"There were a bunch of like sub-techniques in learning it, and some of those are good for the stirring - making it spin in only one direction - or the whirlpool - making it non-contained. I'm also working on making it larger or smaller?"

"How long have you been working on it?"

"I learned the original... Two and a half years ago? And that took me a month. I haven't gotten much time to work on improving this, though..."

"Stuff keeps coming up?"

"Yeah, and Pervy Sage has had me doing a lot of other training stuff..."

"Why do you call him that?"

"He's always introducing himself as the Great Sage of Mount Myouboku, but he's also a pervert? I met him when he was spying on the women's baths and then he beat up the boring guy my sensei had assigned as my tutor 'cause my tutor'd started yelling at him for being a perv, so I bugged him until he agreed to teach me instead. He also writes these really boring porn novels."

"...well, the novels are presumably harmless but people who spy on vulnerable naked folks sometimes don't stop there."

"He's never assaulted anyone that I've seen. ...Though there was that thing where he wanted me to stay in a girl transform around him more that was kinda creepy, but Granny Tsunade punched him when I mentioned that and he dropped it, so."

"I'm glad anyone ever polices his behavior but that doesn't mean he's not sometimes being a little subtler."

He nods. "I think he's mostly the type to make stuff weird, which is really bad for some people who're around him? But I'm not sure being kind of creepy is - you can tell someone to leave a restaurant but not society? And as long as I stay a boy around him he's not creepy at me, and I'm the main person he's ever alone with lately?"

"Yeah, I guess. And there's probably bigger priorities than this one guy assuming he's not using his phenomenal ninja powers to terrorize civilian girls with clones while you're not looking, say, because what does 'alone with' mean when you can do clones anyway -"

"Most people can't even maintain one clone. It's too tiring, and gives most people headaches right away. Pervy Sage's max is a few minutes."

"Oh. I guess I've been hanging out with irregular sorts."

"The Hokage are kind of by definition irregular! And I think Sasuke doesn't realize limits, like, exist."

"And I haven't been having trouble so far, though I'm still in single digits."

"Yeah, I don't have trouble with as much as like one or two thousand tactically, though I'll get headaches if I try to read that many books at once."

"That's a lot, wow."

"I didn't even get told about the whole memory returning thing until I was talking to dad! Which I don't get, I could've been studying way more..."

"You didn't notice?"

"I'd only been using them in fights, and I think part of the me not getting headaches thing is the memories kind of just slot in? And I don't notice them all at once. So at the end of a fight I'd have a really good sense of what went down, but that wasn't distinct?"

"Huh! I found it really conspicuous and all I did the first time was split off one clone and have it say a sentence and then dismiss it to be sure I could."

Shrug. "I don't look at my own brain much, too."

"That might be it."

"Also being a jinchuuriki might mess with it somehow?"