Naruko screwed up her face as she looked over the series of hexagons that had been tiled to make the current board for our game. Frowning, she slowly nodded to herself. "I'm gonna'... move my worker up this row and have him extract a resource." Flicking a glance up at me, I gave her a small nod before she drew a card from the face-down deck beside her-

-and smirked widely, a foxy grin filling her face.

I snapped my fingers to draw her attention with a frown. "No smirking. You're supposed to be practicing concealing your emotions. Poker face." I reiterated, waving a hand towards my face. Well, honestly, it wasn't really poker that I was referencing, but I'd always think of the more familiar card game whenever the subject came up.

Naruko grimaced. "Ugh, whatever." She slapped down a card with a generic graphic of iron ore onto the line of resources in front of her. "I've finally got enough to play Momochi Zabuza, the Demon of the Mist!"

Satsuki perked up from where she was working on a set of ninshu-derived chakra control exercises I had given her and looked over.

"Alright, he spawns in your village." I pointed at the tile closest to Naruko to remind her. "But he's still got to finish his training, so-"

"Not this time!" Naruko crowed proudly, tapping two cards with pictures of a cornucopia on them. "I've got an emergency mobilization card! So Zabuza can act as though he's ready for combat this turn!"

I chuckled, the sound that of a proud tutor seeing their student be mildly clever.

"Alright, where are you going to move him?" I asked graciously.

Naruko's eyes roved across the board before, her finger moving up the edges of the hexagons, before cutting a smirk short and moving the Zabuza card up to that corner. "Here! I'm going to have him assassinate your noble to stop you from making that minor village your ally!"

I fanned the cards in my hand and pondered deploying my ace, then decided there was a better course of action. Tapping down five of my own resources, specifically two of the 'daimyo support' resource I'd used a golden fan to represent. "Alright, but I'll be activating a proclamation, just like you did to get Zabuza to move this turn. Mine is 'resource seizure.' So the next time one of my forces dies this turn, I get to pull a resource card, but since it's a noble dying, I get three resource cards instead."

Naruko's face puckered cutely. "Aww, man! No fair! You shouldn't get stuff when you guys die!"

I snorted as I picked up my noble card and put it into the graveyard. "Think of it this way. Maybe the guy you just killed was actually helping an enemy village and, when he died, we found evidence to prove it. So we get to take all of his stuff because he was a traitor."

She crossed her arms and pouted. "That's still pretty awful. What about his family and stuff? Aren't they going to be hard up for money now that he's dead?"

I raised an eyebrow and dryly reminded her. "You are the one who killed him just now. Maybe you should think about that before you send a legendary assassin after someone."

Naruko's mouth opened like she wanted to argue, but all it did was hang there as she considered my response.

In the meantime, I dolled out my resources and considered my next move as I looked to where Yakumo was doing a series of basic physical exercises that would have left her in nearly-crippling pain just a few months ago. I could see the strain she was going through, especially since she'd been at it for several hours now, but she was nowhere near collapsing.

I'd need to move to the next stage of her training soon.

"A Nara in our class was curious about the game." Satsuki offered in the distant tone of one trying to hold a conversation even as she was maintaining her meditation. "He was irritated when I told him you'd insulted shogi."

That would be Shikamaru.

"Shogi isn't abad gameby any means, but it's hardly the epitome of tactics and strategy that most people like to hold it up as." I moderated the comments I'd made months prior. "It's very... straightforward and limited, in its own way. You know exactly what resources both you and your opponent have, there's only one way to restore value to your board, you and your opponent both know exactly what moves each other are making when they're made..." I rolled a hand in a vague 'so-on-and-so-forth' motion. "That kind of thing. It doesn't account for randomness, luck, unequal resource distribution at the start, any kind of reinforcements, alternate victory conditions... it isn't a good metaphor for actual combat."

Naruko snickered, her pigtails bouncing. "Shika's face when you said that, hehe! I can't even!"

Satsuki released a huff of amusement. "He tried to argue... something like how it wasn't in the game itself, but relied on people to play it with that stuff in mind."

I grumbled and rolled my eyes. "Which is why most people won't take away the proper lessons from it. I guess insome waysit's a good metaphor for the life of a shinobi, in that you can make a relatively simple game incredibly complicated by manipulating the pieces, the other player, and the overall game itself, but in my opinion you're better going with something with more moving parts." I glimpsed the look of incomprehension on Naruko's face and rephrased myself. "More game mechanics. That way you build a necessity to look at multiple layers of play at the same time instead of allowing superficial strategies to dominate the players' minds."

Which was really the problem, in my opinion. Shogi was an easy game to learn, but a hard one to truly master and most people didn't bother looking 'underneath the underneath' for hidden lessons and complicated meta-game manipulations. Instead, they defaulted to relatively basic strategies and feints, much like the vast majority of shinobi would never advance beyond a certain limited rank.

A game that had more mechanics to learn, in theory, could force otherwise-apathetic minds to confront their own habits and preconceptions. It was why I'd built the still-unnamed game the way I had, as a tool to help everyone learn something, not just a few bright minds polish themselves to perfection.

I mean, eugenics is always going to win out in this world, but even if Naruko is Rule 63 Ninja Jesus, even she could use a bit of help on tactics and strategy.

"Kotaro-san?"

I paused in my observations, turning to where one of the Kurama clan's retainers had approached to a respectful distance before bowing. "Can I help you?"

"The master of the house would like an audience at your earliest convenience. He has a guest who has requested to speak with you on matters of the young lady's training and will be awaiting you in the rear banquet hall."

I frowned, but nodded, and wondered what all this was about. Perhaps another play by Danzo? Sai and Torune, when they weren't being inscrutable cryptids, were learning the trade at a decent rate. I wasn't going to be teaching them any of my personal techniques, but that wouldn't be an issue for a great while. As it turned out, I'd vastly underestimated the degree to which I'd been demonstrating my own skills, since neither of them would be ready for more advanced smithing lessons for many more months. Lamentably, this also meant that I'd painted myself as a prodigy among prodigies, I was coming to realize, but...

...well, if my plan had still been to live a quiet life and escape the Elemental Nations, that would have been a problem.

Now, I could use it to my advantage.

I passed my hand of cards to Satsuki. "You're up, try to give her a fighting chance." The Uchiha heiress smirked as the Uzumaki jinchuriki squawked in outrage before I turned to Yakumo. "Cool down for five minutes, then meditation until I get back. Your dad wants an update."

Yakumo paused in her forms, cocking her head before nodding. Meanwhile, I rose from where I was seated and made my way around the house towards the back. The Kurama clan property wasn't all that large, though it was a bit remote, even more so than the Uzumaki property and backed up to the mountainous ridge that circled half of the village, a large expanse of grass and forest making up their backyard.

As I rounded the corner and approached the rear hallway, I saw the rice-paper doors had been pulled aside with Yakumo's father seated at the head of the table and...

Yuuhi Kurenai.

The jounin was the picture of the more dignified and respectable side of kunoichi, wearing a kind of distant lethality like a mantle. The way her red eyes cut across to me as I entered her field of view, the subtle tightening of her fingers around the cup of tea in her hands, and the straightening of her upper back all gave me more than enough indicators for me to read the unhappiness apparent in her.

"Lord Murakumo." I greeted the family head respectfully at the edge of the wooden walkway, then turned to the guest. "Lady Jounin."

"Yuuhi Kurenai." She supplied, looking me over. "You're Kotaro. The blacksmith's apprentice."

I nodded, looking to the patriarch for direction as the older man sighed. "The honorable jounin was my daughter's previous tutor and expressed... an interest in determining her progress and capabilities, as well as that of her tutor."

"Ah." I gestured towards the table. "If I may?"

An approving nod saw me slipping my boots off and joining them, a servant bringing me refreshments only moments later. "If you have questions, Jounin Yuuhi, please ask and I'll answer them as best I can."

Kurenai frowned at me. "You've made progress with Yakumo's condition." She stated brusquely. "How?"

"I'm teaching her an extremely precise method of body control I developed before I realized that the condition of my chakra coils made me unsuited to be a shinobi." I explained.

Her eyes narrowed. "Simple body control shouldn't be able to effectively neutralize a condition as chronic and extreme as Yakumo's."

I kept a scowl off my face as I read between the lines. It didn't take a genius to understand that Kurenai was irritated with the circumstances given she had, according to Yakumo, given the girl up as a lost cause. To be proven wrong, by a half-trained civilian tradesman's apprentice no less...

I'd need to tread carefully here.

"As I informed Yakumo, it is honestly more akin to the art of kugutsutsukai than taijutsu." I paused, frowning openly. "The art is... difficult to explain, but if one is familiar with how thoughts conceived within the mind flow from the physical organ of the brain down one's spine-" I traced the path with two fingers from my forehead, over my face, following the curvature of my neck, and down through the opposite limb to my palm. "-and into the limb in question, triggering muscles to contract, limbs to move, and the body to function. Simply take that to its furthest extreme and you will understand what I am teaching the Kurama heiress."

Kurenai's lips twitched downwards. "A form of puppetry, but using your own body instead of an artificial doll? And you invented this?"

I shrugged minutely. "Before I decided I was not fit for the demands of the shinobi lifestyle, I attempted to draw out the very limit of what my body was capable of since I didn't even have the reserves of a genin."

Kurenai leaned back a bit, humming in thought as she looked me over. "That is a rather bold claim to make, to say that one even younger than you currently are, created a new art wholesale."

The Kurama clan head smirked ever-so-slightly, a sign that he was knowingly holding back on bragging regarding my achievements in swordsmanship. Normally, he would have brought them forward, but given that Kurenai was in an irritable mood from being slighted by my mere existence and, as a jounin, could cause me problems by claiming I was suspicious.

Which Iwas, honestly.

"I suppose I could give a demonstration, if it would not offend my host?" I asked, looking to Murakumo. After a quick denial and a curious nod from Kurenai, I drew myself back from the table and began quickly and efficiently compacting myself into the smallest square I could. The red-eyed jounin twitched slightly at the sound of various joints popping out of their sockets when my limbs needed to bend in ways which nature hadn't intended. The entire process took less than a minute, leaving me in a pose which would have beggared contortionists from my previous life.

"That... isn't painful?" Kurenai asked, seemingly morbidly curious as she stared at me.

"It doesn't matter. Pain is an illusion that can be overcome through training and willpower. As long as the actual damage being done to the body isn't lethal and you can maintain consciousness you can at the very least get yourself to a medic." I explained, flexing my fingers and raising myself up off the tatami floor in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a spider.

A shiver crept up the jounin's spine that she wasn't quite able to force back down.

"Where is he?!" An angry voice rang out across the compound, coming from the direction I'd left my erstwhile students in. All three of us paused at the loud cry and the elder two at the table frowned as they moved to get up.

"That sounds like the budding young weapon mistress," Murakumo noted while I began unfolding myself and popping joints back into place.

"Tenten, yes. This is the first study session she's made since she graduated." I stated, picking up my cup of tea and downing it. "I'm impressed, it only took her three weeks to build up enough stamina to track me down after whatever training her jounin-sensei put her through."

Kurenai frowned and looked curious despite herself as I looked over the room and carefully positioned myself out of immediate sight. "Why would she need to track you down?"

"Might Gai asked me not to inform her that he'd selected her as his genin." I explained. Kurenai outright winced and Murakumo wasn't much better. I held up one finger to my lips as I sucked in a deep breath before the oncoming surge of chakra approaching.

A cascade of steps suddenly skidded to a stop not two meters away.

"Where is h-oh! Ah... I'm so sorry, Lord Kurama, Lady Kunoichi, ah... but, have you seen Kota around? He...owes me an explanation." Tenten ground out as pleasantly as she could manage.

"I sent him on an errand." Murakumo stated readily, holding up a hand in the shadow of the table Tenten wouldn't be able to see towards Kurenai, even as she opened her mouth and cut her gaze towards me. "More importantly, young lady, you're obviously fresh from the training grounds. Hospitality demands I offer a bath, change of clothes, and a small meal to a friend of my daughter's. Hokuto! Heat the bath water!"

Over Tenten's protestations, a skilled retainer guided her away.

Kurenai huffed a laugh. "I can't say I don't sympathize with the girl." Her gaze sharpened. "But, more to the point, I wanted to talk to you about Yakumo. Even if you can adequately address her physical needs, there's the matter of her... ratheruniquechakra to consider." She shot a look towards the Kurama patriarch, who grimaced and looked away.

"It hasn't been an issue since her skills have been improving." Yakumo's father grumbled, clearly unhappy with the new topic.

"Nevertheless, if she is to enter active service, hertendenciesneed to be addressed." Kurenai outright stated.

"Unique chakra?" I asked, raising an eyebrow as I moved back to sit at the table. "I've noticed something to the effect and was considering options. It seems to be tied to an emotional component?"

The question opened the floodgates as Kurenai began earnestly trying to convince me to drop Yakumo's tutelage. The revelation that she'd had fits of depression and anger where she'd used her bloodline to do serious damage, even if it had been reversed upon lifting the technique, was neither a welcome revelation nor a true surprise if I were honest. The fact that Yakumo hadn't had any of these bouts of temporary madness since I'd begun training her could be explained by her making actual progress and therefore keeping in good spirits.

I realized I'd need to corner Naruko and talk to her as well. For all her faults, the girl took friends' secrets seriously and wouldn't have revealed anything she'd seen or suspected to me before I had good evidence.

Still, as long as she keeps improving, I can buy myself some time to consider solutions. Even if I don't approve of the way Kurenai apparently handled her, I can understand it. A girl barely able to take a brisk walk wouldn't be able to cover the distance required by missions without being literally carried by her squad. I mean, unless you figured out some way to make... genjutsu... travel...

A random neuron fired deep in my brain, the idea it spawned turned over, and I cursed my own curiosity when I realized I wouldn't be able to leave it alone.