Alvarcus's Room, Ten Minutes Later
"I wonder when I'll actually make it over to that island." I mutter to myself as I stroll into my room. "Soon ish. Maybe. Probably? I've got some other stuff that requires my attention first."
"Please say I'm not on that list?" Sasuke says from my couch. "If I am tell me what I can do to get off of it. Please? I'll do just about anything."
"Just about anything?" Now that's quite a lot of options there. "Come find me tomorrow morning. I need to think on this and I have some stuff that I need to go check on."
"Okay I can do that. I'm not going to find any unsavory surprises today, am I?" Sasuke tentatively asks as he pauses in my doorway. "Please no?"
"Nah, you're exempt for today. Plus how can I ignore such a generous offer? I'm sure I'll come up with something humiliating."
"Right. I'll be going now." He leaves me alone in my room.
"Oh that poor boy, he has no idea what he's getting into." I sigh in promised joy to come. "Now where are those chakra conductive kunai Kidomaru got me?"
...
Alvarcus's Lab, Minutes Later
"Dammit." I stare down at all twenty of the beakers in displeasure. "I have no idea how the Sword of Totsuka is made of liquid. I sunk a ridiculous amount of chakra into each liquid and they're void of chakra already! I just left them overnight! I thought for sure that at least one of them would have lingering traces of my chakra, but NO! That would be too easy!"
I sigh and rub my brow in discontent. I know this isn't going to be easy. I know that it will take me a long time to work everything out and that I'll run into numerous potholes and ditches along the way. I just didn't expect one so soon. How can all of these liquids not hold chakra for more than half a day?
"You know what? Fuck it let's see if this is any different." I grab a clean beaker and place it down on the desk next to the rest. With a quick flick of a kunai I sever my wrist.
"Oi. Jiongu. Blood please." I'm holding my wrist over the beaker.
~You're so needy. When can we do something fun?~
"What, was chasing down four people not fun enough for you?"
~No, I didn't get to play with them. They're alive still.~
"Just be patient. Knowing my luck we'll find a whole gaggle of people for you to play with. And done!" The beaker is full of my red blood, it's the exact same amount as the other liquids here. "Thanks Jiongu."
~You're welcome Host.~
"Now, let's try this all again. I'll have to check on them sooner to see which ones last the longest. I'm going to guess blood. That's really fucking dark, even for me."
I spend the next ten minutes pumping an insane amount of chakra into the tiny volumes of liquid.
"Time for the real reason I came here." I move over to another desk, this one has the case of chakra conductive kunai from Kidomaru on it. I have so many desks in my lab that I can have different stations for each individual project I'm working on.
"I've started to make the blade part, but what will be probably even more important and difficult is the container that will have the entities sealed away. I can't really make the production on figuring out which liquid is best for the blade move any faster, so I'll just work on this in the mean time. Let's try and fashion a storage seal onto a kunai and see what happens."
I take out one of the fifty chakra conductive kunai and place it in the center of the table. Next I pull out a set of etching tools, provided by Orochimaru. Usually I'd do something like focusing a small but dense amount of wind/lightning/fire – depends on the exact type of material I'm working with – and use that to leave behind a mark for the seal.
But in this case I can't do that, these kunai are chakra conductive. My chakra would naturally spread across the kunai, that's why these are a commodity among shinobi. It makes streaming your chakra into the blade much easier.
So since I can't use chakra I'm using these etching tools. I have a sneaking suspicion that they're diamond tipped. Honestly I'm not sure if Orochimaru or I am more eager for me to work on this. He's giving me literally any and every tool I could possibly need.
"Let's start simple. Basic storage seal. No, too complex. A storage seal so small it can only a fist sized rock. That's a good spot to start."
I go through the tedious process of etching a seal onto a kunai. You would think it's hard to do with two hands, right? I can assure you it's easier to do with chakra strings. I have no idea why no one else has thought of this, they're broken.
Or I just took them way too far.
Stop that! Get back on task! You can idolize your chakra strings later, like when you visit that soon to be remodeled island!
"Done." I look over the simplest of simple storage seals that's etched onto the surface of the kunai. "All that's left now is to test it."
I place a fist sized rock on top of the seal. Then I spark my chakra against it.
The rock is quickly swallowed into the seal, then instantly spat back out.
"Okay what?"
I try again. Same result. The rock goes in, then without me adding more chakra it comes back out. Almost as if it has a mind of its own.
"Oh. Oh. I'm stupid. No shit it's doing that." I can't believe I missed that earlier.
It's a chakra conductive kunai, it'll hold a little bit of my chakra in the blade. That residual chakra is enough to jump-start the seal to spit its contents back out. Which is exactly what it's doing right now.
"So chakra conductive metal is a bad idea. I need something completely opposite of that for the material of the container since I want the entities to be trapped there forever or until I release them. It wouldn't do for them to be able to disturb the entire sword with their chakra, that alone could dismantle the whole genjutsu thing it has going.
Or is supposed to have going, that's a whole different problem. That means the less chakra conductive the better. How the hell am I going to find a material that doesn't carry chakra?"
...
"I'll look into it for you." Orochimaru says. "I'm sure I've come across something like that before. I'll just have to sift through my old records."
"Wow. Really? Just like that?" That was easy. Way too easy.
"Yes. Just like that. Although you may need to go fetch the material yourself. Depends on how easily accessible it is and whether it's easier to steal it than buy it."
"I can live with that. No rush though, just whenever you have the time."
"No rush? Do you have something else that's piqued your interest?"
"Yeah, creating the actual seal that will pull the stabbed entities into the container and trap them there in a genjutsu. Getting the physical pieces is the easy part, it's making them all work together that's going to suck. That's the part that I don't really know how to do. "
"Good luck with that."
"Thanks, I'll need it. So, on a completely unrelated topic, feel free to ignore any and all loud noises coming from the south east."
"You're going to the island."
"Yep. Ran out of other stuff to do today so I figured why not play with fire? Lots of fire. So much fire the Devil himself would want to run away."
"Just... make sure it stays in one piece."
"Me or the island?"
...
if you want to read ahead of the public release you can join my p atreon :
p atreon.com/CarriePoppins