"The smooth one?" I ask for clarification. "About... five ish meters in radius?"
"Yeah that one. What made that? You weren't testing a new explosive seal it's too clean for that." Sasuke is looking at me intently. "More importantly can you teach me?"
...
"I suppose I could teach you it, but Orochimaru would be much better suited for it. But do we really want to overlap our skills like that? We're both highly specialized in things the other isn't.
Look at me, I'm a walking ninjutsu cannon. I'm a juggernaut that is insanely hard to put out of a fight. I'm basically pure overwhelming force personified and the type of seals I'm focusing on will only increase that. While you are a genjutsu expert, even now there are few shinobi who can equal you.
You're kenjutsu is great, you're skills with all of the basic shinobi tools is simply ridiculous and your stealth is phenomenal. That makes you a perfect assassin, you can blend into the shadows with ease and use your fancy eyes to spot traps so easy it's like they have a sign pointing at them.
I suppose seals could help you with that, but they're not the seals I'm working with. Maybe a sound dampening seal or something?"
"You think I'd make a good assassin?" Sasuke asks. He's thinking of a few various scenarios, running ideas through his head.
"Hell yeah I do. I think it's what the Uchiha should have specialized in." My words pull Sasuke out of his thoughts and he looks at me with a look on his face. It's a look saying I'm an idiot.
"Fine, I'll explain. I do acknowledge that the Sharingan is fantastic in its ability to copy ninjutsu and would no doubt help make an impressive ninjutsu library given enough time, but the inherent ability of the Sharingan could be called heightened awareness. Simply put you see more, better, than everyone else.
The Uchiha would make excellent infiltration and assassin type shinobi because it would be child's play for them to copy someone's mannerisms. After staking out a target for sufficient time you would have no trouble replacing them and your act would be nearly flawless.
You could blend in so easily. Then there's the whole enhanced vision thing, finding traps and other oddities must be a joke to you. That could let you get around most defenses that would be in place to protect a potential assassination target.
Sure it's not as impressive as being able to spit copious amounts of fire, but you could be feared because no one can see you coming until their blood is spilling out of their necks."
"Interesting. I've never considered that." Sasuke admits.
"Yeah, most of the famous Uchiha were known for their ninjutsu or being untouchable in combat. It's only natural to try and take after them but it takes time and countless battles to truly gain that notoriety. But the moment the Sharingan is awakened you can copy things so why not play to that? Honestly I'm pretty sure that's how Itachi got so feared.
Not because of his impressive taijutsu skills, not because of his ninjutsu, but simply because you only see him if he wants you to. Sure he's still insanely skilled in both taijutsu and ninjutsu but his combination of stealth and genjutsu is what made him feared. How do you kill what you don't know is there?"
"I... that makes a surprising amount of sense." Sasuke is analyzing his brother in a whole new light. Then he shakes his head and turns back to me. "Thanks for the ideas, but you never did answer me."
"Oh. Yeah I didn't. What was the question again?" Whoops. I got just a tiny bit distracted.
"What made that crater? Hell I don't know if crater is the right word for it." Sasuke repeats the question.
"A seal that I honestly should not have even attempted to make. My anger kinda maybe sorta clouded my judgment a tad and I ignored my common sense." Mental note: Do not make new seals when pissed off. That's a really bad idea.
"A seal did that? What do you plan to use that one for? And what was up with the rabbit?" Sasuke is very interested in this seal and I don't blame him. It's impressive. It's also something I've ripped off of what I've seen before, this isn't original it's a remake. I've stolen it from someone that I despise, from someone almost at the top of my people to kill list.
"Yes a seal did that, I plan to use it to attempt to cover up one of my weaknesses, and the rabbit served as the trigger." I answer each question he asked in order. Efficiency at it's finest.
"What weakness?" Sasuke asks. "You barely have any and you want to cover one?"
"No shit I want to cover it! What kind of a shinobi would I be if I didn't try to eliminate every weakness I can? Anyways I'm talking about my hearts."
"You're hearts? How are they a weakness?"
"They're my weakest point. Once I'm out of hearts I'm dead so I'm going to give as much incentive as possible to not destroy my hearts to my enemies. Hence the rabbit being the trigger."
"Yeah I'm not following here."
"Okay. So basically that seal I used is rigged to go off once something dies, I tweaked it a bit to specifically go off when a heart stops beating since I want as little risks to me with it as possible. Hence the dead rabbit. In reality there were... a lot of rabbits. I may have blown a few of them up on accident. I know I'm a monster, they were so cute and everything!"
"Oi. Back on topic." Sasuke scolds me.
"Fine, fine." I'm so sorry rabbits, but you served a good purpose. "I'm going to put that seal on each of my hearts. That way when they're destroyed, or when they stop beating..."
"The seal activates. Dude. That's fucked up. I like it!" Sasuke shares a devious grin with me. "Wait, what if they kill it when it's in your chest? That would be bad."
"Yeah it would, that's why the seal isn't ready yet." It's such a shame. I wanted to make this work as soon as possible.
"I need to add in a few more levels to the trigger. A few conditions that have to be met for it to go off. First is obviously the heart stops beating, the second is being a set distance away from everyone and everything I consider important. Not really sure how to do the second one though.
I have a few ideas, like making a beacon of sorts and make it need to be far enough away from all of them to go off. That's probably what I'll end up doing but I have no idea how to make one. Which is really ironic since the beacon should be easier to make than this seal, I went backwards. I started with the hard part first."
"You're taking the seal stuff very seriously." Sasuke points out. "The only thing I've seen you pick up quicker was chakra strings."
"I know right?" It's all thanks to Orochimaru. His journals have been invaluable. It's amazing what a good teacher will do, even if it's just an expertly crafted book.
"Still, have fun testing the beacon idea. There's going to be a lot of those unique craters in the future."
"Nah I shouldn't need to worry about that. I can key the beacon to something simple first, like two tiny explosive tags until I get it down. Then I can move on to testing it with this seal. I'm not that stupid, thank you very much!"
"This coming from the guy who was missing an arm earlier today?"
"Okay so maybe I can be that stupid at times. It's fixed now though!"
Sasuke and I waste the rest of the day away talking about meaningless things. There is no Orochimaru, there's no Otogakure, there's no Bingo Book rankings, there's no Itachi, there's no insane and complicated future plans. It's just two friends hanging out, simply enjoying each others company.
...
if you want to read ahead of the public release you can join my p atreon :
p atreon.com/CarriePoppins