Chương 37: Fireball Experimentation.

'Is there a way to shorten that time?' The clone closed its eyes and thought hard in absolute silence.

'Wait a minute…'

'I know the Shadow Clone jutsu…'

"What if I filled the tenketsu with chakra exactly like I do with the Shadow Clone jutsu!?"

"The shadow clone jutsu has fifteen tenketsu it uses in its totality. And the thirteen that the normal transformation jutsu uses overlap with that! With the only difference being the heart tenketsu which gives the expelled clone its own tenketsu for performing jutsu and the tenketsu to move the chakra to a different position from the body to form the clone."

"So if I simply copy what I do with the Shadow Clone jutsu, it should work, right?" The clone stood up again and began circulating chakra around its body, the chakra slowly passed through the thirteen tenketsu needed for the transformation jutsu and within half a minute there was another puff of smoke as some excess chakra for the jutsu was expelled from the tenketsu. The clone let the smoke clear before standing in front of the mirror.

"And viola! The best pirate the world has ever seen!" The clone said with his nose held up high with pride. In the next few minutes, the clone quickly picked up the normal clone jutsu which also had all its tenketsu covered by the greater shadow clone jutsu before also picking up the substitution jutsu which he used to transform a wooden chair into him.

And given his solid experience of the shadow clone jutsu since it came from Tobirama himself, all his transformation, clone and substitution jutsu were perfect without any flaws.

"Thank the Dark Lord for giving me this bonus." The clone diligently prayed in the temple room that the original had built into the home. After finishing the prayer, the clone dispelled itself by stabbing its chest with a ceremonial knife. Haruto in the R&D department obtained the clone's memories and felt surprised.

'It mastered the three basic academy jutsu?'

'Holy shit! He's a genius!'

'No! I'm a genius!' Since it was the end of the day, Haruto quietly packed up from his desk since the computers were still training the models and went back home. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. He ate some ramen and prayed to the Dark God for a few minutes before going back to training ground four along with his new little training journal.

'Time to train in 'Scorch Release'.'

"Let's first set up a baseline for the fire ball jutsu so that I can compare what happens when I make changes." Haruto said to himself before gathering some spiritually charged chakra to coat his throat and casting the fireball jutsu for the first time that day. The fireball that Haruto spat out landed on the ground and exploded in a mushroom cloud.

".... is it just me or did the fire get even hotter than yesterday?"

"Is it because I read up on Kakashi's fire release training journal? Because I read up about and meditated on the nature of fire?"

"... must be…" With the baseline set, Haruto opened the journal and looked at the first question he'd written in it on the first day he'd trained with Hiruzen.

"Let's see what happens when more chakra is poured into the Heart tenketsu in the fireball." Haruto cast the fire ball jutsu again, this time with more chakra inside the heart tenketsu copied into the jutsu as he stood back and watched the resultant explosion.

"Hmm…that was simply a larger explosion… it wasn't hotter per say, just larger… the fireball was of the same size though… still it gave off a dangerous feeling like it was a primed explosive… it was also a little harder to cast without letting it explode inside my mouth. Was that why it exploded so quickly after it was released from my mouth?"

"Alright… next question… what happens when the heart tenketsu isn't filled with too much chakra?" Haruto cast the fire ball jutsu once again with the changes he had thought of and stood back and watched the resultant explosion.

"Hmm… this explosion was indeed a little farther away than before, indicating that the fireball travelled further… it was also much smaller than normal, was it because the fireball leaked out the chakra stored in its tenketsu during the trip? There was also no dangerous feeling like before…" To Haruto this fireball seemed much more like the fireball used in the manga, one that never hit anyone but was always used as an opening move by everyone.

It took a few seconds for Haruto to record everything in his journal before he quietly began his third test.

"Let's try and make the quick release Fireball jutsu…"

"How could it work though? Does it depend only on the speed the fireball is expelled from the tenketsu in the throat or is there another trick to it?" Haruto frowned in thought for a few seconds before deciding to learn by testing things out. This time however he didn't use as much chakra as before, he simply gathered enough chakra to create a fist sized fireball before expelling it through his mouth.

Before expelling however, Haruto forcefully expelled the chakra from his throat tenketsu in hopes of speeding up the flying speed of the fireball that was released.

"That's… no good." Haruto shook his head.

"In spite of the fireball being smaller, it flew at the same speed as the larger fireballs. In fact it seemed a little bit slower. And on top of all that, I could feel that trying to expel chakra from the throat tenketsu quickly risked destabilising the jutsu… I'm not sure I could pull it off for a larger fireball without it exploding inside my throat."

"But then how could it work…"

"Hmm…" Haruto thought for a while as he recorded his observations in the journal when an idea stuck him.

".... what if I sacrifice a portion of the chakra in the tenketsu in the jutsu to explode prematurely to send the fireball hurtling in speed? Like a rocket?"

"But… how do I create a controlled explosion? And how do I make sure that the explosion doesn't destabilise the fireball itself?" With those questions in his mind, Haruto quickly sketched up some ideas in his journal before settling on one of the most promising ones.

"I'll create a separate tenketsu in the fireball and fill it with unstable amounts of fire release chakra… that way when the tenketsu explodes, it will take only a part of the fireball with it while the rest attached to the main tenketsu remains?" With the answer clear to him, Haruto quickly cast another small fireball. Except this time instead of circulating chakra only through his heart tenketsu and the solar plexus Haruto circulated it through the tenketsu in his throat to add a third tenketsu in the jutsu.

He then filled that tenketsu with chakra and released the fireball from his mouth.

"Woah…" Haruto watched the oddly shaped fireball escape his mouth. It wobbled unstably for a second before exploding prematurely. Only, after it exploded once, the small fireball split further into an even smaller fireball and shot up upwards into the sky before exploding in a shower of sparks.

"So it did work…" Haruto noted, "Just not very well. The direction after the preliminary explosion was off and the stability of the jutsu before the first explosion was questionable."