Inserting a self-destruct seal into the seal array isn't hard, it's just troublesome because I have to find a way to insert the seal into the already extremely complex existing seal array without affecting its existing function.
That reminds me, I have to name it. What should I name it as? It alters one's perception of reality, but it is also a torture seal. Perception altering torture seal? Wait, that sounded too much like what my godfather would name his seals and his naming sense is terrible. Perception Seal? The whole thing is based on the idea of altering one's perception and interpretation of reality after all.
Let's go with that for now.
It's been two days since my godfather gave me the go ahead to continue with my personal project and also the order to complete my seal array. Isolating the Intent Seal and making it a standalone seal outside of the sealing array wasn't hard. It took me less than an hour to complete it, so that's one job completed.
The biggest problem is redrawing the entire Perception Seal after I'm done testing the self-destruct part, and that's assuming I only needed one try to get it right. If it fails, I have to redraw the whole thing again from scratch, test it, and then repeat the process until it works flawlessly.
It is so cumbersome.
Redrawing the entire array is going to take a lot of my time. My wish for a photocopy seal had never been greater than before. The photocopier had not been invented in this world yet and I don't know the science behind how it works, but I'm sure Fuinjutsu can definitely provide an alternative.
It's just a matter of whether I can find it. I'm definitely going to invent a photocopy seal somehow because of how much easier my subsequent seal works will be if I have something like that to use.
Hanabi had returned from her daily jinchuriki training with Kushina about two hours ago and simply dropped herself on the floor of my room beside where I'm sitting. I would have moved her to her bed next door if it wasn't for the fact that I know she is still afraid of her nightmares coming back to haunt her.
Problem is, her head is currently resting on my lap and she is drooling onto my pants. My leg is slowly going numb because her head is resting on it and I don't want to move her for fear of accidentally waking her up. She is still snoring away.
Nevermind, back to the idea of the photocopy seal.
I know that Sai has the ability to make his ink messages transform into an ink beast and rearrange itself back into its original message upon entering a blank scroll. He had shared with me before the principle behind how that technique worked. I could probably apply that same logic here if I want to create a seal that copies texts and images written in ink from one scroll to another. However, firstly, there needs to be ink on the scroll that I want to copy the information to. Let's name that the Copy Scroll for now until I thought of a better name for it. If I want the process to be quick and efficient with the least amount of mess, it's best if the Copy Scroll already has ink on it.
I definitely need a storage seal. The Copy Scroll would need to have existing ink on it in the first place and it can only be stored with a storage seal to ensure that there is no mess. That means the base template behind this new photocopy seal- or screw it, I will just name it the Copy Seal for short- has to be the storage seal. The Copy Seal cannot interfere with the contents of the scroll it is copying from and it cannot trigger a reaction from an existing seal if I want it to work on seals as well. Something must be done about that. This whole idea of a Copy Seal involves replication of an existing object. Storage seal involves the taking in and out of an object from another space. Can something be done here?
Which genius even invented the storage seal in the first place? That guy is a damn genius.
Come to think about it, the Edo Tensei perfectly replicates the looks, personality, and abilities of the summoned reanimated corpses. There's no way I'm going to catch a glimpse of the seal array of that forbidden jutsu since my status in the village is shaky enough as it is, but I can make an educated guess on how the seal array works.
From what I remembered in canon, Kabuto mentioned the need to collect DNA samples of the shinobis he wanted to reanimate. I bet that was how the seal array of the Edo Tensei perfectly replicated every single aspect of the reanimated shinobi aside from pulling the soul back from the Pure World. If I apply that logic here, if the contents of the original scroll I want to copy from is the 'DNA', is there a way to transfer it onto a different seal through certain means?
Seals have memory. Even something as complex as the seal from the Summoning Jutsu needs that aspect for it to work. The actual seal design of the Summoning Jutsu is actually extremely complex, it is just usually compressed into a much simpler design for it to be able to work for combat purposes. However, it is still possible to unravel the compressed version back into its original form and compress it again because seals have memory. They remember the exact way to compress or expand itself even without you telling it to. I like to imagine it as how you can use the computer to compress a folder into a zip file and extract the contents back again to access the files. You can repeat the entire process back and forth indefinitely, because seals have memory.
If seals have memory, then can I alter the memory of the Copy Seal such that it can replicate whatever new 'data' I put into it in the form of the content I want the Copy Seal to copy? That is definitely within the realms of possibility. What I need now is a way to transfer said data from scroll to scroll with the least amount of fuss and time. It must be a process that anybody can do.
The process of transferring 'data' is the hardest part of inventing the Copy Seal.
Hanabi squirmed a little before stretching herself with a yawn, almost knocking over my ink bottle in the process.
"Watch where you are waving your arms." I complained halfheartedly as I shifted her away from me. Finally, the sense of touch in my leg is returning.
"What time is it?" She asked as she rubbed her bleary eyes with the back of her hand.
"Been about two hours since you slept and drooled on me."
Hanabi stood up and peered over my shoulders to see what I'm working on. She gave up trying to understand after looking at it for a total of one second.
"What's that?"
"I'm trying to invent a seal that can copy the text of one scroll to another because copying everything by hand is so tedious. Can you imagine the number of times I have to redraw my new seal array for every failed attempt in testing the self-destruct function? No way I'm going to do that."
"That seal sounds great. So what's the problem?"
"How to transfer the content from one scroll to another with perfect accuracy."
Hanabi rested her head on mine as her long hair cascaded around my face messily. We stared at the scroll in front of us in silence for about a few minutes before she spoke up again.
"Actually, isn't something like that already done? Just on a smaller scale."
"Really? What?"
"I'm sure you have been doing it with your ice when it comes to seals. Just give me a small block of it."
I conjured a small cube of ice for Hanabi, who took it with a hand. She raised the index finger of her other hand, lit it up with a small dose of the devilish blue flames before pressing it against a surface of the cube of ice. The area which her finger pressed on melted partially, making an indent. Hanabi then proceeded to poke a few more indents on the same surface with her finger.
She then took my brush, messily painted some ink over the surface of the cube that is ridden with holes before pressing it down on a blank piece of paper. The resulting ink image is a perfect square with circles at the exact area which her fingers poked at.
Oh
"My dear Haku. Ever heard of rubber stamps?" Hanabi said in such a sarcastic manner that it made my eye twitch in annoyance. "You know, that thing otou-sama always uses to quickly ink his signature on all his paperwork when he gets lazy? I thought you carved your seals on your ice, how did you not think of this?"
I could not think of a witty comeback because Hanabi's right. How did I not think of this?
"You win this time." I admitted my loss as I adjusted my thought process accordingly to this new insight. If the scroll I want to copy from is the 'rubber stamp', and the Copy Scroll acts as the ink pad slash paper, then all I need to do is to ensure that I can 'engrave' the ink from the original scroll properly on any other medium.
Seals have memory. If I exploit that fact about seals, I could make this work. In this world, most paperwork are written in ink. I could have my Copy Seal 'memorise' the content of the original scroll to be copied from by tracing the ink patterns on the original, fool the sealwork into thinking that is a part of the seal design all along, and then replicate it by exploiting the memory aspect of seals. That's it! That's how I can make this work!
I quickly picked up my brush again and redraw an entirely new seal design based on the template of the common storage seal. First, the Copy Seal needs to be able to store some amount of ink to copy the content. Secondly, I need to tweak the original storage seal design such that the moment it comes into contact with any other ink-based content, it will automatically copy and memorise the exact manner in which the original content was written or drawn in ink. This can be done by fooling the Copy Seal into thinking that this was a part of its seal design all along by exploiting its 'memory' characteristics. Thirdly, if we are copying the seal designs of other types of inked seals, then it cannot interfere or accidentally trigger the seal the Copy Seal is copying.
I can work with this.
"I'm going to take a shower and then I'm bringing dinner over to your room." Hanabi told me as she made her way out of my room. I hummed in acknowledgement, my hand still busy in trying to modify the storage seal to my liking.
I can totally do this.
The slamming of the brush on the table woke her up. Hanabi yawned as she rubbed her eyes, pushing the blanket off her. It's definitely late at night. She remembered not wanting to sleep alone in her room, so she decided to sleep in Haku's room because that workaholic is still working on his Copy Seal even when it's nearly midnight, so she decided to go and sleep first.
What time is it now anyway?
The clock hanging on the wall told her it's 6am in the morning. Wait, what? Haku had been working on his new seal throughout the night?
That crazy idiot.
She saw the man who she is so crazily in love with glaring at a scroll on his table with so much intensity that she thought he might have awakened some unknown dojutsu without her knowing. Beside his table, a huge bunch of scrolls lay messily on the floor, telling her how many times he had failed to get his idea of a Copy Seal up and working.
However, that's not her main concern right now.
"Haku. So help me. If you are not going to sleep right now-"
"I think I did it."
"What?"
"I did it." His voice got a little louder as he turned around to face her, the lack of sleep clear in his eyes. "I think I just made it work."
"Show me."
She scrambled to her feet and immediately got to his side, ignoring her bed hair and how unsightly she must be looking right now after just waking up from her sleep. She saw a seal drawn on the scroll, which looks a lot like the common storage seal at first glance but you can easily see the minor differences if you take a closer look at it.
"Alright, look." Haku took a random book from the bookshelf next to him and flipped to a random page. He pressed the page down on the scroll and with her byakugan active, Hanabi saw how a very slight push of chakra from Haku into the Copy Seal immediately activated it. The small amount of chakra from the seal quickly caused the seal to unravel and expand before it traced the ink patterns on the page from the book. Shortly after, more ink spreaded out from the Copy Seal on the scroll and rearranged themselves to form the exact same words from the page of the book. It's an exact copy.
When Haku removed the book, the final result is a perfect replica of the page from the book now inked on the scroll, the Copy Seal gone.
"You actually did it within a night." Hanabi whispered in shock. She knows Haku is brilliant, but this is another thing entirely. She can already imagine just how revolutionary this seal could be if it came into existence.
Imagine the amount of time saved from the tedious process of trying to make copies of paperwork by hand. Imagine if it can actually duplicate other types of seals simply by letting them come into contact with the Copy Seal. The speed in which explosive tags and storage scrolls that Konoha can now produce…
She doesn't even want to begin thinking about it.
"The only thing left to test is to see if it can copy other seals, which I'm not planning to do here just in case everything explodes. If things have to explode, it is not going to be in my room."
"Come. Let's go to the training ground outside." Hanabi began to drag Haku up on his feet. "I don't care if you wake the whole compound up with you. I need to see this."
They hastily grabbed whatever Haku needed to do up another Copy Seal. She is sure that even their assigned ANBU guards are curious about what they are about to do.
She waited impatiently for him to redraw another Copy Seal onto a small blank piece of paper. Once done, she handed him an explosive tag. He gave her a flat look upon seeing that.
"Seriously? The first thing you want me to test is the explosive tag?"
"Think about it this way. If you can copy the seal design of an explosive tag without anything going wrong, everything else is probably going to turn out fine."
"Good point." He agreed as he took the explosive tag from her. He made an ice clone and the clone began walking to the center of the field. They both held their breaths when the clone pressed the explosive tag and the paper with the Copy Seal together.
Nothing explosive happened yet.
"It works." The ice clone spoke as he showed them both pieces of paper, each having the same seal design as any other explosive tag commonly seen being used by shinobis.
"Test it." She said immediately. "Detonate the copy."
The ice clone threw the copy onto the ground before leaping away. A second later, an explosion happened at where the copied explosive tag was thrown, creating a small crater in the process.
"You did it." She began to shake Haku excitedly with her hands on his shoulders. "You actually did it! You crazy genius! You did it!"
"Yes I know." Haku snapped back. "Stop shaking me."
"Quick! Quick! Test the other type of seals! Storage seals, barrier seals! Anything! Hurry!"
"I would if you can stop shaking me around."
ANBU Boar, also known as Yamanaka Fu, could not believe his eyes.
When his Hokage ordered him to guard Yuki Haku, he had thought that it was an excuse for the Hokage to guard his godson out of his personal bias for the child. Manpower in all divisions is strained enough as it is. Why waste an ANBU of his caliber to guard someone who obviously has the ability to properly defend himself, child or not?
But after seeing that display?
Nope. He cannot argue against the results. That Copy Seal is impressive. The boy's seals must absolutely not land in enemies' hands, that's for sure. Someone must keep a watch on those revolutionary seals. A seal that copies anything that is written in ink within seconds? Even other seals?
A seal that can copy other seals is definitely a revolutionary seal.
He watched in wonder, excitement, and curiosity as the two genin began to test the newly invented Copy Seal on every single common seal design they could think of. Storage seal, barrier seals, the intent seal, even the complicated as heck seal array the Hokage wanted Haku to complete to be used in the T&I. The one the boy named it as the Perception Seal. Everything was copied perfectly. On a side note, Haku had also successfully finished the complete version of the Perception Seal on his first try. He is a fucking genius.
He no longer has any doubt in the rumours that the boy single handedly sealed a tailed beast within the Hyuga girl.
Fucking hell, this invention of the Copy Seal is revolutionary. No more tedious copying of paperwork if someone else asked for a duplicate. The time needed for their logistics department to produce explosive tags and storage scrolls can definitely be cut by more than half. If that can be done, the odds that Konoha can easily win a war against Kumo are so much better now despite the huge hit they took from the recent invasion on their village. Hey, who knows, maybe even the combined might of Iwa and Kumo may not be that much of a threat anymore with so many explosive tags on Konoha's side. The side which has good management of their logistics always wins the war.
'You see that?' He used his hands to sign to Bird, whose team is tasked to guard Hanabi. Bird's shift had supposedly ended half an hour ago, but he chose to stay here because he too is curious about the extent of seals in which Haku's new Copy Seal can actually copy. So far, there are no seals it couldn't copy yet.
'Yes.'
'He's a genius.'
'I know. I watched him grow up.'
Oh right. Bird is a Hyuga.
Bird's entire team had also secretly flocked to the area where Haku and Hanabi are now testing the new Copy Seal. More and more Hyuga clan members are also gathering around at the crack of dawn to see what the commotion is all about. The Hyugas know that ANBU members will be present in the compound due to Hanabi's jinchuriki status, so they weren't alarmed upon spotting all the hidden ANBU guards with their byakugan.
"Alright. We just tried your Copy Seal against every common seal we can think of. Right now, you are going to sleep. You have been awake for close to 24 hours and I'm not going to allow you to continue doing this crazy shit."
"But Hanabi, I-"
"Haku."
Every man knew that tone. That type of tone that their significant other will use against them when they are displeased about something that they did. If you know what's good for you, you shut up and go along.
"Fine." Haku relented. "But I need to first bring all my seals to tou-chan and explain to him how it works-"
"I'm sure one of the ANBUs watching us can do that." Hanabi cut him off before shouting in Fu's direction. "Hey, Boar. Do you mind? Your mission's technically not over until Haku's seals reach the Hokage. The faster you deliver it to him and explain to him how it works, which I'm sure you would know by now since you have been spying on us all this time, the faster your mission ends. Sounds good?"
'She's right.' Bird signed to Fu, who mentally rolled his eyes at the remark.
Boar made his appearance in the middle of the training field with a shunshin. From the looks of it, only the young children were surprised by his presence. The Hyuga adults, even the civilians, were totally unfazed by his appearance.
The ability of the byakugan really precedes its reputation if even civilians knew he was there all along. There's really nothing that can hide you from those white eyes. How did that Kumo nin even incited the Hyuga Affair so many years ago if that were the case? How had Hanabi been kidnapped from her own home if the byakugan is this good at allowing the Hyugas to spot intruders in their own territory?
Fu is sincerely glad that the Hyuga clan is a part of Konoha. It would be a nightmare if the clan belongs to another village.
Hanabi passed the seals over to Fu before going to drag an unwilling Haku along with her back to his room, who is now mumbling something about wanting to further improve on his new seals.
"Hanabi, I need to fine tune the-"
"You are going to get some sleep and I'm going to make sure you sleep until noon at the very least. If not, I will make you."
Everybody wisely shuffled out of Hanabi's way. Fu looked at the seals in his hands. Guess he will be the one doing the demonstration of the new seals to his Hokage. Pretty sure his Hokage will be very impressed by his godson's invention of this brand new Copy Seal that nobody told him to invent or expected him to do.
Why is that boy stuck here in the clan compound? He's good enough to get himself into any division with that kind of skill set!
Hell, with the display he put up in repelling the invasion, he is already good enough to be at the frontlines right now!
"Hey Obito, come take a look at this."
Obito walked over to the tent where he and his long time friend made their war plans when Kakashi beckoned him to come over. Their battalion's encampment is set along the borders of the Fire Country facing the direction of Kumo's territory. Tension is running high along the borders but thankfully, nobody is willing to fire the first shot yet to signal the start of the Fourth World War. Hopefully, this will not escalate any further even if Obito personally wanted to erase a small army of Kumo shinobis or two to vent his anger because his own village had just been invaded.
Obito had just got back from checking the teams under his command when Kakashi waved him over.
"Look what you cute little student invented."
Obito squinted his eyes a little at the foreign looking seal Kakashi held up for him to see. There's no doubt which student of his Kakashi is referring to when it comes to seals.
"What's this?"
"It's named the Copy Seal. The message that just came in from sensei told us that it was invented a week ago by Haku. As long as it is ink-based, it copies almost anything simply through physical contact. That includes volatile seals like the one you see on exploding tags. In fact, there is no ink-based seal that the Copy Seal cannot copy. If there is, we haven't found it yet."
"You've got to be pulling my leg, right?" Obito blinked his eyes twice and snatched the piece of paper from Kakashi's hand. It looks like a storage seal at first glance, but the similarity ends after giving it a second glance.
"Do I look like I have nothing better to do?"
"Show me how it works." Obito demanded. He knows his cute little Haku-chan is brilliant with seals, but he needs to see it to believe it.
"I tried it. It's damn bloody convenient if you want to mass produce seals at a rapid rate or simply want to make duplicates of your paperwork." Kakashi commented as he took out a rubber stamp from his pocket.
"See this rubber stamp? Sensei sent me one of these. The other stamp is with Guy's battalion in case we need them on the field for whatever reasons." Kakashi took out a rubber stamp from his pocket, which the mirror image of the Copy Seal is carved on. Kakashi quickly stamped it on an ink pad a few times before quickly using it to stamp copies of the seal on small blank pieces of paper that they were previously about to create a new batch of explosive tags from.
Kakashi then took an ink bottle and poured some ink over each seal. With a push of chakra similar to how they would activate a storage scroll, the ink got sucked into the Copy Seals.
"This is the fun part." Kakashi commented with a little too much glee in his voice as he took out an explosive tag from his weapon pouch. "Watch."
Obito activated his sharingan and watched as Kakashi pressed the explosive tag against a piece of paper inked with the Copy Seal. When Kakashi separated the two pieces of paper after two seconds, a perfect replica of the explosive seal from the explosive tag was copied onto the previously blank piece of paper.
"The hell? That worked?"
"That was also my reaction when I first saw it. I had a shadow clone test the copied explosive tag. It fucking worked. You cannot even tell the difference from the original. Minato-sensei sent our battalion double the amount of explosive tags and storage scrolls we asked for because there is now a surplus of those back in the village. All because of a seal your student invented."
"The Copy Seal only works if the size of the scroll or paper you are copying to is big enough to cover the original copy, right?" Obito pointed out. "If the size of the paper is too small, there wouldn't be enough space to copy the entire content."
"Yeah, but most scrolls and explosive tags come in standard sizes across the Elemental Nations, so there wouldn't be much of a problem. The Copy Seal doesn't even necessarily have to be applied on paper, it can work on any surface that ink won't get smudged on, like cloth."
"Seriously?"
"I'm serious." Kakashi deadpanned. "Do you know how much easier infiltration missions are now because of this? We no longer need to steal information. We can now quickly copy written information without leaving any traces behind. I can already foresee sensei sending you on a mission to copy everything Kumo stores in their damn library without them any wiser."
Obito let out a huff as he puffed his chest up.
"What can I say? I'm a good sensei."
"Pft. Please, dobe. You didn't teach Haku a damn thing about sealing."
"You know what? We might have just won this war even before it started, because we can now afford to dump exploding tags on the entire Land of Lightning. All we need now is enough paper to ink the Copy Seals on and the Land of Fire has nothing but trees. We are the largest exporter of paper in the Elemental Nations."
"Yeah, that's actually a little scary to think about." Kakashi scratched his chin in thought. "But hey, if a war does happen, we might actually be able to end it quickly through explosions. Iwa's Explosion Corps has nothing on us now."
"Imagine the expression on Onoki's wrinkly old face when he sees us with so many exploding tags. Remember what we did to the Kannabi Bridge?"
Obito's lips cannot help but curled up into a wry grin.
"Oh yeah, that was fun."
Kakashi and him both let out a snigger at the memory before Kakashi's voice turned serious once more.
"The design of the Copy Seal is a tightly guarded secret for now, but there's no way it can stay hidden forever since we used it on such a big scale like this. The other villages are bound to know about it soon enough and then start stealing the design somehow one way or another like how the design of exploding and storage seals eventually became prevalent. But sensei and the war council wants to see if we can use this invention as some sort of first mover advantage to talk Ay down from starting another war. If this Copy Seal alone can dissuade him from firing the first shot, that will be the best."
"I highly doubt it." Obito scoffed. "If I were that bastard, I would simply send an infiltrator to steal the Copy Seal's design."
"Yeah, but at least now we have more cards in our hands for the moment. Maybe Minato-sensei can really think of an alternative to avoid another war with this new development. Paperwork is going to be so much easier thanks to Haku. I should have been his sensei."
"Hey, no stealing my cute little genins. You already got your own minions."
"I can trade Naruto for Haku."
"Try harder."
"Naruto and Sasuke for Haku."
"Those two will be heartbroken if they ever hear that coming from you."
"They come in a package."
"And Haku-chan cannot do without nabi-chan and vice versa and even if you offer your entire team it is still not valuable enough for me to make the trade." Obito waved Kakashi off. "Too bad. Too sad. Life's like that."
"Not valuable enough?" Kakashi's voice rose a little higher. "The heirs of the Uzumaki, Uchiha, and the Haruno clans are not valuable enough? Are you sure your eyesight is alright?"
"They are perfectly fine." Obito countered. "By the way, we really should start working on ideas to take advantage of the surplus of explosive tags we just received from the village. I was wondering if we can make use of my Kamui to rain the explosive tags down on any Kumo teams that will try to ambush our camp."
Kakashi did a Guy-style thumbs up.
"The most youthful idea I've heard so far. Let's get working."