It had only been around a day since his last bit of training with his master, and after a quick apology for going overboard at the hospital, he went home; It really could have gone much worse, he had won the fight without killing his master and he'd only fractured his arm and given him a bad concussion. A lot of ninja training sessions ended worse. It seemed he was more annoyed about losing the turban than he was about the injuries, and after promising to get someone to design him another Turban that looked more official his master had forgiven him. Still, that meant that he'd have to train on his own from now on... at least for a little while. He knew that he probably could have asked someone else to train him, but this was just getting more used to his fire chakra. How hard could it possibly be? He doubted it would be that hard, and he would rather be alone with this kind of thing. He was used to being alone, all of his working life he'd been alone, and it was easier than being with someone he'd never met before. Well, perhaps that wasn't true. He'd had his master at the beginning, but since his death he couldn't have anyone else with him. Nobody else seemed to want to take the time to understand this beautiful piece of modern Science. Doctors always thought about using what the body already had, instead of what could be added to it. Then there were those fools who just didn't understand it and dismissed it as heresy or playing god. Playing god? Seriously, if he was playing god he'd make them regrow their legs from scratch, forget the metal augmentations, why would he stop at giving someone a new limb? Silence, he found, was much better than talking to some people.

He was on a small pedastool, his legs bent as he sat there, instead of being in his uniform he was wearing his usual clothes. A simple white linen shirt, black training trousers and a pair of boots. His hands, for once, were completely uncovered as he left his hands resting in his lap, his augmented hand ontop of his other one as he thought about the way that his body worked. He had known so much about his biology ever since he was young. This extended to his chakra flow, and although he wasn't usually that good at controlling it, he could analyze most things about his own system. Blood vessels, sinews, nerves, all of these basic things inside his body and it was so intricate. Such a little change could change so much. His body, he mused, was like a machine. If you used it the wrong way it would break, but unlike machines some changes to the body could never be repaired. You could fix or replace parts of a machine, but a body... you could never do that to a body. You had to replace it with something different from it's original ingredients. If your leg is removed, it becomes useless and you have to get a prosthetic or you'll be ruined for the rest of your life. Maybe that was the reverse for the flow of chakra... could you change your chakra's components into something it should normally not be? Well, he could turn it into heat energy for fire based techniques, maybe he could change more of his body's chakra into energy like that. Like a much simpler operation, only done by understanding himself instead of having to use mechanical pieces.

600/2000

It was strange to think of the human body like the way Tomoya did, and most people would think of it as repulsive, cruel, maybe even inhumane. That was wrong, it was so far from correct that it wasn't even in the same house as correct. hell, forget house, it wasn't even in the same village... no, in the same land... aw hell, it wasn't even on the same continent as correct! He knew just how important flesh and blood were, but why would anyone stop there? You could train yourself to do so many inhuman things, there were people out there who could make themselves immortal, who could see a million miles with their eyes, who could turn into cats or dogs or even those who could make simple ground explode. Even he could fire gas out of his lungs, so why did anyone think that adding to those wonderful things was inhuman? It made no sense.

He had to try to understand his body, to force his chakra to work the way he wanted it to, but maybe... maybe there was other things one could do with their bodies that involved chakra. He had once heard about a man, a man around 100 years ago, who had turned his entire body into a puppet. He still lived, and laughed, and loved. That could certainly be called living, but maybe there was a way to do it without fully sacrificing humanity... he had been used to making prosthetics for years, but could you substitute machine parts for more than just limbs? Maybe kidneys, stomachs, hearts... Wait a second! Could he be onto something here? He thought hard, his mind racing as he felt the chakra burst through his body, his chakra flow always the more virulent when his brain was running quickly like this.

If you could survive as a puppet, why couldn't you survive as a machine? Hearts made out of clockwork, pumping blood around the body. Veins made out of steel, stopping you from ever bleeding to death. Wouldn't that save so many lives, the inability to bleed to death? And what about old age? He knew from his exploration on cadavers he had been given to practice making limbs for that as you grew older your body made more mistakes as it reproduced your cells, causing you to break down slightly, causing the inevitable death by old age. But what if as your body decayed you replaced it by robotics? You'd never have to worry about sagging skin, hearts beating out of sync, hell if you replaced the central nervous system with something much more advance you might not even have to feel pain ever again. That would make the world a wonderful place, where the only pain you could feel was emotional... but what about pleasure? Orgasm, endorphine release, adrenaline. Surely these wonderful things helped to keep humanity... if he was going to even consider doing these things, he would need to work out how to manipulate these things properly. However, that would have to wait. Right now his main concern was manipulating what he already had. He had to be better at.... well, everything.

1130/2000

Yes, he needed to be better at everything. Everyone else had managed to do things he'd never been able to do. He was seventeen, he'd failed the graduation exam the first time he took it, which was shameful enough, but then that damned cousin of his was so good. Ray Kato.... he loved him dearly, but when he thought about him his blood boiled. He was three years his junior, and it had been him who had been given control of the clan. Sure, Tomoya hadn't wanted it at the time but he'd never made a show of it not being in his plans, and he was the most intelligent member of the clan for god knows how many years. Certainly the smartest one currently alive at any rate, and that included the elders. He understood things that most people didn't, he was stronger than even his own master after six months of alone training, he was good enough that even the local hospital was asking for his help designing prosthetics that were to be used to save lives, to help put people back to work, and everyone seemed to be happy for him. But no, they disregarded that and chose Ray. RAY! The boy was an idiot compared to Tomoya. Weaker, stupider, inferior in every way and yet they hadn't even thought about making Tomoya the head of the clan. What was up with that? He deserved the leadership, not his foolish cousin. What was it? The sympathy card? His mummy had died, was that it? Were they feeling sorry for poor wickle Ray? God damn it, what was the reason they'd foregone their own prodigy and given it to him? He wanted to know!! there had to be a reasonable explanation behind it, everything had a logical reasoning behind it! That was the way the world worked, right? Why did it have to be like this, he deserved it, he deserved to be loved and to get everything he ever wanted. But no, this was what he got. Sure, he loved his job but this... this slow dawning revelation of just how unfair the situation was pissed him off no end!

1463/2000

He breathed out, feeling a surge of hot chakra going through his veins. Was it the heat of his fire chakra that was making him so htoblooded today? Was it because he was pushing himself past what he would normally be comfortable with? Right now, that was the least of his concerns. The air around him was saturated with fire chakra, it seemed sickly hot to anyone who would come onto the roof, but he wasn't noticing it. He wasn't even sweating. He was absolutely furious at the clan. He had done everything for them and gotten nothing in return. Nothing!! All they did was judge and scorn and laugh at him. Oh, look at Tomoya, they'd say, isn't he just so crazy! Look at his little finger ticking away there. What does he think he is, a clock? Oh god, he wanted to kill them, to beat them into a bloody pulp or throw them off the tallest building in the village. His family, his own flesh and blood, was what disgusted him most in the world. They were willfully ignorant morons.

Why couldn't he have been born in the Nara clan like Shikimaru, or in the Sarutobi clan like the third Hokage. Why, he'd even have been willing to be in the clan of Kankurō of the puppets. Somewhere with someone smart to talk to, someone who'd appreciate his genius for what it was, instead of laughing and scornning as his real clan did. Hell, he'd had to go to outside help for someone to understand what he wanted. His brother and father hadn't been able to do that at all. Of course they hadn't. He was the black sheep of the family, a genius in a flock of complete idiots. How COULD they have understood him. They still didn't, but now it was for a complete different reason. After being hand selected by Sunagakure's hospital to be the one who produced their limbs, the one who managed to get everyone happy and well again. It was exactly his clan's opinion that he was playing with god. He had no doubt in his mind that his clan thought that if someone lost their leg on the field of battle they should be left without a leg for the rest of their life. That was why his uncle had refused to get a leg fitted from him, they thought these machines were corrupt and wrong. They saw his finger as a living testament to just how freakish his technology that he gifted the clan with was. When his brother looked at him it wasn't hatred or scorn that he had behind his eyes, it was fear. Pure primal fear of something they didn't understand...

Tomoya's eyes opened with the sudden realization as the fire chakra shot through his system, his rage getting so strong that it would have looked like there was a fire behind his eyes. His own family deserved to be put to the torch, and if he had to be the one to do it then so be it. He would show them just how wrong their old methods were, and he would drag them kicking and screaming into the new world... one way or another. And if they wouldn't accept him, he would make his own clan. He would no longer suffer under the tyranny of a society led by fools. His chakra seemed to manifest with a red light around his body. This was the start of a new clan.... of the Suijōki clan, the clan of steel.

2088/2000