His basic physical training was progressing steadily, and through a hundredfold effort, he had barely managed to grasp the rudiments of using Chakra in a crude way. But Shira knew that real combat involved far more than that.
Taijutsu was more than running and throwing punches. It included fighting techniques and the use of weapons.
He began incorporating basic fighting moves he knew from his previous life into his training: straight punches, hooks, uppercuts, side kicks, low sweeps, simple grappling techniques, and evasive footwork.
The moves were monotonous, but he practiced them with painstaking care, striving to perform each one to the utmost limit his current body could manage.
Before long, however, he ran into a new bottleneck.
He needed weapons. At the very least, he needed basic Shuriken and Kunai for throwing practice, wooden posts or sandbags to hone his striking accuracy and power generation, and even some weights to strengthen specific muscle groups.
But when he tactfully asked his parents for a training Kunai, a troubled look appeared on his mother's face.
"Shira, that sort of thing is very expensive." His mother stroked his head, her voice apologetic. "Besides, ninja tool shops won't just sell them to a child who isn't a ninja..."
Shira fell silent. He understood. Resources were scarce in Sunagakure, and metal goods were especially precious. Even the most ordinary training Kunai was indeed a considerable expense for an ordinary merchant family like theirs.
More importantly, in this rigidly stratified village, certain boundaries existed, even if they couldn't be seen.
He couldn't, and wouldn't, put his parents in a difficult position.
"I understand, Mom. It's all right. I'll think of another way." He gave his parents a reassuring smile, but inside, he once again felt the weight of this world's reality.
Over the next few days, as he finished his chores at Chiyo's place, his gaze began to drift, deliberately or otherwise, over the piles of "scrap."
He saw broken puppet arms containing tiny metal joints and connecting pins;
He saw gears and bearings too badly worn to be used in precision puppets anymore;
He saw discarded miniature Shuriken with dulled edges, which seemed to have been projectiles for some kind of mechanism;
There were also irregularly shaped metal offcuts.
To Chiyo, this trash was worthless, but in Shira's eyes, it glimmered faintly.
One day, after finishing his work, he was about to take his usual bag of medicinal dregs when he stopped and turned to Chiyo, who was inspecting a set of puppet joints.
"Lady Chiyo," he said respectfully.
Chiyo didn't even look up. Her tone was as impatient as ever. "The medicinal dregs are in the usual place. Take them and leave. Don't waste time."
"I would like something different today," Shira said.
"Hmm?" Chiyo finally raised her eyes and glanced at him, seemingly a little surprised that the boy would make a new request. "What caught your eye? I don't have anything valuable to give you."
Shira pointed to the pile of scrap metal in the corner. "I'd like some discarded parts and offcuts."
Chiyo followed his finger and frowned. "What do you want that junk for? You can't eat it or use it."
Shira took a deep breath and answered honestly, "My lady, I'd like to make some training equipment. My family can't afford proper ninja tools, so I want to try using this scrap."
"Training equipment?" Chiyo looked him up and down and snorted. "Making Kunai out of scrap? Boy, do you think forging is child's play? Without a furnace and hammer, how are you going to work it?"
"I understand," Shira replied, neither servile nor overbearing. "I never intended to make real Kunai. I only need pieces of metal with roughly the same weight and shape, so I can get a feel for holding, swinging, and throwing them. I could even just use pieces of metal heavy enough to serve as weights."
His requirements were modest, so modest that all he needed was the metal itself.
Chiyo looked at the serious, determined expression in Shira's eyes, then at the pile of scrap, which really was useless and taking up space.
In her decades of life, she had seen all kinds of geniuses, but this was the first time she had seen such a "penniless" boy, so good at finding materials in a hopeless situation.
"Suit yourself." She waved a hand as if shooing away a fly. "Take whatever you want from that pile of junk. It'll be less of an eyesore here. But don't expect me to help you work it, and I don't have money to buy you tools."
"Yes! That's enough! Thank you, Lady Chiyo!" A surge of joy rose in Shira's heart, and he thanked her solemnly.
From that day on, Shira added another task to his "part-time job": prospecting for gold.
After finishing his chores, he would squat beside the pile of scrap metal and carefully rummage through it. He looked for pieces of metal of a suitable weight and an easy-to-grip shape;
He looked for thin sheets that could be ground down to a rough edge, and heavy gears he could string together to use as weights...
The process was grueling. With no tools, he could only resort to the crudest methods: rubbing metal sheets repeatedly against hard rock just to give some of them rough edges, and binding heavy objects with sturdy sea buckthorn vines to make a crude weighted vest or leg weights.
As a result, his hands gained many new cuts and blood blisters.
Chiyo would sometimes watch him coldly from the sidelines, but on occasion, when he was stumped by an oddly shaped part, she would suddenly toss him a remark:
"You idiot, that's the core of black ironwood, not metal. You could grind it till you die and it still wouldn't work. The dark gray piece next to it is the one."
"Making weights? Those vines will snap in three days. That discarded spool of Chakra Threads in the corner has lost its conductivity, but it's strong enough. Take it."
The pointers were trivial and even came with scolding, but they were crucial to Shira. He treasured every word, committing it to memory and putting it into practice.
At last, he had his first set of pitifully shabby "training equipment":
A few rough-edged pieces of metal that he could just barely grip and throw;
An immensely heavy makeshift dumbbell made from discarded bearings bound together with Chakra Threads;
A weighted vest sewn with all kinds of metal fragments.
The items were crude, ugly, and even somewhat ridiculous, a world apart from proper ninja tools.
But Shira looked at them as though they were treasures.
He began wearing the weighted vest for his daily runs and physical training, swinging the misshapen "dumbbell" to build arm strength, and throwing the hefty metal pieces again and again at a bull's-eye drawn on a rock.
Every time he sweated buckets, every ache and swell of his muscles, left him feeling deeply fulfilled.
Once again, he proved through his actions: if the conditions didn't exist, he would create them! If he had no fine materials, he would use scrap iron to hone an edge of his own!
Through the window, Chiyo watched the stubborn figure in the courtyard, clad in comical weights and furiously throwing "scrap iron" at a rock. In her cloudy eyes, a trace of something, so faint that even she herself didn't notice it, flickered and vanished.
Perhaps this boy really can use what others see as trash to carve a path through the desert that no one has ever imagined.