Settling into my Skin

"That kind of makes sense..."

Apparently, there was a public library, helpfully called the Konoha Library, where residents could freely look up information. You didn't even need to be a shinobi or an Academy student to peruse their books. There didn't seem to be any jutsus or other high-level information though, but history and trivia on the three basic Academy jutsu was another story entirely.

Iruka's words—and the textbook blurbs—about the three basic techniques being related struck me funny every since I had first heard about it, so I had tried to figure it out once for a wont of anything better to do. And as it turned out, I had started to get a feel for their similarity after a few months of continued practice in-and-outside of Academy hours.

They were all really the same jutsu, from a certain point of view.

Or rather had all originated from one jutsu and evolved into their own techniques, branching outwards into many different variations and techniques with the years from the humble original Transformation jutsu. Just as Iruka had said, the Transformation jutsu was the basis for both the Replacement and the Clone, and one could even say, were taught in order of difficulty. They all did the same basic thing, constructing a chakra shell that replicated the appearance of another thing or person, and as such I thought that in theory you could append all the other, physical clone techniques as further evolutions of the same idea.

Or off-shoots, perhaps.

Transformation was the first and obviously easiest of the bunch, as the chakra shell was affixed over your own body, giving you the most control over it. But because of that you were very much limited by your own mass and volume; you couldn't very well compress yourself down into the size of a needle and even if you did turn yourself into a house, it'd pretty much collapse under its own weight–the jutsu was just a disguise you donned, that's all.

Replacement was the same thing but applied to some other object which acted as an anchor for it long enough for it to act as a diversion or substitute. It had no will of its own and had to be manipulated and moved manually if it was to be anything more than a doll. It was actually kind of similar to the puppetry stuff that Suna nin did, when I thought about it.

It did explain why the Replacement jutsu wasn't used as much as I had thought it should; it wasn't anywhere near as broken of an ability as I had thought. Many fanfics had depicted it as a very easy and incredibly effective variation of the Body Flicker jutsu, when in fact most of the high-level variations of the Replacement required the use of the Body Flicker. Kakashi had probably been using it against team 7 as a way of showing off, too.

We puny Academy students had to actually set up and prepare it, meaning that we couldn't just magically escape from situations with it if we couldn't actually get out of the situation otherwise.

A pity.

Finally, the Clone jutsu was just the same idea as with the Replacement jutsu; an external chakra construct that could be manipulated and used as a distraction. But without something real to anchor the chakra construct to it just couldn't be as dense. Just as with a transformation too big for your own body to support, trying to make a clone with too much 'substance' just caused it to collapse on itself like a body without the skeleton to support it.

Which was probably why Naruto's always ended up looking like corpses: it actually took less chakra to pull off the Clone jutsu than it did either the Transformation or Replacement jutsus.

And without the need for preparing a substitute, it could be used much more easily in the middle of a fight. Still, I couldn't say I remembered them being used very often in canon, since usually just getting the hell out of the way was that much faster. Or using a more advanced form of clone technique.

This wasn't something that was taught in class either, because it was old stuff. Really really old, stuff. No one today even knew who had come up with each individual variation, though many references to modern off-shoots of those techniques existed, as several of the books boasted of the Second Hokage's genius in developing the Shadow Clone jutsu by adapting the higher-level chakra construct framework from Transformations into Clones, among other things.

I supposed that all clone jutsus were variations in the same vein; using whatever element you were most proficient in to add more substance and punch to the illusionary shell the basic Clone jutsu created and giving it some more autonomy.

It also gave me some ideas for how to continue my training outside of the Academy lessons.

Since I couldn't get my hands on high-rank jutsu, didn't know that many advanced chakra control exercises and couldn't just start training physically like a madman yet, I had had to think carefully about what to spend my time on. I mean I had already figured out the tree walking since a month ago, after they had shown us the leaf exercise and the line between the two was so obvious I wondered how many others had made it over the years.

But, well, as I had suspected with my physical training, my stamina was still quite lacking. Not in the sense of how long I could run around and not drop, but in terms of how many jutsu I could use. I hadn't found any real literature on how to optimally train chakra capacity, but I assumed that generally working yourself to exhaustion was not optimal. As with any physical training, I assumed that little and often was best; if something hurt the next day, I had probably overdone it.

Especially since I had no fluffy konner waifus with healing powers in my gut. Curse you, Naruto.

Anyhow, even in the absence of hardcore shounen manga training montages, I had a concrete goal now.

Before I graduated I wanted to be able to do all three jutsu with one handseal. No, more than that, I wanted to master those three jutsu to a level where I could use them on the fly and even build variations of them once I wanted to. I knew it was possible, since I was absolutely certain I had seen Naruto use Transformation with just a single ram seal in the anime.

I had first thought that the way to achieve that was to unravel the exact meaning of each handseal.

Since with the Sharingan I could more or less see exactly what happened, I thought that I might be able to do it, too. But just because you can see how someone does something, doesn't mean you can just do it yourself, and just because I could see how my chakra behaved with certain handseals didn't mean I could replicate those configurations without the handseal.

What were handseals, anyhow?

I knew that the ones we were being taught at the Academy were based on the Chinese Zodiac, at least back before, but here no one seemed to quite know from whence they had sprung. Something about a Sage of Six Paths, or some other religious origin was usually attributed as their origin. But, never having heard about that before now, I wasn't sure how much of it to believe.

At some point before coming here, I had reasoned that the handseals were just a method for memorizing patterns of chakra molding or something; creating mnemonic or somatic callbacks to guide chakra. Like how it seemed to work in Avatar's bending or with Biotics in Mass Effect.

But the handseals worked right off the bat, with no need for anything else. Like magic incantations, just with your hands, somehow.

I might have attributed it to some system; a grand, reality-spanning system or something that recognized callbacks and created phenomena in response, but to my Sharingan it seemed like the entire process was entirely local. So unless there was some kind of extra-dimensional shenanigans at work—in which case, it was useless for me to even contemplate it all until I could observe it more directly—then it seemed as if handseals really did manipulate chakra into doing wondrous things all by itself.

With that in mind, I had two theories for how it all worked.

The first was the old 'it's all powered by human belief' chaos magick cop-out for these things. That, by doing something and producing results often enough, it was engraved into the unified reality of humanity that it just worked that way. Something along the lines of the placebo effect, just... more. Jung's Collective Unconsciousness, but with literal reality-altering for good measure.

That by repeating phenomenon often enough, the noumena correlated until it became causation. Like water running down a rock long enough to etch grooves deep enough, that eventually the water simply always ran that way. It didn't even have to be something related to humans since it could just as well be that this reality, this universe itself, was alive and learning and causing it to happen.

It was an attractive theory because I was a human being and that was more or less how our brains worked and the way we perceived reality. Why animism and attributing motive-driven actions for inexplicable natural phenomena seemed to run so common among all primitive societies. The sound 'cow' actually had nothing at all to do with actual cows, except we had all—or some of us, at least—agreed that it was a reference to actual cows, the same way that we did it to the letters c,o and w put after each other. Or rather, four lines that sort of looked like a T, here.

Stupid kanji and all. Or then with two-dimensional drawings of cows, which only made sense to use because of our stereoscopic vision.

A blind creature that relied on hearing or smell or heat to sense its way through life would find there to be zero correlation between a real cow and a drawing of a cow, no matter how accurate it might seem to our eyes. In the same way, I couldn't feel too mystified about how strange gang signs could literally change the otherwise seemingly mundane observable universe.

Because maybe I just lacked the senses to see what was actually going on.

And that was the problem with that theory: I had no real way of testing it or making any use of it, even if it were to be true. Unless I could mass hypnotize a significant portion of the population and try to see if I could warp reality, it ultimately remained something that simply did not matter.

Well, the Sharingan does have some genjutsu, even if I haven't quite figured out how to work it yet...

The other theory was a little simpler.

I remembered seeing a physiotherapist who had shown me a weird trick with my big toe, back before...

By stretching it into an awkward position, he could trick my brain into going into a panic mode, which cut down considerably my physical strength, even in limbs seemingly completely unrelated to my legs like my hands. Then, by stretching the toe another way, my brain relaxed and I felt normal again. It was curious going from 'oh god, ten push ups?!' to 'ez pz thirty squeezy' with just the twist of a toe.

Another funny example, one anyone could do with a friend, was sitting on the ground cross-legged and placing a bunch of pencils between your fingers. Put them right up along the knuckles, like Wolverine claws or something, and you could resist being pushed over pretty well. But move the pencils down so that they were held near the nails and suddenly you would have a much more difficult time resisting.

The explanation was something about the brain thinking that if it used full force it might end up damaging the body. The same mental block which made it difficult—if not impossible—to bite off your own finger, despite the joints actually not being much tougher than twigs or carrots.

Supposedly anyway. I haven't ever tried that out.

Regardless, by putting your hands, some of the most sensitive parts of your body, into awkward positions, you were sending in signals to your brain... Which somehow translated into chakra doing funny stuff by happy accident?

I couldn't really explain why it happened, but I could see it happen in real-time with my Sharingan.

And this was sort of a thing back before too, wasn't it? I didn't remember the specifics, but in meditation, you could do these mudra things and they were supposed to induce specific effects, like enhanced recovery or vitality, though how exactly that was supposed to work I had no idea. Maybe it was a form of routine, like in sports? A form of self-inflicted operant conditioning? So maybe they worked through that same principle, even if that blurred the line between my two theories...

Regardless again, it was a fact that the hands were incredibly important as far as the human brain thought. As in if we had a second pair of hands we wouldn't be able to use them at the same time due to their immense processing requirements along with our already existing pair. As in it was already difficult to do two different things with them at the same time, like clapping your head while rubbing your belly, or drawing a circle with one hand and a square with the other...

And this connection did not go simply one way, as the hands were some of the most sensitive parts of your body.

So, just by contorting these immensely sensitive and dextrous digits, my brain was picking up on subtle patterns and details that escaped my non-Sharingan senses and translating that into changes in not only my physical body but also in my spiritual self, giving birth to the ability to manipulate chakra. Like going to the doctor and kicking when he hits your knee with the reflex-test hammer, just... with fireballs and lightning bolts.

And unlike the 'clap your hands if you buh-liieeeveh slash it's really reality marbles all the way down' theory, I could actually test this and see if it bore results.

As the brain is pattern-recognition machine.

So... if I just keep doing something until it became second nature, I should be able to start skipping some intermediate steps. Because it wasn't my hands doing funny signs that was causing my chakra to do things... It was my brain doing it because my hands first did something funny.

So if I just did it enough I should be able to do away with my handseals. Like riding a bike long enough that you could take your hands off the steering bar.

Which was why I had returned to constantly using the Transformation jutsu. It was the basis for the other two, so until I figured out how they had evolved out of it, there was no point in trying anything else. So every day, outside of class, I spent all day transformed into someone else.

I didn't just try to transform better by the Academy's standards, I pushed every limit that I could think of. Size, weight, shape, texture, sound, color... I even tried to create things that didn't match up to reality, but I wasn't having much luck with that.

If it slipped during training, I re-applied it. If I thought I had aroused someone's suspicion—something which was surprisingly easy to do in a village full of ninja, go figure—then I would break line of sight and Transform again. I sought to minimize the amount of chakra I needed, I worked to get rid of the smoke and sound, I struggled to transform into as many things of as many different shapes and sizes and weights as possible. Inanimate objects were hard. Large variation in size was even harder. Getting it solid enough that I could actually punch things with just the chakra shell was really annoying and took way too much time and effort to master.

But it was fun practice, with constant improvement.

The kind that the monkey brain goes all dopamine-doopy for.

So within a few months, I had started to figure out some of the things I had copied from Iruka's Clone jutsu through the Transformation, seeing where the logic intersected and where I could apply one thing to another. Some small aspects which I could change in how I constructed the shell around myself, which improved how well it handled stress, or how much smoke there was when I used or canceled the chakra shell around my body.

And eventually some things I discovered with the Transformation made me question how my copied Clone jutsu worked. It was kind of exhilarating when I finally realized something I could improve on in the Clone jutsu from my Transformations.

Though for all that those two jutsu progressed, there was little I had managed with the Replacement jutsu. Simply put, it just seemed so underwhelming in comparison, especially since I knew there were better clone techniques which would fill the tactical slot of a momentary distraction much better. The point of putting something tangible within the Replacement was to fool as many senses as possible to enable a counterattack or other maneuver, but it was too bothersome to set up to be worth it, I felt.

So while I could do it fluidly, it was still just a cheap trick, more of an insult than anything else.

Besides, for the style of combat I was gearing for it seemed pretty much entirely superfluous.

Having analyzed my strengths, past and present and theoretically future, I had concluded that what I wanted to be was a super long-range specialist. A sniper in other words. The Sharingan gave me immensely powerful and sharp vision, even for very far away targets, and its predictive abilities already made it an extremely potent aid for calculating projectiles' paths.

The Uchiha had historically been experts of various throwing weapons for a reason, as I had found out.

But as far as I knew there were very few who specialized in sniping. There had been that spider-guy from Sound, but he had been more of a mid-range stealth harasser, while what I had in mind was a fire-and-forget style sniper. With my chakra-enhanced physique in the future, it was eminently possible for me to use supersonic arrows in the future, meaning that even high-level opponents should have trouble reacting to surprise attacks.

And if I shot it from as far as I thought it would be possible, then by the time they even realized they were under attack, I could have abandoned my primary firing position and moved on. Hell, I could lay an ambush and then punish them from a secondary firing position any number of other similar shenanigans.

Of course, since we were ninja, the problem of detecting my enemies at such ranges was an obvious problem... But that's why I was planning to become a Jack-of-All-Trades-plus-Master-of-One. With the Sharingan, it was eminently possible after all.

I had thought about things like ninjutsu or genjutsu specializations, kenjutsu and taijutsu, but honestly they didn't feel like effective strategies with the Sharingan; they didn't play to its strengths and cover its weaknesses sufficiently. Technical jutsus required chakra, which my Sharingan did as well, meaning that if I wasn't careful in a prolonged fight I would be setting myself up for exhaustion. And in close quarters combat, my focus on vision wasn't as big of an advantage as it might initially seem.

I had done fencing, kendo, judo, and aikido in my previous life and knew by heart that mastery in those disciplines was largely based on the sense of touch rather than the vision, since the hand was always quicker than the eye. In fact, I intended to train in those very arts as a form of Sharingan counter; if I was too close for my movements to be seen, then what did it matter if they had a superhuman doujutsu?

So, when I had thought about how to maximize the potential of the Sharingan, the sheer force projection of modern-day combat methodology from my old life kept being the obvious answer. Even if couldn't beat the strongest of the strong with sniping, the amount of energy I would expend on a still possibly lethal attack was minimal, making for an immensely cost-effective strategy.

So the weapon I had decided to truly master at this point was a rather peculiar one for ninja: the bow.

Well, Naruto-ninja. Real ninja had used it often enough.

Of course, that meant that I would have to make my own bow. There were a few hunting bows still in the Uchiha compound, but none were anything special, merely simple recurve self-bows. No, if I was going to use a weapon—however anachronistic and nominally pretentious as it was—then it was going to be with all the bells and whistles.

I had bought and read and practiced the literature; I had made several of my own bows; I understood the mechanics behind how they worked, and I knew just how much more potent something like a compound bow was in comparison to everything short of firearms. Because while I wanted to revolutionize the way I could engage targets at a distance, I didn't want to revolutionize ninja warfare as a whole. Because hot weapons were a can of worms which could only end up coming back to bite me in the ass in the long run.

Anyhow, with hard cams for an optimal force curve, super-light limbs, a damp bridge, string silencers and the works, I knew I could wreak some real havoc from a distance. And if I was right about the Sharingan, I could also use minimal, or perhaps even no fletching on my arrows, ensuring that they were fast and stayed fast even at a distance.

See the thing about projectiles was, that air resistance was a real drag. Get it? Drag?

Heh, I kill myself sometimes.

If you wanted to double the flight distance of something it wasn't enough to double its initial energy. Rather, you had to increase its energy exponentially, because the faster something moved through the air the greater its air resistance would become. In fact, in the formula for calculating air resistance, velocity was squared. Meaning to the power of two. Multiplied with itself.

This was why I was so disillusioned with kunai and shuriken as long-range weapons.

The reason everyone could parry a dozen thrown shuriken with ease was because by the time they reached your opponent, they must have already expended half of their initial kinetic energy and slowed down considerably thanks to the air resisting them. But arrows were different. If made right, then they could have the air resistance profile of a senbon needle. Practically zero drag.

With the right arrow, I was sure I could reliably loose them over a kilometer away. Well, at that point maybe adding in some fletching for lift would start being productive. It all depended on just how potent the Sharingan was at seeing that far, so whether or not I would be able to hit anything was a different matter entirely.

But hey, if Itachi could make those bullshit ricocheting bullseye throws with kunai, I was pretty confident that it would all work out.

And worse yet, that was still years away even in the most optimistic of estimates because making compound bows was right there next to rocket science when it came to challenging. It was a careful balancing act between how light the limbs were, which affected how fast they could propel the arrow, with how sturdy they were. Because, boy, a snapped string at the poundages I was envisioning wouldn't just maim me, it was likely to kill me. I would have to spend months on just researching materials for the bow limbs, the string, the cams, the arrow shafts, fletchings, arrowheads... Everything.

So for now I had settled for practicing with the hunting bows I had to ensure my Sharingan really was up to calculating my dream shots.

It was actually more fun than I could have ever guessed, running around the forest and jumping from tree to tree with my chakra-enhanced leaps, sticking to surfaces like Spider-Man, and navigating a three-dimensional environment while looking for things to hunt. It wasn't the sniping I was envisioning, but it was incredible fun nonetheless.

Like Quake's rocket jumping, except without all the explosions and self-harm. Speaking of, I couldn't wait to get my hands on exploding tags.

Somewhere along the way sealing had entered my list of things to learn, because its synergy with my kit was pretty obvious when I started to think about it. If nothing else, I wanted to be able to carry enough arrows to put down an army without having to actually lug around enough arrows to put down an army.

But, hunting and archery could wait for another day. He had plans for today.

"Uchiha Sasuke," Shino greeted me and if you didn't know him, you might have thought him annoyed. But I thought of his current expression as 'cordial', knowing that despite his stoic appearance, my fellow student was pleased by my request for his company outside of Academy hours.

"You're early," I commented.

I had meant to arrive ten minutes ahead of our scheduled time, but he looked as if he had been already here for a while.

"I assumed it would not be a problem. Why? Because we both have a habit of arriving early."

"True enough." I shrugged. I did have a habit of always starting early and stressing ahead of planned meetings. I was the type whose whole day was practically ruined if I had a meeting in the afternoon and nothing planned before that. "Alright, you bring enough insects?"

"I have brought all of my flight-capable kikaichu, as you requested," he answered and nodded.

"Cool. So, what I want to do is practice my Transformation at the Uchiha compound. It's a bit of a walk, but we can train in peace there," I said, raising an eyebrow to see if he had any problems with it.

"That is acceptable."

Nodding, I started leading the way. The Aburame and Uchiha compounds were quite literally on opposite sides of Konoha, with the library almost smack dab in between, so it had been a convenient place to meet.

We walked in silence for a good five minutes, in no real hurry. I could tell that Shino had questions for me by the way I could hear his hive buzzing, but I let him mull it out for now since he hadn't asked. Maybe he wanted to see if he could piece it together before we arrived since my request had been pretty mysterious.

It was only as we crossed the compound's walls that he asked what had been on his mind for minutes.

"It is curious that you would request my aid with the transformation technique."

I glanced at him, raising an eyebrow to say: Was there a question there?

"...After all, you are by far the most capable in our class, ninjutsu very much included in the consideration. The request for me to bring mostly flying insects is also very interesting."

He still hadn't asked anything. It was something I enjoyed doing; playing little conversational games with my fellow stoic.

"...How may I help you, Uchiha Sasuke?"

I smirked. A win for me.

He knew it, too, sulking as he was that he had to come out and ask it.

"I've been working on the Transformation jutsu a lot. More than just the basics we do at the Academy—you could say I'm trying to push it as far as I can. You know how transforming into a vastly different size or into something very unlike your body, like an inanimate object, is really hard, right?"

Shino nodded.

"Indeed, I know this well. Why? Because compensating for the mass of my bugs when transforming can be very difficult."

"But conversely by using their mass you can transform into a really convincing adult, or layer a Clone on top of a swarm and make it almost independent for a minimal chakra cost, right?"

The Aburame gave me a startled look, brows hanging high above his dark glasses. He raised a hand to his face, pushing the lenses in a nervous gesture. "You are very familiar with my clan's techniques, Uchiha Sasuke."

I smirked, letting him know he had just confirmed everything I had said. "Just guesswork, Shino. As I said, I've been working on the Transformation jutsu a lot."

Another point for me.

He nodded, accepting the loss.

"Then, I am even more curious to see what you wish for my help with."

We arrived at the woods next to the lake where I knew another Sasuke had been shown the Great Fireball jutsu by his father.

"Well, why don't I show you."

I closed my eyes, bringing my hands together in the dog seal, breathing in a focused manner as I carefully switched to the low boar seal, then finally raising my hands into the ram seal and whispering under my breath: "Transform."

There was no smoke, only a shifting and the smallest of pops as my body changed. My point of view fell down as I allowed the Transformation to compress my body. It's surprising how small you can become, if you really contort yourself, especially as a child. Black feathers shuffled as a hooked cruel beak pointed upwards to stare at the now-towering insect user.

"So, what do you think?" I asked, my voice warbled and lower than normal, but still perfectly understandable.

If Shino had been taken aback before, he was positively gobsmacked now. He raised his hand to adjust his glasses again, clearing his throat.

"Impressive, Uchiha Sasuke. I did not think it was actually possible to transform into a bird. To think that you intend to master flight of all things."

"You're making me blush," I replied, shuffling my feathers. "But yeah, I definitely want your help with learning how to just that. I had thought about being an eagle or a hawk, but really the ability to talk is just too valuable to pass up on. This was also about the smallest I could squeeze myself down to, too. So a raven it is."

I had no idea whether I would actually be able to fly since by all logic my mass should remain unchanged despite the chakra construct of a raven enveloping me, but the preliminary gliding I had tried had been pretty promising.

"Yes, a very logical decision. Why? Because ravens are much more common and rarely used as messenger birds, so you will be able to spy and fly more safely. And my kikaichu will be able to carry your weight in that form, so long as you do not revert your shape, ensuring your safety while practicing your flying technique. And this will serve as excellent training for me as well. Why? Because—"

I made a cawing chortle of laughter to interrupt him. Shino had a tendency to start rambling about every little thing on his mind once he got excited. Though I wasn't going to correct him on the weight, let him figure it on his own for now.

"I'll still owe you one, so if you need any help, just say the word."

"Very well, Uchiha Sasuke. Shall we begin?"

If I didn't know any better, I might have thought that he was excited. I made another cawing bark of amusement. It was good to start the session with some good humor, since I knew I would be stumbling around and failing a lot with this. Just because I transformed into something didn't mean I would know how to handle the form, after all.

In the Academy most of our classmates were still struggling with transforming into an adult and dealing with having longer legs, something like this was definitely abnormal.

"I'll start out trying to get off the ground. Once I manage that, I'll move over to the lake. So even if you don't catch me, I should be fine."

Shino nodded and with that, I started flapping.

It was a fairly miserable three hours, ending with my giving up after my entire upper torso started cramping too much for me to continue, but by the end of it, I had at least managed to learn how to take off and remain somewhat stable in the air.

Meaning my Midnight Nameless jutsu actually worked and I could now fly.

And that was pretty damn cool.

"You're going down, you evil-eyed bastard!"

"Whatever you say, dead-last."

Naruto absolutely fumed, filling me with vicious amusement, but then Haruno screeched by the side and the sensation subsided. I sighed, shaking my head as I made the obligatory half-tiger seal of cooperation, love and peace and tree-hugging, which Naruto made with equal annoyance, after which Iruka shouted for us to begin.

The orange menace blurred forward, fist pulled back as swung at me with all his strength.

My hands are hand-blades, I reminded myself as I surged forward with arms raised and bent at the elbow, one going to block his wild punch from the inside and the other elbow smashing into his chest in the same instant, just below his floating ribs with all the force of my dropping weight.

Open Gate – Elbow Drop!

All the air was knocked out of the blond and even I could see the stars in his eyes for a second. No eye contact! I chided myself, breaking to look down at his torso as I remained in contact, my arms snaking around Naruto to bring him down in an elbow lock against the ground that left my right hand free to draw a kunai.

He back to his senses eating the dirt and struggled for a miserable second before I tightened the elbow lock and pressed my knee on his buttock to keep him from squirming.

Iruka sighed, raising a hand. "Winner: Sasuke."

Again the crowd cheered and whatever joy I had derived from winning evaporated like the morning dew before the sun. Getting up, I offered a hand to Naruto, but the fuming blond knocked aside my hand amidst jeers. Iruka had to force him to do the half-tiger handseal shake of love and peace before he let use step back down from the sparring platform.

As I remembered, Uchiha Sasuke had originally been oriented towards a flashy and acrobatic, kick-oriented style of taijutsu before the time-skip. But, well, I didn't like that kind of stuff too much, preferring to always keep at least one foot down on the ground so as not to compromise on my mobility. Once you were in the air, you weren't really moving until you landed, and I didn't like that at all.

So I learned how to fight differently, which didn't escape notice among the teachers, even if they chose not to comment on it. So long as I kept winning and proved a sufficient level of competence, they probably didn't really care.

I was blending a bunch of judo, kali, boxing, and karate stuff with what I was being taught at the Academy, in a somewhat random mishmash, along with whatever other bits of taijutsu I had unwittingly stolen over the years with my Sharingan.

It wasn't the cleanest or coolest style, but it got the job done, even without my Sharingan.

See the thing about the human sense was that they weren't equal. Sure, vision was superb in general, but it was also really, really slow. You could react to a sound twice as fast as you could to a visual stimulus, with your sense of touch being somewhere in between. So even with my eyes closed, once I had my hands on someone, they were toast.

In fact, that was kind of specifically why I trained it.

While taijutsu sparring I preferred to move into what Bruce Lee had referred to as trapping range—where we were too close for proper power punches but not quite hugging each other, where the Sharingan wasn't all that good because it couldn't see half of all the limbs in the fight—often finishing my fights with joint locks, elbow strikes or take-downs. If anyone ever thought to try and fight me that way to negate my Sharingan, they would be in for a rude surprise.

See the thing was, despite how macho and cool punches were, they were absolutely terrible when it came to killing people. Kicks were a lot better because they were longer and stronger, but they tended to compromise mobility and put you off-balance, because you know, one foot off the ground and in the air.

So I preferred to do standing grappling. Most people could shake off a punch so long as it didn't outright knock them out. Few people could shake off a kunai to the back of the head. And, well, those people I would probably recognize on sight and steer the hell clear off. And, what was probably most important in my mind for the future, trapping techniques covered the gap where weapons and jutsu ended, yet flowed in suitably if I chose to close the distance myself. The footwork for cutting with a sword was different from punching, but the hip turn could easily translate into a technique that leveraged or pushed an elbow with a step.

I practiced it, because it was an unusual, if apparently very effective even among ninja, style just as it had been back before. I practiced it, because no one here did. Everything else; the various other ranges taijutsu fights could take place in, I could just fill in with Sharingan-stolen technique so that I could fight competently if I needed to mix it up.

Jack-of-All-Trades-plus-Master-of-One.

The one thing I didn't focus on really was advanced ground grappling, since getting tangled up with someone sounded like a great way to get picked off with ninjutsu or kunai by their allies. Anyhow, fighting with taijutsu strictly unarmed only made sense for ninjas because they usually wanted to keep their hands free for handseals. But as it was, I wasn't gearing for that kind of style, so it wasn't going to be what I was going to be focusing on much in the future.

"I'm going to graduate tomorrow, y'know! And then I'm gonna be Hokage and you're all gonna be sorry!"

Naruto was making another scene again, which only seemed to make the jeers and laughter louder.

To be honest, I wasn't sure what to do about him anymore. I enjoyed messing with him more than I ever thought I would, probably due to something innate to Uchiha Sasuke, but seeing others pile up on him did get old fast.

I vaguely knew that Naruto had failed the genin exams three times before he became a genin, but I had never really thought about what that meant. That he had tried to take the exam early wasn't done him any good. Last year his failure had caused his reputation to crash through rock bottom and had crushed his self-confidence for a week, but he had bounced up again after that. And now he was going to try again, running headfirst into an exam he just couldn't pass without outside interference.

I had considered testing out early and I was fairly sure that if I really wanted to, I could steal the top spot from this year's batch of genin, getting myself onto Team Gai as the rookie of the year with Lee and Tenten, and it was tempting, given how seriously cute Tenten was and what a Chad Lee would become. But, in the end, I valued my free time too much at the moment to start my working career yet. The Academy was easy and I still had things I could work on that required more time and effort I wasn't sure I would have as an active ninja.

So, I was going to wait and bide my time. That, and weigh my options.

I wasn't even sure if I wanted to work with Kakashi, either. He was a cool character and definitely amusing to read, but at the same time, I didn't want to personally deal with him and his quirks. How much had he even taught his team in canon?

By the most pessimistic estimates, all he had to offer me was the Chidori which to be perfectly honest, wasn't all that attractive of a technique. For the sake of my continued functional hearing, if for no other reason. Well, maybe there was a lot more going on off-screen, but he was still a troublesome bastard.

That said...

Mizuki was eyeing Naruto again.

I was fairly sure I still had a year before he tried anything, but it would pay off to keep an eye on Naruto after he failed the exam tomorrow, just in case Mizuki had for some reason decided to move up his time-table and trick Naruto a year early.

Well, it's a perfect opportunity to work on my Midnight Nameless jutsu. It was basically still just a Transformation jutsu, just as fragile and easy to break. But cool names were half the fun of superpowers, right?

"Did you see me win, Sasuke-kun?" A bouncy Ino asked as she ran up to me, slightly flushed from exertion, with Sakura not five steps behind her.

"Hmm? Nevermore!"

"Sasuke-kun...?"

They looked at each other uncertainly, before deciding that I was being coolly mysterious. Which, well, I was, but when they thought it, it stopped being fun.

"Hn. Never mind."

I spent the next evening tailing Naruto in my raven form, fairly confident that no one was paying me any attention.

And as expected, Naruto had failed his exam spectacularly and was now moping around alone at Ichiraku Ramen. I was for a little while tempted to show up as my normal self and I wasn't quite sure whether I wanted to cheer him up or mess with him further, but in the end I remained where I was.

Mizuki was a no-show, but I got to observe how Naruto trained out of sight.

I wasn't sure whether he normally trained this hard or long, but while his technique and basics were a mess, his spirit certainly wasn't lacking. He was going about everything all wrong, putting in way too much effort into the wrong things and as a result, gained only mediocre returns. But that was to be expected, given how many faulty assumptions and holes in his understanding of everything he was working with.

Given a half-decent training regimen, I was pretty sure he could have aced the exam.

But, well, I wanted the Shadow Clone jutsu and I enjoyed watching the blond little fuck squirm, so this was fine too.

I was actually getting a little bit bored when suddenly someone I hadn't expected at all to show up, did.

"Gramps—!"

Oh shit. The Hokage.

Time to vamos the fuck out before he noticed me. Probably had already, too. Fuck.

Taking off quietly in the opposite direction I landed in one of the more forested areas within Konoha's walls and transformed back after making sure no one was in sight. Then, transforming into an unassuming-looking woman, I took a roundabout route back to my place, keeping a low level of chakra kneading active the whole way in an effort to sense any nearby chakra sources.

For my age my chakra control was probably top-notch, given all the random forms of chakra control exercises I had tried out, ranging from tree walking to water walking to imitating the way my chakra moved when I used certain handseals. But it was still nowhere near good enough for me to qualify as a sensor.

So when I found the Hokage standing outside my house without having sensed him, I wasn't too surprised.

"Ah, welcome back, Sasuke."

Politely bowed, suppressing the worry and anxiety bubbling as I spoke. "Hokage-sama."

There was a long, drawn-out moment of silence. Then, wondering if remaining transformed was somehow improper, I released the chakra construct around me with a quiet shh...

And the look in his eyes seemed haunted–so very distant for a moment. Probably remembering something from his past due to meeting with Naruto earlier, rather than anything to do with me.

"Hmm, hmm..." The old shinobi finally opined, rubbing a thoughtful hand over his beard. "You have certainly a very remarkable handle on the intricacies of the Transformation jutsu. Very remarkable."

"...Thank you, sir."

Had Sarutobi Hiruzen ever even directly interacted with Uchiha Sasuke outside of scenes like the mission desk? I had no baseline for this moment, outside of the knowledge that he was pretty damn close with Naruto. There was no way the Hokage didn't know about the way—about my and Naruto's less than cordial relationship.

"...Would you," I hesitated in the awkward moment, looking back to the front door of my house. Did I actually have anything at the house to offer? It was customary to offer tea, I think, but I was pretty sure I had never bought any. The offer had just started to slip out, filling the silence, not by any conscious choice. Maybe there would be something left behind by Sasuke's parents, but...

The Hokage shook his head minutely. "No, that's quite alright. But, thank you for the offer." He brushed his beard once more, his piercing eyes intent on me.

This is... awkward.

"It can be a difficult thing, being alone. Very few, even among ninja, can stand it. I believe it is something natural, to seek the company of our like and to band together."

Wut?

Had he come here to play Will of Fire advocate? Oh. Oh. He thought I was pulling a Hinata on Naruto. Yeah, I could work with that.

"I just... wanted to make sure he wasn't going to do anything stupid."

It was the literal truth, too.

The Hokage smiled warmly, nodding once.

"He is very unlike those whose company you seem to prefer, isn't he? Brash and surprising children often make us worry, no?"

Was he making a point about Shino and/or me? Or something else? I nodded once, saying nothing more. Getting caught was less than optimal, since I wouldn't be able to do this next year. I would just have to trust that Naruto pulled through with Mizuki, unless I could master some kind of clone technique that could establish an alibi and hone my stealth technique to a much higher level.

Getting caught spying on Naruto once would be one thing, but a second time would rouse attention I did not want.

And in noting that even as I had been caught I wasn't reflecting on it one bit, I realized that I hadn't changed much at all from my first life. I had always been like this; keeping everything to myself and plotting my own plots, heedless and uncaring of the thoughts and feelings of others.

Hell, since awakening as Uchiha Sasuke I had never once considered telling anyone what I knew—or thought I knew. That I knew how certain things could play out and chose to make my own plays in secret was only obvious to me. Wasn't this how all-time travel stories went? At least I wasn't hiding behind a guise of a misguided savior complex and was honest about my power plays.

A hand on my shoulder brought me out of my thoughts, amusement plain on the aged face looking down on me, even if he was most likely entirely misguided about what had me so introspective and reflective.

"Well, I should be going now, young Sasuke. If there is anything at all you wish to speak to me about, then..."

There was something, but I hesitated. But he saw through it before I could hide the spark in my eye and I realized it when he stopped talking. Grimacing, I looked away. It wasn't an entirely honest desire, yet at the same time, it was something that was bothering me.

Well, it was something that would come up if someone who knew the Uchiha looked into me would notice, so it was probably the smart play to make here. And like so many other moves on my part, it was something I thought the real Sasuke might have done in these circumstances. His pride allowing, at least.

"Before the... Uchiha clan's massacre. My father was teaching me how to do the Fire Release technique, Great Fireball." I glanced at the lake, not far off from my house. It must have been on that pier, even if I didn't remember it myself, since it was on Uchiha property.

The Great Fireball was the signature Uchiha jutsu, as far as I knew. Even those who hadn't awoken their famed copy wheel eye could still perform the fire release jutsu.

And I couldn't do it. Which bothered me, more than it probably should have. It wasn't something that would fit into my kit or style particularly well, but if I could more or less emotionally blackmail it out of the Hokage and put that worry to rest, then it was probably worth it. I'm sure the Hokage would have a scroll or two lying about with a description for it. I had looked around in the Uchiha compound for something like that while cleaning up but had failed to find anything, part of which was why it was bothering me. I had expended effort into it, yet failed to yield results.

"It's the coming-of-age technique for Uchiha and when my father taught it to me, I couldn't do it. He..." I think Fugaku must have said something about Itachi being able to do it; that was about what I remembered of their relationship from before. Sasuke's inferiority complex had started early, as far as I remembered. But I didn't remember well enough, so I didn't want to say too much about it. "I thought I could practice it, but... I don't remember how to do it."

"You could not do it...?" Sarutobi's eyes softened, and then his shoulders slumped with a shuddering breath.

All the Uchiha are dead, my father's last technique, my failed attempt at learning it. That was a pretty good round of emotional manipulation. It almost made me feel a bit dirty. But it wasn't as if it was anything personal to the old Hokage; it was just another orphan asking the Professor for a jutsu.

I was sure Naruto had tried something similar before, given their relationship. Though probably without the 'my parents are deeeeaaaad!'-angle.

"In the... aftermath of the incident, the ANBU combed over the compound to ensure that nothing dangerous was left lying around. Several of the personal jutsu libraries were sealed away with the wills, I believe..." He mused, looking up at the far-off darkening horizon.

I exhaled a breath of relief. I could wait a few years, so long as the technique wasn't completely forgotten. I just hoped that they had bothered to write down how to do a basic C-rank fire jutsu. The original Sasuke must have done something differently with the sealed wills, since I remember that he was definitely much more proficient with Fire jutsu than I was.

The Hokage sighed heavily and then placed a hand on my shoulder.

"I had not thought of this. My apologies, young Sasuke." He looked old and tired. Much more than a mere wheedling of a jutsu should have amounted to. Was I missing something here? I studiously kept my face blank of my confusion as he nodded. "With no one else to pass it on, it would seem that the duty falls to me, then."

Wait, what?

"Come." He turned around and headed for the lake.

Was, was the God of Shinobi going to teach me how to do the Great Fireball jutsu? Holy shit, maybe there was something to that 'precious Uchiha'-bullshit after all!

As we stopped at the end of the pier overlooking the

"The Great Fireball jutsu, while a simple Fire Release technique, is not something even a genin might be expected to know. Techniques reliant on a change in chakra nature can take years to learn and cannot be rushed. Among the Uchiha, as I remember, the fire nature chakra tended to run very strongly, so I have no doubt that you will be able to master it given some time."

I listened on as he raised his arms and pulled back his sleeves.

"The handseals are as follows: serpent, ram, monkey, boar, horse and finally tiger. Like, so."

His chest expanded like the bellows of a great furnace and suddenly the lake was awash in flames, the grand sphere rivaling the sun alight atop the waters. I blinked back tears, stepping back from the heat. A second later it was over, even as the steaming water rose to lick at my face.

Holy shit!

I swallowed heavily, calming down with a slow breath as I remembered to breathe. It was a good thing I had been kneading a minute amount of chakra, the leftovers from my earlier transformations, because it had allowed me to sense the staggering build-up the Hokage had been able to so casually in mere seconds.

And I had no doubt that he had done it extra slow on purpose, just so that I could keep up.

"The... chakra build up began at the horse seal, even though the inhale only begins after the tiger seal... Does that mean it's a mixture of Fire chakra and regular air as you exhale?" Like a flamethrower, spitting out the liquid or gas propellant. And it ignites past the fingers, too. "So the tiger seal is for the ignition, creating the spark the alights the chakra exhale?"

Sarutobi nodded, a curious look in his eyes. He was staring rather intently at my eyes.

Ah, he's wondering about my Sharingan?

"Did you wish for me to copy it with my Sharingan, Hokage-sama? I apologize. I did not mean to waste your time."

There was another strange look behind his analytical eyes and again I wondered how I should act with the leader of the village. Without a frame of reference for Sasuke in a situation like this, I was falling back on my original manners, unable to confidently act like a jerk as I tended to in the Academy.

"It is commendable that you are not relying on it blindly. But for now, why don't you just try it."

"Right, of course," I nodded, stepping up to stand before the man.

I closed my eyes, focused on the chakra within me, and then ran through the seals, focusing on the last two as the power welled up in my chest. With a great roar, the Great Fireball jutsu erupted over the water in a long lance of fire, almost reaching the opposite side of the lake.

I blinked, cutting off the jutsu and blinking back tears again from the searing heat. Coughing once, I looked up to see if the Professor's reaction. He didn't look impressed... but neither did he look unimpressed. Then again, in his time he must have seen every kind of genius and dunce under the sun, so I didn't know what I was expecting.

Sarutobi fished out a long pipe from his robes and lit it with a single handseal, taking a long drag from it, as I waited for his verdict.

"As you can see, Fire jutsu can be very versatile, depending on how well you have trained them. With a certain kind of breath," he began, inhaling from the pipe and then blowing out a surprisingly solid sphere of smoke out towards the lake. "You can make a great ball of fire, just as the name implies. Or," he took another, slower inhale and then blew out a long, snaking rope of smoke. "You can reach further away by focusing it. Mastery of the Great Fireball comes is quite peculiar in that, that it relies very little on the mastery of handseals and chakra and much more on recognizing how to shape the breath after those things.

"Fire jutsu are particularly good at denying territory, especially in wooded and enclosed areas." Like Fire Country's great forests. Or urban conflicts, like trench warfare, had been in another world. It usually wasn't the fire that killed, but the lack of oxygen and dangerous gases and smoke, I knew. "But conversely, the great weakness of Fire jutsu is formlessness. Against solid defenses, they struggle to penetrate, which is why more powerful variations often rely on either some form of carrier or reinforcer, in the form of ninja wire, earth jutsu projectiles, or then wind jutsu to feed the flames into an explosion or great pyre. But such things are still very far off, even for you, young Sasuke."

Having spoken his piece, he let me mull it over as he savored his pipe.

And there was a lot to take in there. A lot more than I had expected and not just about the jutsu itself.

If I wasn't imagining it, it felt like he was trying to warn me off of relying on my bloodline limit too much.

Had I blindly copied it with the Sharingan, it was likely that I would have missed the sheer versatility he wanted to impart. At least at first, until I had had some time with it; I knew that the original Sasuke had been able to adjust and make copied techniques, like Lee's taijutsu, his own. But it was exactly the thing I had been worried about, when I had avoided copying the jutsu taught at the Academy.

Maybe he knew about the higher-end powers of the copy wheel eye and was trying to circumspectly dissuade me from that path. I certainly had no intention of reaching for them, since murdering allies and going blind didn't sound like a particularly good time.

Besides, the basic three tomoe Sharingan was plenty broken on its own already.

"Huh, maybe I should take up smoking," I finally said, only half-joking.

The Hokage chuckled.

"That will not be necessary. If my memory does not fail me now, there is a book by the name of Breathing and Shaping in the Konoha Library. You will find a variety of useful exercises within, should you choose to borrow it."

I nodded. "Thank you, Hokage-sama, I'll check it out."

He nodded and turned around. "But now, I'm afraid other business beckons me. Have a good evening now, young Sasuke."

I nodded, bowing again as he departed.

He's actually pretty well. Guess I'll be saving his life then.