Embers

Why the fuck isn't Orochimaru dead?

It seemed a simple enough question with a simple enough answer: I hadn't killed the fucker after I catching him. And then no one else had killed him.

Apparently.

Sure I didn't know for certain that the Snake Sage hadn't been executed already, but all the word around town was still about his imprisonment. Nothing about him being judged and put down.

The Third Hokage is something of a softy, too, even if he's still out of town, glassing vast swaths of desert to show the Suna forces just how badly they fucked up.

Still, why didn't I kill him?

I don't remember.

I had been wrestling with the Shadow Clone memory retention issue for a few days now, but even as more and more of the Konoha Crush—as the invasion had now begun to be called—became coherent to me through the haze of a hundred heads, I still couldn't remember why I spared Orochimaru.

Because just loping off his arms and legs isn't going to do much to slow him down in the long run. The fucker can body hop, remember?

So why hadn't I put him down...?

I grimace as suddenly the continued surveillance and stares don't seem quite so benign anymore. Sure it had been annoying all this time, but... How do I know it's not actually my super clingy and psycho sorta-kinda-almost ex who isn't stalking me around town now, looking to burn down my house and steal my dog?

Or my body, since I don't have a dog right now.

I kinda do want one, though. Or maybe a cat, since dogs require more constant care...

Might not fit with my mission schedule in the future. Or maybe I'll ask Kakashi about his ninja dog contract – having my own or sharing his pack of smart ninja dogs could be cool.

Or maybe I should see if there's any cute girls among the Inuzuka to date? Get a big litter of puppies in on the bargain. I mean I already know how the basics of their clan ninjutsu work. But eh, then I'd have to deal with Kiba on a more constant basis.

But Akamaru is pretty cool. And marrying Kiba's big sister and forcing him to be all deferential to me could be fun, too...

Anyhow, how do I know that Orochimaru is still contained?

Where is he even held?

Probably that big thing Mizuki is in, or then underground with all the other criminals, where they can't use their chakra—no wait, now I'm remembering something from the Bleach anime, I think. Confusing filler for filler? Same period of my life, well over a decade and a half ago now, so no wonder it all starts to blend together, the beginnings of a headache forming already.

Fuck it, going for a flight now. My tails can just fucking deal.

I'd probably recognize the building if I saw it from the air. Besides, haven't flown around as a raven enough recently.

I explode off the ground in a Midnight Flicker—the now practically perfected 2.0 version, even if I can't un-Transform quickly enough for it to be quite useful at shorter ranges—and the spike of surprise and shock I sense from my surveillance are delicious.

Banking in the air I bleed off the explosive acceleration into an ascent over Konoha proper.

The destroyed buildings and the debris still stand out like an open wound by way of the dusty ground where there should be wooden buildings, painted red and green and blue.

But the healing and reconstruction are already well on their way with the people below looking energized, moving about with purpose, rather than any lethargy or desolation. I don't quite know how to compare the ninjutsu to the modern-day working machines I knew back before, never having worked on a proper building site, just having built things by hand, but it looks fairly impressive.

Earth jutsu to level and compact the ground for a stable foundation, fire or wind jutsu to clear rubble, tree walking making nearly all kinds of climbing harnesses or external platforms unnecessary...

From the looks of it, it was mostly older genin handling the rebuilding.

It kind of was D-rank drudgery, so that made sense. Besides, it only took one or two ninjas with the appropriate jutsu to handle their respective elemental roles, since too many cooks spoil the soup. I wonder how many of them have even seen any combat and how many are little more than chakra-enhanced civil engineers...

Adhesing to solids seemed like a common enough skill, though.

Weird, how so few seem to try and push it to its limits...

Moving along on the wind-borne black wings, I leave behind that particular section of Konoha, spiraling on outwards in my quest for an obvious prison.

I was going through a minor growth spurt again, but it didn't seem like it was fraying the raven form too much with the extra chakra I had put into the Transformation. It was a worry I had: that if I continued to grow my ability to compress into the shape of a bird would deteriorate and finally vanish. Already I was big for a bird of the Corvus genus, and flying would be impossible if not for my blatantly superhuman strength.

At this rate I would probably have to abandon the raven form if I couldn't find a way to expand the inside. At least for myself, as the Shadow Clones could still make use of it, lacking the limits of a physical body.

But dividing myself into a larger form—like an eagle, perhaps—and my clones into ravens, would waste all of the experience they would accrue while flying. Waste all the experience and training I had already put into. Sure, a bird was still a bird, but the raven form was the one I had gotten good at and could Transform into quickly and accurately thanks to all that practice, allowing me to develop the Midnight Flicker in the first place.

If I had to turn myself into an eagle in the future, I would probably have to start all over again for the Flicker - like learning two different languages half-assedly instead of truly mastering one.

And I didn't want to abandon the raven: it was fairly innocuous everywhere in the world, agile in the air and forests, well-recognized as intelligent and ominous, had natural camouflage for darkness, and was a cool theme besides for my personal jutsu...

I wanted to keep using it.

So I had been pushing more chakra than usual into it, despite all the care early on in my training I had taken to minimizing the jutsu's expenditure, now trying to experiment to see if that would allow me to expand the internal space somehow, though so far with little luck.

Because I wasn't Sakura - I had enough chakra to spare for an overblown Transformation jutsu, rather than trying to endlessly optimize its efficiency, especially given all the applications that line of development seemed to have.

It wasn't just the Rasengan or the Strong Fist that relied on the natural chakra spin for power. The Inuzuka's Fang-line of taijutsu techniques used it, too. Though it was closer to the Hyuuga's Kaiten—simply performed while on all fours to turn the self into a horizontal drill, probably compensating for their lesser chakra control by using their hands to achieve comparable power—than either the Fourth Hokage's or Maito Gai's prized techniques.

And that was important because it wasn't merely the Inuzuka who could use it: their ninja dogs could as well.

While Transformed into a likeness of their Inuzuka companion.

I could probably perform a Fang drill if I really wanted to, but I knew for a fact that my Shadow Clones could not. Nor could I do it while using a Transformation jutsu disguise. The same way a Flicker tore them apart, the chakra bubble and immense pressure created by the spin would dispel them.

Partly the dogs could do it thanks to chakra's ability to imprint and reference, allowing the ninja dogs to continuously copy their companion's guise in the jutsu that built off of their Four Legs jutsu... But Kiba and Akamaru also used soldier pills to stabilize their Transformation variants, all the way up to that two-headed wolf thing they would eventually do.

And Naruto was Naruto – so it seemed to me like the key to pushing the Transformation jutsu's limits lay in exceeding a certain chakra-to-mass-and-or-volume ratio, allowing it to stabilize somehow. So while I had no direct link from this to the idea of expanding the internal space, it made a sort of intuitive sense that it would.

Anime-logic, if you will: just throw more power at it until it works!

And it sort of did seem to work? I hadn't been able to compress the raven form into the size it had been back when I first started as a wee little ankle-biter back in the Academy, but it wasn't quite as tight a fit as it had felt during the Forest of Death... Maybe?

So, progress?

Not really - but it was a glimmer of hope.

The chakra imprinting technique the Inuzuka used seemed easy enough at least and I had more or less already figured it out, but I hadn't trained it to the point of muscle memory yet.

Version 3.0 is going to be a doozy – forget B-rank supplementary, A-rank offensive will be more like it. Well, if it works.

Kakashi could eat his heart out then.

I banked again and brought myself into a sharp descent, pulling up and canceling the Transformation at the last second into a backflip as I landed back next to my house, having found nothing.

If there is a prison, it's probably underground or further away from Konoha.

Neither of which would be easy to find, especially while nominally at least keeping to my house the way I had promised.

Already one ANBU-looking ninja was approaching me, no doubt to chastise me. I could taste his annoyance on my skin even before he landed.

"Uchiha Sasuke, you—"

"Fuck off."

I Flickered back to my house, performing the two-step to my front door around the corner flawlessly. The invasion had allowed me to gather an absolutely immense pool of references for how to perform regular Body Flickers, which along with my variant practice, had made me rather adept at it.

Taking out the key and entering I sighed as the overbearing presence against my skin returned. At least the observer knew not to bother me again.

"Sakura?"

"Sasuke-kun! I found several books you might want to read—can I come in?"

I shrug, letting her inside and throwing a glance at the ANBU keeping watch on my front door. At least they had changed the guy around noon. The previous one was growing annoying.

"So I thought about what you told me and Shino the other day! About yin and yang and spirit and..."

"Calm down, Sakura. Sit down and catch your breath," I said and turned towards the kitchen. "I'll make some tea so gather your thoughts first."

"Oh, right."

Even as she seemed to obey, her buzzing energy did not wane at all.

Finally, when I sat down opposite her, she released all the pent-up words all at once.

"I think the reason you don't notice any difference in your spirit—no matter how hard you try, I mean—is related to your Sharingan, because—you said that it's why genjutsu don't work against you, and several of the treatises on the in'yo or onmyo teachings stress that the Uchiha are highly attuned to yin chakra, even more than the Yamanaka and Nara clans; everyone says you're like the ultimate practitioners. So, if yin chakra is the stable no-spin state, then that makes sense, too! It always returns to rest, any kind of state imposed on the chakra would just be fueling it! So—"

"Sakura, I have no idea what you're talking about."

The pinkette blinks, completely lost for a second before she frantically takes out one thick tome and places it on the table next to the teacup. I don't think she even noticed that I had put it there.

"This is one of the treatises on yin and yang chakra – it's written by the Second Hokage, Sasuke-kun!"

"...Okay?"

Wait, how did she even get that? Pretty sure those should be on restricted access.

"And he writes extensively about the Uchiha and how their affinity for yin chakra is so strong, look at the bookmarked parts, Sasuke-kun!"

I frown.

"Fine, fine. Just drink your tea and give me a few minutes," I reply tersely, accepting the book and opening it on the first bookmark.

At first, I just eye through the sections she had bookmarked, idly scanning the text, but soon I'm poring over it in detail.

It's obviously a later reprint, mostly dealing with theoreticals without any direct practical applications, written in flowery language and references, most of which I'm only familiar with from years of having to read Academy texts using similar similes and analogies, and some inferences.

No doubt, at least a third of the points the book is trying to have come across are going over my head though.

But what I do understand is very interesting. Like how the 'light' yang style is due to the chakra being excited into spinning into higher frequencies unique to each individual, and how conversely the 'dark' yin chakra is at rest, in a manner conspicuously similar to black body radiation in physics. The yin constructs and yang animates, like a blueprint coming to life, or something like that?

The Shadow Clone jutsu—the Second Hokage created the Shadow Clone jutsu?—is apparently an application of these two principles, based on how—again, apparently—the tailed beasts exist as physical entities despite really being nearly pure chakra—something completely new to me—as the stable, almost solid yin chakra is like ice, forming the body, physical shape, and purpose, subsequently allowing the animating yang chakra to be contained in it and bringing it to life.

Didn't remember any of those tidbits from before - even from the Academy.

I just remembered him as the white-haired dude who could rip moisture out of the air for his water jutsu and use that really potent genjutsu against the Third Hokage.

Almost like my eyes of entropy line, cutting off the senses from the self, attacking the spirit.

That and maybe the remote-controlled zombie jutsu that Orochimaru used in canon. I think?

But that still doesn't prove the existence of yin and yang chakra per se. It seems more like an energy state of base chakra the way he describes it, outside of the Shadow Clones and tailed beast examples raised, since he doesn't go into any detail there. The same way some people have an affinity towards specific elemental types of chakra, they have a base energy state to their chakra, allowing them to more easily use certain types of jutsu.

Assuming any of this is actually true and I understand even half of it right.

Somewhere along the way my Sharingan have whirled to life, allowing me to devour and memorize the pages at a pace dozens of times faster than normal.

Because for all the interesting tidbits, I'm also reading something peculiar between the lines. Just as a great writer can put more than words into their writing, great readers can read in-between. Or underneath the underneath, as a student of Kakashi's I'm legally obligated to say.

I don't think Tobirama liked the Uchiha.

It's almost like reading some Nazi scientist's dissertation about why the Jews are so dangerous.

Bipolar emotional distance and control. A coolness that goes into their very core. Inability to form bonds with others. Habitually objectifying or othering people. Moving goalposts without even realizing it. Extending these same habits to the self... It's like that one passage where Hitler talks about debating the Jews in Mein Kampf.

I'd be offended if he wasn't so damn accurately calling me out in all of my rubific mania.

Even the part where I had retreated into myself and used my Sharingan as a crutch to vent frustrations internally, back before the Wave mission.

Shit, were all the Uchihas absolute fucking maniacs like me? No wonder Itachi fucking killed them. Hell, I'd kill myself if I had to deal with myself on a daily basis.

It brings to mind some of the early Konoha history lessons we had. Most of it had gone down before my awakening as Uchiha Sasuke, but later topics often called back to the long strife between the Uchiha and Senju clans before the village's founding.

Konoha wasn't that old, so the Second Hokage had probably been alive for the old conflicts?

I snort, reaching for my tea, and notice Sakura staring at me with surprise.

"Tobirama wrote a good pun."

Totally called the Sharingan evil eyes in this one line, just like Naruto does. A pretty clever play on characters, too.

I end up reading the book cover to cover twice, though mostly in piecemeal as I jump back and forth, going back to sections to check and re-check it against later parts. And while I don't necessarily agree with all of it, I think I get the basics of it. Especially the practical applications hinted at.

It's not just the chakra coils, but also the expansion of the lungs, heart, and circulatory system which affect the coils with their movement, huh...

"Shame he's dead. Would have loved to talk to him about all this..."

And not just the parts calling the Uchiha out for being antisocial at best and genocidal yanderes at worst, though those parts were fascinating too in their own way. I clearly needed to read up more on the founding of Konoha and this 'Madara'.

"Then..."

"But I'm not sure how it changes anything I said back then. It doesn't seem to directly contradict anything I said before. Or maybe I'm just iterating again."

Moving goalposts without realizing it, disassociating, and getting manically emotional without realizing it.

I seriously hope he wasn't serious about that love bit – because even if I did say that to Orochimaru, not sure how I feel about either becoming Sailor Moon or an unhinged yandere. Or yangire, if I get rejected...?

Ominous stuff.

Besides, shinobi dealt in secrets. Who knew how true any of this actually was, and how much was just veiled remarks to something else, or misdirections that would only be clear to someone with the right verbal teachings or ciphers.

That was the problem with esoteric teachings – you had to peel it back and compare it to itself to shed all the self-contradictory teachings to find the kernels of truth within.

"I'll have to think about it for a while. Unless you had something you wanted to say?" I ask Sakura.

"Well, umm... Maybe I should read it again first—I only read it once, I can't read as fast as you can, Sasuke-kun."

I roll my eyes.

It's not exactly speed reading, more like keeping multiple tabs open in my mind and comparing the texts all at once, when I'm using the Sharingan. Comprehension would take a little while longer. I would have to meditate and sleep on this to fully internalize it, I think.

"That's fine. Just give me your thoughts – you clearly had something you wanted to say."

She licks her lips, before nodding, eyes not meeting mine.

"It's just... If you occupy the bottom of the spectrum—your chakra naturally always being in an unexcited state—being so heavily yin-aligned, then it might seem to you as if there is only one direction. As if there is only doing one thing: exciting the chakra to whatever degree you find necessary... And why trying to disturb your 'spirit' as you put it, doesn't seem to do anything."

I frown.

It doesn't exactly jive with my experiences... But trusting what feels intuitively right can be a mistake.

I'll have to think about it more...

"What's the other book?" I ask, deciding to just leave the matter be for now.

"Oh, oh! This..." She turned around and reached for the book she had placed aside earlier.

She looks frazzled. Has she been sleeping alright?

"Here! It's about the Uzumaki and the Village Hidden in the Eddies, and their history of sealing...!"

I blink at the cover. There's a picture of a beautiful red-headed woman next to what looks like the First Hokage. The book seemed like something you'd find in a bookstore. A popular history print I would have seen back before about the Egyptians or Greeks, or their mythology, with lots of colored pictures of statues and ruins.

"So the Uzumaki invented sealing scrolls, too?"

I didn't particularly feel like reading the book right now, head still too full of the previous one. I knew if I tried to read the other right now, I would just have to re-read both again later.

"That's right. But, I couldn't find anything else on the subject. This was the only book that even mentioned the origin of sealing beyond that, but..."

"I can't see it listing many references for any of its claims..." I sighed.

It was the kind of publication that would boldly repeat things 'everyone just knew' and continue propagating hearsay and rumors. Well, given the Uzumaki being Naruto's family, it might all even turn out to be true by some contrived shounen logic.

Back before computers had become utterly ubiquitous, despite the fact that they were all fundamentally compromised technology. It was practically impossible to even find modern hardware that didn't have some kind of backdoors or built-in zero-day vulnerabilities, but even so, it just wasn't possible to not use them, their usefulness being too absolute in any competitive market.

And if I theoretically created a completely new form of power, something based on secrets and references and symbols— something like a magical coding language as sealing is—wouldn't I create some sort of checks and controls so that it wouldn't be used against me?

Like a Y2K bug? Or ensuring that one of the basic pillars upon which it was built could be changed at a whim? Or deleting a critical dependency upon which all more complicated functions were built? Completely negating all the seals and works previously created with it, or even only those created by someone without access to some form of authorization.

That way I could not only use it without having to worry about keeping it a secret, but I could also actively spread it as far and wide as possible to maximize the potency of such sabotage.

Hadn't that been the tiresome trend back before as well; selling not 'products', but 'services' and 'licenses'? Hadn't I complained about this very trend, hoping that it would be different with sealing?

Maybe I was just seeing old ghosts where there were none.

I hadn't seen anything like what I figured was possible, but it wasn't like I could trust any of the international history made available to me. Something like entire infrastructures collapsing overnight in the middle of a war effort because of Uzushio deciding to do something to that effect was entirely possible.

It keeps coming back to the Uzumaki...

Could it be that what Naruto had done with the Transformation jutsu was only possible because he had some innate affinity or understanding of space-time as well? Like the way certain special elemental affinities worked? If Ice is a special element, I don't see why space-time couldn't be as well, as tiresome and annoying as that would be.

I'm becoming too reliant on Naruto, I thought, glancing at Sakura. And her, too. I need to figure this out on my own. If only to prove that I still can.

It wasn't as if I had no ideas about how to start that line of research. If it was just Naruto and trying to reverse engineer seals, maybe. But Haku had done something similar with his mirrors as well, compressing himself inside his flat ice sheets.

So perhaps there was some kind of overlap between Wind-natured chakra and space-time expansion.

Now if only my Wind-alignment wasn't such garbage...

I stand up, causing her to stand up as well, hers more of a flinch-reaction than a conscious decision, however. I take pity on her, for now, and say: "Good job, Sakura. Go get some rest."

"I-I yes, thank you, Sasuke-kun!"

As she says that, a third book falls to the floor from her open hip pouch, jostled by her earlier hurried standing up.

A book with a very familiar orange cover.

"I-I-I—!"

She freezes, eyes going wide as she sees that I see her copy of Icha Icha, a bookmark similar to the one in the Second Hokage's book between its pages. A denial on her lips, she shakes her hands, face flushing crimson and eyes swimming in pure panic.

"Who's your favorite character?" I ask, raising a brow, almost amused that she caved in and read it after all.

But it's somehow disappointing that she didn't stick to her guns in disliking it. But maybe I'm just finding fault in her now for the sake of finding fault in her by now.

She blinks, twice, thrice, before swallowing heavily and looking away shyly. "H-Haruka,"

I nod, sighing.

Of course.

"Who was yours...?" she asks, almost as if morbidly curious and despite herself.

"Hinako."

Sakura goggles.

"But—but Hinako was a shrill shrew! It was obvious how she would end up alone, pushing everyone away and being such a prude—or, I, uh..."

"Right, and she was going to end up as a spinster if she hadn't turned on Haruka and Shinji. But I think that was admirable on her part, choosing to her own beliefs over conforming even if left her alone."

She steps back, away from me, and I'm not sure why.

I glance at the mirror and sure enough, I'm not exuding anything unusual.

My eyes are normal and I'm calm. I mean, we're just talking about a raunchy novel. Sure I've had long arguments before about the morality and themes of hentais' because they have a capacity to speak about very deep things specifically because of how base and depraved they are. They speak to something primal and instinctive, past the shallow veneers of civility that we put up.

Like holy fuck that one hypnosis-reverse-rape novel turned hentai; it was one detail away at the finale from being a serious take on the human condition and the virtue of forgiveness and second chances - but then it plunged balls deep into the darkest pit of tragedy and misery, and just ugh...

Okay now I'm actually getting worked up about some porn I watched years ago. Calm down, Sasuke.

So why does Sakura look like she's actually seen me for the first time?

Well, I guess we're finally talking in a language we both actually understand, rather than past each other and at our own false images of reality. Well, her more than me. I had my rude awakening back in the preliminaries.

"Where do you draw your line, Sakura? How much are you willing to give up before you make your own stand?"

Like I said to Anko - Sakura burned a damned friendship over a mutual crush on me. How fucked up is that?

"I..." She licks her lips, avoiding my eyes. "I need to go."

With that, she dashes out, only bothering to grab her copy of Icha Icha with her.

I shrug and get back to trying to figure out how to master space and time.

"Anything?"

"There is a slight disturbance, but it is hardly worth noting," Neji replies.

I cluck my tongue, letting the genjutsu go.

"Looks like I'm still lacking something there."

It was probably rash to expect another ground-breaking discovery in the field of genjutsu to be so easy. Just because the Sharingan and Byukugan are both mutations of the eye does not mean they work the exact same way. The eye is one of the most complex organs in the human body, even without getting into all the connections and imaging the brain has to do to make sense of what the eyes tell it.

And since the Hyuuga could clearly see in all directions without having to turn their eyes any which way, their eyes clearly worked on a completely different operating principle. Probably detecting chakra somehow, instead of photons the way normal eyes do.

In that sense, it might make sense to assume the Hyuuga and Uchiha are offshoots, rather than just parallel evolutions. Didn't canon say something like that, too?

Besides, the Hyuuga exemplified excellence.

Their training regimen was complete – if they shared a village with the Uchiha, I found it difficult to believe that they would not have developed highly sophisticated methods for training against anything the other broody, bright-eyed clan might have thought up.

"I would question the wisdom of wasting time on attempting to fool the Byakugan with illusions, were it anyone else..." Neji begins saying, snapping me out of my thoughts. "So instead I shall question why you believe it necessary? You know how exacting my clan is about safeguarding our eyes."

"I'm not looking to fight any more of your clan, Neji. I'm just gathering data points," I answer.

His brows furrow minutely, motioning me to continue and explain myself.

But the problem is, that I'm relying on knowledge from back before again. Knowledge and anecdotes which don't have direct counterparts here.

I doubt what I had read from Tobirama would make any sense to him either.

"I'm... trying to see if my intuitive understanding matches with reality, doing away with what appears to make sense and discover the truth, however unintuitive it might be."

The thing about science—or rather, the empirical method—is that it's easy to look at something and go 'well this is like that other thing, therefore they must be similar', but then when you stumble on new data which contradicts that paradigm, that previous understanding not only becomes faulty but also very likely a hindrance.

'Well, that other thing can't work this way, so why would it work here?'

Causing you to dismiss the new data and stunt any advances.

For example, back before, mathematics had been extremely advanced for thousands of years, with great minds capable of solving incredibly complex problems without any of the modern tools or shortcuts that had been available in my time.

To accomplish these feats in areas such as multiplication or exponents, it was common to use geometry.

Two times two, or two to the power of two, is four because you can line up both of those problems with geometry and arrive at the solution intuitively: seeing it right there in front of us with our eyes. Our eyes, which send transmit their findings to the brain, that then forms a three-dimensional representation of the world around us.

A representation, because it is not reality. Blind people who became able to see proved this, unable to recognize objects they knew from before through touch with their newfound visual prowess without being allowed to touch the item.

Thus this specific intuitive method fails when attempts to introduce operations not easily translatable to our perceived visual reality are made, precisely because of how powerful of a crutch it is.

For example, negative numbers were an abomination in the minds of many extremely accomplished and intelligent mathematicians: how could there be such a thing as a negative number? There was no such thing as a negative object. So how could you have negative distance, or negative area, when attempting to geometrically represent such problems?

For this reason, many a notation method went to great lengths to undo any possible negative numbers, which to any modern understanding would look incredibly backward and inefficient, constantly working around subtraction. Or imaginary numbers, which were just as maligned and important for certain fields, like electrical engineering or quantum mechanics.

Or—on the subject of electricity—the initial belief hundreds of years ago that electricity runs from the positive pole to the negative pole like an invisible fluid, when the electrons actually go the other way.

Hence conventional current and actual current are completely opposite because electrons are a negative current rather than a positive one, as had been imagined.

I still can't reliably remember which was which with the cathode and anode, or what the hell cations and anions are because they seemingly flip depending on whether it's a charge or discharge, whether you're pretending the black box can't be looked inside of, or if you're working inside of it suddenly again. And were they strictly for one type of current, or both?

Fucking cathode-ray tubes. Fuck anodes, too.

I take a deep breath, ignoring Neji who's looking at me weirdly. I mean, I am only arguing with myself to the point of making myself a little angry, nothing weird. Just stress from being constantly followed.

Anyhow, just trying to think about working with modern AC-power without the Cartesian plane or complex numbers—however unintuitive they might be—would be an absolute nightmare.

So intuitive understanding is a crutch.

But how do I explain any of this to Neji? Maybe I need to prod about his frame of reference and build an analogy he can understand.

"Have you ever used your Byakugan and known something perfectly, but then tried to explain that to someone without it and found yourself unable to? Or found that they just did not get it, no matter how many times you explained it?" I ask.

Neji scoffs, crossing his arms.

"Constantly."

I snort at his emphatic answer – suddenly all his talk about destiny and acting as if everyone else is just blind makes that much more sense. He has always been a one-eyed man in a land of the blind, to some extent.

"Right. But then how do you know that you aren't just as blinded and wrong as you know everyone else?"

Neji blinks, the equivalent of a Hyuuga goggling, I think. He has no rebuttal. I think I just rocked the foundation of his worldview again.

Should I introduce Neji to continental philosophy while I'm at it?

Better not.

"That is how you were able to defeat me – by surpassing your own blindness."

There's a hint of awe in his voice.

Completely unfounded, I'm pretty sure I'm the blindest of all here.

Regardless, I smile and snap my fingers at him. "Exactly. These are useful and very powerful," I say, eyes twirling to rufescent magnificence for a second. "But they aren't infallible. They're just a tool, that can be just as inappropriate and wrong as any other tool if used wrong."

I let him mull on that for a few seconds before I continue again.

"So I want to comprehensively test my ideas by getting more data points – to see where I am right and where I am wrong. To see if I can reproduce the results consistently, or whether I can find the exact point where it stops working, achieving falsifiability... In that sense, failures are even better than successes, since they help me narrow down principles behind how something works."

A benefit of anime powers is that they seem to work most of the time pretty easily, compared to how much work it was back before. Or maybe it is just the Sharingan doing all the heavy lifting and I'm just full of hot air.

Neji nods again, appeared a little less enthused again.

He's a genius, but he's not an uomo universale – he doesn't really care beyond his specialization.

Bring it back into his frame of reference.

"Like, I think that most of the concept of elemental affinities is bunk, and it's training and preferences the same way the Gentle Fist is built up."

The Hyuuga prodigy raises his brows again, appearing amused as he recognizes my moving the discussion back into something he understands and actually cares about. Even without the Byakugan active he's a superb cold reader.

"The Great Fireball jutsu which young Uchiha are taught – did we teach it because we have a natural affinity for Fire chakra, or are we good at Fire jutsu because we learned it so young?"

The age-old nature versus nurture argument.

Well, I have no idea if it exists here. But back before it was almost a tired cliche already.

"Because I think the Great Fireball is a method for helping young ninja learn how to mold chakra and create fire. Or rather..." I frown, trying to find a good analogy since bicycles and training wheels don't exist here. "It's a step-by-step introduction to Fire chakra."

"Obviously. It is the first jutsu taught to the Uchiha, as you just stated." Neji nods, not looking particularly impressed by my argument.

It's the fine line I'm trying to bring up. It's not 'the first fire jutsu Uchiha learn' it's more 'train this to improve your Fire chakra nature'.

"No, it's not like..."

I take a Gentle Fist stance and Neji's brows rise up into his headband. I do a snap-sway, thrust.

"This is one of the first things taught, right?"

He nods, arms hanging by his side, no longer looking quite as relaxed.

"But it's not very useful, is it? I mean there's like three different things wrong with it if I tried to use it against you, but it's necessary, because it builds up to this," I say and then snap-wind, thrust in a much tighter and faster motion. "But to do it consistently you need to build up to it. Like, fuck, my wrists were killing me the day after our match..."

"...Yes, the ligaments take a long time to adjust to the sharp movements of the Coiling Heaven Bridge. Do not train it further without my supervision – the tendons of your wrist are still not fully healed from our match."

It's my turn to blink, numbly looking at my hand.

Right. Chronic injuries and sequela aren't always obvious until it's too late. As the torn muscle and tennis elbow of my left forearm back before taught me. Proper rest and recovery are vitally important to growing stronger.

"Thanks, Neji. I didn't even realize."

He inhales, crossing his arms as he nods. But it looks like he's smiling a little. Might be a trick of the light.

"But it demonstrates my point. It must take months to condition the bones, tendons, and ligaments to handle that movement, right?"

"It took me two years until I could perform it at full speed without accruing considerable strain and risking injury," Neji agrees.

I nod, gesturing with my hand as if to say 'there you go.'

"I think it's the same with the Great Fireball. Compare it to what the books in the library say about training elemental affinities; taking a leaf and trying to just burn it in your hand? Eh?"

Neji tilts his head and I want to say his eyes turn distant, but it's hard to tell.

"I have not read any books on elemental affinities since the Academy, but that does sound familiar."

Right, his team is full of physical specialists. I'd say taijutsu, but Tenten is more of a weapons girl with a bent on throwing—shurikenjutsu—so, close enough.

"But that, compared to the Great Fireball, is like... jumping into a running river when first trying to learn how to swim. Yeah, it's an exercise for those who already have a natural tendency towards that, at least according to the chakra paper test, but who knows how accurate that test even is. But it doesn't even give the first idea about all the component actions necessary for creating Fire-natured chakra.

"Whereas the Great Fireball takes all those different components and makes them individual components as the handseals, as far as I can tell. Because I can't actually look within myself when I'm doing the jutsu and by the time I exhale the fire's already there..."

"I see. That does sound as if it could be useful," Neji says as he nods. "There is certain value to discovering principles by yourself, but it is hardly efficient."

He sounds something between bitter and smug. I wonder if he's gotten to show off his Kaiten and Sixty-Four Palms to anyone outside his team, yet?

"It was actually another thing I wanted your input on - seeing how the jutsu works, I mean. Since it's formed inside my body."

"Did you wish for my Byakugan to confirm something specific or merely follow the overall flow of your chakra?" he asks, looking interested again.

"I think I have a pretty good idea in general of how the chakra flows, but I'd like you to confirm it. Or rather, explain it and then I'll say what I think it is and maybe we can discuss or debate it?"

"Hmm..." Neji shrugs, accepting that arrangement easily enough.

I turn to head to the lake, since I don't want to burn anything around the trees. As we start walking, I sense both my surveillance, and Neji's notice of their moving. He's been keeping an eye on them since he first got here and while we've exchanged meaningful looks, we haven't mentioned it out loud.

It is what it is.

I'm just trying to play nice for once, however much it's aggravating me every waking minute of every day.

Coming to the bridge, Neji standing behind me, I exhale, remembering the times I have observed the process with the Sharingan.

"Okay, so here I go."

Snake—connect the inner and outer with a flare of chakra, the interlinked fingers of left and right becoming one; Ram—form the chakra around my body; Monkey—bind the air and chakra together; Boar—bring them together, separate from the surroundings and inside my body when I inhale; Horse—it does something inside my body; Tiger—the final shaping seal:

Fire Release: Great Fireball jutsu!

The roaring bolide slams forward against the screaming air, rippling and writhing the water with its heat, great streaming shrouds of vapor rising in its wake as it continues forward until the very center, where I cut off the streaming chakra from the Tiger shaping-handseal, the raging inferno dying off a second later.

It had suddenly become swelteringly hot, the lake looking like an idyllic hotspring with how the surface was bubbling and swirling after the jutsu.

I inhale and exhale slowly, bringing my chakra back under control.

I think I might be approaching old Sarutobi with this jutsu now.

Pretty sure his fire dragon would still blow me and mine away, though.

Turning around to Neji, he uncrossed his arms as his eyes returned to normal. He didn't look particularly impressed, but I could tell he had taken a step back from before and that he had been squinting from the heat. Even I felt a little bit toasty.

"So?"

"You flared your chakra, inhaled it, turned it into Fire chakra within your body, and then exhaled it, fueling it until you ceased the jutsu."

Right, I figured that already...

Well, of course he wouldn't be looking for the details I'm interested in if it's his first time seeing it.

I wanted to avoid contaminating his understanding with my own biases, but it can't be helped if I want quick results. Doing Fireball after Fireball until he starts picking up on the details I'm looking for is just a waste of chakra... Besides, I can still try that later with Hinata or Hanabi or whoever, I guess...

Well, it depends on how much he saw and remembers. Let's start off by asking some more questions.

"Did you see how the chakra became Fire-natured?"

He nods. "At the Horse-seal, it ignited inside your body."

"Right," I reply with a nod. With my current understanding, the only handseal I really need for a fire breath is the Horse-seal since I can do all the flaring, suffusing and basic concentration without handseals. But I don't know what exactly the Horse-seal does. "But was it because it was being agitated by motion..." I say and show my hands rubbing against each other to cause friction-heat, "or by being compressed to the point of the temperature spiking?" I motion as if making a snowball in my hands.

Snowfall has been pretty scarce in Konoha, though. Nothing like back before.

"Compressed...?" Neji frowns, crossing his arms again as he falls deep into thought, and finally he nods. "It was becoming smaller in your lungs and throat after you inhaled all the chakra you had prepared."

"Like, into a really, really tight ball?"

He nods again.

So compression is the ignition. It's not chakra turning into another type of energy, but the Horse-seal bringing the collected and enriched air and chakra together.

The handseals had over the years begun to make a lot more sense to me.

I'd observed early on that when used in conjunction with other seals, the exact function of a handseal changed, depending on what exactly preceded it, only somewhat resembling what the seals did when used alone. So I had focused on jutsu with minimal seals until now, trying to understand the process. And I was starting to make some headway there now: the Tiger and Ram seals were similar enough, as I'd observed, but there were differences.

Canceling your chakra flow to disrupt genjutsu, preparing to Body Flicker with a chakra bubble and the Tree Walking's solids repulsion step, manipulating chakra around your body when swimming through the earth, or shaping a stream of chakra to feed your fire-breathing were all things that the Tiger seal seemed to accomplish.

In other words, controlling and linking the movements of the chakra and body. Standing still to halt your chakra. Dashing to move. Exhaling to push outward a stream...

In comparison, the Ram seal where the fingers were the same but the left hand was atop the right, had a disconnect between the chakra and the body. The constructs formed in the Transformation jutsu followed the body, but they weren't being sympathetically controlled, while the regular Clone jutsu was something entirely removed. And the Cross seal for Shadow Clones, it was taking that a step further, splitting your chakra out of your body and imprinting the self into its sufficient density.

So I'm guessing the Serpent seal is used for connecting the body with something external—something solid—and manipulating it without sympathetic movements from the body for guidance. Earth jutsu, maybe?

And in this context, by that logic as I had suspected, the Horse seal is a compression. No control, no connection. Simply pure power pushing it all together.

"Which means..."

I had more or less an idea of this working already, even if I haven't been using Fire jutsu too often, but...

Raising my open hand, I will the chakra into my palm and allow it to suffuse the air for a second. Then I bring it all in and compress, aiding the action by closing my fingers around the center of my palm. It exceeds the critical point, igniting with a pop, and begins to feed on the chakra-enriched air.

"Ah..." Neji leans in, surprised at the open flame burning in the palm of my hand.

Look, ma! No handseals!

"So it looks like my theory is right."

I nod and close my hand into a fist, cutting off the chakra and choking out the fire.

The Great Fireball is a simple method for achieving Fire-natured chakra, probably because of it being between all the chakra gates and so near the central coil in the gut, allowing you to really squeeze it from all around, familiarizing your chakra—or brain and spirit or whatever—with the action, increasing your affinity for 'Fire-natured' chakra and allowing you to perform more difficult Fire jutsu more easily after it is mastered.

I could simply compare the Fire Dragon Bullet's eight handseals to the absolutely ludicrous forty-four handseals necessary for the Water Dragon Bullet for that point. It felt like Hidden Mist had desperately wanted their own elemental dragon technique and had ad-hoc ass-backwards reverse-engineered it to work despite water really not wanting to work what way.

Not that I knew for sure, but that's what it comes across like.

There's just one big problem with all this.

If I could figure out that the Great Fireball jutsu is a training method, then the Uchiha clan must have known as much, too. I mean, three tomoe Sharingan shouldn't have been that rare, not like the Mangekyo probably was. And that's assuming they just stole the jutsu and chose it for those properties rather than creating it from the ground up for that express purpose.

So why are there no records of any of this?

I've looked, but found nothing like a library or hidden cache of scrolls or books. Was it all stored as verbal teachings, the Sharingan's affinity for perfect recall making the written word a useless weakness, that would only allow outsiders to steal their hidden knowledge?

Seems possible...

But wouldn't they still at least share it with the Hidden Leaf - their home village? And if they didn't... how much more were they hiding?

It reminds me of Tobirama's writings again.

Of how far away from everything my compound is in the village.

Is it just another case of the genin being kept in the dark – a part of the international armistice and de-arming of ninja? It doesn't sound like it, because I remember the Academy listing two chakra affinities as a common requirement for jounin—as oxymoronic as a common elite can be, anyhow—so that means it is understood that affinities can be trained up.

Hell, the Third Hokage is pretty famous for being a master of all five elements and Orochimaru seemed like he could probably do it, too. But is it just two for most 'elites' because the method just isn't known and they have to do it the hard way listed in the one book I read?

Neji doesn't look like he knew any of this from before despite the Byakugan being perfectly suited for perceiving it.

Is it because he's just a member of the branch family?

Probably shouldn't ask him about it, or if Hinata would know...

The Hyuuga prodigy's outlook on life had brightened considerably, but there was still some—entirely justified—tension there. Hell, if I had awoken as Neji instead of Sasuke and it was still before the sealing, I don't know what I would have done.

Rip my eyes and balls off, blinding and neutering myself to avoid being sealed?

It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility.

Regardless, this made it seem as if acquiring practical control of all the five elements wasn't such a herculean task, so long as all the component control exercises for handling an element were trained up first the way it was in the Great Fireball jutsu.

Except where did that leave the bloodline limit elements, like Haku's ice? And were there more of them? The Academy had been pretty sparing in that kind of information.

Was Gaara's sand control something similar? The Kazekage had something like it but with gold...

Or was it a Shukaku derivative?

So there probably is some genetic element to affinities.

Damn it, I really need a bingo book. Or at least proper access to intel reports. Which I will probably get as soon as I start up my R&D career.

Just as soon as Naruto drags his lazy ass back to Konoha so we can all get promoted.

Looking at my palm, I remember another jutsu performed without seals—the very one Naruto is probably learning right now with Jiraiya—and am reminded of the distinction they taught us in the Academy. Shape and nature, nature and shape. If concentrating immense amounts of chakra into a small point was all it took to make fire-natured chakra, why wasn't the Rasengan a fire jutsu?

What's the difference? Is it just the scale? Elements are micro-control and shape is macro?

I remember Naruto being in considerable pain while trying to learn the Rasengan and being forced to push through it... But did he burn himself with it? 'Chakra burns' ring some bells, but it sounds like the kind of thing fanfiction would have used to highlight just how awesome his chakra capacity was.

'Wooow, look, he's even burned his own tenketsu with how much chakra he can use...!'-kind of thing.

Maybe I should start training the Rasengan already—I know how to do it, even Naruto's little Shadow Clone workarounds—so it shouldn't be too hard and it would probably reveal a lot more about chakra worked... Except for all the surveillance constantly on my ass making that a distinctly terrible idea.

"Well, whatever. Anything you want to work on, Neji? We've spent enough time on my questions already."

The Hyuuga scoffs and smirks. "I was aware of your self-centeredness before I chose to come – no need for false hospitality now."

I roll my eyes at his chiding for ignoring him again in favor of my introspection and fall into an easy Gentle Fist stance.

"I'll take that as a 'yes, this is boring, please punch me, Sasuke-sama'."

His smirk widens and he takes his own stance, both of our eyes changing as we step forward and clash with whipping blows.

I can't help but notice how much I've been eating recently.

Entire chickens, several servings of fish, a dozen eggs... Despite having eaten my fill of good, healthy, and filling food not three hours ago I'm hungry again. And despite my rule to not eat before going to bed, it's hard to refrain when it feels like there's a pit in my gut.

Is it just my new growth spurt – or is it related to my increased demand for chakra?

It's something Neji noted, too...

'Have you been sleeping poorly? You appear ill-rested. Even more so than when we last faced off.'

And maybe his suggestion of getting a firmer pillow and new mattress have some merit to them—even if I can't feel anything wrong with my neck, yet—but I suspect he was seeing something more than just a coming crick or ache.

I've been using my Shadow Clone storage seal a little bit too much, I think.

During the month leading up to the Konoha Crush, I was trying to shore up as much chakra as I possibly could, so I didn't exactly go out of my way to test its efficiency after I was sure it just worked. But now that there's nowhere near as much pressure on me, I have been doing the proper experimentation.

Because even normally Shadow Clones don't have the best return-on-investment as far as chakra expenditure goes. As in, even if the clone does nothing and immediately pops, there is a significant fraction of its chakra that is simply lost.

Right now, after all my work to improve my stamina, if I create a single clone—halving my maximum capacity, giving it that half—there's something between a quarter and a fifth of that half that will not come back to me. Before I think it was somewhere closer to between a third and a quarter, so I've definitely seen some improvement since the Wave mission. This cost appears fixed regardless of distance or initial chakra investment, so long as the clone does not expend chakra needlessly.

Its continued existence and moving around obviously take their toll, hence why I had originally created the seal to minimize those losses.

This lined up pretty accurately with my current ability to create about ten really weak Shadow Clones at once, that returned practically nothing when dispelled—the 'fixed cost' not being completely filled, detracting from their ability considerably—and having to limit myself to less than seven or eight clones, if I want to see any real returns to my personal chakra reserves when the clones dispel. All assuming they had not used any jutsu or wasted any chakra frivolously, again.

So in that sense, creating a few 'strong' clones is much more efficient than creating many weak ones, as each one still required that fixed cost to be created.

A shame - I had initially thought the ability to create 'expendable' weak clones at will would prove advantageous for scouting.

And This is all in addition to the mental overload from too many sets of memories. It's not just poignant observations and realizations that return – it's all the inane thoughts and sensations, too. I'm not sure if the Sharingan is making it better or worse despite running a few reading retention tests, either.

It's the problem of buffer overload.

As it all comes in, I can deal with it just fine... But when I go to sleep and my brain tries to file in all the short-term memories into long-term recollection, it's swamped with so much it has a difficult time deciding what is worth remembering.

Meditation, mnemonic exercises, and a journal help a little...

But it's still a worrying trend.

Like reading up for a test the night before and remembering nothing a week later.

I don't want to turn into a broth brain like Naruto, do I?

So I would henceforth focus on creating a few strong clones, rather than a host of weak ones, even if the variety did come in handy before against Orochimaru. For Shadow Coaching, I would have them working on partial dispels, using a disappearing kunai or shuriken from their person as a medium to return their observations to me.

That way the parallel memories of each snippet would overlap, rather than be from a dozen different points of view, perhaps even building on earlier thoughts. And if that proved just as hazy for recall, then I would have to work on the clones' ability to select what they returned, perhaps through self-hypnosis or genjutsu.

And if I wasn't getting a very good chakra-return-on-investment on the clones, maybe I should cut back on the habit of sealing up all my excess chakra, at least a little?

Because what was chakra anyway?

It's a question I keep getting back to, again and again. Where does the energy come from? The fact that we're taught it is—partially, at least—stamina suggests at least in part it's our bodies' stored chemical energy. Most likely the food we consume, based on the Akimichi clan jutsu being a method for directly accessing the stored energy in fat.

But would that really be enough to power all-out supernatural techniques and feats?

No, wait... Chakra is in everything, right?

How the hell did the massive animals in the Forest of Death manage to come about in such a small eco-system, if there wasn't some additional boost in the food chain? So are all the living things I eat are suffused with small amounts of chakra too, perhaps?

But that just shoots the problem down the food chain. Where do the plants at the very bottom of that hierarchy get that energy from, then? The sun?

"Ugh... I really don't need all these thoughts before bed..."

There's something fundamental that I'm still missing here, some component to chakra I just don't understand yet. And it's not goddamn spiritual energy.

But assuming I was stressing my metabolism and body by continuously forcing it to produce chakra to keep filling up my triskelion clone seal, maybe I should consider the long-term effects as well. Stress in small bursts is really good for the body, telling it to toughen the fuck up and get its shit together. But continuously, without pause or change or chance to rest, it's extremely harmful.

To the extent of the classic anime trope of using up your lifespan.

I sigh, rubbing at my brow, running the mental mnemonics for my two new observations.

Chakra and food chain, chakra and food chain, chakra and food chain – test rest/stress schedule, test rest/stress schedule, test rest/stress schedule...

"For now, I guess I'll just start sleeping the weekends at full chakra capacity and see if it changes anything..."

I would have to run the full gamut of experiments again: would it even make a difference in the short-term, how much chakra capacity counts for 'full', how many days of the week should I rest then at this full reserve, how long before getting to bed did you have to have the chakra in reserve again the way eating before going to sleep was bad, was there a difference between your naturally replenished chakra or could you just top off before bed with a clone...?

Damn it, I need a bigger sample size for all this shit...

Well, Sakura would be joining me in all this soon. Probably. Maybe I could draft the other rookies, or make it my first big project once I become a researcher...

Unless they first put me in some ass-end lab assistant position, forcing me to clean up after some other scatter-brained genius for a few years. I grimaced, remembering chemistry again.

Fucking anodes.

Except now I realize that trying to mess with the Shadow Clone's efficiency will cut in the chakra growth efficiency since maximum efficiency with clones is one half-chakra clone, which is nowhere near the point of exhaustion I need to reach. So do I need to do one half-clone and then one-quarter clone? Or do I push it further, with a one-eight clone after those two, or... one-half followed by two-thirds by making one clone and then two with my remaining half of chakra, and...

"Ugh. I don't need this math right now..."

I'll need pen and paper for this.

Sluggishly writing a note—including my earlier mnemonics, just in case—straddling the fine line between incomprehensible to everyone else but not to me, I shake my head, deciding that this is enough for fucking today.

I have been feeling pretty tired lately, so might as well start tonight and see if it makes a difference tomorrow morning. I pull up the triskelion seal on my arm and release a clone that should leave me topped off at maximum after training with Neji. It was mostly taijutsu work, excepting the earlier attempts at genjutsu and one fireball.

He looks around, confused for a second, expecting either a training scenario or a fight.

"...We being ambushed?" he asks, crossing his arms.

"Nah. Too tired to explain, just running an experiment. Pop off."

He blinks and throws me the middle finger.

"Nah, I'm going for a flight. Sick of being cooped up all the damn time."

Yeah, he's right. I stored him a few days ago and I more or less arrived at the same conclusion this morning. Even if I had the excuse of looking for Orochimaru... Which does remind me of that situation again, unfortunately.

That's three mnemonics for tomorrow... chakra food chain, chakra food chain, stress/rest test, stress/rest test, Oro, Oro, Oro...

"That's fine, but don't waste chakra or train anything excessive."

The clone of me frowns but shrugs. "Fine. I'll just fly around a bit. Not like I have any big plans to take over the world or anything."

He leaves in a flutter of inky feathers, vanishing into the midnight like a nameless ghost.

Yes, I just thought that. Such a perfect name, I love that jutsu so much...

Almost makes me want to go flying, too. Eh, tomorrow maybe.

Drinking a last glass of water, I head for bed, hesitating only a moment at the books Sakura had left behind.

"...Sorry, Tobirama, you're a little heavy this late."

The Uzumaki chronicles it is. There's plenty of pictures there, I note as I tuck in and crack it open. A lot of pictures of a lot of redheads. Senju Mito—the First Hokage's wife—most famous among them, but hardly alone.

"Huh, wonder if that Grass genin was related to them..."

She seemed kinda weak, though.

Well, maybe someday I could drop by around Hidden Grass and have another chat with her. Maybe poach her for additional data points on the whole sealing front.

Not worth a mnemonic, though.

Chakra food chain, stress/rest test, Oro...

My last thought before sleep claims me is that I'll probably have to approach that filler-fuckwit Danzo for info on Orochimaru tomorrow.