The sky above Training Ground 10 hung heavy with late spring clouds, thick and slow-moving, as if mirroring the pace of the day. Below them, the newly formed Team 10 stood in a rough triangle, the grass still wet beneath their sandals. Asuma Sarutobi scratched his chin with one hand, the other loosely holding a lit cigarette, which danced at the corner of his mouth with each quiet exhale.
"Alright," he said, voice low and calm, "I want to see how the three of you handle an engagement drill. Shikamaru, you're the lynchpin. Chōji, Ino—you're his support. Assume formation."
Shikamaru, hands in his pockets, gave a long sigh. "What a drag..."
Ino elbowed him. "You're the center of the plan. Try not to nap mid-strategy."
Chōji munched on a protein bar, nodding with slow enthusiasm.
Asuma stepped back and made a lazy seal. A faint shimmer ran through his chakra as he suppressed his own presence to a degree. "Your goal: tag me with your chakra within five minutes. Go."
They moved. Ino swept wide, trying to force Asuma into movement. Chōji barreled forward, deceptively quick for his size. Shikamaru, however, lagged behind—until Asuma noticed the faint glimmer of a seal shimmer beneath his foot.
Just beneath the grass, hidden on a paper tag anchored by a kunai, a seal flared briefly. It wasn't explosive or binding in the traditional sense. Instead, it activated a localized feedback loop—a recursive gravity delay.
The effect was subtle but precise: as Asuma stepped onto it, the seal created a fraction-of-a-second resistance, like an invisible hand tugging gently against his momentum. It calculated and responded to the exact pressure of his step, reflecting just enough force to throw off his rhythm.
The ground popped with a tiny delay as his foot landed.
It wasn't much. Just a subtle rebound, a hiccup of friction beneath him—but it was enough. Chōji's roll almost clipped him. And before Asuma could recover, his shadow lengthened.
Shikamaru's hands snapped into position. "Shadow Possession Technique."
The shadow caught Asuma's, if only for a second.
Then Asuma vanished in a blur and reappeared behind them, chuckling. "Not bad."
They reset, panting, the drill continuing until time was called. In the end, they didn't tag him—but the near miss left an impression.
Later, when the team dispersed, Asuma lingered.
He crouched near the shimmer that had delayed him. The seal was fading, but it was still there—tucked inside a small slip of parchment anchored to a kunai. He didn't recognize the format. It wasn't the standard Konoha seal array.
More... angular. Nested. A code within a code.
Asuma plucked the tag free and turned it over in his hand. No maker's mark.
---
That night, at the Nara household, Asuma joined Shikaku for a drink. They sat on the veranda, the light from inside soft and warm behind them. Crickets stirred in the brush.
Asuma exhaled a slow stream of smoke. "Your son's seal work is strange. Not bad—just... different."
Shikaku raised an eyebrow. "Different how?"
"He used something in a spar. It didn't detonate. Didn't immobilize. Just... added weight. Delay. Like it predicted where I'd step and nudged the ground back at me."
Shikaku took a long sip of sake and stared out into the trees. "He's been learning from someone. Quietly. Someone old. Someone careful."
Asuma frowned. "A jōnin?"
"No," Shikaku said, voice amused. "Not in rank. But there's depth to him."
Asuma looked back at the tag, now resting on the table. The ink was fading, but not smudged.
"It's recursive," he murmured. "Self-referencing... something about the way it loops."
Shikaku nodded slowly. "You've got the eye for it. He's not your average seal master. He's not after firepower. He's teaching logic that moves."
Asuma didn't speak for a while. Then he tapped ash into a nearby tray and said, "Maybe I'll meet him. See if his philosophy holds up under fire."
Shikaku smiled.
Behind them, in Shikamaru's room, parchment rustled softly. Seals shimmered in moonlight.
A mind was beginning to move with weight.