"Daughter, you have customer!" Meiko jumped up and tilted her head off of the rather blunt and numbing resting spot on her fist when her father called out. Technically, she didn't have customers of her own per se, it was just that when she chose to aid her father, he let her take some of the orders and him declaring that she had customers meant that he chose to send them her way.
The apprentice blacksmith tilted her still aching bottom off of the wooden chair and left her Reactor Gauntlets rolling about on the table. They were just a pointless side project, a fruit of needing to come up with something elementary in twenty minutes and yet Meiko decided to work on them a little bit with more resources and time on her hands to improve them. The Reactor Gauntlets were just sideshow activity before, she was just a lefty swinging with her right whenever she called out for them but it didn't have to be that way.
Meiko's jaw dropped and she froze in mid-motion, namely, a lean back out of shock when she saw the pink-haired woman that had entered her little workshop on the side. Musha had changed her hairstyle since the Chuunin Exams though it was no less tomboyish than the one she had before, her hair hung down in spiky curls and appeared to be stuck that way as if permanently wet, all except for one, slim braid tied together and hanging behind the woman's head like a disobedient and stiff earthworm.
"Yo!" she smirked and raised up her palm in a lively greeting. "Man, I had thought that the workshop of a spry youth would be all modern and shit… This ain't modern at all!" Musha whistled as she examined Meiko's workshop.
While she certainly had an attitude and a way around relaying things, the jounin wasn't wrong about this thing. Meiko's workshop was a remnant of father's storage room where he kept discarded works, scraps and old tools. Such things might have served some use still so neither Meiko nor her father chose to discard them. Old tools proved to be invaluable when one lost one's primary set of tools or just needed spares, faulty work still proved as a handy draft, a blueprint of how to do a certain piece of work up until a certain point where the predecessor had gone wrong.
"If you're here to brief us about the third stage, you don't have to. The Seventh briefed us up before he took Naruto away. We know we've got a week to prepare and then we're gathering in the newly built Academy building." Meiko pointed out.
"Oh, right… Your temporary teammate got yoinked away, didn't he? Guess you guys are lucky that from this point on it's everybody for themselves, huh?" Musha beamed a grin Meiko's way.
"I don't think that way. My teammate, someone I considered a friend, got infected by some ninja-alien that's some body-possessing parasite, apparently and needs to go through a journey to cure him? That's horrible, who knows if he will even make it by the time the next stage comes up. Naruto worked hard and it's not his first failed Chuunin Exams too. I do hope that they find the universe or the time where they can fix him and that he doesn't die of ninja-space-parasite…" Meiko replied.
"Man, what a crazy thing to have to be worried about, huh?" Musha just made herself feel at home in Meiko's workshop, approaching her Reactor Gauntlets that laid lifeless on the table, just a ninja tool that was outdated the moment it was made.
"So, if you didn't come here to inform about the exams, why did you come here?" Meiko wondered.
"Why do people go to blacksmiths? I need a weapon, one for myself so it's gotta be good." Musha tried the Reactor Gauntlets onto herself but her hand didn't fit. Even for a woman of a tomboyish, powerhouse-type build, her hands were massive and she looked like she should have been able to hold the entirety of a human head in either of those two palm leaves she called hands. "Maybe I need gauntlets to punch people with too, what'cha think?"
"What other weapons do you use? It might help me determine your fighting style. Judging from your build it does seem like you'd make use out of some gauntlets though if you asked me, there's not much gauntlets can do to add to one's strength at some point. Jounin-level chakra augmentation is a godlike boost to strength and you'd need supermassive gauntlets that weigh millions of tons to make them make a difference and that sort of weight hampers your speed so they'll still end up making the oomph from your punch diminish…" Meiko shrugged and took her gauntlets away from Musha.
She didn't feel too glad about the potential client of such an astonishing rank judging what Meiko could do based on something she cobbled together from scrap in basically twenty minutes. True, Meiko was trying to update them for the better part of the day and lacked any semblance of the idea of what to add, aside from handing them to her father for basic molecular-level Kirikuzu clan ability tampering to the material.
"Oh, I use this and that… You know me, I'm more of a heavy-duty kinda gal, just like you, I'd wager…" Musha winked to Meiko while toying around with a concept for a chainsaw-sword that Meiko had gone on to improve by leaps and bounds since making the abomination Musha was toying with.
What a weird woman, honestly, she was making heavy engine growls with her mouth as she rolled the belt of the chainsaw-blade about forward and backward. Justifying the first impression of her mental maturity being that of a toddler, Musha quickly got bored of her newest toy and placed it back where she found it – she had that bright idea at the very least.
"Without seeing any preferences, it's tough to suggest anything. You might try an Ono to utilize your insane strength and plow through barriers and swords." Meiko pointed out, extending her hand toward an exceptional ax handle attached to a chunk of wood when the blacksmith just didn't find the time to finish her pet-project. "It wouldn't take much time to learn how to use it, gravity does most of the work, most of the time, honestly…"
"Hmmm… Swords and barriers, huh? I do encounter those things a lot…" Musha scratched her chin, trying to count all the swords and barriers she's clashed with in her most recent missions.
"Of course you do, after all, if you're using a heavy-duty weapon, odds are the enemy will either block it with a barrier or a sword, most ninja use swords and you'll crap all over that with a nice Ono. Traditional swords are fickle to rough touches and crushing blows are an ax's middle name." Meiko shrugged. "Of course, it leaves you one weakness – dodges. You'll leave yourself too open in a battle where the enemy dodges instead of blocking you. A naginata would eliminate that weakness though…"
"They say a yari is the most effective weapon on the field…" Musha pouted her lips outward, considering Meiko's suggestions.
"It is, however, it's a thrust oriented weapon and it is hardly suited for a heavy-duty specialist that's out to do some damage. I felt wary even suggesting a naginata, honestly, not to mention a yari…" Meiko shrugged with the expression that was accurate in relaying just how much she disagreed with Musha's suggestion. Not because she was wrong, she wasn't, not entirely, it was just that the yari was ill-suited to her style and, ultimately, the type of weapon paled before skill and familiarity of the user.
"So why would I want to pay a decent dime for you making me a battleax instead of buying one out of a wooden box filled with hay from some random shmuck?" Musha wondered.
"I can make it out of iron that's dirt cheap and have my father tamper with its molecular structure, making it an elite-grade, chakra conductive weapon. It doesn't need any fancy tricks or modifications either – just chakra coat it and it'll do its thing the best that the thing can be done." Meiko shrugged, wasting no time answering that question.
"Hmmm… You're really good…" Musha hummed out.
"Alright, I'm writing down the order then, any extra specifications? Initials or decorations?" Meiko wondered while scribbling on a piece of paper.
"None. Just make it extra cool as defined by you, I can't wait to see your personal touch." Musha winked before approaching the Reactor Gauntlets and rolling them around on the table, taking notice of the sealing glyphs at the center of the palm area of the gauntlets. "These are nice, primitive but nice. You might have a thing going with these if you keep working on them…"
"That's the idea…" Meiko sighed.
"Say, that fire they make… The Reactor Breath, you call it?" Musha looked up and handed the weapon to their owner. Meiko took them and moved them about in her hand. "It's not a feature you can have your weapons do, right?"
"Nah, I'm not even fully sure why they're shooting fire still… I worked on them some after the exams, tried modifying the seals, there's only that much intensity in a fire you can shoot from your hands, the real damage is in channeling chakra. I'm not sure if I'm messing something up but they still shoot flames instead of chakra blasts…" Meiko put them on and pointed them around the room. The sealing glyphs at the center lit up bright orange and began smoking but she restrained herself from blasting a hole in her own workshop.
"That's because of your chakra nature. You're a natural Fire Release user, no surprise there, that's most of the residents of the Land of Fire." Musha shrugged. "You know, I can help you improve your nature transformation ability, maybe the problem with the gauntlets isn't mechanical or even related to the materials you're using – maybe it's the burning heart that's fueling them?"
"I dunno, I'm a bit of a lousy pupil of that sort of thing. Mana tried teaching me to be better at fending off illusions and it took almost a year to get through the basics… I've once failed the Academy graduation exam because of my terrible chakra control." Meiko tapped around on the floor, trying to set the stacks up on the shoulders of her potential instructor as if to prepare her for the eventual, unavoidable disappointment of reality until Musha dropped out of training her, as many tutors did.
"Pfff… Mana? I trained Mana in Fire Release, it's her natural element too, you know…" Musha raised an eyebrow and snagged a gauntlet out of Meiko's hands, bending its fingers and making a fist out of it before extending it for a bump at Meiko.
"Really!?" Meiko opened her mouth in amazement. "I could use a good nature transformation instructor. My Weapon Transformation and chakra coating would soar in strength all at the same time!"
"So stop yapping, if you've written my order down, let's go grab something to eat and hit the training grounds!" Musha thrust the gauntlet forward and clanged the empty gauntlet against the one Meiko still held.
Now Musha was speaking Meiko's language!
"Kiyomi, dear! Tea time!" Kiyomi's mother raised her voice before sliding the door to the dojo room that was mostly just decorative in appearance. The walls were made of fondled paper and bamboo wood, the paper was thin enough to see outlines through and dyed pink as if the whole construction wasn't already shameful enough. The walls had ample red kanji for vague philosophical terms like "transcendence", "existence", "Ego" etc.
"Thanks, mom, really nice of you to assume that I'm the one on the ground!" Kiyomi flipped out at her mother who spoke to the shadow clone that laid on the floor after Kiyomi had thrown her and prepared the finishing strike before mother entered the dojo.
"Oh, I'm sorry, dear… What strenuous and un-ladylike training you're doing, fighting yourself over and over again must be exhausting…" Kiyomi's mother spoke as if she was the one actually doing the training and feeling worn out by it. The woman still held the wooden tray with a pair of china cups filled with steamy, green goop inside of them.
"Are you crazy? This is nothing… This is less than basic training, the only reason I'm wasting my time with this is that I'm practicing a new fighting style here." Kiyomi tried not to have vein pop on her forehead because that sort of appearance would have truly looked un-ladylike had it stayed that way, as her mother kept frightening Kiyomi as a little girl it would when she got mad as a kid.
"Oh? Do tell…" mother smiled, her oblivious expression made it obvious that the woman knew nothing about possible effective fighting styles that the Yamanaka clan ninja could employ but she would hear it out regardless just because it was her precious daughter talking about a subject of great importance to her.
"The Yamanaka are supposed to be the aces of the battlefield. The ability to control people's minds? Are you even serious?" Kiyomi began before her mother interrupted her with a pinky pressed to the right side of the woman's lips.
"B-But… That's not what…" she was about to argue before Kiyomi interrupted her after being interrupted herself.
"I know…" the Yamanaka heiress declared. "The point of the matter is, our hijutsu are meant to be unmatched in just about any type of task and yet the Yamanaka combat ability is lacking. It's because of the weaknesses that our techniques have – constantly sending out consciousness out somewhere, always leaving ourselves exposed. At one point I've realized that I'm the most effective just being an over-glorified communication device."
"That's not very kind…" Kiyomi's mother mumbled and moved a braid of blond hair out of the way of her face, despite constantly holding her eyes in a near-closed squint anyway.
"It's true though… As much as I hate to admit it, Mana had a bright idea that one time. That must have been why she got graduated while we all stayed behind – she didn't chase new, powerful techniques, she ironed out the basics to the point of perfection. Sure, uncle's been teaching me all sorts of awesome ways to bolster the Yamanaka hijutsu and invent my own fighting style but I'd rather just remove the weaknesses of the basic one." Kiyomi's face turned grin, she truly didn't like to compliment a criminal, even one that used to once be her friend. One of if not her best friend even.
"Don't beat around the bush, mother's kind of simple, you know. Just tell her what you're training to do – reading people's minds." Kiyomi's clone crossed her arms over her chest.
"Oh, reading people's minds?" mother gasped before pressing her finger to her lips and looking up and to the right with a confused squint. "Wait… Don't we already do that?"
"Not like that. Read them in battle, make it effortless, make it as if I'm genuinely reading every motion my opponent's about to make, seeing through their every plan before they even settle on one. That's the goal." Kiyomi shrugged, feeling her cheeks getting a bit hot, as admitting something ambitious to an authority figure tended to make one feel. "I mean… Uncle can basically transfer himself as a thought and fight on a location different from the one he's in through sheer mental power, that's gotta be the limit and the goal."
Kiyomi approached her mother and took the cup off of the tray, for whatever reason, her clone also did the same and took a sip of the slightly cooled green tea. It had a similar texture to tomato juice due to the fact that mother tended to grind mint and other leaves from her gardens, mash and blend them together to where her tea barely resembled any other kind of tea out there.
"Well… I'm sure you can do it!" mother clapped her free hand against the wooden tray as she moved her hands closer together in a gesture meant to encourage her daughter.
"Alright, again!" Kiyomi demanded of her clone and the pair settled in their separate sides of the dojo.
"Heh, I'll get you this time, you're the one who split her chakra off to make me," Kiyomi's clone cheeked at her own maker.
"Not a chance, not when I can see through your mind." Kiyomi declared, placing two of her fingers by her temple in a demonstrative manner that did not aid her attempts at mastering this new fighting style in any way whatsoever.
"We've not yet even establish you're actually doing it. For all we know, you've just lucked out because the person you're trying to mind-read is literally a clone of yourself." The clone took a fighting stance while Kiyomi fooled around with flashy motions.
"Sure, if it makes you feel any better, assume that I've bested you without even being able to read your mind while both weakened after splitting my chakra as well as concentrating on pointless, dysfunctional mind-reading fighting style." Kiyomi cornered her clone and finished her off with that remark. While the pair were cautious to start it slowly and let Kiyomi ease into her mentally aware state under normal circumstances, now the clone just wanted a piece of her.
For the first time since she's started training in this unorthodox fighting style, Kiyomi closed her eyes and tried reaching out with her consciousness instead. None of that hardcore transferring of it, her mind wouldn't leave her own body anywhere but it would expand, feel and read into everything it came into contact with.
A sharp sensation made Kiyomi's eyes open with a blanked out expression while she flew down on the floor and growled in frustration, the clone had decked her good before she could even begin reading into anything.
"Sorry, sorry, you weren't ready, were you?" the clone teased Kiyomi by stroking the tip of her fist that had just sent the original Yamanaka down. Maybe pissing her off wasn't the best idea?
And so the days before the third stage of the Interuniversal, Intertemporal Chuunin Exams went on without a memorable hitch until the fateful day came at last!