"Oooooooooh, you mean- well, the way I've been taught it… it's like… uh… you imagine a mirror on your hand. You can see the mirrored hand, and you pretend its your other hand, so you mentally perform a normal handseal, but physically you perform it with one hand. It's hard to imagine a mirror all the time, so I'm just tryin to adapt to it. Gotta practice a lot!"
Listen, Lord forbid Kojirou ever became an Instructor, but he was on to something. One-handed handseals were literal - just the one half of a normal, two-handed handseal. Mirroring your one-handed handseal made it appear like you were performing a normal handseal, and thus the same circuit effect could still apply. Chakra would still want to circuit through the inexistent mirror, which was why it was so difficult to master this technique. However, teaching your body to circuit chakra through one hand was less established, less tangible and less explainable - chakra was still, in many ways, a mysterious force of nature. It was like imagining that chakra still flowed through the air from one hand to another, but it didn't actually do that- all of that was a bit too brain-numbing for Kojirou to fathom, but he tried.
"You gotta just channel your chakra in a circuit on one hand, though… I think. Handseals don't always apply like that, they mostly help you concentrate the flow of chakra further in the center of your body or wherever you need the chakra to go, so maybe that's why one-handed handseals work in the first place."
…
Kojirou had gotten good at preparing bonfires after years of camping during his missions, so he got right to filling up the ring with more branches and wood blocks. Since there were plenty of branches around them – still in the embrace of green shrubbery – Kojirou chose a large and old tree, not wanting to ruin the chances for smaller trees to grow up into the clouds one day.
Then he pushed his tsuba with his thumb and loosened his katana from its sheath. The branches furthest above looked thick enough, so he took a powered leap and severed those vegetative arms from the trunk, cutting the branches into suitable pieces for the bonfire. After landing on the wet, grassy floor again – watching the pieces of thick wood logs drop like bricks – the swordsman would use his haori to carry handfuls of them back to the camp, inevitably revealing his scarred arms with recovered blisters and burned areas.
He'd light the bonfire by simply poking it with a heated katana, making use of its chakra-conductive properties and his affinity for Lava Release, which did include a bit of Fire Release mixed in there. After Itsuki had prepared the rabbits on sticks, Kojirou would help keep the stick over the fire and watch the rabbit meat darken and become much more edible. From his Katana Case, the swordsman would pull up knives to cut rabbit pieces out for consumption, while Itsuki was setting up a small shelter for the night.
"We should reach the border to Arashi no Kuni by tomorrow noon. A direct line through the country, and we’ll see Kaze no Kuni by afternoon,” he explained based on the intel that his higher-ups granted him via a scroll that Kojirou pulled up from his holster, "As long as we keep moving, we should be good.” With that said, Kojirou and co. would enjoy their cooked rabbit legs and breast before hitting the bags for the night. As they were still in Nohara no Kuni as of now, Kojirou wasn’t on too high alert, but…
Arashi no Kuni lived up to its name. It was stormy… therefore, it was late afternoon once they finally saw the border – and what a clear, solid and noticeable border that was. Stormy wetland got contoured sharply by dry, cracked ground, and it was almost as if the weather was barriered between cold and humid to warm and dry. Kojirou couldn’t help but skip between the two weathers separated by only a few meters, his eyes widening at the absurdity of it all.
Since they reached the border, it didn’t take long before they reached what looked like a canyon pass. Steeper mountain parts had jacked up, fitting with the narrowed area shown on the scroll that Kojirou handed over to Itsuki. "The mountain pass over there… might just be our target. No messenger birds in view, though… but the moment one shows up…”
Kojirou had minimal sensory skills, but he was still trying. His eyes widened, and he could feel that his vision blurred – in the end, he simply convinced himself that he could try and see further with some sort of willed-forth Visual Prowess like Asuka. The results were nil, though. "Hmmmmmmmh… let’s move closer,” he suggested, approaching the dry mountain pass under the afternoon sun turning faintly orange as the evening was approaching.
The mountain pass was deep, or maybe the mountains themselves were just that tall. Either way, messenger birds used these passes for safety passage as they often carried important information, but to truly assess what happened to them lately, they’d have to follow one such messenger bird on its route. This meant that they needed to climb up on the pass and reach higher altitudes.
… Rocks began falling down after entering the pass a bit. Due to the height from where they fell, they were possibly within view of at least one of the shinobi present. Not only by sight, but also by the sound of the rocks colliding with the precipice.
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