Ram -> Serpent-> Tiger.
"Shadow Clone jutsu." Tekai called out.
Yet nothing happened.
Frowning to himself, Tekai pulled out the scroll again, and looked at the instructions.
On it, there was a command for the hand signs order, as well as a diagram where the chakra would flow throughout the body to unleash the technique.
Scratching his head, he felt like it was simple enough. It's not like he was putting together an engine, or something complex. Based upon the instructions, it should be no more difficult than putting together a Lego set.
All he had to do, what he was supposed to do, was mobilize his chakra in a certain order, imagine the technique forming into reality, and then let the hand signs do most of the heavy lifting. Tekai felt cheated, as if all the Leaf Sticking he had done was wasted time, and his chakra control was actually dog water.
"What the hell am I missing?" Tekai slapped the scroll down onto his bed, and let out a frustrated breath of hot air.
At the same time, Tekai noticed the midday sun spilling into the room, causing him to scowl.
He'd been trying to unlock this technique for the last 4-5 hours, and had made no progress.
Gil got to enjoy the sweet embrace of sleep, while Tekai was over here feeling as if he were going to go mad from these constant failures!
The thing that really had him going sour, was that Naruto mastered the Mass Shadow Clone jutsu within a night of studying it.
Tekai was one of the people who often questioned Naruto's intelligence, but now he was seeing the obnoxious blonde in a new light. That kid must be smarter than he let on, because this technique was kicking his ass!
Blowing a stray strand of hair out of his face, Tekai stared holes into the scroll.
While he was doing so, burning the memory of the hand seals, and flow of chakra into his mind, he unconsciously saw the leg weights out of the corner of his eye.
They wouldn't help him with unlocking the jutsu, however, it reminded him of Uncle's note. Specifically, the first line.
"Dragon Dance is the foundation of every technique." Tekai said aloud to himself.
The old man had said that repeatedly, ad nauseam every time they met up.
Tekai figured Uncle Borah meant that it was the cornerstone to every Dragon type ability. But when he said every technique, did he really mean every technique?!
While that didn't logically make sense, maybe this was the truth for anyone who shared the Ryu bloodline?
Shrugging his shoulders, Tekai figured he had nothing to lose, and started up a fresh round of Dragon Dance.
Moving in a familiar pattern that he had done thousands of times, Tekai felt his blood, chakra and vigor begin to sore.
"All right, let's do this one more time. Ram! Serpent! Tiger! SHADOW CLONE JUTSU!!!" Tekai slammed his hands together in order, and forcefully mobilized his chakra.
Feeling a woosh of energy flood through and out of him, Tekai saw 3 identical clones appear in front of him.
Blinking his eyes, Tekai was surprised that he hadn't collapsed onto the ground from fatigue, as he should only have 25% of his total chakra at the moment. However, having said this, Tekai would not want to fight anyone at the moment, as he was sure that even the krabby he had slain previously with ease, would kick his ass if he fought one again at the moment. But still, 3 clones was hella unexpected!
"Dragon Dance is OP, who knew the old man would be right?!" Tekai said aloud, and chuckled to himself.
"No shit, dumbass. Uncle sat up on that dias next to two Elite Four from the games, of course he would know a thing or two." A clone-the first one to speak-shook his head and mocked.
"Yeah, a drunk mysterious fat guy shares his wisdom every day, and we ignore it just like we ignored dad's wisdom back on Earth." The second clone chided.
"Oi, you idiot, don't talk out loud about that origin story." The final, and third clone berated.
Tekai scratched his head in embarrassment. He didn't realize his unfiltered self was such an asshole!
Well, if you can't beat'em, join'em!
"Alright you monkey brains, enough fooling around. Me creating 3 of you must be as shocking to me as it is to you. So let's get down to business." Tekai clapped his hands to get their attention.
"Well dumbass, get on with it already." The first clone rolled his hand with an impatient gesture.
Tekai felt a vein pulse on his forehead, but didn't rebuke himself.
"Aight fine. Clone #1, you get your ass onto pushing the Dragon Dance to the limit. I saw a small grove in the back of the apartment with some training equipment and big boulders. Train till you pop. Clone #2, you read how to unlock the First Gate, study that shit till you get bored and try it out once you can't take studying anymore. Clone #3, same shit as Clone #2, but with the Mystic Palm." Tekai imperiously ordered, and pointed at each of them in order.
"And what will you be doing during this time, our inglorious leader." Clone #1 spoke with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
"Practicing the regular Dragon Dance of course. I want to see how much chakra I can regen after losing so much. Whenever I trained it in the past, I had a full tank. I didn't realize it had a rejuvenating effect until I burned so much chakra fighting in the Dragons Den." Tekai explained.
"Huh, not a bad plan. One issue though, who am I going to practice the Mystic Palm on?" #3 asked with a raised hand.
"Just learning it is good enough for now. If you can get glowy green hands, then I'll be happy. We can probably find some random Pokémon, like a goldeen or a magi-uh ahem, yeah a random tentacool to catch in the Lake of Rage. Wound it, heal it, then release it once healed. Simple plan, right?" Tekai grinned at the rest of his clones.
"Nice save, dumbass, but with how bloodthirsty Gil is, I doubt he'd mind if we farmed magikarp for speed EV's. Anyway, I'll be going out back." #1 rolled his eyes, and jumped out the window.
The other two clones also rolled their eyes, then got to studying.
Tekai allowed himself a little grin. His bloodline, and constant training of the Dragon Dance put his chakra reserves head and shoulders above the average shinobi of his age.
Ordinarily, he would like to put the training weight on right now, but he had already worked up a good sweat. At this point, he was only going to do the Dragon Dance casually, kind of like how he liked to casually walk after doing a hard sprint/run to cool down.
He was tired, and hungry AF at the moment due to the events that transpired last night in the Dragons Den, but this was something he had to do.
While he was no Saiyan, and didn't have something like a zenkai boost, he could really feel Dragon Dance enhancing him when he was low on chakra. It was an interesting training method to do when gassed. Typically, he danced on a full tank of energy, and hardly noticed any dip in his chakra, as his stamina was practically inexhaustible.
The Leaf Technique had taught him how to feel his chakra network like how one felt the wind on their skin. When he used this observation technique, Tekai noticed that the Dragon Dance acted upon his organs differently when he had less chakra in his system.
While he didn't know how to interpret or make sense of this knowledge, Tekai wondered if he could possibly harness this Dragon chakra, and direct it through the Eight Gates for a more potent effect?!
Tekai felt as if he had hit a gold mine with that idea, but he would have to train a lot more to even begin to realize that goal.
Grinning to himself, Tekai eagerly started up his Dragon Dance, then observed the chakra in his body, and entered a meditative, trance like state.
During his exercise, he felt the chakra within his body gradually increase, and over the course of half an hour, came back to about 50%. That was about 1.7% of his chakra regenerated every minute!
Tekai wondered what triggered the regeneration, and if there was a method to increase the rate. He felt that pushing the Dragon Dance to the next level might be what he was looking for. After all, when he struck that monk in the back, it felt like even if he was rapidly losing chakra, he could also spam attacks almost endlessly. This was definitely something worthy of his investigation.
Gliding across the wide, empty main room of his apartment, Tekai was lost in thought, when he suddenly received his first bout of information from a popped clone. About 45 minutes had started since he summoned them, and one had already perished.
Predictably, it was Clone #1.
The incoming stream of information was clear, precise, and sharp. The sudden injection of memories was incredibly uncomfortable, and Tekai felt as if he were going to get a headache as he parsed through them.
His experience receiving them was kind of like a mix between a movie, a dream, and the real time formation of memories all at once. It was a weird trip and a half.
Pausing in his step, Tekai took a seat at his desk, and pulled out a brush, an ink pot, and some paper to record Clone #1's experience.
Collecting his thoughts, Tekai took notes on everything #1 transmitted.
Clone #1 had started things off simple, and began performing the Dragon Dance like normal. Tekai saw that the clone started to move faster, and generate the purple-azure lightning.
Eventually, he entered the Dragon Rage mode, and began to practice the katas Uncle Borah had taught him.
The clone played with the chakra-cloak aura, and discovered that it did not damage the clothes he wore, or objects he touched.
This confirmed to Tekai that it wasn't toxic to himself, like the Kyubi's chakra cloak.
Next, the clone tossed a sizeable rock straight up in the air, and stood underneath where it would fall.
"..." Tekai stared blankly ahead as this set of memories persisted.
He then felt a shift in the clone's chakra, and he tried to focus the aura towards the crown of his head.
The purple-azure chakra cloak rolled, and most of it moved upwards to meet the rock.
When the two collided, the barrier slightly slowed the rock down. It was like if someone wanted to stab a pen through a plastic bag. There wasn't much resistance, but it was just enough of a slow up, that any ninja worth their salt would use that as an opportunity to dodge or counter attack.
Tekai nodded his head. The method was kind of meat headed, but the information this experiment had yielded was pretty valuable.
If anything, this taught Tekai that he should probably spar with his clone the next time he wanted to test this ability out. If he could use his staff, or other weapons, he could test just how effective that cloak was for defense.
Writing that idea down, Tekai resumed his review of Clone #1's actions.
Once the clone realized the aura could be moved around the body and reinforced at one specific point, he wanted to see what other applications it had.
Focusing the aura on his hands, he slapped one of the 12ft boulders that were laying around in this training area. He was careful not to exert his strength, but focused entirely on the aura.
Unfortunately, it seemed it didn't do anything.
He tried it a few more times, but nothing happened.
Eventually it seemed as if he had an epiphany, and started doing the Dragon Dance again.
This time he started to sway left and right, then collided into the stone with his right fist forward.
When he made contact with the stone, he exploded through it in a burst of Dragon type chakra. In the process, however, he both grievously injured himself, and burnt what chakra held him together, popping as a result of his attack.
Tekai furiously wrote down every step of the process, then crossed his arms, and closed his eyes as he imagined the sensation his clone had transmitted to him.
It seemed that this avenue of attack had some serious potential. However, it was also risky to pull off.
Tekai decided he would pursue this avenue with further Shadow Clone experimentation until he could fine tune it, and comfortably use it himself.
Lastly, the thing he wished to pursue was chakra control in the Dragon Rage state. If he could find a way to reduce, or limit the drain, then perhaps he could maintain the state indefinitely when combined with the rejuvenating feature of the Dragon Dance.
Writing down some final notes, Tekai turned to the other clones to see how they were progressing.
Clone #1 had delivered some valuable feedback, hopefully #2 and #3 were just as fruitful.
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AN: Read up to chapter 27 at: patreon.com/KarpQQ