[Uzumaki Ichigoni]

[googlefont=Crimson Text]

くたばれ
A resupply in Kibishī Yokubō no Shima, the isle of demanding spectres. It was here where his father lived for a time when Ichigoni was a child, and it was here that he brought his fathers remains when he passed. It seemed almost pointless to bury him, because his remains were sealed within the shinigami itself. Never to rest, locked in eternal battle with the leader of the Uzumaki assassin sent to eliminate them.

He took leave from the ship to attend his fathers grave. Standing within the forest alongside the mountain, he was surrounded by ghost white trees. The tombstone was marked by the sun and moon crest that his father had designed to distinguish them from their enemy cousins. Grey and simple, but overgrown with moss. The Uzumaki spent some time cleaning the stone, and contemplating his life with his father. Silently longing for more time with him.

Perhaps one day, that time would come, should he ever need to call on the devouring ghost. Until then, he had only memories.

After tending to the grave, he unsealed something hidden within the tombstone. The scroll contained encrypted details of his fathers signature technique. One that he was being taught before his death, but he had never quite mastered.

Ichigoni finally felt ready to take on the technique. It was his legacy, and his father would have wanted him to learn it.

1/11

🗡️

[Uzumaki Ichigoni]

[googlefont=Crimson Text]

くたばれ
Pacing from the gravestone after resealing his notes, Ichigoni brought himself to a familiar clearing. He had spent many months of meditation in this grove, attempting all manner of meditations and sensory deprivation in attempts to establish connections with the shinigami. At one point in his life, he thought that he understood the nature of the reaper. It cost him dearly when a demon came to Kirigakure, and the demon didn’t answer his call. He should have died that day, and the village might have been spared much of the destruction it faced.

In the clearing there were mushrooms and pale blue flowers resting in the shadows of the surrounding white oaks of the forest. There was a pool of water in the center, where the Uzumaki looked at his own reflection, briefly imagining the face of his father within it.

Drawing his hand up, Ichigoni manifested a shard within it that was much smaller than his normal chakra rods. Roughly the size of a kunai. His father could do this while manifesting a seal within it.

He observed his rudimentary trigram blade. The shinobi understood the theory behind how it worked, but had never been able to make a breakthrough on actually performing a sealing. He closed his eye and thought back to the days he spent with his father.

2/11

🗡️

[Uzumaki Ichigoni]

[googlefont=Crimson Text]

くたばれ
"That’s not quite right,” his father’s voice called to him in his imagination, or perhaps from the echoes of the bowels of the hungry spirit that lingered in wait to feast on his soul. "The seal itself becomes the weapon.”

It was a lingering memory of his last lesson. "But how do I do that?” he asked, looking at the pool of water in front of him. No response would come, because they had to get underway on their final voyage together. All that he had now were his father’s notes and the memories of him.

Ichigoni decided to start with another seal, perhaps the most basic. On the surface of a scroll, he wrote a generic storage seal and examined it with deep contemplation. The patterns drawn were integral in molding chakra in such a way that it would fold foreign chakra into it. The most basic skill was initiating either mass or energy and translating it into chakra that could be drawn into it like a vacuum.

It was clear that he needed to find a way to mold the chakra just as if he had drawn the seal, and then shape it into a weapon. But he remembered that the formula of his fathers seals looked different than standard, as if they had been modified into a clean kanji that was much more condensed. Simple to the eye, but extremely intricate.

3/11

🗡️

[Uzumaki Ichigoni]

[googlefont=Crimson Text]

くたばれ
Ichigoni placed the kunai sized shard next to the paper. He observed just how little space he had to work with, and tried to imagine how he might convert the formula into something that could be reasonably accommodated into the projectile.

He unraveled another small scroll and placed it next to the two. Before beginning the complexities of trying to manifest the shape of the seal into the shards themselves, he would begin with understanding how he could compact the formula itself that small. Then he needed to make sure that it could release the seal itself and imprint it wherever it made contact. Working with paper was the easiest way to write formulas.

Using his finger to create an engraving seal, he ran it over the paper and began to draw the typical generic seal. He etched carefully and slowly, applying principles that most would think impossible, and that he had only known because of his father’s teachings. Fitting everything into a kanji that could "unfold” into the normal seal was akin to doing olympic level origami.

"Why couldn't you have just been an Uchiha or something? Then I’d be well on my way, all thanks to you,” he said jokingly under his breath. Inspecting what he had drawn, he knew that it was a failure, and he crumbled up the parchment and pulled out more to make another attempt.

4/11

🗡️

[Uzumaki Ichigoni]

[googlefont=Crimson Text]

くたばれ
Nearly an hour passed by, and Ichigoni had gone through several scrolls worth of paper. The shinobi kept finding himself puzzled by nearly perfect seals, so close that he couldn’t find fault with them until he tried his hand at storing pebbles inside. The last one shot the pebble out and it hit the side of his cheek hard enough to break the skin but not quite hard enough to draw blood. A little bump redder than his hair was swollen up on it.

Finally, after a long and arduous process, he produced one of these miniaturized seals that could functionally hold material. There was a certain exacting curving in the kanji that had to be perfect to channel the chakra just right, and by a stroke of luck or genius he managed to find the sweet spot.


Placing the scroll against another scroll, he focused his chakra and it released. He smiled proudly when his theorem worked. The miniature seal, containing a rock, transferred seamlessly into its original form when it made contact with the paper.

The Uzumaki had figured out the theory behind the technique but now to apply it, he would have to begin trying to materialize that seal onto the trigram blade as he formed it. A task neither easily said nor done.

5/11

🗡️

[Uzumaki Ichigoni]

[googlefont=Crimson Text]

くたばれ
Ichigoni spent several minutes redrawing the seal, over and over. He committed the way it looked to his mind. Then he began engraving it directly onto his forearm so that he could feel it against his skin using a quill and ink that felt cold to the touch. The task that he had to accomplish was only something he could imagine in theory: he had to draw the kanji formula he had just derived by leaving negative space as he manifested the shard.

Flexing his wrist slightly, a shard of chakra began to form beneath his skin. Shaping it normally until he got to the end, the Uzumaki began to concentrate on forming fine lines between the end. It seemed impossible, like trying to squeeze a certain shape from toothpaste.

Without looking at the shard, he knew he failed. But his eye gave it a curious look anyway. There were inklings of negative space there, but it looked more like someone had dipped their finger into wet cement when it dried than it did a fuinjutsu seal.

More out of jest than anything, he pushed his chakra into it to see if it could seal anything. The shard crumbled like a dry cookie in his hand. The tranquil forest filled with a chortle of laughter that scared several nearby jays from their nest.

6/11

🗡️

[Uzumaki Ichigoni]

[googlefont=Crimson Text]

くたばれ
For Ichigoni’s next attempt, he decided to try doing something akin to tracing as he manifested the shard. He took a bit of the crumbled shard from before and started outlining one of the marks that he’d painted on his left forearm, pushing hard enough against each line of the kanji to raise bumps on his skin and leave it sore.

He’d go to manifest the shard once more, feeling it forming beneath his skin. He concentrated on the feeling of the pain, and this time instead of trying to leave a negative, he tried to create raised lines that would imprint the kanji.

The product that fell into his hand after materializing bore a perfect symbol on it. He lifted it up towards the sunlight and gave it a curious inspection. It seemed as if it had worked, but he wouldn’t be sure until he began using it.

His first task was to see if this extremely modified generic seal would work in its weaponized form. He took a rock larger than his palm and placed it on top of the shard, and then he channeled his chakra into it from the makeshift hilt of the trigram blade. It rejected the chakra.

7/11

🗡️

[Uzumaki Ichigoni]

[googlefont=Crimson Text]

くたばれ
Taking pause for a moment, he started thinking to himself about what the purpose of the technique really was. Ichigoni had a suspicion that he needed to confirm. He took a pebble and tried to seal it within the trigram blade. He soon realized what he was doing was all wrong, because this was simply casting the sealing technique onto the shard. He could do that himself already. The purpose was to manifest a completed seal from start to finish.

This would make what he could seal with the generic seal very limited, as he would have to seal something he could manifest into the shard as it was created. This insight brought a new understanding to him as to why this jutsu was only meant to be used with sealing techniques of a lower grade. Only so much information could be stored on these small shards.

The Uzumaki decided that the generic sealing technique would be ill-suited for much practical use. He could simply use traditional methods to seal small objects into a shard to throw if he really needed to get it across the battlefield. Or you know, just throw it.

With this new wisdom, he decided that the trigram blade would be much more successful with another low grade fuinjutsu that he had knowledge of...

8/11

🗡️

[Uzumaki Ichigoni]

[googlefont=Crimson Text]

くたばれ
Ichigoni spent another hour or so drawing the attraction seal and getting a better idea of how to apply the eight trigrams sealing method to it so that it could be compressed and transferred across mediums. The Uzumaki found that much of the practice he had with the generic seal had practical application with other seals, but knowing a formula and doing the calculus behind it still took time.

On another spot on his left arm, he had marked up and then raised the flesh with the shard in order to provide himself the necessary training wheels to learn how to manifest the pattern correctly.

It took him three tries to get it right this time. The first time he tried to manifest it without forming the hand seals of the attraction seal first. He ended up with an empty seal: no good and a stupid mistake. Unlike the generic seal he had to create something with his chakra to make it work. The second time, he simply botched the shard and the markings were not correct.

On the third and final attempt, the Uzumaki pulled a perfect trigram blade from his arm with the attraction seal kanji compressed on it completely. He gazed at it with a widened eye. This was it!

9/11

🗡️

[Uzumaki Ichigoni]

[googlefont=Crimson Text]

くたばれ
Now was the time for him to test the transferability of the seal from one medium to another. If it worked like it was supposed to, it would imprint the seal onto a surface when it was struck, and the contents within would still be able to be activated.

Before doing so, he made a second trigram blade with the same jutsu imprinted on it. Both seals were necessary to complete his testing to the fullest. This time, he managed to get the trigram completed on his first try and without even needing to trace over a sore spot on his skin. He was starting to get the hang of it, and with a little more work it could be fielded for combat.

Taking aim at a tree to the south of him that had pale white bark, he let the first of the sealed blades fly free like a kunai towards the tree. When it struck, the imprinted chakra of the seal transferred from the blade to the paper, leaving an imprint of the original seal carved by chakra onto the tree.

It looked as if Ichigoni had met his goal, but he couldn’t know for sure until he tested the other blade.

10/11

🗡️

[Uzumaki Ichigoni]

[googlefont=Crimson Text]

くたばれ
Lifting the other trigram blade up into his right hand, Ichigoni pulled his arm back and threw it towards the opposite side of the clearing than the tree that his original blade had imprinted the attraction seal on. The attraction seal itself was designed to make a light object move towards another object that was heavier that bore the same seal. For most fuinjutsu users, there was a limitation in that they had to get in direct contact with both objects to make it work.

Ichigoni’s new jutsu would allow him to circumvent that limitation. As the blade flew through the air, he formed a single hand seal and activated the technique. The airborne blade was stopped from going the wrong way and quickly darted towards the tree, landing smack in the middle of the opposite attraction seal.

He’d never physically touched that tree, only striking it with the manifested shard. There was a feeling of achievement that filled him with a quiet joy. He’d achieved his father’s jutsu after all this time. The Uzumaki still had more practice to do, but this had been an eye opening training session. Though he was a jounin, he still had a lot to learn.

11/11

🗡️