The Way of the Weaponsmith

It was kind of an odd shift in experience, going from living alone in a small cramped apartment made even smaller by the obtrusive presence of his creations and the tools he used to make them, to living alone in a massive empty Clan District with entire and rather large buildings he could dedicate to things he once devoted walls to. A bookshelf containing his notes on everyone he's met, everything he's heard them say and seen them do; and his general opinions on said people, words, and actions; now was but one of many in a library that he all but owned. His own little piece of the extensive history of the clan and the village stored within.

The same went for his tradesman's tools. Where once his forge, crucible, anvil, and countless other minor hand tools had cluttered the infinitesimally tiny space he called a "living room", he now had a dedicated shop for his craft. All he had to do was have some people move the equipment from the former to the latter, and he was good to go. Of course, he lacked the skill to actually run a store, and even a connection with somebody who had said skill. But that didn't matter to him, since he didn't plan on selling most of the weapons he made. He didn't need the money, given that at some point he simply stopped eating and could reliably live in considerable comfort (if loneliness) here in the district.

He decided to craft some fuuma shuriken to test the improvement in his ability granted by the freedom to move around. After all, it was said that focusing on the basics was the key to getting better. With that in mind, he opted to make a batch of 20 of them, using the activity as training and exercise for his skill as a craftsman.

Removing the tree that had tried to seize him was a major victory in his mind, but ultimately that was ground down by the need to do more work. Luckily, said tree had strong roots that with some work, made solid material from which to craft equipment. Like with all crafting of Senju Wood, there was some involvement of chakra manipulation that his bloodline at least made easier. As was typical of hardwoods, it was ordinarily pretty stubborn when it came to being worked. Luckily, he wasn't dealing with the wood as a crafting material at the moment, rather he was putting it to use as firewood for his forge. Of course, most people would think of that as a waste, given how expensive the wood was at the store. But Ashitaka was one of those lucky few who could produce it out of virtually thin air so it could be chopped up and burned. More than that, he "happened" to have an axe handy that was well-suited to hacking apart the wood and he had no qualms about putting it to good use.

As for what he was actually forging today, well that was a true test of a blacksmith's abilities: a complete set of high-quality senbon needles out of Titanium. To make matters more difficult, he planned to leave one end of each of them hollow and open so that he could incorporate them into his Wood Cutting Technique. The difficulty of senbon needles lay in their size: only a couple millimeters thick, the crafting of each one required extreme precision to pull off. Not only that, but Titanium was nearly as uncooperative a metal as Senju was a wood. It was highly prone to acquiring impurities and therefore had to be monitored constantly during forging to keep them out, and the problem was worse when it came to small objects such as basic projectiles since every one of them that gained any impurities basically had to be started over from slag. It took days to get them right. When he did, though, he was almost sure he could sell them if he wanted to.

After the senbon, Ashitaka decided to try his hand at kunai. One might argue that this was akin to learning how to doggy paddle after learning to SCUBA dive, if one was ignorant at the surprising difficulty of applying advanced skills to simple tasks. It was too easy to overthink the job, and to overwork the weapons, effectively destroying them by endlessly chasing after miniscule flaws. In the week or so of working these Titanium projectiles, he'd lost track of how many he had to melt back down and start again from scratch. It was a terribly rough, unforgiving, and thankless job; but something about it was immensely rewarding at the end of the day. It felt like not needing to be told that he was doing a good job, and that... that was somehow valuable beyond words. Slowly but surely, the need for the pride of others was sated and driven back by his growing pride in himself. He may not have been a good fighter by the measure of his peers, but at least this was something he could do well.

The kunai that he forged were different from the store variety in a few ways that separated them even further from their garden variety cousins that any ninja with the money and desire could get from the General Market. Aside from their superior material and the quality of work that was required to render it functional, there was also their weight and shape. Since Titanium was less dense than Iron, the blades would have been lighter even given an identical volume. But he wouldn't settle for such an easy improvement. Instead, he also worked them into a more aerodynamic shape, with one side of the body sloping in mirrored hyperbolic curves toward a spine at the center and offering a smooth, shallow parabolic one on the other side. As a result, his kunai had a much more clearly defined "top" and "bottom" than ordinary ones. This cost them slightly in versatility but in exchange offered a much greater flight speed and slightly more comfort when worn.

When holding one up for inspection, he caught the fire's reflection and noticed much to his chagrin he probably should have been aware of before he started: the metal was damn shiny and would probably destroy any attempts at stealth when worn. Up close, he could see his own reflection well enough to brush his teeth with, and he was sure that if he hung up his gear with the weapons attached, he'd be able to see it here in the shop from the District Gate. That matter was a problem that he was going to have to find a solution to, and soon. And it wasn't like sanding it helped. It made the reflection less clear, but no less present. He might have to resort to painting them, as hideous an option as that was. But it was better that than bleeding all over them because they revealed his location to the enemy. Then again, given that many seemed able to spot his chakra signature even in the dark or through obstructions, he found himself wondering just how big of a difference that would really make.

Next on the list was an item crafted purely from Senju Wood: a katana. Unlike most things he'd made up to this point, this one was an extremely straightforward and classical Samurai-style weapon. Just as with the kunai, its deceptive simplicity actually made it harder to pull off. It was a beautiful and pure weapon that drew critical eyes of even the most novice of observers. And to add to the pressure to get it right, he intended to use it as his proof of skill when he applied for work at the Stag Emporium as part of his pursuit of sufficient attention to maybe start drawing commissions. He hoped that with those, he would garner enough funding to help with the nebulous financial strife that his best friend Chika had said that Konoha was experiencing.

The weapon was ambition incarnate: hopes and dreams, and the will and ability to make them a reality. For a solid week, he wrestled with the Wood, using chakra to grow and shape it. He had to stream it in with extreme care, lest the Wood grow out of control and try to become its own tree. Of course, taking the in-process blade to the anvil and beating it into submission with a hammer seemed to help with that. Normal wood would have split and splintered under such abuse, but his namesake compacted from the blows, growing denser and more durable with every strike. As he watched the sword form, he wondered if he should take something from this to heart. Although it looked like a toy to the untrained eye, his katana was no less a weapon than one made of steel.

To prove its worth, he put it to the "tatami mat test", rolling up the mats in question and striking the roll with the edge of his blade with the intent of severing them. The six-mat roll stood no chance, and neither did the nine. At fourteen, he was finding that he had more trouble making the rolls in the first place than slicing through them. He decided that this would have to be a satisfactory result, although he did kind of wish he could see just how far he could push it. Instead, Ashitaka decided to start work on a bow. He drafted the concept and put it up in the shop, certain that he'd be finished with it shortly after dealing with the matter of potential employment.

The bow was going to be an interesting piece of work. He had to actually take the time to learn Kyujutsu to generally get a feel for how they should operate at their peak. And buy a market bow to observe their basic forms and functions near the minimum of what he considered "serviceable". Once he was comfortable with both, he set to work on his own, working with the Senju Wood body that his new employer had claimed was so ideal. He found that manipulating chakra for it was easier than the previous weapons he made from it, especially the sword, probably because of all the practice he'd been getting when it came to making them. Which was good, because with all of the additional factors going into its development, it was still going to take a long time.

He spent hours just working out how to work out incorporating the Stag Emporium's deer skull logo along with his own wolf's head one with the limited space available on what would be the forward surface of the bow's upper arm. He always wanted his image to be presented as inherently triumphant life, but there wasn't really a way to do that without possibly slighting his new employer with the implication that his wolf was eating the deer. This was going to be a big issue if he didn't get it sorted out quick, because the emblem was supposed to be made of the titanium braiding he planned to decorate and reinforce the wood with. Once it was finished though, he'd have a masterpiece of a bow that was light and comfortable in the hand and could probably launch an arrow up to a mile away. That left the issue of developing his own abilities to put it to good use. In spite of having received a commission and a contract, it never crossed Ashitaka's mind to consider making a weapon that he didn't intend to develop skill with as though he meant to use it himself.

If one was to make the best use of a bow, of course, one would need arrows. And Ashitaka decided that twenty wasn't quite enough. That's why he'd previously bought Darhk's custom projectile molds for mass production. After all, why settle for idly sniping a single arrow at a time when one could rain death over a wide radius and make it impossible for an enemy to escape? Not that he could ever bring himself to kill another person, except maybe that Burned Man who kept making his life miserable, and even that was kind of iffy. Still, it didn't hurt to have the option if the necessity ever arose. So he laid out the handful of casting molds, fired up his forge and dropped the ebony ingots in, ready to set to work. Of course, there were scalpels, pen knives, and other surgical tools on hand for the more delicate work. But when it came to achieving the general shape of an arrow, pouring liquid metal into a mold promised to do well enough to start.

This was his first time working with Ebony, and he couldn't help feeling some mysticism as he observed the unique metal as it melted. As with his Titanium work, he used his Senju Wood to fuel the forge, although in this case it was not necessary for the sake of preventing impurities but simply for attaining the requisite heat. Ashitaka had had his hair cut before this particular venture, not so much as to drastically change his overall appearance, but at least enough to reduce the itching from his scalp brought on by the intense heat and the chances of loose hairs falling into his work and contaminating it.

This was going to be a long venture, but when he finished, he planned to buy some five-way seals from his employer so he could carry all of these arrows at once without their taking up too much space. And once it was complete, he might have made enough of an impression on someone with his skill as a smith to actually convince them to buy his creations. That would be nice. It was nice when Ari bought her claws from him, but nobody else had bought anything since.

Of all the things Ashitaka expected to get out of his time in the Grand Konoha Training Facility, new commissions for his weapons wasn't one of them. Still, they were nice to have and it meant meeting the requirements put forth by Okane. The issue was that one of his commissioners didn't yet have the ability to use the weapon she ordered from him. It took a remarkable physical prowess to use a top-tier bow like the one he was making for her, and if her current standard of training was anything like the one that led her to where she was, she'd probably die of old age before becoming able to use it properly. But that was her problem, not his, and so he set to work fulfilling the request by Uchiha Yui to make for her a bow of Ebony and Senju Wood, dubbed the "Raven's Talon". The pattern he made on it was slightly different from the one he'd put on his own bow, but it still served the same purpose: strengthening the arms while keeping them flexible and maintaining the weapon's weight distribution focused largely on its center.

The process took an entire week, as was the case with the one he made for himself, and worse he felt like he wasn't improving in his quality of work. He had plateaued for several months now, and the lack of progress was really bothering him. But there was nothing to be done for it but to push harder with each new piece, and hope that through a combination of his development in other fields and sheer force of will he could find the road to the future he was looking for. As he worked, he looked down at the shattered pieces of the sword he'd broken and thought about the process by which he'd bring them together. The truth was that he'd never performed kintsugi before, and therefore wasn't entirely confident in his ability to do the art justice. Still, he'd made the offer and had been called upon to make good on it, and so he would.

The Haganenokiba Memorial was to be nothing short of a masterpiece. It was, after all, made in honor of a sword gifted to a noble man by what Ashitaka could only assume was a better Hokage. The work required precise timing and surgical precision as tiny splinters of steel were sutured together with molten gold, which in turn were carefully brushed and prodded into floral designs with Senju Wood implements specifically designed for such careful work. To say the process was painstaking would be to make a terrible understatement. In spite of his training and capabilities, he found himself having to pause periodically to massage and exercise his hands to loosen them up. He often lost track of time, pouring countless hours into each day of work on the project.

The one perk of his near-perpetual solitude was the lack of potential for his work to be interrupted. He was able to focus uninhibited on his labors because there was no concern that someone might be looking for him, for any reason. His position as Head of the Senju Clan, or as the favored student of the Hokage ultimately amounted to nothing of substance. Most people took one look at him, saw an overdressed kid, and went about their day. He did experience a brief and minor influx of orders as word of his capabilities started getting around. But once people realized how long any given product was taking him to create, it was back to the realm of near total obscurity for Little Ashitaka. And so, he worked.

The upside to the particular task he'd assigned to himself at the moment was that it allowed him to broaden his creative horizons a bit. Both of the Memorial's primary requirements: glass-blowing and kintsugi, were entirely new processes for him. As it turned out, he took to them as well as he did any other art that didn't directly involve combat, and thus his confidence in his abilities was allowed to bud again.

The Kuroikiba was perhaps the very image of what a katana should be. Its black Tetsudashi Steel blade was precisely one meter long from its tip to the cherry heartwood-toned Senju Wood hilt, which itself was half that length and formed to have an ergonomic grip. A blood red silk braid was wrapped around said hilt and drawn as tight as a bowstring. The sheathe was carved from the same block of Senju Wood as the hilt, as was made clear when the weapon resided in it and their grains aligned.

While it was already a respectable piece to begin with, Ashitaka was determined to make it exceptional. So it was that he spent the past two weeks heating and beating the miniscule impurities out of the legendarily stubborn metal before, satisfied, he sharpened and polished the enhanced blade. He slung the finished product in the belt loop that originally hosted the Effortless Perfection and picked up the Haganenokiba Memorial and the letter which had come with Tengoku's payment. It seemed that it was time to see how people who were wealthy even by the standards of established Clans lived.

Mitsuki approached the Senju district... She'd heard from some of the locals that she might be able to find some weapons here. The young kenjutsu user trudged forward in search of the apparent shop in the area, trying to track down the vendor, and even activating her sharingan to look for their chakra signature. "Hello!? Anyone here?" Mitsuki yelled in question at the top of her lungs. "I come with ryo in exchange for finely crafted weapons!"

She continued to search around aimlessly, determined to find this shop in the Senju District that was... practically a forest. Eventually she just sat down under a tree waiting for the vendor to come to her since she couldn't find the shop for some reason. She turned off her sharingan and prop0ed herself and the tree. "Hello?! Is there a blacksmith here?" She shouted again, annoyed at how lost she was.

The young girl would be met with a white dog with body mass roughly equal to her own. It would bark at her and dance in a small circle, grabbing her sleeve and trotting a short distance away and barking again, indicating that it wanted to be followed. Not that the dog knew her goal, but all of the Inuzuka dogs were under the same basic command to escort anyone who looked both harmless and lost to the domain of the Senju Clan Head. Which incidentally happened to be a forge that was the most prominent source of smoke in the District. And that was where Mitsuki would be guided. Once there, she would find not Ashitaka but instead a pretty young woman with auburn hair and striking green eyes wearing a smith's apron and thick leather gloves over her semi-militaristic uniform. Upon seeing the younger girl, the older one would flash a sparkling white smile and place her elbows on the store's countertop to look down at her.

"Hello there, little Miss. Are you lost? Do you want us to send some people out to find your parents?"

"OH! I *was* lost, but I don't need my parents, I'm in the right place I believe." Mitsuki would cheerfully say, looking around the forge. She looked back to the head of the Senju and readjusted her headband, indicating she was in fact a genin, and not just a lost little girl. "I came looking for a vendor who wouldn't rip me off for a decent blade." She concurred, having seen the... awful display of swords at the general market that would seldom even cut a genin fresh from academy. She stretched herself out and pulled out a bag of coin.

"What'll this right here get me?" She questioned. The bag seemed filled with about 20,000 or so ryo.

Monika Inuzuka responded to the girl's comments with what would have been a model-perfect corporate smile had it not been for the light from the forge's fire making it look somewhat diabolical. She deftly counted out the ryo, sorting it into four stacks of 5k, then looked through the price index. When she found what she was looking for, she went into a back room and came back with two weapons. The first one took considerably more effort to lift onto the counter than the second.

Name: Zanbato
Item Rank: B
Material Rank: B+
Units Used: 3 units Steel, 1 Unit Wood
Description: This nasty weapon is a gigantic sword designed to sever the heads from horses that have been too traumatized by battle to be safely approached. It could just as easily be used to hack people in half. It is a Heavy Weapon and requires two hands to be used effectively by anyone with below C-Tier Strength. Its sheer mass grants the user an effective (+) Advantage to Strength when delivering strikes with it.
Requirements: Kenjutsu, C-Tier Strength
Crafting Time: Instant
Yield: 1
Price: 20,000 Ryo

Name: Senju Bokken-Nata
Item Rank: B
Material Rank: B+
Units Used: 1 Unit Senju Wood
Description: This sword looks identical to a garden variety bokken-nata save that it is made from hardened Senju Wood and therefore has durability comparable to Steel. Its perfect form and balancing grants the user an effective (+) Advantage to Coordination when wielding it. Additionally, it reduces the cost of Kenjutsu techniques using it by one Rank.
Requirement: Kenjutsu
Crafting Time: Instant
Yield: 1
Price: 20,000 Ryo

"That much will buy you one of these. Of course, I'd strongly recommend you save a little to buy yourself some armor. The finest blades in the world won't do you any good if somebody decides to make you a bit shorter." she suggested as she held out a hand, palm down and level with Mitsuki's head and then brought it down to her shoulder level. With a smirk, she withdrew her hand and set aside one of the stacks. "For just 15,000, you can buy yourself a more ordinary katana. And of course, the shinobigatana or wakizashi is only 10! Those should serve you just as well until you're more confident with your income."

Mitsuki shook her head and dropped the rest of her ryo on the counter. "In that case, can I get a katana, and do you do armor here?" She inquired. She was a kenjutsu user, and needed both armor and a sword now that he mentioned it. "Do you... Also have any scrolls lying around? Blank scrolls?" Mitsuki would say in addition, scurrying through her bags.

"Sweetie... this is an arms dealership, not a general store. We sell weapons here, and only weapons." Monika said as she made that smile again, then lugged the giant sword off the counter and into the back, returning briefly to swap out the bokken-nata with a standard steel katana with noticeably more grace. "Here you are. It's a bit generic, but it doesn't take a Sharingan to see that it's clearly of a superior quality to those offered by those racketeers trying to exploit fresh young genin like yourself with their shoddy work. I'm afraid I don't know of any other specialty shops in Konoha, but the Heavenly Emporium which Prince Ashitaka is contracted under should have whatever else you might need. You can't miss it. It flies, despite being the size of this entire District."

"I see... well." Mitsuki scooped 15k back into her pouch, and hung it back on her hip. "The payment's all here in full.. I'll go see if the Emporium has any quality armor for me." Mitsuki said, clearly having her doubts about the armor. She gazed upon the blade presented. She of course sees that that product is high quality... but she's going to gaze on it with a sharingan anyhow, just as she did the blades at the market... she knows from her father never to fully trust a blacksmith until you've held their sword for a while.

Mitsuki's eyes turned a shade of crimson, with two tomoe surrounding the center in a wheel pattern as she examined and attempted to appraise the blade.

"Little Miss... if you're going to be judgemental of a purchase after you've already paid for it, at least have the decency to do it out of the retailer's sight!" Monika announced cheerfully as she scooped up the ryo and deposited it in the store's vault. Of course, she knew that her work wasn't nearly on par with Ashitaka's and had come to terms with that. But a child who was not similarly talented baring the steel and scrutinizing it in full view of the public was just rude.

As if to punctuate her request, the white dog that had escorted Mitsuki to the store now approached her, gave a short bark and wagged its tail, indicating that it was ready to escort her somewhere else if she wanted to go. The dog, naturally, was oblivious to even basic human courtesies let alone the more advanced ones being addressed at the moment. It had its one mission and it was going to carry it out with a vengeance.

Mitsuki sheathed the blade and the crimson faded from her eyes. She looked toward the dog, and was more than welcome to let it guide her away from the shop and toward the shop, where-ever it should be. As soon as they were out of sight however, she reactivates her sharingan to examine the blade out of sight, checking for its materials, and quality. (I.e. post stats so I have something to put in my update log.) After it was fully appraised she'd put it back, knowing it was paid for now, regardless of the materials.

[Exit Thread]

The katana in question was pretty straightforward, so appraisal didn't take an expert.

Name: Steel Katana
Item Rank: B
Material Rank: B++
Units Used: 1 Unit Steel, 1 Anvil
Description: This sword looks identical to a garden variety katana save that it is made from Steel rather than the Iron used by the General Market, and is generally of higher quality. Its superior form and balancing grants the user an effective (+) Advantage to Coordination when wielding it. Like all weapons made at Lupis Armaments, it has the store's logo embossed on the end of the hilt and that of The Stag Emporium on the flat of the blade where it meets the hilt.
Requirement: Kenjutsu
Crafting Time: Instant
Yield: 1
Price: 15,000 Ryo

With Monika handling the more run-of-the-mill weapons sales, Ashitaka had more time to work on custom commissions. In this particular case, it was an advanced version of the Jade Panther Claws that he'd previously made for Ari, now made with Ebony and a much higher degree of skill. He wondered if she was ever going to retrieve either version, although given that their presence or absence would have done absolutely nothing for her in her last battle, he could understand if she didn't. Still, they were done now and he didn't know what he would do with them if she didn't pick them up, considering that even if he re-tailored them for his own hands they wouldn't fit with his Transformation Bracers in place.

Due to unforeseen delays, the Dark Panther Claws took far longer to complete than he'd initially expected, but at long last he'd pulled it off. He honestly didn't know what had spurred him to make the things, but that didn't matter now. He hung them on the wall not far from the custom bow he'd made for Uchiha Yui, then told Monika to inform Tengoku and others who were interested in custom orders that he would be out of town for a while, and that he wouldn't be able to complete them until then. Stepping out the front door of his shop for what might be the last time, he secretly hoped that a certain samurai girl would come buy them.





[Exit Thread- claiming Dark Panther Claws]

Ashitaka was glad to finally be back in his forge. The craft was his one source of stability and reliable pride in the whirlwind of madness that was the world he lived in. With rhythmic rings, his hammer beat the semi-liquid Ebony into shape. A tried-and-true process of heating the metal with burning Senju Wood and using the flow of his chakra to locate impurities to pound out of the metal helped him center himself and cope with the guilt for the staggering lack of reaction he felt towards the piling losses that had been laid at his feet. As long as he was working wood and metal into implements of war, he didn't need to think about anything else. Tengoku would have his Inazuma no Kiba in a timely manner and pristine condition, and life would continue as normal from there as he caught up with the backlog of orders and ideas that had built up while he was away at Hot Springs.


[Starting work on Inazuma no Kiba. Completion date 2/14/21]