The Dead Bone Pulse

The next day, Haru found himself filling road holes and fixing tiles with Akihiko and his mates on their previous battlefield under the supervision of a law enforcement agent of the branch and a professional architect of the clan.

That day Haru regretted not having learnt a bit of Earth release ninshu as it would have spared him some more tiring efforts.

The ordeal was remarkably boring in Haru's perspective, so in the meantime he began pondering about an issue that had always bothered him in the original manga.

The world building of the Naruto verse has always been lacking in some areas in his opinion. One of those being the frankly unclear way chakra was quantified. What did Genin, Jounin or Kage level chakra reserves meant actually ?

So as his mind was somewhat idle, Haru arbitrarily choosed the amount of chakra needed to form the standard Rasengan as the unit of this brand new system. He called that unit the gan.

According to his estimates and this new unit system, with his current chakra reserves, Haru could perform the Rasengan about thirteen times. But it would not be accurate to say that he had thirteen gans of chakra, because such a straightforward assumption didn't factor in the effectiveness of chakra control.

One of the main problems caused by poor chakra control was the substantial loss of energy during the various internal transformation processes.

According to his observations, if most students at the academy could be considered at genin level, then genin level chakra control meant that about two thirds of the chakra consumed was lost. Such a poor efficiency was heart wrenching, as it meant that basically one would only be able to effectively use only a third of his chakra in practical terms.

Haru himself, after dedicating over a month of his training to chakra control exercises, had a chakra efficiency of about two thirds. Which wasn't that bad in his opinion.

Factoring this parameter in his calculus, Haru had chakra levels of about twenty gans, and could actually use thirteen gans of it at the moment. It was a far cry from Naruto at the beginning of the canon, not to mention at the early stages of Shippuden where he could casually summon a hundred clones doing half a hundred rasengans and go on as if that didn't happen.

Since the last time he started thinking about the Shadow Clone technique, although Haru did not manage to recreate it, not to mention master it, he has made an approximate guess about the amount of chakra that would be required in order to produce such a chakra construct.

Considering that a Shadow Clone should take about half a gan of chakra, at twelve years old Naruto must have had chakra levels in the hundreds of gans. It was indeed absolutely ridiculous considering that his Ōtsutsuki bloodline was orders of magnitude thinner that his and his clansmen's and that he was such a malnourished kid since he was young, feeding on such a nutritiously poor food as ramen.

Quantity must have made up for quality in his case.

Throughout the day, Haru didn't interact much with the others working beside him. He has had a few eye contacts with Akihiko, and although there has been no words exchanged, there was no hostility either.

Making use of his very perceptive Byakugan, Haru found some entertainment in evaluating other's level of chakra with his new system. Akihiko had about thirty five gans of chakra, at least in rough terms, with was certainly a higher amount than him at the moment.

It was quite evident for Haru that his effective chakra amount was much lower though. No more than fifteen at best, as the day prior they were both at the end of their rope around the same time.

Although thirty five gans of chakra sounded good, or at least better than him, it should not be overlooked that Akihiko was about two and a half years older than Haru. When Haru is his age, he is confident that he will have at least fifty, if not sixty gans chakra levels by then.

Although he wasn't bad, Akihiko was indeed not as gifted as him or Byakuya. He was also much worse than Eina, who was herself a tad bit more talented than Koyuki.

He was average.

That is also why Haru hasn't shown hostility, or wariness about him today. He truly was indifferent, because from now on Akihiko was just an irrelevant defeated side character on his journey.

In all likelihood, in a few weeks Byakuya would be able to smash that guy quite easily.

When the daily chores came to an end, Haru didn't forget that he had an appointment at the matriarch's place in the evening for her daughter's birthday party. He had a few hours left so he had to think of a gift that would please her and not embarrass him too much.

Going back home without wasting time, Haru began thinking.

Giving her a technique would probably not be a great idea. As the patriarch's daughter there wasn't much that could catch her eye, and most likely nothing that he owned.

He had to think of something else.

He didn't have anything of substantial value in materialistic terms. So he should probably focus on the emotional value instead.

A cake according to his last life's recipes would have been a unique idea, but even though there was a surprising amount of ingredients for such a barren place as the moon he was quite sure that there was no dough and milk.

So the cake was not feasible either.

Well he would find something later, maybe ask his mom if she had any ideas.

When he arrived, Haru took a quick shower and came to his mom as was planned.

A short while later in the backyard of the house, Hisame sat in the lotus position in front of her son. Although her eyes weren't white and her gaze could not pierce through his skin, it seemed that Haru's body couldn't hold any secrets before her. It took her a while before she spoke.

"The Dead Bone Pulse blood limit is in many way different from the Byakugan, Haru." Explained the woman in a calm and serious tone. "You see, there are several states a Kekkei Genkai may be at a given time in somebody."

"The first one is the active state, where the ability is awakened and at the direct command of its bearer. The semi-active state is an intermediate stage where the Kekkei Genkai is awakened but mostly unavailable its user because it may either be in a preparatory stage or because the user does not fulfill some requirements. This is the state your Shikotsumyaku currently is, and your classmate new pupillary technique is also."

" Lastly, there is the inactive state and the damaged state. Inactive bloodline powers are considered mostly impossible to awaken, as they are in fact in a locked state within the latent bloodline. Hamura's Tenseigan has long been classified as a dormant, or inactive, ability.

But as there is definite proof that it has been awakened naturally for at least one his descendan, modern theory has proposed yet another intermediate layer : the semi dormant state of the Kekkei Genkai. But although this is indeed a fascinating topic, we are sidetracking. We should refocus on the matter at hand."

Haru nodded obediently, though he could not refrain himself to think about it for a while longer.

Whilst it seemed like the Tenseigan was the most orthodox evolution of the Byakugan through Hamura's bloodline, Haru knew that there was at least two other paths the Ōtsutsuki clan's descending from Hamura could take : Isshiki's and Byakuya's so called Taiyogan, or so it seemed, and Boruto's Jōgan. In modern biology terms, they could be considered ressessive mutations.

Although Haru was quite confident that he would not loose out to Naruto and Sasuke in the future with the assets he currently had at his disposal, Isshiki alone was enough to overwhelm both of them at the same time.

Kaguya herself was only ever beaten in thanks to Kishimoto's massive levels of plot armour in Haru's opinion.

But world he was now living in was not fictional. It was reality, and he really should not be confused about this.

The Six Paths level was a true watershed. It was the very top only a handful of mortals could ever hope to achieve. Beyond that mountain top laid the heavens, immortality, and the Kekkei Mora.

To his knowledge, only something as miraculous as a chakra fruit could give one hope to ever reach that level.

But the Six Path level was different. It was a height he had reasonable hopes to get to, and in many ways. Evolving his Byakugan up to a higher grade dōjutsu of the Ōtsutsuki race was a very fanciful way to shorten that path and heighten the healing of his potential.

"Don't be distracted." Hisame dryly admonished with a frown. "Although you will fully awaken your Shikotsumyaku to an active ability eventually in a few years, I will hasten the process."

Haru was now fully focused.

"It's actually fairly easy." Revealed his mother. "I will stimulate the chakra of the Dead Bone Pulse in your spinal cord. It will trigger a harmless but restless reaction in your bones you will need to grasp and learn to handle in the meantime in order to activate the Shikotsumyaku Kekkei Genkai in your body. Do you understand Haru ?"

The white haired boy nodded softly, rewinding her instructions in his mind to be sure that he would not miss anything when the time comes. She made it sound quite easy, and he hoped it would indeed be as smooth sailing.

"This method is quite ingenious." Said Haru, a bit admirative. "But are there any drawbacks to it ? To my knowledge, few are those who awaken the Shikotsumyaku before the age of ten. It doesn't look like this method is widely used."

"Because indeed it isn't." Hisame revealed. "You could say that this is something that I came up with."

Haru was startled. The fact that she came up with such a method her own about the second most studied blood limit of Shirogakure for hundreds of years was a bit unbelievable for him. How was this possible ?

"Although it would be somewhat inaccurate to say that I invented this technique, don't forget that I'm a Dead Bone Pulse expert." Hisame clarified softly. "Don't dwelve on it too much, are you ready ?"

"Yes."

As per his mother's instructions, Haru laid down before her. His belly was facing the soul, and her palm fell on his back.

Haru closed his eyes and steadied his breath, in order to quell the restlessness of his body and to calm his nervosity.

Unbeknownst to Haru, who was now in a near meditative state, a scene that he would have found incredibly strange and unnatural had he witnessed it took place.

In the eye sockets that formerly held two brown coloured eyeballs now laid two large white eyes, and the ocular veins around them constricted.

At this moment Hisame's chakra flared and an immense pressure befell Haru, who shivered a bit. Had he taken a look at her now, he would have been stunned by the majestic aura she radiated, and her peculiar demeanour.

Soon, Haru felt an incredibly dense and pure chakra entering his body. Immediately, he noticed how warm it was, though he was sure that it had nothing to do with fire attributed chakra.

Taking a closer look with the internal vision of the Byakugan, Haru quickly interstood that this chakra had a very imbalanced yin to yang ratio that was heavily leaning toward the yang.

Under the masterful control of the woman above him, this peculiar yang chakra softly entered his flesh, then his bones.

When it began infiltrating his spinal cord, a sensation that felt extremely foreign and awkward made Haru shiver once again out of inconfort.

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Hey guys ! I haven't had time to proof read the chapter much so let me know if there's any grammar oddities or mistyped stuff.

If you have time, please let me know your thoughts about the story in the commentary or even better, a review.

If not you can help too by giving out some power stones ! If I get thirty I'm going to release an additional chapter. :)

Have a good evening !