Obito casually swept the outdoor bar with a lingering gaze on the various ninja present, both those who were obviously geared-up and those who were blending in with the civilians. Even if he was walking the friendly streets of his home village, some habits were impossible to truly turn off. Not that he would even if he could, really. Habits became habits for a reason, good or bad, but a ninja's were almost always in service of keeping themselves alive. Finally, after a moment of lingering in the doorway, ostensibly searching for his old friend that he'd noticed the chakra signature of half-way down the street, he sauntered towards the table Sagara was absently sipping a beer at.

"Hey." He jerked his chin at the man, grinning as Sagara replied with a monosyllabic grunt.

It seemed other peoples' habits didn't change easily either.

"So, how's the kid?" Obito asked as he signaled a waitress with an order using a few sloppy signs. The former kunoichi rolled her eyes and ducked back to the bar, her single arm holding the large tray underneath it.

"Freak of nature." Sagara Hoshi rumbled out as Obito wondered once again if the universe had a sense of humor to give someone like his childhood friend a name like that. "Asked to start making swords, told him to piss off and make more wire. He made that gizmo in back that churns out wire easy as you please, then asked again."

Obito smirked as he leaned back and accepted the tall glass of plum wine from the server, exchanging a folded ryo note in the same motion. As the woman walked away, he sighed. "We'll add that to the list, I guess. Gods, I just wish I knew what all this meant."

Sagara grunted. "I'll say, kid weirds me the hell out when he just does this shit. Grabbed him 'cause I thought he was just a natural with smithing, lunatic brat thought it was normal to be able to build a forge in an empty lot. Who the fuck does that?"

Obito chuckled, sipping his beer. "For what it's worth, Satsuki-chan is still bugging me to drag him back to the academy. Even if I keep telling her I can't force him to re-enroll unless he breaks a law and I can manage to force penal training on him."

Which was far from ideal for a crippled genius and meant a nearly guaranteed trip to the genin corps tagged for the dangerous, yet unimportant, tasks the village needed done. That sort of fate was reserved for real delinquents in Konoha, kids who put law-abiding villagers in the hospital for the sake of some pocket money, started a fire in a vacant house for shits and giggles, or outright killed someone. It left a bad taste in Obito's mouth, seeing half-grown children thrown into the meat grinder, but they'd burned their goodwill with the village quite thoroughly.

Little Kotaro did not merit that course of action, even if Obito somewhat agreed that he was a 'freak of nature,' to use Sagara's term.

"This is why I didn't go into intelligence, you know?" Obito griped, swirling his cup mulishly. "Kid's parents were registered villagers in good standing before the fox, he's got orphanage paperwork since then, all of the staff say he was quiet, smart, well-behaved, and helped out with the younger kids as he got older. Barely a black mark on his record anywhere. Academy teachers report the same, wanted to recommend the kid for the central academy last year, but he failed out on endurance training and chakra pool size."

Sagara grunted, which was another reason Obito was glad to have reconnected with his old friend. The man knew when to shut up and listen, to let him think his way out loud around a problem.

Obito tilted his cup at Sagara. "I looked up the medics that examined him to see if what he told you about his medical condition was bullshit. Lead woman was a main-branch Hyuuga, so that's a dead end, but the assistants confirmed the report filed was accurate. His chakra system is totally fucked every which way. He can barely make enough to do the leaf exercise for five minutes."

"Thirty." The blacksmith grunted. "Been keeping an eye on him. Has this routine he does every damn day like clockwork. Saw him floating that leaf on his head with your bullshit ninja magic once. That part of his day gets longer every now and then."

Obito took a long slug of his beer. "Okay, so he's still training, that's good to know. Not really actionable, since there's no rule against even a dropout keeping their skills up." Yeah, it was kind of suspicious, but being able to do one or two basic jutsu often made you an attractive mercenary prospect if you moved out of the village. Plus, kids liked cool tricks and if you couldn't make it as a real ninja, being able to impress some civilians was often a nice salve to your wounded pride.

Plus, it was great for getting laid.

Not that Kota was probably thinking about that, but give it a few years...

...and he might want to give Satsuki a lesson or two on how to keep things discreet from Old Man Fugaku. At least, if the two didn't grow apart once his cousin started taking missions outside the village.

"He gave a sword he made to one of our regulars." Sagara volunteered. "Girl's birthday, I think. Her name's Tenten. They might be friends or some shit."

Obito snorted. "Regular lady-killer, your Kota."

Sagara rolled his eyes. "Teaching her how to use it, too. Dunno if that means anything."

The shinobi's eyebrows rose. "Like... how to swing a sword or... an actual sword style..."

Sagara scratched at the grizzled and singed beard on his chin as he drained his glass. "Hmm... heard him talking about stances and things, so prolly a style."

Obito stared at the man, wanting to disbelieve the man but knowing that Sagara knew bits and pieces of several styles. It came with the profession, to a degree at least, if only because it helped recommend and select blades for customers and to assess blades for resale or reforging. It was a little like knowing select curse words from the various dialects of the Elemental Nations; occasionally useful, but mostly just trivia. Here, though... it was enough expertise to recognize that you were dealing with a language rather than just some made up childish code.

"Where the fucking hell would the kid know even part of a swordstyle from?" Obito asked the empty air above his head as he looked skyward for an answer.

"Report him?" Sagara asked, waving at the waitress with his empty glass.

Obito grimaced and drummed his fingers as he drank more. Could it be... a bloodline, maybe? Either a new one or a minor one he hadn't heard of? It wasn't on file, but that didn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. Some proto-bloodlines were simply written off as 'familial talents.' It'd be the first time Obito had heard of a heritable sword style, though.

It was suspicious as hell if the kid really did know a complete sword style without any reasonable explanation, though. Enough to warrant a trip to Ibiki?

If Kota had been an active duty ninja, possessed all these weird marks against him, and was talking to merchants or sending packages outside the village, then it would have been an easy call. Except Kota wasn't. He was a random civilian orphan apprenticed to a blacksmith who had made friends with the second child of a clan head and another random orphan. He just happened to also be a blacksmithing prodigy, could fight at an academy-graduate level without chakra, and somehow knew a sword style. Oh, and he'd made a clock that could also cut gears for making other clocks, because the kid had bizarre hobbies.

"I'll need to drop by and watch one of their practice sessions." Obito temporized. "You recognize the style?"

Sagara shook his head. "Nope."

Which meant the easiest answer, that Kota had bribed or sneaked his way into the upper-year academy scroll library probably wasn't the correct one. It'd still be a hell of a trick if he taught himself the Standard Leaf Form without an instructor, but it'd make things understandable.

"I wanna' know more before I throw the kid to the wolves." Obito decided, rubbing at his chin as he slowly allowed an idea to form. Grinning at the blacksmith, he nodded. "I think I'll let it slip to Satsuki-chan that Kota's other friend, who just happens to also be a cute girl, got a sword from him and is getting sword lessons on the regular."

Sagara looked puzzled for a moment before realization set in. "Give the kid enough rope, then."

Obito raised a hand and waffled it back and forth as a pair of full drinks were placed on their table. "Eh, I think of it more like going fishing. Kid is fine with teaching a mysterious sword style, let's see if I can get more details out of him by giving him another student. In the currently-unlikely event that he does end up a danger to the village, it'd be easier to move on him with concrete proof. I'll keep a bunch of records and pick Satsuki's brain every now and then for details too, just in case we need to get official with all this."

...and, in the meantime, Obito could remind himself that he was technically on-duty as active Shinobi Police Force for the foreseeable future while he took a mandatory rest period from ANBU. This was totally within his actual duties if he got called to the mat for it, even if he was really just supposed to be coming in for a few hours to file paperwork each day and not pursue active investigations while he unwound and de-stressed.

Yep, totally within legitimate duties and not at all because a quiet, studious, serious prodigy with a tragic backstory reminded him of someone who he had once called a friend.

...

Tenten had turned out to be, in many ways, the perfect student.

She was enthusiastic for the material without being hyperactive. She was unafraid to ask for clarification when she was confused or felt that I hadn't explained the material well enough. She was smart, dedicated, punctual, and had at least a small modicum of talent for wielding swords. All of this was both gratifying to me on a personal level as well as a good mix for the style I'd chosen to teach her.

Shii-Cho, also known as Form I, was the foundational lightsaber combat style taught by the Jedi Order to younglings, initiates, and padawans. It had, quite literally, thousands of years of refinement from its humble origins as a sword form for use with mundane blades and broadsabers.

All of this was exactly what Tenten needed.

Shii-Cho offered her a chance to learn how to competently wield a sword without any of the complex flourishes of the higher forms that needed more expertise and experience to understand. The form's roots in the pre-lightsaber era were also a major strength, almost all of it being relevant to working with regular steel. Even the rare pieces of the form that instructed on blaster-reflection and force-use could be easily adapted to deflecting shuriken and kunai or augmented using chakra-enhanced reflexes and speed.

That said, the style wasn't without its weaknesses. It had very little in the way of three-dimensional movement, the style wasn't strong against singular opponents, and dealing with jutsu was something of an out-of-context problem for it. That said, Shii-Cho was also something of a tool-box form, meant to give initiates the bits and pieces they needed to personalize their own combat style. Because of Shii-Cho's simplicity, it was incredibly adaptable. This meant that you could remove or add whatever you felt was necessary to make the style work personally and inform your later decisions about which form you would need to expand into so you could further develop your skills.

Uchiha Satsuki, infamous pizza-gremlin, needed precisely none of that.

Coming from a major shinobi clan, she'd had remedial lessons in Fire Fan Blade, the traditional Uchiha style, for several years now. Regardless of the fact that her family's art wasn't suitable to her own fighting style, she'd had her foundation laid. She knew the basics of using a sword, she understood what she didn't need in further instruction, and she was fluid enough not to actually need rigid form practice to instill strength in her motions. There was also the slight issue that Satsuki was simply far more talented than Tenten, to be brutally honest.

I could still teach her Shii-Cho, but given she wasn't a raw initiate in swordsmanship like a relatively poor student-orphan such as Tenten, Satsuki wouldn't get much out of it.

All of this is important because, after Satsuki had heard I'd made and given Tenten a sword and was now teaching her, she moped and sulked around like an irritated cat until I got the hint and gave her what she wanted.

At least I didn't have to worry about a gift for her birthday in three months.

It was also helpful that Sagara gave me a few hours every second or third day to tutor the two in swordsmanship. All of which I knew to mean something was at work behind the scenes, but I'd been a dumbass and decided to invoke the Power of Friendship and it was too late to put the genie back in the bottle now.

Which left me with a problem, because I could run the clock out until Satsuki got bored and left for greener pastures by subjecting her to largely pointless Shii-Cho training or I could grab another sword style to begin training her in. A swordstyle that, unfortunately, would not involve a more advanced lightsaber form because I did not actually have access to a plasma blade for her to wield. Sure, in theory, you could dismantle and rebuild one of the higher Jedi forms into something that could be used with a mundane uchigatana, but if you're going to put that much work into it, why not just pick a different style in the first place.

Because the brutal truth was that Makashi through Juyo all absolutely needed a lightsaber to properly function. I could maybe adapt Form II to work with a high-quality chakra blade, but that would mean not only spontaneously developing the ability to forge some of the most powerful and expensive weapons in the elemental nations, but also debuting a new sword style after gifting a blade to Satsuki.

I was probably already on someone's radar at this point given my development of cheap and easy high-quality ninja wire, even if they weren't watching Tenten and I practice. Something which really should have occurred to me months prior.

So, no, I wasn't going to raise another half-dozen red flags simply to learn and teach some crazy bullshit plasma blade space paladin swordsmanship to a ninja.

Again, at least. Once was a stupid mistake, two or more times was just crazy.

The alternative of waiting out Satsuki's patience was promptly considered... and ultimately discarded. I actually liked Satsuki, even if she was a pizza mooch, and didn't want to waste her time like that. During that time she could also be learning some other skill that would save her life in the wilds of this non-canon setting, so in some ways pushing her through shitty remedial lessons was an active betrayal of our friendship and might contribute to her early demise.

All of these are perfectly valid rationalizations I told myself again and again over the last month to justify investing potential in Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.

I had to do it to be a good friend and it was definitely not because my inner weeb demanded I seize the golden opportunity to grab what was possibly my favorite fictional sword style of all time, I swear.

Anyone who says otherwise is a filthy lying liar who lies.