Chapter 3: Childhood
Uncle Raikage fulfilled his promise. It didn't take even a month for one of the guest rooms in our mansion to be filled to the brim with copies of sealing scrolls. Hell, he even sent the originals of Uzumaki scrolls the village plundered when it attacked Uzushio!
Needless to say, that was more of a joke. These scrolls were completely useless. All contained a blood seal and needed Uzumaki blood to be opened. Hmm. Thinking of that… Karin and her mother will be useful later on. Anyway, my mother actually also held true to her promise and started to train me. Mostly in theory though.
I spent the majority of the year in the guest room turned provisory library. One must marvel at the art of Fuinjutsu. And also at the simplicity of the shinobi folks.
A week with sealing manuals and I already understood why Uzumaki were so-called 'Prodigy seal masters'. The reason why their seals were so feared and effective. The reason why their clan was so feared. The reason why most nowadays 'seal masters' are not very known. The reason why sealing art is almost forgotten. The reason why even if they were able to open Uzumaki scrolls they wouldn't be able to read them. I also understood that calling Jiraya a seal master is an insult to sealing arts. All of those can be summed up by 'special unknown language' and 'creativity'.
Uzumaki had a talent for sealing arts, yes. But their seals are written in a completely different set of symbols. Simplified Kanji, if you will, but, not really. It was minimalistic, efficient and it worked well! I also understood I won't be able to use or learn it without a manual, which is most likely in one of the scrolls locked by blood seals. Damn Minato and his cheat called Kushina... While I doubt the guy learned the Uzumaki sealing language, he definitely learned Uzumaki seals and translated them to 'generalized' sealing language. The shit that seal masters use nowadays.
This revelation prompted me to experiment! In just three months, look, and behold, I managed to create a new 'symbolic language' for sealing arts! I used the English alphabet for words and Arabic numbers for equations. Hah, the reason why most seals are unbalanced and inefficient is actually that they use Kanji to do equations! Now simple addition and subtraction would be fine. Long and tedious but fine. But can you imagine the length of equations for space or time manipulation in Kanji in a world where people struggle with multiplication? Two words. Fuck. It.
No wonder they need kilometer-long scrolls for their seals! Sealing arts can be compared to math. Well, not really, but that's the closest thing to it. Equations are actually kinda like circuits of seals. They manage everything. From getting the needed amount of energy to creating the desired effect. Anyone who actually 'understands' sealing will eventually make some modification to the language he uses for sealing in order to make it more efficient. THAT is why I call Jiraya's mastery an insult. Saw the guy's seals and even me after a week of learning can tell he is shit at sealing. He can copy/make seals. He also has knowledge about a lot of seals. But to actually create something new by himself? Bah...
That was for language. But what about creativity? Well, we are in a world filled with wars and shinobi. Sealing is called FuinJUTSU. That Jutsu part is the misleading bit there. Most sealers assume that since it's called Jutsu, it should be used for combat, be flashy, and explode. Heck, even storage seals are geared more for combat. They can hold gear, corpses, and so on. But when it comes to food? Their sealing matrix is not made to hold food for a long amount of time.
Most seals are various types of sealing tags too. Danzo managed to make a loyalty seal which from the effects I saw in anime should be just a modified secrecy seal. Boohoo.
Orochimaru's cursed seals and Minato's seals are actually the most interesting seals in this world. They are complex. Even Tsunade's seal is just a botched up pitiful attempt at getting a 'passing grade' in sealing. It just holds her chakra and then overuses that chakra to stimulate her cells to heal incredibly fast which basically reduces her lifespan. It uses seals to store chakra and uses her IRYO NINJUTSU to heal her at cost. There is NOTHING prodigious about that seal. It is a masterpiece of medical ninjutsu though.
So yeah, the arrogance of unworldly talent in sealing is so not clouding my judgment…
Anyway, by the time I was four, I actually became a secret supplier of seals for Kumo. I always gave my seals to uncle A when he came to visit and look at my 'doodles'. Lately, he even brings brother A. Geez, that's confusing, right? Brother A will be the 4th Raikage. He is a kinda funny guy even though he is a lot older than me and always tries to stop himself from cooing as he sees me.
Being able to dish out the seals I made for them and the fact their sealing experts couldn't decode and replicate them made both brother and uncle A to look at me with enormous respect. Now, they are both over 2 meters tall and I am four years old little shit. Well, it only fueled my arrogance, to be honest. Hehe.
I also trained my lightning release. That went a tad bit slower than sealing though. I was not so zealous and a four-year-old didn't really need it anyway. I made enormous progress in it though.
The Lightning Release: Chakra Mode actually had two stages. Flooding your nervous system with fine controlled lightning chakra to speed up your reactions. And speed up your body with lightning chakra. The hardest part of this was the brain, of course. Needless to say, the nerves have a threshold they are able to withstand and this threshold is different for various nerves if your lightning chakra is not finely controlled you can fry your brain, or any part of your body for that matter, from the inside.
I was not as interested in the technique itself as I was in speeding up my own brain and speed of my seal creation. And so when I reached six years old I created my first Ninjutsu. It was derived from Lightning Release: Chakra Mode and I called it Lightning Release: Time Slow.
Well. Time Slow actually used the principles of Chakra Mode to speed up my brain and gave me 1/10 of the speed of Chakra Mode. This couldn't really be used in combat though. It was purely to make me create seals, I could draw with closed eyes, faster. The biggest upside though was the efficiency and ease of use. For Chakra Mode, you would need innately strong lightning nature and years upon years of fine-tuning your lightning affinity, training your body, and many more things to use it.
For my Time Slow, the requirements were a lot less demanding. Heck, I was six. My chakra was very limited and my lightning manipulation while commendable was nowhere near Raikage. Yet, I could use Time Slow for hours upon hours of seal work. The biggest downside would be that my brain is sped up to the full capacity of Chakra Mode but my body only 1/10 of it.
It. Is. Annoying! Well, I got used to it. Eventually.
In my sixth year of age, I also discovered the horrors of working out. My mother was really serious when she said she will train me. The day after my sixth birthday she started to prepare my body for Chakra Mode. Heck, I almost died that day! And the next one. And the next. And next. And...
Reading fanfictions it was easy to imagine people train and say 'pff, I could do it too!' but actually be driven almost to madness by body training? I was six, if my mind wasn't that of an adult I would probably break. Huh, guess that's why most of the shinobi have some idiotic quirk.
I also had to protest for two months straight for my mother to change my training and modify it to target other sets of muscle in my body. I have no need to look like uncle and brother A, thank you very much! I want to be a lean, slim young man! Not a muscle monster! Mother eventually relented, even if very reluctantly and with childishly pouting Uncle A behind her while Brother A cried bitter tears. After all, without the body training of her clan, I won't be able to use Chakra Mode to the fullest… Well, who said I want to use THEIR way of using THAT jutsu?
With the body training and seal creation for Kumo and family interaction, my day was full. You might say 'just drop the seal creation!' but, damn, do you know how profitable that is? I understood though. I have no way to further myself in the way I want if my mother gets her way with my training and I want to get money. I needed Shadow clones. And I needed them fast.
It took me a few days but I finally got a week-long vacation from a body tempering and a month-long trip to Kumo with my mom. My older brother joined us. Hah, the champ actually also trained with us from time to time. I was SO envious of him! He didn't need to do even a tenth of what I had to go through daily! I had my payment though. The face of my father when my older brother wanted to learn under a samurai. He was horrified. Poor guy would rather us to be spoiled rotten than kids interested in killing arts. I blame my upbringing!
I spent the vacation from body training to finishing my new seal. I called it Seal of Truth. It is kind of like Yamanaka Jutsu, except I have no need to get into their head. It is a seal on paper and to use it, you just have to stick the paper to the target's forehead and activate it with chakra. The seal hypnotizes them and makes them spill their darkest secrets. The best part? They will vividly remember that moment! There's no better feeling than the sadistic satisfaction of knowing they will despair because of my seals.
Well, I also added a defensive mechanism! It is a double-layered seal, the first layer prevents the actual seal from being seen before the activation. And in the seal is incorporated a self-destruction mechanism that will burn the paper with the seal hour after it is activated. The seal can be researched only after you activate it and even then only for an hour. Take into account the fact it is a seal in English… Hah, not even Nara seal master would be able to decipher it. Not like they have one.
The seal also indicates if the target has any other seal that prevents him from talking or if he is under the influence of some mind Jutsu. I basically covered almost all bases with it. The only remaining thing was an actual test. Kukuku.