"Then what should I do?" Tenten asked Ren with an unhappy frown.
Ren chuckled in amusement at that. "That's the question, isn't it?" He looked at Tenten and saw that she did not like that answer at all and was trying and failing not to scowl. "If it were that easy, there would have been thousands of S-rank ninjas in Konoha."
Ren wholeheartedly believed that everybody had the potential to become S-rank. The problem was, not many people knew how to train effectively.
There was a reason why S-rank ninjas usually had S-rank, or at least Elite Jonin rank, teachers who knew how to properly train to become a good ninja because they went through it themselves.
Gai was a special case, though. The man was no doubt capable of training exceptional taijutsu users. Both Neji and Lee were a testament to that.
But when it came to training somebody like Teneten, somebody who did not specialize in taijutsu, the man just didn't know what to do with her.
But now that Ren pointed out that Tenten's training has flaws, Gai was definitely going to do his best to improve it. The only thing Ren could do for the girl that Gai could not was to give her an additional option that would fit into her fighting style.
Something she could build upon with time. Something that had the potential to make her dangerous.
Ren unsealed a scroll from his wrist storage seal and put it on the table in front of Tenten. "I worked on that for the last three days." Alongside five clones. But he didn't think the girl needed to know that. "It contains a seal that will help you refine your Earth Nature in a certain direction that I think will go very well with thrown weaponry."
Tenten blinked, not expecting that. But she regained her wits fairly quickly as she took the scroll into her hands and curiously unrolled it before she instantly lost herself in reading the small section with the description of the seal's effects and manual for the usage.
Gai, however, was more suspicious as he lost his jovial facade and asked with utmost seriousness, "And you are willing to give this to Tenten? Just like that? For free?"
Ren might not like it, but he had to admit, Gai's suspicion was warranted. In this world, people did not give away techniques to strangers they had just met a few days prior. Not without an ulterior motive.
And naturally, Ren had one, too.
"Of course not." He shook his head. "I-"
"Wait! This will allow me to manipulate my weapons mid-flight with my Earth Chakra!?" Tenten suddenly exclaimed in disbelieving excitement, interrupting Ren.
He just raised his eyebrow at the girl before nodding. "If you master it." He shrugged. "That is not going to be easy. Even if you have Earth Chakra Nature. The seal will make it possible, but you will be practically skipping the first two control exercises, going directly to the hardest stuff."
The seal was essentially a training tool for Earth Chakra Nature that simplified the process. Unlike the usual exercises, Ren decided to get 'fancy' and skip the initial stages.
Basically, Tenten would be learning the master level of Earth Chakra manipulation before even starting on the first and second steps of her chakra nature exercises. Normally? Doing so would have been foolish. But Ren's seal was constructed to make it work.
It was Ren's attempt to make the training quicker and easier because not everybody was Naruto and could spam hundreds of clones to learn elemental chakra manipulation in a week.
This thing took people years of effort normally, so figuring out seals that could shorten that time to months was a good goal, in Ren's mind.
This was his first prototype. His first attempt.
Instead of helping the user to train the Earth affinity by turning leaves into dirt, the seal directly focused on helping the user learn how to imbue Earth Chakra into objects and use that chakra to move said objects, on the extreme side, even slightly affect the objects' gravity fields through the Earth release.
It wasn't quite a technique. The whole thing was more akin to wall walking rather than proper ninjutsu. It just had a direct practical application, too, unlike most elemental chakra exercises.
The result also wasn't quite telekinesis yet. It was more like something that dearly wished to be classified as such, but was several large steps too far from reaching it.
Tenten was not going to be lifting anything heavy with it. But the shurikens and kunai? Ren hypothesized that the girl could definitely learn how to change their trajectory at a moment's notice mid-flight, how to keep them in the air, or even how to indirectly increase her projectiles' speed.
All of that while keeping the hardening effect of the earth chakra active on her weapons because, well, this whole thing was still based on imbuing earth chakra into weaponry.
Basically, her projectiles will not lose speed, but they were going to hit like a truck and be manipulable mid-flight. And for a girl with near-perfect accuracy? That was going to make all the difference.
"If you put in the effort, say, three to four hours of training a day," Ren cheekily told the girl, who huffed with a small smile in response, "I'd say you just might get to a passable level to call it a budget magnet release by the time the Chunin Exams roll in."
With that said, Ren looked back at Gai and decided to finally answer his question. "I am not giving this to Tenten simply because I am that generous. While I don't have any malicious intent for her, you can say that she is a free test subject for this seal. I want to know how well it will perform, and I will ask for regular reports and feedback from her about using the seal. This is my first attempt to create a seal that can help people train their affinity better, so..." Ren trailed off with a small shrug.
"And you are sure it is going to work?" Tenten asked, her tone filled with scepticism now that her initial excitement had fallen off.
But Ren simply nodded. "I am certain of it. Ino can actually make a shuriken orbit her with this." He said, and Tenten's eyes lit up.
He inwardly wryly smiled. Yes, Ino could do it. But she was never going to make use of it because 'it was not her style', according to her own words. Ren almost rolled his eyes at her attitude.
Which... fair. She had better techniques to waste her chakra on.
Ino mostly practiced it to help Ren make the training seal. The initial ideas were his, but Ren didn't have Earth affinity. As such, he could not do the exercise. Creating it was all Ino, even if Ren's ideas and theories were spot on. She still deserved the credit for it. His sole achievement when it came to this was making the seal.
And he was fine with that. Because he had more ideas concerning this seal. He even suspected it might be possible to make one seal usable for all the elements and all the existing exercises.
The theory fit. But for that, he needed data. Hence, giving it to Tenten, his new trusty guinea piggy. Not that he would ever call the girl that to her face.
"I see." Gai enthusiastically nodded. "This will be very beneficial for Tenten if she manages to learn it. I shall also help her fan her flames of youth by looking for somebody who could teach her how to make throwing weapons deadlier! And if I don't manage it, I shall run a thousand laps around the village on my hands! Thank you for bringing these issues to my attention, Ren! This is an explosion of YOUTH!"
Ren watched in amusement as Tenten covered her face with her hands in total embarrassment, and he and Gai exchanged a brief, mischievous glance.
Honestly, Ren could understand why the man was doing this. It was fun to see people's faces and reactions to it.
"Thank you very much," Tenten groaned, "but I don't want to explo-"
Suddenly, a loud booming sound came from the next door leading to the lab as the entire building momentarily shook, and both Gai and Tenten quickly snapped to attention and stood up in surprise, prepared for a fight.
Fortunately, the seals all over the building prevented the customers in the shop area from feeling a thing, but the back room was not as protected, so Ren and his two guests experienced the shaking in full.
"The business is booming." Gai grinned when he realized there was no danger and sat back down on the couch.
"Sometimes quite literally." Ren deadpanned as he looked toward the door that swung open, and a shadow clone of his entered, giddily not minding the trio of looks that fell on him, while his face and hair were covered in... was that soot?
The shadow clone threw his hands up with a winning grin, holding a small paper tag as he exclaimed.
"A cleaning seal is finished! I've forevermore defeated chores! Time to scrub Konoha of all the filth! Mwhahahahaha-!"
The clone puffed out of existence as Ren's cheeks pinked under the two amused stares of his guests.
That... didn't go according to the plan.