The rest of the school week went uneventful. Askuna's clones had spent around 500 hours getting quite proficient with water and fire release raw manipulation. Now as he had a free weekend, he wanted to do a personal project of sorts.
When he was experimenting with chakra nature transformations, he felt the idea was too easy, you just envision a concept, one of the five, and try to attune their Chakra to it, through imagination and repetition.
In fact, such training is perfect for his mind clones, but why wouldn't you be able to extrapolate it to other elements, concepts, or some Kekkei-Genkai?
One of his initial ideas is that his chakra can fall easily in the first five initial states, who knows maybe there are more initial states, or the line is blurred, but we could imagine it like a land of hills and valleys, with some rivers.
If we are on the plane, the water would disperse uniformly, however, if we were in a valley, and filled it with water to form a lake, then water wouldn't want to generally flow upwards towards hills. Now we could imagine the first initial states as some valleys demarcated from our original valley, by some small hills, they are not too hard to get to, but also not too easy.
You would have to forcefully make waves in some direction in order to 'search' for a tipping point, where the water would land on the other side. It may very well be so, that initial affinity is such a geographical space, where valleys are connected by a river, or the boundary is very low.
Metaphorically, of course.
However, an even funnier way to imagine one's elemental training is to look at it as the act of trying to pour water over the valley. To make there a small lake, which will grow with time. And assuming that you can 'sense' the chakra over there, you would very easily be able to send the waves back and forth with the initial valley.
Now imagine, all viable combinations of chakra form some valley, and they are farther away from the center or up to some strange mountains that you don't know the height of or their position. Most of them start as dry land, which you don't know anything about.
Now, how would you pour your water up a mountain that is very far away and tall? For example, you have water and fire affinities trained, and you would like something akin to a combination of the two to form a boil release.
Well, let's imagine one has to make a wave somewhere in the direction of the added vector of those two, it could be somewhere else, or even not there, but one would have to try to generate waves from one or two of them.
Now let's modify our model even again.
What if, to activate the affinity, you could just simply pour chakra from the initial pond which determines your default chakra, and then it would grow from a valley to a spring, that is capable of generating the water? Therefore, if you want to use it you would have to make a wave back from this spring to the initial pool, and it would roll down the hill and mix with the base chakra.
Now, in order to activate the Kekkai Genkai of boil release, the requirement could be to pour from both water release and fire release simultaneously up a hill in a certain direction, enough for chakra to trigger a fusion and activation of Kekkei Genkai spring, which would be able to easily generate more of it.
Now also imagine, that our initial pool is the lowest in a valley of circular hills, which has 5 visible mountains, and 5 smaller pathways through each slope. Then behind the mountain barrier there exist the five unactivated springs of standard elements. Locally they are also valleys, but at a higher elevation. So in essence, they are all located a little higher than our initial pool ( of let's say starting chakra).
Then, if we consider combinations of those affinities, they would be even beyond those initial valleys, also divided by some range of hills and mountains, but they are way higher. Let's say that it is easier to make waves flow from those high ones to the lower ones at their base.
Do you see the image? The activated Kekkei Genkai would be able to easily flow to lower-level elements that create them, we also would be able to improve those lower elements easier, as we can pour to them from the activated upper springs.
Maybe such a spring needs to be activated only once for us to gain awareness and all it needs from us to use its benefits would be just to let it pour some of the essence down to our initial pool.
Of course, the whole image is just a simplification, we could add more dimensions to all of it and create vector space, maybe it is possible to move from the initial pool straight to Kekkei Genkai, on an even steeper rock climb, without touching elemental attributes, and then going down would be easier, or maybe same as difficult.
There could be more initial states, like sensing chakra, medical chakra, Ying, and Yang, but do you get an idea of the model? One needs to climb somewhere, slowly splashing droplets up some hill to activate an affinity that is beyond the hill, so it can generate its own energy and then send it back down.
We could even call the process of moving our chakra there as some kind of giving life to the spring that is all dried up, and the more we give, the more powerful the spring is, and the easier and more can flow down to our chakra pool.
Is that concept a good representation of the model? What the heck, are you really asking that? The most probable answer is: "Hell no!", but it gives an idea of how to attempt to acquire Kekkei Genkai.
As we have learned with Naruto World, having a great idea for Chakra to conceptualize is half of the success.
So, how do we achieve synchronization with different Chakra?
The most straightforward solution would be to engraft someone's flesh and hope its chakra combines with their chakra, enough so, that one can see this spring or maybe it can activate on its own, so you can acquire it.
The best examples are Danzo, Madara, or the greatest oddball of them all, Orochimaru who gets Kekkei Genkai forever after possessing a body, even after switching it. Notable examples are the Silver and Gold brothers, getting Kyuubi's chakra after feasting in its stomach.
Or Naruto and Sasuke acquiring Sage Chakra, though in this example they didn't gain activation of some spring, no, this chakra was probably directly poured to their lowest spring from Sage, without activating the springs of their own.
Which is a huge waste, they could have probably used the overwhelming connection to send waves and acquire those Kekkei Genkais for real, or the sage chakra forever.
The second problem may be the necessary quality of the Chakra, and that spring may need lots of the initial chakra to even activate, and when searching you could just throw the initial water at it and miss it is there, because it didn't activate. The quality of the chakra may also be important.
Or if one takes foreign Chakra into you and it is better than theirs, it starts to wreak havoc instead of assimilating, destroying springs, or changing everything, who knows, it is just a representation model of something more complicated. As we do for example for Gravity, we imagine heavy objects weighing on a net of Space, proverbially curving it.
Though, one is just a figment of the imagination and the second is a simplified picture of a well-established theory.
The other way than grafting to achieve the breakthrough, without dealing with DNA and cancers, could be a slow way of meditating on some concepts that would proverbially send waves in some direction at semi-random, by attempting to harmonize your chakra to achieve the intended quality. It is a process that is achieved through repetition and exploration and it may be accomplished by sending your chakra through the things you want to control/create like sand, ice, mud, trees, lava, etc.
Hoping that eventually, it will one day click,
On the other hand, it may be that your actions only will fruit when creating offspring, and just then it would carry on through the evolution.
Or it may be possible that even temporarily activating a spring may not be enough, and bloodline would make it easier, as it may change one's first created pool in such a way that it could be used as a key to access some hidden path to a certain valley. Without it, it would need a lot of development in the spring before it reaches such sufficiency that it doesn't dry up.
One way to see it is that a Chakra fruit or becoming Jubi Jinchuriki, could grant Chakra so potent and strong, that it can easily be used to activate springs of Kekkei Genkai, or maybe it activated them by itself, giving special eyes like Byakugan or Rinnegan. In essence, it may even carry genetic information or alter someone genetically.
Soul, genetics, and chakra. Curious how they influence each other in this world, isn't it? It is a popular motive in other works of fiction, like Jujutsu Kaisen, which connects body, soul, and mind. Therefore, as the world seems like a mockery of real physics combined with random concepts that influence chakra, Askuna wouldn't be too surprised if that was the case.
Or the world may make sense and it is all encoded in genetics and any pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo won't work. Yeah, unlikely, there is too much weird stuff there happening with chakra.
Therefore, between engrafting and attunement, he prefers the second if possible. So for his next project, he will try to learn how to imitate the chakra of others or mix small doses of it so his chakra can learn how to access those dimensions or morph itself as needed.
In this random search method, he has the clear advantage of time. He can spend way more on probing done by his mind clones than others, experimenting in parallel and all around the clock. However, in the end, his training may be hindered by the amount of chakra he needs to flow there.
Simple, more chakra and higher density of it could allow for greater coverage and efficiency of experimentation.
While searching for some hidden valley of chakra combinations may be possible considering the number of his clones, it may be way easier to attune to someone's other chakra, who has already those avenues discovered. Like Mokuton for example.
If that doesn't work, maybe getting a bit of their chakra mixing in Askuna's System, of course properly diluted, over longer periods could do the trick. Though, who knows, if he won't poison himself doing so.
Maybe he needs a proper genetic component that would handle mixing this chakra. He will do his research on medical ninjutsu later, hopefully without violating the human rights of his subjects. Or, maybe steal notes from Orochimaru or Konocha Medical System?
Nevertheless, as Askuna was sitting alone in his room at home, he decided it was time to experiment with the simplest option, which is visualizing a mixture of fire and water chakra of boil release gathering in his hand and evaporating all water from the filled bowl he had in front of himself.
He could feel the passive evaporation of water particles hitting his hand, so he thought that it could be beneficial for the attunement.
If water training was moisturizing, pressure and movement, and fire training was igniting, burning, and increasing temperature, then who knows maybe it also works. He could control the strain of twenty clones working together on the task, each trying different variations of transforming their chakra.
Some were trying a plain mixture of fire and water chakra fusion, some were trying to concentrate on the image and pouring chakra into it. Some were trying training steps on a micro scale, while 3 nerds were trying to compose the technique from hand seals first.
Ultimately, he didn't have the luxury of never taking a break, or working tirelessly, like some of his mental clones, which got reset every now and then. He had physical limitations holding him back, therefore, he could just leave his hand in the bowl of water and easily fall asleep, read some book with the other hand, leaving his mental clones to do the necessary training.
So he spent his time leisurely, while his clones worked hard, and ultimately decided to go to sleep, leaving his hand in the water. His clones were working exactly at a threshold of his chakra regenerating, so it could continue indefinitely.
But, before going to bed he was also asked by clones to leave both hands submerged in two different bowls, so he could train tenketsu in both hands.
Normally, carrying a ball of water in his hand via manipulation or chakra sticking was still too chakra-consuming to activate continuously without end, so when he woke tomorrow morning, he spent the day the same as before, with little nagging of his clones to do some running to enhance endurance.
As the weekend was finally ending, he estimated, that his clones worked around 400 hours on this during the first three days and the tenketsu on his hands was stinging him quite painfully from overwork. But before they shut it down for night's rest, it seems that one clone has figured something up.
He and the other clones received the supervisor clone's notes on a current state-of-the-art hypothesis on how to trigger an interesting effect while trying to do some chakra nature change.
When everyone understood what was going on, all instances focused on trying this experiment, Askuna also focused his hand and tried to combine every experience to nudge his chakra to boil. Meanwhile, the forty mobilized mind clones performed necessary hand seals, and changes in nature, which were far beyond the scope of what one person could do simultaneously.
The first thing they discovered was that it started to drain a noticeable amount of chakra and the pressure in his tenketsu was increasing, without anything outside happening. Before they realized it, it started to greedily absorb chakra into his hand at an exponential rate, and when there was half of his chakra left in the body, some clones reacted and stopped all chakra supply to the technique while some focused on stabilizing.
But before, it could be canceled out...
BOOM!
A/N warning for the faint of heart, vivid description of the injury.
Sound reverberated and Askuna tumbled around a little. Before his body had time to react, his clones updated him on what had happened. His face and everything around him were painted by a small rain of red.
To confirm their words, he looked down at his hand, or what was supposed to be his right hand, as just below the elbow there was a stump holding on some skin a lot of nothing, and pieces of his little finger.
Scattered around the floor and a section of a wall, were pieces of his flesh, along with a thumb sitting somewhere.
He grimaced, getting up, feeling some of his clones cleaning his face, hair, and front of the shirt with water manipulation, tendrils of water went through the room with pieces of strings, while he burned his chakra like no tomorrow to clean everything up.
He received confirmation, that the previous state of the body was remembered in memory archives, and was at great speed starting to be incorporated into clone jutsu, which would only appear as his hand.
He was asked to cut off the connecting skin, which he did, and strings of chakra put pressure on his limb to stop spewing blood. He looked at his severed appendage which traveled below a cupboard, and his hand was replaced by an unmoving clone's one.
Right on time.
"Are you alright?!" Came his father and mother rushing from the saloon, opening the door in a hurry. They were looking at him in worry.
"What was that?" came from Mother who evidently had been ending her face care session after bathing.
Askuna felt structural pathways of clones forming a smile on his face and they moved his real hand to scratch the back of his head, while he said, "Haha, I broke the bowl when trying to stick it to me. Ninja stuff."
They scrutinized him for any injury, before relaxing seeing no harm happened. His father sighed, saying.
"Ahh, the one you were carrying for the last two days?" recognized father, before continuing, "Hmm, okay, no worry, we heard the noise, and thought something had happened..." he started to leave," Wait a second, I'll bring a scoop and dustpan, don't hurt yourself when cleaning it."
"Okay." He waited, while his clones were organizing a quick jutsu that would replace clone jutsu with shadow clone, but just for hand, and controlled by one of the instances.
"Be careful sweetie." His mother smiled and left for the bathroom, shouting to Father, "Behind the broom in the locker!"
"I know!" Shouted Father before moving from where he was to the locker. Askuna had a hundred of his clones initialized at this moment which went through hastily put-together bastardization models of a shadow clone, they had made the original before, but now it was supposed to be only a hand extension.
In the meantime, he also took some bandages, as he had them bought for the academy. With the help of more clones, they hastily replaced chakra bindings with bandages, but it was not enough, he needed something more restrictive.
He went to his kunai holster, which used velcro, cut it down with a weak wind chakra he explored on the side, and tied it around his stump with the help of his clones, before fastening at max strength.
'Not tight enough.' analyzed Askuna, additionally hearing shuffling being done and Father getting on his feet, having found the dustpan, he went to his previous position and hid his makeshift first aid tools.
Modifying the technique, in principle should be easy, but they already failed two times, due to some hastily made inefficiencies, and they didn't want to force chakra at the problem to force the jutsu happening, as they were at around the fifth.
Last try, or he will stay with the clone hand. Steps of his father were coming and almost perfect execution of the technique was made, without much smoke, his clone hand was replaced with a shadow clone hand.
The pain from the hand didn't register until now, it was all happening too fast for his brain to process losing his hand, but now as he and his father were collecting the bowl shards, the pain from the hand started creeping in, twisting his bowels and soon terrible headache started creeping in.
He reduced the number of mental clones down to five, to save chakra, dizziness from chakra exhaustion and pain started to come in, he was now dangerously close to zero, producing only a little above what he was expanding.
"Don't worry son," he patted Askuna heartedly on the shoulder of an injured arm, to which Askuna grimaced, a little, but father didn't register it as he was swiping shards and added, "I have seen how hard you worked with that exercise, it is no wonder it took you so long to break it!", he laughed.
When the swiping ended and he put a towel on the ground for water to sink into it, he looked at Askuna and said, "Come son, take a break, I was making dinner, and it is almost ready, you will tell us, what this training was about, okay?"
Askuna wanted to be anywhere else right now, but one of his clones suggested, that replenishing calories may be good for chakra to gather faster, so he smiled and agreed with Dad's proposal.
That being said, he needed to stop bleeding, so he answered "Sure, give me a minute and I'll come."
His dad went out of the room, and Askuna heard steps moving away, so he dashed toward the board with little pins in it, he collected a bunch of them and fastened the velcro belt before pinning it in place with pins heated by fire release going into his skin.
He breathed heavily and looked and observed his stump. He was turning into Pain, or it could be Naruto or Sasuke after their battle.
Nevertheless, it didn't work, blood was still seeping. He carefully closed his doors, took his pillow stuffed it in his jaw, before taking his kunai out, and started to heat it with fire chakra. Due to conductivity, his handle was also getting hot, so one of his clones used chakra cushioning between this and his hand.
He took the flat of the blade to his stump and pressed. His clones created a suction to press it thoroughly, as the pain almost made him drop down the kunai. His screams were shuffled a little.
He felt the bone touching the Kunai, everything felt quite vivid. His mentality was replaced twice with new instances already, however he was nearing his last legs.
Yet, his clones decided that he needed to redo it, so they made him apply it a second time, after which they put him back on his feet with steel chakra structures and hanged him to not look so dead. He didn't know how much chakra he had left, it was so empty that he was almost passing out.
It was also smelling quite a bit of sizzled flesh.
Yet, he has used a little of this chakra to take some of the moisture from the towel and splash it on tools which he used to wipe off the new blood, then dropped everything close to his hand laying under the bed.
Now he was swaying on his legs. Fresh instance reset gave him a little willpower, so he prepared to go out of the room.
Going out of his room, he spotted Mom leaving a bathroom, so he went in, closed the doors, and splashed his face with cold water while making himself appear normal and steadying his ragged breathing. His new hand cusped the water normally.
He didn't linger and went to the dinner. His dad served sushi.
'Raw fish, in the middle of the forest.', Askuna snorted, before throbbing pain in his eye, made him clear his thoughts. Alas, his father asked, "So, tell us what was the training you were doing."
Askuna started to reach with his left hand for sushi, but he realized his hand was shaking, so his clones used structural pathways to stop it, expending even more chakra, while he answered "I was using Chakra to stick to things, and more advanced technique is to stick to water, so I was attempting that.", then he yawned, saying "but then I used too much chakra and it slipped. Sorry, I have overtrained and would like to go to sleep afterward."
His father nodded, and his mother came in, saying "Yes, your father also liked to overtrain himself, didn't he?"
"Ekhm..." he coughed while averting his eyes, but then Askuna decided to ask "Overtraining? Were you also trying to be a ninja?"
His father blushed while looking at his mother, and mumbled, "Something like that...", then he looked at his son and put more fish on his plate "Eat up son, it is really good. Then go to sleep."
What happened next was a blur, he ate and yawned before excusing himself and saying good night, but when he got into the room, he checked his stump, "Heh, handicapped." he laughed, before literally falling on the bed on his uninjured side.
His mental clones already had a strategy prepared, first sleep, and tomorrow he will have to burn through medical ninjutsu to stabilize his condition, before gaining rapid mastery in it.
He just needs medical knowledge and all the techniques he will think of by himself on the fly, he will have to find some still-alive fish on the market, and in the meantime, he will use his shadow clone arm.
But the greatest problem was that tomorrow would be Monday, so he had Academy. He is out of Chakra and his shadow clone arm with 5 mental clones takes the equivalent of previously twenty, and he is close to Chakra exhaustion.
Which in turn means he will recover only a third by the morning, which is not enough to learn medical ninjutsu on the fly. So he will have to go to the Academy, where there are Hyuga kids. Nah, he won't learn medical ninjutsu in a day, it is impossible, so he just needs to read enough to know what to do to prevent rot.
Maybe, buy some balm on injuries or alcohol to disinfect it? Fire cauterized it, so it should be fine, right?
He also needs to utilize his lost hand somewhere, so his mom won't spot it tomorrow.
"Ughh..." he groaned in both mental and physical pain.
Was it much of the handicap, though? How good is the shadow clone arm?
When in combat, his clones will work on it, and use standard strengthening and cushioning methods to prevent it from dispelling on contact. Chakra within should make it undistinguishable from sensors but not byakugan.
Almost all bases covered, he used the last of his chakra, to cover his injured arm with the bed's quilt, before passing out.
Only going to his mindscape let him finally gain some peace and fall asleep.
All in all, he considered it a minor setback.