"Sure thing, sweetcheeks," she muttered under her breath. The seals were simple enough. She knew them backwards and in her sleep. It was finding the balance of chakra, the exact placement of which tiny pathways to use, exactly how much energy to add to each slip of her fingers. That was the real art of creating jutsu--and she'd never been much of an artist.

She moved through the seals twice under his watchful eye. The second time was just to stall. The third time she tightened her lips, pausing to ease chakra from her pathways before threading it through the jutsu.

Just a little, he'd said. Enough to follow the seals. In the index and middle fingers.

She didn't release it; the room would only eat the jutsu. Instead, she let her chakra slide back into her pathways unused, shaking her hands out when they tingled. At least it wasn't a high powered jutsu; re-funneling a large amount of gathered chakra could be a trick in itself.

She could see from the look on Asuma's face that it wasn't quite right. "More or less chakra?" she asked, already resigned.