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She doesn't recognise that tree.
She's been here before, she's not that far from the estate, this isn't some unknown place. She must've taken a wrong turn, of course, but where? She should probably just try to retrace her steps, Jaol will be incredibly mad at her...
"And I'll work on the wood clone, then. How much progress have you made with sensing and pulling on your chakra?"
"Sensing, can do, pull, not so much. It's weird, you'd've thought someone would have noticed this at some point in my world, but no."
"Yeah, manipulating chakra always takes longer than feeling it. Maybe meditating on internal energy's not super common? It might also be incredibly difficult to figure out for yourself. Chakra manipulation was, according to myth, introduced to the world all at once by the same person, and I've never heard of anyone using chakra who wasn't at least the apprentice of a shinobi. You also can't do much without handsigns, and I'm really not sure how someone would stumble on those."
"Yeah, if it really needs teaching maybe it just happened that no one had the lucky break."
She nods. "It is strange that people don't seem to discover at the very least sensing on their own, but 'it requires a teacher' makes sense as to why chakra isn't known in your world, especially if you don't have kekkei genkai."
"I mean I'm just going by what you said, if apparently your civilians don't learn it either that's probably it."
"Yeah. Raises the question of where the first shinobi learned it, of course, but anyways." She shrugs. "So keep meditating on it? I can try to draw a diagram of the chakra lines and points if you think that'd help with visualization, but I'm not sure how well I remember it."
Whoops. She forgot to explain how chakra moves within the body, apparently! This ties into 'why handsigns.' She dregs her memory for the old lecture (she remembers more than she thought; she had to practice this pretty thoroughly for medical jutsu) and explains the Gates, and how chakra clusters and flows in lines in the body, and the points where it's easier to force chakra from your body - or block someone else's through careful injury.
...Unfortunately charcoal-on-wood isn't a good medium for drawing fiddly detail like the chakra lines. She can try a very rough sketch on a particularly large piece of wood, though.
That actually works really well! And Tetsuma can correct them when they're in the wrong location. (The lines themselves are internal, but the points do come fairly close to the surface.) There's 361 chakra points, though pretty much everyone can only manage expelling chakra from the hands or feet, so the others are less important to remember unless you're going into medical jutsu. Knowing where the pathways are is kinda needed, though.
It really is! And Dayo's enthusiasm is contagious; it's been a while since Tetsuma felt so excited about jutsu.
Same! "Do you have any other questions?" she asks. If not, they can keep practicing at their respective efforts until dinner.
It takes Tetsuma a bit, but she figures out a) definitely the first hand seal, and b) that there probably should be multiple seals, since she's still having control issues. (Weird, since clone techniques almost always just require one seal, but whatever.) If Dayo's interested, she can narrate parts of the development process whenever he feels like taking a break from meditation. It'll be time for dinner before she makes any more progress, though.
Dayo's tempted, but no, he'll try to just get this done already, no breaks. Punchpunchpunch.
He'll probably find his concentration slipping after a while, but hey whatever works for him, and Tetsuma will call a break for dinner before too long.
Dinner is two different versions of cooked deer-thing, with yet more tubers and nuts and fruit. (Tetsuma's planning on looking for herbs and other plants next food sweep. At least something to make tea with.)
"How've you been doing?" she asks.
"I'm not sure! I might be getting somewhere! But it might be my imagination and I don't know yet how to tell. How about you?"
"I've got the basics down - I know the first seal, and that it'll take more than one, a bit unusually for clone jutsu... Hopefully this won't turn into one of those ridiculous jutsu with four dozen signs."
"I know! The whirlpool jutsu is like that - it uses a lot of chakra but still needs to be controlled pretty finely. I don't actually know how to do it, it's just always brought up as an example. People who are really good can get it down to fewer signs, though."
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