Inheritance

With ginger revenant steps Chika made her want into the building that had been named after herself, Or more accurately her Papa Chikamatsu the man who she had taken her name from.
She hadn’t always been Chika, she hadn’t even always had a name until Chikamatsu had given her one.

On one hand it was a shame that she hadn’t stuck with the name her papa had given her. Cerise had such a lovely ring to it. She hadn’t totally disregarded it, keeping it as her middle name instead. While she was mostly utilitarian she had a sentimental side to her as well and would never throw out something her papa had given her. After all, if she didn’t have any sentimentality she never would have taken on his name in order to carry out his legacy.

The story was dusty having been neglected for the past year or so but otherwise in relatively good shape. It wouldn’t take much maintenance to get it back up and running again, something for which Chika was very relieved about. She would have come here sooner if she hadn’t been so busy with attending the academy. It would have been difficult claiming her inheritance sooner since she would not be legally recognized as an adult if not for her headband she was presently wearing.

She was surprised one of her fellow clan mates hadn’t tried to move in on her turf in the meantime. Perhaps they had some honor after all, though after the way they had turned their back to her papa at his funeral she wasn’t about to start giving them any of the profits she would be earning from this place anytime soon. They would have to work for her forgiveness before she gave them so much as one red yen.

“Mine.” She declared bluntly as she got to work cleaning up the joint.

(Claming overship of Chika's Cogs and Crafts store)

Upon closer inspection the store wasn’t in as good condition as she’d initially assumed. Once she started removing the thick layer of dust it was apparent that the building was very run down for some odd reason. The back end that could be used as a house was still questionably liveable but otherwise it was going to cost a lot of money to get the store into good enough shape that a customer would be willing to step through the doors.

To add insult to injury someone had come in and removed all of the stock which meant she had nothing to sell even if she was somehow able to open the store. Luckily the back area had been locked and from the looks of it remained untouched the entire time. Taking the key her papa had given her out of her pocket Chika unlocked the door and moved to the storage area. The sight of what she found inside was enough for the usually stoic girl that she fell to her knees with tears in her eyes.

There were several puppets inside including one that looked exactly like Papa Chikamatsu had before his untimely demise. For a moment she almost believed he’d come back to her somehow. After all, one of the former Hokage’s Satomi Uchiha had supposedly risen from the grave so why not Chikamatsu? But she knew she’d only be lying to herself, indulging in a childish fantasy that could never come true.

In all the fantasy stories she had read in the last couple of years growing up heroes might be occasionally allowed to come back but never traitors. Of course she knew that Chikamatsu was no traitor but most of the rest of the village didn’t see it that way. Unless she managed to clear his name first he’d never be able to live in peace even if he could somehow come back.

In the end those were just stories, just fiction. In reality people don’t come back from the dead. That was just how life went. The only way she could ever see Chikmatsu again, the real Chikmatsu and not some puppet facsimile of him would be when she passed to the otherside herself, something that god willing wouldn’t happen for a long time to come. Her papa wouldn’t want that and Chika herself certainly didn’t want to die just yet, not when she still had so much to do like building the world’s ultimate puppet.

Still even if it wasn’t her real Papa that didn’t make the puppet any less special. Perhaps she was more sentimental than she realized, just the idea of being able to fight alongside the image of him was enough to make her feel better. It was the perfect tool to use against Nyg and Satomi. She wasn’t out for revenge but that didn’t mean she had to like them. She almost couldn’t wait to see the looks on their faces when they saw the puppet in action.

Shooting out a chakra string from the tip of her index finger she snaked it into the puppet moving it around and getting a feeling for its internal structure. An amature puppet user would need several strings to control one puppet but someone with her high level of coordination could easily accomplish that with only one.

Within seconds she had the puppet up and running just the way she wanted to. It might have taken her longer if it was something made by a stranger but she was quite used to Papa Chikamatus’s work having been taught how to make puppets by him. She knew his style inside and out which made it child’s play for her to use anything that had been made by him. It wasn’t just one puppet that he had left in storage but several. One shaped like a Guardian dog statue, One made after Chikamatsu if he was a girl instead of a boy and one’s patterned after a typical Uchiha and Huyga clan member.

The ones that Chika herself liked the best was the one styled after her Papa obviously and of course the Spider puppet that had been made in the image of her Papa’s summons. Considering her true form was that of a Spider herself which made her feel a certain sense of kinship even if it was just a puppet and not an actual living creature.

While Controlling the Faithful Karakuri Chika shot a second chakra string out using it to learn how to use each of the other puppets one at a time, two being the most she could use at once without her concentration stuttering to falter causing the performance of the puppets to drop precepatislesly with each additional one she used.

It was theoretically possible to control up to 10 Puppets while using the right jutsu but something about that idea struck Chika as being the wrong way to go about things. At least it seemed wrong for somebody like her who only had an average human’s worth of stamina to speak of. She’d be drained of what little energy she had in no time flat if she tried to pull off such an outlandish stunt.

It wasn’t like she didn’t want to improve her stamina among other things such as her constitution. The problem was that no matter how hard people worked sometimes they only had so much potential to grow. From what the Clan doctor had told her most of Chika’s potential had gone towards her Coordination and Perception. It wasn’t like she didn’t have room to grow in other departments, it was just that in the long run she would get the most bang for her buck if she focused on improving what she was already good at.

In any case she wanted to focus on ways to fight that cost as little chakra as possible so which meant the kinds of high end techniques that would be required to use more puppets effectively where out. No she’d just have to accomplish what she could with good old fashioned engenuity.

If it was hard to use many puppets at once then why not use one that could split apart into several or combine several into one? It was by thinking outside the box that unexpected things became possible. The idea of making something like a Russian doll where you had a smaller iteration of the same puppet stored inside a larger one was something she was willing to bet few people had ever tried.

The reason for that was cost, Puppets were expensive to make as heck. Chika was going to either have to find a way to become rich or find a sponsor for herself if she was going to fulfil her dream of being the greatest puppet maker in the world. She had a long long way to go but in many ways Papa Chikamatsu had given her the best possible gift a father could by leaving her with not one, not two but six entire puppets. Fully equipped at that. It was a shame his masterpiece, his pièce de résistance had been destroyed but even so what had been left in storage for her was worth a small fortune to the average ninja. Sure someone who had millions of ryo might not think much of it but as someone could barely scape two ryo together it meant the world to Chika.

Moving the Faithful Karakuri towards her Chika manipulated it into giving her a hug. It didn’t have any of the warmth her Papa had but she liked to imagine it did. Held in it’s wooden arms her eyes blinked in surprise as she felt a slight bulge coming from the pocket on the Puppet’s vest.

Reaching inside she pulled it out to reveal an envelope addressed in her name. Not as Chika that she had assumed from her Papa but the name he had given her Cerise. Inside was nearly 400,000 worth of Ryo. Had he known he was going to be killed that day he went to the hospital? That seemed unlikely but he had always been the kind of man who planned for contingencies. The idea that he would leave some cash behind for her to find if something happened to him was exactly the kind of thing he would do.

“You really were the best Papa.” Chika muttered to herself as the tears flowed freely from her eyes. She had claimed all of her inheritance now but it would be some time before she moved from this spot and went back to cleaning the building to get it back to livable condition.

[exit]

Learning
✶Faithful Karakuri
✶Loyal Karakuri
✶Deceitful Karakuri
✶Loving Karakuri
✶Uptight Karakuri
✶Mocking Karakuri
1444/900 words

Loot: