Scrap Gauntlet

At dusk, Hui had barely stepped into Chuanhe Residence when Amber fixed him with a deadly stare.

"Stare~ Meow, I knew it was you, Hui. How are you going to make it up to me for my fish? This batch was specially made. I've been waiting ages for it."

Hui felt sweat pouring down his back under Amber's stare. He raised his hands in surrender, then fled the scene.

Sasuke's face darkened. So one of the two lunchboxes had actually been filled with cat food?

"Phew, finally got out of that one. Practicing ninjutsu is much better. Sasuke, which scroll do you want to see?"

"Of course, the Shadow Clone Technique."

"Here."

After memorizing the entire scroll, Sasuke said his goodbyes. He planned to go home and practice first, then come back tomorrow to ask Senior Chuanhe about anything he didn't understand. After all, this was his brother's arrangement.

He also didn't want to watch Hui's back disappear out of reach.

After saying goodbye to Sasuke, Hui sat quietly in a chair in the living room, staring at his hands. Today's lessons at the Ninja Academy had been a little dull; he'd learned all that material ages ago.

His father had already taught him the nature of chakra, so he couldn't let his expectations down.

A long time ago, Hui had noticed that his chakra reserves were abnormal. Could it have something to do with the thing on his back?

Hui wasn't stupid, of course. He had his suspicions about his father's strange behavior yesterday.

But his own situation didn't match the descriptions of Jinchuriki. The Tailed Beasts described in the records were one more evil than the next. They hardly seemed like the sort that would willingly take on their host's injuries.

Since his father said it was a good thing, he decided not to dwell on it. The truth would come out one day. He closed his eyes and focused intently on sensing his chakra.

Matter and energy were much harder to understand than chakra. If he couldn't turn that knowledge into combat power, then learning it was pointless. Even if his father didn't say so, Hui couldn't forgive himself for that.

"Mass, kinetic energy, inertia," Hui muttered. Chakra began to gather in his hand, spreading over his entire palm.

Energy existed in relation to matter. To gain greater destructive power, he needed to imbue matter with more energy.

"Kinetic energy, speed."

"Angular momentum, angular velocity!"

The pale blue chakra in his hand slowly separated from his skin, leaving a gap. Then it began to spin around his hand, forming a rapidly rotating gauntlet.

Hui opened his eyes and studied the new technique he had developed. Chakra with no elemental nature, spinning at high speed. The feeling was oddly familiar. Wasn't this the Rasengan his father had told him about?

Hui grew excited, as if he'd uncovered an incredible secret.

What if he made this "gauntlet" bigger? Wouldn't it become the Hyuga Clan's Rotation?

Hui tried to expand the technique. The gauntlet around his hand began to swell, but he quickly lost control. He'd failed.

He dispelled the chakra in his hand and tried again, using both hands to shape it according to the description of the Rasengan. He failed again. The Rasengan was an A-rank technique, after all. It was unrealistic to think he could master it so easily.

Compression? Hui thought of the Flame Explosion Technique and its absurd degree of compression. What if he could isolate that part of it...

Hui tamped down his excitement. If he lost control and blew up the house, that would be bad. At the thought, he shuddered.

Thinking back on his two failed attempts, Hui quickly realized the problem. He knew what the techniques looked like, but nothing about how they were actually performed.

Take the Rasengan, for example. Hui only knew that it required rapid rotation and compressed chakra. How fast? How much compression? How did you compress chakra that much? He didn't know the answers to any of those questions.

To use cooking as an analogy, Hui was trying to recreate a dish just by looking at a picture. His father's scrolls were like recipes, spelling out every step in detail: what to do at each moment and exactly how far to take it.

A real chef didn't need to follow a recipe every day.

Sasuke had been right. His father's scroll had been a cheat code. The Earth Clone Technique was only C-rank, but Hui had succeeded after looking at the scroll just once. He'd been too impatient. Could he really call it mastering a technique?

Hui recognized his shortcoming: his foundation as a ninja was too weak.

Following that thought, he realized that his only apparent strength was this chakra that clearly didn't belong to him.

Hui fell into confusion. His father had once told him, "A ninja isn't powerful just because their techniques are powerful."

He'd assumed that as long as he mastered his father's techniques, he could become a ninja like him. He'd been far too arrogant.

He formed the azure "gauntlet" on his hand again. This was the first technique he'd truly developed himself, yet looking at it made Hui unhappy. Anyone would be disappointed after all that effort, only to end up with a shoddy imitation.

He would call it the Scrap Gauntlet. Hui decided he would use this humiliating name to say goodbye to his past.

"What's wrong? You developed a new technique. You should be happy." His father's voice rang out.

"Father, teach me the basics of training as a ninja. I've realized that what I know is like a castle in the air—flashy and powerful on the surface, but in an actual fight, I couldn't even beat a competent Genin."

"I don't know Taijutsu or genjutsu, and even my ninjutsu was spoon-fed to me by you. You taught me that haste makes waste. You should keep this key for now. I'm not worthy of having it yet."

Hui looked at his hands and spoke with a self-deprecating smile. "I've named this technique the Scrap Gauntlet. I want to use that humiliating name to remind myself."

Chuanhe fell silent. All this time, his mindset had been to go faster and faster. The basics of being a ninja? What were those? As long as you had powerful chakra, there were plenty of shortcuts to becoming stronger.

A strong person? Chuanhe thought of Uchiha Madara. He was a ninja who seemed impossible to counter.

Taking Hui's words into account, Chuanhe tried to imagine Madara with a weakness in Taijutsu, or one in genjutsu. With even a single weakness, Madara wouldn't have been so overwhelmingly imposing.

The five elemental releases, Yin-Yang Release, Taijutsu, genjutsu, Sealing Technique, Cursed Seal, dojutsu, even Senjutsu—Uchiha Madara had stood at the pinnacle of the Shinobi World with all of them.

Chuanhe reconsidered his own actions. A modern person's way of thinking was an anomaly in this world. Faced with difficulties, he'd lost his drive to improve. Just like the way he'd taught Hui, he too had been running away.

To avoid war, he'd abandoned his dignity. Yet he'd comforted himself with the thought: When you're at rock bottom, dignity isn't worth a thing.

He'd run from love, too. If Yuki hadn't persisted, Hui wouldn't have been born, and he would still be fantasizing about someone saving the world. He'd been given another life, so why work hard at training? No matter how much he trained, he'd never beat those overpowered freaks.

Hui, this was the second time you'd lit up my life.

What did he have to fear now? At worst, he'd die. One more life was already more than enough. Besides, he had more than enough hidden cards to leave his mark on this illusory world.

"That's a good name. Hui, I'll remember this technique forever," Chuanhe said after a long, long silence.

"Tomorrow, we'll go to the river. This time, I'll teach you from the very beginning."

"Keep the key. You're more suited to holding it now."