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[— Manga Scene —]
Shikamaru's shadow surged after Temari, but she continued retreating quickly.
"I won't let you get away!"
Suddenly, Shikamaru took off his vest and threw it high into the air, where it inflated like a parachute, casting its shadow across the arena floor.
Temari's eyes widened.
'I never expected him to use his vest as a parachute… to give himself another shadow!'
'That bastard… he kept forcing me to watch for his attacks coming from the ground, so I wouldn't notice what he sent into the sky.'
Temari quickly began analyzing what she had seen.
'He can connect his shadow to other shadows to increase its range… but he can't control the shape of those shadows. And only when his real shadow reaches his opponent's shadow can he restrict their movement.'
Her eyes locked onto the shadow rushing toward her.
'Now I understand everything about the Shadow Imitation Technique!'
[— End Scene —]
…
Konohagakure:
In the section where the Nara Clan sat, Hiketsu wasn't looking at the vest hanging in the air.
He was looking at Temari.
Shikaku, meanwhile, had gone back to the previous page, then the one before that, then all the way to the moment Shikamaru had begun pursuing her across the arena.
"He hid the attack in the one place she wouldn't look."
Hiketsu raised an eyebrow.
"The sky?"
"No."
Shikaku slowly shook his head.
"Outside the problem he made her think she was trying to solve."
Hiketsu's eyes settled on him.
Shikaku pointed toward the pages.
"From the beginning, he made her think about one thing: the shadow on the ground. Its range, its area, its direction, and the shadows it could reach. Even when she discovered the hole, the danger was still coming from the ground."
Then he pointed toward the vest.
"So when he sent something above her head… she wasn't even looking for it."
Hiketsu smiled.
"Good."
Shikaku returned to the final page. Temari's face was tense, but her eyes remained sharp, moving between the shadows as she analyzed the rules governing the technique.
"But she understood it."
"What?"
"The Shadow Imitation Technique."
Shikaku pointed out her conclusions one by one.
"She understood that other shadows can increase the range of his own. She understood that he can't alter the shape of a shadow he borrows the way he can alter his own. And she understood that he can't restrict her movement until his shadow actually reaches hers."
Hiketsu's smile faded slightly.
"Yes."
"Then this trick won't work on her again."
"Probably not."
Shikaku fell silent for several seconds before saying:
"And that makes her more dangerous now."
Hiketsu didn't need to ask why.
At the beginning of the match, Temari had been fighting a technique she didn't understand. Now, she had turned everything she had seen into a clear set of rules inside her head.
But after a moment, the older man smiled again.
"You're only looking at it from one side."
Shikaku turned toward him.
"She learned how his technique works."
Hiketsu pointed toward Shikamaru.
"But he's the one who taught her."
Shikaku's eyes paused.
"Think about it. Every piece of information she obtained came from something he allowed her to see. The range, the shrinking shadow, the use of other shadows, and the vest."
"You're saying he deliberately revealed all of that?"
"No."
The answer came immediately.
"Don't turn intelligence into knowledge of the future. No one can control every conclusion their opponent reaches."
Then Hiketsu tapped a finger against the page.
"But a good fighter isn't afraid of being understood by his opponent, as long as he understands what his opponent will do with that knowledge."
Shikaku fell silent.
This time, he was no longer looking at the vest.
He was looking at Temari.
Inside her own thoughts, she had declared that she now understood the Shadow Imitation Technique.
That meant her next movements would be built around that understanding.
"So the battle has changed."
Shikaku finally said it.
Hiketsu nodded.
"Now it's finally getting interesting."
…
Shikaku turned to the diagram explaining the mechanics of the technique and remained silent for several moments.
It looked simple when drawn this way.
Shikamaru's shadow could extend only a limited distance. If it encountered another shadow along its path, he could use the area provided by that shadow to increase the range of his attack, then continue extending from the other side.
"Strange."
Hiketsu looked at him.
"What is?"
"The technique itself hasn't changed."
Shikaku lifted his eyes from the page.
"It's the same technique we know. There's no new jutsu, no modification to the hand seals, and no ability we've never seen before."
He looked toward the vest.
"All he did was find another shadow."
Hiketsu chuckled softly.
"And that surprises you?"
"A little."
Shikaku held the page between two fingers.
"We're always training to increase the speed at which the shadow extends, improve the precision of our control, increase the duration of the restraint, and make better use of the surrounding environment."
"Correct."
"But throwing your vest into the sky to create a new piece of the environment yourself…"
He paused.
"I never thought of that."
Hiketsu looked at his son without mocking him.
Instead, he seemed pleased.
"Then you've gained something useful from this volume."
Then he added:
"Clan techniques are an inheritance, Shikaku. Not instructions."
Silence settled between them.
"If every generation uses a technique exactly the same way the previous generation did, then we aren't inheriting a fighting art."
Hiketsu tapped his finger against the image of the vest.
"We're inheriting a habit."
Shikaku lowered his eyes toward the page again.
This time, the words stayed with him.
…
Sunagakure:
Inside Sunagakure's Art Store, Karura read the scene in silence, while Rasa beside her remained focused on the page where Temari explained what she had learned about her opponent's technique.
"She's good."
Rasa looked at her.
"Temari?"
"Yes."
Karura pointed toward the girl's thoughts.
"The trick caught her by surprise, but she didn't waste time getting angry because she fell for it. She immediately started analyzing why it worked."
Rasa reread the scene.
She was right.
The moment Temari realized the vest was in the sky, her thoughts didn't linger on the fact that Shikamaru had deceived her. They immediately moved toward what the deception had revealed about his technique.
His own shadow.
Other shadows.
The additional range.
And the condition necessary to restrain an opponent.
"She gathered a lot of information from a single attack."
Rasa said it.
Karura smiled faintly.
"Isn't that the point of surviving it?"
Rasa glanced at her from the corner of his eye.
"I thought you'd be annoyed that he tricked her."
"Why would I be?"
Karura raised an eyebrow.
"Because she's our daughter?"
Rasa didn't answer.
Karura returned her attention to the page.
"If my daughter is going to become a shinobi, I'd rather see her get fooled here and understand why than grow up believing intelligence means never being fooled by anyone."
Rasa remained silent for a moment.
Then he said:
"I didn't say I disagreed with you."
"Your face did."
"My face always looks like this."
Karura stared at him for two seconds.
"That's a different problem."
The corner of Rasa's mouth moved despite himself before he returned his attention to the volume.
…
A few moments later, Rasa pointed toward the vest in the sky.
"But the Nara is interesting too."
"Because he tricked her?"
"Because he turned something that wasn't a tool into one."
Karura looked at the page.
"His vest."
"To most shinobi, a vest is just clothing. To him, it became a parachute. The parachute created a shadow. And that shadow became an extension of his technique."
Rasa paused for a moment.
"He doesn't only think about what he has. He thinks about what he can turn what he has into."
Karura looked back at Shikamaru.
The same boy who had been sitting beneath a tree only a short while ago, wishing he could be a free cloud and complaining internally about having to fight…
was now turning his own clothes into part of a multi-stage plan.
"What a strange lazy boy."
Karura said it.
"Very lazy."
Rasa agreed.
Then, after a moment, he added:
"And that may be what makes him dangerous."
Karura raised an eyebrow.
"How?"
"Because he doesn't want to fight."
Rasa looked at Shikamaru's image.
"Someone who enjoys fighting might search for the strongest attack, or for a way to crush his opponent. But this boy… he seems to be constantly searching for the shortest path to solving the problem so he can go back to lying down."
Karura laughed softly.
"That's the strangest compliment I've ever heard you give a shinobi."
"It wasn't a compliment."
"Of course."
…
Karura's eyes returned to Temari.
Only a few pages earlier, her future daughter had believed she was safe. Then the shadow appeared from somewhere she hadn't accounted for. And now, before she even had the chance to catch her breath, another danger had appeared above her head.
But she didn't collapse.
She didn't freeze.
She thought.
"Rasa."
"Hmm?"
"If this really is our daughter…"
She paused for a moment, then a small smile appeared on her face.
"I like the way she thinks."
Rasa remained silent for a moment longer than necessary.
Then he returned his gaze to the page.
"So do I."
Karura didn't need anything more than that.
…
Konohagakure:
Shikaku was still reading.
Once again, he returned to the beginning of the match.
Temari at a distance.
Shikamaru watching.
The shadow advancing.
Its range being revealed.
The hole being used.
Then the vest rising into the sky.
Each step on its own seemed almost disappointingly simple.
But when placed together, they began to look like something else.
"Father."
"Yes?"
"I think I understand what I like about his fighting style."
Hiketsu waited.
"There isn't a single flashy move."
Shikaku looked across the consecutive pages.
"If I saw each one by itself, I probably wouldn't think much of it. Using the wall, taking advantage of the hole, throwing the vest… they're all simple things."
Then he raised his eyes.
"But every step changes what Temari knows about the battle."
This time, Hiketsu said nothing.
"When she learns the shadow's range, he uses another shadow. When she starts looking for shadows on the ground, he creates one in the sky. Every time she understands one rule, he uses that understanding to change the question."
A faint smile appeared on Shikaku's face.
"He isn't hiding some secret technique."
He pointed toward the boy on the page.
"He simply doesn't allow her to solve the same problem twice."
Hiketsu looked at his son for a long moment.
Then he returned his eyes to the volume.
"An innovative fighting style."
In the arena, a future heir of the Nara Clan wasn't displaying a new technique.
He was doing something far more important for a clan that had built its strength upon intelligence.
He was taking an old technique…
and refusing to think about it in an old way.
____________
Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
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Chapter 234: I Give Up! (End of the Volume)
Chapter 235: What We Know About the Future
Chapter 236: Heroes of the Manga!
Chapter 237: Episode 50 of the Anime!
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