Adamu was quite a sight to behold when Kakashi showed up in the morning to assist him. The strange man was sitting at a cheap desk on a folding chair, the only two things he had asked for aside from the books and scrolls that now covered the desk to a depth of several inchest. His hair, already usually disheveled, was a horrifying mess, and his eyes were slightly red, the lines around them more apparent than normal. The man had obviously gotten no sleep, and spent the night reading instead.
Off to one side, Jaimi was laying on his bedroll, his back to the rest of the room and his hat on the floor beside breathing was even and remarkably silent, only the slightest movement of his side indicating he even lived. But the moment Kakashi shut the door behind himself, Jaimi was moving, sitting up almost mechanically and setting his hat on his head. He nodded to Kakashi and then looked at Adamu.
"Many powers increase exponentially with the chakra invested," Adamu said, thumping his head on the book open in front of him. "There is usually a minimum amount of chakra expenditure to get a technique to complete properly, and there is usually a point where more chakra becomes difficult if not impossible to control, causing the technique to fail, but there is no theoretical maximum a technique can accomplish. The limit is in your control."
Jaimi sighed, and glanced at Kakashi, who looked confused. "This is problematic," said Jaimi, as Adamu thumped his head on the book repeatedly, "because it makes engineering problematic. If a fireball of five hundred degrees is normal, you can engineer a surface to resist fires below, say, five hundred and fifty degrees. But all that means is that the attacker needs someone with the control and reserves to reach five hundred and sixty degrees."
From his position, his voice muffled by paper, Adamu said, "meaning we cannot prevent enemy action, we can only prevent a statistically significant degree of enemy action."
Kakashi shrugged. "Welcome to the Shinobi world. Never assume anything."
Jaimi nodded, apparently nonplussed. "So, without a maximum, we need a minimum. Who among your society would have the least amount of chakra, while still being capable of demonstrable effects?"
Adamu was a hit with the children in Konohagakure's Shinobi Academy.
Something about him, his cheerful demeanor maybe, or his own childlike enthusiasm, made children flock to him. Jaimi did not begrudge his companion on that, and in truth he used it as a shield, permitting him to be himself rather than trying to put the kids at ease by pretending to be like them, something that rarely worked. Children had an instinctive dislike of nonstandard adults, an excellent trait but one that made interacting with them difficult for Jaimi.
Admittedly, it was also nice to see those same kids jump into Adamu's world view and start to learn about science and the art of viewing the world with clarity. He may not have the same sort of unending joy and enthusiasm as children (and Adamu) had, but he was not beyond appreciating it.
There was, however, a couple children that caught his eye and gravitated towards him, a pair of children who wore dark sunglasses and heavy coats. Aburame Kana and Aburame Tama were stoic, taciturn, and very intelligent, traits Jaimi valued innately, as did they. While Adamu and the rest of the children chittered and chattered as was their way, Jaimi had sat on the ground next to the Aburame children and started discussing why they were visiting the school.
By the time the day was done, they were both sitting in a small lounge for the teachers, tired but hopeful.
"The kids has some odd ideas on how to measure chakra," Adamu said with a goofy grin. "But most of them revolved around individual perceptions. Chakra sensors and Hyuuga can apparently sense chakra is used, but even they cannot measure it to a degree we would find useful. Some of the others suggested that we define the minimum like the teachers do, based on a single technique like the Clone technique."
Jaimi raised an eyebrow at that name.
"It's an illusion thing," said Adamu in explanation. "It creates a chakra construct that bends light around itself, resulting in a visible but not otherwise tangible image. Apparently the fact that it has no non-visual effects is what makes it relatively easy and low-energy to use, as most shinobi techniques are tangible."
Jaimi nodded. "Matches up what I found with the Aburame children. They also suggested that we investigate chakra paper, which reacts to chakra and is used to determine what sort of element they're most aligned with once they reach the equivalent of journeymen in their profession."
"They have elemental alignments?"
Jaimi nodded.
"... Neat."
They both turned to Kakasi, who had been leaning back and watching them talk, while Iruka graded papers in the background, diligently trying not to drown in the almost unrealistic volumes of paperwork being heaped onto him as part of his application for a teaching job, not knowing that he was grading almost six months of papers that dated back as far as the second Hokage, a pile that was an almost sacred right of passage for all of the teachers in Konohagakure.
They didn't even need to ask at this point. Kakashi just walked over to Iruka and poked him in the shoulder. "Any chakra paper on you?" he asked.
Iruka glanced at the two strange men and gave them a small smile before getting up and digging through a cupboard, then returning with a few strips of paper and handing them to Kakashi. "Sorry," he said, smiling cheerfully if self consciously at the two strangers, "It's a little old, so it might not react properly, but it should be enough to demonstrate the idea."
Kakashi held one of them up in one hand and focused his chakra into it, causing the paper to wrinkle as his lightning aligned chakra had its effect, although one corner of it remained straight.
Adamu looked hopeful. "Is there a specific amount of chakra needed to do that?" he asked. Jaimi scoffed, and Adamu smiled. "I know the answer is no, but we have to ask! The only stupid question is one nobody ever asks."
"Not really sure," answered Kakashi, putting the remanding papers on the table. "We usually tell students to put as much chakra as they can into the paper, to make sure of a clear reading."
"So a student can trigger one of these?" Adamu asked.
Iruka looked up from his grading. "Technically, yes," he answered, his voice distracted. "That said, it's not usually done until after graduation, because it does take more than a negligible amount of chakra to activate it."
Jaimi picked up one of the paper slips and looked at it. "How are these made?" he asked.
As it turned out, a lot of the most basic tools of the shinobi profession were made by, well, shinobi. Specifically, shinobi not fit for regular work.
Sometimes, a shinobi would suffer a career ending injury. In theory, Konohagakure could give them an honorable discharge and wash their hands of the whole thing, which would just leave the problem of sometimes very powerful civilians with no income but access to sometimes reality warping powers and a lifetime of practice in thinking outside the box when it comes to fulfilling their objectives.
Thankfully, Konohagakure was not run by a pack of idiots, so there was a system in place to retain those who were otherwise unfit for service for support tasks, such as manufacturing basic weapons, sewing uniforms, and creating simple seals and tags.
Hanako had lost several fingers and the lower third of her right leg during a particularly bad chunin exam, and after the medical prognosis and a conversation with her sensei, she decided to join the Shinobi Support Service rather than attempting to reach combat capability with such disadvantages.
She enjoyed her work at S3, more so than her old frontline job as a genin if she was honest with herself. It was quiet and peaceful, and her excellent chakra control leant itself to creating Chakra Paper. The process was slow, and required a careful and even application of chakra to seep into the paper until the entire thing is infused into one solid sheet.
And now, she was being stared at by two absurdly unusual strangers, a young shinobi she vaguely remembered seeing around town, and a literal legend of the Konohagakure shinobi force.
"How long does it usually take to make a piece of chakra paper?" Adamu asked her.
"About ten minutes, sir," she answered, smiling proudly. Fifteen was the average, and she was wrecking the metaphorical grading curve with pride.
The two strangers nodded to her and then stepped away to start speaking rapidly. Within two minutes they started using words she couldn't begin to understand. Within five minutes, even Kakashi's eyes had glazed over. At seven minutes, the skinny one had pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil and was sketching furiously.
At ten minutes, the two men nodded to each other, and Jaimi gave her a small smile. "Are you willing to help us perform an experiment?"
Hanako looked at the… contraption that was now mounted on her desk. It was a series of gears, hooked up to a kitchen timer, with a small clip suspended on a string that dangled down to the level that her hands usually rested.
"All you need to do is what you normally do when you charge the paper. We've got this set for ten minutes, and every minute it'll move the paper slightly. Don't adjust yourself, just let it slide when it does, okay?"
She nodded and settled herself comfortably, reaching her hands up on either side of the strip of paper, only to stop when Adamu darted in and snatched the paper away from her. "Sorry," he said, in a suitably sheepish tone, "one last thing to do." He pulled a pencil out from his pocket and made a couple tiny marks on the paper before slipping it back between her waiting hands. "So we know which way is up," he said cheerfully, before stepping back.
Keeping the careful, measured flow of chakra going between her hands proved to be difficult. The machine sat there, quietly ticking, and every minute it would suddenly jerk the paper slightly further up, pulling more and more out of her grasp. She adjusted to that oddness well enough, but the intense stares coming from the two men was somewhat intimidating. They were not threatening or even intimidating. Adamu was constantly smiling, and Jaimi had the sort of blank features she would expect from a practiced shinobi. But they watched her hands, and the paper, and the machine with frightening intensity.
The moment the machine jerked the paper out of her hands, Adamu darted forward to take it into hand. "Excellent. Not too much trouble for you, I hope?"
She shook her head. The machine was slightly distracting, but ultimately had no effect on her concentration.
"Do you mind using the machine for the rest of your work day?" asked Jaimi, after glancing at Kakashi and getting a nod. "We may need more samples of the resulting paper." She nodded, and they gave her a polite nod before exiting with almost unseemly haste, the two strangers smiling at one another.
"Your teacher tells me your control is best in your class, and that you can perform the Clone jutsu," said Jaimi.
Aburame Kana nodded. "I am not sure if my control is best, but I am in the top three, and unlike the other two, I can perform that technique correctly."
Jaimi nodded and handed him a small strip of paper. "Please focus enough chakra on the paper to perform the Clone jutsu."
Kana looked at the paper, and was about to ask about the markings before Adamu plucked it out of his hand and glanced at the marks before flipping the paper over and handing it back to Kana after giving Jaimi a smirk.
Kana focused, and found two surprises. The first was that she was an earth aligned shinobi. The second was that she had a hand in the discovery of the cha, the unit of measurement for chakra.