>>5927050“How does it work?”
“You open it.”
You open it. It’s full of water. You give her a questioning look.
“Pour it out.”
You begin pouring it out into the shallow pool. It just keeps pouring. And pouring. And pouring. Eventually you stop on your own with no real clue how much longer it’s supposed to take. “How much water does this thing contain? How come we haven’t solved world thirst?”
Hotaru smiles, and then walks over to the nearby tool shed, opening the door. Inside is a large barrel, around 40 gallons, with the same marks as the bamboo container. “Weapon summoning is a common first step for ninja who learn fuinjutsu. You can render material into a pattern of raw chakra, sealed within a scroll. Unfortunately, sealing water inside a scroll would be… Unwieldy. So, the interior of this barrel is linked to the interior of the water container.”
“Why do we use plumbing at all, if it’s so easy?”
“Because, young man, seals aren’t perpetual, and the jutsu is a waste of time and chakra for this purpose when water is easily summoned and manipulated through ninjutsu.” She says, bluntly. “Use will cause the seals to fade, and when they fade too much, the jutsu will cease. As such, it’s a cludgy technique and I’ll have to maintain it between missions until you either learn high level sealing jutsu yourself or decide you’re confident enough with generating your own water that you don’t need it.”
“You’re implying that I’m in the wrong for wanting this.”
“Yes. Well, it’s a question every ninjutsu user has at some point: Wouldn’t it be best if I carried some of my specialty with me? With the elemental releases it’s common for people with a preference for the more tangible ones to be even more likely to think such things. People with wind techniques don’t need to worry about having air, users of lightning and fire find it more intuitive to not worry about where it’s coming from and don’t seek to bottle lightning or fire, but people who use water or earth often think of scenarios where they won’t have access to it.”
“Most wind, fire, and lightning jutsus I’ve heard of don’t require a medium. Most of the water and earth ones do. Earth even more so.” You state, flatly.
“Wind does require a medium in many of their jutsus, air is simply omnipresent so it's less relevant. And it’s easier to release chakra directly as a fire or lightning because chakra already exists in a comparable state as energy, at least, as the human mind intuits it, straining against the limits of creativity. Water and earth are the outliers, true.”
“So if that’s the case, I’m better off having access to it?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then why imply otherwise?”
