I had, perhaps, been underestimating the resources of the Global Defense Agency. Maybe that was because in my brain they had been basically the local variant of an organization like SHIELD from Marvel: big and filled with black ops divisions and other money sinks like any proper shadowy governmentally chartered faction. Yet one with definable limits to their remit.
That was with the presumption that they were sharing space on this version of Earth with other conspiracies, big spy agencies, and side groups as well. Space and budgetary constraints, as there were only so many dollars that could go around, even for a superhero universe.
Alien technology must have been the magic words that seemed to get wallets opened around here. Something I’d noticed as I pulled up to the Pentagon, under an illusion and going through the instructions to the secretive entrances to the GDA’s underground base. In no small amount of time, they’d prepared a surprisingly well-stocked workshop for me.
Effectively, all of the myriad machining tools, odds and ends, and materials that I’d requested were laid out. Most of them were metals that I had to find or remember the Ōtsutsuki terms and names for, but overall most of them were pretty much anything that you could find on a normal world. There’d have been better materials I could have used, perhaps, but I didn’t know what kind of exotic materials existed in this world.
This would have to do.
“Is there anything else you’re gonna need?” The functionary who was leading me inside and showing me the various tools turned to me with a look of expectation on his face.
“Honestly? Everything that’s here should suffice.” There were probably a couple of rare earth metals or very expensive materials that could come in handy, but I didn’t need them at the moment.
…It did remind me to see about picking up asteroids and other big hunks of rock in space and bringing them down to earth. Selling them to the GDA could probably net me a neat and tidy profit. Or, helping them bring space assets up into orbit, because I could just pick up an object or sell it for cash.
There were a lot of options there if I just wanted to be wealthy for the sake of being wealthy. Maybe I could have just tried to ask for more money, but the human inside of me still wanted to work for a living on some level. Just accepting charity simply because I was the biggest, strongest thing in a given room sat ill at ease with me.
Focusing back on the now, I turned to the functionary that’d been tasked with guiding me in. “So, should I just work and then call people in when I actually have something to show off, or…?”
“That would be ideal, yes,” the man agreed.
I nodded back. “Then I’ll probably have something to show later in the day.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.”
With everything more or less stowed away, there wasn’t anything else to do but actually sit down and start working. I had my designs and a good idea of what I wanted to make. Now I just had to bring them into reality.
When you boiled down to it, a puppet was a bunch of simulated chakra networks that were, well, puppeted around by a puppeteer. For regular shinobi they’d have to rely on chakra threads, a technique that could be used or developed into other things and tended to be highly reliant on the fine control of the individual in question. There were also realities of the limitations of how many puppets someone could control at once.
It was a strategy that my people didn’t need to abide by. The Ōtsutsuki in Naruto: The Last relied on a few specific resources to properly control a large number of these constructs at once. By and large, allowing them to be relatively autonomous, save for the fact that you properly needed to implant them with commands. Most of which were rarely all that complex to begin with.
I didn’t have an Energy Vessel to operate hundreds of them at once, and honestly, I didn’t need it. To control a few at range would require me to kind of configure a custom shinjutsu for it, but it was eminently feasible. Presuming I needed to do that, to begin with. Giving it some instructions that were built in from the outset might be enough.
The only real flaw I could see being here was the power source of my new creations. If I weren't applying chakra threads or had some fuck-off huge energy source, I’d have to get creative. As always, I looked first to the tools at my disposal, but specifically Hyotōn. Being able to craft ice from nothing but pure chakra was…
There was something there, wasn’t there?
It was where my mind was wandering as I focused on the parts of construction that didn’t require me to be all that present mentally. None of me, specifically, as I broke off into several different clones that handled the various parts of construction. Who needed a full-scale team when you were the entire team?
A few of my clones were handling the bones of the model puppet, made from the hardest metal I could find out of the stock provided. Everything, from the myomers that’d be simulating muscle memory to the faux-chakra network that I was building into those myomers, was laid overtop a general frame like that. You could get pretty wild with them too, or use a corpse if it had specific capacities you would have liked to maintain in the new creation. Yet for today, I was sticking with just a standard humanoid.
A head, four limbs, five fingers and toes, and a set of eyes, along with the rough notion and imprint of the rest of the face, like a nose and mouth. None of it was tremendously advanced stuff, as far as my people went, but it was serviceable enough. With so many clones acting in concert with one another, the entire process took a remarkably little amount of time.
Which is why I spun some off to begin dealing with the myomers. I called them that, but that was mostly just a term I stole from Battletech. In that universe, it was an artificial muscle technology that functioned by way of electroactive polymers. When the conductive fibers contracted, it was because an electrical current was applied, and when that current was cut off, they expanded.
The principal in puppetry was much the same, if we were being honest. It just required materials that were saturated in chakra and reacted to it instead. Not easy to find on this world, but when I had the right fibers to begin with, I could do the next best thing. Effectively bombarding my target with the equivalent of countless humans' worth of chakra until it was practically radioactive with space alien magic.
There was a reason why I was so fond of calling the Ōtsutsuki prone to solving their problems with brute force. When you didn’t have to work within the same confines as everyone else, that was the type of culture that developed. It wasn’t that they were incapable of sophistication, hardly, just that their knee-jerk decision most of the time was overwhelming force rather than anything specifically sneaky.
Such tactics could change if they needed to be a little underhanded. It was just rare, given how uncommon races were that could demonstrate any kind of actual fight against them. That was just one of the reasons why, from the outside looking in, I could tell what kind of a genetic dead end we were in in our current condition.
My gripes with the vast majority of Ōtsutsuki could wait for another time, though. For now I had work to do.
Altogether, my efforts with the frame and actuating muscles came together a lot better than I’d thought it would. It was ugly, and I saw countless points of failure and concern that made my burgeoning perfectionism scream. The thing would do for a very, very basic proof of concept, despite the one thing that was missing.
It would move. It’d be functional, in the barest sense of the word. But nothing about the puppet would be optimal.
That didn’t stop me from beaming at the messy, crappy work, feeling the satisfaction of a job well done. “Good job, guys.”
“We’re you, idiot,” one of the clones responded. “As in, like, literally you. This isn’t a Shadow Clone situation.”
“I know,” I agreed, knowing full well I was having an idiotic conversation with quite literally myself. “But it’s fun to mess around, innit?”
The clone in question thought about it before giving me a nod. “...Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
We all had a good laugh before I did the proper thing and reincorporated all of my perfected clones into me. It was a little disorienting to see and feel from all those perspectives, but I got over it quickly. Now it was just a matter of focusing on the part of the project that I had been deliberately putting off.
It was another reminder of why I was even bothering with puppets in the first place. My clones operated off of my chakra reserves, and that was something even a perfected one had to deal with. My puppets, meanwhile, could be loaded beforehand with as much power and set to a task. Theoretically, anyway. I knew there would be situations where one would be superior than the other, and that was fine.
Variety was the spice of life, or so they say.
When it came to how they should be powered, I really did waffle over this constantly. There were so many ways for it to work that would allow for the unit to be relatively autonomous in most respects. Some of them better than others, like my objectively stupid chakra-draining model. Like, just by the dint of it existing in my mind, I felt as if it could still happen by someone trying to replicate my work and getting a bright idea.
It just sounded like the sort of thing that was built to go awry in a superhero universe like this.
But no, I would not be going ahead with that idea personally. Nor was the notion of personally topping up the units when they were low workable, even if I could dump and seal vast amounts of chakra inside of them to make it work. That just wasn’t feasible either, not for any sort of mass production. Not that I ever believed there’d be more than a handful of these units that Cecil would dare put trust in.
The solution in the end looped back around to my icy bloodline. All of the constructs were partially chakra-created and partially from the water content in the air. That ratio changed fairly drastically depending on the environment I was in, yet it did prove to me that I could make highly chakra-saturated constructs. Not only that, I could create Hyōton constructs that could cross no small amount of range, either.
Demonic Mirror Ice Crystals effectively allowed someone to teleport between them. So, first, what would happen if I created a crystalline unit to absorb or store chakra, and then a paired one that would be able to send chakra to the core at a given moment? It would create an unmistakable weakspot in the design that would be protected, but it would also work to solve the power constraints of fueling the puppet.
Yeah, I could feel something percolating in my brain as connections were being formed with the basis of this idea. If a shinobi asked me to try and explain it, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do so to their satisfaction. The whole thing was more instinctive, with a grounding in practical chakra studies that was the result of centuries, if not thousands of years, of iteration.
When I began forming the nucleus of the puppet, I focused on the concepts that lay at the heart of my ice release. A crystalline lattice that was cold, cold enough by itself to probably lower the entire room by existing, just near the size of my fist. It was round and engraved with as many carefully carved lines of sealing script as I dare put into the ice to maintain the various functions and autonomous features.
Carefully, and with a delicate touch that it probably didn’t need, I placed the core inside of the chest of my puppet. For a few moments nothing happened, as it stood there silently, before I activated my Byakugan and watched the flow of chakra come out from the core itself. I’d dumped maybe a quarter of my reserves into the thing, which was…
It was a lot. If someone weaponized that core, they might be able to take out the Pentagon by itself. Thankfully, I was the only one who had any real knowledge of how to do so.
As the machine came to life, I smiled broadly while I lifted up the control ‘mirror’. This wasn’t made of ice, was nearly as tough, and had been made into a ring that I could wear. Still engraved with fūinjutsu script, though. Or was it more of a jutsu-shiki, or shinjutsu, since I’d made it with my special capabilities…?
Ugh, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I put the ring on and looked at the puppet. “Jump up and down at the maximum rate of a human man.”
Quick as a whip, it moved to follow my orders as it began to jump up and down. Then I ran it through its paces, watching all of the small internal points of wear and tear, or improper design and friction, as it moved about the room. Running, jumping, sprinting—the works—everything that I could test the full range of motion for the construct before we got into anything truly arduous.
As it was now, I estimated that it could probably operate for five to six months alone on the chakra invested in it now. At least, operate at a primarily human level of capability. Going above and beyond that, reinforcing itself with chakra, or using any special features, would drastically begin to take that rate down. If it weren't for the fact that I regenerated my chakra as easily as breathing and existing, I’d have called it untenable.
But this was just a first draft of literally everything. A proof of concept that one man (and his clones) could craft a proper autonomous puppet by their lonesome. Right now, I felt pretty confident that Invincible could beat this thing if he really went at it, just based off what I’d seen of him before. If I iterated on the design more, I got the feeling we could boost a lot of other numbers across the board. Saving those people in Chicago was certainly something that gave me pride and accomplishment and some real warm and fuzzy feelings, but this was a very different kind of satisfaction.
Was this what people had been talking about when they spoke of the pleasure they got from working with their hands? I was starting to come around to their point of view, at least to an extent. Once I was sure that everything was working to my satisfaction, I sent a text off to Donald that I was ready to present it to their scientists.
It wasn’t until the late afternoon that I received my guests, who didn’t seem all that disgruntled for having to stay later than they might have expected. Rather, they all seemed excited, clad in their white labcoats and dressed accordingly for their roles. Donald was even there with them, looking on politely.
“These are what could be described as generalists,” he explained, gesturing to the various individuals who stood before me. “Since we’re in such foreign territory, it seemed prudent to begin with people that might not have any predispositions or notions you’d be breaking.”
“It’s appreciated,” I smiled, beaming at the man. “You’re well prepared.”
“Truthfully, it’s not every day we get an alien willing to explain their technology,” Donald admitted. “The Martians are isolationist, and few of our other visitors were so accommodating.”
Understandable. It means that I’m something of an outlier in my willingness to explain my bullshit. Mostly because I wasn’t sure if knowing how I did what I did could hurt me, yet perhaps that was just some plain Ōtsutsuki arrogance at play. Humanity was a bunch of bipolar apes, and by god, we did our best when we were at our most desperate and willing to complete and utterly flail about in our desperation.
“Then I’m happy to help out the greater human interest, however… Before I progress with the explanation, may I ask what humans actually understand about the preternatural?” I asked, glancing between the various scientists who had approached for the demonstration.
“Within the confines of so-called supernatural phenomena?” The raven-haired woman from the bunch asked. I think her name was Daphne or something, with a small frown creased across her features. “It’s not very reliable. By and large, most ‘mages’ or those with magical powers do not often explain them to any real degree.”
That did make me frown. “...Are you saying there are no magic-wielders on this planet?”
She shook her head at the question. "There are individuals who claim magical powers and origins, but when it comes to codified systems of power, no. None of those exist."
My estimation of how prepared the world would be for my powers dropped by a few notches, yet that didn’t mean the GDA and the powers that be couldn’t adapt anything from it. It just meant that the grounding that might have come from having their own homegrown magical practitioners in the fray of that research wouldn’t come to pass. Sometimes, that was just the way it was.
“I’ll start with the fundamental basis of my species’ capabilities, which tie into every living creature that we’ve ever come across.” Raising a hand, I focused and cast what was an illusory sort of genjutsu on all of the people present.
In my hand hovered a taijitu, swirling in black and white. “Everything living is made up of two types of energy, physical and spiritual.”
“Physical energy is a force that is produced by each of the individual cells of an organism's body,” I continued, highlighting one half of the greater whole in the illusory wheel that I’d manifested. “It almost directly coordinates to physical strength, stamina, and the works. The more you have, the more robust you are.”
There were some sounds of typing, or, in the case of a few of the scientists present, scribbling with pencils on notepads. One of them even raised their hands, a question evident on their faces.
I didn’t hesitate to give them a nod, opening the floor for the brief query. “Does this always correlate to size or other factors like genetics or superhuman abilities that branch off from the direct physical strength of the subject?”
“That’s a very good question,” I said, smiling. “From what we, my clan, have understood of the matter, it can vary between individuals of the same race and population. However, those traits tend to correlate with a larger than average quality of physical energy production.”
Pausing, I glanced between the other scientists present. “Are there any other questions?” Once I was sure there weren't, I continued on with the presentation. Next up was the other half of the taijitu, which would represent the other half of chakra for the sake of my audience.
"Moving on to spiritual energy, this is a more complex part of the equation. It’s derived from consciousness itself and is generally agreed upon to be tied to things less easily measurable.”
“What, like actual intelligence?” One of the scientists pointed out. “You can test for IQ, but some of the other elements feel a little more complex.”
That was enough to make me hum as I tilted my hand from side to side. “Somewhat. But I’ve never personally thought those sorts of exact tests are the most reliable. For example, there’s a difference between outright ingenuity and being industrious enough to study for a given test or knowing how to get a good result on it.”
In fact, there were many ways people could study for IQ tests. From a lot of people, there was this presumption that intelligence was this innate, inborn, immutable trait. And to a certain degree, it was true; there were some people who’d just never quite be as bright as the rest of the herd. That didn’t mean that you couldn’t improve your actual observable IQ through a variety of means.
That was a problem with academia, though, and outside of the scope of this discussion.
“However, yes, studying, meditation, training, and just general life experience are part of what makes it increase,” I confirmed. “It’s a lot harder to measure than, say, someone’s innate physical might. My clan has also observed that practicing a technique repeatedly, for us at least, counts as building up experience to increase your spiritual energy.”
There was an objective reason to master only a select number of jutsu, though you certainly hit a point of diminishing returns on this style of training eventually. Everyone had their own beliefs on the matter, and honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the belief itself colored the actual training results. Chakra was just weird like that.
“Coming together, they are the two halves of what is known as chakra. However, most living creatures lack a functioning chakra pathway system to actually circulate it through the body.” Placing a hand on my chest, I gave them a soft smile. “Unfortunately, humanity does not possess one. That does not mean you are incapable of making use of the energy system in other ways or benefiting from my own expertise.”
It was at this point I moved over to my puppet, which was standing stock still this entire time. “This is what I’m tentatively calling the model Mark One Bushi, created from the practice of puppeteering.”
“An autonomous drone,” Daphne commented, inspecting it along with all of the other scientists present. “Though to what end? We certainly don’t lack models of robots to do similar things.”
“Built from Ōtsutsuki knowledge, these are designed to, by and large, do things that our low population tends to make a little cumbersome to deal with. However, what’s basically a maid to me is functionally equivalent to a relatively high-powered superhero to you.” The clan as a whole was literally designed for no small amount of regular human sacrifices, beyond the fact that we didn’t tend to breed very quickly as a rule.
Slapping the puppet on the shoulder, I willed it to begin doing jumping jacks, just as a demonstration. “Through this ring, I’m able to command it and any other possible puppets that I’ve created with similar core. Theoretically, there’s not really anything about the fūinjutsu involved that really requires chakra at all, save to activate it. While the puppet itself is outside of the scope of our discussions, the other underpinning systems are not.”
Though a part of me did want to entice the GDA with bankrolling my puppets. The only real part of this that I’d be more widely sharing with them was some very basic fūinjutsu seal variants. For more, I was hoping to coax them into being more impressed by the possibilities of puppetry.
Tapping the ring with my other hand as I continued, I gave them a broad smile. “And in that case, there are other things you can do to properly get it going. Blood is one of the most common means of activation, but I’m fairly sure I can create other means to do so.” Some sort of seal that absorbed blood for an activation trigger would probably work, but the logistics felt like they’d get too unwieldy before long.
Much to my surprise, that seemed to be the thing that got the murmuring going amongst them. It wasn’t what I’d expected, but I continued along as I gestured to the puppet again. “Through a core of ice saturated in my chakra, it can reinforce itself and replicate at least some programmed abilities of mine. Though, the higher the level of activity, the more this core will exhaust itself.”
Then a voice I hadn’t expected today and hadn’t seen with my Byakugan turned off spoke out from the entrance to the workshop. “How long can they operate for?”
Glancing over, I saw Cecil strolling into the workshop, inspecting my efforts with a critical eye. His face didn’t give anything away, though, and I wasn’t keen to just violate his privacy to try and read his body language…yet.
“Five, maybe six months, at a relatively low operating capacity,” I guessed, hedging my bets and making the presumption they’d probably throw it at much less complicated threats. Or have it mostly in standby. “If you wanted to try and replicate my own capacities, it’d be…markedly less time, and even then I’m unsure of how well this model would hold up.”
“But it could, if given the right materials?” He leadingly asked.
Giving the question the due diligence it deserved, I thought it over. So far, I’d been using mostly materials that could be considered relatively mundane, save for what I’d done to them with chakra and sealing script. That didn’t mean I couldn’t accomplish more with advanced metamaterials that I didn’t even know existed.
“Yes,” I nodded. “It’s a very tentative yes. There’s no reason that better materials or more refined designs can’t have their operational parameters vastly increased.”
Something satisfied glinted in his eyes at that answer. Though Cecil became the least of my concerns as I began to field questions from the rest of the scientists. There were all sorts of queries they had about the range of motion, the limits of my design, scientific principles, or the various versions therein that my people used. It was a lot, but at the end of the session I had the privilege of seeing several scientists walking away from the entire conversation looking thoughtful.
Especially as they probed at the possibilities of fūinjutsu and jutsu-shiki. The first was basically the capacity to just seal items, living beings, chakra, or even more esoteric things. And for a specifically creative race like humanity, that was enough to start making their heads spin for a bit with the possibilities. Making it so that I was the foremost expert in this new scientific field…
For a knucklehead like me, that was enough to make me puff up my chest a little in satisfaction.
Regardless, as they were walking out, Cecil stayed behind, and I could only give him a crooked grin. “So? What do you think of the puppet?”
“It’s an impressive design, genuinely. However… I think out of everything you’ve shown off so far, the thing that’s got the eggheads the most excited was that fūinjutsu of yours,” Cecil explained, gesturing to my ring.
I blinked. “Wait, I thought the puppet would be the more impressive thing.”
“It’s certainly flashy,” he agreed readily, nodding as he crossed his arms. “But it’s ultimately another destructive drone, and one that’s dependent on your assistance to likely ever operate. We’ll probably be arguing over the merits of acquiring a few from you and the hassle of setting one up.
“But your sealing script opens up vast, incredible new opportunities for storage and other unusual capacities that would work independently of you.”
And honestly, could I even blame him for taking that position? I didn’t know what the heights were for this sort of thing, but creating seals that just ambiently absorbed natural energy would likely solve a lot of the issues they might have been having. Or, creating one that could absorb it from a source, like a living creature, to be used elsewhere.
It was a messy thing, but killing a cow so they could power some utility fūinjutsu that saved them tens of thousands of dollars, or more, wouldn’t even be a price most people would blink about. Maybe it was the space alien in me talking, but I’d thought about things first and foremost as a weapon and not about the other services that my capacities could provide.
“...I think that sort of concept would genuinely be workable,” I conceded, rubbing my chin as I gaugingly stared at Cecil. “Not something I would have come up with, but you guys are better at this than I would have thought.”
“You do seem a bit young for your age.”
“I’m over a century old!” I squawked in outrage.
To which Cecil could only shoot me a smirk. “It’s not the mileage, but how you handle those miles, kid. This was good work, though. I appreciate you sharing this with us, even if you’ve also signed yourself up to no small amount of busywork for the next couple of days.”
Words that I could only snort at and look immeasurably smug about. “Ha! Nope, I can split off a clone that knows everything I do and doesn’t need to eat, sleep, or breathe. They can pump it for information while I’m off doing more interesting things.”
For a moment, I could see a deep longing in Cecil for that kind of capacity. Right before it was smothered by a half-lidded glare. “Try to think about the rest of us mere mortals before you gloat over something like that.”
"Sorry, Cecil,” I smirked. “I’m only a 'kid,' right? I’ve still got some growing up to do.”
He sighed, rolling his eyes at me as he turned to leave. “Whatever. You’re cleared to go, kid. Just be sure to make yourself available for questions on how all of this works in the future.”
“Will do.”
It wasn’t the same as saving people from alien invaders, but this was a different kind of thing I could share to make the world a better place. The entire experience was good for me, since it was making me think about my abilities in ways that I hadn’t. If nothing else, I was excited to get back home and start scribbling down new ideas to take advantage of the new avenues I’d been directed to consider.
Not bad for a day’s work.
Author's Notes:
This chapter doesn't have a lot of hectic action, but it is setting the groundwork for future developments later in the fiction. Ultimately, not a bad overall chapter, though I'm also prepared for the deluge of people potentially arguing that giving the GDA access to any chakra derived sciences is a bad idea. We'll see.
Additionally, if you would like to read ahead, you can find up to ten chapters ahead via the linktree in my profile. For the time being, all adult content like future smut in anything I write, will be on , though in due time I'll likely try to get the processing and authentication through on to be able to post it there as well. So be mindful of where you're supporting me.
Lastly, I have a freely accessible post up speaking about our first week live, questions for what people would like to see improved or fixed, and also a poll on all of my snippets or stories, to test the waters and see which way people are going. If you'd like to be part of that process at all, click here.