This Game of Life

Chapter 28

Honour

Thoughts of Abarai were banished from my mind as I swung the shinai in my hand, testing its weight. The gathered samurai seemed rather shocked – at the ease I swung what was meant to be a two-handed training weapon made for grown men in a single hand, and at my presence in general. Toyohisa didn't seem to share their awe. "Come here, nin." He roughly barked, silencing the chatter in the room, and reminding the men exactly who I was. I could feel the atmosphere becoming more frosty, especially as I continued swinging, ignoring the older man. "I said-"

"I know what you said. Heard you loud and clear. I'll come when I'm good and ready." The man's teeth clenched, face turning a mottled puce in his indignation at being spoken to so casually.

"You impudent little-!"

The temperature in the dojo dropped a few more degrees as I let my killing intent out into the room in full force. "You forget yourself, Mihikata." I muttered darkly, playing up the character I had inadvertently created the night before as much as I could.

Evoke Fear has increased in level by one!

Killing Intent has increased in level by one! Killing intent has increased in level by one! Killing Intent has increased in level by one!

The assorted men whose surprise had begun to give way to anger instantly stopped chattering again, their fledgling rage being consumed by fear. Toyohisa himself felt it – the blood had drained from his face, leaving it stark white. Even still, he opened his mouth to try and retain some semblance of control, but after listening to him struggle to form a coherent sentence for a few seconds, I took pity on him, pulling back my intent and further taking charge of the situation.

"Anyway, now that we all are aware who's in charge here… I'm here for a reason, to learn how to wield a sword better so I can better protect your lord for the duration of my post. So, since you're, uh, honour-bound to aid him, and all that crap, you've got a duty to help me. Otherwise you'd break your vows."

Obviously, none of them took stock of what I was saying, but then it wasn't for their sake. It was just in case any of them had any bright ideas about going to Chichiatsu-dono about me. I could just state that reason and say that I just needed to use a bit of force to get my point across… nothing serious. I looked through the throng of men as I thought, taking note of levels and titles as I did so. Toyohisa was the strongest, which made sense – though there were a few close to him in strength. They were on the older side, for the most part, a handful with their hair fully sliver.

"You." I pointed at one such man, the one with the highest level out of the old men. "You look like you've been through a lot. Surely you can teach me the most. You'll be my sparring partner until I say otherwise."

The old man's face twisted, turning an angry red. "I will do no such thing! I will never teach the skills I have spent my entire life learning to a filthy, honourless ninja-!" The man's speech was cut off by a deep gasp, his hands fluttering to where I had firmly placed my fist in his stomach.

"Easy there, gramps," I said softly, though I knew everyone in the room could hear and see me. "You shouldn't get worked up like that. It's not good for your health." I leaned in, this time making sure he was the only one who could hear me. "And neither is disobeying me."

I felt kinda bad, strong-arming the old dude. He was the Hokage's age, or perhaps even older, and to be fair, it's not like I needed them to learn kenjutsu, The Gamer would take care of that, but… it undeniably felt good, being the top dog. But only a little.

I pulled back, smiling brightly, and placing my hand on the old man's shoulder, who at this point had gone pale. "You feeling better now gramps? Great. I'm sure you'll come around to it." My eyes flashed at the old man, before turning away.

"Got anything to add, Toyohisa-chan?" The man bristled at the insult, but didn't act. I mentally locked that reaction away – I couldn't risk pushing him over the edge and actually making him attack me, or I'd almost certainly die. Although – now that I think about it, considering my shitty killer intent was so effective on them, my genjutsu'd also probably work wonders… hmm. Something to bear in mind.

"Yes, I do." The man stood straight to his full height, I imagine in an attempt to intimidate me – which might've worked, had I not fought against Akatsuchi and Kurotsuchi and found the smaller girl was far more deadly than the giant of a man. Though, I'm sure he would've torn us apart just as easily had he wanted. "This is my dojo." I blinked, focusing on Toyohisa to make it at least seem like I was listening.

"This is my dojo," he repeated, "And what I say goes. My word is law here."

I sniggered. "Yeah, keep telling yourself that." His jaw clenched, before he continued.

"I will not brook insubordination from you, and you will not threaten and make fools of my men. If you even try, I'll have you strung up and quartered like the criminal scum you are. Do you understand me?"

"You'd have to catch me first. Reckon you could manage that? Also, dude, it's not insubordination if I'm not one of your men, so your first point doesn't even make sense. You meant to say you won't take disrespect from me, like what I'm doing right now. Speaking of, I've broken one of your rules. Shouldn't you be quartering me like you said?"

The large samurai seemed to stumble over his own anger at my last statement, because of course his threat was empty. No matter what he thought of me, I wasn't one of his men, I wasn't even from Swamp, I was a hired agent of Fire, meaning I was one of the Fire Daimyo's men. To touch me would require express permission from Chichiatsu-dono, and even then would put our country's alliance in jeopardy, and perhaps even incite war. And trust me, civilian war was bad enough, but one where the country's shinobi had good reason to be incensed and the enemy had no native nin of their own? It'd be the end of the country.

Toyohisa wasn't stupid; he understood this, and so on a base level he also understood that I also couldn't do anything to him for the same reasons, but he also understood that Swamp was not the threat to Fire that Fire was to Swamp, and more to the immediate point – if I really were to act against him, I wouldn't get caught. I was a creature of the night, a bogeyman, something that was only seen when it wanted to be; at least that was the warped image of me our time together and his own assumptions had created. He could try to force his way to being equal with me all he wanted – he knew by now that it'd never work, even if I let him say he was. It would only be a matter of time till his men understood that too.

I turned on my heel, point made. "I'm done here. I'll begin my training the day after I resolve the Abarai situation. I'm looking forward to it!"

I left the sliding door open behind me, feeling their gazes never leave my back as I walked into the distance.

"Alright," I sighed, the paltry – though not insignificant – information about Abarai available fresh in my mind. "I'm not going to get anywhere lazing around here training all day, much as I'd like to… that can wait until after I deal with this guy." Chichiatsu-dono would be fine with it if I got rid of him, since we all know that he's guilty… but he'd prefer to deal with it in the Swamp way, meaning my priority is just to incriminate him, not kill. I only engage if I'm caught – unlikely – or if there's an extenuating circumstance… Those thoughts repeated in my mind as I left the palace to do my own digging.

Too many times, I found myself acting without thinking, despite the Gamer's Mind keeping me calm. It didn't stop me from acting rashly – it simply made it so that instead of panicking and freezing up in an unexpected scenario, I instead just immediately began fighting. That won't fly here. I don't have a Kakashi-sensei to bail me out, or the boys to back me up, and I want to respect my employer's wishes, when able…

Lost in my thoughts, my body went on autopilot, leaping up to a rooftop. I berated myself for it – I'd just done what I was telling myself not to. My presence here wasn't known to the public – for now, at least, and keeping it that way would make the current situation easier. Thoughtlessly leaping around like that in broad daylight would give me away faster than I could blink. Luckily, this time, it seems no one had seen.

I gazed at the capital's skyline, realising that coming up here was bad for a second reason – this wasn't a ninja village. The buildings were massively different heights, and most of them didn't have flat roofs like I was used to. Even the ones that did had much less running space than the Konoha buildings, and there was the second issue – the rooftop network worked in the Leaf due to the both the buildings being built to accommodate it and also because of the sheer amount of shinobi using them, carving out clear flight paths over time due to natural wear. This city had neither, and I struggled to find even a single roof to leap to from where I was, so I didn't even try, instead looking up to the top of the highest building I could see, and firing over to it with a Body Flicker.

I touched down onto the high, slanted roof, adhering to it with chakra as soon as my sandals made contact with the stone the structure was made of. "No one should be able to see me here… certainly no civilian should be able to, bu then, if i'm right about Abarai, things might not be so simple…" I crouched down, considering for the first time just how I intended to actually get the information I needed. I had been talking up my ability in stealth and recon, and while they were leagues ahead of any civilians, I wasn't particularly sneaky by shinobi standards, nor had I received any real training in it, other than the Academy standard.

"I should've nabbed that clone technique off the boys as a parting gift… I could really use another pair of eyes, or another twenty."

Although… It's not like I didn't have a clone technique myself, right? True, the Bunshin no Jutsu was an E-ranked ninjutsu that was really more of a genjutsu in the vein of my False Surroundings technique, and couldn't really help me as it was… but I didn't have to use it as it was, did I? Ever since I became The Gamer, I've been creating techniques through novel manipulations of my chakra, and then modifying and building upon said manipulations by further stretching and specialising them. But I had never considered - what was stopping me from doing the same, to the already existing jutsu I had?

It's not like I had to worry about figuring out handseals, or anything like that - the only real difference between my jutsu and the skills I had created myself is that my jutsu tended to have fancier names, and broader application, but that didn't mean I couldn't change them as I did everything else.

That thought burning in my mind, I created a single Clone, and the illusory doppelganger stared back at me. Should I not directly order it to do something, or create it while having specific instructions in mind, it would remain there forever, until the chakra I used to create the construct ran out, and it returned to the ether.

"The Shadow Clones are completely different… They're solid, for one, meaning they can make physical contact with things and have an impact on the world, as seen by them casting shadows… And, more importantly, they seem to have minds of their own. They definitely have some form of higher brain function, unlike this, which is completely mindless. In contrast… the shadow clone is meant to take fuckloads of chakra, while the cost of making one of these is miniscule, even for me, and my chakra capacity, while growing bigger now, is miniscule compared to most shinobi."

Hmm. It couldn't be that easy, could it? ...It was worth a shot. For the first time in… months, I placed my hands together into the horse seal, using the construct to help with retaining control as I mustered up as much chakra as I was willing to let loose in a civilian city. I needn't have bothered, however. It only took a thought - no, less than that - and my chakra instantly responded to my call, flowing through my body and saturating both it and the air around me, the smallest wisps of energy coming off of me.

Despite the - for me, at least - veritable flood of power I was harnessing, however, I remained in complete control the entire time, and once I realised this, I dropped the seal, having inadvertently confirmed once and for all that I would never again need to make a handseal for as long as I lived. I nodded to myself, and thrust the thrum of power into shaping my image.

I was rewarded by my MP tanking to dangerously low levels, to the point where I almost didn't have enough to remain stuck to the roof, and a large cloud of chakra smoke - despite my best efforts. my inexperience with controlling such large amounts of chakra had meant at least some of it had been lost, unfortunately - and as the smoke cleared, another clone. But… It still had that completely mindless gaze, and while it did seem more corporeal than the first one, it still wasn't really what one would consider solid - if anything, I'd just made the technique into more of a ninjutsu. The lack of a skill pop-up further confirmed that just supercharging the jutsu, in this case at least, wouldn't be enough. There was something more that I was missing, something that made a shadow clone fundamentally different from the regular.

I scrambled up higher on the roof, sitting at the top of its slant, and began to think about the problem more deeply, my mission completely forgotten in the wake of this new dilemma.

"Maybe… the clue's in the name? It's a shadow clone… but they're not made from shadows, right? I thought they were called that just because they actually cast shadows, or something like that… But maybe they are made from shadow. You can make clones out of things, Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza both did it with water, and that big guy - Akatsuchi - he didn't make a clone, per se, but he made rocks into a humanoid shape and got them moving on their own, so it probably shares at least some of the principle…"

"So maybe the shadow clones are just that - shadow clones. Living shadows, essentially. I mean, the Nara use their shadows for all their jutsu, so its not like there's a precedent against using shadow for techniques. But then… how do you manipulate your shadow?" My brow furrowed. I'm no Nara, in training or raw intelligence, and even if I were to figure out how to manipulate shadows, it probably wouldn't be happening today, on this roof.

"So… let's focus on what I can use already. Fire and Earth." I breathed in deeply, before shuddering and stopping myself. I couldn't practice that here, in the middle of the city. If I lost control of it… Earth was out too. It'd make my presence far too obvious. And, honestly… I gazed at my MP, still teetering on just high enough to keep me aloft. I didn't have the chakra to try it now, anyways. I didn't have the chakra to do much of anything right now, really, thanks to that failed experiment.

Cursing my recklessness at wasting pretty much all of my chakra on an experiment that I not only didn't know would work or not, but also didn't even have an indication if it would, I sat on the roof, waiting for enough chakra to have replenished that I could safely Body Flicker back to the palace. My first day of investigation ended before it even began.

A couple of hours later, chakra now back to a useable level, I stood in my marked out training area, in just an undershirt and shorts, foregoing my scarf and my dress. I was about to play with fire, after all, and I don't know if I'd be able to replace them. To the side, Touka watched from a safe distance, and a few more curious eyes stole glances as they passed by.

"Okay. Test number 1…" I breathed in deeply, before lifting my head to face the sky, a plume of fire escaping from my mouth as I expelled a Flamethrower above me, and my gathered onlookers gasped. Unlike normal however, I made a concerted effort to retain control over my released flaming chakra, even as it fell down around me. Many small fires sprouted up around me, but as I watched each of them, I smiled as they did not spread, and each lit up a little more brightly as I pushed chakra in its direction. "Success."

"Test 2…" I now tried to throw my chakra out to each of the flames, and drag them all together into one big conflagration. In the back of my mind, I realised that I could've skipped this by just making a Fireball to begin with, and starting from there… But that wasn't as fun, or cool. Besides, knowing that I could manipulate my fire after I had sent it out as long as I kept a mental link to the chakra could come in handy. As I thought this, the flames had already merged into a large bonfire, leaving smoldering streaks where they had dragged themselves across the ground. I could feel the crowd watching this growing by the second, but I ignored them. This had been the easy bit, the stuff I had assumed was possible but had wanted to see for myself. This coming part, though…

Bidden by my thoughts, the flames began binding themselves into a humanoid shape. At first, they were formless, featureless… but little by little, it was less of a blank slate, and more of a reflection of me. In a couple of minutes, and with a good deal of effort on her part, it was like looking in a mirror. Well, apart from the fact that the clone was still just… fire. It had her shape, but not her appearance…

Thinking quickly, I thought of the Clone technique, and how I manipulated my chakra to make that work, and before I could second-guess myself, I pushed that through the flame in front of me, using it as a medium to cast the jutsu. Before my eyes, and the onlooking crowd, which at this point even Chichiatsu-dono had joined, was an… almost perfect replica of me. The grass smoked under her feet, and her eyes burnt like fire, glowing a burnished orange… But she grinned at me, and I grinned back. "Hell yeah!" We said in unison, me not having commanded her to do anything of the sort, and we high-fived each other in elation.

A skill has been created through a special action! Through manipulation of fire, and understanding one's self, the skill 'Vision of Ferocity - Flame' has been created!

I didn't know it, but I was the first person ever to create a fire clone.