Meiko looked back at the unexpected ruckus caused behind her. While working on Masen-Z's Gear-Man puppet, all the cheer and joy included, was relatively noisy and messy, something about those noises back there seemed more chaotic. Just as the girl turned around, she witnessed a black and white striped crimson constrictor wrapping itself around an area of eighty meters or so, creating a ring suitable for a close range brawl.

"What the… Are they going to fight"? Meiko yelled out in surprise as she jumped off of the shoulders of Gear-Man. She wanted to dash right to her friend but her gear-headed attitude forced her to turn back and admire the upgraded and rebuilt Gear-Man. It had much more bright yellow coloured plating and much more protection on what Meiko thought of were weaknesses, even if Masen-Z actively objected making the puppet too efficient, he didn't want to sacrifice its authenticity in the process. The boy cared more about it looking like he wanted it to look rather than it being optimized, just like with his entire weaponry system…

"Oh, don't worry, they'll just have a friendly wrestling match. Your friend is after Othello G, isn't she?" Masen-Z carelessly waved his hand.

"Wait, what!? She is!? What the hell is going on"!? Meiko freaked out continuing to switch onto the wrestling match about to start behind her and the Gear-Man armor.

"Yeah, we knew it all along. I was wondering why we were being so quiet about it and I was worried that Othello G or Sunny Lee may try to pull something funny while you were resting but I'm glad they decided to settle it with wrestling". Masen-Z smiled, paying little to no mind to the craziness behind him, continuing to adjust the yellow shoulder pieces of his puppet.

"B-But if Kiyomi gets beaten up…", Meiko was beginning to worry.

"Don't worry, if she gets beaten – you guys get eliminated, right? Well, that's how this thing works. You don't want to fight three on two under any other conditions, right? Now come up here and help me with this, if you do, I promise I'll show you something cool when we're done", Masen-Z smiled ecstatically pointing at a point of shoddy gear-work where the gears fired off sparks in every direction once they started working.

Kiyomi carefully moved around the constrictor's controlled ring area, she didn't try out approaching the snake too close, worrying that it may not allow her to use it as wrestlers usually used ring ropes but the snake's eyes were hypnotizing even in their calmness making the girl's heart calm down slightly, at least as far as that was concerned.

"Do not worry, Anaron is just a ring tool, he will not be attacking, you unless he's acting as the ring corner. If you want, we can edit the rules, establish an interference DQ clause", Othello G suggested as he continued dashing around the Yamanaka in blinding speed, his already incredible swiftness accelerated even more with each rebound off of the ropes.

"Sounds fair enough", Kiyomi replied, quickly turning around with a punch. She needed to slow Othello G down if she wanted to begin to hope catching him with a Yamanaka hijutsu at any point. At a soon enough point, given a few more rebounds she'd have been unable to follow her opponent's moves at all.

Othello's figure blurred, he moved so oddly and grotesquely, a bended up and mangled speed mirage made following his moves nearly impossible as the lightning swift wrestler bent over Kiyomi's punch, drifting like a lightning bolt to the other rope and shooting off of it, coming at the blonde in speeds escalated to an unforeseen degree.

The large brawler leaped in the air, flying like a bird with his arms stretched out wide. Running right at Kiyomi the wrestler decided to punish his opponent's slow movement with a forearm smash.

"Egoi Smash!" Othello shouted out, Kiyomi knew that he was aiming at the back of her neck, he was far too fast for a proper response, the best she could have done was just turning around and taking the hit with the front of her body, doing her best to raise a block. While turning around the kunoichi did her best to bend and relax her knees to not tackle her opponent's superior smashing power with her own, such a competition would've either busted her bones and completely decimated her or caused her to spend too much chakra trying to overcome the enemy's offensive.

With an awesome flying forearm smash the blonde got sent flying down but, having done all she could to minimize the impact, she could roll aside and bounce back on her feet relatively easily. When one trained under the logic defying physical monster of utter incompetence that was Chestnut Hanasaku, one learned to deal with absolutely unfathomable physical power coming right for one's head.

At least the exchange, while costing Kiyomi some painful bumps and chakra to not get her arms blown up in fleshy bits from the force of impact with the very particles that compose her body being smashed out of her, stopped the accelerating level of Othello G's threat.

"That wasn't bad", Othello G commended Kiyomi as he continued to move across the ring, little by little his circular running forced the blonde into the center of the ring.

"As good as your normal human opponents, I wonder"? Kiyomi taunted the man.

"As if you don't know that it's all scripted", Othello smiled before diving in, shoulder first, at his opponent, only for Kiyomi's side palm chop to hit the exposed part of his neck and stop the giant lump of flesh in his path. During the giant's moment of stumbling, Kiyomi kicked him at the side of the man's leg, loosening his balance and potentially damaging some of the more sensitive bones near the area of the heel. To top it all off, Kiyomi thrust her palm straight into Othello G's face sending the wrestler tumbling back and hitting his summoned snake. This time his heels got too damaged to bounce off or to regain his balance so he just slammed into the reptile.

"I do know that, it's what I like about wrestling. The soap opera aspect of it", Kiyomi grinned, "I have one friend who doesn't like violence all too much, she'd probably like scripted expression violence where no one gets hurt as well. Our free time hadn't been peaceful enough for me to introduce her to wrestling yet".

One oddity that demanded Kiyomi's attention was the behaviour of the snake Anaron. When Othello G was running around he was using the snake's body to be bounced off, sometimes the reptile even aided that goal by using its tail to repurpose the force of momentum and push his summoner. Yet now the wrestler just slammed into the animal with a rough thud. It was so odd how erratic the snake's behaviour was but it appeared that it could control the elasticity of its own body, which was likely why the wrestler used it as a portable, summonable ring.

"Mind Body Disturbance: Art of Valentine"! Kiyomi yelled out, having found a perfect moment to hit her opponent. Using Yamanaka hijutsu was risky, one of the first things she learned was to never use them just blankly as if they missed she'd be completely exposed for a brief moment. The travelling speed of her projectile may have been just slightly slower than the speed of thought but in the ninja world such speed may not have always cut it.

Othello's body rolled right under Kiyomi's Art of Valentine variant, the quick evasive roll was fast and sharpened, the man wasted not a single moment and each and every movement of his body was up to its potential. The man may have reached the very peak of human physical condition meaning that every time Kiyomi wanted to attack him physically she'd need to use chakra augmentation – the only way of surpassing the barrier of humanity.

Othello finished his roll right up at Kiyomi's face, while the girls mind raced to return to her body, having just missed her seemingly dazed opponent. As her mind did its best she couldn't help but notice her opponent's body tense up, something big was coming.

"Dahomey Eyes"! Othello G yelled out as he picked the girl's body up and tossed it in the air. Anaron the snake looked directly at Kiyomi, the petrifying reptile's gaze being the first sight that the returned mind of Yamanaka allowed the girl to perceive. As her perception sharpened, her mind scurried to find a solution from the incoming attack she realized that those scary eyes were observing her from closer and closer on – the snake was tackling her.

As a rumbling shockwave blasted out from the upper part of Kiyomi's body and her back twisted the mortifying sensation was followed up by a heart-chilling snapping of a spine sound. The gruesome illusion of Kiyomi's painful demise was cut short by the body poofing into smoke and getting replaced by a bag of the sweet truffle-like rock hard nuts, the food for the Snapper-Ants' young which Othello G enjoyed previously.

Before Othello G realized and properly processed that this was no genjutsu, but instead a Substitution Jutsu, Kiyomi's image blurred in right in front of him, stunning the fleshy giant temporarily. The Yamanaka's foot shot right behind him as her palm slammed against his face and nose and shoved Othello G down, using her augmented by chakra strength to slam him against the rocky ground before smacking his open central chest area with a powerful heart punch and retreating from counterattacks.

Meiko just could not distract herself from the rumbling and raging battle, surprisingly somehow managing to contain itself within the snake's coiled ring. More and more often the blacksmith's eyes slipped away to glance worryingly at her friend's struggle to overcome her target. Where before they could decide how they'd engage, here things were completely different – the conditions for the battle were thrown at them and they were the only straw they could grasp for.

Masen-Z sighed before leaping his own height in distance off of the puppet armor and down on the rocky ground. Following his example Meiko leaped down, her eyes still locked on the battle that transpired. She couldn't exactly make the specifics out but it seemed like an even enough fight for there to still be hope.

The young man grabbed under a plate of armor and began yanking it wildly, after a short while the annoying steel clanging noise distracted Meiko and made her return her full attention to the puppeteer.

"What are you doing"? She wondered, slightly confused as the young man proceeded to tear the armor plate off. He was lucky that the plate had to be loosened there so to contain the large two-handed sword blade and the gear mechanism used to spring it out and pull it back in. That was the only reason why such an effort brought results in the first place.

"I want to show you something. Like I promised, you're someone who was nice to me and shares my passions so it's only fair you see this and enjoy it as much as I did", Masen-Z smiled confidently before falling down from his strange tampering with the armor before picking himself up with an embarrassing blush in his face. In his hands the young man held the exposed sword taken off of the puppet. Its handle was just an uncomfortable chunk of gears and solid steel so it was less than desired battlefield weapon while unattached from its original location.

"You know, if you wanted a sword for your… Whatever this is, I could've pulled one from my seals. I'm sure I still have one or two left there somewhere", Meiko began rummaging all over her body, tapping over herself, trying to remember where exactly she had sealed what as some of the lesser used tools may have went forgotten after a long while.

"See? That's exactly the point. You were friendly to me, so I want to share a technique with you. One that I can't really pull off, hopefully you'd have more success", Masen-Z energetically jumped right up in Meiko's face, almost impaling her on the giant blade. Once again the awkward young shorty pulled the larger than his own body blade aside with a blush before focusing his chakra so intensely that his whole body tensed up and the boy had to cry out from the strain building up so much chakra caused.

Momentarily, the sword lit up in flames, a completely inflammable solid steel blade was blazing like a chunk of wood with the flame feeding off directly off of Masen's chakra pool.

"Ummm… I don't know what they teach you in Ninja Academy back in Kumogakure but… We kind of already know you can imbue your weapon with chakra. It's called "Chakra Flow" and you can channel your chakra through pretty much anything, although I'll admit it, transferring Elemental Release through it like this is impressive for a genin", Meiko shrugged looking somewhat unimpressed.

Masen-Z then put the sword down allowing the flames to extinguish as his own breath intensified and he started to huff from the exhaustion of maintaining the chakra flow for as long as he did.

"Then why don't you use it?" Masen-Z wondered, "If you know how it works, the basic principles of it, how come you barely ever channel your chakra through your weaponry? Your physical force will only take you so far, you know".

"Well… I don't know if you knew but… I'm not the best with chakra control. I thought Team Walnut have mocked me enough to give you the clue", Meiko pouted feeling ashamed of admitting her own flaws in front of Masen-Z. She turned around but, for the first time, not to watch Kiyomi's battle but to turn away from her newly made friend.

"That's not true, you're using Sealing Techniques that are quite difficult on the whole scale of things. They're above ninjutsu in complexity, lower perhaps only compared to genjutsu and medical ninjutsu. How could a failure of chakra manipulation ever pull that off with such ease and high degree of success? Just how many Sealing Techniques have you failed to do?" Masen-Z objected pressing on Meiko's shoulder which he needed to step up on his toes to even reach. It was a result of a combination of both higher than average Meiko's height and his own, much shorter than average.

"Sealing Jutsu are different, they're almost a second nature to me. I've practiced them since I was a little girl so I pretty much got the hang of them. They sort of naturally came to me. Maybe it's a counterbalance of my other failures, like a lack of use of my clan's bloodline…" Meiko pouted before walking further away and sitting down on a rock, pressing her puffy cheeks against her fingerless gloves.

"Well, you must know that while your physical strength is impressive, you won't survive for long relying just on it and weaponry. You need an expansion of your arsenal, you need to improve or else you'll get left behind. This Chuunin Exam, is there something you want to prove with it"? Masen-Z wondered.

"Yeah, it does mean a lot to me. My friend – Mana, she's helped me out so much, she lead me on an insane expedition to give me the honor to hold a legendary artefact just because I like legendary weapons and artefacts. It's because of her recommendation that I am on Team Hokage and sometimes… I can't help it but… I feel like I don't belong amongst the others", Meiko sadly turned her face away.

"Well… You may not belong for much longer", Masen-Z cut the sharp edgy truth ruthlessly, yet trying to use as soft of a tone as possible.

Angry and shocked that the Kumogakure ninja would even say that when he was the one wearing a nearly dysfunctional suit of armor with more flaws than a horror movie divinity had tentacles, opting to go for what looked cooler and what he liked more compared to functionality.

"You see, your friend here - Kiyomi, she's a Yamanaka, with time she will only grow mightier. I haven't seen much high ranked Yamanaka in Kumogakure but we've read plenty about them, so should have you. She'll be able to read minds, influence them, mentally torture her enemies and execute people with just a glance. She'll be crushing people mentally before you know it. In a world of such people, you need your own thing to compare. If you don't grow past your limits, you'll never be protecting your friends, you'll never fulfil your promises made and you'll always be protected by them. You must've seen that limit you've reached as a genin, that bar being raised today", Masen-Z sat nearby to Meiko trying to be as frank and as soft as possible. The last thing that the blacksmith needed now was a tough and condescending talk.

"Yeah, a girl everyone admired in the Academy, with a better bloodline than she probably deserves, beat me at my own game." Meiko stuck out her lips bitterly recalling when Lithia Uchiha kicked her butt up close, something that rarely happened. Almost never when faced against someone as puny as Lithia was physically. She had little to no taijutsu skill but her Sharingan was all the edge that the Lolita teen needed.

"Well, there's one thing I tried to pull off. Something I invented and have never heard of it being used elsewhere…" Masen-Z jumped up and stood in front of Meiko as he picked up a kunai out of his pocket and extended it right in front of Meiko's face so that the blacksmith's attention focused onto it.

Wind and dust picked up from the intense concentration and chakra being built up, jets of hot air circled around the shorty as the kunai once again lit up with flames, this time with much more strain and focus than it was used before.

"You know, when you channel your chakra into a less conductive weapon, or one not conducting it at all – you need to use proportionally more chakra to channel it", Meiko pointed out with a bored and saddened expression as she saw little to no point to what Masen-Z was showing her. The kunai knife he used was not a generic one sold in bulk for filling ninja tool pouches, it was a custom order but the alloy still looked shoddy and had small percentage of chakra conductivity, most likely. The boy was selling an arm and a leg to even make it heat up, at this point.

Then, with one swift energetic shout the flaming chakra got changed with base chakra lacking any elemental properties before the colorless and almost invisible channeling of chakra got turned slightly red. Masen-Z was balancing out the percentage of Fire Release chakra in his imbuement, with a lower percentage he could still make the chakra visible more easily to a naked eye while not having to strain himself so much to maintain elemental release. Masen-Z gripped the kunai as he would a reverse grip short blade before an elbow sized blade made out of nothing but transparent light red chakra extended from the kunai before fading away. Almost immediately after the young man collapsed on his knees.

"One day… I tried replicating Gear-Man's… Crimson Blade… Of Positron Maximal Ultimate Justice Bringing… Then I found this out…" Masen-Z huffed out before extending the kunai for Meiko to examine. "You don't have to use a sword to imbue a weapon with chakra. With enough intensity, control and skilled shape manipulation you can create a sword of chakra through anything. I don't think there are limits to this ability. Just imagine – a massive mountain-sized sword coming out from a kunai, or a shield large enough to protect the entire village. Imagine a suit of armor made of nothing but solid chakra channelled through some unimpressive object like a simple chest plate", Masen-Z fell on his back as his chest rapidly lifted up and down.

Meiko's hand shook holding the kunai, tears ran down her cheeks falling onto it before she placed it beside Masen-Z and clutched her fists.

"It's not something I can ever achieve. I can probably flow my chakra through weapons with enough intensive training, make it natural to me. Shape manipulation? That is well outside my world, that is a weapon of ninja in the class of Gods but… Positive Chakra Flow. That's an amazing ability"! Meiko kept on brooding before exploding in excitement with the final words. It was the most amazing thing she had ever seen, like a child being showed the most astounding and breath-taking, yet the most expensive, toy in the shop. One they could probably never ever own in their life unless a miracle happens.

"Positron Blade… Positive Chakra Flow… I like that name", Masen-Z laughed out still breathing heavily on the floor.

Seeing this ability was better than telling Meiko a secret. It was making her believe and hope in a miracle. A miracle that she could at some point control and use this Positive Chakra Flow.