The park was clean. The testing ground was ready.
Jordan had wanted the Shadow Clone Technique for a long time.
The premise was simple enough on the surface: Naruto Uzumaki, with his absurdly large chakra reserves and the A-rank forbidden upgrade known as the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique, had used it as the foundation for nearly everything. Rapid-fire skill development compressed years of training into days. Simultaneous combat from multiple vectors. Intelligence-gathering without exposing the original body. The technique had carried him from failing the Academy graduation exam to fighting on the same level as the Sage of Six Paths, and most of that climb had involved some variation of make several hundred copies of yourself and get to work.
The protagonist's halo had certainly helped. But the technique itself was genuinely that good.
The Shadow Clone and the Multiple Shadow Clone differed by scale rather than principle—both required crossing the hands into the Ram seal, both split chakra across the resulting copies, and skilled users could execute either with a single hand. The real distinction was that the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique produced numbers that stress-tested both the user's mental compartmentalization and their total chakra reserves. Most shinobi couldn't sustain more than a handful of clones before running dry. Naruto's reserves were the exception that proved the rule.
There was also a common misconception worth addressing.
Some ninjutsu could not simply be learned by watching, regardless of how simple the hand seal sequence appeared. Shadow Clone Technique was one of them. If Tobirama Senju hadn't invented the specific chakra routing pattern from scratch, even Hashirama—with his Tailed Beast-level reserves and Sage Body—couldn't have used it through sheer will and enthusiasm. The technique required understanding both the seal sequence and the precise internal chakra flow through the body's meridian system.
This was why hand seal complexity didn't correlate directly with technique difficulty. Itachi Uchiha developed one-handed seals because he understood the meridian flows deeply enough to reroute them with half the standard physical input. Tobirama himself had simplified the forty-four-seal Water Dragon Bullet down to three—not by eliminating steps, but by internalizing the intermediate steps so completely they no longer needed external physical expression.
Distributing printed hand seal guides to civilians would produce nothing but carpal tunnel injuries.
Jordan raised his crossed hands into the Ram seal, let his chakra follow the routing pattern the Shadow Clone card had integrated into his ability set, and exhaled.
"Shadow Clone Technique."
White smoke erupted across the park square.
It cleared to reveal another Jordan Evans standing in the open space—same height, same blond hair, same blue eyes, same build. Looking, from a physical standpoint, absolutely identical to the original.
The clone had his hands in his pockets. His expression suggested someone who had been interrupted during something more important than whatever this was.
Jordan stared at him.
The clone stared back with the energy of someone who found the whole situation beneath them.
"Get on with it," the clone said. "Some of us have things to do."
...Do I actually sound like that?
Jordan's first instinct was to establish the hierarchy immediately—main body, primary consciousness, the one running this experiment—but he caught himself. If this turned into an actual altercation, F-boy would witness it, and he would never hear the end of it. The Stand's capacity for professional detachment had limits, and watching Jordan brawl with himself in an abandoned park was well past them.
[Please continue,] F-boy's voice came from somewhere to the left, with the serene attentiveness of someone who had already prepared commentary.
Jordan took a breath. "Right. Standing by. I need to examine—"
"Don't touch me."
"—your chakra levels and—"
"Use your eyes."
Jordan's temple pulsed once.
This was, apparently, a valid manifestation of his own personality. According to what he'd read about shadow clone psychology, physical copies produced by the technique inherited one dominant aspect of the caster's character rather than a balanced composite. Any given clone could amplify any facet of the original—the focused version, the patient version, the strategic version, the version that had strong opinions about not being examined like a lab specimen.
He had, it seemed, gotten the version with a very pronounced sense of personal space and a low tolerance for being told what to do.
Do not comment on this, he told himself firmly. It is a manifestation of one's own will. It reflects nothing.
He dispelled the clone.
A stream of memory returned with the dissipating chakra—brief, clean, the clone's two minutes of existence packaged neatly into sensory data and returned to the original. Jordan felt the technique's internal mechanics from both ends simultaneously: the act of sustaining the clone, and the act of existing as the clone. The understanding deepened immediately.
He also noticed the chakra balance.
Half. The first clone had consumed exactly half of his active chakra pool at time of casting.
The pseudo-Herrscher Core had already begun replenishing it—the deep reserves filling back toward capacity at a rate that made the deficit feel more like a momentary dip than an actual drain. But the experience of suddenly losing half one's chakra was notable. For someone accustomed to an essentially bottomless pool, the abrupt reduction was a new sensation.
The good news: the clone had retained access to most of Jordan's ability set. Not the Stand itself—F-boy was tethered to the original—but the physical enhancements, the chakra natures, the ninjutsu catalogue. Even the passive Super Saiyan state had transferred across, which meant each clone was starting from a base that most combatants would consider a finished product.
The bad news was relatively minor: the clone's chakra pool didn't share in the pseudo-Herrscher Core's regenerative depth. It had what it had at creation, and that was the ceiling. For most applications, this was fine. Jordan's reserves were substantial enough that the inherited half was genuinely substantial.
He cracked his knuckles and formed the Ram seal again.
"Six."
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Six detonations of white smoke in rapid succession, evenly spaced across the park square. When it cleared:
Six blond men stood in a line.
The effect was immediate and difficult to categorize. Same face, same build, six different expressions—one looked bored, one looked vaguely annoyed, one was already scanning the park perimeter with tactical focus, one had crossed their arms and seemed to be evaluating Jordan critically, one appeared entirely serene, and one had tilted his head at a slight angle that suggested it found the situation mildly amusing. The line of them in the afternoon light had the accidental visual coherence of a very specialized entertainment group.
Jordan looked at them.
Six versions of himself looked back.
"...Right," he said.
His chakra had dropped to one-seventh of its total—the original retaining its portion, six clones dividing the rest. The sensation was more pronounced this time, a real reduction that registered as something approaching physical discomfort. The pseudo-Herrscher Core was already compensating, the deep reserves cascading back up through the integration points, but the momentary experience had been novel. Unprecedented, actually. Jordan Evans had never before felt genuinely low on chakra, and even nearly low on chakra was a new data point.
It wouldn't matter in practice—one-seventh of his reserves was still a very large number, and the regeneration rate meant the gap closed fast. But it was worth knowing the sensation existed.
He filed it under solved, not a problem, awareness noted.
As skill proficiency developed, he'd be able to actively distribute chakra ratios rather than defaulting to the automatic equal-split. More chakra to a specific clone for a priority task, less to others running secondary roles. The system could be optimized significantly once he had more time with the technique.
For now, the important thing was that it worked.
He looked at the five clones arrayed in front of him—the sixth he was retaining as observer—and clapped his hands once.
"Alright. One-on-one combat testing. Take turns." He held up a hand before any of them could respond. "Watch the strength ceiling. We are standing in Z-City. There are buildings nearby. The objective is calibration, not structural damage. Everyone understood?"
Five pairs of blue eyes regarded him with varying degrees of enthusiasm, skepticism, and what appeared to be competitive interest.
Jordan rolled up his sleeves.
"Let's go."