Even Jack didn't know how to respond to Jennifer's film idea. If his very first directing credit involved nepotism-casting his wife and stepdaughter as the leads, his career would be over before it started.
Maya thought it over for a moment. "Jack, do we really have to go to a theater? Don't you have a VCR somewhere?"
She knew he'd married into the household—though he'd never quite accepted that framing. The man hadn't arrived empty-handed. Besides a full renovation of the entire house and a TV with a built-in VCR, he'd also made sure to give James his own surname. "I'm not a kept man," he seemed to silently insist. Back then, even their neighbors Lucius and his wife had been green with envy, dropping by constantly to watch films on the thing. A VCR in those days cost several thousand dollars—more than an ordinary car.
"It broke over a year ago," Jack said. "Repair quote came in over a thousand dollars—not worth it. I offloaded it to Alben down the street for cheap. This era's already on its fifth generation of players, and I've got a friend in Silicon Valley who says Bill Gates is testing a new Windows operating system. Should be out in a couple of years. That old VCR was already obsolete."
Maya blinked. "What does a computer have to do with a VCR?" A few years from now, sure—but right now, if you need a replacement, you should still just buy one.
"Think long-term," Jack said, with the authority of a man who had thought about this very seriously. "I've been in Hollywood long enough to know what's coming. But do you know what the studios are already planning to charge for content on disc? Twelve dollars a copy. Twelve! So here's my plan: wait for the Microsoft operating system, buy a PC, then copy whatever I want straight from the studio database. That's how you save money."
Maya stared at him.
Who was it that used to claim foreigners all respected intellectual property rights? Jack was literally a film industry professional, and he was laying out a multi-year plan to watch pirated movies. Then again—same impulse, different era, every country on earth.
He said it with such conviction, such wholesome I'm-just-trying-to-save-money-for-my-family energy, that Maya couldn't even argue.
She let it go.
Jennifer finished nursing James and set him down on the floor. Maya immediately scooped him up.
Time for his workout.
She was controlling James's movements through Shadow Imitation—the force was Maya's chakra, not his own muscle strength, so she didn't have to worry about him straining himself or spitting up. Standing and moving around was good for his bone development anyway, and since the chakra was doing the actual lifting, his skeleton wasn't bearing any real load.
Maya fished out a cassette of Michael Jackson's Dangerous—released two years ago—and clicked it into her personal stereo. The beat kicked in.
James stared at the little box making noise, mouth open, clearly on the verge of an "ah-ya" protest.
Then he started dancing.
The baby executed a flawless robot dance routine, head bobbing side to side, producing a stream of syllables that sounded suspiciously like "sister is terrible, terrible, terrible."
Maya cracked up. She kept the routine going for nearly half an hour, working up a proper sweat. Then she carried James to the bathroom and they took a bath together.
The details of that are not important.
After getting James settled, Maya sat cross-legged on her bed and turned her attention to the gacha rewards.
She looked at the Silver Grade 9 Regular High-Level Experience Package and sighed.
"Regular High-Level." Was there also an "Advanced High-Level"? A "Peak High-Level"? A "Half-Step Supreme High-Level"?
Yes, actually. There absolutely was—the system had borrowed the naming conventions of online game items to give players a sense of familiarity. Different grades of experience packages advanced skills by different amounts. The Silver-grade one she had was already top-tier for its rank, and it had cost her ten thousand Influence Points.
She currently had several skill cards stockpiled: Bronze Fireball Technique, Bronze Transformation Technique, and Silver Random Water Release. If she spent a few hundred more Influence Points, she could probably assemble the full Three Body Techniques set.
After thinking it through, Maya decided to prioritize the Three Body Techniques first.
The reason every ninja academy student had to master those three techniques before graduation wasn't arbitrary—veterans knew from experience that the Three Body Techniques had the best cost-to-effectiveness ratio on the battlefield. It was also why the system kept dinging her professional rating.
Unless Maya pushed one of the three disciplines—ninjutsu, taijutsu, or genjutsu—to an absolute ceiling, like Might Dai had, she had no shot at a Mid-Ninja evaluation. And even then, she'd probably be worse than Guy's father was as a genin—a limping, one-legged version of Mid-Ninja at best.
There was also a practical reason: she was about to start operating as a vigilante. The Transformation Technique would be essential for protecting her real identity.
She activated the Transformation Technique skill card and the Regular High-Level Experience Package simultaneously. Both dissolved. And then, in a flood of clarity, the fundamental principles of the Transformation Technique unfolded in her mind.
Maya sat with it for a long moment.
"So that's how it works. Of course. No amount of hand seals would ever be enough to learn the basics of the Three Body Techniques on their own."
She pulled on her pink superhero pajamas, crossed her legs on the bed, and thought.
The Transformation Technique was deceptively simple. So simple, in fact, that it didn't even require hand seals—and yet without natural genius, no one could self-teach it. Ever.
Here was the principle:
Everything in existence has its own frequency—its own unique vibration. Living things carry one. Inanimate objects carry another. The Transformation Technique works by perceiving the target's frequency and then shifting your own to match it.
And the transformation is complete.
But each object's frequency is nearly imperceptible. Even the most gifted individuals who manage to sense the difference between their own frequency and their target's still struggle to actually change their own. Which means that in any other world, the Transformation Technique would be extraordinarily rare—a godlike ability.
So why had it become something so utterly commonplace in the Naruto world?
Chakra.
When the God Tree first appeared, it began drawing the world's natural energy to fuel its own growth. At the same time, its strange and overbearing chakra began eroding the entire world. When Kaguya Otsutsuki consumed the God Tree's fruit and it went berserk, Hagoromo—the Sage of Six Paths—subdued it. The God Tree's chakra then dispersed across the entire world, partially replacing the natural energy that had been drained.
From that point forward, every human, animal, and plant born in that world had been shaped by a common substrate: the God Tree's chakra. They were all, in a sense, made of the same stuff.