"That's gonna be all kinds of popular once people can learn techniques for civilian applications, right now it's 'stick with what you got' or 'surgery'."

"Yeah! The current stuff's either kind of a chakra overlay? Which's easiest, but it breaks pretty easy. Or the full transform, which's - if you stop actively doing it you bounce back? But working on a thing that's a permanent change until you use it again would be fun, though maybe not super safe for turning into things that can't have a human brain..."

"I'd imagine, yeah, you turn into a bird to fly around and whoopsie-daisy."

"I can also do inanimate objects with the transform, too, though most people can't - with those I'm aware of my surroundings and can turn back and I guess if I did something that could move on its own I probably still could? But I don't know if someone used a permanent transform to an object if they'd be able to use a technique to change back without a lot of practice, even if they were still aware?"

"And usually I'd practice stuff that's dangerous like that with clones, but clones are made of chakra so would behave weirdly with that."

"...aware of your surroundings, uh, how?"

"It's kind of like how chakra sense works? Just better? I don't have eyes or anything but I can kind of tell where everything is and I can hear stuff."

"Huh. I don't have chakra sense in hand yet, that sounds interesting."

"It's easier to turn clones into weird stuff 'cause they're already just made of chakra, and I think by default that chakra's only shaped like you because that's what you think of as you?"

"Heck, I'm only shaped like me because this is what I think of as me. The original one, I mean."

"Cool! You might either have a very easy or a very hard time turning into other stuff, then, I don't know how that combines."

"I can make my clones into lots of different things but some things do feel weird to remember being, and clones are pretty fragile."

"What feels weirdest?"

"This one time I turned into a fuuma shuriken - a really big throwing weapon - so me and Sasuke could fake out an opponent was fun but really weird. Getting thrown's kind of bizarre."

"Do you ever in fact turn into a bird and fly around?"

"Yeah! Though flying's harder than it looks."

...Cam waves a wing at him.

He laughs. "Haven't ever managed to just do a partial change! Might try that though, being human-shaped with wings would be fun."

"It's harder for humans who have wings added like this to fly than it is for daeva mostly for stamina reasons," says Cam. "But you probably have baseliners more than beat in that department."

"Yeah, it's been also taking me a lot longer to get tired over time."

"Do you have to sleep every night?"

"Kinda? I can stay up for like a week if I'm actively using chakra but that's mentally tiring, and most people find staying awake for more than like three days to be a huge effort only for emergencies."

"Interesting, so definitely not something baseliners can do without a ton of drugs but not by like an order of magnitude or anything."

"I could probably do more in an emergency or if I had a healer at hand, but, yeah, shinobi are also supposed to sleep every night even if we could do every three nights. I think chakra regenerates faster when you're asleep?"

"Does it really? I guess that makes sense on some levels."

He shrugs. "I haven't noticed a ton of difference but I remember being told that."

"Could just be something people say to encourage you to get sleep."