Chapter 7

Chakra was the lifeblood of the ninja. And Samurai. And sometimes Monks. And maybe other groups that don’t really fall under any of those categories. Really it was the lifeblood of anyone who actively used it.

Chakra was both the energy produced and consumed by living beings, a combination and physical and mental energies that worked together in order to facilitate the biology of a creature to produce greater quantity and diversification of chakra. To the learned individual, this chakra could be expended and utilized to produce a dazzling array of quasi-natural effects known as ‘jutsu’. The strings of chakra he used to control his puppets was a jutsu, the technique he used to turn soil into sand was a jutsu, and so on.

Chakra, being the energy that fueled supernatural abilities, was a thing to carefully manage and then expend when the situation called for it. Immoderate expenditure of chakra could easily result in one combatant running out of supernatural fuel much earlier than the other, and without the ability to perform jutsu, they would be at a severe disadvantage against their opponent. Thus, it was critical for any aspiring shinobi to learn how to carefully measure and utilize their chakra when it was needed, but save it outside of those times.

Despite this skill being critical, there was no standard method to actually measure one’s reserves of chakra. At least not in Suna, Ryoma had checked. Because of this, he had ended up needing to invent one of his own. This meant selecting something as a standard unit of measure, then starting to test things from there.

The unit he had initially decided to choose was the humble clone technique. Not the sand clone, which produced a physical drone-body for him to command around, just the clone technique which produced an illusory image of himself that he could command around. When he had started his measurement process as an academy student, he could produce one clone, eleven times. Eight times before he began to suffer chakra exhaustion, three times before he passed out and had to lay out of school for a week to recover.

The teachers were both impressed and unimpressed with him for that one. Impressed by his initiative in exploring the limits of his body, unimpressed because he should’ve done this with supervision.

By his later testing, he found that he had 8 ‘units’ of ‘available’ chakra, and 3 units of ‘chakra I need to function’. So long as he only spent 8 units of chakra at a time, it would recover with a few hours of rest, eight, as it turned out. If he tapped into his ’emergency’ chakra, then some sort of system would go out of wack and his body would need to recover before nominal levels of chakra regeneration returned.

There was probably more chakra locked away in his body that he outright couldn’t access at all, on account of the ‘passing out’ thing, but that didn’t matter for his measurements.

He, referencing a thing from his past life, decided to call his ‘available’ chakra his ‘peripheral’ pool, his ’emergency’ chakra his ‘personal’ pool, and each unit of chakra a ‘mote’. Doing it things way allowed him to precisely track exactly how much effort he had been expending and how much he had left to expend, so long as his measurements were up to date.

This was slightly complicated by his increased level of chakra efficiency later on, but that was easy enough to account for with refinements to how he counted things. Now, a ‘mote’ of chakra was the amount he needed to expend to create and maintain ten chakra strings for one hour. Having a standard unit of ‘ten chakra strings’ let him work in decimals if he really needed to, which thankfully he had managed to avoid so far.

By his most recent measure, Ryoma had thirty-nine motes of chakra, eleven personal and twenty eight peripheral. He recovered three motes an hour, so he could maintain a full set of strings for as long as he needed to, more or less. Spending a single mote on the clone-jutsu now would produce three clones.

All of this to say, Ryoma was currently down eight motes. One on remaking a set of chakra-strings for his next group of Bolters, three on making that sand clone earlier, three on using great breakthrough to make distance between himself and the Nude Bomber, and two halves used to create and maintain a pair of basic illusions. This left him with twenty motes left to finish the fight without long term consequence, and thirty one if the situation turned out really bad.

“YOU ASSHOLE!” The disgruntled roar of the nudist called out, emerging from the treeline in a furious set of rippling booms, smashing through thin branches and slamming his heels into the ground to carve grooves in the earth. His skin, formerly a reasonable pale shade, now looked rather tanned and almost blended in with his short, spiky brown hair.

He looked rather unharmed by the long-distance launching, which told Ryoma that the tanned skin was probably some form of hardening technique. He didn’t hear any explosions to cushion the landing earlier, just a crash, so it probably wasn’t that.

What a pain in the ass, a naked guy that runs around hard and bursts all over people.

He smirked, hidden under the transformation technique and disguised as one of his bolters, amused by his own joke. Meanwhile, the bolter hovering in front of him was covered by a substitution technique, covered in the illusory image of himself. “It took you long enough to get back- I was starting to think that you had given up and gone home.” He spoke from slightly behind his illusory double, the double gesturing a shrug appropriately.

It was hard to get the mouth right, way easier to just cover everything so there’s less to ‘animate’ when pulling tricks like this.

Boomboom glared at him, glancing tensely at the puppets, then over at the clients and back to him. “So… You’re not a wind specialist at all… you’re a puppeteer…”

“You’re absolutely correct.” Ryoma called out, making sure to get across a humored tone.

“Shut up!” Boom yelled immediately, throwing an angry finger forwards. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up! Everything you say is bullshit and I’m not listening to it!”

“Sounds about right.” Ryoma easily agreed, starting a slow walk around. He circled Boomman, making sure to approach the client as he did just to make him back off. Sure enough, Boomman circled the opposite direction, making sure to stay far away from where Ryoma had been standing previously. “From your lack of attacking- you’re not actually here to pull your weight. You’re just here to be a nice big distraction, aren’t you?”

“Fuck that!” Boomman brought up a hand and poked himself in the chest with his thumb. “You’re looking at Katsubachi! I’m the bomb! I’ve always been the bomb! I will continue to be the bomb! There’s a bounty on those ladies heads, and I’m here to fucking collect!”

“A bounty eh?” Ryoma responded with tepid curiosity, stopping in place and using his foot to drag a line in the sand that covered the road, drawing the nervous eyes of Katsubachi down towards it. He had been using some spare strings to sweep it up while waiting for the boomman to come back, but it was a new detail in the scene that he didn’t have any information on.

Ryoma, however, had bought enough time to get more info of his own. Katsubachi’s tan had been slowly fading, a clear indication that it was some kind of temporary condition. Highly likely to be an earth-natured skin-hardening jutsu. Ryoma wanted one.

A pure bluff, more or less. “Before we get to the part where we tear each other apart- mind telling me about this bounty? It’s news to me you see.”

“Oh-hoh?” Katsubachi laughed, tilting his head. “You didn’t know? Laughing Smoke has declared open season on all nobles, five million for each one brought to him.”

There were a number of shocked gasps and sharp inhales from behind him. Ryoma could only hear that figure and immediately decide that it was a scam.

“Hehe~ You know, it would be way easier to cash in if I had a little cooperation. Sure I’d have to split it another way, but three million is still more than enough to retire with.” Katsubachi shrugged with a grin. “Whaddya say, Sunanin? You help me turn those two ladies in and get the easiest three million of your life. I bet it’s way more than what you’re being paid to defend them.”

Illusion-Ryoma, Illyoma, nodded slowly, letting his head tip down and hat cover his eyes. “That’s correct, it is a whole lot more than I’m being paid right now…” There was shuffling and worried sounds from behind him.

Katsubachi’s grin widened.

Illyoma tilted his head back, raising the brim of his hat just enough to show his glaring eyes. “I refuse.”

It was always so satisfying to see the expression change.

A few seconds of incredible violence followed immediately after.

Katsubachi’s eyes narrowed into a glare, as he clasped his hands into a seal and threw himself forwards in a body-flicker, a basic jutsu that allowed for extremely rapid movement by energizing the muscles with chakra. It was hard to determine where you’d end up afterwards, because you usually moved faster than your own reflexes could keep pace with, which was the main issue.

That handseal, however, was not the seal for a body-flicker. Body-flickers used ‘Tiger’. Katsubachi was using ‘Snake’, which usually corresponded to the body and more generally to earth techniques.

Illyoma intercepted Boomman in the middle of the air, catching him with puppet-body and illusion carefully positioned to have the feeling lined up. Bracers and hands layered over claws and body-frame to stop the bandit well before the line in the sand was crossed.

Katsubachi’s skin turned dark brown, and a grin started to form. Dull blue eyes glinted into the dark brown of his illusory double.

“Gotcha.”

Boom, the man exploded, engulfing himself in a wave of violent force. At once, the illusion of himself dispelled as the Bolter was turned into shrapnel and scattered poisoned senbon around in the air.

Katsu’s eyes widened. “Substitution-?!”

The bolters on either side unloaded, shuriken and kunai shooting rapidly from either side and making direct impact, bouncing off the bandit’s hardened skin and going wide, leaving tiny scratches in their wake. He soon enough blew up again, shockwave sending those projectiles wide to either side of the road and throwing the bolters off. It took him one full second in between explosions.

Confirmation that penetration was possible at this stage and timeframe between bursts, proceeding to step two.

This narrative has been purloined without the author’s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The illusion around him vanished in a pull of smoke as he raised his hands, letting the bolters drop and catching the poisoned senbon around the airborne bandit.

His eyes widened further, mouth opening in fear.

Ryoma clenched his fist. The senbon followed, all rushing towards the target in the center. As expected, they barely scratched the bandit, leaving behind nicks and cuts and little more as they rushed forwards and bounced off his hardened skin.

The bandit landed with a laugh, throwing himself forwards even as Ryoma jumped back behind his line in the sand. The reminder of the line made the bandit stop suddenly, looking down at it nervously before taking a step back and raising his hands.

Ryoma let his guard drop, reaching up to scratch the side of his head. “Man… that’s some pretty good defenses you have. All of my puppets only left little scratches.”

“Heh! Regretting not taking up my offer earlier?” Katsubachi laughed, shoulders squaring and reaching down to pick up a handful of the discarded shuriken. “That’s too bad, I’m not about to let you off the hook.”

Ryoma twitched a pinky, making one of his Bolters explode. The bandit jumped away again, landing and looking around for whatever had just blown up. That’s right, get that blood pumping and heart racing.

“W-what the hell was that!?” The bandit demanded, looking around and not being able to see anything in particular except the ruined shells of deactivated puppets. His eyes widened as he saw the kunai that one of the Bolters had fired, handles wrapped in explosive tags and ready to go off on a twitch.