Sleight Advantage [Naruto SI] (Old version)

[RogueDruid]

Yes, Yes, I know I haven't updated my gamer story for a while, but between school and work, I haven't had time to give my muse the attention she demands. However, in my efforts to reconcile with my erratic muse, she gave me something new.

So I present to you, my Naruto SI.

(I own nothing, etcetera etcetera)

---

"Make a Wish Toru-Kun!" I looked at the cake in front of me, decorated with a bright blue ten.

Ten years.

I've been dead ten years.

I've been here for ten years.

Sometimes my memories seem like a dream, a long forgotten delusion.

But then I'd catch myself muttering the tune to a song in English, or writing with letters instead of kanji. I've managed to suppress that, to keep my… memories, under control.

It's easy to separate myself from my old past. After all, now I'm in a far different place than my first life.

My name is Toru Shusho.

Now, as I look around at my family, as I celebrate my tenth birthday, I'm reminded just how different my life is now. I'm not a writer, an artist, or even a gamer
now. I'm a shinobi in training. Not just that, I'm a shinobi in training in Konoha.

God, it's been so long since I first woke up and understood the world around me. I had to be…. What, four? That's when my memories started coming back. I don't know if I've been reincarnated or not, but god, I thought I was going crazy. It wasn't till I started knowing things that I shouldn't, that I realized my memories were real.

That's also when I decided that if I want to have any chance at all of surviving the coming clusterfuck that would be the shinobi world, I needed to get as smart and strong as possible.

That meant going to the academy, Learning about chakra and learning to fight and… god.

Kill.

I was willingly learning to Kill.

But that was the thing. I couldn't focus on butterflies, I had to ignore the details and focus on the broad strokes of the story. And fully be prepared to drop any plan I made at the drop of the hat.

Anyway, back to the fact I was ten years old, again.

I was, in particular, a very… forgettable kid. Dark brown hair, slightly tanned skin, skinny but too thin to be called lean. I had picked up some muscle, two years of daily exercise and taijutsu practices helped with that. The only real feature that made me stand out from most civilians was my eyes, a dark blue, that depending on the lighting shifted to lighter sea green/blue, or to dark gray/blue. No scars or birthmarks, my hair was cut short and loose, a mess of slightly wavy locks. Beyond that, the transfer to new youth hadn't really changed my personality much. I was still reclusive, still quiet and a book worm. My new family wasn't shinobi, no, my family was merchants. Upper middle class.

I was the odd one in my family. I wanted to 'be like my grandpa!' as I often exclaimed,

The proof was my birthday party, I suppose, and the gifts I got. My cousins always wanted toys or games, or something pretty. I got a bunch of books and scrolls, a few odd trinkets such as packs of artistic playing cards and senbon. A new jacket, and so on. Ten years here, like I said, and my family knew me well. They gave me things I wanted, and things I could use. I had a few classmates, and my family, but not much else present. The games were tag, or hide and seek, the food sweet and flavorful, but also nutritious. I was helping groom myself to be a survivor.

My family was, surprise surprise, civilian. No bloodline, no history of chakra use beyond a grandfather who never made chunin, and no archive of skills and techniques. We were a family of craftsmen, a jewelry maker for a mother, a merchant for a father, leatherworking, and smithing scattered through cousins and uncles. Oh, as for training as a ninja I had dozens of half-remembered tips and skills from stories in my past life, but in practice, I didn't remember half of anything useful. Oh, I knew some things, I had been slowly working bit by bit on chakra control, slowly grinding any piece of control methods or expanding my reserves whenever I could. I had tried the infamous tree walking, and though I didn't have the control or reserves to actually stay on for more than a second, I did learn to slow falls using walls and climb easier by giving a second of grip to kick off of.

As for the family side of the skill equation, I had some experience when it came to metalcraft, but compared to my mom's apprentice, I was more likely to work the stalls then the bench. Just didn't have the eye for design like she did, my stuff was always more practical than artistic. One benefit of my family was that I had plenty of time to tinker when my mother wasn't working in the shop. I was free to use any bits of scrap as long as it wasn't a chunk of gold or silver. I didn't have the artistic flair for delicate and ornate designs or my father's tendency for polite and kind barter, but I had a good eye for sturdy designs and things that were robust and practical.

I drew my attention back to the party. It wasn't very lively, partly due to the small size, partly to the bad news from earlier the month.

The Uchiha Massacre had happened.

God. it wasn't really noted, but the Uchiha's were a large clan. I had three members in my class alone. Sachi, Tori, and Tora, a girl and two twin guys. But god, hearing about the massacre, and then walking into class the next week and seeing the three empty seats… it had hit a lot of us hard.

I had done some mental math and asked around to confirm. I was, compared to the rookie nine, ten, right now they were all 7-8. I was almost three years ahead.

That was both good, and bad. Good in that I had closer to five years before the sand invasion or the start of the Canon Story, bad because I would have to survive for three years as a genin and/or chunin before they graduated.

I wish to survive what comes.

I blew out the candles, smiling as my family cheered.

I smiled at my family as we started opening and playing with my new gifts, my cousins crowding around to hep inspect.

I had five years to survive till canon started. Seven until the next war if I didn't throw things off.

I could only hope it was enough time.

 

[RogueDruid]

Ah, the joy of the backlog. the Mythical Two chapter for one-day special!

---

When you are reincarnated into a well-known fictional universe and attend a school designed to make you a badass, chakra using, child soldier of mass destruction loyal to your village, you never consider something. With your memories, you will probably have enough life experience to see through the somewhat creepy and occasionally downright crude manipulations and can focus on important things. Like how to kick ass, take names, and chew bubblegum.

Then reality will set in and you start to notice things.

Like how half of the fucking academy curriculum is fucking bullshit. At least to me, anyway. Considering the basic maths and science courses only barely taught anything new, the only classes I really paid attention to for the first two years were language, since before I came here, I didn't know Japanese (or the local equivalent that sounds and looks like Japanese), and history. I did learn these, in fact, I had a solid foundation that stayed even when I finished getting my memories back.

As for Shinobi skills… I had to fight hard to learn them, but I can totally see why people like Sakura, without any help or supplementary materials, seemed unsuited for the life a shinobi. The academy taught the basics, they taught them well, especially if you knew where to look for help, but the basic three, Transformation, Clone, and Replacement, were difficult if you were a civilian. Hell, I still couldn't get a good transformation down. I was always was a bit too blurry and indistinct when I tried to copy someone. Clones were a bit easier, though I had a habit of making them with slightly more pronounced expressions and body language, something I had to fix before they were considered passable.

And the replacement technique… trying to wrap my head around that piece of Jutsu magic was painful. I could finally do it with practice and was still practicing it religiously… sometimes literally (the Log is God, trust the Log) but I got a look at the scrolls for its theory once. I swear, if nothing else, that put me off trying to mess with space-time Ninjutsu for some time. Though I did take the time to learn the full thirteen hand seals version that it originally was composed of, before the more practical five seal academy version… among a few other things considering its breakdown.

I also now understood the reason why the rookie nine were almost all clan members. It turns out that families that constantly use chakra have children who can use chakra a more easily, with reserves just that much larger. Apply this over a larger time scale, and you get the clan kids who can kick a civilian adult's ass halfway to hell before attending the academy. Beyond that, they seem naturally tougher and stronger if a bit more specialized.

Anyway… back to the present.

I looked around the main floor of the Konoha Library. This floor and everything above ground for two more stories were civilian. To access it you had to undergo a basic background test, give three different references for the Anbu to talk too, and sign an agreement to stay under surveillance for three months without being allowed to leave Konoha.

Just Hidden Village Protocol,

For most of the library's civilian side, it was basic books on reading and writing, there were things on mythology, old histories, and records of great events. There were shelves of mathematics and sciences, most of them rather basic, a few shelves full of trade skill manuals and schema for tools and stuff like charts and forges. An entire half a floor was legal records and information concerning Konoha Law. Along the back wall was a rather meager fiction section. The Shinobi, however, had their own sections. On the first floor underground, an extra ten feet of reinforced material separating it from the civilian area was the academy section of the library, watched by a pair of bored looking chunin (and if the books of protocol were correct, a pair of ANBU hidden somewhere as well).

I walked down the stairs, keeping my pace slow and nodded to the chunin on duty, holding out a permission scroll to them. Permission scrolls were the academy students best friend, they were written weekly, and had to be requested from your teachers. They were needed to use either the training grounds or access the library archives. As a student, I couldn't remove anything from the area, but I was free to take notes for later reference.

Most of it was just textbooks, and scrolls: dozens of each one lined up. There were condensed courses on math, history, science, languages, cultures, first-aid, weapon maintenance, physical health, observation skills, and the basics of the academy three. All geared for academy students, all geared for ninja life. Along the back wall were the optional books, things to help aspiring students to find specialties. Aside from the two guards, there were a dozen students from the academy, most of them working on the basics, or catching up on classwork.

I meandered along the stacks towards the back corner. The further away from the desk, you were, the more esoteric the books became. There weren't any justu scrolls here, those were farther down, on the genin to jonin floors, but there were a few books that caught my interest, and I had been reading through them when I had the time.

"Fuinjutsu Fundamentals, the basics of sealing… Arts of Deception: The Shinobi's Guide… Chakra Control: Imbuing Tools… Ah, There, Shurikenjutsu volume 8: Altering trajectory and Impacts."

All but Deception, which was a good sized scroll, were books the size of a Young A novel and were covered in some level of dust. The fuinjutsu book had been checked out a lot, if the wear and tear on it meant anything, but didn't seem very well taken care of. I had originally flipped through it for a moment and could see why. It was written as the driest most numbing boring thing ever. The kanji was small and filled every page, there were barely legible diagrams of parts of seals, and most of it was long droning pages about each sigil and how they reacted to chakra. It was also the only book on fuinjutsu on the shelf, so I was reading it anyway.

Chakra control was far more like a field manual, but read more like a college textbook. Each section clearly explained something, but it was outdated by at least thirty years. The main reason I chose it was that it had more detailed manipulation theory than the current academic texts, even if it was out of date.

I pulled up at a desk in clear view of the chunin, and opened a small notebook, and pulled out a pen. I opened the Fuinjutsu book and the Chakra Control books first, flipping through them to where I last left off. In each book were the joker playing cards from one of the decks of cards I always had on hand, marking where I had stopped reading. In the Fuinjutsu book, I was looking at the diagrams of imbuing chakra into the paper and ink to prepare them for sealing, and in the Control book, I was on a chapter about channeling chakra through weapons to strengthen and reinforce them. I had come across these months ago, but I only recently started realizing the similarity between the techniques.

For the fuinjutsu paper, the process described taught how to make personal chakra paper and revolved around matching the chakra signature of the scroll or seal tag to your own signature, to increase chakra resonance. Chakra resonance was a big deal in sealing, the better the resonance, the more efficient any seals were, the less chakra needed to charge them, and the greater effect it would have, properly resonance sealing scroll could fit almost a third more mass than generalized sealing scrolls. Explosive tags burned a bit hotter, barriers lasted a bit longer.

For the Control concept, it was used to apply chakra to weapon use. The primary use was to strengthen a weapon to survive stress. For instance, reinforcing a kunai to hold up better against a sword. Mastery of chakra reinforcement was supposed to allow almost anything to function as a weapon, at least for a short time. Things like sticks, bottles, and bits of paper, but the list of examples go on and on. The weaker the base material, the weaker the reinforcement, but organic materials had a better 'flow' allowing chakra to reinforce deeper. For instance, using this a person with, say, an oak staff could use it to block swords or axes, because the chakra would imbue deeper into the wood, holding the entire thing together and forcing the blades to work harder to cut into it.

Eventually, a sword would cut through, but it would take far longer than otherwise.

For metals, instead of imbuing the material, due to metals unliving nature, you had to coat the weapon, forming a thin layer to deflect damage from the weapon. The exception to this was the so-called 'Chakra Metals' which were a set of higher density alloys that are forged with chakra being forced into the metal. I had suspicions that tungsten was one of the main metals used in some of the alloys, but no real proof. Chakra metals do let the metal act more like an organic material, however, letting the chakra flow into the weapon to reinforce it.

Both of these were fairly common techniques, but given my habits, I had a few ideas on how this could be used, but working out the theory was taking time, though it did help me develop a few tricks using the academy henge...

Oh well, I still have almost two years of class left to go.

Time enough to study and figure out how to use this.

 

[RogueDruid]

Alright! chapter three, whereupon I start defining my SI's path of development. For those of you who don't know, the original art of Karawmi was the ability to replace yourself with a dummy or similar size/shaped object without a person nearby noticing, it's a combination of psychology, speed, smooth movement, and timing.

Also, thanks for the support everyone who commented or liked the story so far! hope to see this one go far.

---

I bit back a curse, looking at the long welt that ran from my shoulder to my elbow on my arm. The 'safe for training' wires I had been salvaging from one of the academies approved training grounds after the heavy rainfall from the day before were tangled above me, holding me to the tree by a snare like a trapped rabbit. I looked at the wire that was now hanging loosely around my wrist, and then back to the simple pocket knife I had in hand. It was a folding knife, based on the design I remembered of the folding hunting knife that my grandfather back in my first life gave me. It was made of steel, hard and a slight bit more brittle than your normal kunai, but far thinner and sharper. It was a cutting, not a piercing or chopping weapon. More tool than weapon anyway. Regardless the knife was sharp and thin enough that I could get under the knot and cut the wires, but the wires were under tension and it showed one of the annoying things about messing with ninja wire.

It was like a taut guitar string, with just enough elasticity that cutting it under tension caused it to snap back. Whipping along the skin of my upper arm, even with the protection of a wire mesh shirt, it stung.

I took a second to assess the situation. I was almost ten feet up, and even with the slow advancements in control and capacity, I still couldn't tree walk yet. I could slide down, but the trunk had a kink that would make me lose my footing. I knew it. So I had a choice. Slowly cut my arm free strand by strand and get my upper arm covered in welts…. Or… Ah, fuck it.

I planted my feet on the trunk of the tree and pulled myself up a bit, knife flashing up and slicing the wires just beyond my fingertips. The sharp blade, moving fast, let loose a twang that seemed to echo through the brisk late fall air as the sudden lack of anchorage caused me to stumble and slide down the trunk. The knot of the wires kept the ends together so that when the tension was released, it didn't snap back towards me as a small fast moving strand but rather as a loose bundle of slower wire.

Twisting slightly and widening my feet as I slid downwards, I pushed off and managed to roll a bit to soften the fall. I still winced as it jarred my legs and caused a bit of pain to flare from where my knee slammed into a rock. Groaning, I took a moment to retrieve my knife from where I had dropped it and fold it up, flicking the blade closed, the knife looking a bit too large for my young hand, but not by much. A shake of the wrist and a bit of sleight of hand, and it was securely stashed back under my sleeves.

I bent down and picked the old duffel bag back up and continued scavenging. I had started this once my mother was fine with me wandering the village more. With the half a year that had passed since my tenth birthday, I had gotten enough freedom and enough slack with my curfew that I could start looking for spare tools.

Like that wire, though it seemed I needed more work to dismantle traps like that. Damn. I also needed to finish working on the wire escape techniques. Particular while wearing my tools.

I put what I had taken before I snagged my arm in my bag, stashing the long coil of wire among the few dozen shuriken and kunai I found littering the forest behind targets or in trees.

I had also found the broken half of a weapon, some rather basic type of small blade, a tanto maybe? It was straight and had the slightly angled tip, so that sounded like the most likely candidate. No hilt or guard with it though.

I kept an eye out as I started heading home, doing a quick spot check of my tools and outfit first, making sure nothing got lost from my surprise hanging. I was wearing a jacket, dark blue with green accents, loose and lightweight, tied around my waist for now. I had a black tank top and a mesh undershirt, the sleeves of the undershirt shifting back to a solid black cloth just past my elbows. The style was a bit distinctive, and the sleeves past the elbow were a tad larger than normal, and a bit stiffer than normal cloth, a side effect of lacing it with a length of the wire mesh used for armor. My pants were a dark black-blue color, slightly mottled to break up the coloring and fitted so the ankles were snug to my legs, keeping the loose shinobi cargo pants look, and letting me lace up my shinobi sandals over the lower hem without an issue, without having to use the cliche bandages to wrap my ankles. Under my sleeves, though, was my pride and joy so far in my current efforts at custom tools to use.

A skin-tight leather sleeve ran from the base of the middle finger on each hand to where the mesh ended. It was lightweight, made from rabbit leather, and thin, almost as thin as my shirt. I had spent a long time treating it to be as supple and flexible as I could, asking Tsumori, the leather worker down the street, for advice. Once I had gotten the leathers the way I wanted, I started trimming them, starting by making them a pair of laced up sleeves. I had paired up threads and loops of leather for a line of senbon needles, a place to stash a few coins, the slot for my hunting knife, and two complete set of standard issue lockpicks under the outer sleeves. Beyond that from wrist to knuckles was a layer of very delicate steel chainmail, the results of a week's worth of careful soldering and filing, the mail was sewed carefully to the leather with sturdy threads. The mesh was fine enough that it flowed almost like cloth, if quite a bit heavier, and was hidden under the sleeves. It gave my taijutsu a bit of a kick and gave me a defense against blades. Leaving the palm and fingers clear was necessary though since I had to have my fingers free to use Jutsu, and the steel would disrupt the flow of my chakra.

The best part is that in the six years since my memory returned, I had taken the time to learn and practice any bit of sleight of hand I could, constantly. And I learned everything I could relating to it. Card tricks I had seen in my half-remembered past life, ranging from artistic cardistry to complex magic, making things disappear. Coin tricks, misdirection ranging from three card monte and cup games, up to disappearing small things and pickpocketing. I worked on any and every trick I knew to make my hands faster, more precise, then I made more nonsensical and absurd, strange and confusing ones to push my fingers further. If it made my hands move faster, forced me to lie smoother, and gave me any edge in deception I could get, I tried it.

On the days when I walked home or around town, my hands would sign in my sleeves, remembering my first life's mom, the wonderful deaf woman who taught me ASL before I could really speak English. I mixed those hand signs with the hand seals from class, and every combination thereof. I could sign the alphabet back and forwards, and fingerspell faster than I could talk. Heh, I could complete my old ASL alphabet in less than two seconds.

It had gotten a few looks on occasion, but I was usually subtle enough about it around people. A classmate who usually sat next to me, Sado Ikaru, had made a habit for a while of watching me flip coins from hand to hand, hiding and palming the coins as often as possible during lectures. At this point, I barely had to pay attention to the motions of coins, though I needed to keep my focus on my hands if I messed with cards. And after the 104 card pickup incident a few months ago, I stopped using cards during most lectures.

Heh, I think I'm the only person in class who can pull off the original art of karawmi, at least on a civilian.

The point is that my sleight of hand made my sleeves go from useful, to almost worthy of being called effective. I had been getting used to them so far, practicing retrievals and concealments with the multitude of simple hooks and sheaths that now crossed my arms. Getting used to the weight of the chains and the tools that accompanied them took some doing, but it wasn't too hard, I had intentionally used a slightly lighter alloy of steel. Bends easier, but is about thirty percent lighter.

Unfortunately, it's that very chainmail that had just fucked me now, the wires catching on a link of the chains and sliding between the design to fit really snugly against the leather. Thanks to the armbands my wrist wasn't dislocated or sprained, as it had spread the pressure around a bit, but it also screwed me for trying to get my arm untangled. And now that I was free, I still had a chunk of wire stuck in the chains. It took a few minutes of cutting and pulling, but I finally got the wires out of the chainmail and let my hands drop, only to frown at the soft clink of the chains.

That was another thing I had to learn to fix. The chains would clink, softly it must be said, if I made any sharp steps or movements. I had so far started to try and fix this by keeping my hands and wrists moving constantly, keeping the chain in motion. I was going to work on it till I could perform my entire array of sleight of hand and sign without the sound of metal clicking, but I feared that was a while off yet. Or… hmm. A fingerless glove over the top? I'll have to try that.

Looking up I noticed the sun had started to head to the horizon, and so I turned to head back up to the village main, the bag of tools on my back.

On the way, I passed the market and traded a few ryo for an apple and a piece of jerky, something protein and vitamin rich.

Gotta be healthy and strong to survive.

 

[RogueDruid]

Trust me, when Toru finally starts fighting, he'll be all about the "Hey here is a flower. and hers a senbon pinning your hand to the flower, but that was a distraction for the senbon in your knee, which is a distraction so I can punch you." once he incorporates random sealing into that it will be hilariously effective.

---

I looked at the younger classes running through the drills from the roof of the academy while I nursed a bottle of water. A ruffle of silk and one of the kunoichi in training, a girl named Mari Asako, sat next to me doing the same.

Today has been a practical testing day, and for the first time in a while my class had gone through the morning test rotation, and that let me sit up here and watch the fights and examinations of the younger years. There were a dozen classes, but the two I was looking for had slots that were after ours. One was the group two years behind me, the rookie nine. That was still a few minutes off from starting, but the three that would one day form a team under Maito Gai were just finishing their warm-ups. Right now the future Team Gai's class was out and about. The team members of Gai were the easiest to spot since the rookies hadn't shown up yet. Hyuuga Neji was going at a straw stuffed mannequin, his hands a blur. Not yet that legendary speed that is nearly invisible, but definitely fast and vicious, even now I could see the hate that was starting to build. It was easy, his stance, his aggression.

Seemed like such a cross to bear, I wish I could help but, unlike Naruto, I don't have the power of the mighty 'Shounen Protagonist Friendship Punch!'. I dropped my focus, eyes roving over the long hair of the young Rock Lee, who was slowly going through a kata for taijutsu, though to my surprise he looked a tad unsteady on his feet.

And across from them, in a place with a suspiciously good view of Neji, but far enough away to give him personal space, Tenten was working on sharpening her kunai and a few swords. It was strange to see them. On one hand, I knew them, the strange dissonance between the young Toru and my older past life, telling me vague stories of them fighting odds, fate, and their sensei's influence… Except for Lee.

Lee would happily give into his sensei's influence.

I looked away, focusing on a senbon as it flipped through my hand, spinning and flicking it from finger to finger. It was light, and I had to keep my fingers closer than when I worked with pens or coins. I snapped my hands, sending the senbon rotating around my middle finger, sharp needle pointless than an inch from my skin.

"Why do you do that?"

The sudden question made me jump so hard I lost my grip on the senbon, sending it flicking up and over the ledge. My hand flashed out, a flicker of chakra through my fingers sticking to it long enough for me to get my grip. I sighed and then glanced over to see Asako, lips quirked in amusement. "Sorry, what are we talking about?"

She rolled her eyes and pointed to the senbon. "That. The hand thing. Whenever I see you, if you're not writing or training, you're doing something with your hands. I've seen coins, cards, kunai, shuriken, pens, senbon, and even knives in your hands. Why?"

I looked at her and considered. Asako was fairly popular but was one of the few girls in my class who I could see becoming a kunoichi. She was focused, if a bit prone to being sidetracked at times. It seems I was her current distraction.

"Tell you what, if you can see where this ten ryo coin goes I'll tell you." I challenged, hands flicking down, the senbon slipping from my fingers into a pouch on my leg, as I performed a drop of the ryo coin into my hand, from under the cuff of my shirt. I had her mark it with a scratch from a kunai, to prove it was the right coin, and then flicked my hands up and fingers apart, showing the coin held between the first and second fingers on my right hand. My left spread mirrored without the coin.

Asako looked intrigued and turned to face me, looking focused at the coin. I grinned and started slowly, the coin folding over my knuckles as I brought my hands together, manipulating the coin so it turned across my knuckles back and forth, one side to the other, once, twice, three, times, each run getting a faster and faster before tossing it up a few inches and clapping my hands over it. I rubbed my hands and then held my hands open, fingers once more held wide and holding a coin. The coin wasn't a ten ryo though, now it was a slightly larger fifty ryo.

I looked at her slight expression of shock and grinned. "Now, where is the coin?"

She looked at my hands, to my face, particularly my shit-eating grin, then back to my hands.

"It's up your sleeve!"

I grinned and shook my head. "Actually it's not. Would you kindly check your left pocket."

She put her hand in her pocket, and I savored the expression of confusion, and then astonishment, as she pulled the marked ten ryo coin out. "B-But Wha-?"

"Sorry, but you missed the trick. Try again?"

She scowled and agreed, shoving the coin back in my hands.

I grinned and repeated the trick, but this time when she looked in her pocket, I shook my head and pulled it from my pocket, showing her kunai mark. Specifically, I pulled it from the zipped up pocket on my knee that was in her sight the whole time. I placed the coin in her hand, and she looked at it, her expression in an absolutely hilarious look of confusion.

Her expression was absolutely priceless, even more so when I walked away, simply checking the see the rookies were coming out to play before leaving the roof.

I would look over their progress another day, wouldn't do to draw suspicion.

 

[RogueDruid]

Okay, I've got a full nights sleep and-

Huh. That's a lot of replies...

???

Huh. I'm going to cut this off here then.

Okay, people, I get it, you have opinions, and honestly, i love seeing you express them, I like the feedback. However, I feel like your derailing my thread. So I'm going to answer some of these questions and cut this off at the knees.

Will SI befriend Naruto and gang?

Click to shrink...

Not really. He wants to keep an eye on them for information purposes and to keep track of any major butterfly's that he might have unintentionally caused.

Will he defect from Konoha/ go crazy/ Sell information. bounty hunter?

Click to shrink...

No. Nothing of that sort will happen until the Chunin Exams, at the absolute earliest. Konoha is currently his safest place to be. There's no major corruption/civil war/strict military protocol/ Economic collapse that's going to toss him to the dogs. the preaching of teamwork means he has time and support o get himself trained to a survivable point and figure out his bag of tricks. He also has the most information that's relevant to Konoha and knows most of its current dangers.

Why does he care about the Canon Characters?

Click to shrink...

Information. He knows them, even only partially, and knows they have a rather high level of importance. Most of them are heirs to clans, and that means that politically, they are important. he does care about some of their issues (Negi's hate, Sasuke's thirst for revenge) but not enough to get involved. he might deal with that if it becomes a problem, but for now, he knows that they're issues. He also is a bit empathetic, and so he sorts of muses about it on occasion. but like he said, he isn't going to pull the shounen protag fists of friendship anytime soon.

Go steal Magic eyeballs/object of powers/MacGuffins/ ecterea

Click to shrink...

No. For a few reasons. First off, I'm severely underpowered to take on anyone like Pein/Itachi/Akatsuki/etcetera. Secondly, I'm trying for a natural progression of skills and abilities. Learning new tricks takes time, and that's something he only has so much of. he's focused on refining skills, of picking up as many useful tricks as he can and getting to a point where he can hold his own long enough to escape a fight.
he's also slowly developing his own style, and the idea of relying on a MacGuffin just... doesn't sit well with him.

Why When/where now. Konoha's boring/Overused.

Click to shrink...

Well for a few reasons, first off, I agree that Konoha is overused, and I don't plan to spend too much time here for most of the story. but Konoha is a Known Quantity. It instantly gives you an idea of the culture and people there. friendly, somewhat sociable, civilian heavy. You know who the Kage is, who the Ninja are, there's a million and one bits of information that you can get just from saying. "Oh, he's from Konoha." What starts changing that is the modifiers. "He's a civilian born." "Specializes in deception and misdirection." "Is out of the village on a mission to -Blank-" "No bloodline" and so on and so forth. There are another dozen descriptors for this story in particular that change "Meh, he's from Konoha" to "Holy shit, this guy came from the Treehuggers? How did that happen?"


TL: DR I like the enthusiasm, but tone down the arguments a bit, please?

 

[RogueDruid]

Damn, Day four of consecutive uploads! I think I've impressed myself. Alright, today we begin to see exactly how skilled out young Ninja has become with three years of practice, and a rather admirable work ethic.

Enjoy!

---

It had been a few weeks since I baffled Asako, and while she hasn't bugged me since, she does keep glancing at me out of the corner of the eye whenever I do coin tricks. I would think she's a fangirl, there's plenty in the class, but she hasn't shown any of the traits I've come to expect. No blushing, not stammering or constantly watching, just a higher level of interest. I would go out on a limb and say she's trying to figure out my tricks, and so every time I notice her looking, I repeat the trick I used on her the first time.

Each time I see her frown slightly, definitely intrigued and annoyed.

Maybe it's my time spent working on deception, and maybe I'm just that much of an asshole, but I can work with this.

"With the ramifications of the defeat at the border of Grass and Fire country-"

I'm currently sitting in class. I don't have Iruka or Mizuki teaching for my grade, but I do have an older sort of burned out teacher, Mono Daisa. He's not from a clan as far as I know, but he had a fairly stable, if boring, career. Genin at 12, three tries in the exams for Chunin at 17, a teacher at 22, and now still teaching at 34. I looked up his records, and it was mostly B and C ranks. He's old but he knows his stuff, and even if he doesn't seem to have much drive, he knows what we'll listen too, and what we won't.

I'm idly listening as he expounds on a rather in-depth examination of the losses of the second shinobi war and how it changed the political landscape. And how it lead to the build up for the third war.

"-which lead the second Mizukage to-"

Most of its boring, but he's following the books close enough that it's nothing really new, I've read ahead for the week already.

"-and so we can see how the trade embargo-"

I've so far been splitting my attention between him and the coin I keep using chakra on, trying to move it with the leaf balancing exercise without touching it. This was one of the fundamentals of the chakra control book I had been reading recently, and the basis for a few more interesting applications. Due to the coins lack of organic matter, it's resistant to chakra manipulation, but occasionally I get a short flicker of movement, the coin sliding an inch or two in one direction or the other. I remember a few stories where Naruto learns to weaponize the tree climbing technique, and ideas that it's the basis of Tsunade Senju's super taijutsu. I'm not aiming for that though, due to reserves and my control, I'm never going to be anything close to a medic, or Naruto's powerhouse BS. Instead, I was thinking of something else, throwing faster senbon being the more immediate idea bouncing around my head.

"Shusho, what was the name of the general for the Wind forces at the battle of Archways."

"General in command was Daichi Moto, he died in combat and passed his mantle to his subordinate, puppet master Ebizo." I spoke out, eyes never leaving the coin on the table, watching as I got a half spin out of it.

"Correct. Now after the transfer-"

In my three-plus years of the academy, I've grown fond of senbon, even though they're not really on the curriculum aside from a passing mention. The main reason is that they're light and subtle enough that I can palm them and throw fast. Shuriken are also a useful weapon, particularly once I got the hang of bending them around things, but to throw them requires a bit of a larger exaggerated motion, same with Kunai. Senbon are stealthy, though, and far, far quieter. I can use shuriken and kunai regardless, the wider motions perfect to conceal a drop or palming a weapon, such as senbon.

If I'm going to be a ninja, I'm going to BE A FUCKING NINJA. Not to say I won't try to build some ninjutsu skills, but I'm focusing on stealth and misdirection for now. Figure if I can get some slightly flashy but rather direct Jutsu, and pair them with a senbon and poison in an off hand, then I should be a bit better off. Especially with my civilian reserves. Early on when I first realized I was embarking on an uphill battle, I briefly considered hunting for a MacGuffin. A few months of trying to realistically plan out a way to go about acquiring some form of bloodline later, I stopped considering it. I decided the payoff wasn't worth the effort or consequences. If I stumble across some sort of useful samples, I'll take them, maybe even use them for something, but I doubt I'll run around with a Sharingan or anything anytime soon… though if I do, acquire a MacGuffin, then I'll probably seal it as a trump card. And by that, I mean it stays secret until I'm on the edge of certain death.

Anyway, still have a bit more than a year and a half before I'm expected to make genin, and three years after that to work my ass off before Naruto and the rookies get to make genin.

I gathered my things as the class wound down and, when we were finally dismissed, I took off.

As I passed through the academy gates I considered my plans for the afternoon. On one hand, I could head to the library and continue my research, but I was getting tired of sitting in the underground room. It was a nice day, the sun was shining…

Flip a coin time! Heads for library/tails for practical. The coin goes up, I let it settle… Tails it is!

I set course for a lesser used throwing range nearby, open to Academy students, yes, but just far enough away to make the other students less likely to show up. I particularly like this training ground, Number 19, for its throwing range, instead of a dummy or a post, it's an actual range, somewhat like a shotgun range. A long counter and large square boards with targets staggered backward. It's a popular favorite with genin and chunin to get basic movements and experimentation down. I've seen plenty who use it to toss around kunai and shurikens, usually checking the quality of weapons and practicing drawing speed. However, that's weekends when genin teams are off for a day or when chunin have free time. Today's a Tuesday, and it's not even five o'clock yet, the training ground is deserted when I get there, which is fine with me. And since it's empty, I do believe it's time to set up at the range.

I've been using it to practice what I affectionately have taken to calling my 'Bar Tricks'.

Interesting shots that are designed to impress, to draw the eyes. They're opportunity makers, a chance to pick a pocket or poison someone. My current favorite trick I've succeeded with is the Smokers Bane. I set up a fake cigarette and spent three weeks trying to cut the tip off with a shuriken from ten meters away while having the shuriken return to me. Then I did the same with playing cards. And curving shuriken, especially making them turn horizontal halfway through, is a bitch to get right. The cards were way easier, the flatter and lighter shape letting it curve back to me.

For today, I was working on something else. I had the idea down, today was a day for ingraining it into my muscles and getting it to reflexive motions.

I opened three small boxes that looked like pencil cases and spilled a hundred senbon out of each on the table before the targets. Besides them, I start lining up stacks of blank ryo coins, made of a low-quality copper/iron alloy, and without any markings, they weren't money, but they were the right size, weight, and shape to perform tricks with. And I wouldn't have to worry about wasting money or breaking laws by damaging legal currency. I stacked them three high in each little row.

Prep work finished, I took a deep breath, listening to the world around me. My head tilted slightly as I took in what I could without sight… hmmm. Interesting. I opened my eyes and flicked my hands out in a snapping motion, fingers loosening up.

I started slow, palming three blanks and three senbon. I toss the coins up and at the target, before flicking my other hand up and jerking it three times, trying to pin them to the five-meter target with a trio of single senbon.

"Two hits, one miss. Damn," I looked at the blank coin with the senbon embedded in it that lay in the ground. "Again."

Palm the coins, flick them up, senbon in motion. Hit all three, but one senbon was off target.

Again, but two misses

Then only one miss.

And then "Three for three."

But the next is only two.

Then two.

Then three

And on and on it goes.

When I get the motion down, I work on ingraining it as a muscle memory, trying to burn the motion into my mind, my nerves. I start palming and throwing before the previous set settles down. I start flicking the senbon faster, the move becoming more fluid, the act of palming the coin or senbon from in front of me faster.

I almost grin when without meaning to, I make two jerks with my hands and see three senbon hit the post.

By the time the sun starts to change colors for an hour and a half later, the target I've been using is embedded with dozens of senbon, and almost as many fake ryo that are hanging from them. I've also collected and reset four times.

Almost twelve hundred senbon throws,

I always did like the idea of practicing a single trick a thousand times. What was it that Bruce Lee said, I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but the man that has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

I pause, my hands bleeding slightly from a rough edge on one of the blanks slicing my thumb open. I send out the last set of senbon and grin as I pin a trio of bloodied blank ryo to the board, the metal of the coins ringing as they bounced against the senbon.

Three for three, seven times in a row. That's my new record for this.

I smile, looking at the short stretch of dirt covered in the thin silver needles, and cheap copper blanks.

A rummage through my belts for my first aid kit and a quick application of herbs and a bandage cover and disinfect my cut up hand. And then I start collecting my needles. I replaced them in the boxes, stacked 100 per each box. I had to keep fifteen out of the boxes though, these had either been bent or broken by hitting the coins at bad angles.

Of the coins, almost a fourth of them were damaged. I still took them, but they were scrap now. I'd melt them down for new coins later.

Finished, cleaning up, I paused and took a breath. The several boxes laid on the counter with the pile of damaged coins.

Let's see...

First slide the boxes away, and then the good coins, each going into pouches on my waist. Then I started plucking coins out of the damaged pile, as I started to juggle them a bit, flipping coins from hand to hand as I moved, and then starting to drop them. One in each boot, another in each pocket, a few up my sleeves into the cuff of my jacket, another few into the seams of my jacket. One behind my ear, held with the touch of chakra before falling into my collar. Another under the belt, and the rest scattered to the pockets carefully stitched across the seams of my shinobi outfit.

Well, my acadamy outfit, the sleeves I used with my tools were left at home on academy days for now, simply due to the fact I would rather keep some stuff secret. Ninja life habits. Instead of my mesh sleeve shirt, I was currently wearing my blue and green jacket over a short sleeved blue shirt with a grinning skull painted across the front in bright neon green. It was to draw attention when I wandered around, but the colors were broken up enough that by zipping my jacket up, I have a somewhat effective camouflage. The neon skull was also so when I do card and coin tricks in front of it, it fucked with someone's attention, the color just off-putting enough to make them focus on it.

Turning away, I paused and then spun, deciding to throw in one last coin and senbon combo, dropping a ten ryo piece into my hand as I moved, then snapping my hands out, one after the other. I see the flicker of metal flashing through the air.

I smiled, listening to the thunk of metal into wood, and the ring of metal on metal.

The coin was pinned just left of the bullseye, senbon still shaking from the impact.

"Damn. Still a bit off. Guess I need to do this again another day." I sigh and flip a blank coin into my off hand… which, is a sort of misleading statement. At this point, while I'm not ambidextrous, I'm damn close. I start flipping it across my knuckles and through my fingers.

"Wonder what's for dinner... Hmm, heres hoping for fish."

I wandered back downt he path towards the city streets, breifly glancing back just as I turned around a corner to see a figure standing looking at my target, and the single coin there.

I knew I sensed someone. That smell of molten iron is distinctive.

Thats for another day, however.

 

[RogueDruid]

FINALLY!
barely any other SI's do that...

what about the Jutsu that create moving solid-ish things?
like, remember when Kisame rode inside the watery shark Jutsu in order to fly?
that, but for other things?

Click to shrink...

One Technique for you. Earth Style: Earth Dragon.

You know, if you want mind games, the 3

Click to shrink...

jutsu taught in the academy have all sorts of potential.


If someone throws a kunai at you, and there is a puff of smoke and a kunai stuck in a log and you appear next to them, did you swap with the log or transform into a log with a kunai and create a clone?

If you create several clones, and they throw kunai at them, and one puffs into smoke and there is a kunai stuck in a log, did you hit the original and they swapped, or was the clone transformed into a log with a kunai?

If they attack a teammate, is that you under transformation?

With enough skill at the basic techniques, you could turn the battlefield into a shell game from hell.

Click to shrink...

Yes! YES! This is what I'm talking about! now, Add reduced visibility in a similar but lesser vein as our good old friend the Kirigakure Jutsu, introduce a level of uncertainty by providing plenty of distracting noises and sights, and then proceed with a variety of feints and fake outs to raise tension.

Result? Chaos and Madness.

---

Oh Yeah, The final chapter of Arc one ladies and gentlemen. We are one year of from the academy graduation. and this last year is where I'll introduce team 'Mind-Fuck' (Known officially as team 17.)

For now, though, enjoy.

Fool-6

---

The last half of my second to last year at the Academy has been… strange. It seems, against all odds, that I've made a friend. Despite my somewhat introverted and rather reclusive habits, and my times spending way too long out training and wandering the city.

Somewhere along the way, Asako managed to get me talking.

---

At first, it was something simple. She showed up at a training ground one afternoon as I was finishing up a workout and held up that scratched coin. She flipped it at me and I reflexively grabbed it, dropping it into my hand. "Round three, let's go," she called out, and I only looked at her with the barest hint of exasperation.

Hands up, coin displayed. Grab her attention.

Hands together, hands curling as I start flipping the coin, the flicker of the bright metal clear across my slightly calloused young fingers. Then the switch, the start of the third cycle, the coin is the same color, but the size has changed slightly, the speed is fast enough that it hides the motion of my thumb loosening slightly, the coins swapping. Toss it up, making sure it spins and blurs. The coin is already moving, flowing down from my hand, angled down to her pocket, as the new coin bright and flashy catches the attention. Hands come together, the clap timed to match with the landing of the coin, just a bit distracting, just a bit surprising. Hands rub, 50 ryo sliding between fingers as I hold up my hands.

She smirks and pulls the coin from her pocket, flashing the scratch. I can feel my mouth curve not into a smirk, but a grin.

"I found my answer, or rather you showed me. It's all the misdirection. Once you see the change you just have to watch for it." She smirks and looks at the fifty in my hand. "And you seem very, very good at misdirection."

…Gah, bragging time. I've been working on this stuff for years! Curse my roguish pride! "What can I say, I'm a charlatan to my core."

She tilts her head "Charlatan?" Oh, Duh, it's a bit of a rare word choice, and she's eleven, but I've always liked my vocabulary.

I grin and clarify, hands pulling a deck of cards from my jacket, and sliding them from their box in a practiced motion. The cards begin to flip, long rows of colors as I perform some cardistry, shuffling the deck. "Ah, it means part magician, trickster, liar, heretic, and fraud. It is my ideal, my Nindo, you could say. Never fight fair." I draw five random cards, showing the ace of spades on the bottom of the hand, before fanning them to show a Royal Flush, in Spades. "And cheat often." I pulse chakra to the hand that holds the deck while flourishing it behind my back, before slowly pulling it forward, and fan the top five cards of the deck, showing a second Royal Flush.

Also Spades.

I grinned as she looked back and forth between my hands, mouth open in confusion. Then I bring my hands together, and while showing the spades, flip both sets of cards upside down and pass them by each other and back, as I pulled the chakra to my left hand before flipping it back, the faint smoke already waved away as I dispelled a partial transformation. In my right hand, I was still showing the Royal Flush, but the second hand was a mishmash. Ten-five-four-three-ace, mixed suits.

"But- Wait- was that a transformation?" Her voice got a bit squeaky at the end.

I can't help but grin, I can feel it, sharper than my last life's grin. The consequence of more slender features. Oh, I still had some baby fat around my face, but my entire figure is a lot more spindly than my last life. Though… I wonder if I'll get my shoulders again... I liked being a bit broad at the shoulder. "It's only mostly a transformation. Took forever to figure out how to do it as only a partial shift, and to include the cards individually." I had spent a lot of time working on that. My full body transformation was still annoyingly flawed, but only affecting the cards is simpler. Three possible colors, and simple shapes. I also know cards well, years of feeling and looking at every edge and shape, every corner and curve of the cards. Of seeing how they move and shift in motion.

My early attempts at a transformation technique usually were an illusion, with only the most basic of physical changes applied by a shell of chakra. It wraps the user up and builds an illusion over it. Other than hands and feet, most of a transformation is only visual, any real interaction and it acts like shadow clones. Poof. The real form that I had to make to pass the Acadamy tests is far more physical, wreathing the user in chakra and physically distorting their body to make what appears to be a perfect physical copy that's only skin deep. It's… not crazy hard, but the more off from your shape it is, the harder to maintain it becomes.

Full body physical transformation? Uses just under a fourth of my current chakra. My Illusion Henge, a tenth of that, A deck of cards? Barely five percent of that. I could hold an illusion on a henge for hours. A good practice that.

I shuffled the deck and stashed it in my pocket. Looking up to watch as Asako seems to look at me in a new light. I'm fairly certain I know what she thought of me. A bored loner, uninterested in the shinobi lifestyle. I didn't really contradict that. I mean, I was always distracted, never really excelled in class. My jutsu skills were rough but passable, and my taijutsu is my weakest point. I'm good seemingly at two things, card tricks, and throwing things.

My taijutsu was actually pretty bad. Not 'dead last everyone beats me', but I'm definitely in the bottom half of the class on hand to hand. Top fourth or so when it came to throwing weapons, and probably top third or so in test scores.

I started walking, only to pause and look back at her as she stands there watching me.

"Come on. I'm feeling a bit hungry, and I bet you have questions. I'll pay." She perked up and then skips a bit to catch up as I resume walking.

And that was the start. Skip forward a few months and it's become common for us to spend lunches and the occasional afternoon hanging out. She's revealed she's specializing in cryptography and intelligence gathering, while I let slip I've been studying chakra manipulation.

"Nothing spectacular," I said, waving off her interest. "I've just been practicing the basics."

---

It's now late spring, the last month and a half has been mostly spent studying for the yearly exams, and slowly becoming friends with Asako. With the exams now completed and a week off school till we get our results, I've taken to wandering the city for the last few days.

And by wandering I meant learning to roof jump.

"WHHHOOOOO!"

I was on the southwest edge of the city today, nearing the edge of the old Uchiha district and along the southern edge of the open street markets. I sprinted forwards, hands slapping down on the ledge of a roof as I vaulted over a narrow alley, falling into a shoulder roll to bleed off the half story drop to the next roof. I was keeping chakra use down today, having nearly exhausted my reserves yesterday when I finally completed the tree walking exercise.

That's right, I finished the Tree Walking Exercise. Who's the badass who can stand on walls? Me, that's right. Suck it gravity. And today, I'm riding that high. My chakra's hovering about two-thirds of my usual cap, but that's enough for today.

I jumped to the wall of the next building, grabbing the edge of a window to pull myself up and over, keeping the motion smooth and fluid. A deep breath and I was moving forwards again, heading to the corner and the roof across from it. A leap and a step off the ledge and I was airborne, arms spread slightly for balance before I landed one arm down and pushing off before I had stopped falling completely.

I kept moving onwards and made a leap onto a tall fence surrounding the outskirts of one of the clan compounds fields. On my left the street and walls of a dozen buildings, on my right a grove of trees that seems to lead out past the village walls, a few deer looking up at the sound of my passing. Nara compound maybe? Forget about it, keep moving. The fence was half a foot wide and made a great balance beam for running. I held an arm out to steady my first steps, and then leaned forwards, all but sprinting across the narrow path arms swinging to keep my balance.

Half a block later, I leaped off back towards town, latching onto a tree branch and swinging up and over a ledge. There was a second of weightlessness, my upward momentum and gravity shaking hands as they passed me off to each other.

And then I was touching down, rolling to bleed off the impact.

I couldn't help my smile as I ran across the building using towards a large open space. I angled to another building, looking out over the courtyard. I let just a touch of chakra flow to step laterally off the wall, once-twice-three times, and then back down, having crossed the gap. If it wouldn't break my stride, if it wouldn't take my breathing out of rhythm, I would be laughing right now.

God. This… this is what I loved about my new life.

It's so hard to put into words, but the feeling of sun on my face, the adrenaline in my veins and the chakra, god the chakra. It felt almost like a bass guitar in my soul. A thumping rhythmic pulse, that matched every step, every movement. In the manga, they talk about how chakra is formed from yin and yang. Body and spirit, form and substance. They never really go into the explanation of it. But when you move, when you push yourself, parts of your chakra flow. But if you keep your mind focused on the motion, if you put your focus behind it, your Spiritual and Physical side, then it gets interesting. Because ALL of your chakra Moves, it dances and twists and pushes against you.

This, this feeling of both of them working in sequence. I finally understand it. It's… it's like listening to your favorite song, one that hits you somewhere deep, that just the sound of it makes you move to the beat. It's reading that touching romance novel, and the writing makes you feel along with the story and its characters. It's watching a friend make a bad joke that is just so bad that you have to laugh at it. It's all of those things and more.

I wonder if this is what Maito Gai talks about when he rants about the Flames Of Youth? I… I could understand that. The feeling of everything just... clicking. Oh my god I could accept Maito Gai's logic if this was what he meant.

It might just be because of the fact I know life without this feeling that I can understand it, how valuable it is.

But if this feeling is what I'm fighting for? I'm going to fight like hell to keep it. I might not fight for Konoha, or for its 'Will of Fire'. But Konoha is where my family is. Konoha is where my friends and more practically my supplies and tools are. Yeah, there's issues. Root and Danzo, the barely painted over the veneer of 'dictatorship', the fact that I know of at least three times in the not so far off future where the city is attacked with nearly overwhelming force.

You know, it's funny. Until now, I was fighting for survival only, and it's led to me being safe. But that safety is coming to an end. The world keeps turning and I won't be able to stop it. There are too many gears in motion. I could help Naruto sure, but where does that line of thought end. I feel bad for Neji Hyuuga's past, should I help him overcome it? I can emphasize with Gaara's loneliness, should I help him out? I can respect Naruto's idealism, do I follow him?

No. No, I won't. Empathy is nice. For my sanity and any sake of my humanity, I need empathy. But I won't base my actions off it. I remember dozens of stories where an SI or OC tried to 'make things better'. It won't work, I can't force the world to my perspectives and morals. Can't guide them to peace or prosperity.

They can take care of it themselves.

But my goals, my drives....

I'm not letting this feeling of freedom, of the world, moving in sync for the first time. I'm not letting the peace go without a fight. Four years. Four years to make chunin, kick ass, get strong enough to survive what comes my way.

I need to stop following the story of 'Naruto'. I need to start my own story.

I think back to my Nindo, words I've been mulling over.

Fight dirty. Cheat often. Win whenever possible.

I think I need one more line.

Let the rest of the cards fall as they may.


End of Act 0- The Fool.

We begin with the Fool (0), a card of beginnings. The Fool stands for each of us as we begin our journey of life. He is a fool because only a simple soul has the innocent faith to undertake such a journey with all its hazards and pain.

At the start of his trip, the Fool is a newborn - fresh, open and spontaneous. The figure on Card 0 has his arms flung wide, and his head held high. He is ready to embrace whatever comes his way, but he is also oblivious to the cliff edge he is about to cross. The Fool is unaware of the hardships he will face as he ventures out to learn the lessons of the world.

The Fool stands somewhat outside the rest of the major arcana. Zero is an unusual number. It rests in the exact middle of the number system - poised between the positive and negative. At birth, the Fool is set in the middle of his own individual universe. He is strangely empty (as is zero), but imbued with a desire to go forth and learn. This undertaking would seem to be folly, but is it?

Click to shrink...

 

[RogueDruid]

HEY, back again. Sorry for the delay, the layout of this chapter is bugging me. I have enough things that I want to happen to fill both the Priestess and Magician Chapters, but I still need to work out the timeline for them a bit.

For now, though, this is a sort of Training Interlude leading into his next year. figured I'd set up some things that will come up over time, and explain where and how I acquired a few things that become relevant.

---

Summer was coming to an end. In two weeks I would have to resume classes at the academy, but until them, I had free time. So after much haggling with my mother and reassuring her, I would be okay alone for a full week, I got her support to camp out in one of the training grounds. The reasoning I gave was that I needed to learn how to camp properly, especially without help. Eventually, Toru Yoku gave up and let me go. While my father, Toru Gin, gave me a small smile.

My family had a rather quiet dynamic. My father was direct and charismatic at the stall, always with a compliment or subtle suggestion for people perusing his wares. A quiet confidence that what he sold was of quality. It drew people in, made them trust him. At home, he was the same. Quiet yet steady handed for the family. My mother was the far more energetic one, often singing as she worked in the forge. Growing up around her, she was always happy to grace the house with smiles and laughter. But she also worried a bit and was far more temperamental than my father.

When they were angry, it was two very different experiences. My father was a quiet anger, he would lower his voice slightly, to something just above a whisper. His eyes, normally a pale gray would harden to what looked like stone, and he would be cutting. Even when angry my father held no quarter. He could read you, respond to you and counter every argument. The only time I had ever beat my father in a heated argument was when I proved him wrong with facts. And my father was no fool, he knew information. He once joked that he was a merchant. That meant he heard things, knew things and sold things. I knew he was content with that, enjoying his profession.

My mother was the one who got loud when mad. She rose her voice often, but when she was mad it changed from a loud voice of enthusiastic pride or cheer, into screams of rage. But never towards me or my father. Towards us, she affected an air of annoyance that was far more effective. I had heard her yell about some of the jobs she had been ordered before. Often about outlandish claims for things that were not possible, often from some snobbish noblemen or haughty merchant's wife, who looked down on the plain woman who played such a trade as metalworking. But I knew my mother's feelings about her job. I knew if every time I heard songs coming from the workshop, or when she smiled as she showed off her newest creations over lunch or dinner. She had found her passion for art and beauty, and pursued it with all her might.
I only wish she worried just a little less.

"Shusho, do you have your knife?"

"Yes, mother."

"And the food."

Yes, mo-"

"What about your-"

"MOM! It's fine. I'll be less than two hours away if I need to walk back, and Ninja regularly will pass through. If there's something I forget I can come back. The academy office filed all the paperwork correctly and I have the permit for my campsite. Relax."

My mom, brushed her short brown hair behind her ear and gave me a slightly sheepish smile, before lunging forwards and sweeping me up in a bone crushing hug, "Be safe, sleep well, and be careful, okay?"

I relented and hugged her back. "Okay, mom. I'll be safe. Don't let dad get bored now yeah?" I gave her my best 'Faux-serious expression' "I won't be there to distract him from those terribly boring nobles looking at your jewelry! He might just die from boredom!"

"More like relax for the first time in years." I heard as my father ruffled my hair, having drifted up to us as I dealt with my mother. "Oh yeah, and I have a gift for you son." he pulled out two sealing scrolls and handed them off to me. One was signed from my grandfather, and the other was marked as from Higurashi's weapon shop. My eyes practically snapped open. "Grandfather sent me something?" I asked. I figured I had a good idea of what Higurashi's scroll probably held, but grampa Kosuke usually had some really interesting stories to tell. He had been a ninja for a very long time and had seen the last two wars. I was always confused when he said he was still just a genin, but whenever I inquired further he would just get this sad smile and tell me: "when you're older I shall explain my reason why. I do hope you have better luck than me, however."

Anyway, I grabbed the scrolls and hugged my dad, before stashing them in the pack I had. There were another three sealing scrolls already in the bag, one of camping supplies, one of emergency rations, and the last one of training tools and weapons.

I shouldered my pack and a round of goodbyes later was heading out.

I walked smoothly through the crowd, reflexively adjusting my gait and stance to match those of the civilians around me. My jacket was zipped up, and I had a brown knit hat over my hair, stitched with my glowing neon green skull on it.

I navigated west, checking a notepad I had the directions written on for training ground number 32. A forested area. The rules were also written on it. No Combat Ninjutsu above B rank. No fire Jutsu above E rank. Don't leave a messy campsite or any active traps when you leave. Basic stuff, but good thinking on behalf of the administrators. I followed my instructions and soon enough I was through the city into the training ground, shifting my pace from civilian speeds to Ninja in seconds, moving at what felt like a light jog, but was probably closer to two times faster than a civilian who was running.

Ain't chakra such a wonderful drug?

I passed by most of the basic training grounds, most of them simply consisted of a field with training posts or groves of trees. The one I wanted was about twelve miles from the training grounds, back against a small mountain at the edge of the forest. From what I had been told, it had a supply of fresh water and was far enough from the village that the animals were far more common, so I could test my skills at trapping.

There were a few more reasons I was heading out this way. One of them was the vial of dark blue gel in my supplies. Another was regarding… squeamishness.

I knew that one day, perhaps soon, perhaps years from now. I would have to kill someone.

I had only ever killed maybe three things in my old life. A rat, a gopher, and a fish. Each time I had been somewhat… nervous. If I was going to be a ninja, I had to get used to death.

The sun had just reached past its apex when I arrived at training ground 32. The area was a large expanse of forest, marked by a long winding game trail that went from the main path out this way, around to the west, and back. The end of the trail would be at the foot of the cliff faces that bordered the small mountain. I paused to take a drink of water and snack on a small granola bar, and recover. A few minutes later I was navigating the tree's, the wonderful ability to ignore the need to clamber through the branches due to chakra walking was amazingly useful.

A half mile into the woods, I found my target. A long winding river that flowed down off the mountain. I followed it back up towards its source, passing through a few small clearings that were once campsites for another ninja, before finally pushing through into the mouth of the river as it ran through the woods.

For a moment I just stood there to take in the sight.

The clearing was a good four to five hundred meters across, and a good third of that was a large pool at the base of a waterfall. The walls were granite and marble, dense and immovable as they rose up along the back of the clearing, reaching hundreds of meters tall. The waterfall was set to the west, falling into the pool before flowing away into the forest. More importantly, was the steam I could see rising from another pool that was off to the far side of the clearing.

A natural hot spring.

I grinned at that, I had heard about it in one of the geography texts when I had been looking up the terrains of the various training grounds. Between the fresh water of the river, and the hot water of the natural hot spring, (though I could see evidence of someone using a few earth Jutsu to make the spring more comfortable) this would be a good place to stay, particularly while training.

First though, to set up camp.

I wandered the edge of the clearing for a bit. Before finding a good place, a small half sheltered clearing, nestled in the nook of a small granite cliff and sheltered from the waterfall clearing by a thick growth of bamboo. I pulled out my scroll for camping and unsealed a hatchet and a bundle of rope. A few hours of work walking around and cutting down both bamboo and some heavy lifting of a few downed tree trunks and I had a solid shelter. A lean-to built up against the short cliff face, roofed with split bamboo planks and the back wall two carefully laid tree trunks. The top of it was layered with moss and leaves and then soaked with a slight water jutsu I had picked up from a book on survival. It was pitifully weak, nothing more than a weak spray similar to a showerhead but more than enough to soak down the roof of the lean-to. If I didn't know better, I would say it looked like two trees had fallen against the cliff and simply built up debris between them. The water and pressed down the leaves and muddied them with the dirt I had used to seal the roof, making it look like they were packed in there for some time.

I glanced up at the sky to see the sun was now drifting down towards the horizon, and set about setting up a fire pit against the cliff face a few feet from my new shelters opening. A few minutes setting up a campfire and I'm heading towards the river again, a glint of metal at hand.

I pause at the edge of the river and take a deep breath, letting the tension roll out of me. I watch the water, the sun slowly setting to my left.

And then I move, flicking three special senbon out into the water. Unlike normal needles, these ones are more like sewing needles, with a blunt end that holds a loose looped, upon which Ninja wire, thin and shimmering in the afternoon light, is hooked up. The tips are barbed, and as they fly out, I let the spool of wire up my sleeve loose out.

A few second later I'm reeling in a fish, and I pull a short knife from my belt. The cleaning is slow, I'm forcing myself to considered the death of the animal, to take the time and understand how it was now dead. The fish, from what I can see, is some sort of salmon, going by the bright red/pink meat.

I carve it up, and leave the guts and most of the bones in the river, giving back what I won't eat.

I take the fish back, spit it over the fire with some seasoning and let it cook. While I do so, I pulled out the small sealed jar from my supplies, looking at the jet. I had been looking for this for some time now. Gramps had mentioned it once in one of his stories, and it had taken half a year of watching before a trader from Suna was complaining about the 'weird blue gel from Northern Suna'. It was a rather rare yogurt from the goats in the land of the wind. It was favored by poison experts for one real reason.

It was an antidote to one of the more common paralytic compounds. Not just that, but it could be incorporated into a body's digestive system and the antidote itself was particularly painless. The bacteria in this yogurt was specially cultivated to make the user resistant to the poisons. In fact, I had the box of power to make one of those poisons at home sitting on a shelf. I also knew that the reason that this wasn't more common was two-fold. First, the body had to take it during their teenage years. After that, the immune system of a person would be too developed for it to take hold. Even then, by the time I turned seventeen, it would have passed through my body.

Second, it wasn't a necessarily pleasant experience. For the next few days, I would have blue lips and tongue from the bacterial colony growing in my system, phantom pains, itches, and some rather nasty cramps. That's why I had pushed for a full week camping. After that, as long as I kept my diet a bit protein heavy and added more dairy, I would have a fairly solid resistance to the poison I wanted to use.

It also took weeks to get out here in Konoha. Wasn't crazy expensive, but it took a large chunk out of my allowance for a few months.

I pulled the now nicely cooked fish off the fire, and set it to cool a bit, sliding the gel back in my bag for the moment.

Another reason I wanted to come here was that the hot spring was supposed to help with the process. It would relax my muscles and keep my body warm enough for the bacteria take root. I would also help keep me calm and relaxed. I would also keep up with my training of course, but having the ability to rest while the discomfort was present would be nice. I also would be trying to water walk.

I quickly devoured the fish before banking the fire for the night. The summer was warm enough that it wouldn't be much of an issue.

I took out the jar and opened it, and pulled out a spoon. I quickly took two medium sized bites of the gel, cringing at the slightly bitter taste. I choked the bacteria down, the cool liquid coating my throat as it went down. I sat there and waited to see if any immediate reactions would occur, and t check my vitals. a few minutes, later, I was confident everything was working fine.

Sealing it back up, I laid down and attempted to get some sleep. Tomorrow I would finish setting up camp and start training.

 

[RogueDruid]

Back once again! next chapters an interlude should be coming sooner then his chapter did. enjoy!

Oh, at the behest of my muse, I ended up starting my first quest today! here's the link,

Without Oversight- [Worm Tinker Quest] You may have caused Canberra, and now you are cast adrift. with only a collection of half mad tinkers and thinkers, a Stolen Cargo ship, and the ability to hide your future. you must survive.

---

I sat at the edge of the clearing in the early morning light, back to a tree as I read through the scroll for yet another time a quick breakfast of oats and berries at my side. I had opened my presents from my father and grandfather. The first was the Higurashi scroll, and it was, as expected, filled with weapons. Interestingly, was the variety. Three different styles of shuriken, a three bladed collapsing version that has longer and lighter blades, the standard four-pronged academy style, and a set of six-pointed stars. Another dozen boxes of varieties of senbon, some longer, some shorter, some one-sided, some kinked or grooved for various purposes a box with only ten had longer ones wrapped with cloth to make grips. A few were shaped more like sewing needles, with eyes for a thread, and a few cases of the accompanying ninja thread. There were four demon-windmill shurikens, all the collapsing four bladed style, and a duo of a three-bladed version of them, both of the those with a few intriguing tricks built in.

I traced the variety of weapons with a smile on my face. I had asked Higurashi about his variety of weapons a few weeks ago and asked if he had any custom orders for basic tools that were never picked up. He came through in spades, and my father had apparently asked him for a full load out. If I was careful, these would last me through plenty of missions, potentially till I was Chunin.

I had put most of the tools back in the scroll, only keeping out a pair of windmill shuriken, a full set of kunai, and a few loops of wire. I wanted to get used to the weight and balance of my new weapons for a bit. But for now, I was focusing on the other scroll.

My grandpa's gift came with a note.

Grandson,
As you enter your final year of the academy, I believe it is finally time for you to learn this jutsu. I have seen your notes of chakra in your journal, yes, that journal. Not the fake you keep with your school supplies. Your understanding of chakra is… potent, yet incomplete. This scroll and its jutsu should help you master what you seek.

Remember grandson, that you are not built to be the sword or hammer, but a knife in the dark.

I also included a few notes of my own for your research. I do hope it helps.

-Your Grandfather-

Demon Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique. It was not just a 'how to' scroll either. No, this one had the entire breakdown of how each hand seal how to channel chakra through each part. each shift of chakra and each part of the jutsu worked. Beyond that, some parts were clearly marked in dark green ink with my grandfather's hand. Notes on how things should feel instead of how things work. Tidbits like the looser the chakra something is, the more subtle it is but the longer it takes. He even makes a note that you can use simple seals to channel genjutsu to avoid a handsign.

Then at the blank space at the end of the scroll. Is a trick of his.

He calls it visual splitting. Part genjutsu, part bushin, part speed.

I was so~ gonna have fun with this.

---

I finished attaching my new tools to my outfit and checking the feel. The main outfit was what looked like a loosely wrapped kimono, under which was a skin tight dark blue tank top. The tank top was over the wire shirt and loose yet extremely stiff sleeves that now hung down just past my wrists, the faint gleam of metal from my knuckles peeking past the hem. My dark blue pants were held tight to my legs with black ribbons in certain places, forming a complex criss-cross across my lower legs and knees. My feet were protected by thin soled boots that had split toes for grip. Across the left side of my belt were four pouches, each one with a different type of senbon or shuriken. On my right side, held to my leg with the same crisscrossing ribbons, was the standard Kunai and shuriken pouch. I also had a few pockets sewn on the inside of my kimono, holding another collection of senbon and shuriken, a small sleeve filled with low-powered explosive notes saved from the lessons at the academy and so on.

My gloves had expanded. I had changed from straight leather to overlapping layers of tightly laced wire, leather, and a stretchy shinobi designed fabric that was durable yet flexible. The layers meant that I could now go full rogue, and as such my arms were now layered with a dozen more of subtle slots and pockets. My knife had been relegated to higher on my arms, as I made room for the extra long and sturdy senbon built for melee, two lining my forearms on each hand.

Finished with my inspection of my gear, and adjusting my belt slightly so it hung more naturally to my frame, and took a breath.

I took a long look around, up the lightly forested slope that leads up the mountain ahead of me, and the edge of the cliff that stretched out to each side.

I loosened my muscles and stretched one last time.

Then, without ceremony, I took a step back, and let the world shift me sideways. For a split second, I was in free fall, before my foot tapped the stone, chakra flickering at the contract. My fall turned into a flip backward. A hand lashed out as I spun, and a flicker of chakra sent me skidding along the cliff feet glowing with enough chakra to stay vertical but not stay in one place. I found my footing, sideways up a cliff, a good forty feet above the water of the pond beneath me.

Slowly, I worked my way through a basic yoga pose, going from four limbs to two, from hand to legs each motion exaggerated so that the sweat pools off my brow and down my limbs., my chakra is moving carefully, conservatively. Since I've completed the basics of the tree climbing exercise, I've started trying to get my abilities to a practical level. And now my control has shot farther than I expected. With reserves following at a more sedate pace.

I finish my sequence of poses and stances, and relax, letting my mind clear.

And then I started shadow boxing.

I wove around the granite cliff face, hands lashing up as I focused on learning to maneuver across the wall. Jumps and lunges didn't work, neither did leaps back or up. To fight on the wall, I had to stay close to the stone. Dive and back steps that would normally keep me low. But also using my hands to change direction without warning, to launch or orient myself as I moved.

After a few minutes, I made my first major mistake. I reflexively pushed forwards to reach a new vantage point and pushed myself too far.

Two seconds later I was cursing as I splashed into the water below.

I dragged myself out of the water and pushing past the weight of the water in my outfit, I resumed shadow boxing, clambering back up the cliff as I moved, trying to be fast and move evasively. The water dripping from my outfit made it far more difficult.

Two hours later, chakra depleted to my personal stopping point, legs sore, and once more soaking wet, I collapsed at the bank of the river, just letting my breath come back.

I burst out laughing at the ache that I felt in my limbs and looked up at the wall I had been training on. Where before it was clear and unmarred, now it had dozens of Kunai with wires stuck to them placed across the wall, forming a tangled web of ninja wire, an entire spools worth. I had found that I could use a kunai and wire to get me back to the stone after more elaborate movements, even if just for a simple yank. A fall could be turned into a slide or a quick movement with a wire. A good half of the wires hanging from the wall had snapped under my weight or yanked the kunai from the stone. Eventually, I got the hang of lodging them so that they worked as makeshift pinons.

I lean back on the bank and let my gaze drift over to the hot springs.

"I do need to relax…"

---

I lean back against the wall of the pool, the tension and stress of training fading, the scratches of pulled and stretched muscles softening under the ministrations of the hot water.

Over the last year, my hair has grown somewhat, now my bangs hang low enough to almost reach my eyes. I need to cut it soon, but the weight is somewhat comforting to me at the moment, the weight feeling relaxing like this. Closing my eyes, I consider my new arsenal of weapons.

The three bladed shuriken curved sharper when thrown, and the collapsed form made it easier to conceal. They were also lighter than normal shrunken, so that mean that the impact was less, but the speed would be higher. I could probably spin it faster and with the curved blade… better for glancing blows probably. The six-bladed shuriken is a tad heavier than standard, and the profile means that with a straight shot, they hit harder. The various senbon were mostly for grips or for delivering poison or explosive tags. But the short ones, half standard size, are for quick throws, that could be useful.

The Windmill shuriken would be a bit of a new experience. The test throw earlier had confirmed that they had a weight to them, and throwing them was blatantly obvious. No subtlety whatsoever. and I'll need to brush up on my wire work. The three-bladed windmills were a bit better, lighter and with shorter arms, and have two forms other than folded for storage. One where they lock into a short bladed fan, the blades barely overlapping, the other for the standard throwing position.

I sink deeper into the pool and focus on my chakra.

It takes less than a second to find it, the slow and almost lethargic pulse that I recognize as slowly refilling.

Sighing, I finish my soak in the pool, and climb out, drying out before I change into the loose shirt and hakama and ninja sandals that I packed for the pond. It is simple, but while I'm letting my outfit dry out, it'll do.

I reach over and gather up my new windmill shuriken, and grab a hatchet. Twenty minutes later, I finish putting up the bamboo scarecrow that I retrieved from the scroll, and have it planted at the edge of the cliff, in a vein of dirt that runs between the cliff and the rough stone of the riverbed.

I take a stance, and let fly. The first half hour or so is a bust. The shuriken goes too far or flies wanky. Slowly, oh so slowly, I start figuring out how to use the weight, I use spins and long sweeping throws to send it flying. I lung with the motion, I stand stoically, I lean into the throw. A few times I fall or stumble from the weight, the shuriken is half my height after all.

Finally, I start smoothing the motion out. The crazy swings start turning into smooth throws, the balance of my motion smooths out. I continue until the sun starts to set, the shadow of the cliffside slowly creeping over the river.

Swapping back to my now dry outfit, I go hunting for dinner. A half hour of tree hopping silently through the trees. It's not long until I cross a game trail, and start following it carefully. Finally, I come to a small clearing with a trio of rabbits jumping around. Taking careful aim, a senbon finds the skull of the largest rabbit, the other two fleeing.

I drop down and proceed to skin and gut the rabbit, using a kunai to bury the guts in a shallow hole. I expect a scavenger to come and steal it sooner or later.

Slinging the rabbit on a wire, I hang it over my shoulder and head back to camp.

My stomach has been slightly upset, but nothing much. Some protein from the rabbit and rehydrating some of the milk powder in my supplies for a drink should help with the growing process.

I think about my plans for the next few days.

Get used to my new weapon designs, at least somewhat anyway, and start on the hell viewing jutsu molding. My control, especially with the recent boost, should help with that. Speaking of control, I should start water walking somewhat, or at least try and start water walking. I reach camp and proceed to set up to cook the rabbit.

---

Later, as the fire dies down, I sit on a log and look up, eyes tracing the stars. In my hand is a deck of cards, one I had to special order. The back of the card is my green skull emblem, the wide grinning jawline and the bright green of the eyes by the light of the fire, I lift it up, flipping the card to reveal the king of Diamonds.

"Huh. "

I flip the card back and resume shuffling, letting myself fall into a halfway meditative trance, and then, softly I start to sing.

"Well, i was walking down the street…"
As I sing, I let myself fall back into memories. Both now mine and once mine.

 

[RogueDruid]

Otters occurred to me as possible summons. Was not actually what my primary reason for a comment was though.

Original desire to comment came from following thought:

Can the SI 'convince' his earth affinity that the metal in his various gear = earth. And in doing so reduce or eliminate the limitations associated with applying chakra to metal. As well as other applications.

Click to shrink...

Yes... Maybe. that's not going to happen anytime soon though. That's the sort of high-level BS mastery that usually comes associated with a form of mastery.

Whatever summon he gets, as long as he doesn't get it by that stupid anime only thing where performing the technique without a contract summons you to the realm of the animal you are most 'suited' to.

Click to shrink...

Nope, to get his summons he will have to draw their attentions through deed and action.

Magpies would be great for the sheer entertainment value of them liking shiny/flashy things and their ability to fly of course, but if it's a mammal, no idea.

Click to shrink...

Also being aggressively sneaky bastards that come out of nowhere if given half a chance. I was thinking magpies as well, but I don't know what is/isn't an appropriate animal.

Click to shrink...

Hmmm.... magpies snatching Kunai out of the air and doing a demonic version of the Seagulls from Finding Nemo.
(OMAKE?)
Toru stands still and a massive magpie lands on his shoulders, Eyeing the Suna Nin across from him."Mine?"
It tilts its head and locks eyes with Toru, before cocking its head as it asks a simple question.
"Mine?"
"Go for it. [Summoning Jutsu- The black Sky]"
The sky filled with smoke, and then the trees surrounding the two ninjas were colored black and white by the press of feathered beasts.
As one, a single battle cry filled the air.
"MINE!"

Watch his summon is tied to the League of Legends.

Makes friends with Twisted Fate.

Click to shrink...

Nope. Don't play LOL.

I've never seen any evidence in canon that being diametrically opposed, or strength/weakness when compared to other elements, matters at all when learning Elemental Transformation outside one's natural alignment. It's fairly implicit in the material that one's natural alignment is easiest to learn, but nothing is ever said about certain elements being especially difficult, outside the difficulty of them not being the natural alignment.

Kakashi's alignment is Lightning, but we see him use earth and water about equally in the manga. And no use of wind, not even in training Naruto in his wind element, despite it being next to lightning and an element he's listed as knowing.

The Fourth Raikage's element is also Lightning, and his two other affinities are earth and water.

We don't know what Kushina's alignment is, but her affinities are wind and water, which are diametrically opposed.

Hinata's two elements are listed as fire and lightning, diametrically opposed. Sasuke's first two elements were fire and lightning.

While this alone isn't evidence, there's not a single time in the manga where it's said that a diametrically opposed element, or an element that's the strong/weak against one's natural alignment, is harder/easier to learn.

Also, this doesn't come across well because my first post is a criticism about 'what is/isn't canon', but I'm really loving this story. What was the song he was singing at the end of the last chapter? My guess is Time Warp.

Click to shrink...

...Damnit, I had this Misdirection set up and had everyone else convinced to drop the subject until I could spring it on them, and then YOU. YOU just had to come and pull the Rug out from under me, huh.
(Also, You found one of my many misdirections I've been playing, Well done. Have a cookie. relax. Thank you for being so attentive, it warms the cockles of my heart.)

Sparrows, insist people call you 'Captain Sparrow'
Or a parrot? Don't just give it the ability to imitate speech but also the ability to henge. Sort of a low rent shadow clone good for the deception parts of what Naruto does against non-hyuga non-uchiha people, not necessarily the fighting part.
Birds of some sort for sure, for the whole magician act he's got going on.

Imagine rescuing a single animal that he recognizes as speaking. The animal follows him around and insists on forming a summon contract. When part 2 rolls around this creature has a large family and Toru can summon the lot of them. As a joke he says he can nearly do the chidori and summons a lot of small birds.

Long time ago I had a thought about putting hiraishin seals on summons. One flies away, the rest make it really hard to figure out where he's going to show up.

Give the birds storage seals with something heavy in all of them; anvils, anchors, comically large boulders, large lead or iron weights with 10 tons written on them. Summon a lot of these. Include explosive seals so Toru can have his very own airstrike.

Click to shrink...

In order of these comments:

Mayyybbeee.....

STOP READING MY NOTES.

Not going to use the Hiraishin for a long ass time, if ever. Not worth the payout for the effort/consequences in my eyes.

"Yes, I do have a deck planned labeled 'ACME Inc'. Why do you ask?"

Nah, not Chidori.

Summoning Technique: Hitchcock.

Click to shrink...

"HA, my style of combat is unmatched, you could never hope to get close to me, not alone!
"Summoning Jutsu: Hitchcock's Masterpiece."
"OH GOD THE BIRDS! THE BIRDS!"

You know what's way more flexible than a snake?
An octopus.
Think about that for a second, then remember what Orochimaru's Snake-style Taijutsu was like.

Click to shrink...

Snake style is offensive, quick flexible strikes.
Octopus Style is Grabbling oriented. (Tentacle Suction cup Jutsu, AKA: OH GOD WHY WON'T YOU LET GO!)

Octopi would be terrible summons they have no skeletal structure and die on land

Click to shrink...

True, Octopus would be a very... Situation Specific Summon. the benefits would be specialized techniques, and while no "sage mode" they wouldn't have nothing to offer with regards to Nature Chakra.

We're not limited to standard animals, this is a fantasy setting. Maybe these are ninja octopi that have a natural ability to swim in the air as if it were water. Could have swarms of them flying around like the squid machines from the matrix.

Click to shrink...

Shhh.... For Every Ninja Octopus, you can;t find, there's another two that found you.

If I had to take a wild guess on a single animal for summons, I'd say Salamanders. Poisonous, slippery, stealthy, an affinity for land and water.

And I am also of the hope that the summon contract isn't made in the ridiculous anime fashion. "Ruins" is a bit of a melodramatic word, but personally, in the many Naruto reincarnation SI's, the authors using the silly never-meant-to-be-canon instantaneous teleportation ruins the story.

The one clue we have for how Summons are 'normally' acquired (by all metrics, contracts don't happen often, and when they do it's usually preserved by being passed down from teacher to student) is Jiraiya, who wandered by chance into the Toad's realm in accordance with a prophecy they had about a young man doing such a thing.

Maybe on his first C-rank, things get interesting for our card carrying ninja as he finds himself sliding through a watery cave? Dunno.

Click to shrink...

Hmm... Salamanders would be interesting, yes... And he shall have probably an entire chapter or two dedicated to his fist contact with his summons.

With that out of the way, and thank you all for commenting and discussing, lets continue!


Here we finally have an outsider's perspective of how Toru appears. First off, I want to note that the Anbu here is highly observant, and thus picks up on some more information then most of the average rank and file would.

---

'Tsuru' paused once more as he reached the Training ground, sliding unseen through the trees to a new perch.Today would mark the fourth day he looked in on the kid.

And there the kid was once again, for the fourth day in a row, training. The ANBU had to admit he was somewhat impressed the first day, while the young boy had been dancing across the cliff face, he had quietly searched for his camp. He had actually needed a few seconds to find the lean-to. What caught his attention when he returned to watch the kid, however, was the kids fighting motion. Unlike most academy students, his step and movements had a flow. A smooth conservation of motion. Oh, there was hang up, some shifts had a distinctive jerk or small pause, but some of his movement flowed together. A step into a duck and stab, for instance, all in one short straight push. Simple, but perfectly executed. There were a few moments when he would get flashy, but it wasn't hard to see that the flashy movement was intentional.

What really caught the Anbu's eye was the third day he had checked the kid. He had been practicing on close quarters combat on the dummy. What caught his eye is that he would do one motion over, and over, and over. A dozen motions repeated constantly, and then, he performed them all, in dozens of various sequences.

Kunai slash for the throat, hand coming forward for what looks like to correct his balance, and then flash, senbon in his off hand for the leg, while the kunai keeps going, push up and off the ground, keep coming up to knee the groin, aim for sternum, kunai released for another palmed senbon, which goes through the eye.

Variations of it were tried and discarded, never the same one twice in a row, never the base form repeated in any real pattern. But once he had weeded out the unwanted sets of motions, he swapped to practicing what looked to be the best combos he had formed.

Sometimes, the kunai dropped early, others the senbon was shoved up in the gut, or at where the kidneys would be. Sometimes, the stab shifted to slash, and vice versa. Sometimes it was a duo of kunai that shifted to a feint.

They were all variations on a close range combo. To deal with someone reaching or getting in close.

The kids sneak attack were smart too, he would shift his stances and relax, putting himself flat-footed, before beginning a new set. What looked like a panicked and easily avoided slash, hiding a trio of senbon to the stomach. A jolt of surprise that was actually a draw for a knife. A stumble that turned into a kick, or a turn that led into a flickering fast jab.

The movements weren't perfect, not by a long shot. For every ten moves, he tried, six wouldn;t work, no in combat anyway. But the seeds of something interesting were there.

Since then he had requested permission to keep an eye on the kid, and after relaying what he saw, his captain gave approval

Tsuru looked down to see what the kid's plan was today.

----

The kid stood in the center of the clearing and seemed to be meditating. Before him was sitting a freshly cut log that he had placed. In his hands were a deck of cards, and he was slowly sending the cards in long arcs from one hand to the other. Tsuru settled in on a new perch on a tree nearby, blending in with the forest behind him.

Below the kid did one more long arc, but this one was different. Dancing between the cards were thin swirls of chakra. Not a lot, but enough to grab the Anbu's attention.

Then there was a blur, the cards seeming to hover as the kid brought his hands together, The fingers formed Boar-Ox-Snake, and the space between the cards and the log seemed to shift, and Tsuru blinked. Now there was a log, with a line of playing cards embedded in it, sitting just in front of the kid, who was on a knee and breathing heavy. Across the dirt where the log was was the rest of the cards, embedded in the dirt and sticking by the edges out of the ground nearby.

What the hell just happened?

Tsuru thought back and thought through the blur he had seen.

The cards and the log had been engulfed in chakra., and then the switch had happened, both being pulled together and past each other at high speed.

Was that… was that a kawarimi?

What. The. Hell.

The kid, Toru Shusho, was experimenting with the Jutsu. More importantly, he had the control and mindset to successfully experiment with Jutsu. Evry kid, clan, civilian, genius, or dead last, they all made 'Custom variations' of jutsu. A little faster here, a different visual there, but most of them were simple changes. this... Whatever Shusho was working on trying to do, it was still a mystery. That technique was.. Interesting, so far. If it was what he though, a remote substitution, then it could evolve to an assassin jutsu with little effort. Swap an exploding tag with someone's weapon.

The thing is, the kawarimi doesn't work like that.

The baseline of the jutsu sends out what is commonly referred to as the 'anchor' of chakra, marks its endpoint, and then rips both things in a tight arc, sending them past each other with a puff of chakra smoke for concealment, and then stopping them at each other's origin. There are variants where you can use a physical clone as a target or leaving an illusion of yourself over the log, usually just a modded bushin.

But using something as third party proxy to channel the anchor… it's not possible using the basic karawmi. There are a dozen variables most ninja need years to automatically do. Distance, weight, chakra suppression and focus, keeping from ramming a tree or rock in the process. An inanimate object can't do that.

So how did he get the cards to act like that?

Tsuru settled once more to mull over his thoughts and think about the report he would be handing in later, in as Toru stood up and collected the cards, the paper sliding cleanly from the groove they had cut showing that instead of acting like paper, they were acting like they were made of metal, every card was flat and unyielding.

Finally with the deck once again assembled, Toru placed the log back in place and resumed his experiments, taking the time to pull a field journal out and make a few notations before sliding it back into his kunai pouch.

The cards began to shuffle and flow around him once more, chakra flowing through the paper.

----

The Anbu stood before his captain once more, the man in the bear mask looking through the file with interest.

"So he stayed working on that for another three hours, averaging an attempt every five minutes or so, correct?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And his results were positive but unfinished?"

"Yes sir, by the end of the three hours he was running low on chakra, but the last half hour the final three attempts made were under a dozen cards each, and there wasn't a repeat of the early results. He seemed to get the hang of marking only a few cards for each try, and lessening his output."

"Interesting. I'll pass this on to recruiting, I expect they will take an interest in the boy, I know Torture and Interrogation have already marked him for possible recruitment."

That was news to Tsuru, and he stiffened slightly. "T&I Sir? May I ask why?"

"His teacher was one of their best field interrogators outside of the Yamanaka clan. He asked to teach at the academy years ago, he uses it as a cover for keeping an eye on the kids. Apparently, Toru here has been conning almost his entire class, and he almost got the sensei under the same misconception. Anyway, dismissed Tsuru, go have a drink and relax. I'll have you check on the kid for his last day, but I have someone else who wants to watch the kid tomorrow."

Tsuru nodded and left, leaving his captain behind to look over the file.

"'Old man Kosuke's grandson huh? I wonder what path you will travel."

He folded the file and set it down, reaching for two other files, and looking them over.

Transfer and recruitment forms for two children, the same age as the young Toru.

"Hmmm…." The captain murmured as he looked over the lists of skills and assets the two had, before pausing and looking back at Torus file. "I may have three files to send to recruitment."