บท 14: 14: Waste Of Time
Himiko had been up bright and early on the morning after Seija's seventh birthday.
She'd made and eaten a breakfast for herself, cleaned the bowl she used, washed some of her dirty clothes and read a newspaper. She'd seen off Ryoku who was heading out for a usual day at the clinic. He may not have had any Medical Ninjutsu like the old doctor Iyashi or Doctor Ise, Nagato's father, did. But he was quick with his hands and his old Root Anbu training had made him by far the most tollerant of blood and gore in the entire hospital. He would be pulling in more than enough money on his own to support the family, even if they didn't still have most of the money they stole from the Hyuga clan a decade ago now.
All told, it should have been a normal morning. And yet...
'Why is she still not up?' Himiko thought.
Seija hadn't got up yet even though it was almost 9AM. She was normally up bright and early, no later than 7AM, to get as much training time out of a day as possible.
Himiko frowned to herself and activated her Byakugan. Peering into Seija's bedroom, she was surprised to find that the girl was actually awake.
'But then why's she just pacing around her room? She looks like she's seriously deep in thought right now...' Himiko was struggling to figure out what could've gripped Seija's mind so thoroughly that she would pace around her room for over two full hours when breakfast was available and she still had plenty of Ninjutsu practice to work through.
In the end, Himiko caved.
'I'll just ask her...'
- - -
"[Seija. You are thinking too hard about this.]"
'Too hard?! I'm thinking too hard?! Well maybe my memories should've shown me this earlier!'
"[You know that is not how memory surges work. Knowing this information earlier could've only stressed you out.]"
'Firewall, please just be quiet right now.'
"[...]"
"[Very well.]"
As she felt Firewall's presence fade to the back of her mind she returned to her lamentations. She was now seven years old and more of her memories had returned in the night. The problem was that those memories contained a significant amount of important information that would've massively helped her had she known it earlier.
'And even then, I still can't tell what this new 'huge event' in my memories is! It'll be here at some point before my ninth birthday, but that entire time is totally shrouded by fog in my mind! And the training! It could've been so much more bloody efficient if only-'
"Seija? You've been pacing around for hours now. What's wrong?" Her mother interrupted her. This annoyed her at first and she nearly lashed out, but she quickly realised that this was a good thing. Now she could ask about something that she wished she had learned first before everything else!
"Mom! Perfect timing! I need you to help me find something in the basement."
"Uh-huh... Well only if you come downstairs. Calmly. And eat your breakfast." Himiko said with her sweetest smile.
*shiver* 'Sheesh... I really, really don't like it when she smiles like that...' Seija complied with her mother's wishes and calmed down a bit.
After getting properly dressed, eating breakfast and heading down into the basement, Seija pulled her mother over to where they had sorted the B-rank Jutsus six months prior.
"There was something in here that I remembered reading. All of these Jutsu are labelled and their functions described within the scrolls themselves, right?" Seija asked. She had read the scroll in passing but didn't notice the implications of the Jutsu's finer details until her most recent memory surge.
"Right. You're clearly building up to something here so I'll let you get on with it."
"Thank you. There's a Jutsu in the B-rank category that I briefly passed over but in hindsight, this really should've been the first technique that I ever learned, let alone found out about six months ago."
"Oh, have you realised something about this Jutsu that I haven't? Well well, which one is it then? We've got dozens of scrolls in here but it shouldn't take us too long to check them all."
"It was called the Shadow Clone Jutsu. A B-rank cloning jutsu that creates physical clones of the user that share the user's total chakra supply between them."
"Oh? That old Jutsu? I never found the time to learn that one since it was never taught to me back in Konoha. Naturally, I didn't really have the time to sit down and practice it after we stole it and fled here, nor did I see a reason to." Himiko explained as she searched the top half of the shelves.
"Did you discover something special about it?" She asked Seija, who was searching the lower half.
"Yes. It can- Ah-ha! Here it is!" Seija unfurled the scroll with her left hand and gestured to it with her right. Sure enough, it was labelled.
"Here, read what it says there: 'When the shadow clones are dispelled, either due to an enemy attack or by the user's own will, all of the clones memories are returned to the user.' Isn't that insane?!" Seija animatedly announced.
Himiko froze. This...
'Oh my god... she's right!' Himiko realised.
"Seija if this works like you think it will... this could massively accellerate your learning speed!"
And she was right. Seija knew she was because the technique had been shown to her in her memories. If the user of the Shadow Clone Jutsu creates a clone, they can send it off to do a bunch of training. Then, at the end of the day, when the clone is dispelled by the user, the user gets all of the memories of the training that the clone did, effectively allowing the user to multiply their training speed by the number of clones that they summon!
'Well, it wasn't quite that efficient... both the clones and the user have to make do with a smaller chakra supply while they're training, and it naturally doesn't work at all for physical training since neither muscle memory nor physical growth get transferred to the user.' She mused.
'And this is just the regular Shadow Clone Jutsu, not the Multi variant that Naruto uses. This version can't create nearly as many, around five or six being the usual limit compared to the Multi version being almost limitless. But that could be a blessing rather than a curse. Because absorbing too many memories at once is extremely mentally taxing, you really shouldn't use that many clones at once anyways if you don't want to knock yourself out. I guess Naruto was just built different.'
Seija knew that this would drastically speed up her training. And that was why she lamented that she hadn't learned it the moment she learned her first hand signs. Checking the scroll to see how to cast the Jutsu, she was infuriated to find that the Jutsu was almost insultingly simple.
Which was actually why it was typically restricted to Jonins only. If some poor fool with a small chakra supply found this Jutsu and tried to immediately create the maximum number of clones, they'd accidentally kill themselves on the spot from sudden chakra exhaustion. To say nothing of the Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu, which would do the same even if you were a Kage-rank shinobi powerhouse.
Generally speaking, only people like Naruto, who enjoyed the benefits of not only being an Uzumaki, but also being the reincarnation of Asura, being the son of a Hokage, and being a Jinchuriki at the same time could afford to use it safely even when they created hundreds of clones at once. (Though Seija hadn't remembered the Asura part yet.)
Seija had both a large supply, likely from her own part Uzumaki and part Senju genetics, and also unmatched quality when it came to her own chakra. In fact, she was excited to find out how her higher quality chakra would affect the Jutsu's functionality. Would she be able to make more than six clones, maybe seven or eight? Or would the chakra make her clones more durable?
She wasted no time finding out...
- - - - -
A month later, Himiko led Seija down a side street and out to the south-west of their small town.
"Mom, where are you taking me today, exactly?" Seija finally asked after having walked around with her for over ten minutes now with no sign of stopping.
"I'm showing you the way to a small patch of woodland just outside of town. You've been training with those clones of yours for a full month now and the energy of your training is intensifying to the point that it's no longer safe for you to practice in a space as small as our back yard." Himiko explained. She had truly been astounded by her daughter's recent spike in power.
The girl had already figured out how to manually mould her earth, lightning, and wind affinity chakra for the purposes of nature transformation, which meant that she could now wield those raw elements on their own if she needed to, or more importantly create her own techniques using them if she took the time to do so.
Most ninjas never bothered to learn raw nature transformation. Why would they, when pre-existing Jutsu came with nature transformation built into them through their hand signs? It would normally take over a year even for a talented young clan-child to learn just one element, let alone three...
'Almost four, now that I think about it.' Himiko realised, 'She says that she's getting closer to figuring out fire. *sigh* My darling little genius...' She hadn't used that nickname in a while, and it made her smile to herself.
Himiko's thoughts began to wander elsewhere...
'Honestly... to think such a perfect training tool as that Shadow Clone Jutsu was just gathering dust in our basement. I should be ashamed of myself for not reviewing all of the Jutsu down there years ago. I had plenty of time to do it back when I was stuck at home-' Her thoughts were halted by the realisation that they had arrived.
"Alright, we're here!" Himiko spread her arms wide and gestured to the clearing around her.
"Once you've familiarised yourself with the place I'm trusting you to make your own way out here to train regularly. Those war rumors are starting to make the rounds again, and just like a few years ago people will be panic-buying and prices will increase. I'm going to have to go back to my old job at the clinic with Ryoku so that we don't eat into our savings." Himiko said, implying that she wouldn't be around to help Seija train anymore. Seija nodded to her and took a look around the immediate area.
A nice, wide open space in the forest, even with a few convenient boulders to try out more powerful Jutsu on. Seija couldn't have asked for a better place to train in private, a solid 30 minute walk from the town. Of course, that commute would be significantly faster when Body Flickering, which would be perfectly fine once outside of the town's radius.
There was also a low fence enclosing the area hundreds of meters around. This wouldn't stop any Jutsu or thrown weapons from flying off into the forest. Rather, it was simply there to make sure that no wayward foragers would wander into the danger zone. Seija hadn't yet learned how to really sense people with her chakra, and so Himiko installed the fence here as an extra layer of safety for the innocent bystanders until she did.
And with Himiko heading back to town, Seija grinned to herself and crossed her fingers.
[Shadow Clone Jutsu]
An impressive ten clones appeared in a burst of smoke. Her chakra quality really had increased the number she could summon. However...
She'd found out that unfortunately they weren't quite as efficient for learning as she had predicted. Even though she'd already expected them to be limited by their small chakra capacity, she was disappointed to find that the information they returned once dispelled was a jumbled mess of everything the clone was thinking about at the time, not just what they were studying.
Her mind could only absorb so much of this mixed information at once, so roughly 80% of the memories the clones returned to her at a time were unusable for training. Chakra weaving was a complicated affair, after all.
'Guess that explains why it took Naruto literally hundreds of clones just to learn how to split a leaf using Wind Style...'
All told, these ten clones had increased her learning speed for Ninjutsu training by double. Maybe sometimes tripple on a good day when the clones didn't have much else on their minds.
Of course, this was still much faster than any normal shinobi would be able to train.
'Now, let's continue studying nature transformation, shall we?'
Her power would only continue to rise, slowly but surely.
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