Transformative

I woke up to the chirping of birds.

Rolling over, I looked at the clock to see that it was still before six. I hadn't set any alarms last night, just as I hadn't set any alarms to wake me up since I had started sleeping here. Alarms clocks are degenerate. Reaching over I grasped the glass I had left last night on the bedside and downed the water within before standing up and heading for the kitchen and bathroom.

Washing my face, I blearily looked myself over in the mirror.

"Should I cut my hair...?"

It had grown long.

Longer than I ever really remembered Sasuke having. Outside of his weird cursed seal transformation, anyhow. It wasn't like Itachi's smooth hair either, being spikier and darker. Not quite Jiraya levels, either, but somewhere in between. Eh, I'll just use a bit of ninja wire and tie it into a ponytail.

Thinking about hair care and style was too much effort to bother with, I figured if it got too long I'd just take a kunai to it, since I hadn't seen any barbershops in Konoha. Maybe I should just shave it all off and be done with it. That had been my hair care plan before; take it all off in spring, let it stay cool in summer, and then let it grow long for winter. Didn't need a hat that way, see?

It would be kind of amusing to see how the fan-girls reacted to it if I showed up one day to the Academy with a shaved and polished chrome dome.

Chuckling, I brushed my teeth and then transformed, just making a set of exercise clothing I could sweat freely in. It saved the effort of extra laundry and I didn't want to mess around with a different size or proportioned body while training and build in awkward instincts, even as I trained the jutsu.

After that, I went for a light morning run, circling the Uchiha compound once and then crossing the lake and finishing with a way through the trees. I wasn't sure if chakra control was permanent, in the sense of once you learned it you just knew how to do it, like riding a bike or something, or if it was a perishable skill like most combat skills were, so I made a point of doing it at least a little every day. That way, if changes to my chakra capacity or mass did affect the skills, then I wouldn't notice it the same way I didn't really notice the small daily changes to my body's height or weight when I walked or ran.

While in the forest, I made a point to train my pull-ups, doing three sets of 20. I intended to continue raising the sets until I could do at least fifty with each hand, since the muscles involved there were more important than those involved in push-ups, when it came to most fighting techniques.

Or then maybe get started on doing muscle ups at sets of thirty, I hadn't really quite decided yet.

After that, I retrieved my sword; a wakizashi that was slightly on the shorter side for my current stature, but still within acceptable limits. I had been doing drills every day with it ever since I had acquired it, running through basic cuts, thrusts, parries, and movement drills to get used to it. Waving it around like a fan with one hand was a very good and serious way to train the wrist, no laughing now. The thing about swordsmanship was that it was a highly perishable skill. If you didn't calibrate the techniques in and retain the feel for the blade you wanted to use, it was easy to lose your form and overdo techniques.

It was why I had never particularly liked kendo, back before, preferring heavier blades over the bamboo slats.

And without a partner I couldn't really build in the muscle memory for any proper techniques, so until I got a decent clone technique, I wouldn't be able to advance anywhere beyond the basics. Finishing off with a flow drill that emphasized continuous movement and strengthening the whole body equally, from wrists to ankles, along with creating the sense of how power was generated from the feet against the ground through the hip all the way back up to the tip of the blade, I sheathed the blade and returned it to the house.

Kicking off my sandals I checked the time and undid the transformation, leaving me in my underwear, which I without much ado kicked into the dirty bin as I headed for the washroom. Still enough time for a quick shower and breakfast.

Letting the cool water run down my skin and relaxing my muscles, I once again wondered whether I was training right.

Back before, I knew how to train physically, because I could consult the best minds of the past millenium through the internet, and not just the modern-day fads.

How to balance exercise with rest and nutrition, having once in my youth fallen prey to the masochistic gym culture that worshiped the day-after pains, form over function, and set their goals in almost meaningless numbers. This many kilograms here, that body-fat percentage, so-and-so many reps, daily caloric intakes, bulking and cutting, tearing muscles and being forced to start up from the ground to train all the other muscles in the arm to compensate for it, learning to live with chronic tennis elbow...

I didn't miss any of it.

I hadn't broken a leg on a waterpark half-pipe in this body and my knee definitely knew it.

But I had to wonder if I was pushing myself enough. I knew I could go harder, not just from prior experience, but also from the fact that my old expectations were constantly being blown out. Chakra really was something else; even without trying to use it, my current body seemed like a jet engine barely staying on the ground as I kept throttling the gas.

I was starting to think physique had little to do with conditioning in this world.

It wasn't like Dragonball — very few people here had physiques I could call extremely trained. Perhaps Kishimoto had been lazy or perhaps he wanted to emulate the bodies of career soldiers who didn't have time for constantly keeping themselves at a peak-human shape... But I remembered that even the toughest, fastest and strongest of ninja had fairly unimpressive muscles.

Hell, Gai and Lee would have been laughed out of old internet circles I had frequented as do-you-even-lifts and I knew for a fact they were insane specimens of physical ability.

Who was the physically strongest character that I knew, anyhow...? Kisame and Gai were both pretty strong, but neither was really all that buff, so—Oh, right. Tsunade.

She was the undisputed queen of Unga Bunga smash.

And I doubted she had bothered with any kind of physical training in a long while. Maybe her special transformation helped, but I doubted it was the source of her strength. Hadn't it been a point of interest that she had perfect chakra control, just like Sakura?

So physical training probably had more to do with getting more attuned with one's chakra, or something, than actually pushing natural physique higher and higher. It made sense, if I built on top of my 'chakra acts like electromagnetic particles'-theory: the chakra within me moved with my body, but separately from my body. So if I moved it within me in a way that matched and reinforced my physical movements, that would enhance the end result. Like a cloth figure inside of which was a wire-frame, lending it support and structure. Or a second skeleton, which also neatly explained why blunt force trauma seemed to woefully ineffective - anime logic aside. Better chakra control would improve the finesse and timing of each action, familiarity improving my control and allowing me to do more with less.

And that would make it an additive improvement, rather than a multiplicative. So physique isn't that important.

Which would mean the only way to get stronger was just to do. And that took time.

So should I focus on stamina training above all else? It was the foundation for chakra and chakra affected everything else. But then, what kind of stamina training? There was marathon-running stamina and then there was muscular endurance...

I shook my head and cut off the water, letting the last of the cold run off me. I had gotten stuck with shower thoughts again.

"Whatever. Breakfast."

Three eggs and a slice of toast with a glass of milk and a second glass of water later I was heading towards the Academy at a leisurely pace, switching transformations twice as I turned corners and remained out of sight, keeping the chakra smoke and sounds tightly contained.

No one noticed a thing.

I was especially proud of the fact that I had become able to do the Transformation jutsu with just a ram seal now. Of course, with all three seals, it cost less chakra and was more controlled, but it was still a pretty solid improvement.

This had used to be the time when I practiced my Midnight Nameless jutsu, but flying high got all the messenger hawks aggravated and flying low between buildings, while good training as well, got too much attention from the civilians. Sure, the Hokage already knew I could do that, but that didn't mean everyone else had to know as well. If a mysterious raven flew every day from the Uchiha compound to the Academy then there were only a limited number of conclusions people would draw.

So regular sneaking and transformation practice it was instead.

Arriving at the Academy later than I usually liked to, I switched disguises again, assuming Naruto's appearance on a lark as I continued walking. He was shorter and stockier than I was, so I had to adjust my point of balance as I assumed a more... stompy walking style.

Entering the class several heads turned at the sight of my orange jumpsuit, several among them my 'fan-club'. As usual, they were waiting in ambush, so my eyes scanned for Sakura, and as our eyes met I grinned widely and raised my arms, inhaling to shout a greeting...

"Shut up, Naruto!" she pre-empted me and I deflated, assuming a depressed expression as I slouched past her to the seats, now free of all stares as their attentions simply slid off of me.

Sitting down beside Shino, who was giving me a curious look, I released the transformation silently. I could feel his surprised stare, so I turned and regarded him with a raised brow.

"What?"

To the side I could also spot Chouji doing a double-take, having been in his peripheral vision. No one else seemed to be reacting, though, which satisfied me. I was getting pretty good with the Transformation jutsu.

"Impressive."

I rolled my eyes before smirking. "Hn."

Routines got you killed, I remembered reading in a previous life. Both in military and civilian life, being predictable made you open to hostile action. It hadn't been something I had really needed to care about ever before, but since I was going to be a child soldier, I had tried to take it to heart, using my classmates as practice.

Sometimes I came early, sometimes I came late. Sometimes I came in through the window or the ceiling panels, sneaking behind their backs into class. Sometimes I tried to time it so that I slipped before they could notice me. Often I simply timed my arrival so that Iruka's arrival immediately cut the madness short. Often enough that they didn't start getting any ideas about trying to counter my tactics, allowing them to remain complacent and hopeful. It was easier to remain disguised with a transformation in larger groups than in the classes, where everyone knew everyone, so keeping an eye out for when Iruka got moving was fairly easy by comparison.

Sometimes, like today when I felt lazy, I just used a transformation as a disguise to sneak by.

"Pretty sure the best part is yet to come," I noted.

I had seen Naruto not far behind me earlier in the morning. Let's see if anyone had been paying attention.

"Good morning, Sakura-chan!"

"Shut up, Naruto!"

"Awww..."

It was too perfect, as if I had been directing it myself or as if I had just rewound time to re-play the morning's antics between the two.

None of them noticed.

"Disturbing," Shino commented as he realized what I had predicted.

None among the girls seemed to realize just yet what had happened, too wound up in their own arguments and excitement. It wasn't that they were stupid—or, I liked to think they weren't stupid—but rather that they didn't bother to think. Even Sakura hadn't realized that she had 'greeted' Naruto twice. Then again, I wasn't sure whether to peg that down on her lack of skills or down to how often she and Naruto did this song and dance.

Predictability. A poor trait for a ninja.

Well, there was someone who had noticed, but probably for all the wrong reasons.

I pointedly ignored Hinata as her eyes bounced from me to Naruto. I wondered if I had actually managed to fool her too for a moment, and that she was now feeling bothered over having been hoodwinked.

Huh. That thought made me smirk again.

"Huh, what's so funny, bastard?!"

Oh, right, Naruto.

"Your face."

It wasn't even just a low-effort rebuttal; it was literally the joke this time.

"Why you—!"

Luckily Iruka chose to show up just then and I didn't have to deal with the fallout of Naruto picking a fight with me, since that would have roused the horde as well.

"Settle down everyone, we'll be having a test today, first thing! This is your graduation year, so we're going to be working extra hard from now on!" Iruka shouted and I tuned the rest out as it predictably failed to rein in the class.

Naruto, annoyed with me, failed to find a seat next to his Sakura-chan, so somehow he ended up sitting next to me as the class began, grumbling and glaring all the while.

The written test was easy enough, even with the orange menace sitting next to me and blatantly trying to cheat off of me. Most of it was either memorization or then simple problem solving, with a few imaginary scenarios thrown in, reminiscent of moral questions in philosophy classes or something. Would you pull a lever to kill one person and save ten, that kind of stuff, just dressed up in Will of Fire and ninja rules.

Just to mess with Naruto I re-wrote all of my answers three times, acting as if I hadn't noticed him at all and as if I had spotted some dire errors every time. By the end of it, even my hand was cramping from writing so much.

Naruto looked halfway ready to jump out the window by the time the written test was over.

I remembered that Sasuke had been the genius top of his year, which I assumed meant that he had scored more or less perfect in all classes and aced all tests. I had worried that I might have trouble keeping up that kind of performance for long, but I needn't have bothered. Either my mature big brain from before had no trouble with these kiddy questions or then Sasuke really was a genius and I could now enjoy his genetics to coast along.

As it was I spent more time wondering if the brain was something that could so easily be swapped out and improved, like a computer part, than worrying about listening to every word that Iruka spoke during most lessons.

A lot of it was just repetition anyhow. Kids are kinda dumb, you know?

"Alright, line up everyone. Time for the Transformation jutsu test!"

A chorus of groans followed, but everyone hurried along as their names were called.

I didn't particularly try to show off, keeping the chakra expenditure to a minimum while allowing the flare-up of fumes and noise to cloak my transformation into a likeness of Iruka. He smiled, jotting down a grade as he called out for the next student.

Hands in pockets I moved along, ignoring Sakura's congratulations as I focused on Naruto, who was up next.

Unwittingly activating the Sharingan, I was almost in time to realize what I was doing before relief washed over me. Naruto hadn't thought of the Sexy jutsu just yet, faultlessly having donned the appearance of Iruka.

Shaking my head I released the crimson vision with a shaky breath. Did I really want to have a photographic memory of Naruto's Sexy jutsu?

Hmm, don't answer that.

Anyhow the rest of the day went on as normal, except at some point after lunch I noticed Naruto staring at me. More than usual. More intently, somehow, in-between whispering with Chouji who looked distinctly uncomfortable. And whenever I glanced their way he would—poorly—pretend that he hadn't been staring at me. So I ignored him; talking with Shino between classes, sharing observations and some shinobi small talk; kunai sales, new chuunin returning from the exams, that kind of stuff.

The day ended without much else of note, so with practiced ease I tuned out the rest of my class and headed for the exit, mind already focusing on what to start working on next... I had been neglecting my throwing for a while, especially in light of some of the things I had thought might be possible to do with chakra strings, and then there were my recent theories about the relationship between physical ability and internal chakra...

Already halfway around the corner to the main street, having lost the useless hangers-on, I was lost in thought when a familiar voice shouted from behind me.

"Hey, wait–! Wait up, I mean."

I blinked and came to a stop.

Shino was running to catch up with me. Running. And he had shouted, which–Ah, so that's how it is, I thought, catching a whiff of something familiar in the air. Holding back a grimace at the odor of fatty salted noodles and broth, I shoved my hands in my pockets, feigning disinterest.

"Shino. Need something?"

Hadn't Naruto tried this at the start of the series, just with Sakura, using a disguise of Sasuke? Thinking about it, it did seem peculiar that no one ever really went out of their way to mess around with the Transformation jutsu, given the sheer potential for drama it had.

"I... uh..." 'Shino' hesitated, his voice cracking just a bit.

Looking him over, I mused that while Naruto's transformation was visually spot on, his voice and acting needed quite a bit of work. Also, the fact that I could smell the ramen off of him meant that his chakra shell was too porous.

"...You wanted to train? I still owed you for the other time."

Why was he trying to trick me? A prelude to some kind of prank? Or just trying to spy on me in general?

But, well, this could be interesting in its own way.

"I... uh, sure?"

More Naruto behavior bleeding through, making the impeccable Shino disguise utterly moot in a way that bordered on horror. It was like that one filler episode with Shino laughing his head off. Just wrong.

"Right, we'll do it at my place. Come on."

The walk was thankfully quiet, though I could practically feel Naruto's excited energy bubbling behind me as he quietly snickered at having apparently pulled one over me.

As we made it to my clan compound, I debated walking straight onto the water just to see his reaction, but then decided against it. Would be more interesting to see what he had planned out by letting him take charge, so we stopped by the lawn next to the lake instead.

"So, what'd you want to work on?"

'Shino' blinked, obvious even behind the dark shades he always wore thanks to Naruto's exaggerated body language. "Uh..."

So, he really had no plan. I shrugged, then, falling into a relaxed taijutsu stance.

"We could just work on taijutsu, I guess?" I smirked, throwing two jabs.

Naruto almost rose to the bait, only remembering at the last second that a single hit would dispel his jutsu. Shaking his head, he cleared his throat.

"Let's, uh, talk instead. Yeah. Talk."

"...Alright." I motioned him to go on, curious to see what had brought this on.

"This morning..." The hesitation bled away as his whole focus locked onto me. "Why'd you transform into Naruto?" Noticing my lack of reaction to the question, he hesitated before continuing. "I mean, why... Why do you act like such a bast–I mean, why do you not like it when, or, uh..."

"Why do I treat everyone like garbage?" I supplied.

'Shino' nodded excitedly, his disguise practically forgotten. "Yeah, that!"

Well, what should I say to that... It started out as mimicry of the original Sasuke, but really, I do kind of agree with what he would have probably thought, so...

I shrugged.

"Most of them are garbage."

Naruto stilled, brows furrowed with clear confusion.

"I mean..." I thought, a clear example coming to mind. "Look at how everyone who fawns over me treats Naruto." Whatever he had expected me to say, that hadn't been it. "There's a saying... 'he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword'. Which pretty much means you get what you deserve." We live in a society. "So if they treat Naruto like trash, then what's wrong with treating them like trash?"

"B-but... But you do it to me too!" By now, there wasn't even a hint of Shino's voice in Naruto's words.

"Yeah? But he always starts it. I just finish it," I said, smirking. "It's hardly my fault that I always win—no, wait, I suppose it is all my fault."

Looking faux-thoughtful, my smirk went nowhere as I looked at just how livid Naruto looked, even through the transformation disguising him.

"You... You really are an evil-eyed bastard...!" he ground out, looking ready to go stomping off in his outrage.

"Enough about that." I waved away the previous topic. "You came in to get some training tips, right? We've been working on the Transformation jutsu together for a while now..."

Despite himself, Naruto looked intrigued and I smirked.

While overall my transformations blew his out of the water, his still had superior toughness and form. I suspected it had mostly to do with just how much chakra he threw into each of those things, but there were still things I could learn from him.

And so long as I didn't actually enable him to use the Clone jutsu, what did it hurt if I improved his technique in the process?

So, we practiced the Transformation jutsu for a few hours together, during which time Naruto only forgot that he was supposed to be Shino once, but he managed to cover it up by saying he had actually intended to transform into Naruto instead of merely releasing his previous one.

What a doofus.

Overall, it was an adequately productive evening.

The more I looked into calligraphy and seal script, the less I liked it.

Because it was becoming increasingly obvious that nobody wrote or read that stuff fluently anymore, in fact no one had really understood any of it in centuries. Well, perhaps the seal masters of Uzushio - but they were long gone, barely extant as minor footnotes in certain broad treatises regarding the history of the sealing arts.

And this was going to be a massive problem, I just knew it.

Because if sealing was like written jutsu—the kanji used in writing sealing and handseal were the same, after all—or then a sort of programming language for chakra, then not knowing exactly what you wrote meant was going to be a fucking problem.

More art than science... Bullshit, more gacha than science.

Just like translating, I reasoned. Something was always lost in the process because most of the more complex characters were made up of two or more simple characters. So let's say I for whatever reason wanted to make a flashbang tag, or maybe just a night light, and that sealing worked the way I assumed—namely, that by writing a character that meant something, I could capture or replicate the essence of that symbol—and the only kanji that I found was that of 'radiance'...

Well, radiance was written with two characters if you broke it down; sunlight and army, or force, so maybe the original intent in combining the two had been to say 'the force of sunlight'. But, you could break down the character for army too, into forehead and car. So really, radiance was written with three characters; sunlight-forehead-car. Shining Sakura forehead jutsu, anyone?

Had army been intentionally made out of forehead and car, or had those characters acquired their meanings later? And did that matter in sealing?

So... who knew what the fuck just might happen if I wrote that one a tag and just pumped it full of chakra.

"Insane bizarro-logic moon runes..."

This was all of course assuming that the strict meaning of the symbols was what mattered and that it was all literal, so that I even could use some dictionary to piece together the meanings.

Because sometimes, I swear to fucking god, someone had just made a typo and it had stuck because no one thought to do any spellchecking. For example, as I had realized while staring at the back of Naruto's head during one particularly boring lesson... The character for fox was written with two characters, those being beast and melon. Which didn't make any sense, until I realized that the character for melon is veeeery similar to that of claw. As in, one tiny smudge away.

Kitsune. Kitsume. Melon beast. Clawed beast. Foxes being the only canine animals that could retract their claws like cats could, as far as I could remember.

Well, maybe there was still hope for the Kyuubi being my big tiddy fluffy konner gf in the future.

And that was all still just kanji, which was still relatively well understood and widely used. Seal script had been practically dead for centuries. I didn't even want to imagine the kind of mistakes you could make there. So unless I found a master willing to go the extra mile to give me a solid grounding in seal script and sealing in general, it was pretty safe for me to assume that I wouldn't be making any headway there for the foreseeable future.

Now, when I had raised these issues with Iruka, he had been quick to assure me that in his experience it wasn't anywhere near as complicated as I made it out to be. But when pressed, he had to concede that he had never tried to write his own seals and had only learned and reproduced seals which had been in use for years. In other words, he couldn't actually deny my pointing out that it all seemed like complete guesswork and trial-and-error, not with his own experience at least.

It's fucking gacha.

At least I had found a shop willing to sell me three storage scrolls for a modest sum.

Using them wasn't hard; the handseals for both the Enclosing and the Unsealing jutsu were easy, and the amount of stuff I could put in them was pretty much directly proportional to my chakra output and nothing else. They were nothing fancy, having only one 'space' each, meaning I had to put everything I wanted in at once and vice versa. I had tried to unroll the whole to decipher one of them, but after the first meter of squiggly nonsense I had given up.

I just had to be satisfied with having three storage scrolls.

Of which I only needed one for supplies and sundries.

Which led me to my first real foray outside of Konoha's walls; I was running down the eastern road, following one of the main rivers and trade routes.

I had told the gate guards I was going training one afternoon after classes and they had let me pass, warning me to be back inside before dark. I had dutifully nodded and then taken off using my newest jutsu acquisition, thanks to one of the chuunin teachers at the Academy who had been apparently running late from a date.

The Body Flicker jutsu.

It was, simply put, the best thing ever.

The basic theory was the same as with an overdone, 'failed' Tree Walking step—which I really needed a better name for; chakra propulsion step? Maybe repulsion step?—in that you infused the ground beneath your feet with so much chakra that it accelerated you away from that surface at incredible speeds, giving you the appearance of having vanished. This much was easy, something that I had more or less mastered as a logical continuation of tree walking exercise long since.

What made the Body Flicker special was that you also infused the air around you with chakra as well, creating a sort of elongated teardrop arrow shape which allowed you to minimize air resistance, giving you that much more bang for your buck.

It was also why we ran the way we did - hands back and leaning forward.

Historically back before, that running form was exclusively for running downhill quickly, something to do with your point of balance. But here it was about trying to turn the flat human body as narrow against the headwind as possible to minimize your drag profile, which with the addition of the chakra bubble turned us from something like an upright plank into something closer to a speeding arrow, allowing us to slip through the air that much more easily.

Which was a good thing, because I was pretty sure at my top acceleration I could now break the sound barrier, something which was hardly stealthy or inconspicuous if I continued to run around and deal with pesky drag holding me back.

Though that too could have its uses.

So instead, you sort of slipped through the air in a single step the same way you did when diving headfirst into the water.

Also why most ninjas prefer to jump straight up in a stationary Body Flicker rather than into any lateral direction when taking off, I suppose.

And it had to more or less be a single step for a couple of reasons, the first of which I had noticed was that even with my current Sharingan it was pretty much impossible to keep track of where you were going. The world simply turned into a smeared blur around you. Anything more than that single step and you were liable to run into something, trip over, or then completely overshoot your destination. But so long as you had line-of-sight, or at least awareness of your target destination with a clear path, effectively instant movement was possible.

The second thing I noticed was that you weren't done with the tree walking exercise after the start; you had to end it the same way: by sticking your landing and making sure you didn't keep going anywhere past that spot. Because if you didn't, then you kept moving. I nearly shredded apart my sandals on just that first attempt, the dirt road like sandpaper against the soles of my feet as I just kept moving with the leftover momentum.

Which could be useful, too, if you wanted to impart a lot of force with a single attack...

But by using the tree walking exercise to stick to the ground not only did you get a controlled stop at the end, but the massive forces involved in accelerating past the speed of sound and stopping were distributed evenly across your body through all the chakra within you, the same way that it was when you were standing against from a wall. The chakra inside of you—bone to bone, muscle to muscle, vein to vein—acted the exact same way your chakra did between your feet and the tree, so your ankles didn't snap off when standing at ninety degrees on a wall, keeping you in one neat human package.

It was like every little part inside of you had its own personal seatbelt, allowing you could go from zero to a hundred and back to zero, all in the space of a single step and second.

All of this came at an exponential chakra cost compared to just running or even using the chakra repulsion—no, no, propulsion just sounded better—step for that same distance.

Because air resistance is a real drag.

Hah, I did it again.

But the facts remained nonetheless; the faster something went, the more energy it would lose to air resistance. Not just more in absolute terms, proportionally. So to double the distance you moved in one Flicker it wasn't enough to double the chakra used, you had to increase that input exponentially.

It was kind of like the tyranny of the rocket equation, back before.

Only where the rockets could keep investing push at a constant rate compared to a jump where it all had to be paid upfront, rockets also had to deal with a pesky thing called gravity. So to push harder against gravity you needed more fuel. But because you had to bring more fuel, you needed to push again that much harder. So you brought more fuel, which...

Flickering was more like how bullets and arrows worked. Well, not normal arrows. But other supersonic bullets and projectiles.

Still, a lot of fun once I got a hang of it.

Chaining steps even more so.

Flicker, pause, Flicker, pause, Flicker, pause; the world blurring by as I moved.

Though it was a little humbling going from having effectively mastered the Transformation, Replacement, and Clone jutsus back to having to deal with chakra fumes and loud pops, as I flickered down the road, nearly stumbling as I utilized the tree walking skill to stop at the end of the Flicker. General chakra control from the walking skills probably helped, but fine-tuning the jutsu still required time and effort.

Or a better user to steal the hard-earned skill from, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

So while the amount of chakra I wasted within my body and into the ground to kick-off wasn't bad, the amount I had to expel into the air with the bubble that minimized air resistance was something completely different. It wasn't enough to just coat your body evenly, since the human body had an awful air resistance profile, nor was it enough to make a sphere around you—though that was better—you had to make it that weird teardrop arrow, pushing it ahead and behind of you.

If it was just subsonic—that is, slower than the speed of sound—movement, a regular teardrop shape would suffice just fine. It was the optimal form to move through the air, just as a drop of water falling to the ground knew. But once you crossed the sound barrier, things changed. Because at that point air would start to stack up in front of you; you would be moving so fast forward that the sound of you moving was slower than you were, the molecules literally unable to pull ahead of you moving forward.

Like sand or snow piling up in front of you. And as bad as the front was, your wake was even worse.

Sonic booms were no joke.

Which was where the elongated teardrop shape came in; its pointy front pierced and pushed aside air, while its similarly shaped back end minimized turbulence and backdrafts clinging on to you.

Meaning, the front kept you from feeling as if you were running into a headwind and the back kept you from destroying every window within a mile with your turbulent wake every time you wanted to pop somewhere else real quick.

So while it didn't make intuitive sense that by making your air resistance profile bigger and increasing your 'volume', you'd actually become less held back, you also had to consider that chakra expelled into the air didn't exactly behave like solid matter. Similar to how powerfully expelled chakra could sway your hair or the leaves and grass around you, the bubble pushed aside the air around you before it could slow you down.

Like the puck on an air hockey table, floating almost frictionlessly.

It was again a matter of how chakra interacted with the various states of matter.

With solids, depending on the exact amount of chakra used, it could either bond or repel as magnets did. With liquids, it spread out and into the medium easily, allowing your chakra to push against it without necessarily pushing the water away, and with enough chakra pushed into the water your effective volume made you buoyant enough to float.

Gases—air, that is—accepted chakra just as easily as liquids did, but where chakra easily went into liquids and remained mostly undisturbed when pushed into gases it immediately pushed away the air, allowing untouched air to take its place. It was like a fan, except that you did not physically feel any resistance or push back the way the fan blades did. During some of the hotter days of summer, I had just pushed chakra away from my finger and created a small fan that way, and no matter how hard I pushed the finger never felt any force.

It was probably because it wasn't my finger creating push, but the disparate and free-floating chakra rejecting the chakra creating the movement.

So as I had observed before; no easy flight that way.

I hadn't found any literature or studies on why this was, or how the other states of matter reacted to chakra, so I had simply come to accept it the same way you would accept the different compressibilities of the states of matter.

But it wasn't exactly easy to form or maintain, hence there being a lot of chakra wasted in the form of noise and smoke. I wondered if that was why so many of the variations used seemingly random things to hide your arrival; leaves and sand seemed like a useless addition to the technique, but compared to the chakra smoke, I supposed it looked cooler.

The more you managed to turn into those 'useless additions', the less went into an ear-popping sound.

And unlike the Transformation jutsu where the chakra was turned into a tight construct around you, since with the Flicker it was necessary for the chakra to shroud you completely, I wasn't sure if it was possible to do away with it.

My foot hit the ground, bringing me to a snapping halt as the chakra in my foot seeped into the ground and took hold, locking with the rest of the chakra inside my body and stopping me instantly, the excess chakra washing off me into the air as I transitioned into walking at a normal pace to breathe normally again. Either due to the sheer speed you moved at or due to the chakra bubble, you couldn't really breathe while Flickering.

Breath stabilized, I raised my hands into the tiger seal and focused my chakra again as I locked onto a spot three hundred meters down the road. Another, not insubstantial portion of my chakra, pushed out around me as the world blurred for a single second. And again, another pop and puff of smoke heralded me as I came to a snapping halt.

I had tried to continue running after a Flicker, thinking that I could bleed out the incredible speed and keep moving faster that way. But it was like jumping out of a speeding car and I had almost hit the road face-first as a result, when my feet couldn't keep up no matter how fast I tried to run. Maybe if I was on a liquid and could use water walking to float and skate forward, I could ride out the Flicker, but on solid ground it probably wasn't possible. Then again, I didn't know if it was possible to Flicker on top of water, since the acceleration was based on the principle of chakra repulsion from infusing too much chakra into a solid, so...

Hmm, but maybe I can train the chakra bubble part better on water, without the fear of getting splattered against a tree or tripping on the road.

It was worth exploring once I got back to Konoha.

But for now, I decided to stop and continue on normally. I had nearly wasted half of my chakra by Flickering down the road and I still had a few hours to go. So regular old running it was.

I would have flown... except that the ocean was out east and that the Fire Country wasn't named so for nothing. It was hot as all hell, so as usual in the afternoon, a strong sea breeze had formed and was pushing against me, slowing me down even on the ground. It was part of why I had been using the Body Flicker so much; the lowered air resistance it offered me allowed me to avoid the worst of the inland wind.

If I tried to take to the air, I would have had to fly into the headwind the whole damn way... Unless I tried to rise above the cold front. Which I just wasn't willing to do. Flying was fun, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to brave such heights just yet. Not without a parachute or some kind of safety measure for breaking my fall, at least. I would be able to fly fast and low the way back, or so I told myself, even as I continued running and swearing at the headwind. I had been making good time, so there was no reason to worry just yet.

Come over the crest of one particularly annoying hill, I sighed in relief as I saw up ahead the smoking chimneys and bare land where forests had once stood. Dotting the length of the winding Naka river were a dozen buildings that I recognized right away, tomoe awhirl in each eye.

Sawmills.

The Fire Country was famed for its forests far and wide, so obviously we had one of the biggest lumber industries in all the elemental countries to go with that reputation.

Crimson eyes scanned the lumberyards until I spotted what I wanted; piles upon piles of what looked like white dust, as far away from the sawmills, buildings, forest, river... In fact as far away from pretty much anything as humanly possible. And for good reason. Sawdust was dangerous stuff. Exactly the kind of stuff I could make use of.

My hands came together in the tiger seal once more and the world flickered by as I came to a halt behind one of the largest piles. From afar it had been noticeable. Standing next to it I had to crane my neck to look up and up and up.

"Yeah, no one's gonna miss this stuff if I take some."

I could of course pay for it; the Uchiha had left me with a considerable inheritance. But I wasn't sure if they would sell it to me just because I asked nicely.

Crouching down, I plunged a hand into the pile and ran my fingers through the dust. It wasn't quite as fine as I might have liked, but it was dry and plentiful.

The finer the dust was, the lower the initial temperature of the flame needed to be for a deflagration.

Taking out both empty scrolls I rolled the first one out and then ran through the handseals, slamming my hands into the pile before me, pouring nearly a quarter of my chakra into the technique. My head swam from the effort, as this was three times as much chakra as I had ever before used with any single jutsu, but I bore with it. Nearly half of the pile was gone and I blinked at the sight.

That... Was a lot more than I had expected.

Rolling up the now-filled scroll, I looked at the still empty one. Did I really want to fill it with sawdust as well? I was down to about a quarter of my chakra and I still needed to get back to Konoha. The filled scroll felt heavy in my pouch as I realized just what kind of destructive potential I had just acquired.

"Maybe... Maybe this is enough."

I would just fill the last scroll with something like water instead. It would double as a potential tool as well as a counter-measure for if—when, I used the sawdust. Because as it was, I was sure that I would need to contain some fires once I unsealed the dust scroll.

"Hmm?"

Someone was shouting nearby. Ah, damn. They noticed the sawdust vanishing?

Putting away the still empty last scroll, I formed a tiger seal and vanished with a Body Flicker, leaving no trace behind as I appeared half a kilometer away, near the road back to Konoha. A few minutes break to catch my breath and then I would transform and fly back to Konoha. Yeah, that sounded reasonable.

Plenty of opportunities to use the last scroll to enclose some water back home. Even so, I could help but smirk as I wondered just when I would get a chance to use my dust scroll.