"I need to blow off some steam." That was the conclusion Akira came to after the massage at the hospital, once he was back home.
And it was not about Hayana's miraculous hands, which had, yet again, sparked a perfectly natural reaction in his very male body. No, the real issue was what happened as he walked through the central part of the Uchiha district, following behind a middle-aged woman.
There had been a bit of an incident. The Uchiha woman in front of him had accidentally dropped her bag of groceries, and instead of immediately offering to help, Akira somehow found himself staring at the forty-year-old's backside for far too long. She definitely noticed - both the stare and the way his pants were suddenly a little too tight in the front.
Yeah... with no internet around - half of which is basically porn - I hadn't even realized how easily I get turned on by things that are not even that risqué. Now I totally get why, in some conservative countries, they blur bare legs on TV.
My brain is just not used to seeing naked women anymore, like it's been completely rewired. I feel like a teenager going through a growth spurt. If this keeps up, I'll end up pouncing on the first halfway-attractive girl I see.
I really need to do something about my sex life, and the sooner the better. Although... Akira glanced at his right hand, then quickly scolded himself.
No, for the sake of motivation, I should probably lay off the right hand for a while. Alright, think about something else - fuinjutsu, maybe.
So Akira lay in the bath, racking his brain. That interesting seal he had made on his knees could definitely be improved, if only he could figure out how.
I could ask Kushina for help, but... can't I come up with something on my own? Like, take the ink problem - what could I use instead? Then he remembered how his sister's skin had lit up with fuin when she unsealed his dossier.
Tattoos? That could work, and I wouldn't even have to cover my whole palm - I could fit the pattern on just one finger. Or... He suddenly remembered another chakra-conducting material.
Of course - I could wear a fingerless glove, like some shinobi do, and sew a fuin pattern onto it with chakra-conducting thread. Okay, that's an option. But how do I actually improve the seal?
I need to somehow boost the chakra lightning... chakra lightning is basically electricity, so how do you make an electric shock stronger? Alright, time to remember some high school physics. Come on, brain, think.
Let's start from the top. Electric current - assuming chakra lightning counts - is the directed movement of charged particles. Okay. The main concepts are current, voltage, and power.
Power is the product of current and voltage \( P = I \times U \). What I need is to increase the power of my current. So I have to either boost the current or the voltage.
Hm, when you break it down like this, it all makes sense...
Scratching his head, Akira - still sitting in the bath - quickly washed up, dried off, and changed into a fresh set of loungewear before heading to the kitchen to continue his musings over a cup of tea.
Mezumi, seeing how deep in thought Akira was, did her best to move quietly so as not to disturb him.
Current is the amount of charged particles passing through a given point in a conductor per unit time, or the ratio of charge to time \( I = \frac{q}{t} \). The amount of charge depends on how much chakra I can channel and convert, and there is a limit to how much chakra I can concentrate in my chakra pathways at once.
So there is not much I can do there. Hm, current is also proportional to voltage and inversely proportional to resistance \( I = \frac{U}{R} \). So if I lower the resistance, the current goes up - but the only way I can think to do that is by shortening the chakra circuit, and that won't make a huge difference.
That just leaves voltage... Okay, voltage is the work an electric field does to move a charge from one point to another. How do I increase voltage?
Akira glanced thoughtfully at the empty outlet near the light switch. For some reason, I've never really thought about how outlets get their voltage - especially how it stays constant. Wait - wait, that's it!
"Transformer!" he blurted out, jumping to his feet.
He headed straight for the door, leaving Mezumi and Nekorin - who was cleaning up - staring after him in confusion.
****
"How does a transformer work?" No hello, no small talk - Akira just blurted out his question the moment he found the man he was looking for.
The middle-aged man who had wired Akira's house was, understandably, a bit surprised. A good electrician's goal is to never see his former clients again - if you do your job right, they do not come back. Bad electricians do not get many repeat customers.
So when one of his old clients showed up and immediately started grilling him about transformers, well, that was a first.
"Uh, Akira-san, maybe you would like to come in first? Have a seat, some tea? Please." The man stepped aside - gesturing him in.
"Ahem, yes, thank you." Akira, now a bit calmer, nodded and stepped inside.
Once the electrician realized Akira was not there to complain about the wiring, he relaxed and, in a much better mood, started asking what had sparked Akira's sudden interest in transformers. Instead of answering, Akira just placed a small stack of bills on the table.
That is at least eight thousand ryo, the electrician thought - nearly choking on his tea. Realizing it was best not to ask too many questions, he launched into everything he knew about transformers.
Just to be sure, he even dug out his old notebook from when he had taken his electrician's course in Otafuku.
"You see, Akira-san, the whole point of a transformer is to change the voltage of the incoming current at the output. It can either step the voltage up or down. To make it clearer, I will just sketch a simple transformer circuit."
Grabbing a pencil, the electrician started drawing the components. Once he had finished, he continued:
"This square here is the magnetic core - or yoke - which the current flows through in one direction. Around it, at two points, are coils of wire. As you can see, on the left side there are more turns than on the right. This is a step-down transformer - you feed high-voltage alternating current into the left side, and on the right, where there are fewer turns, you get lower voltage. The trick is, the magnetic field created by - "
Finding himself with an attentive listener who was actually paying him for the lecture, the electrician happily poured out everything he knew.
In the end, Akira thanked him, took the simple transformer diagram, and asked to borrow the notebook for a while. The electrician was reluctant to part with his neatly organized notes, but after Akira promised to return it the next day, he agreed.
Back home, Akira immediately headed to his bedroom, handed the notebook to a clone to copy, and went down to the basement.
Heh, this is all well and good, but I cannot exactly walk around with a mini transformer in my hand. Hm, but what if I get creative?
Akira looked at his fingers, picturing wire - no, an inked chakra circuit - winding around them. But... fingers are not magnets. Still, I could run a separate chakra circuit for lightning chakra, and connect my seal to that... let's see.
Sitting at his desk, Akira grabbed a fine brush and some ink and started painting a fuin on his palm and two fingers. Damn, I need a thinner brush.
After a moment's thought, he plucked out most of the bristles, leaving just a few. That did the trick - his work became much more precise and minimalistic. Even so, it took him an hour and a half to apply what looked like a simple, modified fuin pattern.
"Well... not bad. Could be better, but this is mostly just for testing anyway," Akira said, examining his handiwork.
Like before, he had drawn the chakra intake, the lightning conversion, and the release kanji. But this time, there were some upgrades.
Following the transformer circuit principle, he created a separate channel on two fingers, and wound the original circuit around it. So, on his ring finger, he had five turns of chakra channels, and on his middle finger, thirty.
To close the circuit and create a magnetic field, he would have to touch those two fingers together.
If I got this right, then when the fuin is active, the voltage at the tip of my middle finger should be five times higher!
Summoning a clone, Akira decided to test it right away. He pressed the two fingers together, focused chakra into his palm, and touched the clone's side.
poof
The jolt of pain made Akira wince, but he could not help grinning.
It works, but now I need to know by how much. He made another clone and sent it to the kitchen to fetch a sausage from the fridge.
To get a clear idea of the increased current, Akira had a second clone draw yesterday's circuit on a fresh sheet of paper.
As soon as the clone returned with the sausage, the test began.
First, he tried yesterday's fuin. He placed the sausage on the paper, over the release seal, and with his unmarked hand, channeled chakra into the intake. When he pushed the chakra to the max, a faint wisp of steam rose from the sausage.
The underside, upon inspection, was slightly red - like it had been seared for a second on a hot pan.
"Now for the real test." Bringing his left hand to the sausage, Akira pressed his middle and ring fingers together and, touching the sausage with his middle finger, sent the maximum safe flow of chakra into the fuin.
Almost instantly, the sausage began to blacken where his finger touched it, sending up a plume of acrid black smoke - tinged with the mouthwatering smell of grilled meat.
With this finger, I could punch a hole right through someone... But that is not even the scary part.
With voltage this high, it would completely paralyze the target - maybe even stop their breathing or their heart. Sure, shinobi bodies are more resistant to electricity than normal people, but even so, this would drop anyone! Does not matter where I touch them!
If this were a jutsu, I would call it the "Finger of Death." Now I just need to ask Kushina to "implant" this fuin under my skin - or however that works. And if she knows a way to boost the current even more... oh man, then it really would be the Finger of Death!
Chidori and Rasengan can eat their hearts out - fear the power of Akira's finger!
"Hahahaha."