Lack of dialogue made this chapter hard to write...thanks for following and favouriting, if anyone wants to beta for grammar and spelling or coherence, PM me.
"Jiraya-sensei, will Hoshi be alright?" Konan asked as she tried to fold a crane using chakra only. The boy in question was thumping his head against the floor, muttering something that sounded to her like "Andwae, andwae, andwae..."
"Oh, him?" Jiraya scratched his head, more focused on Yahiko and Nagato's shuriken practice. He knew they were competent and a cut or two was nothing for a ninja but damn if it didn't feel like they were kids of his own. "I don't know."
"Do you know what he was talking about?" The blue-haired girl gingerly pulled the wings, cutting off her chakra to prevent it from tearing.
Jiraya sighed. "No. Geez, he makes some toads seem smart."
Half an hour ago:
"So you just conduct your chakra in through these ends, put the tips of your fingers here pour as much as you can without tearing paper up. A small amount of chakra on the 'Explode' kanji will set off in two and a half seconds." Said Jiraya, pushing the seal Hoshi had made towards him.
The white-haired boy blinked. "Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"There's no need to seal explosive material inside the tag and then set it off with fire?"
"Well, this seal design enables air to ignite a corner of the tag and set it off by itself when tied to a kunai, but you don't actually seal anything into the tag."
Quite sceptic, Hoshi did just that, before taking out a blunt and rusted kunai. Excusing himself he went out, followed by a blast out in the rain.
A blast that sounded like a gunpowder explosion, looked like a gunpowder explosion but left no residue besides bits of active chakra, fading from Hoshi's senses like dying sparks of a firework.
Considering the amount of work I've put into the tag, I would equate it to simply picking up an approximately five kilogram weight off the ground to my shoulder height and then let it go. The joules exerted in the process do not equate the amount of energy that was contained in the blast.
Stepping back in, Hoshi picked up a paper from where Konan was settling down on the table to practice chakra/origami and took one and used the same amount of chakra he had in the explosive tag to rip it into shreds.
The volume of sound and kinetic energy gained by the paper of larger area than the explosive tag do not reflect the energy contained in the tag...
The next paper he splattered with enough sealing ink to have the same amount as explosive tag and transferred chakra again. It ripped like a normal paper.
"The array has to be exact, just some chakra-infused ink and paper doesn't make a seal," Jiraya grinned, enjoying his pupil's confusion like his own master had years ago.
"But it doesn't make sense! I know it's converting energy, and chakra is supposed to be energy, but the ink somehow amplifies the gain with no loss in quality-" unless the actual explosion was not a result but a side-effect of the overload caused by the seal on the paper due to severe loss in quality, but to make it explode so accurately confused him on that front, "and the same amount of chakra refuses to mirror such potential as a tag on normal paper and the same amount of energy doing different amounts of work when used similarly without a seal shows that seals can use some energy and not only convert it but increase and energy not supposed to work like that!"
His calculations were actually skewed without appropriate measurement but he was underestimating his guesses, so it shouldn't have been too much of a problem –a problem nonetheless, yes- but still. Jiraya had run him into the ground daily two years for this? Something even he didn't understand at the most basic level?
Hoshi could enlarge energy with efficiency out of his previous world but not without scribbling characters that required another greater degree of attention to detail.
Oh yeah, physics was probably being abused several levels above what he could understand (or not, but even then he wouldn't understand), the law of conservation of energy being violated in particular. Looks like he'd have to make something like a chakra-meter...
"Looks like I'll have to explain again." Jiraya bonked Hoshi on the head, ceasing his rambling and getting him to sit up straight. "Seals are just like toads-"
"Sensei," Hoshi hissed, scraping his teeth.
"Fine," The sage heaved an exaggerate sigh. "Seals are just like women-" The boy moved with the speed of a genin to cover Konan's ears. "-they just don't make fundamental sense. A seal-master who wishes to fully understand them can neither live with them, nor without. Seals are useful, but that's not entirely why we make them." Jiraya toned down his speech, pretending to be cowed by his little students.
He could still vividly remember when the Third Hokage, sat him down for sealing. 'Sealing is like sex Jiraya. It may be used to produce practical results, but that's not why we do it.' Good times, good times indeed.
Hoshi sat there listlessly. There was no internet and no doubt no one ever stored Fuinjutsu research in places difficult to access. If an explosive tag worked like magic, they'd store it in places that gave no access.
In the beginning, Hoshi had felt that Fuinjutsu was like electronics, each component of the seal acting like a chakra-powered circuit in conjunction with Kanji, different shapes working as resistors or capacitors for stability, logic gates for cancelling out the flow of chakra at certain points with the Kanji giving the seal a function.
And then he found out a single battery could perform the work of a dozen depending on the diagram. Mind switching to Korean as he cursed, Hoshi began to knock his head against the table muttering "No, no, no..."
Konan and Jiraya said something, until the latter said something about toads being smarter than him; toads which had never finished a science textbook and then tried to learn Fuinjutsu. The two watched in alarm as the white-haired boy twitched.
"Feel my damn youth!" Hoshi pounced with a flying kick (i.e. Dynamic Entry) on Jiraya, who caught his foot and tossed him out the open door like a shuriken without getting a hair out of place.
"Sensei, you did that on purpose." But Konan made no move to get up and retrieve her friend. In fact, she was trying to fight down a smile.
"But you thought it was funny, right?"
"...Don't tell him."
These past months Jiraya had turned into a demon from hell, pushing them to their limits and then forcing them to be broken.
There were days when the jounin used to run them ragged without a naps of barely an hour for days on end, but none quite reached the level of insanity (and Hoshi used the term 'normal' for eighteen hours of training daily).
Ever since they had mastered climbing rocks with chakra and learned to walk on water to some degree as well, the Toad Sage began sneaking up on them, starting impromptu spars or dodging exercises daily, to the point the quartet felt jittery when the older man pulled nothing for a few hours, let alone a days.
(That time had been too much fun for Jiraya, but with the constant murderous gazes levelled towards him, he didn't laugh).
Right now, Hoshi had a good idea what the man was trying to do; A chunin exam simulation. They had each begun to show their own style, they had the basic three jutsu down (not including the Transformation for Hoshi); their chakra reserves had increased ever since the damn Sage had started to drive them insane.
All of his lectures on survival and team formations kicked in, cobwebs clearing from their minds as Nagato dodged a lethal kunai throw and Yahiko blocked a kick that dislocated his shoulder while the Sannin only uttered a single word; "Run."
Which had been two days ago, but paranoia had not let them sleep. Any love they had for Jiraya was lost. In Hoshi's perspective, it felt like he was back in his own world, where a single bullet would end should he sneeze in the wrong hiding place. (Not that Jiraya was out for blood...he wasn't, was he?)
A cursory glance showed Konan and Nagato keeping up, one with her control and the other with his reserves as they ran above a river. Yahiko was by all means above the average ninja his age, but he struggled to keep the pace they needed to evade Jiraya. Hoshi himself only exerted chakra for brief moments, using his muscles without chakra enhancement to leap, ignoring the pain for economy.
"Incoming!" Konan, their sensor alongside Nagato warned.
"Twelve, clone at four." Rinnegan observing, the redhead called out the positions of their sensei and water clone. The ability had come as a great surprise to Jiraya, but Nagato still couldn't differentiate a shadow clone from elemental ones.
"Konan, with me. Nagato, support. Hoshi, engage at four then regroup." Sprinting forward, Yahiko took charge with Konan behind him, readying her shuriken. Nagato fell to their middle, ready to provide long range support to both.
Hoshi sighed visibly, preparing to fight for the seventh time that day. Nearly seventy hours without any sleep, chakra continuously acting as his caffeine. Now adrenaline kicked into his system, remembering that Jiraya was giving them no mercy.
Rinnegan or not, Nagato would have drown two altercations back had they not gone to save him. Jiraya wasn't caring apparently.
By the Sage of Six Paths, he would have left us in the Forest of Death if he could have, Hoshi thought as the water clone tried to grab his ankle. Chakra burst from beneath his foot viciously, slipping out of danger but even before he landed Hoshi spun around and cocked a fist, instincts ringing true to see a face lined with red grinning at him.
The clone didn't talk as it dodged and deflected every single hit, before disengaging only to flick his eyes to the side for an instant and then slip his finger through one of the many kunai and shurikens, flung at him by Nagato.
Hoshi pulled out his own weapons in haste, gaining another small cut on his left hand he used to fling out shurikens as he palmed a kunai in reverse grip with his right. Nagato locked eyes with him, a fleeting connection in which they understood each other, then gathered chakra and reached into his pouch.
Hoshi charged at the Sannin, slashing with his kunai but the clone ducked with a sweeping kick, missing Nagato's second barrage of shurikens aimed for his back whilst forcing Hoshi to jump into the path of friendly fire and breaking Nagato's charge by tossing his stolen kunai back at the redhead.
In a rare display of aggression he rushed while deflecting the incoming kunai with his second, charging with a spinning kicking towards the clone, Hoshi giving a distraction by engaging furiously in close quarters, before a solid kick sent him flying away.
The clone thought nothing of the kunai Hoshi finally slung at him, turning his to the side to let it sail by. Nagato vanished and a solid punch to the back, right where the kidney was located, dispelled the clone into water.
Then he fell through the surface, substitution on a moving kunai knocking him out like a light, exhausted, unconscious.
Panicking, Hoshi dove beneath the surface in desperation, feet acting as jets as he pushed his chakra network to the final limit. The moment he managed to grab cloth –possibly Nagato's shirt- his right leg cramped.
Cuts stinging due to salty water the boy found the kunai with an explosive tag – and hoped the other two noticed when he sent it upwards, imbued with chakra. Vaguely he recalled he was supposed to aid Yahiko and Konan, not ask for help from them.
By the time he had counted to a hundred and three, help arrived and they were pulled out of the water by his other teammates. Dripping heavily over the wet, rocky ground, Hoshi heaved and threw up. Nothing but spittle and water fell to the ground, specked with a little blood.
"Sta...Status?" he breathed with great strain.
"Left as soon as the clone was dispelled. We are to return home." Yahiko answered, panting just as harsh. Hoshi checked Nagato's breathing before asking about Konan.
"Getting food, son of a bitch isn't getting us any." he stretched, letting out small curse as his muscles heated up. Hoshi closed his eyes, rolling over to get the annoying patter of raindrops off his face. He could have slept on the rocks for all he cared.
"I can't believe we lived." Yahiko snorted at Hoshi's statement, but then his eyes widened in disbelief. Feeling eyes on him, Hoshi stopped scribbling in the mud to ask, "What?"
"You're...I give up. You've got more nuts loose than the damned Sage." Hoshi gave a depreciating laugh from where he was drawing a cat on the soil.
"It's not a seal, or practice." Thinking back on it, even the Sannin could not have imagined the passion –that is, boredom and memories of much more rigorous study routine- with which he approached the art of Fuinjutsu, only expecting him to learn the basics to make their own storage scroll and tags.
Hoshi would bet his stolen uniform that most people didn't attempt to learn Fuinjutsu because it was one part of a ninja's life which was downright academic. Coming from his previous environment, he felt less someone accomplished, more a one-eyed king in a crowd of blind people.
None of that had to do with drawing Hello Kitty every once in a while. By the time Nagato came to, Konan was back with a fish half her height, its bottom flat while its spine curved.
"And you call yourselves men," She spat while throwing the dead animal at Hoshi. It struck him in the face with a satisfying slap. He was too tired to retort, but a pulse of chakra rejuvenated him enough to toss the fish to Yahiko as he draped Nagato's arms over his shoulders.
Staggering, he pushed more chakra to his legs to stand up. "Let's take the land route," he grunted, aware that they were only a few miles from their hideout. Nagato was much lighter than the rock-filled sacs Jiraya made them run with during training, so it wasn't something he couldn't handle. Or rather, something chakra couldn't solve.
"You spoil him too much." Konan grumbled, marching slowly and Yahiko secured the fish to his back with ninja-wire.
"My motherly instincts kick in. And you call yourself a woman," Hoshi gave a sloppy grin as she glared daggers at him.
"Wake him up when we're halfway home." Yahiko said and moved forward, setting a fast pace which looked almost lazy compared to their evasion of the Sannin. Nagato's nap was about to be cut short however, as Konan reached and smoothed her collar with a single finger.
One hostile inbound.
"Nagato, wake up." Hoshi whispered. "Oi, little brother," the new form of address startled the redhead, and his friend tapped a code onto his legs. Nagato resumed his sleeping posture, now only pretending.
Yahiko sneezed. "Sheesh, this damn rain," Ambush the ambush, was what the words meant. Red bangs covering his eyes provided no hindrance to the Rinnegan and Nagato exhaled for longer than a second. Yahiko secured their food closer to his frame, ignoring the icky chill it gave.
As one they leaped over the exploding tags hidden on the ground, Nagato flinging shurikens against a rock large enough to cover an adult.
A crouched ninja burst out and rushed towards them, stepping out of reach of Hoshi and Yahiko's combined taijutsu assault into a barrage of metal and paper shurikens, against which he substituted with a stone behind them.
Nagato covered their backs best as he against the man clad in battered black uniform and a brown vest – another Iwa shinobi with black hair and beady eye, taller and older than them all.
Their tired state caught up to them with a vengeance. A fist cannoned Nagato's face, sending him sprawling back. Ignoring their shock the Iwa shinobi moved towards Konan, kneeing her in the stomach while blocking Hoshi's punch.
Fury filled him as he tried to match the taller ninja but only received blow after blow, but he kept up the charge in case to prevent their attacker from forming handseals.
This whole business of kunai first, ask later is too damn annoying! His arm was caught, twisted and a foot in his back sent him face-first into the mud. A rock cut into his chin, a trail of blood joining the raindrops. Vaguely he heard someone yelling his name, and a kunai impaled the ground directly in front of his eyes.
A few metres away lay the Iwa ninja, raked earth leading to his feet, right in the line of a panting Nagato's outstretched palm. "Fucking brats!" he spoke for the first time, voice irritatingly nasal. "I'll kill you! Just you wait I'll-" Yahiko was on him in an instant, striking at his neck. He failed to rend their assailant unconscious and struck him again.
"Let's go. Curse this damn country!" Yahiko seethed and they carried on, Hoshi unravelling a portion of his training tape from his hand to wrap around his chin. They resumed their tense journey, going as fast as they could manage.
"Um, Hoshi?" Nagato called softly. The white-haired boy only flicked his eye to the redhead to show he had heard, before looking ahead.
The timid boy struggled with his words. He had always thought of the other four as a family, after he had gotten over the fear of losing them. After he had decided that his purpose to live was to protect them, for which another man had paid his life.
And Hoshi and Konan had been looking after them since he lost his parents, followed soon by Yahiko. Their sufferings and grief knit them together in a way he had never known possible. Hoshi called him his brother, confirming what he held in his heart seconds later fear stole the warmth from those words.
Hoshi had nearly died. Lead filled his stomach at the mere memory, the kunai heading towards that mop of white hair, that grim face of the would-be murderer had his desperation not activated his eyes –Rinnegan, was what Jiraya-sensei called it. Uncontrolled, but this time the target did not die.
Slender fingers, callused from holding a brush far too long flicked his chin, clacking his front teeth together, snapping him back to reality.
"Pay attention to the present, little brother." His was voice calm, as if nearly dying was an everyday occurrence and like the rain in the country they lived, nothing to be worried about, almost inconsequential to the world and people around him.
Then the words hit, and the feeling of elation was back. "Right, Hoshi-niisan..." Paid attention the present he did.
Cute was a gross understatement for Nagato's bright smile, making Hoshi feel warm in a land where it always
The traveller from another dimension was in his late teens, and thus always slept late, poring over his wooden tablet for Fuinjutsu or practicing chakra control when the moon did not impart sufficient light for calligraphy. It still boggled his mind that mere characters, although bound by some rules (he'd never live that even with the explosive tag down) were like magic.
His current running theory was that seals functioned like software, the limitations of which determined by the programmers' skill and effort. Even the risk of blowing up and not working could be juxtaposed with 'bugs' and incomplete versions of actual software. Besides the glaring difference that a branch of seals were also the hardware, whereas others merely functioned to store items.
Hoshi pauses, the character for 'Magic' just short of two strokes and slowly dips his brush into the inkwell as he thinks. One day, I'll link the summoning jutsu to a hollow sphere. And be the best there ever was. Humming the first Pokémon theme, he carries on.
The night is cool as always, a gibbous moonlight glinting off the rain, his only company until someone else steps out to join him.
"What is it, Yahiko?" Hoshi wiped the board clean with a wet rag before flipping it to the drier side.
"Can't sleep, someone needs to keep watch in case Sensei flips his shit again." The boy sat down next to his friend, forearm resting on his shoulder as he focused on the blank board. "Still studying?"
"Yeah. And he won't start another exam, we passed this one." Yahiko got the feeling his friend was praying more than making a statement, but let it pass.
"We start studying ninjutsu for real tomorrow," Yahiko breathed deeply, trying to calm the butterflies in his stomach.
"A year and eight months since Jiraya-sensei has been looking after us," Hoshi began drawing a vague alchemy array (just because he was in the Narutoverse didn't mean he forgot all the other time he'd spent watching anime.)
Yahiko snorted. "He's ten times better than the ninja academies he told us about. Can you imagine six years to become a ninja?"
"We're not becoming ninja, just learning to fight like one." Hoshi pointed out, showing his pedantic streak.
"My bad," he gave a lazy smirk. "We'll still get those forehead protectors somehow."
"What's your plan after all this?" Hoshi dipped his brush and settled on sketching out helical shapes.
"Plan? Well...can I tell you a secret?"
"Go for it."
"I wish Jiraya-sensei never had to leave." His words were blunt, but his sad expression wouldn't look out of place on Naruto.
Hoshi let out a longsuffering sigh. "He must. He's no ordinary ninja, who knows how much scolding he's receiving for spending his time with us."
"I know but still," He ran a hand through his orange hair, exasperated. "At least he's a hundred times better than the shitty training program."
Hoshi dropped his brush. "There's a training program in Ame?"
"Yeah, but as far as I know, it's just random mercenaries tossed into a fight against Hanzo's ninja. If they live, they get a forehead protector. Most of the Ame ninja are just subordinates of people that have many things to guard in the village, than academy trained fighters who have ranks." Yahiko fired off an easy explanation Hoshi had not even known before.
As for how these people would unite and fight, Hoshi had a pretty good idea. Fear trumped respect when it came to obedience. And Hanzo brought freakin Sannin to their knees. Even if they were not as individually strong at this point in time as he'd known them to be, they were together; a team.
"What are your thoughts? Every time anyone mentions Hanzo, you get worried." Yahiko snapped him out of his thoughts. Emphatically perceptive, but somewhat blunt; that described Yahiko.
"He needs to be defeated. For us to take over Ame," Hoshi said simply, picking up his brush again. It was less dramatic a declaration about the fate of a nation than say, an oath to destroy Britannia, but he wasn't in the mood.
"Taking over a village, huh?" Yahiko shifted a bit, looking back towards the door behind which others slept, Jiraya snoring but otherwise giving no sign he was about pounce on them with a kunai.
Hoshi lightly snorted. He had tried to chastise Yahiko a few months ago when during Jiraya's lecture on war and Cycle of Hatred, Yahiko's outburst of people feeling pain and understanding each other did not include causing said pain by themselves. Vengeance wasn't involved but communication, and the latter was an issue in the world with the marvel that was the internet.
"We can do it, really." Hoshi turned to look Yahiko in the eye, who stared back, if a little unnerved at the mesmerising orbs.
When they had started to build their stamina, Jiraya told them to increase the reps of their exercises by one daily. Hoshi said he'd do it by five. Jiraya shook his head. And Hoshi collapsed daily, fulfilling his promise until Nagato told him to stop.
When they were learning to climb rocks with chakra, Konan had told Hoshi to hurry it up, to which he bit back that he never ruined her concentration when she was practicing origami with chakra, and Konan replied that would never happen to him since his level of control would never fold paper.
He had said he would do it somehow, and a week ago Hoshi had made a serviceable paper-plane, out of thicker paper, but did it nonetheless. And now he was saying he'll take over a village by defeating a man who kept the strongest ninjas from other nations at bay.
For a second he was tempted to believe it. But then he shook his head, "Yeah, right."
"Fine. But we'll still find peace."
"Now that, I can believe."
