I bit back a curse, looking at the long welt that ran from my shoulder to my elbow on my arm. The ‘safe for training’ wires I had been salvaging from one of the academies approved training grounds after the heavy rainfall from the day before were tangled above me, holding me to the tree by a snare like a trapped rabbit. I looked at the wire that was now hanging loosely around my wrist, and then back to the simple pocket knife I had in hand. It was a folding knife, based on the design I remembered of the folding hunting knife that my grandfather back in my first life gave me. It was made of steel, hard and a slight bit more brittle than your normal kunai, but far thinner and sharper. It was a cutting, not a piercing or chopping weapon. More tool than weapon anyway. Regardless the knife was sharp and thin enough that I could get under the knot and cut the wires, but the wires were under tension and it showed one of the annoying things about messing with ninja wire.
It was like a taut guitar string, with just enough elasticity that cutting it under tension caused it to snap back. Whipping along the skin of my upper arm, even with the protection of a wire mesh shirt, it stung.
I took a second to assess the situation. I was almost ten feet up, and even with the slow advancements in control and capacity, I still couldn't tree walk yet. I could slide down, but the trunk had a kink that would make me lose my footing. I knew it. So I had a choice. Slowly cut my arm free strand by strand and get my upper arm covered in welts…. Or… Ah, fuck it.
I planted my feet on the trunk of the tree and pulled myself up a bit, knife flashing up and slicing the wires just beyond my fingertips. The sharp blade, moving fast, let loose a twang that seemed to echo through the brisk late fall air as the sudden lack of anchorage caused me to stumble and slide down the trunk. The knot of the wires kept the ends together so that when the tension was released, it didn't snap back towards me as a small fast moving strand but rather as a loose bundle of slower wire.
Twisting slightly and widening my feet as I slid downwards, I pushed off and managed to roll a bit to soften the fall. I still winced as it jarred my legs and caused a bit of pain to flare from where my knee slammed into a rock. Groaning, I took a moment to retrieve my knife from where I had dropped it and fold it up, flicking the blade closed, the knife looking a bit too large for my young hand, but not by much. A shake of the wrist and a bit of sleight of hand, and it was securely stashed back under my sleeves.
I bent down and picked the old duffel bag back up and continued scavenging. I had started this once my mother was fine with me wandering the village more. With the half a year that had passed since my tenth birthday, I had gotten enough freedom and enough slack with my curfew that I could start looking for spare tools.
Like that wire, though it seemed I needed more work to dismantle traps like that. Damn. I also needed to finish working on the wire escape techniques. Particular while wearing my tools.
I put what I had taken before I snagged my arm in my bag, stashing the long coil of wire among the few dozen shuriken and kunai I found littering the forest behind targets or in trees.
I had also found the broken half of a weapon, some rather basic type of small blade, a tanto maybe? It was straight and had the slightly angled tip, so that sounded like the most likely candidate. No hilt or guard with it though.
I kept an eye out as I started heading home, doing a quick spot check of my tools and outfit first, making sure nothing got lost from my surprise hanging. I was wearing a jacket, dark blue with green accents, loose and lightweight, tied around my waist for now. I had a black tank top and a mesh undershirt, the sleeves of the undershirt shifting back to a solid black cloth just past my elbows. The style was a bit distinctive, and the sleeves past the elbow were a tad larger than normal, and a bit stiffer than normal cloth, a side effect of lacing it with a length of the wire mesh used for armor. My pants were a dark black-blue color, slightly mottled to break up the coloring and fitted so the ankles were snug to my legs, keeping the loose shinobi cargo pants look, and letting me lace up my shinobi sandals over the lower hem without an issue, without having to use the cliche bandages to wrap my ankles. Under my sleeves, though, was my pride and joy so far in my current efforts at custom tools to use.
A skin-tight leather sleeve ran from the base of the middle finger on each hand to where the mesh ended. It was lightweight, made from rabbit leather, and thin, almost as thin as my shirt. I had spent a long time treating it to be as supple and flexible as I could, asking Tsumori, the leather worker down the street, for advice. Once I had gotten the leathers the way I wanted, I started trimming them, starting by making them a pair of laced up sleeves. I had paired up threads and loops of leather for a line of senbon needles, a place to stash a few coins, the slot for my hunting knife, and two complete set of standard issue lockpicks under the outer sleeves. Beyond that from wrist to knuckles was a layer of very delicate steel chainmail, the results of a week's worth of careful soldering and filing, the mail was sewed carefully to the leather with sturdy threads. The mesh was fine enough that it flowed almost like cloth, if quite a bit heavier, and was hidden under the sleeves. It gave my taijutsu a bit of a kick and gave me a defense against blades. Leaving the palm and fingers clear was necessary though since I had to have my fingers free to use Jutsu, and the steel would disrupt the flow of my chakra.
The best part is that in the six years since my memory returned, I had taken the time to learn and practice any bit of sleight of hand I could, constantly. And I learned everything I could relating to it. Card tricks I had seen in my half-remembered past life, ranging from artistic cardistry to complex magic, making things disappear. Coin tricks, misdirection ranging from three card monte and cup games, up to disappearing small things and pickpocketing. I worked on any and every trick I knew to make my hands faster, more precise, then I made more nonsensical and absurd, strange and confusing ones to push my fingers further. If it made my hands move faster, forced me to lie smoother, and gave me any edge in deception I could get, I tried it.
On the days when I walked home or around town, my hands would sign in my sleeves, remembering my first life's mom, the wonderful deaf woman who taught me ASL before I could really speak English. I mixed those hand signs with the hand seals from class, and every combination thereof. I could sign the alphabet back and forwards, and fingerspell faster than I could talk. Heh, I could complete my old ASL alphabet in less than two seconds.
It had gotten a few looks on occasion, but I was usually subtle enough about it around people. A classmate who usually sat next to me, Sado Ikaru, had made a habit for a while of watching me flip coins from hand to hand, hiding and palming the coins as often as possible during lectures. At this point, I barely had to pay attention to the motions of coins, though I needed to keep my focus on my hands if I messed with cards. And after the 104 card pickup incident a few months ago, I stopped using cards during most lectures.
Heh, I think I’m the only person in class who can pull off the original art of karawmi, at least on a civilian.
The point is that my sleight of hand made my sleeves go from useful, to almost worthy of being called effective. I had been getting used to them so far, practicing retrievals and concealments with the multitude of simple hooks and sheaths that now crossed my arms. Getting used to the weight of the chains and the tools that accompanied them took some doing, but it wasn’t too hard, I had intentionally used a slightly lighter alloy of steel. Bends easier, but is about thirty percent lighter.
Unfortunately, it's that very chainmail that had just fucked me now, the wires catching on a link of the chains and sliding between the design to fit really snugly against the leather. Thanks to the armbands my wrist wasn't dislocated or sprained, as it had spread the pressure around a bit, but it also screwed me for trying to get my arm untangled. And now that I was free, I still had a chunk of wire stuck in the chains. It took a few minutes of cutting and pulling, but I finally got the wires out of the chainmail and let my hands drop, only to frown at the soft clink of the chains.
That was another thing I had to learn to fix. The chains would clink, softly it must be said, if I made any sharp steps or movements. I had so far started to try and fix this by keeping my hands and wrists moving constantly, keeping the chain in motion. I was going to work on it till I could perform my entire array of sleight of hand and sign without the sound of metal clicking, but I feared that was a while off yet. Or… hmm. A fingerless glove over the top? I’ll have to try that.
Looking up I noticed the sun had started to head to the horizon, and so I turned to head back up to the village main, the bag of tools on my back.
On the way, I passed the market and traded a few ryo for an apple and a piece of jerky, something protein and vitamin rich.
Gotta be healthy and strong to survive.
