Chakra


After Mayu had set up her tent inside the hideout and gone to sleep,
Xander finally had time again to consider how he was going to do this.
He did not want to try anything with chakra while on the ninja world,
nor while he was near Mayu. However, he was also leery of traveling too
far from his current location on the demon-plane.

One of the things he had learned during his time with Naamahalat was
that this area of the hell plane was fairly stable and had familiar
physical rules, but that this did not apply across the entire expanse.
It applied here because this is where armies trained and generals
tested them against each other; but beyond the desert were realms
belonging to other demon lords, and in them the very laws of physics
could be very different, not to mention the demons themselves.

According to the discussions he had overheard between Naamahalat and the
most intelligent, by Xander's judgment anyway, of her lovers,
Janithagdatra, there were some realms on this plane that regularly broke
the minds of any human souls brought there, simply to look upon them.
Her descriptions of them brought to mind the art of M. C. Escher, with
which Xander was only vaguely familiar. For that matter, they had also
spoken of demons that broke human minds to look upon.

Xander had yet to actually encounter another of the human souls
supposedly present on this plane, but he was not particularly concerned
about them. From what he had learned, one of the reasons Naamahalat had
so readily identified him as a gift and as a sorcerer, was that the only
way humans came to this particular hell was through contracts.
Basically, selling your soul meant just that, and any soul here could be
assumed to have been sold by themselves, and so were themselves
responsible for whatever they experienced. At the very least, they were
demon-summoners, not generally nice people, which is what was so
confusing for him about Kushina.

But in all likelihood, her summoning attempt would never have reached
this plane had he not been wearing so many cartouches; which also
implied that several of those cartouches must have matched her summons
in some way or another. After all, everything else he had learned
implied that it was his own home world that the damned souls here came
from, but just as clearly, this was not where those consigned to Hell,
biblically speaking, came.

There was no gate to Hell here, no steady influx of damned souls. Human
souls were a rare prize, and most were treated like trained pets, much
as Xander had been. At least, that was the case in this relatively
Earth-like portion of the plane.

He was not particularly worried about exploration, per se, since it
should become obvious pretty quickly if he started to get outside the
safe region, but by the same token, trying to get a considerable
distance away to avoid disturbing Mayu's chakra senses meant, at the
moment, needing to go in a known direction, since he only had the time
of her sleeping to explore this without having to try to divide his
attention, and traveling at high speed in an unknown direction precluded
the attention needed to avoid crossing into dangerous territory.

Luckily, Xander thought he had a reasonable solution to both challenges.
He had successfully made portals, both locally and across dimensions. He
knew he would be blocked in making a portal to his home world, but
hopefully other worlds and dimensions would not be blocked to him.

So he attempted to open a portal to the Moon of an Earth that had never
developed sentient life. He spent a fair few minutes focusing on the
various details of what he was searching for, but he was pretty
confident that if worlds as different as the ninja world and the demon
world could exist in the universe, then there was at least a good chance
that this would work.

When the portal formed it was black as the night, and he was a bit
nervous about passing through it, so instead of using his actual body,
he used his power to pick up Tarou and toss him through, without being
in that form.

Then he reached out to Tarou, to verify that he still existed, and
slipped into that form. He was on the other side of the portal
alright, and since Tarou was in physical form, he found himself in
quite some pain as the air ripped itself from his lungs. A moment
later he had produced a bubble of Earth-normal air at sea-level
pressure around him, and his healing factor quickly took care of the
damage and pain the explosive decompression had done to his lungs.

Looking around, he determined that the surroundings certainly looked
barren enough to be the moon, though the light was oddly more blue than
he had expected. As soon as he looked up and saw the deeply black sky
with a blue sphere looming overhead, he understood why, and at the same
time, confirmed that he was indeed on an Earth's moon.

Equally obvious from the complete darkness of the night half of the
Earth, he was on the moon of an Earth that had no modern humans, and so
he assumed that his portal had worked properly, and it in fact had no
sentient life whatsoever.

He had felt an intense cold briefly, but when he had produced the air,
it had been at a normal temperature, and maintaining it there was well
within his abilities. His feet were a bit cold, but given that he was on
a cold, dead world, that was no surprise, nor of great concern, given
that his feet were wrapped in stone or a close equivalent.

Reassured that he was neither in danger, nor likely to be discovered,
Xander dismissed the portal and proceeded to call up a mass of chakra.
It hovered almost invisibly in front of him, and Xander considered it.
He still did not know the various hand signs, nor were such likely to
work for him unless he managed somehow to duplicate the 'chakra coils'
these ninja had inside.

So the question was could he somehow, through his control of fluids,
applied as a control of chakra, achieve the same effects?

As before when he simply summoned chakra it was nearly invisible, and
did nothing. What if he applied his intent to it?

Pushing the chakra down into the moon-dust, Xander began playing with
intent, trying to project to the chakra what he wanted it to do. The
results were underwhelming, as the mass of chakra, once released from
his tight control to allow it to do what it would, simply dissipated
into the ground and air.

Summoning a new batch, Xander tried again and again, from focusing his
intent, to visualizing a result, to willing it to work, and nothing
stubbornly continued to happen. Remembering that Mayu had used a
vocalization in addition to the hand-signs, Xander tried quoting her
words, equally to no avail.

Giving up on interacting with the chakra directly, certain there was
something he was missing, but tired of trying to find it, Xander turned
to trying to produce the chakra as it was at the time of release of a
technique.

This bore much better fruit, and Xander was quickly producing results,
though at first they were pretty disappointing. For example, his attempt
at the wall she had produced at first failed miserably. Of course, given
that this chakra had somehow been released inside of her, to allow her
to vomit forth great quantities of mud, Xander was not eager to directly
duplicate it at any rate.

The more distant wall, produced by stomping the ground, on the other
hand, worked perfectly, though the cloud of dust produced did not seem
inclined to settle to the ground in any great hurry.

After a few more failed experiments Xander was able to combine his own
power-based ability to produce mud with the chakra, imbued with intent
at the time of its creation instead of afterward, and reproduce the
appearing wall effect.

It took him quite a few more tries to produce the mud-clone, however. As
it turned out, producing chakra imbued with the intent to produce a
clone of him did not work, nor did trying to duplicate the chakra output
of Mayu, which gave him a very startled clone of Mayu that he quickly
dispersed.

The Mayu-clone did give away the basic problem, though. Somehow, while
the chakra was still inside her, Mayu was imprinting herself into the
chakra, so it had her shape already understood in it.

With that key in hand, Xander was able to produce clones of himself that
seemed almost indistinguishable to a superficial examination. Use of his
actual power was beyond them, however, and examining them with his power
readily revealed that they were composed of a uniform mass of fluid, a
very different signature from that of an actual human, where the fluids
were arrayed in overlapping patterns, of which he could identify the
circulatory, for it had the heart, and the heartbeat, the nervous
system, for it was obvious as it tied in to the brain, and the
respiratory, which though perhaps not technically part of the human
body, had nonetheless a fluid present in it in a very characteristic
pattern.

The chakra coils were also noticeable, though he lacked them, as did the
demons he had encountered. Further, both himself, the ninja, and the
demons had a number of other patterned systems of fluid, overlapping to
various degrees, and a few much simpler ones. For example, he could
readily identify the stomach, and the bladder, and the small sac of
fluid associated with some of the demonesses' fangs, and on one, the
barb on her tail.

That complexity that denoted a lifeform in his sort of fluid-sense was
very notable in its absence here; the clones did not even have a chakra
system, merely a pool of chakra.

Unfortunately for his purposes, while the clone-Xander appeared to know
his intent, and could answer questions, he had no inkling of what it was
thinking or seeing.

"Maybe that is cause you don't have chakra." Clone-Xander pointed out.

Xander giggled involuntarily, an odd sight to his clone as he was Tarou
at the moment, his massive orange Thing form. "I have clones," he said,
and then reached out and lifted his clone, using his power over fluids,
"I find your lack of faith disturbing," he quoted, using his voice
technique to duplicate his speech in a lower register.

His clone laughed. "Wrong body, dude," he said. Xander shook his head.
"Wouldn't want that form anyway, I just had to say it. So you think it's
because I don't have chakra, huh? But I don't want to have these chakra
coil things, I don't know enough about them, and they might be
permanent. I'm risking a lot as it is if I ever try to have kids. Chakra
coils might make me a different species completely."

"Yeah," the clone said. "That'd be a bummer. But hey, I'm fluid, what if
you just make part of me part of you?"

Xander stared at him for a minute, confused, then getting it, paused to
consider. "Well, you don't have any coils . . . but you do have this
chakra stuff . . ."

"I wonder if I can use it?" the clone commented curiously, and Xander
dived to the side when the clone focused and thrust his hands forward,
and the ground erupted in stone spears.

"Way cool!" the clone declared, and Xander stared at it.

"You almost skewered me!" he accused.

"Oh, come on, like it would have hurt you, stone-man. You're the
freaking Thing!"

Frustrated and confused, Xander focused on the chakra in the clone, and
dispersed it. The clone collapsed into mud, and Xander formed another
self. This time, he made one his usual fluid way, just forming another
body, modeled after one of the few fictional warriors Xander could think
of that used ninja-style attacks, Ryu from the Street Fighter arcade
games. Shoryuken and Hadouken might not be exactly chakra-based, but
they were a lot closer than just a generic martial artist or historical
ninja.

A bit more tentatively, Xander reached out to this piece of himself, and
pumped it full of chakra, imprinted with a copy of his basic self, but
also with the intent that it should use the fluid present instead of mud.

The Ryu-Xander grinned, and looked down, then up again. "Kick-ass,
Xan-man," he crowed. "Let's see, if I'm you . . ." Ryu-Xander focused
for a moment, then shook his head.

"Even if I'm you, apparently I'm also enough not-you that I don't have
the fluid powers. At least, I can't change shape." He looked down at
his hand, then grinned. "But . . ." He cupped his hands near his side.
"I think somebody was thinking too hard when he made me," he said, and
then grimaced. To Xander's amazement, blue light rapidly collected in
between his hands, and when he thrust them forward with a loud shout
of "Hadouken!" a blazing blue fireball shot forward.

"No way!" Xander said, then looked down at his own hands.

"It's not chakra," Ryu-Xander said. "You modeled this body after the guy
from the video-games, and he uses ki."

"Yeah, but . . ." Xander stared at Ryu-Xander. "Do that again." He
watched with his fluid senses as Ryu threw another Hadouken. "Yeah," he
said, "I think you did use the power, but it was the body doing it and
not you. Like when I built it, because I was thinking it should be able
to produce ki, it used the power to produce it, instead of whatever
really happens. I'm not seeing anything like chakra coils."

"Makes sense," Ryu responded. "Which means I probably could use chakra -
and if you focused when you made a body on it being able to produce
chakra innately through the power, then it could use chakra techniques
without using up the chakra that is animating it."

"So if I am you, see if you can see through my eyes," Ryu requested, and
turned to look up at the Earth hanging overhead.

Xander nodded and focused on Ryu. He was able to slide into that body,
and see the Earth, and he was able to turn back and look at his Tarou
body, standing still. A moment later his head turned back without his
doing anything. "Apparently," he said, though he was not speaking, "we
can both manipulate the body while you're in it. But I can't shift over
to the Tarou form."

Xander shifted back, a bit uneasy about the odd feeling of his body
moving without his control. "Yeah, well . . . that's neat and all, but
it doesn't really help me that much."

Ryu-Xander shook his head. "You're overthinking it. You can build a body
that can use whatever of the fluid-powers you give it as inherent bodily
functions, including what appear to be ki attacks. The real question is,
if you have a chakra mind in such a body, is there anything they can do
to grab your attention when it is needed. I mean, I could be exploring
the mountain for you, or make Tarou appear to be a real person while
you're doing other things. We just can't replace everything."

Xander nodded slowly. "Yeah, maybe . . . but what could you do to get my
attention?"

"I don't know, but I'd say that is what we need to experiment on." 

Xander nodded again. "I'd leave you here to work on that, but without me
here, I think the air'd go poof."

"I think if there was a chakra link between us, we could communicate
using that. But there might be a simpler answer. Try reforming my body
with the intent that I should be able to communicate telepathically with
you."

"But I don't have telepathy," Xander protested.

"You didn't know you could produce ki, either," Ryu pointed out. "I'm
sure if it works, it'll be communicating through your power somehow. Who
cares how, if it works."

Xander nodded, and dispersed the chakra in Ryu, then a moment later,
reformed Ryu, focusing his intent, and then fed him another burst of
chakra.

"Whoa," Ryu said. "That was a rush."

"You remember our conversation?" Xander asked, surprised. He had not
expected that.

"Yeah, I do," Ryu said. "I guess something lingered since you didn't
form a new body from fresh liquid, just reformed this one. And I can
feel the amount of chakra I have available increasing. Do I still have
the ability to fire ki attacks?"

"Yep," Xander answered. "Not only that, but you should be able to access
the TK portion of our powers. Now, try something else for me, see if you
can create food; I'm pretty sure that is an ability I got stuck with
that is not part of the power I was granted, so you might be able to use
it."

Ryu nodded, and looking at his hand, held up a Twinky. Xander grinned at
that, and held up his own. They both stuffed the entire thing in their
mouth at once, though Xander was quick to notice that his larger form
included a larger mouth, so his mouth was not filled by it.

Once he had swallowed, he continued. "That means you've got access to
food and healing, both for yourself and others." He wondered if
Ryu-Xander had experienced anything when he had dispersed the chakra,
but did not want to ask.

"And since I'm producing chakra, I can perform chakra techniques as I
learn them . . . including . . . Earth Release : Mud Clone!" Ryu looked
at a second Ryu. "Interesting that it cloned this shape, and not yours."

Xander nodded. "Without producing chakra already imprinted, I don't
think you'll be able to do what I did in cloning Mayu. You'll just be
able to clone yourself."

"Ok, one more test," Ryu suggested. "Cut me, and let's see if this body
has Wolverine-scale healing."

"It ought to," Xander said, "that kind of got stuck in same as the food
summoning, but sure," and he gestured at Ryu, producing a small sand
blade near him.

Ryu reached out nervously, and gritting his teeth, touched the blade. To
both their surprise, instead of blood, the sand passed through his skin
and came out moistened, but with no pain and no clear injury. "Right,
still liquid," Ryu said, then concentrated. Xander was surprised when
this bit of access to their power apparently worked fine, as Ryu shifted
in his senses, and then promptly cut the tip of his finger off.

As they both watched, Ryu grimacing at the pain, the wound quickly
healed over. "Yep, I've still got it," he said.

"And you were able to go solid. Can you go back to liquid or gas?"
Xander asked.

Ryu looked startled, as if he had not even considered that he might not
be able to do it, then shimmered, and vanished. Xander focused his fluid
senses and confirmed that he could still readily detect the complex
collection of fluids that was Ryu, who reappeared a moment later.
"Apparently I can," he assented, "but I could not shapechange."

"Odd mix," Xander commented and Ryu frowned.

"It is, rather, but I guess that the transition between forms must be an
innate ability drawn from, but separate from your power. Like . . ."

Xander interrupted him. "Right, after the first few times, it doesn't
really take any concentration or willpower, I don't even really have to
think about switching. I just want to, and I do."

"Yeah, so it's kind of a built in. But shapechanging you have to . . .
well, kind of 'do' it, you have to think about it."

"Right. Let's head back. Then . . . I think we'll have to do a couple of
tests to see if you can pass your memories to me, or store them somehow
to be retrieved later. If we can do that, then we can make a child's
body, and insert you in to one of the villages for training."

"I don't care for killing, but there are definitely some that need it,"
Ryu responded, and they both paused, thinking of their father, and of
stories they had heard of human evil, both from their world, and from
Naamahalat and her friends. "And frankly, learning chakra seems like it
would rule. Ninja school sounds a lot more interesting than high school
back home."

"As for storing memories . . . have you tried to remember anything from
my perspective? I mean, I'm just a piece of you, right?"

Xander stared at Ryu for a minute before nodding and closing his eyes.
He tried to think back and see if he could remember - and indeed, he
found that he could remember firing a Hadouken. Just to verify, he fired
off one himself. Being in scale with his massive orange hands, it put
Ryu's earlier Hadouken to shame, and sent up a rooster-tail of dust as
it sped across the lunar surface and impacted the ground a considerable
distance away, sending up a massive plume of dust.

"You're right. Now, before I forget again, see if you can communicate to
me telepathically."

Ryu nodded and closed his eyes. 'Can you hear this?'

Xander jerked, then tried to reply the same way, thinking the words, as
if he was standing next to Ryu and talking to him, 'Yes, can you hear me?'

'I can.'

"That's excellent," Xander exclaimed. "Now I can really up the pace on
everything. Come on, let's head back."

They passed through a portal that Xander opened, then he returned to his
original body, and reaching out, reshaped and then charged Tarou and
ninja-Xander, groaning as he did so and realized he now had two 'Ryu's'.

The Street-Fighter Ryu immediately recognized the issue, and grinned.
"I'll be Akuma."

Xander looked puzzled for a moment, then grinned. "Going for the evil
twin thing, eh?"

"Well, Akuma had the same training, but more powerful attacks. Sounds
right to me!" 

Ninja-Ryu frowned. "Xander reformed each of us before supplying chakra,
we should have the same abilities."

"Yeah, but I've got more experience," the newly renamed Akuma boasted.

"Oh? Even though we have those same memories?" Ryu retorted.

"For crying out loud," Xander groused, "enough already. You'd think I
was schizo or something." All three were grinning at each other. Tarou
was moving around in the background, getting a feel for the body, making
sure that it moved properly without needing Xander's active fluid
powers.

Finally, Xander reached out to the phantom he had left in the mountain,
and charged it. He did not have to bother with explaining what he wanted
it to do, as of course it had his memories and knew what he would have
told it already.

He almost did the same for the stuffed animal in Kushina's room, but
remembered in time that ninjas, unlike the demons (or so he had assumed)
were highly chakra sensitive, and would instantly home in on such a
sudden appearance of chakra.

Glancing at Akuma, he considered him for a moment. "You're going to need
to pay attention," he warned. "There is no cut-off on chakra production
right now, so if you feel like it is getting to be too much for whatever
reason, bleed some off, or do some techniques or something."

He repeated this telepathically to his mountain phantom, and they all
nodded.

Given his new abilities, Xander briefly contemplated sending a clone to
Naamahalat, but discarded the idea. Not only did he not know how she had
reacted to his escape, he was not sure that any clone could survive the
rigors they would put him through. Besides, he still had not succeeded
in forgiving her, though he knew that she had every reason to assume he
was a gift and enthrall him.

It was tempting nonetheless, given that he had gone from having sex
multiple times a day to none at all, a less than comfortable transition
for a teenage boy.

Returning his attention to the stuffed doll in Kushina's room, he
repeated his pattern of using it as a reference to produce a new body,
then using that body to slip out of the village. 

He would get clones inserted into the village academies when he got the
chance, but for now, he figured it would be enough to create pairs of
clones, and have them swap places regularly, with one of them invisibly
observing a training session or sessions, or classes, etc, in the
village, and the other practicing what he had previously seen in the
village. They could swap out occasionally, though the memory transfer
thing might be enough for the external clone to train the techniques the
internal clone was observing.

He made two clones, crafting them to look like a mix of some of the boys
he had seen at Kushina's training, so if they were seen, they would not
stand out, and gave them a chakra jump-start.

Once they were in place, he went gaseous and resumed flying over the
landscape. This time, he had a more definite goal in mind. Instead of
merely looking for any chakra-powered conflict, he was looking for a
defensible place he could turn into a protected base on this world,
giving him a safe place to go back and forth from.

It would also give him a chance to see if there was a way he could use
his powers to create a permanent portal between the two realms, or
better yet, something that could create such a portal on demand between
two set locations, that could be protected so that only he or one of his
clones could operate it.

He stopped suddenly, realizing this was exactly the sort of task he
should be delegating now, while he focused on exploring his power,
something his clones could not do for him. Finding an unoccupied
clearing, he made a quick portal, stepped through and returned to his
original body, then activated the just exited body as a clone, and sent
both it and Akuma back through the portal to search out a good location.

Returning to the desolate moon, popping his sphere of air back into
existence, Xander dove back into studying his power. Particularly, he
started testing the limits of his fluid creating power. He had used it
to create chakra, something he would have thought was more of an
energy, whereas a fluid was implicitly matter, wasn't it? Gas and
liquid were both states of matter that were both fluid, but he was
pretty sure that chakra was not, yet apparently it still qualified as
fluid.

So what else qualified as fluid?

Xander's first effort was to create energy, but nothing appeared to
happen. Deciding that it might have been overly generic, Xander wondered
what other sort of more specific energy he could try to create.

Remembering Akuma/Ryu's first attack, he summoned a ball of ki. This was
more immediately visible than the unfocused chakra had been, but in the
glowing blue light it gave off, Xander wondered if that was because he
had already seen it as blue?

Xander tried to produce red ki, which had no effect. He tried red
energy, but again, no effect. He tried to produce thermal energy, and
here he was rewarded, though again it was nearly invisible. Only
nearly though, and he could feel the heat wafting off, and when he
moved his hand, he could see the shimmering effect as the heat
distorted the light passing through the heated air.

For a moment he tried pushing the envelope, steadily driving up the
amount of thermal energy. He had to stop pretty quickly, as it became
too uncomfortable to continue.

He dispersed it and paused to consider what to try next. A moment later
he realized he was missing the obvious. The most direct and obvious form
of energy to a modern human would have to be either light or
electricity. He was pretty confident that he could produce light by
producing molten metal, which aside from mercury and maybe one or two
other low-melting point metals had some pretty impressive glow to it.

Could he produce light directly? His first try at producing 'liquid
light' gave him something that was actually more gooey, luminous in a
way that reminded him of fireflies, or something glowing under a
blacklight.

An attempt to produce pure white light, on the other hand, succeeded in
producing a glowing orb of white above his hand, whose brightness he
could control pretty directly, and which cast some pretty stark shadows.

Was this a consequence of 'e equals mc squared', an equation even he
had heard of? Or was fluid really so expansive a term that it could
cover this?

An attempt at producing an energetic plasma, at a bit of distance from
himself, succeeding in producing the imagined orb of glowing gas, with
occasional sparks of lightning visible within, looking much like the
sort of lightning sphere toy common in mall novelty stores.

A few minutes of puzzling over what else to produce reminded him finally
of a fluid he had heard of only from science fiction movies, especially
Frankenstein, élan vital, something which he was quite certain had been
thoroughly debunked. Could he produce it? He had already produced a
number of other things, including the super-soldier serum, that were
wholly fictional as far as he knew.

Xander considered it, then wondered if it was worth the risk. This was,
after all, the topic of innumerable sci-fi movies wherein the mad
scientist imbues something with the vital force only to be killed by it.
Given that history, was he risking the same result?

Frankenstein's monster had been crippled in its ability to speak, and to
move fluidly. Could he be precise enough to create something that was
not in some way lacking? He was not skilled in medicine or the way the
body was put together. Perhaps that test would wait.

Xander felt frustrated. He knew there were many more types of energy
than he was coming up with, even just in his comics, but he certainly
did not want to produce a sentient energy, like the Phoenix Force from
Marvel comics, or the Power Cosmic only to discover that for it to
exist, Galactus had to exist, and was created to allow it.

Stifled, he turned back to chakra. Sure, it was something he would be
learning about over the next while anyway, but if a whole population was
using it in constant battle and their world had not been destroyed, at
least he did not have to worry about creating monsters or attracting the
attention of angry gods or world-devourers.

After a brief spate of reproductions of some of the techniques Mayu had
demonstrated for them, exploring what he had to impress on the chakra as
he created, Xander moved on to what for him was the most obvious next
step.

Just as he had applied the technique for making a mud clone and warped
it into a working clone for his extra bodies, he figured most of these
techniques could be warped into variants.

In particular, he had observed in the fight where he picked up Mayu a
number of water based attacks and felt he had at least a chance of
reproducing some of them.

He was about to try and do so, when another thought occurred to him. A
moment later, he had duplicated the chakra Mayu had produced when she
made a mud clone, and in return was granted a clone of Mayu.

"What is your name?" he asked, looking at her closely.

"Mayu," she said, with a slight bow.

"Do you remember me?" Xander questioned, watching her face closely.

She nodded. "You are a companion of my Lord Ryu."

That confirmed it, she actually had Mayu's memories, just as his
personal mud-clone had his own. As much as he had tried to reproduce her
chakra based on what his senses told him of it, there was absolutely no
way he could have remembered that chakra's attributes in sufficient fine
detail to reproduce her memories. Just to verify, he questioned her
about her family and her home village, and found no holes, no gaps in
her memory.

So somehow, when he had commanded his power to reproduce the chakra she
had produced, it had done so to a precision greater than he could have
managed with his memory. He had seen little hints of this before, hints
that somehow there was more to his power than just what he himself could
imagine. After all, producing an elixir of healing was all well and
good, but the fact remained that Xander had absolutely no personal
knowledge of the attributes of such a fluid. Yet he had been able to
create it.

Yet there were other things, other times where that seemed to fail -
he was not certain, but he did not think he would have been able to
create chakra prior to first seeing it. It was hard to say, given that
he had not actually made the attempt prior to observing the
strange-eyed lady's use of it. One might argue that he could produce
ki sight-unseen, but of course, he had seen the hadouken many times,
even if it was only on a video screen. Could that make a difference?
Was his ki even actually the same as what Ken or Ryu produced in the
game?

He dispersed the clone, and ignoring the impossibility, reproduced the
chakra released by the dead ninja who had produced the water dragon,
even as he produced a large mass of water. Instantly the water took on
the attributes of a dragon, and roared through the air looking for a
target, before he dispersed it.

Well, that was rather interesting.

He wondered if Mayu would remember what her clone had seen, if when he
had produced chakra matching hers at the moment of the technique, he had
actually produced her chakra, binding the clone to her. It did not seem
possible, yet at the same time . . . Xander was fairly sure that he
could produce her blood on demand, or Naamahalat's, probably even the
Duke's. Would she remember?

Xander's clumsy attempts at other water jutsu failed miserably. Only, it
seemed, when he was reproducing the exact chakra output of a usage he
had himself witnessed was he able to reliably reproduce a result. With
no real understanding of chakra, he had no idea what changes to make,
what to shift in it to make it stronger or weaker aside from changing
the quantity of chakra, what to do to make more or fewer spears appear,
or a wall of granite or marble or some other particular stone, nor, it
seemed, could he simply reproduce the earth effects he had seen as water
effects.

Yet he had been able to adapt a mud-clone to himself and to his fluid
instead of mud. Did that mean that another, Mayu for example, could
somehow use a mud-clone on his fluid instead of mud, and have it work?

Was that somehow inherent in the mud-clone technique, that it worked on
the fluid it was pushed into, and not specifically mud?

Looking around at the disturbed landscape, Xander considered it. Now
that he had a retainer . . . er, well, now that Ryu had a retainer,
anyway, and wasn't that an odd fix to be in . . . he needed to provide
proper lodgings.

Did he really want to house her permanently on the demon plane? Surely
not; if she were ever encountered by the demons, they would not hesitate
to capture and make a pet of her. He could build something here on this
moon, but the slightest breech would produce a potentially lethal
decompression. He glanced up at the blue light of the Earth hanging
overhead. If his travel worked there was no life there--no, that was
wrong, no sentient beings there, always assuming his power had
understood that requirement of the portal--and he could build there.

But then he might interfere with future life developing on the world. It
would be ideal if he could have a fortress in its own dimension, its own
world, like a demi-plane from D&D, or a larger version of the space in a
portable hole.

He could maybe make a home in such a place, with doorways to get to the
demon-plane, and the ninja world, and eventually, to Sunnydale on his
own Earth. That would take care of the defensible place that Akuma and
his new unnamed clone were searching for, as well as . . . well, no,
maybe he would still need that, to guard the doorway to his demi-plane.

So what was involved in creating such a plane? Could his powers do it
directly, or could he use them to give himself such a power?

Xander tried to consider the possibilities, and whether he should risk
giving himself such a power. Would there be any long term side-effects?
Was it even possible any more, or had it ever been, to give himself a
power with a time limit after which it would cease?

The potential benefits seemed worth it, but it made sense to Xander to
see if he could accomplish it directly through his power first. He was
not particularly sure how to go about this, aside from simply trying to
make a portal to an existing demi-plane and taking it for his own.

He did not want to do that, since even an abandoned demi-plane might see
the owners return at some point, or have external access points floating
around that he did not know about.

So Xander decided to try something different. The first thing he did
was to use a portal to step over to this solar system's Mars, to be
further from any potential ill effects on developing life on Earth.
After forming a sphere of air and looking the land over to be sure it
was a dead world, Xander sat down, and slowly and painstakingly worked
out on paper what he wanted to try. Trying at first to think of it as
Willow might got him a lot of nowhere fast, but when he backed up and
came at it by trying to mimic a comic book description of some
entity's parallel world, he made considerable progress. After
considerable pondering, and a bit of elixir to deal with the resulting
headache, he carefully rewrote his ramblings to be more legible, then
proceeded with his attempt.

First, he concentrated on what he wanted to happen, the forming of a
demi-plane governed by the same basic physical laws as the universe he
was in, but supporting the existence of magic, chakra, ki, and demonic
and celestial energies, and permitting the existence of various other
rule-breaking phenomena, wholly subject to the exertion of his will but
self-sustaining otherwise, that would respond dynamically to the needs
and desires of the inhabitants where doing so did not conflict with his
will.

With these ideas in mind, Xander produced a small amount of fluid and 
pushed chakra into it, willing that the clone thus formed would hold 
that thought in mind. Then he proceeded to elaborate on his intentions 
for the primary entity in the demi-plane, supported by the plane 
itself, a house with enough self-will and understanding to respond to 
its inhabitants' needs and wants, forming new rooms from material 
supplied by the demi-plane or himself, and capable of sustaining 
portals that he formed, and controlling access to them, as well as 
generating unseen servants of the D&D variety for general maintenance, 
and pumped these ideas into a second formless clone.

Before continuing, Xander popped a portal to his demon-plane hideout and
swapped bodies with Tarou, so that if his next attempt destroyed Mars,
he would not have damaged his original body.

Ready to make the attempt, Xander, in quick succession, attempted to
produce mass amounts of several varieties of energy. He was moving
quickly, and did not waste time paying attention to which succeeded and
which did not, just focusing on producing them with the intention that
they should be subject to his will and that of the two clones. He
quickly went through dimensional energy, gravitational energy, pure
magic, elemental magic of earth, fire, air, and water, then void magic,
the substance of his portals, a magical fluid capable of matter
production and transformation, ki, life energy, chi, electricity, light,
demonic energy, demonic magic, celestial energy, celestial magic, élan
vital, kinetic energy, potential energy, water, sentience, sentient
energy and polymorphic energy before conceding that he could think of
nothing more, and then pumping it all full of chakra loaded with the
intent for it to accomplish his will, and promptly fell unconscious.

When Xander finally revived an unknown time later, he was confused and
disoriented, but not in nearly the pain he expected when he remembered
where he had collapsed. He winced when he remembered where he had been,
anticipating the pain of frozen flesh, the burning of lungs that had been
too long without oxygen, the dry cracked feeling of soft tissue that had
been leeched of all moisture. After all, he had collapsed on the surface
of Mars, and without his will maintaining it, the sphere of temperate
air around him would have quickly faded into the background thin, barely
present atmosphere, leaving him exposed to the raw elements of Mars.

As Xander marveled at the absence of these pains, and slowly sat up, he
felt sheets falling away. His eyes popped open in surprise, and he found
himself in a bed, in a comfortable looking room. Beside the bed was a
bedside table, and on it was a small breakfast tray with a bowl of
what looked like Captain Crunch cereal, a spoon, and a tall glass of milk.

Xander grinned, and sliding his feet off the bed so he could sit on the
side of it, he pulled the tray around, finding it was on a long and
flexible arm, poured a bit of milk into the bowl, and actually ate a
proper breakfast, for the first time in a long while.

Then he finally bothered to check his memories, and discovered that he
had actually been carried along into the new demi-plane during its
creation, and that apparently the two clones he had made had become
incorporated with the various magics and sentient energies he had
attempted to summon and ended up becoming the minds of the plane and the
fortress or mansion or house or castle or whatever it was.

Beyond that, he could remember the activities of his other clones, and
by what he remembered, judge that he had been out for about two and a
half days. His child clones had already had a good day of observing
training, and practicing in the fields, and one of them had apparently
bothered to sit down and write out a letter to him and then memorize it
to be sure he got it, advising him that he should supply them with a
small number of additional clones to attach to outgoing caravans, to
locate other hidden villages of ninja, and learn what could be gathered
from them.

Akuma and the now-named Lewis (apparently he grew tired of being
nameless, and took a name from Lewis and Clark, as he felt like they
were on a similar trek) had noted several possible locations.

Tarou and Ryu had spent some time (Tarou being now in his original body,
as he had discovered just before over-exerting himself that while his
clones could not switch bodies on their own, he could move them himself)
working with Mayu going over what had been collected from the dead
ninja, and which supplies she needed.

As evidence that his clones could be creative on their own, the
demi-plane informed him that it liked the idea, stolen from AD&D's
Ravenloft and the Mists of Avalon, of using a demi-plane produced mist
to accomplish larger scale connections between planes, an idea which
startled Xander, and made him wonder what else he had overlooked. Mists,
after all, were liquid suspended in a gas and so fluid twice over, yet
he had not even thought of using them for travel, which would provide
both concealment, intimidation, and possibly, as the demi-plane mind
implied, instantaneous transport of large groups already in martial
array, without bottlenecking.

Rising, Xander asked the house to guide him to a good spot to form a
permanent connection with his demon-plane hideout. Immediately, a
light appeared in front of him, and moving slowly ahead, guided him to
a large central hall with sweeping grand stairs and a massive
chandelier that made him wonder whose mind was actually coming up with
all this, then down a hall into a corridor reminiscent of a stone
dungeon. The walls transitioned from paneling to exposed brick and
then worked stone, before finally reaching an almost natural looking
cavern. The light drifted to a large opening on one side, and slowly
flickered and swelled, until it finally resolved into a face.

"Hey, Xan-man. Here's the deal; the plane and I think if you use the
plane to make a mist connection, we can actually extend through it, and
push some of the demi-plane's rules out into the other side, so any
attackers have to actually enter your realm to even get to us."

Xander frowned, considering this. It was very weird to have the plane
and house seemingly more creative and intelligent than he was, but then,
he had stuffed them full of all sorts of energies. Odd effects were
probably to be expected, especially when he had apparently actually
managed to strain himself for the first time, to actually push his own
limits. He had not previously noticed any difficulty or strain in using
his powers, except for the odd resistance of the ninjas' chakra, which
had not really taken much to push past. Apparently creating a demi-plane
and everything he had tried to get into it had actually finally
demonstrated that he did have limits, somewhere.

He summoned a mist, just to see if he could. When it manifested without
difficulty, he nodded. "Go for it," he said, and watched as the
cavernous opening filled with a dark mist. Wanting to see it from the
other side, he quickly formed a portal and stepped through it.

In the hideout, he watched as mist billowed up from the ground to one
corner, and then a red light glowed in the darkness of the mist, before
clean stonework spread from within the mist and engulfed the interior of
his hollowed out hideout, concealing even the tiny openings he had left
himself for exiting.

Swapping with Tarou to get back into his original body, Xander mentally
explained what was going on to Tarou and Ryu.

"Alright, Mayu," Ryu said. "Time to pack up your tent and get a proper
room."

He guided a nervous Mayu into and through the mist, and as advertised,
they ended up in the dungeon area, where a light appeared to guide them
to where they could find rooms.

Xander, meanwhile, reached out to the first of the locations found by
Akuma and Lewis, and trying mist-travel for the first time himself, had
a mist rise and engulf him, and as intended, when it receded on both
planes, it left him in the location they had picked.

Examining it, Xander found that they were clearly thinking of his
consideration of piracy, for he was on a sheltered beach with a small
cove beyond, with beautiful deep water, and two encircling arms of coast
with lines of rocks sealing him in. They were not completely continuous,
but definitely did not look like something a ship could navigate.

A ghost ship, on the other hand, which could pass through the mists?
That could be a different story. Xander looked around the cave, that
actually engulfed the waters towards the rear of the cove, such that the
beach continued directly into the cave on one side, while the other was
rocky and appeared impassable on foot.

The cave continued for some distance beyond the water's end, and Xander
liked the look of it. Aside from the impassable barrier rocks, which
ensured he would not be bothered by ships seeking refuge, this would
make a perfect pirate cove.

He had just returned to the house to locate a good spot to form a
connection to the cove, with his senses at their full as he examined the
mist he was using to make the trip, when darkness enveloped him. For the
first time, Xander could actually feel the energies reaching out to
draw him in, and felt like he could resist, if he wanted to.