The Awakened Soul (Naruto SI)

[Welydora]

Same day. Kakashi's hospital room

The jonin was finally sprawled out in bed, reading his little book as usual. The day had been… intense. He was still processing what he'd seen in the Land of Waves.

The way the door slid open without a sound caught him completely off guard, and in the doorway appeared an elderly woman known in and beyond Konoha.

"…Elder-sama?" Hatake's only visible eye went wide in surprise. He instinctively tried to hide the book under the blanket, but it was already too late.

"Exactly, brat," Utatane Koharu stepped into the room, her cane thudding dully against the floor. "I heard about your mission after your… 'vacation.'" She practically spat the last word. Then she quietly slid the door shut behind her. "You've completely lost both your strength and your wits, Kakashi. You let the enemy lure you into the simplest trap. You didn't do reconnaissance, despite the direct suggestion of the junior member of your team. You endangered genin and would be dead if not for my student. Over the years, the only thing you've really improved at is jerking off." Utatane jabbed her cane contemptuously toward the little book. "But in every other respect, you've just gone soft and predictable. I've got a few things to say to you."

Pointedly ignoring the chair, she stayed standing over his bed, looking down at him. What followed for the white‑haired man were twenty very humiliating minutes of insults, mixed with a tactical breakdown of exactly how he should have acted on that mission. Although Koharu definitely spent more time comparing his professional qualities to various types of organic waste…


The next day, I managed to join Hinata's team. Technically, they were called Team Aoba, since he was their commander. But it was more convenient for me to call them something else.

First thing in the morning, I dragged my ass over to their training ground.

"Yo," I called out, stepping out from behind a tree. "Feel like going on a mission?"

Just like that, I threw it out there.

Hinata lit up the moment she saw me and nodded without hesitation. Kiba and Shino exchanged glances. Their sensei, Aoba Yamashiro, looked up from the scroll he was reading and eyed me with interest.

"Uzumaki-san," he said calmly, then paused for a few seconds to think. "Unexpected. I believe your assistance would be useful to my team. And if we're going, we might as well take something more serious than a D-rank."

Holy shit. I thought I'd have to talk them into it… But here he is: sharp, decisive, reasonable, and flexible. Not like some other sensei… flashed through my head.

I nodded in agreement. A moment later, our ears were assaulted by Kiba's joyous yelp-slash-roar; he was clearly thrilled about a higher-ranked mission.

It turned out to be their first C-rank mission. Getting it really perked the whole team up. You could tell they were probably getting bored with constant work in Konoha. It showed especially on the dog boy. Riding that wave of positivity, Inuzuka called me his bro and, in his excitement, tried to hug me, but a fatherly smack upside the head calmed him down.

After that, we headed to the Hokage's residence.


Finding a merchant's missing daughter. That was the mission we were given.

A hundred kilometers is nothing to a shinobi. Moving at a leisurely pace along the tree branches, we reached the merchant's small estate in less than an hour. We were met by a sweaty, short man whose face showed a mix of desperation and hope.

"Shinobi-sama! Thank the gods you're here!" he wailed as his servants led us inside. "My daughter… She didn't just disappear, she was kidnapped! I've heard of this gang, and they're demanding a ransom! A huge ransom! I don't have that kind of money!"

He looked at us hopefully. The client didn't really understand why there was one more of us than usual, but he was clearly happy about it.

Aoba was about to open his mouth to offer sympathy and agree to the new terms, but I beat him to it, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"One moment, Aoba-san." I turned to the merchant, my tone going cold and businesslike. "So you're saying the mission's changed from a 'search' to 'combat against an armed group and hostage rescue'?"

"Y-yes, but—"

"You do value your daughter, don't you?" I went on, not letting him cut in. "Our team, as you can see, consists of young genin. We were also geared up for a different type of assignment. We're going to have to push ourselves to take on an entire gang. Risk our lives." I swept my gaze over my temporary teammates. Kiba, Shino, and Hinata were looking at me with a bit of skepticism, clearly not seeing yet where I was going with this. They were genin; beating up regular bandits really wasn't a problem for them. "Tell me, Mister Merchant, do workers you pay that little really bust their asses for you?"

The client went pale as he caught the hint. Aoba, on the other hand, watched with interest, seeming to understand I was giving his students a lesson they wouldn't find in textbooks.

"I… I…" the merchant stammered. "I'll increase the reward! Five times! Just bring my daughter back!"

I turned back to my temporary teammates. Their faces were stretched in shock. You could practically read on them something between Wait, you can do that? and Damn, this guy…

"Deal," I nodded, seeing from their faces that they agreed. "But there's one more condition. After we return your daughter, you're going to tell all your friends and colleagues what valiant shinobi work in Konoha, how lucky you were that I, Uzumaki Naruto, personally ended up on your mission, and what a kindness we showed you by agreeing to such modest terms."

The merchant nodded hastily, though in his eyes I clearly read the fleeting thought: Next time I request a mission from Konoha, I'm going to make sure you're not on it.


Once we were away from the house, Shino quietly remarked that it had been a pretty dirty move on my part to force the price up. Kiba, catching the vibe and being his usual brash self, decided to butt heads too, declaring that this was their mission and they'd try to finish it themselves first. To his surprise, I agreed.

"Fine. It's your mission now. I'm just support and a coordinator, if needed."

Then I explained what technique I'd be using to coordinate them.

Well, what did he expect when, basically, he asked me not to bother too much? Besides, there was another plus in this: Hinata's team would be able to polish their teamwork even more. And to make sure everything went even better, I added one last touch, speaking through the mind-link:

Yamashiro-san, don't interfere unless there's a real chance of someone dying. Let them show what they can do.

He gave a barely noticeable nod.

And Team 8, in fact, showed some solid teamwork.

Kiba and Akamaru, like hounds, picked up the girl's scent from one of her things, and in just an hour we were at the gang's hideout.

Shino sent his kikaichū out for recon, and ten minutes later we had a complete map of the hideout—an old, abandoned warehouse—and the exact number of enemies. Hinata, using her Byakugan, confirmed Shino's data and spotted several primitive traps on the approach.

For genin, their coordination was impressive, at least by what I knew of Konoha's average genin level.

The assault plan was simple and effective. Shino's bugs silently "put to sleep" the two sentries at the entrance, draining enough chakra to leave them weak and drowsy. Then Kiba and Akamaru crashed through a small wooden gate like a pair of rhinos, going in with their Fang Over Fang tactic. The move worked off the jutsu of the same name, where Akamaru takes on his master's form; then the two of them drop to all fours, leap, and spin rapidly, creating visible whirlwinds and delivering a barrage of quick strikes to their target. Right off the bat they created chaos and dragged most of the bandits' attention onto themselves.

That was when Hinata went to work. While everyone's eyes were glued to the Inuzuka's furious charge, she slipped into the building like a shadow through a side entrance.

I watched her especially closely. There wasn't a trace of her old hesitation left in her movements.

Coolheaded, with precise Jūken strikes almost invisible to their targets, she disabled the bandits in her path, shutting down their tenketsu. If Kiba was charging through like a runaway freight train, Hinata's actions were just as decisive, but completely different in their finesse and precision.

In one of the back rooms she found the merchant's daughter, tied up and scared. After freeing her, she gave the signal, and a few minutes later the entire gang was down and trussed up.

The leader of these poor bastards, by the way, turned out to be smart enough not to harm the hostage, hoping for a lighter sentence. He probably understood that this kind of business doesn't last long before you get bagged. What he didn't factor in was that confiscation of all his "hard‑earned" loot could also be part of the punishment. But he could be surprised by that in court.

After the beatdown… that is, the main part of the mission, I walked over and started praising the team's actions, especially Hinata's, which made her a little embarrassed.

Aoba also expressed how pleased he was with the team's results, talking about how much they'd grown…

After that, we returned the girl to the merchant. Sure, the mission hadn't been carried out perfectly; we could've arranged everything way more subtly. But it worked like this too, didn't it?

On the way back to Konoha, the group's mood was high.

Kiba wouldn't shut up about how he and Akamaru had wrecked the bandits, Shino nodded silently along, and Aoba listened with a faint smile, occasionally throwing in tactical comments. I, for my part, noted with satisfaction how well they'd meshed. Their specialties complemented each other perfectly. But what pleased me most was Hinata's progress. She hadn't just done her part of the plan—she'd done it coolly, efficiently, without a hint of her old indecision. A real shinobi had awakened in her… and it was disgustingly cute. With that face of hers she looked like an ultra‑cute combat kitten. If she had cried out "Nya!" with every strike, I would've just melted on the spot.


"I'd like to see how much you've grown," I said to Hinata the next day when we met at our usual training ground. "Want a quick spar?"

She hesitated for a moment, then determination flashed in her eyes. She nodded firmly, taking the Hyūga clan's fighting stance.

We'd done plenty of spars back in the Academy and even a few outside it. Hinata was used to me being stronger, and she knew that in a fight with me she didn't have to hold back.

I didn't underestimate her, rushing in right away with the kind of speed that usually left my peers stumped. I wanted to see her limit and how she'd react to real pressure. But what happened next genuinely surprised me.

Hinata didn't retreat or block. Instead, she started spinning, releasing blue streams of chakra from every tenketsu in her body.

"Kaiten!" Her voice, though quiet, was full of resolve.

A rotating sphere of blue chakra formed around her. Before I could reach her, I had to jump back so the technique wouldn't just launch me away.

I stared ahead in surprise. Absolute Defense… that's what they call it. She'd mastered one of her clan's most difficult techniques.

"Good, Hinata. Very good." I couldn't hide my admiration. "But you can't win a fight with defense alone."

"I know," she replied and, stopping her rotation, rushed into the attack herself.

Her movements had become faster and more precise; training in the clan had clearly intensified. Had she kept quiet about it just to surprise and impress me? It'd make sense—she knows my personality and could easily have predicted that. And that, together with what she was showing now, was really impressive.

She activated her Byakugan, and her chakra-laced fingers immediately went for my tenketsu.

I dodged her thrusts easily, and even parried some of them in a similar way, flooding my own limbs with chakra and releasing it at the moment of contact.

For several seconds, blue flashes and waves of chakra flew from us in all directions.

But she didn't give up, trying to force me into a combo. And I didn't back off, waiting to see what else Hinata would show.

"Eight Trigrams, Thirty-Two Palms!"

Her attacks turned into a flurry of precise, lightning-fast strikes. Our arms blurred from the speed. Two palms. Four palms. Eight. Sixteen. I parried each blow, not letting her hurt me—or herself. The exchange only grew in speed and power.

Thirty-two palms…

Hinata exhaled heavily as I knocked aside her final strike.

The fight stopped.

I wouldn't say it had been hard for me, but it wasn't exactly effortless either.

"Definitely chunin level," I said, without a trace of irony in my voice. "Kaiten and Thirty-Two Palms… Hinata, that's incredible progress. I'm honestly impressed."

A familiar blush spread over her cheeks, but she didn't lower her eyes. Instead, she looked up proudly… not at me, but off to the side. And that alone was already big progress…

"Thank you… Naruto-kun."

"This calls for a celebration," I suggested. "My treat."

The evening at a small, cozy restaurant that served the best dango in Konoha went by surprisingly easily. Hinata still got flustered when I praised her, but again, much less than before. She could hold a conversation, laughed at my jokes about Kiba and his "rhino" tactics, and even talked about her training and how cutely her little sister Hanabi huffs and puffs during practice. I pointed out that Hinata was no less cute during our spars, which made her blush even harder.

Our friendship, it turned out, was getting warmer and deeper. I felt calm around her. That comfort was a pleasant break from my endless race for strength and all my other dark plans.

All in all, the rest had gone well. I'd recovered my strength, helped a friend become even stronger and more confident, and spent time with someone I genuinely liked. But as I headed back late that night to my empty, quiet mansion, I knew the break was over.

Down in the basement, in the cold of the sealing fuin, the material I'd obtained in the Land of Waves was waiting for me. My main project demanded attention, and now I had everything I needed to take the next step.

It was time to push science forward.

---

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[Welydora]

My teammates were still in the hospital and were supposed to be discharged tomorrow. So I dedicated the whole day to experiments.

No, I didn't immediately jump into the final testing of my pile of theory-hypotheses on live "material." Instead, for the first half of the day my brain got hijacked by a different topic—also pretty damn interesting.

Soul research.

Same old lab. I was looming over the operating table with Subject One, while above me—hanging a bit off to the side—were massive metal rigs with black inlays stuffed to the brim with my chakra: fūin analyzers and stabilizers. The first one was self-explanatory. The second existed so the "material" wouldn't die ahead of schedule. Both devices radiated energy loaded with huge bundles of properties, doing their jobs the way a normal ninja would with jutsu—only on a much deeper, more efficient, and more powerful level.

First, I put my hand on the subject and, using a not-particularly-high-end technique, instantly drained his chakra circulatory system—CCS—of excess energy.

After that, dozens of blue chakra threads burst out of me.

The soul sits like it's not quite in the same space as the normal world… but I could shift my chakra into that, so to speak, "other" space and still touch the soul with it. And even though other people's souls weren't visible to my soul-sight because of their chakra… despite the whole "different spaces" thing, it turned out it wasn't that simple.

Whatever. That problem was fixable for analysis.

The threads sank into the subject's arm with surgical precision. Some of them, picking the right "layer" of reality, groped for the soul, while others methodically ripped major chakra channels out of the body.

On my earlier command, the stabilizing seal pumped blood away from the work area, while the analyzer calibrated under my control, sending streams of information straight into my consciousness.

Soon I found the metric I needed, and first in soul-sight—and then, thanks to the fūin analyzer tuning itself to match that ability's properties—in my mind, the subject's soul "aura" flared up in microscopic detail.

"Green-yellow?" I noted the color.

As expected, souls came in different colors.

With the right properties set, I latched my chakra threads onto the subject's soul with a technique similar to how ninja stick to vertical surfaces.

Thanks to the analyzer, I had a read on the structure—barely different from my own—and the soul's durability. The second part differed a lot, and not in a good way… which just meant I had to spread my grip over a larger area. Anything to keep the body pinned to the table and slowly, relentlessly drag the soul out.

The subject was under insanely strong anesthesia, so his body didn't even twitch. But the space where his soul existed filled up with emanations from the tiny doses of energy leaking out of him—emanations with properties that read as emotions: agony, terror, and other similar stuff, just less pronounced. With the analyzer, I couldn't just tell if someone was lying—deepest, smallest emotions couldn't hide from me either.

The CCS—even heavily drained—still held the soul in place. So to separate body and soul I had to burn through the CCS's internal reserves hard, to pull the soul out in one piece.

Soon, held in my threads, a green-yellowish soul hung in front of me. Same outline as the subject's short body. Same sphere with a core inside the "aura."

And even this kind of desecration didn't wake the soul up… damn it.

I had a long list—very long—of what I needed to test in a soul: traits, functions, abilities. But I started with one of the most interesting items.

The threads slowly cut an opening in the chest, opposite the core. The part of the soul that used to be "aura" peeled back like skin as a slow current of energy pushed out from the subject's soul. The energy was almost transparent, but faintly tinted with the soul's color.

The analyzer and my sphere-sight immediately pushed inside the soul, running yet another comprehensive scan. A cloudy sphere—old and stagnant.

Ten minutes later, almost all the energy had flowed out of the subject's aura, though it didn't stop completely, still trickling thanks to the internal reserves of the sphere.

Next part of the experiment: the threads—this time using noticeably more force, though still nowhere near my possible maximum—punched an opening in the outer core. Energy from the subject's soul rushed out under much higher pressure.

In terms of raw volume, what got released here wasn't even a drop of my chakra. But the stream looked powerful—and because of that, beautifully detailed—purely thanks to how hard I was pushing my sphere-sight sensory output while focusing on the subject's sphere, plus the analyzer. Figuratively speaking, it's like a fart: normally you can't even see it. But put on a thermal imager… Yeah, not the best association, but with that soul color? Kinda symbolic.

There were properties in the subject's energy, but they were extremely weak and scattered. And barely interpretable for me. A lot of them were even smaller—so small that even with the analyzer I couldn't make sense of them. Souls were one hell of a puzzle… but that didn't mean—not even close—that I wasn't getting data. I was getting a ton, and I could sort and process it for a long time. And I've still got other projects, by the way.

When the flow almost stopped, now releasing only little by little from energy generated by the core and, to a much lesser degree, by the walls of the outer core, I moved my threads toward the core to open that up too.

In general, all energy generates energy. Weird law of the world. Why, and where it comes from—no clue. But it's just how it is. The higher the concentration of energy—like in a shell, for example—the higher the generation.

Once I did it, the emanations of terror quickly died down, while the core's own energy radiation increased. My perception got flooded by literal oceans of properties—some sharply imprinted, some so faint I could barely tell them apart. All intertwined, all moving in a strange, incomprehensible, chaotic dance.

For about half an hour I tried to make sense of it; the process sucked me in that hard. By then the core had barely started to dissolve. And something else was interesting: the CCS—and then the body—started dying off after the core got damaged. Like there was a connection, and when the soul that they depended on apparently died, everything else followed right after.

Yeah… so that was my first kill. And it happened pretty damn routinely…

And what's worse: the soul isn't immortal. It's very much destroyable. Meaning, presumably, I can be killed completely and permanently too.

Those facts put me in a mild melancholy. Still, it didn't stop me from continuing to study.

When I opened the third subject's soul—purple, by the way; everyone's souls had pretty different colors, while mine was still gray—a hypothesis popped into my head.

I'm Ashura's reincarnation, right? Meta-knowledge says yes.

After that thought, I finished up with Number Three quickly and, without much enthusiasm, moved on to studying myself.

I didn't have to poke holes in myself, since I was working with my own energy—energy that, ever since my soul awakened, could pass through my own shells without any resistance.

But at first, I couldn't find it.

Then I figured: if souls exist in those weird layers, I should probably search in that direction. So I did.

The world felt multidimensional. And with my energies—without fully understanding how exactly it worked or what it precisely led to—I could affect those other dimensions. Similar chakra manipulation I'd only seen in high-class space-time techniques. And even then, that field was barely studied.

The search went on until evening. And ended in failure too…

Nope. Not that simple. Maybe Ashura's soul—the one I'm reincarnating—sits too deep. Maybe I need a different approach.

Whatever. I'm stubborn. And I'm almost completely sure something has to be there.

So, deciding I'd keep trying for a month and if it didn't work I'd come back later when my skills improved, I went to sleep. Today was productive.


The morning was normal. I slept well as always and woke up in my little mansion feeling pretty energized. Three "numbers" I'd deprived not just of life, but even of the possibility of reincarnation, still didn't make me feel pity. When I think about it, yeah, it stirs up a weak, unpleasant feeling—but nothing more. So, to fully detach from it, I went back to business.

My teammates were supposed to be discharged already, and despite the pretty extensive circumstances, our mission continued.

First thing I did was swing by Sakura's place. She lived in a normal-looking, two-story house—standard Konoha.

So I wouldn't have to meet her parents and waste time, I climbed up to the second floor, to Sakura's room window, and knocked.

She was in her room, and when she came over she saw my face—pretty damn surprised.

Even as I approached, my sphere-sight picked up Sakura's appearance, which had… changed.

"…Naruto?" Sakura asked calmly (!)—even though she absolutely should've pointed out I'd climbed up to her like a creep instead of using the damn door. "Why not through the door?"

She said it just as calmly, and when she noticed my stare she looked away, embarrassed.

"It doesn't suit me, does it?"

She drew my attention to the thing that surprised me: her hair had been cut into a bob.

"Well, it actually does," I said. She looked good even without long hair. "How're you feeling?"

I hopped down onto the floor softly, trying not to think too hard about why she decided to change her image… Teen brains. I'm afraid if I truly understand how they work, my psychiatrist's note might stop being valid.

"Good. And… thank you. For everything." She hesitated again and looked away. Her eyes snagged on the note I'd left on the nightstand, the one with fūin on it. "That was really direct… and nice. Thanks for that too."

Her words—and her expression—were disgustingly cute. So I couldn't help it: I reached out and ran my fingers through her pink hair.

She got even more flustered.

"You're welcome." I shrugged, then pulled my hand back.

For a second there was this weird silence between us. I broke it without shame.

"Ready to head out to the Land of Waves today?"

"Yeah. Five minutes."

Nodding, I teleported off to gather the rest of the team. No point peeking in on minors. Now, digging around in corpses—that's different, that's my thing. But staring at living people is usually unethical.

After a while, when it turned out everyone really was ready for a quick move—even Hatake—we arrived at Tazuna's place. And then I got to witness a pretty weird scene.

"Sasuke," Sakura addressed him. Her voice—unlike her previous attempts to talk to him—was firmer than ever, without that extra timidity.

The guy slowly turned his gaze to her.

"I want you to apologize," she said, looking him straight in the eyes. "For what happened on the bridge."

"…" The Uchiha didn't get it right away. But when he realized who said it—and what exactly—his eyes widened to unnatural sizes and his mouth fell open on its own.

"Until you apologize, we don't talk outside of missions. I'm not your property, and I'm not an obstacle you can throw away when it's in your way."

Then she simply crossed her arms and turned away, waiting.

But under my and Kakashi's surprised looks, she obviously didn't get anything.

Sasuke snorted and turned away too.

So we stood there like that for about twenty seconds.

"M-ma…" Kakashi summed up the situation.

"Yeah," I agreed.

Sakura, still not getting an apology, shot the Uchiha a look full of hurt.

"You sure you're okay?" I asked gently, trying not to provoke… possibly someone who wasn't entirely stable, with sharp movements or tone.

"Uh… yeah?" She gave me a confused look.

"…If anything, I've got good connections at the hospital. Come to me if something's wrong."

"…" Sakura didn't understand what I was getting at, but nodded.

After that we headed for Tazuna. He turned out to be at the construction site, not home. Looked a bit worn out for so early, and he had a black eye under one eye.

"Greetings to the honored ninja of Konoha," he said, bending in a bow like he'd never bowed in his life, which surprised me again.

"And what the hell happened to you?" I asked.

"Excuse me?.." Tazuna didn't get it either, but he noticed my whole team staring at him weird and started to panic.

"Yeah… forget it." I waved him off. Honestly, it wasn't that interesting. And I could already guess—his own people probably smacked him around for that sideways attitude toward terrifying demo—ahem. Toward respected ninja.

"Any incidents while we were gone?" Kakashi asked, finally getting to the point.

"None, Hatake-sama," the bridge builder reported respectfully.

"M-gh. Good," Kakashi noted, then stepped a couple of paces away and turned to us. "Team Seven. You might not know this, but your teammate—Naruto—not only dealt with those two ninja, but also Gato's cartel."

That surprised all three of us. Sakura and Sasuke because I wiped out the cartel, and me because Kakashi actually bothered to verify mission intel after my report to the Hokage. Did Koharu bite him back there when I sicced her on him? No, they're not like that… or are they?

"However," Hatake continued, briefly glancing at Tazuna's confirming nods. "Our mission isn't over. Until the bridge is finished, we'll guard the perimeter of the construction site. And we'll guard Tazuna at night, when he's home. But first, I have something to tell you."

No, she definitely bit him. Where else would Kakashi get a sudden attack of responsibility and a craving for work?

We moved away from Tazuna, leaving him to do his thing. And Kakashi just… started breaking down our fight: what Sakura could've done better, what Sasuke could've done better, where they screwed up, what they did okay, what they did well. He even broke down his own fight. Me, he didn't mention at all—probably just in case.

After that, Hatake went on watch with Sasuke. The jōnin would instruct him on what to do and how. Yeah, we got taught this in the Academy, but Hatake would show more—and in practice.

Sakura and I were left alone with our own schedule. In six hours it'd be Sakura's turn to go, where she'd get the same kind of instruction; after that, mine; after that, Kakashi's.

"What a morning," I said, watching the two of them walk off. Then I turned to Sakura. "How about a light training session? Feels like the perfect time."

"Tell me, Naruto…" she started, also watching them. "If you… finished Gato off. Doesn't that mean our mission has no point?"

"Heh. Glad you noticed. The mission isn't mandatory. But it's a good time for me—I can just send a clone, and it'll barely burn any energy. And it's a good time for you guys: nobody's distracting you, tons of free time. You can focus on getting stronger."

"That's so you," she said, turning her head toward me. "Will you tell me more? Like… how you dealt with the cartel?"

"It's not a bright story."

"Please."

I glanced at her. At least her curiosity survived.

"Fine."

After I told her—and Sakura listened closely, asking a few clarifying questions along the way—we did a short spar. Then I gave her a new chakra-control exercise that didn't take much stamina, told her I was leaving a clone with her, and went to the lab to handle my own stuff.

Days moved forward.

While my clone stood watch over Tazuna and patrolled the area, it still spent most of its time training with Sakura—polishing her chakra control, taijutsu, and helping her process the lessons from that fight. That's how it happened, by the way, that Sakura and the clone (rotating replacements), so random people wouldn't distract them, moved into the mansion that used to belong to Gato.

In my lab, I—the original—buried myself in experiments. Days and nights flew by while, scanning my own chakra core, I tried to feel out, to catch that anomaly—"Ashura's construct"—which I was sure was hidden somewhere deep, in other "layers" of reality. It was exhausting, meditative work that demanded absolute concentration specifically from me, the original.

But doing only one thing was way too little for me. So, on top of that, I tasked dozens of other clones with parallel work in the sterile halls of the underground complex.

On many tables, under the light of fūin lamps, lay immobilized test subjects. My clones started the final verification of my hypotheses.

One clone, using a modified Mystical Palm, sent hair-thin chakra impulses into the subjects' muscle fibers, stimulating accelerated growth and transformation even without micro-damage—on a different principle, where muscle changes without the extra intermediate stages. The results showed up right in front of our eyes: the fūin analyzer streamed models and live graphs of tissue density and strength changing in real time.

Another clone worked with the nervous system of several people one after another. The chakra flows, boosted through fūin, were crammed with so many properties the technique was more complex than Hiraishin. The energy wrapped the spinal cord and major nerve nodes, stimulating myelination of nerve fibers—done to increase signal speed and push reflexes even closer to absolute.

A third—actually, a whole group of clones—tested and studied the body's natural renewal processes. They also tried, after breaking the Hayflick limit—the cell division limit I'd learned to remove a while back—to test different ways of increasing cellular resistance to cancer, DNA damage, and restoring that DNA; and on top of that, ways to detect, isolate, and destroy whatever cancer cells still appeared anyway. That group was basically working toward biological immortality. But besides hacking the cell-division limit, there were still a lot of obstacles on the path to that goal… Over years of studying, I'd figured out how to bypass many of them. Still, everything had to be tested.

And there were other clone groups too. We were working on every system in the body.

Work was boiling on all fronts for my body-improvement project. Data piled up.

And I… could feel it. I was standing on the edge of a huge discovery.

---

If you enjoyed my work, feel free to check out my Patreon. There you can read up to 20 chapters ahead and get early access to any new stuff that I publish

 

[Welydora]

The days kept rolling by. Different teams of clones worked themselves to the bone, and of course I—the original—didn't slack either.

There were a shitload of results from the groups working on the body-enhancement project. But most of it just meant more experiments—sometimes with tiny tweaks, sometimes with not-so-tiny ones.

On the soul-research front, I put clones on it too, even if they could only work through "crutches"—the analyzer. They had a kind of soul-sight; since they don't actually have souls, they could only fake it using chakra, and even then it was way more crooked than what I used thanks to my natural ability. To use that sphere-vision properly through chakra, you first had to actually understand it better. But there were no big, fat breakthroughs there, which made me—the original—pretty damn irreplaceable. The clones, again, leaned on the fūin analyzer, which couldn't fully replace my inborn sense, but in a lot of aspects it was actually even better.

With the tools we had plus a pinch of materials, the clones managed to detect soul emission from the test subjects on one of reality's layers—emission that leaked past the chakra "veil." Meaning: radiation spreading outside the body and readable by my sensitivity! After that, the clones poked around "to the sides" from that point to figure out what spatial ranges that emission usually showed up in, and using those data they created a Soul Analysis technique.

The jutsu gave you data on a soul even while it was still inside a body. It didn't work as well as ripping the soul out, and sure as hell not as well as ripping it out and then studying it with a fūin analyzer. But it still let you determine the strength, color, and a bunch of other minor—sometimes not so minor—traits. Using that technique, the clones ran a huge study with over a hundred thousand people from different countries. The end result was some pretty notable, pretty reliable data.

Everyone is born with slightly different soul strength. With age, the soul grows stronger. But after around fifty, ordinary people hit a plateau. After sixty, degradation ramps up more and more. For shinobi it's a bit different: the more chakra you have—or the stronger a soul you were born with in the first place—the later that degradation starts.

Hiruzen had impressive chakra reserves in his youth, and his soul—unlike his body—is still bursting with energy. Even if it turned out weaker than mine. His chakra, though… chakra can degrade too. Age. Especially if it doesn't get "refreshed" for a long time. It can accumulate damage that healed badly or wrong. In theory, if he still had those special sections in his Chakra Circulation System—the ones responsible for potential and letting it grow more—then that aging could be fixed. But local science has pretty damn little data in that direction. And the guy with the most extensive knowledge on it is staring back at me from the mirror.

Even so, like before, I had no way to just start mass-producing those sections on an industrial scale. Though I was close to cracking how to do it anyway.

This whole topic needed research, because it looked like even if I solved the problem of cell durability, actual biological immortality would still require working on chakra too.

The clones kept collecting data, and they were going to keep doing it for a long time.

But the greatest discovery these days was a real goddamn breakthrough! Found it! I found that thing inside me!

Yeah, it sounded like a kid who'd been using the potty without ever thinking about how it worked suddenly discovering there's something weird and unusual down in the genital area. But it wasn't quite like that for me.

So. Asura. First: my soul is not his reincarnation. Neither is my body. Or rather… my body… I think it's becoming the reincarnation. But I still need to sort that out.

A long, painstaking comb-through of spaces inside my body and a little beyond it followed. I checked every square centimeter. And since the search wasn't happening in three dimensions, the search volume over those days got so massive that if you converted it into normal 3D space, you could build a launch site for an Earth-to-Moon rocket there and still have some room left.

So yeah… that explains why, after all that, my eye was twitching and I was basically baring my teeth while staring down a little sphere—white with a faint bluish tint—glowing with energy.

I called it Asura's construct. Not a soul. I might be kinda shit at sensing under certain abnormal conditions—like when you're dealing with a brain-melting multidimensional space—but I can tell chakra apart from soul energy.

This crap was, as expected, in shifted space, in the area of the center of my chakra hearth. Right in that little flame. It was a kind of energy body: not especially thick in raw power, but very thick in terms of how many properties were stuffed into it. Its very existence was sustained by fūin—unknown to me before, but woven into Earth's chakra a long time ago. The construct had no soul, and without those fūin it shouldn't have been able to exist at all.

What was even more interesting: the construct was eating my energy, even if only bit by bit. It processed it and output a slightly smaller amount—and, most importantly, in a slightly altered form. That was supposed to slowly reshape my chakra toward the type it radiated… and even more than that.

Before, I didn't even feel it. Maybe my senses just got used to what's been happening to me… I don't know. Since birth? Even earlier?

This heretical Asura construct got me seriously interested. This was a legacy of the descendant of an ancient alien—not the work of modern, or even merely recent, minds. Which meant there could be a lot in there that I'd never understood before, but that could be insanely useful.


Days took off again. Most of my time was now eaten up by studying souls, the construct, and ways to strengthen the biological "container." That didn't mean I had no life outside the lab… at least, the clone did.

Back to the construct. Over a few days I studied it properly. And it was just… something else.

But in order, and relatively brief.

The construct has the progenitor's body template—presumably Asura's. Following that template, using the CCS as a conductor and a tool of influence, the construct alters the host's body. From that influence, much more slowly, affinity for manipulating elements and Yang also grows.

Compared to modern research—especially my own—the construct works slowly, and inefficiently at that. But it's effective and safe for the host.

The Mystical Palm Technique can visibly change the body right before your eyes, healing wounds. The construct's work is designed for long years.

Based on just these surface-level facts, even without deep details, you can already form a pretty solid hypothesis about why certain events happened the way they did. Specifically: why Hashirama was so strong. Answer: he was apparently the only reincarnation who managed to (a) be born with extremely high chakra growth potential and (b) live to an age where he could actually realize (a). The construct runs on the host's chakra. Without a monstrous reserve, at its current efficiency—and especially when the construct only takes a small percentage of energy production—a shinobi with even an average jōnin's strength would have to learn how to live for centuries to reach the transformation the First Hokage went through.

The template includes a body capable of far higher physical performance than normal, with insanely strong regeneration. A body that can produce far more Yang and can even exist without food and water—living purely on its own generated energy. Those were the obvious abilities; there were more, just less noticeable.

Pretty significant, right? Especially in the shinobi world, where people constantly clash up close and use life energy a lot.

Hashirama was very strong. The construct boosted him even further. The First had a lot of Yang, and over time the construct made it even more. He could heal himself mid-battle, without hand seals… a massive achievement among med-nin that officially nobody managed to replicate.

Well, not exactly: with my control and chakra, it's within my abilities too. And thanks to meta-knowledge, I remember Orochimaru has a powerful healing technique that's supposedly also impossible for local med-nin. And maybe there are other people who can pull off something like that. But now I'm nitpicking.

I had access to Hashirama's cells. That's how I understood the Asura construct had fully finished its work on the First. Too bad it didn't help the Second God of Shinobi survive anyway. That same access to the First Hokage's body had previously kicked off many of my sub-projects inside the grand body-enhancement project, so the Asura construct isn't valuable to me for every single part of it.

The most important thing in the construct wasn't the template itself, but the mechanism that rebuilds the body to match it. A real treasure—once I studied it, ideas lit up in my head in whole armfuls about how to copy it and improve it.

This new data changed a lot in my experiments, and I needed to adjust things so the body-enhancement project would turn out even better. But… later.

Lately, I'd gotten way too fixated on studying. So the next day I gave myself a "day off," so to speak. Especially since I had a reason.


Today was March 28th—and also Sakura's birthday.

Since that mission in the Land of Waves—which, as far as I was concerned, was still ongoing—the girl had gotten… stranger. Or rather, more sane, but compared to her old personality, that looked strange. Sakura used to express her emotions loudly, but now she stopped reacting that way to unusual events.

And also—and this looked weird too—she started treating me more respectfully, especially during training. Exactly "more respectfully," like in those sketchy Chinese cultivation novels, though not quite that extreme—just that kind of tone.

Still, the fact nobody was calling me "Master" suited me fine. Because considering our "species"—twelve- to thirteen-year-old kids—that would've been weird.

My gift wasn't expensive, so she wouldn't stress later about needing to give me something equally pricey. And it wasn't the usual crap like a set of kunai or a technique. Sakura liked board games, so I figured a quality set brought from another continent—not too expensive, but actually emphasizing our personal connection and mutual understanding—was the right kind of gift.

So I took it and showed up at the clearing where she was doing her morning exercises to wake herself up properly. Then I made it clear that I, as her mentor, was declaring today a day off and dragging her to Konoha to celebrate.

Her confused questions—like, aren't we on a mission right now?—were heard, but only so I could deal with them. Because after I towed Sakura over to the rest of our team, Kakashi and Sasuke got informed they were pulling double watch today—covering Sakura, and, while we're at it, me too. And then, ignoring Hatake's complaining, I teleported myself and Haruno back to the Leaf.

After that came a full day of exploiting either me or her, which I used to the max for our "rest." As in: with me repeatedly asking, to her embarrassment, "What else would you want?"

We visited her parents, who were surprised she'd shown up in Konoha. We went through an interrogation that was embarrassing for Sakura but not for me—a guy fully intending to relax and have fun—about what kind of boy their daughter had brought home.

And it wasn't just me enjoying her embarrassment. The Haruno family enjoyed it too. They knew the jinchūriki by face, didn't have any negative feelings about it, and actively played dumb to crank that embarrassment up, like a bunch of clueless little stumps.

After that we gathered our old crew of former classmates. According to Sakura, they weren't prepared because they hadn't gotten invitations, and she hadn't even planned to celebrate, and calling them would be rude, and maybe they had stuff to do, and blah-blah-blah—broken apart by a couple of my lines. Don't overcomplicate it, and the main thing is to have a good time, right?

Nobody actually had anything urgent, so our core group assembled within a few hours at a restaurant I paid for.

I'd wanted her not to feel like she owed me too much afterward. Didn't quite work out. But my explanations—that I did it from the heart and didn't want anything in return—seemed to get through. Hopefully.

We stayed like that until night. First there were questions about why Sakura changed her image, but after her brief, no-deep-details explanation that the mission left a heavy mark on her memory, it shifted into shared stories about who had what happen on assignments. Then to other topics, just whatever was going on.

The most wild story, in my opinion, was mine—where I told them how "a friend of mine" screwed over some sucker from the capital.

Sakura's birthday, honestly… yeah, she liked it, but it could've been better. But how many emotions she got because of me—that was… something. Especially for her. At least, that's how she put it at night, before I left her to sleep at home, in her usual bed.

That was the break. I acted pretty pushy, organizing everything like that, but I understood Sakura's personality and the others' too, and I knew that in this specific case I could do it this way and it'd be better. If I tried to organize Hinata's birthday like that, she'd burn up from shame, and that would be very not good. Here, though, it was a lot more good than bad.


When the break ended, our routine in the Land of Waves continued. And my lab work resumed with new force.

After I put the clones on new experiments based on data from the test subjects, and after I studied Asura's construct inside me, I couldn't just ignore its "bro." Indra's construct. And my teammate, Uchiha Sasuke, was supposed to be its host.

The very next day I baited him into my lab. It was elementary. I offered Uchiha a serious spar with no restrictions. He, of course—after a bunch of personal training and awakening the Sharingan—agreed, burning to prove his prowess and superiority. As you can guess, it didn't work out for him.

In the heat of battle, I "accidentally" hit him a bit harder than necessary and knocked him out. Then, putting on a show of extreme concern for my "dear" comrade's condition, I kept him under my fūin analyzers for several hours. Ahh—what a kind soul I am.

Knowing where to look, I barely wasted any time. The right sphere—only coal-black, with the same faint blue glow—was also found in shifted space at the center of Sasuke's chakra hearth.

The data I got from it was insane. I even surprised myself when I realized Indra's construct worked noticeably more efficiently than Asura's. Which made sense. It was mostly made of Yin chakra—the energy of mind and spirit. Yin sets form and structure, while Yang—raw power—without Yin is almost uncontrollable. Even the Adamantine Chains technique—no matter how much I'm glowing gold—I use with a hefty Yin component too.

Indra's construct, unlike Asura's, focused almost all its attention on transforming the dōjutsu and the CCS, touching the rest of the body only as a side note. And it did it pretty efficiently, focusing on the finest, microscopic changes.

In Sasuke's case, the process was moving fast. The properties embedded in his construct were even deeper than mine, and some of them even my analyzers couldn't fully catch. It became clear that dōjutsu development is a ridiculously complex mechanism—one you could sink a lot of time into studying.

But my current goal is body enhancement. There's a saying: "Chase two rabbits, and you'll get smacked in the face by both." Or was it not exactly that? Whatever. The point is: be consistent.

Judging by a quick analysis, the construct will finish its work on Sasuke by the time he's fourteen or fifteen. The process depends a lot on how hard Uchiha himself trains, but even then, the result won't be all that obvious to outsiders. To them, he'll just be a childhood "genius" with pretty dense chakra. Actually, he already is—but later he'll be better.

And yeah, dense chakra doesn't mean you have a lot of it. Sasuke got decently lucky with chakra potential, but compared to my reserves, he's one of many mediocrities.

I copied everything I could from Indra's construct onto a special metal capable of storing chakra imprints. I didn't know how that mechanism worked in full, but watching its end result in the future would definitely be interesting. After that, I put the construct back, patched Sasuke up, and sent him out of the lab, "making him happy" with the news that he'd lost again.

And yes, I could create a copy in the form of a similar energy body—the kind constructs themselves are. But I still hadn't figured that out properly, so I copied the properties the best way I could, as accurately as I could.

Studying Indra's construct wasn't useless at all. Its template gave the host very strong Yin, tweaked the brain a little, and slowly built affinity—as if the host trained nonstop—giving solid aptitude for using techniques. Among other people Sasuke is a real diamond, capable of a lot, and in the future, even more.

But as a person… well, I didn't pick Sakura for "raising" as a better candidate for delegating some of my tasks in the future for nothing. No matter how problematic she could be, she didn't have a deranged brother who made her relive her parents' murder over and over in Tsukuyomi, and her psyche was way healthier.

Back to the construct: the data I got gave me a colossal chunk of understanding about transforming energy itself. Ideas were literally flashing before my eyes—what I could now do with the Chakra Circulation System!

The constructs were living examples of targeted strengthening of Yang and Yin. Exactly what I'd been aiming for for so long—just implemented differently. And now the picture finally came together. I got working hypotheses for how to do the same thing, but on a much deeper level. Not just force chakra to match the progenitors' template, but calculate that template myself—make it way more powerful. Artificially increase the number of those CCS sections responsible for reserve growth.

My body-enhancement project, and the chakra-enhancement project that had only just been born but was practically finished thanks to the new data, merged into a single whole.

Test subjects started flowing through the lab like a river. There were even more clone teams. We were all in for a titanic amount of work.


Running projects in the lab, of course I didn't forget my development as a shinobi. To my—again—surprise, after my talk with Koharu, Kakashi even… I still can't believe it actually happened… offered me a spar himself.

Thankfully for my mental health, he did that a lot only during the first week. The second week—less often. After that I had to drag his ass out myself again, just so I could "motivate" his kidneys, liver, lungs, and other vital organs with my fist. Otherwise the poor guy will wither away without me.

On April sixth, the bridge was finished. After that, our team moved back to Konoha.

After that, time seemed to go even faster. Endless experiments…

If I packaged everything I did with the clones into scientific dissertations and then implemented it even at a basic level among the general population, there'd probably be enough material for over a thousand professor degrees.

After thoroughly working through CCS enhancement and almost finishing the project, I saw another big opportunity—enhancing the soul the same way. The idea was that now, with a wide base of experience in transforming energies, I wanted to transform, say, my chakra into the energy my soul absorbed when I reincarnated. That was what made me multiple times stronger in a very short time. So why not do the same for other people? The soul clearly has some kind of ties to chakra, like my clones noticed.

Except it didn't work.

Transforming the energy worked. I had to do what I'd had to do for previous experiments too—order a whole lot more fūin metal to build a single device stuffed with a damn sea of properties that helped with—or rather, almost entirely did for me—the chakra transformation according to a template. The template wasn't something I remembered in perfect, tiniest detail so much as something I refined based on current knowledge, my own gut feeling, and the sensation of the soul itself—how it "felt better."

But carefully introducing what I got into other people—nope, didn't work. The soul only absorbed that energy if it got into immediate proximity to the soul core. Even when I tore out a test subject's soul and placed it into what looked like the same conditions I myself had been in back in that space—where there's tons of "nutritive energy" around—it still produced no result.

And there had been hope: souls in babies are very young, meaning in that space they do absorb energy and rejuvenate before being born. So if they weren't absorbing it in my artificial space, then I was doing something wrong. And what that "something" was—who the hell knows.

The second option—chronologically it was actually the first—where I forcibly made a hole in the soul with a probe of my own soul and pumped the needed energy into it, did work. The soul strengthened and purified. But after absorbing the nutritive energy, the souls started growing around the probe right where I'd made the hole. And with that hole, souls functioned badly—usually losing more energy than they produced—and because of that, presumably, the soul felt like shit. A week later—yeah, it turned out that due to permanent depletion, the soul started breaking down faster.

That was not okay.

But after a bunch of failed attempts, I decided to risk it. And do what I'd managed to do before. Converting that same nutritive energy from my own chakra, I pulled it inside with my own soul… and it worked.

The energy tasted a little "off" compared to what I remembered. But I knew my soul could regenerate, and thankfully, as a complex organism, it sent me signals when something was slightly wrong versus when something was seriously wrong. While absorbing the energy with my soul, the sensation was somewhere at the lower edge of "something's kinda off."

My soul was stronger than any soul of any creature I'd ever met. But my chakra, compared to it, was stronger by three orders of magnitude. Just a reminder of one of the reasons I mostly use chakra in this world—when something is a thousand times stronger, you feel it.

Since my "bootleg" nutritive energy wasn't ideal, my soul probably absorbed it with less-than-perfect efficiency, and after gulping down half my chakra reserves in one go, it basically responded: "That's it—one more sip and I'll pop." So I flat-out couldn't "pump it" at a crazy pace.

Well, I could: those half-reserves raised my soul strength by about sixty percent, which compared to the previous pace of around twenty percent per YEAR was just monstrous. So that "efficiency," which was low because I couldn't make the energy closer to what was needed and the soul had to "digest" it down to the right level, felt pretty damn insignificant.

But with my chakra-enhancement project in mind, my soul would catch up to my chakra—if I completely ditched developing the latter—only very, very slowly. And again, chakra has undeniable advantages in affinity, plus the sheer mountains of local knowledge about it, which I also possess. Still, the soul had its own advantages, which is why I kept pumping it too—while experimenting with what doses and frequency worked best.

Over the week—while still buried in the rest of the experiments—pumping my soul showed itself especially well. Or rather: holy shit, it worked insanely well.

After digging into it, I didn't fully understand what exactly happened, but it was clearly something huge. With soul strengthening, my intellect, control, and sensitivity crawled upward fast. And the second and third didn't scale proportionally to the first.

It felt like I'd regained the kind of growth potential for control and sensitivity I had in early childhood.

The clones went to check that hypothesis—dug through ninja medical records, checked the ninjas themselves—and it turned out: yes. Those rare few who were born with stronger souls had higher potential for chakra control! That discovery, with a snap of the fingers, made soul development so important that now I always keep my soul at least strong enough for that potential to stay.

That potential, by the way, doesn't get realized too fast, and soul growth itself goes much quicker. But now I'm definitely not stopping that development anytime soon.

Years of prep, and the guns I'd set up weren't just firing one after another—turns out I'd loaded other, hidden weapons too, and they started blasting as well. Now all that was left was to polish the last strokes and reap the big harvest.

So there was nothing surprising about the fact that soon—after a lot of tests—it was time for the final stage of the body-enhancement project… Time to make my child's, relatively weak body truly powerful.

---

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[Welydora]

With a tired sigh, I opened my eyes. Sitting on one of the fūin circles in a huge, dimmed-out room, I got up and swept my gaze over the two dozen clones sitting in the same kind of circles—then headed for the big vertical glass chamber in a stone frame at the center of the array.

One step—and the clones dispersed into chakra, getting sucked back into me. A couple more, and the chamber, hissing out steam, clicked open, revealing a naked man.

Clean skin—like some model who lives on the most expensive creams. Defined muscles, those aesthetic ripples that could give even Apollo a complex. And silky black hair falling over a face with damn-near perfect features… except for those tiny little tells that still let you recognize the guy who'd been transformed into this walking embodiment of pretty. Even the "two hundred seventy-three" kanji carved into his forehead didn't ruin the picture anymore—healed up on its own, not a trace left.

"Still can't believe something this good can come out of such ugly freaks," I thought, looking over the next test subject.

That was another thing I'd built into my body-enhancement project: appearance changes. Not even close to the biggest achievement, by the way. What mattered way more was—

The subject's eyes slowly opened, focusing on me. Then, the next instant, they bulged wide.

"Nooooo!!!" he screamed, recognizing me. His limbs instantly started moving, trying to get out of the chamber, but all he managed was one awkward flail—and then he just ate the floor. "No… no… no… just not again…"

He tried to crawl, but his limbs—so powerful now, but brand-new—still didn't have the neuromuscular connection trained in. So all he could do was this clumsy, splayed-out scrambling with hands and feet.

"I haven't run the painful experiments on you yet. For now," I said, walking up. Then I just lifted the thrashing body by the neck and dragged him deeper into the lab, toward another room.

The subject kept screaming and trying to break free—and in barely ten seconds he got a handle on his new limbs enough to land a couple heavy hits on me, the blows echoing with a dull, meaty thud.

"Hmph." That was all I gave him before I pushed my chakra through my arm almost unhindered, dropping him into unconsciousness with genjutsu. "Genin-level strength, with chakra-reinforced strikes, in a worthless nobody like this. Yeah. That's science shitting on talent and hard work."

Soon we reached the destination, and the subject was strapped into the fūin analyzer.

This was the finale of the project. And it wasn't the first today—wasn't even the tenth overall—where I once again confirmed my calculations were dead-on.

I could calculate a whole damn lot. Not everything, though. The first three corpses from this stage of the body-enhancement project would confirm that. But together they gave me enough data that the numbers for my own body came out insanely close to "perfect." Close enough that if something did go wrong, odds were even higher I could patch it up afterward.

In a few days, once I stockpiled more clones with full chakra reserves, I'd perform the essence of the project—an EX-rank technique—on myself.

May 1st. Rebirth Day. Third-person POV

In the center of the biggest hall in the laboratory stood a horizontal chamber—like a coffin of cloudy white crystal. The analyzer's metal framework hung over it. And all around—on the floor, the walls, even the ceiling—insanely complex fūin circles and schematics pulsed, weaving into one living network. Twenty stable shadow clones sat at the key nodes of that network, ready to do their work with jeweler-level precision. These fūin were "crutches," necessary for a procedure that even their original's already-boosted control still couldn't pull off solo. Sure, the recent rise in sensitivity and control from the soul's growth let him add a few more strokes to the final calculations, making the technique a bit stronger than planned—but it still didn't let the one whose body slept in the sarcophagus cheap out on the number of clones.

That web of interlaced fūin… was the most perfect, most complex thing this world had ever seen.

The moment their creator sank into complete unconsciousness, without hesitation, the clones got to work.

Each formed a different series of hand seals, and the fūin symbols in the room started to come alive right before the eyes, sliding around in seemingly chaotic motion. Then, with one unified smack of their hands against the floor, part of the fūin "flowed" onto the sarcophagus, wrapping it and lighting up white.

The body's reconstruction had several stages. The first had just begun.

First, chakra streams guided by the clones began rebuilding the body's frame. Fūin analyzers linked to the chamber transmitted every tiniest transformation into the clones' minds, each change obeying the new will forced onto it.

The procedure started with the skeletal system. Chakra stimulated an insane densification of bone tissue, altering its crystalline structure and making it 30–40 times stronger than normal. At the same time, natural growth was preserved—important, so the original wouldn't end up stuck in a kid's body later. Bone marrow underwent deep modification, starting production of a new type of blood cell more tightly tied to chakra, able to carry energy more efficiently.

In parallel, the muscular system was rebuilt. It was surgery at the cellular level. Muscle stem-cell growth was stimulated, and they began forming new fibers. 90% of the muscles were repurposed into "power" and "burst" types, their density increasing 50–60 times. The key point was this: the old, even if effective, mitochondria were replaced by new, more functional "chakra energy generators." Basically mitochondria, just feeding directly on chakra—able to work indefinitely without needing oxygen or glucose. Now the muscles could work indefinitely on chakra; though at the peak of their capabilities—about three minutes—they were designed to dump colossal, inhuman strength on the back of equally inhuman energy reserves, in short but destructive bursts.

At the same time as bones and muscles, tendons and ligaments were rebuilt too. Their strength increased 110-fold. Elasticity hit a level unreachable by normal methods—they could handle the loads of the enhanced muscles and wouldn't tear. An extra layer of collagen and fiber flexibility gave insane mobility; braided through with thin chakra channels, they guaranteed flawless linkage with the new muscular system.

Inside the crystal chamber, waves rolled under Naruto's skin. For a moment, his body lit up from the inside with a mesh of new, shining channels—not just the original Chakra Circulation System, but thousands of new microscopic paths being built in real time, threading through every cell.

After several hours of work, the stage was completed. The fūin wrapping the chamber vanished, and after a few seconds' pause the clones again formed different combinations of seals in unison and slammed their hands to the floor. All so the second portion of the room's fūin could "crawl" onto the chamber and flare to life.

The clones' focus shifted. Now they worked on the systems meant to feed and control this new, stronger "engine"—the parts of the body that had just been reinforced.

The cardiovascular and respiratory systems were rebuilt in sync. The heart transformed into a powerful "chakra pump," able to circulate chakra-enriched blood through the body with ridiculous efficiency. Vessels were strengthened to withstand higher pressure, and the capillary network expanded threefold, giving unprecedented nourishment to every single cell. The lungs were kept, but reoriented: their volume and alveolar surface area increased significantly, and the endurance of the breathing muscles—like all the body's muscles—rose. Now they could function without air indefinitely, always filling with the owner's chakra to spread it in high concentration throughout the body. Chakra could already nourish the organism well, but with these changes the cost would become far more targeted. That meant lower chakra expenditure, bigger results with fewer losses—or, at rest, much lower energy consumption.

Then the clones moved on to the subtlest and most complex stage: the nervous system and brain. This demanded absolute, surgical precision. The myelin sheaths thickened and were replaced with new, more chakra-conductive channels, boosting signal transmission speed 20-fold. Synapses were optimized for instant reaction. In parallel, the brain was rebuilt: the neuron count increased tenfold (significantly higher than in any test subject, thanks to feeding off Naruto's colossal chakra reserves), and connectivity between them was strengthened. The sections responsible for chakra control were reinforced the most. That led to an exponential rise in computing power, learning, and analysis—to an unprecedented level. A micro-construct of "combat adrenaline" was also embedded into the brain: a reflex program for auto-acceleration in danger, switchable on consciously.

The fūin analyzers transmitted into the mind—like pictures on a display—the moment they recorded an unbelievable, blinding spike of neural activity. The map of the nervous system literally "lit up" with light.

A long time passed before that stage ended too. The clones repeated their floor-smack ritual, and new fūin flared across the chamber.

The clones moved on to the systems meant to push the body to a completely new level of existence, making it semi-autonomous and hypersensitive.

The digestive and endocrine systems were radically altered. The digestive system was preserved as a backup, but now it was optional. The body was fully rebuilt to feed on chakra. It could process any organic matter into pure energy, utilizing food with almost no loss (99.9% assimilation efficiency). The endocrine system was placed under full conscious control, allowing deliberate hormone control, switching off pain, and regulating emotional states as needed.

The immune system and regeneration became the apex of all transformations. The Hayflick limit was disabled at the genetic level—cells no longer aged naturally. DNA gained repair mechanisms and anti-cancer safeguards capable of instantly neutralizing pathogens and restoring damage. Antioxidant enzyme levels increased. Instant healing of minor wounds became automatic, requiring no conscious control. Limb regeneration took hours if the body was unconscious, and minutes if conscious and under the reborn one's control. Recovery from critical damage took minutes. More than that: based on the pattern found in chakra—so-called "affinity," which exists in all shinobi—a construct was built inside the body that enabled this regeneration. Simply put, all templates were inside it now, and chakra had something to follow even without conscious effort. And on top of that, it boosted regeneration so much the body could survive even decapitation—the head would be restored from the template and the soul's memory. Though that would require conscious assistance from the soul, so realistically only Naruto could pull that off.

The senses underwent final calibration. The number of photoreceptors in the eyes increased, allowing much sharper vision. Hearing expanded from infrasound to ultrasound. Smell became capable of deeper analysis of scents, and touch became inhumanly fine. The ability to "dampen" sensitivity improved to avoid overload from the new sensations. Though, considering the brain's increased capacity, that last part was really just a secondary measure.

Again: hours of work, the end of a stage, and a transition to the next.

The final—and most important—stage: rebuilding the Chakra Circulation System itself. Using all data gathered from Asura's and Indra's constructs, a long-term reconstruction of the CCS began according to a new, "ultimate" template.

New growth zones were introduced into the CCS. A process of balancing Yin and Yang was launched—something that had been skewed since birth. A new growth vector was set: for now and the near future, doubling the reserve every three months with intensive training (and enough chakra to "feed" that growth, a big chunk of it coming from the Kyūbi). Chakra density would increase too.

In short, the body was rebuilt on a far more perfect template (with the CCS only on its earliest foundations) than even Asura's or Indra's. It became the strongest foundation—the highest step of evolution.

The procedure was finished. The fūin on the floor, walls, and ceiling went dark, their glow slowly fading. Only the node points remained unchanged. The clones, drained—almost all their energy spent building new parts of the CCS inside the original's body—dispersed into chakra and returned to him.

The sarcophagus clicked open, releasing a cloud of cold steam. Inside, under a soft hiss, lay a body that was both familiar—and completely alien.


The first thing I felt was silence. Not the room's quiet, but internal silence. There was no familiar background noise of a working body—no heartbeat, no breathing, no stomach rumbling. There was only the steady, powerful, soundless pulse of chakra, rolling through my body in waves.

The world crashed into me in an avalanche of sensation. I saw dust motes inside the chamber, dancing in the beams from the lamps piercing through the glass's semi-transparent surface—and with a clarity that used to be a pain in the ass to achieve even with chakra. I heard the hum of power cables deep beneath the lab floor, and the beat of a moth's wings outside, beyond the thick walls. My sense of smell separated ozone from working seals, the scent of metal, and the cold, sterile aroma of medical solutions from other rooms. And my brain—rebuilt and ramped up—processed that flood of data without the slightest strain.

Sensations I used to get only by using techniques and concentrating chakra were now just my default state. And they were ready to shoot way higher if I used chakra consciously.

The sarcophagus opened, releasing a cloud of cold steam. Awkwardly lifting my hands, I barely managed to hook my fingers over the edges to sit up… and heard the chamber crack from that simple motion. The body was light—insanely light—yet at the same time packed with monstrous, spring-loaded strength. But. It still hadn't learned how to use that strength.

Letting chakra threads slip out of my fingers—easier than ever—I used them like tentacles to lift myself and set my feet on the floor.

The threads slowly transferred the weight from themselves onto my limbs, and I felt it clearly: the solid floor under me just caved in. After the upgrade, my body should've weighed a little over a ton and a half—about thirty times more than before.

Yeah… If scientists from my old Earth found out what and how I did to my body, they'd call me a heretic and burn me at the stake. What I did here would be, I guess, very unscientific over there. But this world has its own rules.

My legs moved wrong. My brain gave a small command—"stand up"—calculated for old, weak muscles and slow nerves. The new body responded with such speed and power I almost lost my balance. The neuromuscular connection was snapped, basically near zero compared to what it used to be.

Almost falling, I took a step. Clumsy, shaky—like I'd decided to get wasted for the first time in my life. Second step—more confident. Third—even steadier. With every movement, every muscle contraction, I felt my new brain rewriting old reflexes at a crazy pace, calibrating itself to the capabilities of a perfect shell.

Chakra moved through my legs, effortlessly spreading my weight over a larger area so the floor wouldn't buckle.

After ten steps, my gait went from crooked and inaccurate to even. After twenty—into something absolutely silent, smooth, and predatory, like a panther going out to hunt.

Reaching the doors leading out, I smoothly pressed my fingertips to the nearby panel, and after a pulse of chakra the fittings unlocked. Watching that, I clenched my fist. Then my gaze dropped lower, to muscles so even and aesthetic it was almost stupid.

"Perfect~" I whispered, and my voice—no longer needing breath, produced through naturally generated Wind-nature chakra—came out especially even and clean. "But I need a test…"

---

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[Welydora]

After getting dressed and making sure I hadn't forgotten my ninja gear, I dragged my ass over to the familiar section of the Jōnin Reserve.

Before long, I was in a circular room where, like almost always, jōnin were sprawled on couches along the walls. Ten of them.

Three of them gave me surprised nods—my obvious physical changes were hard to miss. I'd sparred with those three before, separately.

I nodded back, and before they could start grilling me with questions, I threw it out there, shameless as hell:

"I'll bet a hundred thousand ryō each that I can beat all of you at once. I'm using only taijutsu and kenjutsu. You guys can use whatever the hell you want."

The three exchanged looks, while the other seven let out skeptical snorts. One of the second group stood up—then a taller, broader guy got up too. If I remembered right, he specialized in taijutsu, and our fights were always the most interesting… and the hardest.

"Hold it," he said, putting a hand on the shoulder of the younger one who was about to run his mouth. The kid just blinked and shut his open mouth. "Uzumaki-san…"

"You look different," I finished for him, not about to wait while he struggled to give birth to a thought. "Muscles tougher, face even more irresistible, hair silkier, eyes sharper. I've got a mirror at home, so yeah, I know. But the point is, I'm trying to make some money. So what's it gonna be—ten of you against one kid?"

The provocation hit perfectly. The condescension in most of their eyes flipped straight into irritation. The hulking taijutsu guy—Doro, if I remembered right—let out a heavy snort.

"You've gotten even cockier, Uzumaki," he said, rolling his neck.

The respect in his voice—like before our first spar—was a lot thinner now.

"Your mouth is way too confident, even for you. But…" The shinobi smirked. "A hundred thousand ryō is good money. I'm in."

He glanced back. After a few nods, he looked at me again.

"We all accept your challenge."

"Perfect," I said, grinning.

We headed for an empty training ground. None of us wanted to pay for repairs to this building—and a couple of the neighboring ones—after the brawl they were probably imagining. And, in my case, after what I was imagining, it would've been a few city blocks.

Ten minutes later. Training Ground No. 11

Ten jōnin spread out, circling me.

"You laid out the rules," Doro said, settling into a fighting stance. "Only taijutsu and kenjutsu. Start."

I didn't wait. My very first burst was aimed straight at the weakest link in their chain.

My body wasn't spilling excess chakra—it was trying to find the perfect balance for reinforcement again. I'd already found a balance for everyday life; now I needed one for combat. The point was to spar, not to crush everyone's morale by flexing my chakra. And also—important detail—everyone here was supposed to stay alive.

The first seconds were pure chaos. My body—still getting used to what it could do now—reacted with excessive, almost uncontrollable force.

My lunge was so fast I almost shot past my target.

Then my dodge from flying shuriken was too sharp, throwing me off perfect balance for a split second.

I snapped a kunai strike aside with my tantō, but I put way too much power into the block—my opponent got launched like a rag doll for several meters instead of just having his weapon redirected. Good thing I had enough precision to set the blade right, or I would've been left without it. I probably looked like a clumsy but absurdly strong monster, and that seemed to mess with their heads.

But that didn't mean we stopped.

With every movement, with every wave of chakra spreading through my body from my heart, I felt billions of new neural connections in my brain snapping into place. Calibration.

"He's strong, but he's clumsy! Hit him from all sides!" some jōnin I didn't recognize yelled, stating the painfully obvious.

They'd picked a decent path. It just led nowhere.

Every second, my clumsiness burned off. My movements became perfect—efficient, smooth, lethal.

Doro, realizing things were going the wrong way, charged me, his fists wrapped in dense chakra.

"I'm your opponent!"

He was fast. His punch had serious weight. I moved my tantō flat to parry, but instead I set it at a slightly wrong angle…

Not every time I'm gonna get lucky.

CRACK

With a deafening sound, the blade of my expensive, high-quality—yet, unfortunately, completely ordinary—tantō failed to handle the clash with Doro and shattered into several pieces.

For a heartbeat, I froze, staring at the hilt in my hand.

"Useless chunk of metal," flashed through my mind. "Though it did at least take the hit."

The very next second I moved—faster than I'd ever moved in my life—and grabbed Doro by the arm he'd pulled back. Just so I could smile, clamp his limb with my free hand, and with one violent swing of his whole body, hurl him a good twenty meters away.

No strain… so far.

"Hands, huh? Fine. Hands," I said, looking at the jōnin who'd actually paused at that little stunt. "That's even more fun."

I dropped the tantō hilt.

This stopped being a spar; like expected, it turned into a beating.

One of them swung a sword at me—I caught the blade barehanded. Steel groaned as my fingers tightened, leaving deep dents in it, and I ripped the weapon out of my opponent's stunned grip. From the squeeze, the sword cracked right in my palm.

Another tried to hit me in the back—I didn't even turn, just drove an elbow back, precise, without extra force so I wouldn't kill him, right into the solar plexus. He dropped, gulping air.

A third started forming seals for a Fireball—I was next to him before he could even exhale, and a light chop to the neck put him to sleep.

Doro attacked again, his taijutsu was excellent. But I could see everything—every move, every trick. I slipped his strike, let it pass, and answered with a short palm strike to the chest. He flew back like he'd been hit by a battering ram and slammed into the ground, unable to get up.

Thirty seconds after my tantō broke, it was over. Ten Konoha jōnin were scattered across the grass. Some groaned, some were unconscious. And I stood in the center, not even winded, clenching and unclenching my fists, enjoying the control over this new, insane strength.

I walked over to Doro, who was trying to rise.

"Looks like you owe me a million ryō."


The fight was… bad. Really bad. I hadn't used even a tenth of my full power.

In a slightly shitty mood, I stopped by a confectionery to test what my upgraded tongue could do with flavors. After that—if not fully happy, then at least satisfied enough—I headed for the residence everyone here knew.

"How's life, Hokage-sama?" I walked up to the chair by the desk and sat down.

"I'm fine, Naruto," the old man sighed, like always setting his papers aside the second I showed up. Then he reached into a drawer and handed me an envelope. "But not everyone can say the same."

"Oh, that was quick," I said, casually pulling a stack of bills out of the envelope. I looked them over, shoved them back in, and started spinning the envelope in my fingers. "They decided to pass it through you," I stated.

"Correct. And, as you asked, they requested to never be invited to spar with you again." Hiruzen sighed. "Ohh, Naruto. You short on money? But… more importantly—what the hell happened to you? You've changed."

"Did an artificial body enhancement," I shrugged, like I'd just said I ate ice cream.

Hiruzen's look shifted. He stayed silent while I listened to his blood pressure climb right in front of my eyes. Would be real bad if he had a damn heart attack…

"Naruto," he finally said. "You didn't run experiments on Konoha's citizens, did you?"

"Uh…" I cut off, then spread into a grin. "Actually, yeah."

Hiruzen's eyes blew wide with fear, and then a huge disappointment started building in them.

"But I know the Land of Fire's laws, and I got written, notarized consent," I said, pulling a single sheet from the seal on my bracer and handing it to the old man.

At the sight of that one page, he froze. Suspicion flickered in his eyes.

He snatched it out of my hand, and after he read it, his eye started twitching.

He carefully set the paper on the desk. It basically said that I, Uzumaki Naruto, allow Uzumaki Naruto to perform any medical procedures on Uzumaki Naruto.

"That was a bad joke."

"Sorry," I said, actually a little guilty, shrugging.

"And… messing with your own body can be extremely dangerous. You're a medic—you should know that."

"I covered my ass with precautions."

He went quiet again, then leaned back in his chair a second later.

"The tests were done on Gatō's people?" Hiruzen hit the bullseye.

"Exactly."

Silence again.

"I… can't say I don't understand you," Sarutobi finally said. "But I hoped you'd find more light in your heart to guide them, not… do that."

"I think the citizens of the Land of Waves wouldn't understand your hopes, specifically."

A mournful sigh escaped the old man.

"Still, I think I showed enough kindness. Toward those same citizens of the Land of Waves. Didn't say it before, so I'll brag now: I gave them a chance at a better life. The officials and daimyō are under control and will do everything I order. They'll trade using a few modern strategies my clone saw in one country on a neighboring continent. And besides that, I financed them with my own assets. Well—assets that used to belong to Gatō's cartel. So they'll be back on their feet soon and living way better than before. Oh, and they'll pay me a little for it too."

Hiruzen listened with a dark, thoughtful look, and when I finished, he pulled out the most important bit:

"Naruto… the Land of Waves is following your economic directives… and has to pay you back… Did you just annex the economy of a neighboring country?"

"Well… yeah. I did them good—no reason to screw myself over."

"…" Hiruzen looked like he wanted to say something, then changed his mind and switched topics. "Fine. Why are you here?"

Finally, the point.

"I want to order an S-rank mission from the village." Hiruzen's eyes widened, and I just handed the envelope back. "I want to fight a real taijutsu master. At full power."

A flicker of confusion crossed the old man's face. He slid forward and took the envelope.

"So the fight with those jōnin wasn't enough?"

"That wasn't a fight. More like I lightly patted them and they immediately dropped. And I can't even tell how easy it actually was."

"…Gai will be here tomorrow. He's on a mission right now."

"Great. Tell him I'm covering all medical expenses."

That was that. A million ryō for the spar I was planning was kinda low. Honestly, I'd charge more for something like that. But Gai is, uh, very well-mannered and way too, uh, kind. And even for a "simple spar with a jōnin," he'd only take that kind of money from the Hokage—and even then only because he respects him a lot.

I went home to prepare and to look forward to it. I might actually have to go all out.

The next day. Training Ground No. 24

The most remote training ground from Konoha—isolated. Perfect place to let loose. Standing on green grass in broad daylight, I waited.

Right on time, a green dot showed up on the horizon, rushing closer at high speed and leaving a trail of dust behind it.

Maito Gai was a man with massive black eyebrows, a bowl cut, and sharp cheekbones. He wore a long-sleeved green jumpsuit, orange leg—uh, leg warmers, and a green jōnin vest.

He stopped in front of me, bursting with enthusiasm and what he called the "Power of Youth." It didn't look like he fully understood why the Hokage had called him in for an S-rank mission.

"Hey there, Uzumaki-san!" he thundered, striking his signature "good guy" pose with a thumbs-up. "Ready to feel the full power of Youth?!"

I smiled a little. We'd sparred before, but back then he hadn't needed his main technique… the Eight Gates. Each one makes a shinobi stronger. This time, I was sure that would change.

"Maito-san, I didn't pay for an S-rank mission for nothing," I answered calmly, then let my voice get a bit more serious. "I've gotten a lot stronger. Don't hold back."

"Ha-ha! A million ryō!" he laughed. "I'm sure you overpaid, young friend! My youth is priceless—but not that priceless!"

"Instead of arguing, let's just check," I suggested.

For a moment, Gai stopped smiling. His gaze turned serious as he looked me up and down. No contempt, no doubt—just a nod, and an excited spark in his eyes.

"Yes, I see it—the fire of Youth burns so brightly! Very well! I accept your challenge!"

He struck his "good guy" pose again. I couldn't help appreciating that. He didn't doubt, didn't hesitate—just decided to confirm it himself. Kakashi could definitely learn something from his rival.

We met in the center of the training ground.

Like shinobi sometimes do, we started by testing each other out.

Gai opened with his Strong Fist style—every strike fast, powerful, precise. But for me it was… easy. At that speed my movements were nearly perfect; I redirected his attacks without effort, feeling his knuckles slam into my forearms without leaving so much as a mark.

Maito immediately realized I was different now. He could feel the insane density and power in my body. The tempo climbed, but I still wasn't attacking seriously.

"Good, Uzumaki-san! I understand! Time to raise the stakes!" he shouted, and his body began to change. "First Gate—the Gate of Opening! Second—the Gate of Healing! Third—the Gate of Life, OPEN!"

His skin flushed red; his veins bulged. The fight jumped to a new level.

But after a brief exchange, Gai realized—surprised as hell—that even this wasn't enough.

He started getting fired up. And so did I.

"Fourth Gate—the Gate of Pain! Fifth—the Gate of Limit, OPEN!"

His speed and strength shot up. Now it was closer to even. Our strikes collided, sending loud shockwaves that crumbled the ground under our feet. I blocked attacks that would've shattered anyone else's bones, feeling only heavy impacts.

The training ground started coming apart.

Our speeds blew past the sound barrier.

This is better. Still not it.

I started pumping a bit more chakra into strengthening my body, and the advantage slid back to me.

Every lunge I threw carried a pressure wave so violent oxygen ignited in flashes of flame, and the air tore with thunderclaps.

Maito could only parry those monstrously heavy attacks.

Gai, pushing himself to the limit and unable to land a counter, realized even that wasn't enough.

He sprang back, breaking the spar for a moment.

"I see it, Uzumaki-san! This is… incredible! My fire isn't enough! Then I'll blaze it hotter, to clash with yours!" he roared. "Sixth Gate—the Gate of Vision, OPEN!"

A hurricane of green aura erupted around him. The cracked earth at his feet crumbled into dust and swirled up into a vortex.

For the first time, I took a truly serious stance. Now the real fight starts. I released more chakra too—the ground around me split, and fragments began to rise into the air.

The air filled with the loud howl of our energies.

"Boom."

With a brutal kick, Gai launched me high into the sky.

Even surprised by the force, I stabilized easily in midair—after letting him do it. I could've dodged with Hiraishin, or just jumped away. But no. My goal was to test how tough my new shell really was.

"Morning Peacock!"

Gai was already above me, and his fists came down at an insane speed—dozens, hundreds of blows. The air around me flared from friction, and behind Maito, the windup motions of his strikes formed a fan of fire like a peacock's tail. Each hit was like a small explosion.

I crossed my arms in front of me, reinforcing them with chakra, and took the whole storm head-on. My jumpsuit tore to shreds, burns bloomed across my skin—but I didn't even twitch. My mind calmly rode out the pain, analyzing his technique, feeling my body endure that ridiculous onslaught.

The attack ended. I got blasted down, slammed into the earth, and a crater several meters across exploded around me. Gai landed nearby, breathing hard.

I rose slowly. Right in front of his stunned eyes, my burns and abrasions sealed up with a light hiss. My gaze met his—and mine was pure excitement.

"Excellent, Maito-san! Ha-ha-ha! You actually made me work! Now it's my turn…"

I jumped back, tearing open distance. In my core, a storm of chakra spun up, and part of it leaked out. The air, just starting to quiet, screamed even louder; trees at the edge of the training ground bent under the pressure of the energy pouring off me.

Gai understood he'd have to use everything he had.

"You truly are a monster, Uzumaki-san… But I am the Noble Green Beast of Konoha!" he roared again. "Then let us show all our strength! Seventh Gate—the Gate of Wonder, OPEN!"

A dense blue aura of evaporating sweat wrapped his body. Muscle fibers began tearing under the monstrous strain.

He raised a palm in front of his face, tapped it with his fist, and formed a hand sign like a tiger. White aura began forming around him.

In response, I settled into my stance. I wasn't using the Eight Gates. But thanks to the seal, an even more monstrous amount of chakra started concentrating inside my body. The air around me turned red.

The air around each of us distorted and flared, shaping into silhouettes of roaring tiger heads. The roar was so loud it drowned out everything else—and so physical it kicked off an earthquake.

"HIRUDORA!" we yelled almost at the same time.

A gigantic white tiger of compressed air and my slightly smaller—but denser, like it was overflowing with Yang—red tiger surged straight into each other.

They collided. My vision flooded with white light, most of it slamming downward.

The explosion was colossal, but almost silent. My ears instantly went dead.

A shockwave of pure pressure and energy erased everything. The training ground was practically wiped out, turning into a crater about two hundred meters deep and around a hundred and fifty meters across. For an instant the temperature spiked so high the ground instantly glazed over with a molten crust. Trees within nearly a kilometer were ripped out by the roots and lit up like matchsticks from heat over a thousand degrees. Chunks of earth were torn up and shredded in midair. Farther out, fewer trees were uprooted—but the superheated shockwave still started fires all over the area.

The blast hurled us both more than a kilometer away. I crashed into the forest, broken in several places, and hit the ground.

Slowly—very slowly—I stood up.

"Haa… what a madman. If I hadn't redirected most of that technique's energy downward and onto myself, he would've been torn apart…"

A disgusting, wet crunch and a series of clicks followed—my broken bones slid back into place, and torn wounds knitted shut right before my eyes. Swaying at first, then walking steadier with each step, I jumped toward where Gai's body was.

While moving, I formed a string of hand signs, dumped in more chakra, and created a technique that quickly dragged storm clouds across the sky and unleashed a pouring rain. The fires had to be put out fast.

"That was… magnificent," I said, looking down at the defeated master. His body was twisted up, and his skin was almost charred from burns. But he was alive. "You're a worthy opponent, Maito-san. Though you take way too many risks."

I dropped to my knees, and my palms flared with bright green light—modified Mystical Palm. I didn't say I'd cover medical expenses for nothing. And I needed to do one more interesting thing too…

---

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[Welydora]

The lab sounds made for a strangely calming vibe. Which was perfect, because that's exactly where I was.

On the table in front of me lay Might Guy, wrapped up in thin threads of chakra. Another modified version of the Mystical Palm pulsed softly, feeding straight into the patient's chakra pathways. The familiar "easy" damage—torn muscles, broken bones—had been fixed almost instantly, basically back in the forest, on the fly. But that wasn't the end of it.

The Eight Gates—Hachimon—is a forced overclock of the body and the chakra circulation system. A targeted activation of a cascading breakdown. It literally burns cells, dumping all their life energy into one short, destructive burst. Structural degradation of tenketsu, the channels losing integrity on a subatomic level… basically, the body "burns" itself to squeeze out way more than a hundred percent of its original max.

There's a reason this technique is forbidden. Modern medicine says the damage Hachimon does can't be fully repaired, period, and it hits the organism hard. The brawling brute sprawled next to me was lucky—he happened to be on good terms with, probably, the only person alive who could actually fix him completely.

Healing Guy's chakra circulation system wasn't "impossible" for me—just a pain in the ass: you have to do a ton of calculations to generate a system like that for a specific body, then patch it up point by point. All in all, it took about an hour.

When Might woke up, he opened his eyes and for half a minute just stared at the bright ceiling. Earlier I'd moved him into another room of the lab—one without any equipment.

"I've never felt this good…"

"As a med-nin, I've got access to certain… special means," I said with a faint smile, standing about a meter from the bed Guy was sprawled on.

He sat up without any trouble and looked at me, confused. Everything was lined up perfectly for realization to bloom in his eyes, and—

No. He didn't get the joke.

Instead, he immediately launched into a speech about what an amazing spar we'd had. How, for a man living for taijutsu, it was the highest honor to fight a worthy opponent. To go all-out, and all that stuff.

I listened for about four minutes before I managed to shake off this "Noble Beast."

Truth is, the spar really was good. I just didn't enjoy listening to some weird dude shouting his lungs out.

Hirudora—Daytime Tiger. Using my body and chakra circulation system to the fullest, but without opening Hachimon, I managed to replicate it… kinda. My body was just titanically strong and tough. If Guy had been my enemy, and if I hadn't redirected the energy of that strike, I would've gotten away with nothing but a burn. But for Might, even just using the technique was already breaking bones—and if I'd piled on more load by meeting him head-on, he wouldn't have held up.

The idea that I don't use the Eight Gates isn't exactly true. The first gate—the one that lets you use a full hundred percent of your strength—is basically always "open" for me. Or rather, it's not even there, because my body's durability lets me do without it. But I can open the others. Now, after studying Guy up close—someone whose chakra has already opened those Gates—I can say for sure: I know how, and I can do it.

And not just the seventh.

My body is on a completely different level. The regeneration I built into it is so strong that, by my most plausible theories, I could even afford to open the Eighth Gate of Death. Of course, it won't be consequence-free. The technique still implies "burning" the body and the chakra circulation system itself—only even harder than with the Seventh Gate. If I burn through half my reserves in that mode and live, I'll end up weakened by way more than half after the fight. I'd have to spend a long, tedious time patching the scorched circulation system and restoring my body. In the near future, there probably won't be a reason for a suicidal burst like that. But the very fact it's possible is… motivating.

Speaking of possibilities. My sensory perception after the upgrade also hit a new level. Sensitivity to chakra flow, to muscle movement, to the structure of techniques themselves became comparable to the Sharingan—if not straight-up better. That's exactly why I could analyze and copy Daytime Tiger on the fly, just from seeing how Guy formed the pressure and concentrated power.

I was already thinking what to do next. After I finished with Guy, I wanted to rest a bit. Maybe meet Hinata, or check how Sakura's training was going. But those plans weren't happening. I didn't even make it out of the house before an ANBU guy materialized at my door.

"Uzumaki-san. Hokage-sama requests your immediate presence at the residence."

So much for rest. I've got a pretty damn clear guess what the old man wants from me.


Hiruzen looked like someone had beaten him with a sack and then punched him in the gut—completely wrung out.

After greeting him, I sat down across from him.

Without a word, he put an ANBU report in front of me, along with a photo that I assumed was taken with some Telescope-Technique knockoff.

"This… was your doing, Naruto?"

The picture showed a fresh crater. Huge, melted over, like a meteor had slammed into the ground. Around it—a whole kilometer-wide zone of forest burned down to nothing.

"Yeah. Sparring," I answered shortly. "Got a little carried away."

"'A little'?" His voice was pure helplessness. "Naruto, you changed the country's topographic map! Sensors all along the border recorded a chakra burst comparable to a Bijūdama!"

I squinted at the photo harder, picking it up.

"They're full of it. A Bijūdama's weaker."

Hiruzen just stared at me in silence. I could see his world collapsing in his eyes. A world where he was the Hokage—this wise mentor, a guardian. All of it was falling apart, because it no longer fit his picture of reality. Now, in front of him, sat a conduit for power he couldn't understand and couldn't control.

"Oh, quit panicking like that. Everything's fine." Trying to calm the rattled man down, I turned the photo toward him and started tracing it with my finger. "Look, right here in the pit, a lake's gonna form soon. And just look at this weird ground—burned black. Huge area, totally clean, nothing to clear out. You could build a resort here, the kind you won't find anywhere else. The forest over there is already knocked down—construction will be even cheaper. Imagine it: scorching sun, palm trees on freaky black soil, and all of it by a deep lake. I mean—perfect project, right?"

Then I put the photo back on the desk and watched Hiruzen stare at it blankly.

A bit more time passed before the old man let out a loud sigh.

"You know… Naruto. I already regret bringing this up. So I'll only say this: Guy's mission was classified. The only person who knows you did this is me."

"Mhm. Secrecy," I nodded at his measures. No point letting enemies know too much about what we can do. Then a thought flashed: if they didn't let me relax now, maybe they'd let me later. "I worked a lot to get this strength. And I'm tired. Maybe there's some mission for me… something harder?"

Yep. I considered an S-rank mission a form of rest. But I didn't get what I asked for. Still—since I'd brought up dangerous shit, they did tell me something interesting.

The Hokage gave me info on Akatsuki. A currently small group of elite shinobi whose goal is to collect the bijū. It's sold as some utopian endgame where they use the tailed beasts' power to bring peace to the world. But right now the organization isn't having the best time—they need to toughen up and even recruit more members.

Meaning they'll come for me as the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki—just like in the Naruto story I know from meta-knowledge. But everything the old man told me basically meant one thing: I've definitely still got time. Two years, at least. Which means I don't have to start sprinting around cutting everyone down right this second. I can stay in a relatively safe village until they start moving and keep building power. Because once they start, it'll be obvious—since I, as the host of half the Nine-Tails, would be sealed last anyway: the Kyūbi's chakra volume is too huge to seal first.

Even now, I've got decent odds of handling all of Akatsuki alone. With tactics and shinobi squads involved, those odds get stupidly high. But Akatsuki are still pretty damn dangerous enemies—one of them has the Rinnegan, for starters. And if I've got the option to quietly "bulk up" a bit more, I'll take it.

After saying goodbye to the Hokage—who approved my approach of "sit in the village longer"—I finally went to rest.


After inviting Hinata and Sakura to one of the nicer snack places in the Leaf, we had a good evening. They ate themselves full; I ate myself stupid. After that, in good spirits, we split up.

Both girls were pretty shocked by the changes in me, then started worrying I'd done something wrong to myself. Mostly Hinata. But a few minutes of convincing them that I'd checked everything thoroughly before trying it on myself was enough to calm them down. Sakura relaxed faster—she'd seen more of what I can do and is way more inclined to believe me right away.

Then the next day, watching Sakura train, I was thinking.

Basically, it just happened that the girl was completely dependent on me. And that meant I could do a whole lot with her, and there wouldn't be any uproar because of it…

So, waiting until she was worn out and absolutely, definitely couldn't resist, I… offered her a body-enhancement procedure.

She completely gave herself over to me—meaning, to my philosophy and instructions. As weird as that sounds for a thirteen-year-old girl. Over that time she'd earned my trust—way deeper than before.

Sakura accepted my offer with honor. I patted her on the top of the head and reminded her she wasn't from the Land of Iron, so she didn't have to act like a samurai, then went off to do the calculations.

Crunching a template for her body—which is female, meaning it differs from a male body pretty damn strongly—wasn't that hard. In my research I never focused only on myself or only one sex. So a few days later, holding her hands, I helped Sakura climb out of the chamber. And then—after making sure she was fine, and waiting until she learned to walk normally without my help—like the absolute asshole I am, I led her straight to the scale…

The look on Sakura's face when it hit her how much she weighed burned itself into my smug mind forever. The camera I used to capture the moment, though, got snatched away and smashed with indignant outrage. But my memory's still with me.

Sakura's enhancement is different from mine. Different balance of changes, different energy distribution. Because her base body was a bit weaker, her strength wasn't proportional—by weight—to mine… but her brain, on the other hand, got improved especially well.

Considering I used my reserves to first build up the potential of her chakra circulation system and "inflate" her reserve to the size of three jōnin. That ate several of my own chakra stores—which, compared to a normal jōnin's, are holy-fuck huge. In the end, she became multiple times stronger than her old self, while her improved brain made her control jump especially hard.

That kind of reserve let me densify my student's body to the point the scale showed a three-digit number that started with a "2." That didn't mean her strength was only seven times less than mine—no, it's less than that, and there are a lot of factors, the main one being chakra power. But Sakura wasn't worried about those details. She was worried about that number.

Reassurances that she was way lighter than me and basically "lightweight" for real, for some reason didn't help. Riding that wave, Sakura kept bitching at me over my jokes, and I found it kind of cute. Like messing with a fluffed-up cat that wants to scratch you but can't—because "the owner's a nimble bastard" and keeps yanking his hand back in time. Honestly, after a period of low emotions, it was really nice to see "old Sakura" showing again.

Still—good things in moderation. That's probably what she decided too, because after a few minutes she calmed down… and started apologizing for her "unworthy" behavior. Not like she'd just gone a bit too hard with her expression—fully deserved from my point of view, by the way—but like, I don't know, she'd accidentally burned down my house and my lab worth over a hundred million ryō. I accepted the apologies fast and started convincing her she hadn't done anything wrong. After a minute of coaxing she gave in and accepted that everything was fine… out loud. My "eloquent" look made it obvious as hell I didn't believe her, and she just turned away. Anyway, we dropped it.

After adding "cut off the supply of samurai literature into Konoha" to my to-do list—before Sakura picks up even more crap from there—I started planning the next project.

Going by meta-knowledge, what is this world most famous for? Honestly, I don't know—I haven't seen any statistics. But according to the authoritative opinion of one reincarnator, this world's famous above all for special eyes—the Sharingan.

That moment when, right in the middle of a fight, using nothing but sensitivity to energy and all-around vision, I copied Guy's technique was just—holy shit. And I really wanted an even cooler analyzer. And the fact that I already had a ton of bioengineering data on the topic—and, on top of that, I'd even touched those special eyes and had a pretty blurry idea of how to make myself something like that—only fed the itch.


Getting samples for research was easy as hell. The scheme was already tested: offer Sasuke a spar; knock him out; drag him into the lab for a few hours. And for comparison—minus the "offer" step—I also dragged Kakashi into the lab with his Mangekyō.

After I was done with the Uchiha and finished copying all the data off Hatake too, before I really dove into the research, I had a short talk with Kakashi. The reason was the fūin seal I found straight up in his brain, which—yeah, that one surprised the hell out of me—made it possible to remotely subjugate the jōnin.

"Where'd you pick up this kind of crap?" I asked when he woke up.

"No idea," he answered, clearly not in the loop.

I nodded, deleted that filth, and after telling him not to wander around sketchy places—unless he wanted to "catch" something else—I kicked him out of the lab. And only then did I get to the real work.


It took a few days to organize all the data, but in the end I had a pretty broad knowledge base on the Sharingan. Put simply, these eyes turned out to be an insanely complex biomechanism—the result of intertwined genes and fūin commands shaping their structure.

If I dumb it down hard and really try to force the analogy, you can think of dōjutsu as a core and layers. The core is a semi-unique set of chakra properties and genes. The layers are what the core grows over itself, like tree rings. The first completed layer is the three-tomoe Sharingan. The second is Mangekyō. The third—the deepest and most complex—is the Rinnegan. Each next layer is stronger, but each demands way more from its user.

And here's the main thing: the stronger the layer, the "thinner" its properties are—and the worse they get passed down. Kakashi's eye, for example, will never evolve into a Rinnegan—its core simply doesn't have the necessary "blueprints," everything got lost among the bastar—ahem—among time. Sasuke's eyes are different, but not because of his bloodline. Indra's construct is slowly but surely embedding the missing properties into his core, preparing him for future evolution. Even so, that process is unbelievably delicate. I could understand and copy the properties for Mangekyō, but the Rinnegan still stayed beyond my perception.

Moving on to what I actually managed to study—regular Sharingan. Roughly speaking, it has two main functions. The "Eye of Insight"—super-perception that lets you see chakra flows and track movements so fast it feels like you're seeing the future. And the "Eye of Hypnotism"—a powerful genjutsu tool, from simple suggestion all the way to full-on control. Sure, I could plant commands in someone's mind myself, like I did in the Land of Waves, but the Sharingan made that whole process stupidly easy.

On top of that, there were two ultimate built-in techniques—Izanagi and Izanami. Both "burn" the eye, almost like the Eight Gates burn the body. Izanagi briefly turns reality into an illusion, so to speak, letting the user "rewrite" their death or injury—restoring the body to an ideal state using an embedded template, a kind of affinity (similar to my regeneration construct, except it's instant). Izanami creates a self-restoring genjutsu construct that locks the target in an endless time loop. You can only escape it by accepting your fate. And that "fate" is chosen by the user.

Next—Mangekyō. Besides access to Susanoo, the huge chakra warrior, awakening this stage gives the user two unique abilities. And this is where heredity gets really interesting.

You can imagine the core of each dōjutsu as a "tub" full of potential properties. That "tub" gets inherited with different levels of "fill." Then, using that "tub," plus the user's knowledge and even their desires, the core forms unique abilities. Sasuke's "tub" had lots of stuff tied to genjutsu (Tsukuyomi) and black flame (Amaterasu). Kakashi's (or rather, Obito's) "tub" leaned toward space-time techniques (Kamui). Meaning the abilities weren't pulled out of thin air—they formed for pretty understandable reasons.

So yeah: regular Sharingan properties are fairly "thick" and almost always get passed on in full. Mangekyō properties are much thinner, and what you inherit depends on how lucky you got with your ancestors. Rinnegan properties are even thinner—like, insanely thinner—and in the eyes I studied they didn't manifest at all, lost across generations of their predecessors. Only after Indra's construct does evolution into the Rinnegan become possible. Well. Probably.

That thinness is almost inversely proportional to the dōjutsu's power. And to how many properties you need for the evolution in the first place. Maybe whoever designed this shit—if there even was a designer—understood what kind of power they were handing out, and weak inheritance was necessary. The inability to reliably inherit it through inbreeding could also be a safeguard. Both against the dōjutsu, in one possible timeline, ending up on someone else's side. And, probably even more importantly, so weak, diluted descendants don't awaken eyes that can kill them. A vassal is only good if you can get something out of him. Getting something out of a dead husk dried up by an energetically overpowered dōjutsu is a lot harder. All of that's guesswork, but it sounds true enough. Those eyes came from the Ōtsutsuki, and they've got a main and a branch family, supposedly. Members of the younger branch, being weaker, could very well fail to withstand the Rinnegan. Just like normal people wouldn't withstand it either—hell, even very talented jōnin feel like shit from Mangekyō alone.

Though that second point is either less likely, or it's just a second line of defense. Because a host that isn't strong enough, even after Indra's construct does its thing, still won't awaken even a basic Sharingan unless they meet the strength "requirements."

Studying all this gave me ridiculous opportunities. Essentially, I got a manual for using other people's techniques. Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, Kamui—now that I knew their "code," I could model and reproduce them.

With all that knowledge, my clones and I immediately jumped into experiments.

Awakening each stage of a dōjutsu is based on concentrating a special chakra in the eyes—formed by the brain under the influence of strong emotions. But you also need strong chakra to begin with. Sasuke, even if I carve up his whole family in front of him ten times, still won't awaken Mangekyō right now. Not enough muscle.

But I didn't need emotional spikes. Thanks to what I knew from constructs, medical ninjutsu, the structure of the dōjutsu themselves and the techniques—especially Izanagi, for even cleaner deconstruction—I could directly transform subjects' eyes according to the needed template. And thanks to the raw power of my chakra and no less ridiculous control, I could "force-awaken" the stages I needed in them. It was complicated, sure, and I couldn't do it without crutches like fūin to make the process easier. But it was doable.

Test subjects started flowing in again, in little streams. I needed hundreds of tests, to check every hypothesis. God, it's good I've got clones—everything can be done in parallel.

Days flew forward. If not for trips outside, for time spent with Hinata or Sakura, I probably would've completely lost my mind… though maybe I already did. But as long as my research kept producing results, and the people close to me were okay, it kept me steady.

---

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[Welydora]

Barely a month had passed. It was June first. The dōjutsu project still wasn't finished, and right now I was "resting" with Sakura. More accurately, only I was resting—and even that was conditional—while she was huffing and puffing for real.

Because we were sparring.

At Team Seven's training ground, our silhouettes blurred whenever we closed into close quarters. We circled each other, bent at angles normal shinobi simply couldn't manage, and under the nonstop dull thud of strikes and parries, we waited for the other to slip.

The pace was such that an elite jōnin would have no business here. Only a certain Noble Beast—and even then, only after opening two or three Gates—could've brought anything to the table against us in taijutsu.

The ground under our feet bucked with every fleeting collision, kicking up a light earthquake that carried for hundreds of meters.

Finally, when she split her attention on my layered feint—which turned into a sweep—I followed immediately, packing a solid amount of chakra into my fist and letting her reflexively close up behind a hard block…

…and drove a brutal uppercut from below.

Boom.

"Went low," I commented as Sakura flew a good twenty meters toward the stream, then tipped my head up at the sky. "Probably means rain."

Then, wasting no time, I went after her.

I was trying to keep myself around her level. But with my stronger… well, everything, I still held the advantage. Even my thoughts just moved faster.

When I got near the stream, I had to juke sideways hard; a wide pillar of water was surging at me.

It was Water Release: Water Wall, used a little differently than most people did.

Once my feet hit the water's surface, I had to spin even sharper to weave between the tentacles bursting up from below—another Water Release technique with the same vibe.

"Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!" Sakura's voice carried through the hiss of water slicing the air.

While I dodged, she—having fully seized the initiative—finished the sequence with a third B-rank jutsu.

From the exact spot I was "supposed" to move into, straight out of the water, a massive maw lunged up fast as a shell fired from the depths.

But playing the momentum, I slipped past it easily.

My own costs were minimal: basic body reinforcement, expert use of the wall-walking technique to "hook" and snap-change my movement vectors, plus Water Walking—well, to walk on water.

Sakura knew she couldn't just take me head-on, so she simply kept the chain going. Water cutters flew at me right away; I leaned away from a few and noted they'd gotten too slow.

She was tired.

So, still dodging, I just raised a hand.

"Enough," I said, and soon the attacks stopped.

As I walked closer, Sakura came into view—soaked, breathing deep from exhaustion, her hair stuck to her face over one eye. When I reached her, I gently tucked the loose strands behind her ear.

"You did well today."

"Thanks… Haah…" She flushed a little at the gesture and exhaled, tired but relieved. "I'm glad to follow you, sensei…"

My face twitched at the title. Not often, but it slipped out of her sometimes. Lately, we'd gotten pretty close. Those rare little "sensei"s short-circuited me because they felt way too formal for how close we were now.

"You're picking up Water techniques on the fly. You've got an obvious, massive affinity for it," I hummed, satisfied. "I think by twenty you'll surpass Hashirama."

"What?" She jerked up, startled. "No way, haha. The First-sama had insane chakra reserves… like you. I'm nowhere near that. Naruto, thanks, but you—"

"I'm not exaggerating. Yeah, I boosted your chakra, but it's been growing on its own, too. In a month—noticeably. In seven years, your progress will be monstrous."

A whole spectrum of emotions flashed across her face. Then, overflowing with gratitude and loyalty, she thumped a fist into her palm and bowed toward me.

I rolled my eyes.

Not exactly "samurai," but whatever, I thought, turning slightly aside. "We'll focus on Water Release. Konoha's vaults still have a lot of techniques stashed away. For now—want to go eat?"

Sakura lifted her head. The gratitude in her eyes was replaced by hunger. She nodded eagerly, and we left.

Hunger in the bodies I'd improved only hits when chakra is running low. Eating isn't strictly necessary in those cases, but if you do, the conversion speeds up chakra recovery.

We had sparred for about ten minutes. Sakura used not only those techniques but over two dozen more before our last close-range clash. So yeah—no surprise she gassed out.

But those ten minutes were great. Sakura always fought with her head, trying to herd me into traps. There was still a serious gap between us in raw power, but when I sparred with her, I couldn't fully relax—either I was actively evading, or I was forced to answer her pressure with blunt force. Definitely better—and more enjoyable—than sparring with jōnin who were already far weaker.

Heh… The bristly cat had turned into a dangerous panther. Even if some old-new habits still slipped out, bows and all.


A couple more weeks passed—packed with research, not so much with events. Only today, June fifteenth, did my clones and I finally get all the way to the bottom of that crippled dōjutsu called the Sharingan. We figured it out, modeled it for myself with every improvement I could squeeze in, and of course, stockpiled enough chakra-filled clones to make sure my new eyes would be the best of the best.

I didn't call it "crippled" for nothing. The Sharingan is hereditary—which means it's subject to a mechanism that's both beautiful and disgusting at the same time: evolution. And Mother Nature, adding bits of genome here and deleting there, mutating it every which way, really did a number on this dōjutsu… and gave me a lot of extra work.

The problem was the awakening of the Mangekyō. A normal person—even an Uchiha—can awaken it and still not be able to use it properly. It damages the eye, causes hemorrhaging, and as my research showed, creates countless micro-injuries in the chakra circulatory system of the eye itself. The reason is simple: after evolving into Mangekyō, the dōjutsu's chakra output jumps by multiples, but the chakra channels in and around the eye don't keep up. They're too weak for that kind of flow. On top of that, most people awaken the Mangekyō after they've already realized the potential of their chakra circulatory system (CCS), and in adulthood, it loses that childlike ability to adapt quickly.

So you get a closed loop. Every use of the Mangekyō creates microcracks in the channels. Chakra leaks out of those cracks and tortures the eye from the inside like fine needles. The owners go blind. And if the user is especially trigger-happy and fires off Mangekyō techniques like a Gatling gun, the self-destruction only accelerates. That theory, by the way, perfectly explains why Itachi, using his eyes carefully, went blind slowly over years, while Sasuke burned his out in a very short time.

The locals—back when they still lived in the era of spitting on science and prioritizing nothing but the desire to stab their neighbor—somehow managed to invent a fix. Their theory says you can get the Eternal Mangekyō by transplanting the eyes of a close relative.

And it does work.

A transplant introduces new chakra into the body—chakra with a different affinity—that can actually synergize with the current one. Same way genes can synergize. Together, if you're lucky, the chakra and the genes receive "new" data sets; using those, they restructure a bit. Ultimately, this reinforces the channels in the eyes, preventing future trauma, and boosts regeneration. It's all way more complicated than that, but if I simplify it brutally, part of the positive traits of the transplanted eye's original owner—both affinity and genes—gets "added" to the recipient, triggering a qualitative mutation. And since not just genes mutate but chakra too, the result can show on the body very noticeably.

But from my perspective, it's still like treating a gunshot wound with a Band-Aid. Yeah, it might help—and hey, at least they didn't smear it with shit—but the method leans way too hard on luck. Dōjutsu rejection is a very real risk; not everyone gets Madara-level lucky. Even factoring in this world's realities, the risk isn't that high… but it can still go wrong. And on top of that, a random "compilation" can assemble the dōjutsu's abilities crookedly (honestly, it always does), leaving the user to intuitively "fine-tune" them just to make them run at a decent speed with tolerable chakra costs.

My method, naturally, was far more complex—and safer. It didn't rely on a blind transplant and praying the stars aligned so everything "just worked." It relied on deliberately strengthening the eye's CCS to the required level and meticulously compiling the dōjutsu's traits—no gambling on luck.

Because my capabilities were on a completely different level, I managed to design a Mangekyō that substantially outperformed the standard model. Stronger. Able to conduct colossal volumes of energy without self-destruction.

When an Uchiha who has awakened the Mangekyō gets another Mangekyō transplanted, the eyes evolve. They become stronger, integrating better with the rest of the body. However, because they restructure around the new chakra, the transplanted eye's abilities are lost—and the old ones get installed instead: the ones the Uchiha originally awakened in their first Mangekyō.

My Mangekyō carried not two abilities, but several—Susanoo notwithstanding. Less chakra-hungry, but no less effective—if anything, more so.

That said, my eyes aren't perfect either. They can't evolve into the Rinnegan; I simply didn't give them that option. I didn't fully understand how the Rinnegan worked, and I wasn't about to graft properties into myself when I didn't even know how that energy behaved. So no matter how many times my chakra grows in raw power, evolution won't happen—unless I personally rework the eyes later. That's future business.


The procedure started the same way as the body enhancement.

First: developing a filled framework of fūinjutsu seals, a template by which the flesh of my eyes would be reshaped. I embedded every relevant piece of knowledge I had into it; even my refined Izanagi properties were used for faster, more efficient transformation.

Then: my body in the chamber. A couple of dozen of my chakra-filled clones at their stations across the nodes of the seal network.

A few hours of painstaking but precise work.

And then I opened my eyes. The iris stayed the same blue—but these were entirely different eyes now.

I climbed out of the chamber and stood still. No negative sensations. There was no point running an extra check under the analyzer; the clones had already done it thoroughly.

There was a lot—so much—dense chakra in my eyes, thicker than ever, ready to obey at any moment.

A light focus on a simple technique, and a Shadow Clone appeared in front of me under Transformation, making it look like a full-length mirror.

Again—and the pupil in the reflection flared red. A blink, and a thick black ring swelled out of the pupil, almost completely covering the crimson glow. Spinning into a circular motion, it immediately merged with the pupil and stretched into a sharp diamond that touched the iris at the top and bottom. But the black geometric shape kept transforming, as if forced outward from the other two sides, forming two smaller copies on either side. Now, against an alight red background, there was a light-devouring black elongated diamond in the center, flanked by two smaller ones.

"The design isn't exactly pretty. But the important part is what the eye can do," I noted flatly.

Then, channeling the eye's chakra into a structured technique without straining my mind, I simply dissolved into the air and appeared somewhere else.

Studying the properties from the Sharingan "tanks," as well as Indra's construct, gave me a lot of ideas. Some I implemented; some I straight-up copied.

Thanks to Kakashi's Mangekyō abilities and plenty of other samples from the "tanks," my capacity for spatial manipulation took a qualitative leap. I no longer needed markers; I could calculate conditional coordinates myself—how many units to shift, into what space, all that. And yeah, I have my own space too, usable as a transit point but not strictly required for teleportation. It's the same black dimension with a floor of chakra cubes.

My body manifested high in the daytime sky, and with wind roaring in my ears, I dove down toward the ocean I'd appeared above.

But before I flew far, my body simply hung in the air via technique. Flight was stamped clearly into the Ōtsutsuki legacy—the Sharingan—and of course I studied it. Now I could use it myself.

And then…

Even without final adaptation to the dōjutsu, thanks to understanding what does what, my body was instantly sealed inside an energy crystal.

Glowing gray, in a couple of seconds, I stood within a diamond-shaped ultra-durable barrier built into a helmet—inside a giant of chakra burning with steady white and black hues. An armored knight. Its second pair of arms became angelic wings behind its back. And in its hands was a blade—a long, elegant espada, capable of both cutting and piercing.

Susanoo is considered a manifestation of the soul. I designed mine in a more familiar European style, and in the colors of my soul.

Still.

With a loud whistle, the giant under my control snapped the sword a few times in quick swings. Not the most impressive thing my eyes could do.

Knowing what my dōjutsu was capable of, I began methodical testing. I decided to skip the most primitive part—charging the blade to launch a slash—and simply dispersed the espada into the air.

Feeling the wind under the wings, I enjoyed the intoxicating power. But everything in moderation.

The glow in my eyes flared brighter, and a hundred meters down along my line of sight, an entire cloud of black flame erupted.

"Amaterasu…"

Even from that distance, I could hear it spreading with a hiss, burning even the vapor.

Staring at water that had literally caught fire—water that would burn for seven days and seven nights—I winced. Just hearing the technique's name triggered phantom pain in my ass.

Seriously… Maybe I should test Tsukuyomi on Koharu? That ability was in my eyes, too. But… no. We were even over those moments, so I'd pass.

Tsukuyomi, by the way, is an extremely powerful genjutsu. With enough skill, you can trap a victim in an illusion where their sense of time is distorted—so, for example, in a few seconds, you can make them live through days of torture. A brutal Mangekyō technique, so specialized in genjutsu that even a heavyweight like the Third Hokage in his prime would have to put in maximum effort not to meet the dōjutsu user's gaze. Kakashi's eye or Madara's couldn't do that because their specializations were different. But Tsukuyomi makes its owner terrifying. And it's good that with these eyes—and with my chakra density already raised decently thanks to the body upgrade—I'll be able to resist even stronger techniques.

Next, I decided not to drag it out and tested the abilities I'd assembled from what affinity remained in the "tanks." Almost all of it was spatial work. And even something particularly "thick" and "noticeable" I'd picked up from the Rinnegan.

I spread my hands to either side. My eyes flared brighter, and the space near my hands split open into diamond-shaped voids. Exactly like the eye pattern, just single diamonds. They existed like two-dimensional cuts, with no concept of "depth," and opened into blackness from both sides.

Not only could I use Kamui—through a separate ability I could open outright portals. These, again, yawned with darkness like they led into deep space. Not quite… though that statement wasn't that far off, either.

I called this dark space the Nothingness. It's the same space where I woke up after death. Not the exact same point I'd been at. Nothingness, like space, is enormous—maybe bigger—and it isn't static; it's always moving. But for now, it would serve as a massive dump: a place to toss things so I wouldn't have to clean them up later.

After that thought, using the second ability, Susanoo's clawed energy hands seized what felt like the very fabric of the portal—and pulled toward me, a little downward.

My hearing was instantly drowned by a howling wind. The fire below bent low. Clouds in the distance began to twist and stream toward the portals. The voids became gravity concentration points, like black holes, devouring air in staggering volumes.

This technique can pull in a lot. But that's not the only way to use it. The ability responsible for creating portals was broader than that; it could also close spatial passages and help manipulate them.

The darkness winked out, leaving only a warped "frame." The air streams—previously almost fully swallowed—now rushed completely toward me and downward, bending the flames even harder, yet not snuffing them out, and applying no real pressure at all as they shattered against Susanoo's energy armor.

Still, the "frame" was only a concentrator. At my will, it dissolved too. The airflow didn't instantly weaken, but the clouds moving toward me—dissolving along the way—began to slow. The technique, now reduced to mere points that warped light, started acting more broadly.

Holding the pressure for another second, I dispelled the technique entirely, and the air soon returned to its normal movement.

I looked down. My eyes flashed—and the flame died. After that, the chakra forming Susanoo simply dispersed and drew back into me, leaving my body hanging in the air.

So yeah. Nothing ultimate. Again, the bulk of the dōjutsu's traits were already shaped into finished techniques—Amaterasu, Kamui, Tsukuyomi. And from the smaller amount that remained, these techniques were formed. Not omnipotent, but useful—and they widen the arsenal.

Finally, I spread my arms and teleported myself extremely high. High enough that I could see sharp outlines of continents, like I could almost cup the planet in my hands.

Up here, there wasn't nearly enough air to breathe. But for my body, that was no problem at all—same as the cold.

A focused thought—and under Transformation, my clothes changed into a tight blue suit, a red cape started billowing behind me, and a big letter S appeared on my chest.

"…Yeah. Not exactly canon," I remarked, then looked myself over.

If I were taller… and had a little less muscle, I thought.

And with that, the primary test of the Mangekyō's abilities was over. In the future, of course, I'd master it more, but for now, I could rest a bit.

The dōjutsu satisfied me.


The rest didn't last long. The very next day, wanting to test my new energy sensitivity thanks to the dōjutsu, I headed to an interesting building.

Konoha Prison, where they kept particularly dangerous criminals. Straight to the section where Zabuza and Haku were currently housed.

Appearing in a reinforced concrete corridor, I nodded at two startled guards and simply walked past them.

"Uzumaki-san!" One recognized me and hurried up, cutting in front. "You can't go in there. What are you even doing here?"

The shinobi looked anxious and genuinely lost.

"I can," I said calmly, then turned back toward the second guard, who was still staring. "Tell your boss I'm taking the ice ninja for a couple of hours. I'll bring him back."

The guards exchanged looks.

What I wanted was wildly off-protocol. But I had a reputation as a pretty important person who, first, was a jinchūriki; second, walked into the Hokage's office like it was his own; and third, could chase an honored elder around the village, loudly threatening to shove her ass into a meat grinder—and apparently suffer zero consequences for it. There were more points, but that was enough for the guard farther away to just nod, turn, and go find his boss.

"Uh… I'll escort you," the closer guard said, then led me down the corridor.

"You're living pretty nicely," I noted, looking over the interiors of two cells across from each other. In the left, sitting on a regular bed, was a pretty, feminine-looking boy with a scroll in his hands. Haku. In the right, Zabuza rose from his bed, waking up. This time he was without his bandages. "Separate bathrooms, everything clean. Knocked a lot, did you?"

"Hmph. You've changed. What do you want?" the former swordsman rasped, ignoring my jab as he stepped up to the bars.

"Nothing from you. Go lie back down," I said indifferently, turning away and meeting Haku's lifted gaze. His face had been healed after my clone's hit—no scars left. "I need you to demonstrate your techniques. If everything works out, we'll be out for about two hours. You'll get some fresh air."

"The air is fresh here too, Uzumaki-san," he said quietly, glancing over my shoulder.

"I'm insisting. And I promise, if you don't do anything stupid, I won't hurt you."

"…Zabuza-sama?" He pushed the responsibility for answering onto his… I don't know, whatever their relationship was—his sugar daddy?

Turning to Momochi, I met his grim stare.

"Go with him," he decided at last, making me snort.

Apparently, he had enough brains to realize he shouldn't risk ending up skewered on a sword and charbroiled again.


Soon, the two of us stood by the river at one of the training grounds.

Konoha treats its prisoners pretty gently and doesn't even damage their CCS. Still, they do take precautions. So I had to remove the fūinjutsu seal on Haku that blocked his ability to use chakra.

"Make an icicle and lift it up near me," I ordered.

The boy—stretching a bit after the seal came off—nodded and obediently followed, forming a couple of one-handed signs simultaneously.

When Haku turned toward the river, the Mangekyō lit in my eyes. When he turned back with the icicle, he could no longer see the dōjutsu in my gaze due to suggestion.

"Good. Now feed it Ice chakra, but don't let it grow—make it radiate chakra."

For about a minute, I just stared at the fairly large icicle, analyzing it. My Mangekyō's analytical abilities were enormous and didn't fall too far behind the stationary analyzer. The eyes gave me such visual acuity that if I wanted, I could slice into something and examine the insides of any cell in obsessive detail. I could make out viruses, DNA, even molecules and atoms. And my ability to perceive chakra's properties was no weaker.

After the study, I formed the same hand signs Haku had shown a moment earlier—and then, using my understanding of chakra theory, added a few more to make the task easier. All to tune the chakra in my hands as close as possible to what he was using.

Another minute or so—focused, carefully calibrating energy properties—until everything clicked into a fairly organic combination. Then, concentrating all that chakra in my left hand, I swept it outward in a broad motion, releasing it and instantly creating a rush of pale, bluish mist that, reaching the river, froze it in a fan-shaped spread.

"…You?" Haku lost the ability to speak. For five seconds he watched the huge slab of ice block the river's flow, letting only a little water slide over the top. "Are you a Yuki half-blood?"

His face turned thoughtful, like he was trying to remember whether he'd seen me before.

"I don't share your clan's blood," I cut him off immediately. "But I want you to teach me everything you know. Consider it part of the price for me sparing you two. And if I like what I see, I'll reward you."

He nodded sharply, agreeable to the point of obedience. Then we got to work.

With Mangekyō, I recorded every technique in extreme detail, expanding my arsenal—and, specifically, my understanding of elemental chakra as a whole.

Honestly, even a normal Sharingan would be enough to see what was needed to reproduce how Ice Release forms—how Wind and Water chakra mix. But local shinobi, even Sharingan users, couldn't actually reproduce it.

To create a blended element without innate affinity, you need an absurd, near-impossible level of chakra control. It's not enough to mix two elements—you also have to recreate a huge number of unique, ultra-fine properties that turn a simple mixture into a true Kekkei Genkai. The locals simply didn't have the "resolution" in their control to reproduce what they saw.

Of course, there were exceptions. One. The current Tsuchikage, for example, learned Dust Release from his predecessor—a kekkei tōta, a mix of three elements. But that's a unique case, likely years of stubborn training from early childhood under a master. They got ridiculously lucky to meet at the right time in the right place, with the right affinity and high talent for control.

In a sense, I got ridiculously lucky, too. Not with affinity, but my life led me to a point where my chakra control—boosted by my soul and my new brain—was on a completely different level. Which made it possible for me to recreate the structure of Ice Release.

Over the next hour and a half, Haku—whose chakra reserves I refilled a couple of times with one of my techniques—showed me all his jutsu. From the weakest, most insignificant ones to the most large-scale.

I couldn't replicate everything the way he could, but with Mangekyō, my brain stamped the knowledge into itself. Later I'll drill it, and in theory, once I adjust—and once my chakra at least lightly picks up an imprint of Ice affinity—the techniques should come easier.

After studying the Kekkei Genkai, I was satisfied. In a good mood, I said we could spend the next half hour granting Haku's wishes. We ended up going shopping, because it turned out Konoha Prison is nice and all—but it doesn't have everything.

"So what, you're gonna knead clay with Zabuza? With a cucumber?" I skeptically inspected the bag Haku handed me as we left the cosmetics store.

"Put it on the face. I'll slice the cucumbers and put them over my eyes—it's good for the skin, Uzumaki-san."

"My version sounded more interesting, but fine. Where to next?"

"Another cosmetics store. Yours are really good here."

"Uh-huh… honestly, I thought you'd buy delicious food. But hey, to each their own."

"Later." He nodded. "We don't have much time. Let's hurry."

Going by stereotypes, this Haku was born in the wrong body. I've got girls among the people close to me, but none of them have ever dragged me around stores like this overly appearance-picky boy did. Though maybe it was because we were in a rush?

He even tried to pry out of me how I'd gotten such smooth, flawless skin…

Those were a weird thirty minutes, but I was the one who offered.

When we returned to the prison with two dozen bags, the building chief who came out looked displeased. But at the sight of me, he chose not to open his mouth unnecessarily. He simply thanked me for keeping my word, accepted my thanks for lending out his prisoner, and left. And I, having no more business there, went back to my own affairs. Which had piled up again recently—and I really needed to sort them out.

Studying Kekkei Genkai… I can't wait to get into it.

---

If you enjoyed my work, feel free to check out my Patreon. There you can read up to 20 chapters ahead and get early access to any new stuff that I publish

 

[Welydora]

The next two days were pretty normal for me. Just without the long hours in the lab—those got swapped for long hours at the training grounds.

After only a day of training, I learned to crank out Ice chakra fast, and my skill already outstripped Haku's. By stuffing ridiculous amounts of Ice-nature energy into my body, I quickly bullied at least some affinity into myself, and it started helping a lot. It was still nowhere near Haku's natural affinity, but even this was enough to get real results.

By the end of day two, my capabilities with Ice Release had seriously surpassed Haku's. The raw power of our chakra was wildly different, so no surprise there. Same with the power of our minds. Mine, once it got used to producing the right chakra, started spitting out way better control.

On the third day, though, I… No, I didn't train Ice. I dragged my ass over to Hiruzen to flex what I'd learned.

I iced up a little tree right on his desk—after they'd cleared the papers off it. He stared at it for, like, two full minutes with a completely blank face. Then, saying some Yamato would arrive in two days to teach me Wood Release, he asked me to get out of his office. All so that, the second I left, he could go right back to his "glug-glug-glug" in there.

Yeah…

After that, without waiting for my future sensei, I managed to reproduce Mokuton using the First Hokage's scrolls and—more importantly—his cells. Wood turned out to be even more complicated than Ice. Way more unique properties. And Ashura's construct, by the way, didn't give me any affinity for it. It looked like Hashirama developed this nature himself.

I only managed to get the Kekkei Genkai to even a remotely basic level by the time that Yamato finally showed up.

We met at the usual training spot—the field. He was a pretty ordinary-looking guy in standard jonin gear: a spiky mess of brown hair, brown eyes, a slightly long face, and a helmet-style protector that covered his forehead and the sides of his face.

"Hey," I waved at the shinobi who appeared in a shunshin.

But he just walked up in silence and stared at me with these dead-ass eyes. Some "dead inside" type.

"…" He stared.

"...Man, you okay?" I asked carefully, just in case.

"...Are you glad I came, Naruto?" he asked—and went silent again.

I just snorted. Formed a few hand signs, grew a sheet of paper out of my index finger, then pulled a pen out of the seal on my bracer. I wrote down the hospital's address, the office number, and a last name, then held it out to him.

While I was weaving signs, Yamato's eyes went back to normal and tracked my hands.

"Here. Take it. I'm not in a rush with the training, so go do the full course."

"Mashima-san?" He took the paper. "That's a psychiatrist."

"Yup. Great specialist. Makes total sense you two know each other. Go see the doc again. You need it."

He stared at me again—but now with normal eyes, a normal face, normal everything.

The specialist really is insane-tier. It's just that the second people see his last name, they start acting normal.

"Ahem-ahem," the shinobi coughed and even got kinda awkward. "It just… didn't work out between us."

"Shocking," I noted flatly, folding my arms. "So what's with the circus?"

"I know you treat rules pretty casually, and I wanted—"

"Give me a masterclass?"

"Hey. Don't interrupt. Damn… That look usually works on everyone, but… hm." He frowned. "I wanted you to have more respect for norms and the people around you. I once worked with Kakashi-san in Team Ro—he was my senpai. And I know you beat him up. You can't do that. He's a sensitive soul. And also…"

For about three minutes, he lectured me and listed all the places where I'd "behaved badly." I listened with a completely blank face. Honestly, the only reason I didn't cut him off was because I was curious what exactly the public knew about me.

"That it?" I asked when he finally finished.

"Yes," he nodded primly.

"Didn't convince me on a single point. I had good reasons. Now can we move on to Mokuton?"

"...Huh?"

"No, I'm not going to explain every case and why I did what I did. Let's start."

And we started on the basics of Mokuton techniques. Hashirama left a lot of theory behind, but Yamato—as another Wood user—had expanded it over the years, too.

Over the next few days, I picked up every skill he had in the Wood element. Along with the basics of architecture, which my newest sensei did as a hobby.

Soon, I could make small wooden houses sprout straight out of the ground, and by the end of the training—big ones. Much bigger than Yamato could manage.

The early stages of mastering an element—when I could quickly optimize it for myself—went fast. But in the end, the farther you go, the harder it gets. And even though I surpassed Yamato, Hashirama was still a long way off. Growing and controlling a massive dragon-snake thirty meters long was, for now—and probably for the next month or two, max—my limit. That still beats Yamato's techniques in raw power, sure, but compared to Hashirama's kilometer-scale Thousand-Armed Statue… yeah. Plenty of room to work.

Honestly, I hadn't been that into elemental nature training before. Even though, like with anything else, I had massive potential for it.

These days, messing with Ice and Wood, I was distracting myself and resting from my main craft—bioengineering—and nothing more. I still remembered the saying about chasing two rabbits, and going forward, I planned to focus back on what I actually know best.

No question, nature releases are a ridiculously promising direction, but real mastery in the shortest time only happens when you commit to one thing.

So yeah, I was taking a break from genes by studying elements. And I wanted that break to last at least a month, to build up more energy and ideas.

But one day, some lunatic tore me out of my downtime. He threw on a bandit balaclava and attacked me! All to remind me about one important event.

It went like this…


I was sitting on one of the training fields, legs crossed, holding two hand seals in each hand, concentrating Mokuton chakra inside my body.

A dull, heavy hum of chakra filled the air, while the air itself warped from the energy saturating it.

This had been going on for over an hour when a person in a balaclava "unnoticed" crept into the clearing.

He came up behind me and lunged at me with a kunai.

In a flash, I sprang up, easily slipped past a few swings, drew a kunai, and moved so fast he didn't even notice—ending up behind him, ripping the mask off, and immediately putting the blade to his throat.

Everything froze.

"And what the hell is this, Iruka?"

I wasn't surprised—I recognized my academy teacher's chakra and the outline of his body right away.

"It's a Konoha check. Screening for the Chunin Exams… Ha-ha, Naruto-kun. Could you put the kunai away?"

I did, then waited for him to turn toward me.

Umino looked rattled. But more importantly, he wasn't lying—and he hadn't attacked with a clear intent to kill.

"Thought it through," I noted, handing the kunai back.

"Not really…" the chunin admitted, rubbing the back of his head and shoving the weapon into his pouch with his other hand. "Kiba-kun sniffed me out immediately. Shino's bugs covered me before I even got close. And Hinata…" He winced. "She hit me faster than she recognized me. I spent two days in the hospital. And now I've seen your strength… and…" He sighed. "You've all gotten so strong."

It looked like another second and he'd shed a single, stingy man-tear. A teacher proud of his chicks that flew the nest.

Cute.

"Interesting. You're testing them one by one?"

"Yeah."

"Then I seriously don't recommend going near Sakura," I advised. "She's gotten a lot stronger, but her sensory skills still aren't up there. She might not recognize you, and you won't get off with just a hospital stay. I'm telling you—I vouch for her."

"O-oh…" He sagged even more.

"Don't go near Sasuke either. The guy's twitchy, and after training with Kakashi he leveled up hard too."

And it was true. During the Land of Waves mission, Kakashi actually did a fair bit of training with my team. And even if he did it like crap, the one who progressed the most was the Uchiha who'd awakened his Sharingan. So yeah—Sasuke resisted at first, but once he started seeing results, he got pulled in. The training lasted about three weeks before it ended because Hatake's laziness kicked back in. Still, the student's talent beat the teacher's anti-talent, and Sasuke learned plenty of techniques—at his own level—and did a solid job copying and adapting Kakashi's fighting habits to his style. A couple of days ago, as I know thanks to a clone, that "three Sharingan" duo started meeting up again for personal training.

"H-ha," Iruka smiled sadly. "Now I feel completely useless."

"Hey, hey. You're screening who's ready. That's important work," I patted his shoulder. "Besides, you've still got Asuma's team. I'm guessing there are fewer prodigies there, and they need a proper check."

"Yeah… Thanks, Naruto, for the info." He perked up a little. "I've gotta go—deadlines are burning, ha-ha. Later!"

"Later," I waved, and he vanished in a shunshin.

So. The Chunin Exams.

That screening from the Village really is necessary. Not everyone's like my team or Hinata. A lot of genin are straight-up useless, and if they show up to the exam, they'll just die. This selection is probably there so those very same idiots can see their weakness in practice—so they're not only pulled from a lethal exam, but also get motivated to become stronger.

But this exam is… "a little" below my level. …And they want to drag me into it anyway, since the checker showed up? Well, that's actually perfect. I'm already kind of tired of nonstop research. This'll be a more varied kind of rest—watch people, have fun. I planned to end my "vacation" a bit early, but if there's such a great excuse, I'll stretch it a little longer. Right up until the exam ends.


A couple more days passed in normal routine. Everything was almost like before: sometimes I met up with Hinata, sometimes with Sakura, sent my clone out on missions, and trained—though not too intensely—in elemental transformations.

Nobody actually invited me to the exam, by the way. Even though I knew there'd been a jonin meeting where the topic came up.

The big sign was the mass arrival of genin with their instructors from the Sand and other smaller Villages.

And because of that, Hiruzen asked me to come see him—since the visitors managed to pull some shit on day one.

"...picked up my grandson and almost stabbed him in the middle of the Village! Just because he bumped into him! Like that's normal!"

While I sat at the desk with my elbow propped on it, the old man paced the office, wired and furious, retelling what happened that morning. He was tense and pissed off to a degree I'd probably never seen from him before. At least not in front of me.

"If a jonin hadn't been passing by, that Sand kid would've killed a child in the street. This is completely unacceptable!"

"And you invited me here so I could quietly kill that Suna brat?"

The old man stopped and looked at me.

For a split second, I saw a very clear yes in his eyes, but…

"No," he dropped his gaze. "Forgive an old man. I probably shouldn't have told you that."

"No problem," I shrugged. "And if those genin go missing because of someone else, I won't even notice."

Hiruzen let out a heavy sigh and walked back to his chair.

"You can't. That shinobi was one of the Kazekage's children. And not even the worst of them…"

I'd already turned fully toward him.

"Hm. That's a lot of trust between you. The Kazekage sent other kids too, right? Including the jinchuriki?"

What I meant was: sending a jinchuriki into another village is a huge risk. Because, well, anything can happen. What if he "gets lost," and then in the next war it turns out some village has one extra jinchuriki? Hypothetically. Sure, it's not that simple—there's the whole world-balance thing, and a disappearance alone could trigger a war. But you could still come up with options. Slip in a delayed poison so that, once the jinchuriki gets home, he goes berserk and kills everyone. Or something else.

"Trust? Please," the old man waved it off. "The issue is that Gaara—the jinchuriki—is one of the strongest shinobi in the Sand. Possibly, after his father, the strongest."

"And they're sending him to the Chunin Exams?" I pointed out the absurdity.

"Politics," Hiruzen said darkly, and kept going in the same tone. "The Sand's jinchuriki… he isn't like you. That child grew up in hatred, and that couldn't not leave a mark on him… He's a madman. Bloodthirsty. And if we let him near other genin…"

"…" I nodded, pushing him to finish the obvious thing he'd been building toward from the start.

"That's why I'm asking you to participate in the Chunin Shiken and keep an eye on Gaara. He must not destroy Konoha's new generation."

"Mm." I leaned back in the chair. "Okay. I'll go. I kinda also want my classmates to stay alive. Might even save a few asses."

"It makes me happy to see understanding in your heart, Naruto," Hiruzen's shoulders loosened by maybe a millimeter when I agreed. I already had a reason to go—rest. Now I had another.

Sarutobi reached into the bottomless drawer of his desk and pulled out an exam invitation, handing it to me.

"Yeah," I took it and glanced back. "By the way, wasn't Kakashi supposed to give me this? He's waiting by the door, actually."

"He was, but… what I'm asking you to do is very important. And Kakashi, as you know, isn't exactly our best diplomat."

"Heh, yeah."

I smirked, and Hiruzen finally relaxed completely. The conversation seemed over when the old man, in this totally casual tone—like he was asking how many sugar cubes I wanted—threw out:

"Listen, Naruto. Just hypothetically. Not now, but in ten or twenty years. Would you want to become Hokage?"

My eyelids lifted.

The question surprised me, so I actually thought about it.

"Probably… no."

"Why?" Hiruzen clearly expected a different answer, and his shoulders dipped in confusion.

"The job's efficiency is low. Running a Village might be beneficial. But…" My mouth spread into a wide grin. "Running the whole world is way more meaningful. And it'll take about the same amount of time. Yeah—you just handed me a pretty interesting idea. I'll think about it." I nodded at the old man like I was thanking him.

Sarutobi's face turned to stone. But after he recovered, he looked at me like I was a very ambitious teenager whose ambitions were… a bit too high.

"Ahem-ahem. It's probably too early for that kind of talk." Wiser from experience, the old man decided to bury the topic and protect his mental health. "It was good to talk. Thank you for coming by."

"Yeah. Take care."


After nodding to Kakashi, I walked down the Residence corridor, lost in my thoughts. Hiruzen's question—thrown out almost casually—had sparked a really interesting idea, and now it was spreading in my head.

My power—that all-encompassing strength I not only have, but can use and multiply—is the result of a lot of factors. Luck that I even reincarnated, being born into a monstrously talented body, my persistence, my work—sure, all of that matters. But I also understand I wouldn't have achieved even a tenth of this progress if I'd acted alone.

Konoha became an incubator for me. I had plenty of mentors here, and even more people I simply picked things up from. Priceless knowledge from secret scrolls, support and resources from the Hokage, even just the ability to work calmly without fearing for my life—all of it paved my road to where I am now. Because of that, I can't help feeling… grateful to this place. Konoha became my alma mater, let me grow stronger under its "wing." That's why I treat its people a bit warmer than I otherwise would, and why I didn't demand insane money from Hiruzen for my work. He'd already helped me like a king. So much so that if someone "not one of ours" paid the Leaf—even a few billion ryō—they still wouldn't have gotten that kind of help.

But back to the idea… Konoha, the Land of Fire—that's only a small part of the world. And the world is huge. So, theoretically, what if you unify the whole world under a single rule? Remove national conflicts, force everyone to share their developments, unite the best minds and aim resources at common goals… That wouldn't be just a step. That would be a fundamental leap in the speed of progress. For the whole world, and for me personally.

Thanks to the knowledge of specialists from one country, I became insanely strong. It's logical to assume that with the knowledge of the entire planet, I'll become even stronger.

There's a worn-out phrase: "War drives progress." But it's too shallow. Yeah, war forces massive resources into specific developments, mobilizes the best scientists and engineers, and cuts through bureaucratic delays. But at what price? Some people die, others scatter under threat of death, whole generations of specialists get lost, and innovation mostly funnels into military tech while medicine and everyday technology degrade. After the jump, progress freezes—or slowly declines—for decades. It's inefficient.

You need targeted, controlled pressure.

And what if you allow for… a biologically immortal ruler. A tyrant. Whose power is unquestioned, and whose mind is sharp enough to plan centuries ahead. Someone who understands he's going to live on this planet for a very long time, and that it's in his own interest not to drain a country/planet on a "maybe it'll work out" gamble, but to develop it on purpose, with a detailed strategy. He could redirect resources, set tasks for the best minds, bring them together, remove obstacles. Pressure and reward, for motivation, can be applied artificially too. And in the long run, that would bring far more progress than the usual chaotic bursts of wartime innovation.

That's the rational path.

The Ōtsutsuki. I know about them from meta-knowledge. But who comes after them? To face unknown, even stronger enemies, I need constant, uninterrupted progress. A guarantee that every year I'll become stronger. That's the only way to add even a little confidence in my own survival.

Only… nothing works perfectly on the first try. You have to start somewhere.

In the Mist, there's some kind of revolution going on right now, isn't there…? Maybe I should pay them a visit. Practice "global governance" on one country first, and only then go for the whole world.

With thoughts like that, without even noticing it, I walked from the Residence back to my house. The idea was… interesting. Very interesting.

But it needed time.

All these ideas needed time. So why not start after the exam?

A little earlier. The Hokage's Office

"So why did you call for me, Hokage-sama?" Kakashi asked, locking the door behind him.

Hiruzen studied the man who'd entered with a thoughtful look.

Hatake looked different than he had a few months ago. The old apathy was gone; in his single visible eye, a living, assessing fire smoldered. His posture was straighter, more collected.

"You've been showing yourself well lately, Kakashi," Hiruzen began in a calm, leading tone. "Sparring with Naruto-kun did you good. You got your form back fast—your edge. You look like a living person again, not like some ghost from the Memorial Stone."

Kakashi's expression shifted slightly at the mention of the stone, but he stayed silent, only giving a short nod.

"As I reminded all the jonin instructors at the meeting," Sarutobi continued, "the exam is soon. And, as we both understand, your genin—all three—will become chunin. They'll go their own way, and you'll be freed from the duty of directly training them."

Kakashi didn't speak, but his gaze sharpened. He had a bad feeling somewhere behind him, a little below the belt, that this wasn't just polite conversation.

"Where are you going with this, Hokage-sama?" he finally asked.

Hiruzen looked him straight in the eye before his pupils narrowed, like a man making a fateful decision.

"I see you as my successor, Kakashi. The next Hokage."

Kakashi recoiled like he'd been hit in the gut. His eye went wide.

"No… Hokage-sama, that's impossible. I… I'm not suited for it. And you're still full of strength—you can do so much more for the Village."

"Perhaps," Hiruzen agreed, but deep exhaustion slipped into his voice. "But I'm aging, Kakashi. Every year, this burden gets heavier. And besides…" He paused, staring out the window at the Village. "I feel something. The air smells like a storm. This exam… it may bring something bigger than simple trials for genin. And I want to be sure that if something happens to me, Konoha will have someone who can catch the falling Hat of Fire—before it drops into the abyss."

A heavy silence settled in the office. Kakashi lowered his head, and the silver hair that fell forward hid his expression. He thought about those he'd lost, about his mistakes, about the weight he'd tried to run from for so long. And then about a new, weird team that—without realizing it—had started pulling him out of the dark. About his teacher's son.

His kidneys and liver answered with phantom pain, and Hatake huffed with a fleeting, crooked smile.

Finally, he slowly raised his head. There was no shock or fear left in his eye. Only heavy, unshakable resolve.

"If… if it's truly necessary, Hokage-sama… I accept." He swallowed. "With honor, I'll continue the work of the previous Hokage—and of Sensei—until the time comes to pass on the Will of Fire again."

Hiruzen nodded in silence, and in the corner of his eye something gleamed—either pride or sadness.

Sarutobi had made another move that, it seemed, should only make things better.

Now all that remained was to wait and see how fate would answer.

---

If you enjoyed my work, feel free to check out my Patreon. There you can read up to 20 chapters ahead and get early access to any new stuff that I publish

 

[Welydora]

The weather in Konoha today—like almost always—was nice as hell. Warm sun, pleasant to stand under. With a light breeze in my face, I could hear the quiet rustle of leaves as I walked up to the Academy.

It's only been a few months since my class graduated, but that old red building already hits me with a warm little wave of nostalgia. Man… how many times did I fight in there? How much random bullshit did I have to listen to in class?

The exam invitation—turned out it was the same day, just earlier—got handed to my teammates too. It had the date and time I was supposed to show up. So I dragged my ass over. Room 301.

I hadn't even gone a few hundred meters toward my destination when it hit me like lightning.

Sphere Sight showed… a red-haired girl, and the past flooded my head—my parents skewered on a huge claw, Mom forcing a smile through the pain, blood running down her chin… and the helplessness of my weak, infant body.

I shook my head.

For fuck's sake… even now the old nightmares chase me. Whatever. The past should stay the past.

Once I got my head together, I kept walking.

My teammates were waiting for me at the Academy entrance. The exam itself was starting in fifteen minutes.

We said our hellos, and Sakura asked:

"Naruto, are you okay?"

Sasuke threw us an annoyed look because we were holding him up.

"Yeah. Mostly. Just, uh…"

Just in case—so I'd be one hundred percent sure—I made a sliver of my chakra sensory for a moment, to get a better feel for one girl's chakra.

"I found a relative."

"Uzumaki?" Sakura blinked, surprised. Besides me, nobody here knew anyone with that last name.

"Yeah. Her chakra's almost the same as mine was. Well, until recently. Wanna go check it out?"

She nodded. Sasuke, still frowning at all of it, just turned toward the entrance, and we went inside.

The exam was in Room 301, and going by the first number, you had to get up to the third floor. Only the stairwells in this building are weird as hell—you can't just go straight up. To reach the third floor, you have to walk a long stretch of the second-floor corridor first.

And when we were climbing the stairs to the second floor, Sphere Sight showed me another scene that made me roll my eyes.

"Naruto, are you sure you're fine?" Sakura asked calmly, stopping our little procession. Sasuke, walking in front, stopped too and turned back even more pissed, drilling holes in us with his glare.

"Yeah. Different reason this time," I said. "On the second floor, two chunin apparently ran away from a circus and decided to put on a show where they shouldn't. They used Henge to look like teen genin and put genjutsu on the sign for Room 201 so it looks like 301. Now they're blocking the way for this fooled crowd. They're messing with everyone, and… oh, one of the disguised assholes just punched a genin from the crowd." I explained it like I was commentating on something happening right in front of me. "Let's go. It's on our way."

"Oh… okay," Sakura agreed, a little interested.

Once we finally moved, Sasuke snorted and walked forward all proud. Though, judging by the tiny flicker on his face, he was curious too.

When we rounded the corner, the exact scene I described was there.

"And you think you're gonna take the exam?" one of the two blocking the classroom asked with his eyes closed, a light contempt in his voice.

He looked like a guy with a big spiky mop of hair, three bandages on his face, and the handles of some weird weapons with rings on the ends sticking out behind his back.

"Maybe you shouldn't even try," the second backed him up. This one wore a Leaf forehead protector and a tight piece of gear around his neck and part of his jawline.

"Yeah, of course you shouldn't try. Bunch of green-ass little brats," the first continued.

Looks like nobody in the crowd knew those two were under Henge. The Transformation was pretty solid, so no wonder the genin didn't suspect anything.

On the floor in front of them was a boy with a bowl cut in a green jumpsuit I knew way too well. Supporting him was a girl with two hair buns and a pink Chinese-style vest; the rest was standard kunoichi gear. The first was Rock Lee, the second was Tenten—Guy's students. We'd met in passing.

After that last line, the girl supporting the guy on the floor stood up.

"I'm begging you, please let us through," she tried to enter the classroom, but immediately caught a fist to the face—same as her teammate earlier.

"Ha. Now that's real equality," I said with a slight smirk, giving everyone a reason to look at us. "No, I mean, I get it—them." I nodded at the crowd; I didn't recognize anyone else there except one guy from the Hyuga clan. "But you two—why the hell are you putting on this masquerade?"

The guy in the green jumpsuit got up like he hadn't been punched at all.

"Uzumaki-san, glad to see you," he bowed from the waist. I nodded back, then nodded to the girl and the Hyuga too. When he straightened, his eyes locked onto Sakura. He took a step toward her, cheeks turning red. "My name is Rock Lee! I don't know your name, girl-san, but please, go out with me. I will protect you until the day I die!"

After that speech he flashed a sparkling smile, stuck one finger up, and hit that "good guy" pose his sensei does sometimes.

I lifted an eyebrow. Bold.

Sasuke looked surprised too.

Sakura froze for a second, then stared at him with disgust.

"Fuck off, you disgusting creep," she said with a grimace, stepping behind my back.

Fair. The kid's face really wasn't doing him any favors, and that proposal was… yeah. And that's not even counting the main thing…

"Don't be mad, Rock-san. But Sakura's mine." I put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her in for a second; she flushed a little.

It's not like we were officially dating. I thought it was too early for that. But we were close.

Lee understood it his own way. His smile cracked instantly. His eyes went dull for a second.

"I see… That's fair, and it's the right thing. With your looks, you suit each other well. And… I know you, Uzumaki-san—you're a good person. You'll take good care of her."

"Absolutely," I said. "And yeah, I'd advise you not to throw lines like that around. People might start talking about you, Rock-san."

"Huh?" He didn't get it.

But that—and my earlier question about the masquerade—got cut off.

Hyuga Neji stepped toward us. Long dark-brown hair down to mid-back. Brown shorts, a white vest, and his right arm and leg wrapped in bandages. Hinata's cousin.

"Hey you, introduce yourself," he said, looking at Sasuke.

"Before asking someone's name, you should give yours first," the Uchiha replied. He'd only been watching up until now, but irritation was creeping into his voice.

He really wasn't happy we were wasting time on dumb crap.

"How rude," I commented.

"What are you doing?" Tenten walked up to us. There wasn't a mark on her face, which meant she could reinforce her body with chakra at least a little. "We agreed not to draw attention, to act weak. You suggested it yourself, Lee. What the hell happened?"

She asked him. Lee was slouching a bit, staring at me and Sakura with huge sadness. His face looked like it had darkened, broadcasting the inner pain of its owner.

Understandable.

Because a moment ago—since the chance showed up—I wanted to touch some soft, nice-to-the-touch pink hair. So with my hands buried in it, I was massaging my student's head. And judging by her relaxed, pleased look, she was enjoying it a lot.

Noticing Sakura, the Hyuga glanced my way, then shifted his gaze back to the Uchiha.

"This is your first exam, right? How old are you?" the pale-eyed one kept going.

"I'm not obligated to answer your questions," Sasuke said, after flicking a glance at Tenten. He was getting seriously pissed. He came here for an exam, and everyone around him was in the way. If it kept going, it was gonna turn into a fight.

I didn't really care.

"Well, have fun with… all that. We're going," I told them, swept the group with my eyes, and led Sakura to the stairs.

On the third floor we quickly found Room 301. I slid the door open, and we walked into a classroom packed with genin. In a pretty large room, more than a hundred people turned to look at us.

"What's with them?" Sakura asked beside me.

"How would I know? Maybe genin here have a hobby of staring at people," I shrugged, looking for familiar faces.

"Sakura, Naruto, you're here too!" a girl shouted our names and hurried over. Blonde hair tied in a ponytail, bangs covering the right side of her face and one green eye. White arm warmers, a purple top and skirt, and bandages visible on her stomach and legs. That was my sort-of former classmate and Sakura's sort-of friend. She spun her head around and asked, "Where's Sasuke-kun? He did come, right?"

"Good to see you, Ino," I said. "Yeah, he came. He's just…" I paid a little attention to Sphere Sight. "Fighting some guy in the hallway, heh."

"Huh?" she stared at me, not getting it.

"Don't worry about it. He'll be here," I waved it off.

"What? How does that even—?" Even more confused and worried, she turned to her supposed rival. "Sakura, I get Naruto, but how could you leave Sasuke-kun alone?"

Sakura looked her over, then said something straight-up philosophical:

"We didn't talk about it. But I abandoned empty dreams and found a path I can see clearly. I won't follow blind feelings—and I advise you to do the same, old friend. Feelings are fog. Reason is a blade. Only by mastering it can you tame the storm inside and live with dignity, instead of wandering through suffering for no reason."

"…"

I stayed quiet.

That was some samurai quote, wasn't it?

Listening to her, Ino got even more confused. Before, she'd thought Sakura cut her hair because of how intense the mission was—since that was the explanation she'd gotten, even without details. But apparently they didn't talk much otherwise, and my teammate never laid out the full picture. And now it was getting clearer—that mission was tied to Sasuke in a big way, if Sakura was saying shit like this.

"You guys really came to this dumb exam too?" my other former classmate walked up with his hands in his pockets, asking a rhetorical question. Shikamaru Nara—pineapple hair—looked like he was suffering just from being here, same as always. Choji came with him too, still the same fat-looking guy with long messy brown hair sticking out around the cutouts of his headband/underwear thing with Konoha's protector on it. He was tearing through a bag of chips at a pretty good pace.

"Oh, found you!" Kiba bellowed, walking up with his teammates.

"Good afternoon," Hinata greeted politely as she came over too. Shino nodded hello.

"Yeah, hey," I smiled and nodded to the newcomers. "Three teams together. Not bad."

We didn't even get to talk properly before some lunatic came up with an obviously forced accusation.

"Hey, you! Why the hell are you making so much noise?" a white-haired guy in glasses walked up. "Turning this place into a marketplace…"

He kept bitching, then shut up when he met my eyes.

"Shut it, Kabuto. We're having a happy reunion with old acquaintances."

"Um… Uzumaki-san," he adjusted his glasses.

This guy, like me, worked at the hospital. We barely knew each other. Also, I knew him from meta-knowledge, but that's not the point.

"That was pretty rude, don't you think?"

"So was your comment," I said flatly.

"…"

He looked at me with mild annoyance.

"But whatever. It was good seeing everyone. We'll see each other again, but right now I need to step away," I told the group—then grabbed Kabuto by the shoulders (his eyes went wide) and placed him right in front of them.

"Hey, what are you doing?" he protested.

"This guy's failed the chunin exam six times. You can ask him why he's such a dumbass."

And I just turned around.

"Actually, the exam is really difficult…"

"So difficult you failed it six times?" Shikamaru asked.

By that point I was moving deeper into the room. That girl was still stuck in my head.

Still, I could hear and see everything going on with my old classmates just fine.

"Yeah," Kabuto nodded easily and reached into his pouch, pulling out a deck of cards. "And over that time I prepared pretty well. These are Ninja Cards—I collected a lot of information. Interested?" he asked quietly, in a conspiratorial tone.

Right then the classroom door opened again, and a battered Sasuke and Lee walked in, with the rest of Guy's team behind them.

"Sasuke-kun! What happened to you?!" Ino asked loudly, rushing up to him.

"Get lost," he brushed her off. At the same time, all my classmates completely forgot Kabuto existed and focused on Sasuke.

"Better not ask. That team… their leader…" Sasuke stared at the floor with wide eyes, unable to find words. Not surprising—he ran into the Noble Beast, the one who broke up the fight. And Sasuke fought Lee, not Neji. "Freaks," he finally said, picking the most polite word he could manage.

Kabuto looked at them weirdly and, just in case, adjusted his glasses again. Only now did he start showing the cards.

Guy's team wasn't interested, so he only showed them to my former classmates.

He could store information in the cards, but normally you couldn't see it. If he fed the cards his chakra specifically, the card would fill with text and images. First he showed a card listing, in columns, the number of exam participants from each village.

One hundred and fifty-three genin total, according to the card. Then Kabuto moved on to who was who, giving a rundown of each village.

Meanwhile, Uzumaki Naruto

Moving through the crowd at an unhurried pace, I walked up to three genin from the Hidden Grass.

Among them stood a girl, maybe thirteen, with short red hair and red eyes. A Grass forehead protector on her brow, glasses, and swamp-colored clothes—for better camouflage in forest terrain. She stood a short distance away from the two guys, frowning. Her posture, her expression, her chakra—everything screamed sadness, even doom. But it also looked like she'd almost accepted whatever was causing it.

"You're an Uzumaki too," I said as I came up. The girl lifted surprised eyes to me. "My name's Naruto…"

I started introducing myself, but a genin in a black bandanna, with a sword hilt sticking out behind his back, moved toward me and cut me off.

"Step away from her!"

He tried to shove me, but the instant he met my eyes, he froze.

"S-sorry," he stammered—partly for everyone watching, but really because of my genjutsu—and backed off.

"Shigeri, what the hell's wrong with you?" the second one stepped up, wearing a big light scarf, but after he met my eyes too, he swallowed loudly and retreated to his friend.

"They won't interfere."

I said it not just to the girl, but to the other Grass genin gathered around. There were fifteen of them total. Seeing what happened to their two buddies, they decided not to get involved.

So I wouldn't scare the kunoichi even more, I chose not to pull a dead-eyed face—let alone an angry one. I let out a light breath and spoke in a softer tone:

"Once, I was an Uzumaki by blood. Now the lineage of the Red-Haired Devils is just a blurred part of me. But our blood is similar… and you remind me of someone. I don't know what kind of life you had before this. But you're the only relative I've met in this life… so I'm offering you a move here, to the Leaf. Maybe even to my place."

Just said it, straight up. I was drawn to her—like to a lost relative, like to someone who reminded me of Kushina, and also… like to an underrated anime character I used to like, except now she was standing in front of me alive and real.

"I-I don't understand," the girl finally spoke. "You're an Uzumaki too?"

"Not pureblood, as you can see," I nodded at my hair color—though I meant something deeper than that. "And I'm offering you shelter."

A serious thought process showed on the redhead's face. Around us, the Grass genin started exchanging looks like I was inviting their kunoichi into a cult. Still, nobody dared to mess with me.

And before she answered, I continued:

"Konoha shinobi wear the Uzumaki village crest—Uzushio—on the backs of our flak vests. Our villages had a deep alliance while Uzushio existed. And the Leaf won't abandon an ally. You included."

At that moment one of the remaining Grass genin got brave enough to take a step toward us. One look from me, and he immediately changed his mind.

"I'm not forcing you. I'm giving you a choice. Here in Konoha, my authority isn't up for debate. I can make the relocation happen even if the entire Hidden Grass is against it."

"That's…" She didn't know what to do, which was fair—I walked up and dumped a whole information bomb on her. "I-I don't know… I probably can't…"

I tilted my head a little, confused. My face stayed relaxed, no threat on it.

Then I straightened and turned to the guy with the sword.

"You. Tell me. Does your village keep Uzumaki held down?"

"Her mother," he started answering honestly under my suggestion, nodding toward the girl. "And she too has special chakra that can heal. You just have to bite… Her mother pays for being allowed to live in Grass by healing people. Karin became a genin, and now she'll have to heal us here if it's needed."

The Grass genin started glancing around nervously. Shigeri had clearly said too much. Not his fault.

The girl visibly shrank at his words. She obviously didn't like the fate of being a walking medicine cabinet.

"I see…" I said without emotion, then turned to her. "Karin, nice to meet you. My offer changes: I'm offering sanctuary not just to you, but to your mother too—and every Uzumaki you know. And I promise that… here they'll live with dignity, without violence and without being forced."

She froze, torn. I could see she understood my offer now, and thinking it through, she wanted to believe it—but she doubted, because she didn't have real proof I could actually keep my word. And she wasn't fully convinced about why I was helping either… smart, suspicious girl. With the eyes of her—now I get it—"teammates" in quotes on her, it was hard. But she didn't shut her brain off. She was still actively thinking something like: What the hell is even happening?!

That hesitation was fixable.

I had a fast way, but it wasn't perfect and would scare her a bit. Sadly, it would work—and in the end it would bring the least negativity.

"Your chakra—I can feel it—doesn't just heal. Your real talent is sensitivity. Use it on me." After I said that, I spread my arms in an open gesture.

That should settle whether I could back up my words.

Her heart was pounding.

Yeah… like a scared cat.

But to my satisfaction, she listened. Closing her eyes, she sent a thin wave of chakra over me.

And immediately recoiled. Her face twisted in shock—and then fear.

Karin felt a bottomless, flowing ocean of energy inside me. Chakra bigger than every genin in this room put together. But that wasn't what scared her.

Deep inside, at the very center of that ocean, she found something else. Something ancient, dark, stuffed with concentrated hatred. A terrifying, monstrous presence curled up in my stomach.

Real, animal fear hit her face.

"You don't have anything to be afraid of," I said, trying to calm her down. "The creature inside me is a bijuu, and it won't break free. No matter how hard it tries. Because in the end, I'm stronger."

After that, I held my hand out to her.

Breathing deep, Karin stared at it.

She looked at my outstretched hand, then at her own scared reflection in my calm eyes, then back at my hand. She thought about her mother, about the scars waiting for her, about despair and dead ends. Then she looked at me—another Uzumaki—whose presence seemed to rise right in front of her eyes. A guy carrying a terrifyingly ancient, all-powerful monster, standing there not broken, but confident—and strong enough to lock that thing inside himself.

"I'm sure it'll be better for you and your mother here."

The Grass genin started exchanging looks even harder. They didn't like where this was going.

"You promise… they won't use my mom?"

Her eyes didn't leave mine, and her chakra uncertainly wrapped around me.

I smiled. Her natural sensor talent was the strongest I'd met. With that kind of sensitivity, she could probably even catch the Third's lies—but not mine. Of course, she didn't know that. And she didn't know I wasn't going to lie.

"I promise."

The girl's chakra flared with a whole fan of emotions, and her palm reached for mine on its own.

Something inside her snapped loose.

The moment our hands met—and I smiled at Karin even more encouragingly, like she'd just jumped into an ice hole—several Grass genin, finally unable to take it, lunged our way.

But a sudden, loud crack of shattered ceramic somewhere off to the side stopped them cold.

---

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[Welydora]

Everyone turned toward the spot where my former classmates were standing.

A small conflict had already sparked there: Kabuto, while talking about the genin from different countries, had spoken about the Sound genin—only three of them were sent here—with obvious contempt. The Sound team's leader, a hunched man wrapped in bandages, with a straw raincoat on his back and some kind of chakra bracer strapped to his forearm, obviously didn't like that. So yeah, people started moving.

That guy stepped toward Kabuto with the device held out like a weapon. But…

So fast none of the genin even noticed, Sakura flashed in front of him, grabbed the Sound ninja by the bracer, forced him to stop—then clenched her hand, and with a crunch snapped the device.

"Hands. Keep 'em. To yourself," she said coldly.

"Sakura!" I shouted, happy as hell with how decisively she handled it, and waved my free hand to catch her attention. "You don't have to protect the white-haired one. We're barely even acquainted."

She looked at me, surprised. Then she snorted, shoved his now-unarmed arm away, and stepped aside like she was saying, Fine. Fight, then.

Flashing an "OK" sign, I went back to Karin.

"Since you agreed, we act now."

Two clones popped up on either side of me.

"I'll go talk to the Hokage about you right away," the one on my left nodded.

"And you can leave with me right now. This exam doesn't matter anymore."

Karin turned her head between the three of us. Then, kind of slowed down, she let go of my hand, took a step to the second clone, and grabbed his hand instead—since he'd offered his palm.

Right then—right now, they thought—the Grass genin were about to riot.

But smoke tags blew up by the entrance, and the doorway to the classroom flooded with smoke.

Under that cover, Karin left with the clone. Right before disappearing, she threw me—the original—a hopeful look.

The first clone simply poofed away, while I, not giving a damn about the Grass genin anymore, headed back to mine.

"EVERYONE SHUT UP! You're screaming like little kids!" a big guy roared when the smoke had almost cleared. He wore a black coat and a bandana, and his face was carved up with scars. Behind him, more than a dozen chunin in gray uniforms stood in "cool" poses, hands behind their backs.

"You're the loudest one here," I said irritably, and the shinobi snapped around toward me.

But when he saw who'd said it, the examiner decided to pretend he hadn't heard anything and turned back around like nothing happened.

"Sorry for the delay. The first stage of the Chunin Exams. I'm your examiner, Ibiki Morino." He swept his gaze over us. "Take your seats. We're starting."

Meanwhile, after getting their agreement, I took Hinata and Sakura by the arms and led them to the same desk.

As I walked, my eyes caught on a red head. Gaara of the Sand—Shukaku's jinchuriki, and a Magnet Release kekkei genkai user. Hiruzen had asked me to keep an eye on him. Alright.

When everyone had sat down, the examiner was about to continue, but one of the Grass genin interrupted.

"Morino-san, a Konoha genin took our kunoichi!"

He said it and waited. The scarred man nodded with stiff composure.

"Yeah, I saw. Who was on her team?"

Shigeru and his scarf-wearing buddy hesitantly raised their hands.

"Only full teams can participate. You two—out."

"(＃°Д°)" The genin who'd just tried to rat me out gaped in shock.

"(0_0) (0_0)" The two getting disqualified went wide-eyed too, totally speechless.

They were clearly expecting something else.

Seeing they weren't moving, Ibiki made a circling motion with his finger. Two gray-uniformed chunin immediately walked over and grabbed them by the arms.

"No!" Shigeru kicked and thrashed.

"I'm gonna complain!" the scarf guy screamed.

Nobody listened. They just got carried out.

Kicking two genin out instantly cranked the tension up and made almost everyone tense. The room went quiet. Ibiki broke the silence by turning to the chalkboard.

"Listen carefully. There are several rules in this exam, and one of them is: after we start, you don't ask questions." He tapped the chalk against the board and started writing as he spoke. "The first stage is a written test. Everyone starts with ten points. There are ten questions. You answer one and keep one point. In the end, we total up the points of everyone on the same team. And one more thing—if the proctors—" by then, the gray-uniformed chunin had already taken seats around the sides of the classroom, "—notice you blatantly cheating, you lose two points immediately. If you run out of points, the genin is removed from the exam along with their team."

He hammered the last part down and checked his watch.

"You have exactly one hour. Your sheet has only nine questions. The last one—the tenth—I'll give you fifteen minutes before time's up. Begin!"

After setting a nasty mood, Ibiki started pacing the edges of the room, making the atmosphere even heavier with that grim look of his. For the record, this guy works in Interrogation—actually, he's the boss there—so yeah, he knows how to scare people.

I lowered my eyes to the answer sheet and started reading. The questions were pretty damn interesting. A lot of them didn't give exact data, forcing you to write an answer based on your own assumptions.

Some were just hard to calculate. Others required specific knowledge. Like question eight—you needed chemistry, and they don't really teach that properly at the Academy.

After reading everything, I put a finger on the sheet. A light pulse of chakra—and every blank space filled in with a cocky, perfect calligraphic script. Figured I'd show off a bit on this exam. Burned the letters in like I was making a fuinjutsu seal, without damaging the paper.

Then, activating a mental technique, I linked up with Hinata and Sakura.

I wasn't worried about the girls at my sides in the first place—they were smart enough to write the test themselves. Sakura had the knowledge for it, and Hinata could easily cheat with the Byakugan.

But through the mind-link, we also got to talk about why I'd approached that red-haired girl at all.

Both of my longtime friends were genuinely touched when they found out Karin had basically been invited here as a walking med-kit, while her mother—apparently under the excuse of "protection"—was being kept in the Hidden Grass in, let's say, shitty conditions, already being used as that same "med-kit" right now.

I'd still have to deal with my relative. But my clones would handle that; right now, we had an exam.

After we finished talking about the redhead, we drifted to other topics, and time flew for us. Not for everybody else.

Minute after minute passed, and more and more genin realized they weren't going to write this test on their own. So they started trying to cheat.

The hunched Sound ninja—the one who probably could release sound waves—sat there looking a bit upset. Not surprising: he'd just had his expensive gadget broken, and that also cut his combat options down pretty hard. Now he was listening to the scratch of pencils and using those air vibrations to figure out what other shinobi were writing.

Sasuke activated his Sharingan and used it to copy the hand movements of someone filling in answers.

Shino had his bugs help him cheat.

Kiba had his dog—perched on his head, it could see a bunch of people's papers and somehow relay what it saw to its owner with quiet barks. Not really clear how, but apparently the dog boy understood his pet just fine.

Guy's team had, even before the chunin arrived, fixed mirrors to the ceiling and copied answers using them.

Five minutes in, a kunai slammed into one examinee's answer sheet. One of the proctors announced that genin had been caught five times, and he and his whole team were kicked out of the room.

After that…

No, genin didn't keep getting thrown out immediately.

My clone who'd been with the Hokage slipped into the classroom under an invisibility technique and passed me an interesting little letter. Then he dispelled, dumping all his memories into me.

It all worked out pretty diplomatically. Now, to deal with the Uzumaki problem in Grass fast, I just needed to send another clone there. Of course with that letter—and, just in case, with a whole lot of chakra.

Still, I didn't want to make a scene by creating a clone right in the middle of the classroom. Sure, it'd be fun to piss off the exam staff, but there'd be plenty of chances later, and these particular guys hadn't done anything to me.

So I made a shadow clone out in the hallway instead. Then I put a Flying Thunder God mark on the letter—and a second later I watched it simply vanish from my hands.

After that, I explained to the girls where the paper had come from and why it mattered, still killing the boredom with conversation.

And then, with some time between incidents, more and more people started getting disqualified. A lot of them screamed, tried to argue with the proctors, refused to leave. But the proctors didn't give a shit about their demands or begging and carried them out the exact same way they'd carried out the Grass genin.

Soon it was time for the last, tenth question.

"Time," Ibiki's rough voice rang out through the room. "But before I ask the tenth question, I'm adding a couple more rules. You have to decide whether you'll answer it. If your answer is no, you immediately lose all your points and you're out—along with your team. However…" He paused—heavy as hell for a lot of people—then continued in a threatening tone, "If you choose to answer, but can't…" An even heavier pause. "You will lose the chance to ever become a chunin."

"Does that even happen?! People take this exam multiple times!" Kiba jumped up and shouted.

Ibiki just started laughing.

"Guess you're just unlucky. This year I'm the examiner, and I decide how it's run. If you're not confident, raise your hand and leave with your team."

A few seconds passed. One genin raised a hand—then more. They started filing out in an almost nonstop stream, and the room got emptier and emptier.

But my team—and my other former classmates—had determination on their faces. For some of them, the exam had become a brutal ordeal, but they'd decided to go all the way.

Not even a minute later, barely more than a third of the original number remained. Ibiki continued:

"So. Those of you still in the classroom… you pass."

"Wha—?!" Kiba yelled again.

"Whether you'd keep going despite the fear of being stuck a genin forever—that was the tenth question," the first examiner explained. "A chunin's job isn't just hard. It carries responsibility. Sometimes, with no knowledge—no real idea at all—about the enemy, shinobi still have to complete the mission! Because the result can save a village… or doom its people to death. Those who don't have enough resolve simply can't be chunin!"

"So those nine questions were a complete waste of time?" a female voice called from somewhere behind us.

"Not at all. This was a test of your ability to obtain information. That plays a very important role in a shinobi's life, and it can cost a lot of lives too. You can't always pull truthful information out of an enemy—I already said what that can lead to. You have to know how to get it indirectly as well. That's why we expelled the ones who were worst at it."

Someone in the class was about to ask another question, but the window shattered and a figure wrapped in cloth flew into the room. Pinning the cloth to opposite walls with kunai, the newcomer covered Ibiki. The arrival turned out to be a girl with dark purple hair and light brown eyes. From her neck down to her thighs, her body was covered in protective mesh. Over that she wore an orange skirt, and on top she had a light beige open coat. On her legs, besides standard shinobi footwear, she also wore metal guards up to her knees.

Immediately, she barked in an indignant voice:

"Hey, you! Why the hell are you so cheerful?! I'm your second examiner—Anko Mitarashi! The second stage starts now! Everyone, with me!" She finished by throwing her hand up like she was about to lead a charge.

Ibiki stepped out from behind the cloth, annoyed.

"You can't read the atmosphere? Look at them. Yeah, some of them look like they just gave birth—they're that relaxed. But they're not cheerful," he said, stepping forward.

Anko looked around the classroom. Everyone was staring at her weirdly, and she got a little embarrassed. Then, after counting the genin, she turned to Morino.

"Sixty-nine? Ibiki, I thought you'd let fewer through."

"No, it's fine. That's a bit more than a third."

While they bickered, I lazily stared ahead and waited.

"Well, I'll cut that down by at least half!" she grinned at us a little viciously. "Follow me!"

She shouted and jumped out the window, taking off somewhere.

"About damn time," I stood up with the rest of the genin. "We should've played cards."

"Naruto… this is a serious exam," Sakura said, and Hinata backed her up with a look.

"Ugh, you two are so damn proper. Can't make quick cash that way," I said as we headed for the window. "Hey, did I ever tell you how I screwed over that little aristocrat?"

"Yes, Naruto-kun. A fake identity… that was unethical," Hinata said calmly this time.

"Tch…" I hopped out the window and waited for the girls to get outside too. "I need to fleece someone else. Otherwise I've got nothing to brag about."

All I got back was two sighs.

And that's how we headed toward the start of the second stage.

Though honestly, my clones had it more interesting… The last one had already reached the Hidden Grass Village.

A Little Earlier. First Shadow Clone's POV

"Yo. You busy?" I walked into the Hokage's office.

"Naruto? You're in the middle of the exam," Hiruzen said, surprised, setting aside his usual paperwork. "Did something happen?"

"I'm a clone. And yeah—basically, we're about to have at least two more Uzumaki living here."

I didn't waste time. I dumped everything on him as-is and walked over to a chair to sit down.

For a few seconds, Hiruzen's face cycled through expressions before stopping on baffled confusion.

"…My sensors reported that among the Grass genin there's supposedly an Uzumaki. But where did the second come from? And… no, wait. Wait, Naruto! Don't tell me you're going to— No! You can't! That's an international scandal!"

He finally hit the core of it.

"The second Uzumaki is that girl's mother," I answered the first question in a calm tone. "And I can, actually. They're keeping my relatives in awful conditions and forcing them into… not the nicest stuff. There's nothing wrong with me showing up and solving the problem myself."

For some reason, the old man went pale. Then he snapped again:

"No! Under no circumstances! I'll handle it myself! This is the Hokage's business!"

"You sure?"

"Yes!"

"Then it needs to be solved today…"

I said, and then I told him some details about Karin's mother's life.

With how well I understood chakra, I had a good idea how healing through biting could work. And the important part isn't that it's horribly inefficient—it's why it works at all. Karin's chakra and her mother's are extremely dense and rich with life energy, sure, but a simple bite honestly isn't enough for a visible effect. How much energy can you squeeze out of cells damaged by teeth? Too little. So I was ninety-nine percent sure the shinobi weren't just biting the woman—they were also using their chakra to basically pull the life energy out of her. Which meant the energy wasn't draining only from the bite spot, but from her entire body, and in much larger amounts.

Do I even need to say how dangerous that can be for Karin's mother? Definitely. If they drain too much energy out of her at once and she doesn't recover in time, the woman will simply die.

Taking that into account, Hiruzen quickly scribbled out a letter to the leader of the Hidden Grass. And with that paper in hand, I'd be able to solve all the Grass problems without massive "pest control." Meaning I wouldn't have to kill anyone, cripple anyone, or even torture anyone. Basically, the Hokage was the one solving it—I just had to act as the messenger.

With that in hand, I—the clone—slipped back to the original under an invisibility technique, handed over the letter, and dispelled.

All so my other double could head to the Hidden Grass.

---

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[Welydora]

Barely ten minutes after I was created, I was already hovering over the Village Hidden in the Grass.

Nothing special, really—lots of stone buildings shinobi can slap together fast, worn-out streets, and that's it. Sure, it was way better than the Land of Waves, but it was still nowhere near Konoha.

The country Grass is in sits between the Lands of Fire and Earth. And during one little war—if I remember right—my body's "dad" (the one from before the upgrades) and his genin squad blew up a crucial supply bridge here. Kannabi Bridge. That pretty much put a period on the war.

Also, from my meta-knowledge, there was supposed to be some kind of shinobi prison here with some freaky-ass thing inside… except I never found anything about it in the Leaf's textbooks. No prison. At least, nothing that sticks out.

And now, after flying over the whole damn country, I'm only more convinced there's nothing here from my memories. Just another village like a bunch of others—getting dragged through the Great Villages' wars. This one, specifically, survives by leaning on "diplomacy."

I dropped onto the roof of a prism-shaped building—basically their knockoff Hokage Residence—and the only ninja on duty stared at me like I'd fallen out of the sky.

A guy in the swamp-green uniform they wear here, with a stupid look on his face.

"Uhh…" was all he managed. Truly a master of words.

"I'm an envoy from Konoha. Take me to whoever's in charge. His name's Hayame Juro," I added, remembering who the letter was addressed to.

"Kid, how the hell did you do that?" He pointed at the sky, then dragged his finger down, miming flight.

…

Instead of answering, I just raised an eyebrow and asked, "You're not local, are you? Because you sure as hell don't look like a shinobi from the 'diplomatic village.'"

"Uhh—!" he started to get offended, then finally noticed my Konoha forehead protector. "Huh?! Wait, you're actually from the Leaf?!"

"Yeah. Now move your ass."

Eyes bulging, he spun around, yanked open the door he'd been guarding, and—straight-up forgetting I existed—bolted inside.

Blinking a couple times, I walked in at a normal pace. My sphere-sight sees the whole building anyway; either I'd spot where this weirdo ran, or I'd find someone with a longer attention span on the way.

I didn't. The local chief that shinobi ran to, instead of sending someone to fetch me, started riding his subordinate about what the hell even happened. And when he finally got it on the third try, he immediately started pressing even harder—like, are you sure I'm Uzumaki?

I got there pretty fast and opened the door on the two of them.

A long, skinny old man around sixty, slicked-back gray hair, dressed in the same swampy colors but way neater, was looming over that rooftop guard. The old man's face was pissed as hell.

But the moment I showed up—less than a second—his eyes flicked over my face, went wide like he hadn't actually believed his underling, and then narrowed into flattering little slits.

"Jinchūriki-sama," he said, taking a wide step toward me, away from his shinobi. "What brings you to our humble village?"

"Blood," I snapped.

His eyes widened again for a moment.

Noting the reaction and giving a satisfied little hum, I added, "I'm Uzumaki. I know you've got my relatives living here."

I reached for my bracer, pulled the letter out of a seal, and tossed it onto the floor in front of him.

Those slit-eyes cracked open again.

Yeah. Zero self-control. And this guy calls himself a diplomat.

"Konoha has something to say about this, too."

He lowered his gaze and spotted the Hokage's seal.

Hayame started sweating—half from the irritation of being humiliated like that, half from fear.

As the head of a "diplomatic" village, he understood a lot. Jinchūriki are always dangerous, even the young ones. Yagura became Mizukage around that age, and after getting a tailed beast he should've been even stronger. And on top of that, the kid in front of him was an Uzumaki—whose relatives Grass had apparently been using in a pretty damn inhuman way. If he pissed me off, this could end in a slaughter.

Even scarier: jinchūriki are the balance of the world. Even if Grass somehow managed to get rid of this blond, Konoha would be very likely to start a war Kusa wouldn't survive. They're diplomats; they're used to feeding people bullshit with a smile, not swinging metal around.

Sure, a world war would come later, once the other Great Villages learned a bijū had vanished. But by the time they got moving, Grass would already be ruins.

So, better safe than sorry, the Grass leader decided to fold—he crouched down and picked the letter up off the floor.

Supposedly there were "claims" inside… and Hayame was already screwed before he even read a word. Just by showing up, this Uzumaki had put him on all fours—literally. So what the hell was in that letter?!

Tense, the Grass leader started reading.

While the boss was busy, the rooftop guard—seeing I wasn't stopping him—washed himself out of there, and it was just me and this lanky bastard.

As he read, his face got sadder and sadder. Yeah. Makes sense.

In short, Hiruzen—playing the wise, slick-ass leader—first expressed official "joy" and "concern" about the "recently discovered" fact that surviving Uzumaki were living in the Village Hidden in the Grass. Then he immediately appealed to an ancient, unbreakable treaty between Konoha and Uzushio, according to which the Leaf is the official patron and security guarantor for every clan member. So he moved the whole letter from "a simple request" into "a lawful, legally justified demand," basically shoving Hayame's face into the fact he'd violated an international agreement.

That "agreement with the Uzumaki" was heavily exaggerated, same as its legal weight. But the Grass leader swallowed it—and got impressed.

Next, disguising a threat as friendly concern, the Hokage expressed "regret" over the "inhumane" exploitation of the Uzumaki's healing abilities. He subtly hinted that such desperate methods could be seen by neighbors as a sign of military weakness, dealing a crushing blow to Grass's reputation—the most valuable asset for a village of diplomats. That move pressured him psychologically and also showed Konoha knew about Grass's internal problems, making their position even more vulnerable.

Near the end, Hiruzen offered a "civilized" way out: immediately transferring every Uzumaki into Konoha's jurisdiction and paying "compensation" for years of service, letting the incident get resolved without extra publicity. In other words, an ultimatum—a carefully thought-out diplomatic maneuver that left the Grass leader no choice except to obey. Refusing wouldn't just mean losing face and reputation—it would mean a direct conflict with a Great Village that has both "legal" and "moral" high ground. A nice little diplomatic zugzwang.

And at the very end, Hiruzen added he'd like to see his colleagues in Grass show "nobility." That they'd pay for their mistakes out of their own pockets, not out of innocent civilians' taxes. And for that, Hiruzen would be sending inspectors from Konoha.

That last part the old Konoha fossil added at my request, whining that Ibiki has something to learn from me. I told him it was totally fair, and we, like… we should fuck over the people who aren't us.

"Better start getting your property ready, Juro," I noted with a smile when I saw from his doomed face that he'd finished reading.

"Of course, Uzumaki-sama," he mumbled, eyes lowered, still saying it in a tone like he meant it. But his chakra made it crystal clear how miserable he was.

He got hit with such crushing sadness it felt like if I told him to go to the main square, pull his pants down, and chop off his dick, he'd be less upset. Looks like he doesn't have much to his name, and Konoha demanded a lot. After paying it all, someone's gonna end up out on the street with his colleagues—bare ass, and still with debts.

Though yeah, I lied about the "fairness." In the future, I can imagine Karin and I might get closer. And considering what these devils did to my possible—like, if you look really far into a possible future—mother-in-law… after they pay everything, it wouldn't hurt to write numbers on their foreheads.

But that's future shit. And even if it comes to revenge, I won't be first in line, or even second. I'll be third.

After that we clarified details: the inspection schedule for the near future; I, sensing lies, reviewed the full list of "debtors" so I could point out exactly who to check. Later I also walked through their properties to document everything, so Leaf people could track it and make sure it all goes where it's supposed to.

Meanwhile, while we worked… no, Hayame's people didn't bring me Karin's mother or other Uzumaki—because they weren't here. But the events were tied to that woman.

Secret Shadow Clone Uzumaki Naruto's POV

Walking into the Grass leader's place can, in a lot of cases, put the whole village on alert. While the other clone went to Hayame, I—the clone—went to the Uzumaki mother right away. So Grass shinobi wouldn't have a chance to reach her first and, just in case, grab her as a hostage.

Paranoia. But what if?

In front of me stood a small, old house. This was where I felt chakra similar to Karin's. And inside was a woman with very noticeable red hair.

No guards at all. I walked up, knocked, and the door opened soon after.

First confused, then staring in shock at the Konoha forehead protector on my brow, a tall woman appeared—about thirty-five. She wore a white dress and a soft lilac floor-length cloak, tied in a bow at the chest. Gray eyes. Straight hair cut to her chin, parting to either side of her face—kinda like her daughter's. And a tired face.

"Hello. I'm Uzumaki Naruto. Can I come in?" I asked, and at the sound of my last name her eyes widened even more.

After a brief pause, she nodded and let me in. The place looked pretty poor.

"My name is Akane," she said, closing the door. "What brings a child from Konoha to this backwater? Uzumaki… I didn't think any of us were still alive."

Pretty soon she led me—friendly, but not quite—to a low table and poured tea. "Not quite," because Karin's mom kept glancing at me with a blank face, while her eyes stayed sharp as hell.

"Family, I guess. And don't call me a child. I'm already an adult."

For a moment something like Yeah, sure flashed in her eyes, but when she noticed my face twitch, she just nodded.

"Fine. I'll take it as given. You wanted to talk?"

"Not only." I shook my head and held my hand out, bending fingers down one by one. "First I wanted to tell you I know your daughter. Then I wanted to brag about my capabilities. And then I wanted to offer you a move to Konoha. Consider it this way: out of pure kindness and attachment, I decided to solve all your problems. All that's left is picking a little house in the Leaf and packing your stuff here."

"Mhm…" After listening, her face turned thoughtful. Not like she was considering the offer—more like she was doubting my mental health.

"Ahem," I cleared my throat. "Okay. Let's move on to the real arguments."

Focusing for a moment on my link with the clone, under Akane's stunned stare a break opened in space beside me, and a hand stuck out holding a letter.

When I took it and set it on the table in front of her, the break closed.

"That was an S-rank space-time technique," I said calmly. "And I have way more destructive techniques in my arsenal. Also… I'm a jinchūriki."

Akane flinched.

"Y-you said you know my daughter… What do you and Konoha want from us?"

I sighed.

"I didn't want to scare you. But I needed you to take me seriously. And first of all… we're—maybe distant, but family…"

Akane's piercing eyes didn't leave me. But her feelings were a whole storm. She couldn't fully believe me—especially my selfless desire to help. Considering how she lived here, she must've formed the kind of worldview where everyone always wants something from her. Like they wanted her to heal shinobi here. Still, my looks mattered—I didn't look like some hardened politician, I looked like a teen who might actually have some decent feelings.

A faint smile showed on my face.

"Karin wasn't easy to convince either. You raised her well, Akane-san. Read the letter—it's from the Hokage to the local chief."

Her face was still full of contradictions. What exactly I'd convinced her daughter of, and how, wasn't clear, but it was scary anyway. But at the same time, my face, posture—everything was open, like I wasn't about to do anything bad.

She carefully took the letter and read.

While she did, I sipped tea. Tasty, by the way.

"This…" She was practically speechless after finishing.

"Exactly. Grass will pay for your service—and yes, to you specifically. And yeah, I can promise you this: in Konoha nobody will force you to do anything. Same for your daughter. If you want, we can put her through an accelerated course at the Ninja Academy. Or you can stay far away from that craft and just live however you want."

"But… I still don't understand. What's the benefit for you?"

I closed my eyes.

Why is she so damn smart? Always hunting for a catch. I mean, sure—this trait probably helped my relative survive this long. But it makes my life harder. It would be easier if she just believed in my holiness and happily ran after me to Konoha squealing… though honestly, my psyche probably wouldn't have survived that specific kind of cringe.

"I'll repeat it. We're related by blood. And also I… I'm just looking for a circle to hang with. Right now we don't mean much to each other. But in the future that can change."

Her sharp gaze landed on me again, and emotions flickered in it… sympathy and understanding?

"I… understand. Karin needs someone she can just talk to, too. And we accept your offer, Naruto-san."

"Awesome," I said, smiling like a satisfied cat.

Mu-ha-ha-ha! See? Looking like a teenager can actually help. I'm sure she finally saw me as just a kid who lacked companionship. That's a deep enough reason. And it's a reason she gets. Because her daughter, in a strange village, probably didn't make good friends either. So she projected Karin's loneliness onto me.

I waved my hand, and a passage opened next to us. And inside it, under the woman's shocked stare, appeared…

A Little Earlier. Second Shadow Clone Uzumaki Naruto's POV

Walking with Karin holding onto my arm, I felt this kind of tremble coming off her toward me. Still, my relatively plain look seemed to smooth it out. And judging by the looks sliding to our hands, the contact calmed her down.

We'd just left the Konoha department that handles property sales inside the village. With the keys in hand, we were heading to check out a house. I suggested we look at this one first, and my relative agreed.

Most of the time she stayed quiet, gathering her thoughts. Only now did she ask a serious question:

"So… what's going to happen to me and Mom?"

"You'll just live here. Like I said," I shrugged. "We'll buy a house now, maybe. This one looks good."

We walked another dozen meters in silence.

"We don't have that kind of money…" she said.

"Not a problem. I can buy you ten houses. Don't worry."

She looked at me again, still quiet. Then, with resolve, she finally started:

"I don't want to live in debt. How can I be useful to you… or Konoha?"

And she stared at me like: If it won't hurt my mother, and it lets us live here safely, I'll agree to anything.

"Hah." I snorted. "If it's that important to you, you and your mom are already rich enough to buy a few houses and live here your whole lives without working."

"Huh?"

By that point, the first clone had finished the meeting with the Hokage, so I told her how much money her mother was going to get from Grass. So much it'd be enough for grandkids, and even great-great-grandkids, if you don't blow it all like an idiot.

"W-what?!" she blurted, shocked. "But… it hasn't even been half an hour…"

"The power of clones! Ha-ha!"

With my laughter, we reached the place.

"By the way, about why I wanted to check this house first." I pointed with my free hand at a mansion nearby. "My house is right there. You can come over whenever you want. I can even set aside a room for you permanently."

Karin looked where I pointed, then looked back at me.

"Should we go in this one now?" I asked, nodding at a sturdy, reasonably spacious house.

"Yeah…"

I clicked the lock and we stepped into the entryway. Took off our shoes, went into the living room… and with a quiet sound, space split into a diamond shape next to us, then stretched into a doorway about two meters by one and a half.

On the other side, frozen, stood a woman with gray eyes and red hair. The clone, turned into chakra, rushed into me and dispersed.

Slowly turning her head and lifting it a little, Karin asked:

"Naruto… are you a god?"

"More like a shinobi," I answered with a smirk to the younger redhead, then turned to the older one.

She was staring blankly at our joined hands.

"Uh… Akane-san, there's nothing between us. Don't stare like that…"

The woman's eyes widened. She looked back—there was no clone anymore—then looked at us again. Then she stepped uncertainly through the portal, throwing an uncertain glance behind her as it smoothly closed.

Akane looked at her daughter with something like relief.

Karin looked at our hands with a whole cocktail of emotions, then finally loosened her grip, pulled her hand free, and waited with impatience on her face until Akane stepped out fully.

"This…" Akane started, but didn't get to finish.

"Mom!" Karin rushed her and almost knocked her over.

She tried to keep her emotions under control, but here she just snapped.

She jumped onto the woman, clinging tight, and then… relief hit her like a wave. Her mom was here—her own person, someone she could rely on—and it was like a weight fell off her shoulders.

Akane, obviously, hugged her daughter warmly.

They stayed like that for about twenty seconds while I just stood off to the side.

But all good things end, or so Karin probably thought, when Akane finally lifted her head and turned it toward me.

"Sorry, Naruto-san. We're probably holding you up."

"Eh, it's fine." I waved a hand. "I'm a shadow clone, and you're not distracting the original from his exam. Let's check the house—and if you don't like it, we'll go to the next one."

After that… I got hit with a whole flood of gratitude from two Uzumaki. My help before felt unreal to them, but now that they'd reunited, it finally sank in that this was all actually happening.

And then we did what I'd suggested.

The place got approved, and when Karin mentioned I lived nearby, it was bought without much hesitation. Of course, you can't do everything in a day, and Akane would have to mess with paperwork. But with me, it won't take long—we already paid the deposit today, and what's left is just formalities.

Next came the move. Grabbing things with chakra threads and wrapping them in chakra, I worked like a whole crew of movers. So in no time, all their stuff was transferred.

Then we went shopping. Basically, it was work for the whole day and then some. But that was already a few hours later, after they received the first funds from Grass… and for that, like for the earlier help, I got a whole lot of thanks from Akane and Karin.

Meanwhile, the original was going through the second stage of the exam.

---

If you enjoyed my work, feel free to check out my Patreon. There you can read up to 20 chapters ahead and get early access to any new stuff that I publish

 

[Welydora]

A bit earlier. Original Uzumaki Naruto

We walked up to a training ground I knew. Heh… way back when, I trashed two booths here. Wonder if the wildlife's still just as cocky.

A tall chain-link fence blocked our way to a forest of massive trees. Shi no Mori—the Forest of Death, that's what they called this place. Gigantic trees, nearly a hundred meters tall, and the local fauna matched. Basically, everything was the same as ever.

When everyone finally made it, Anko started her speech, and I got to checking out the crowd.

All my old classmates passed the first stage, same as Guy's team. There were also a few more Konoha teams—one of them had Kabuto with two shinobi I didn't recognize. Suna's team—the one with the Kazekage's kids—made it through too, along with a couple other Suna teams. Then there were teams from Rain, one from Hidden Waterfall, and one from Grass. And in that last one sat a very well-known shinobi who, for now, was disguised and not drawing attention.

But he got mine. I turned my head his way.

Hiruzen's student. One of the Sannin. An S-rank international criminal. Orochimaru. The guy was squatting with his "bros" about ten meters from me. Feminine face, and a Chinese-style straw hat on his head. Right now, with that nasty grin on his face, the three of them looked like some local street hoodlums.

This chunin exam was clearly not your standard one. Not only was Gaara a straight-up monster, according to the intel, but some deserter of this caliber also squeezed his way in here.

My meta knowledge was still with me. And I knew this specific snake was chasing two goals at once.

First: he was looking for a vessel for himself. Orochimaru has a technique where—like I understand it—he swaps bodies with his chakra, grabbing the vessel's chakra and genes along with it. He has to find a new body every three years, because all the bodies he's taken start breaking down over time, eventually rejecting Orochimaru and straight-up rotting. And an exam like this is a perfect place to find a good candidate—maybe someone with strong enough genes not only to be a "spare," but also something interesting to dissect, figuratively and literally.

Second, the main one: he was planning an attack on the Leaf, and Hiruzen's murder. Between him and his teacher—the Third Hokage, Hiruzen—there's old beef. Orochimaru's still pissed his sensei didn't name him successor and didn't make him the Fourth Hokage. Plus, as I know, the old man also didn't let the poor little snake go around gutting Konoha citizens… and the snake didn't listen, which ended with him getting exiled. So from Orochimaru's point of view, this was Big and Righteous Revenge.

For all that, Orochimaru cut a deal with the Kazekage, who also wouldn't mind hitting the Leaf. Right now the Sannin came for the first goal, and also—apparently—to do some recon and keep his finger on the pulse for the second.

That's enough for me to wait until this clown goes deeper into the woods and then, from the bottom of my kind heart, smack him so hard they'd be collecting bits of him all over the Forest of Death. Like, who the hell does he think he is?

But why rush?

I could do the opposite—let him pull off his plans. Because I could squeeze some profit out of him, and it came down to three points.

First, and the biggest one: according to my meta knowledge, Orochimaru—crooked as hell but still—will later, during the third stage of the exam, resurrect the First and Second Hokage to fight Hiruzen. I once looked into Edo Tensei—Impure World Reincarnation—but the technique isn't really polished, and Orochimaru might add some interesting details to the jutsu. I could just steal them by watching and copying from the sidelines. That alone is a nice little bonus. But even more important: his resurrection will 100% work, and it won't bring any backlash onto me.

In this world, dragging the dead back is considered disgustingly vile. If I resurrected the First and Second Hokage of the Leaf myself, they wouldn't exactly be eager to help me. But if Orochimaru does it, and then I help beat him—now that's a whole different story. I'll definitely get at least a shot at finding out something from Hashirama and Tobirama. At minimum, I'll get to see real Mokuton. And maybe, if the stars line up, the First will tell me how he learned Sage Mode—how he managed to absorb natural chakra spread across the entire planet.

Second point: Orochimaru will bring an army with him. The Gato cartel is almost done for. And that army can be taken and burned as expendable resources.

I can always delete Orochimaru—before the exam, after the exam, doesn't matter. I know he's hard to kill. But against my power, he's got nothing… He'll be a puppet in my hands: do what I need, and die when I need.

Thinking all that, I stared right at the disguised snake like he was already my slave, and like some scene out of a gachimuchi vid, I bit my lip and slowly shook my head.

He noticed, and no… he didn't start staring back. Instead, he let out that long tongue and slowly licked his lips.

Heh-heh. This guy's in the know too.

Too bad it wasn't very authentic, since Orochimaru was in a female body right now.

Luckily for my girls—and especially for the integrity of their mental health—they didn't notice. Though some dude standing nearby kept side-eyeing me and the snake like he was thinking:

'Bro, are you even okay? Why are you flirting with that scarecrow? Look at the examiner's tits—she's a goddess compared to that Grass kunoichi!'

After that little performance, my thoughts slid to the third point of my "profit." From my meta knowledge, I'm guessing Orochimaru's currently tied to Danzo—the already-fired elder who's supposedly got no power anymore, since he "doesn't have" Root ANBU operatives. Except I know he does have some. And if he has some, then what? Then he needs to share. Ahem.

I mean, it doesn't massively bother me, but it still annoys me that there's a radical old bastard sitting around with a mini—maybe even a mini-mini—army that he can use to cause trouble. On top of that, that radical old bastard has Shisui's eye, which is supposedly insanely strong, and I wouldn't mind having it myself. And since he's connected to Orochimaru, I'll use the snake to shove both those dangerous elements into the grave—and shove their resources into my pocket.

Honestly, I won't even have to manipulate Orochimaru much. He'll do almost everything himself. The snake's probably already calculating how much force he needs against the Leaf—or rather, since you can't build that overnight, the forces are basically ready already, and this visit is just the final touches and scouting. And to make him mobilize forces he doesn't have, but Danzo does… I was already sketching out a plan.

Putting on a normal face, I gave Sakura a promising look. She immediately flinched and turned to me.

"Um… Naruto, sorry, but I feel like you just thought of something I'm not gonna like."

Holy shit. She's perceptive…

Hinata, reacting to her words, turned to us with interest.

"Don't worry about it," I said, putting a hand on Sakura's shoulder. "I'll tell you later…"

"Hm…" My teammate got super suspicious.

"It'll… help you on your Path," I said, keeping it short.

Sakura thought for a second, then nodded firmly and turned back to the examiner. Hinata, watching this, threw us a weird look, shrugged, and copied Sakura's motion.

Meanwhile, Anko said, "…But before we start, you need to sign this paper." She waved it. "Here you confirm that during the second stage of the chunin exam, the examiners are not responsible for your life! This is serious. Some of you won't leave this forest!"

She finished with a big smile and looked over the crowd. Someone immediately had something to say.

"So the exam is that dangerous…" Shikamaru muttered, unhappy as hell.

Anko took it like a question and answered with obvious glee. "You have no idea how bad it is. This place is full of mutated animals. Not only are they way bigger than normal, a lot of them are extremely poisonous."

"What do we have to do in the exam?" Ino asked, raising her hand next to Shikamaru.

"Yeah, I'm getting to that. Hand these out."

Mitarashi passed sheets to a genin nearby and continued.

"In order. After you sign, your whole team goes to those shinobi over there." She pointed at ninjas in the distance hanging curtains on some beams. "They'll issue you either a Heaven Scroll or an Earth Scroll."

She pulled them from behind her back and showed them off: a light one and a dark one, with kanji in the middle.

"Then you'll be assigned to one of forty-four gates, and at the appointed time, they'll be opened. The exam itself is to obtain two different scrolls," she said, holding them forward so even the dumbest could follow, "and unseal them in the tower in the center of the forest."

Then Anko hid the scrolls behind her back and pulled out a very simple map of the area. Pointing at the target, she continued:

"From the gates to the tower is about ten kilometers. You have five days…"

"Five days?!" Choji blurted, cutting her off. "We're getting fed, right?"

His voice was pure hope.

"No, of course not! You eat what you find. And don't interrupt me!" Mitarashi snapped. Then she swept her gaze over everyone again. "A few more rules. Opening the scrolls outside the tower is forbidden. If you reach it without your full team—fail. If one or more of your teammates can't keep fighting—also fail. Questions?"

"What if I want to quit the exam?" Shikamaru spoke up again.

"Nothing. Lie down and wait till you get killed," she said with obvious sarcasm. "You either sign and go take the exam with your team, or you don't sign and you and your team can fuck right off out of here. Any other questions?"

No more questions. The genin started reading the "we're not responsible for your ass" paper, while Leaf chunin kept setting up the scroll handout point.

Soon the teams lined up and exchanged their signed papers for scrolls. Right after that, a Konoha chunin escorted each team to one of the forty-four sealed gates.

My team got gate number nine.

Standing at the fence, my teammates stared into the forest beyond it while the chunin next to us sometimes checked his digital watch. Finally, when it showed 14:30, the shinobi immediately took off the chains holding the gate shut. After a few locks clicked, the chains dropped to the ground, and we moved in.

Jumping from tree to tree, we crossed huge distances in seconds.

After about a kilometer, we stopped in a small clearing. In a rough triangle, almost face to face, my teammates instinctively scanned the area. I didn't bother and went straight into repeating our mini-plan—the one we'd talked through before the exam even started.

"So," I said, "like I told you, I was told to keep an eye on our 'ally's' jinchuriki." I stressed that last word again, making it clear what I thought of that "alliance." I adjusted my hair, paused, and was about to continue when the Uchiha shoved his nose in.

"Naruto, I don't get it. Why are you even getting assignments from the Hokage? Last time you didn't explain shit," Sasuke said, staring like he expected more.

I glanced at him with a bit of irritation, but answered anyway. "Because I can do them. And because of special relations."

…

"Pff." Not getting anything else, the Uchiha's face twitched in annoyance and he looked away.

Still, he stayed, so I continued:

"We're splitting up. My goal is clear. Yours is to get one Heaven Scroll. Priority: take it from a team that's not from the Leaf. Like I told you, the real point of this exam is to show off the village's strength, not to stuff the chunin ranks. Because, basically, our income depends on what regular people think of us. You get it. You don't have to go all-out—do recon, for example. I don't think we'll be split longer than a day. The jinchuriki's team probably won't want to sleep in a forest full of mutated animals and venomous insects, so I'm guessing I'll regroup with you by sunset. And then, quick and easy—if you haven't done it yourselves by then—we take the scroll we need and go sleep in beds without extra 'neighbors.'"

In practice, it meant I was just going to go babysit Gaara, while my teammates tried not to die. And, if possible, do something useful.

At the end, I looked them over.

"Any questions left?"

While I talked, Sasuke kept flicking an annoyed look from Sakura to me and back. Hearing that last line, he finally decided to run his mouth:

"I'm not dealing with this dead weight again." The Uchiha glanced at Haruno.

She glared back, and I raised an eyebrow.

"Take her with you," he said. "I'll get the scroll myself."

And without letting us get a word in, Sasuke turned and bolted into the trees .

…Did piss hit his head or what? Like he trained with Kakashi a lot and now thinks he's hot shit.

Watching Sasuke disappear, my student clenched her fists.

"Naruto, can I go break his jaw?"

Her green eyes flashed.

"Sure," I said, "but it won't help. The Uchiha's useless to you, and you two probably won't be working together much anyway. Beating him up regularly to 'earn respect' isn't exactly efficient."

She grimaced, but looked back at me.

"Then how else can I help?"

Not just "get the scroll," either—she was hinting at whatever I'd thought up that "helps her Path."

"On the way here, I spotted Orochimaru. He's disguised as one of the Grass genin."

Sakura's eyes widened. Crystal clear she knew exactly who I meant.

"How about you test yourself on him?"

"Me?! You're suggesting I fight him?" She sounded seriously shaken, and a little scared.

"Exactly." I smiled to encourage her, then got a bit more serious. "I believe in you and what you can do. But I also see you don't believe in yourself. So I'm offering you a way to prove, in practice, how much you've grown."

Sakura dropped her eyes and hesitated hard.

"I'll be right there."

She looked up at me, thought for a second, then nodded firmly… and immediately got an embarrassing head-pat from me. When she puts on that serious little hamster face, she's so damn cute. I couldn't help it.

And yeah, my faith wasn't just empty words. After the body enhancement, Sakura kept growing fast under my supervision. We sparred a lot, she learned a bunch of techniques. By now, it added up.

"So this'll be after that jinchuriki reaches the tower?" Sakura asked once she got over the embarrassment.

"Yeah," I said. "For now, two options. One: you come with me—the original—and ask about Orochimaru on the way so we build your fight plan. But since we'll be watching Gaara, and he's… a pretty brutal guy, we might see some not-so-nice stuff. So option two: I leave you with a clone, and you plan in a calm setting. Or you can try without extra info, or dig it up yourself."

She thought again, weighing it.

"The first option makes me stronger… so that one," she decided, then glanced at me and looked away.

"Ooh, alright~" I said, making it obvious I knew the other reason too: she just wanted to stick around me longer. That made her get a little flustered again.

Then we moved out after the red-haired Sand shinobi.

While we traveled—hopping across dozens of trees—we didn't jump into tactics right away. Sakura had more questions:

"So if Orochimaru's here, other genin are in danger too. Did you send a clone to watch him?"

"Thinking right," I said, pleased. "But I probably won't need to interfere. I think the snake's here for an interesting specimen. Something with a really strong genome."

"So the ones in danger are you, Hinata, and… Sasuke," she said, and the last name came out with clear disgust.

"Exactly," I said. "But Hinata was the least noticeable back in the Academy. I personally took out Orochimaru's spy there, and I know he knows how our old classmates stack up. And I also know Orochimaru was really interested in the Sharingan. So I'm betting the Sannin goes straight for the Uchiha."

"Good. Serves him right," Sakura tossed out, not even asking if I was gonna save our "teammate."

After that, she finally started grilling me about what Orochimaru actually is. Meanwhile, we followed a few hundred meters behind Suna's team.

I could feel them clearly, and even see them at a distance with focused sphere-vision. With my soul power growing, that ability got way stronger—right now the Sand genin were basically in my palm.

Dozens of minutes of wandering passed. But it couldn't go on forever, and after a bit more time, that team stepped into an open clearing and finally ran into their first enemies.

A Rain genin team. All of them had umbrellas and oxygen tanks. The shortest and the average-height ones wore hoods and had hats on top. The third—biggest, and apparently the leader—only had his head wrapped in bandages.

Instead of fighting, the Sand and Rain teams started talking. I noticed other, more familiar shinobi who'd spotted those six just seconds ago. They were nearby.

Hinata's team—meaning her, plus Kiba, Akamaru, and Shino.

Sakura and I headed over. They were standing on a thick branch (well… not that thick by this forest's standards), arguing whether they should go over to those six or not.

"We'll just look! We won't jump in!" Kiba yelled at Aburame, emotional as hell.

"Bad idea, I'm telling you," Shino replied coldly. "Six of them. No point risking it when we've got plenty of time."

"Kiba-kun, I'm against it too," Hinata said politely. "Like Shino-kun says, we really do have a lot of time left. The exam just started."

"Oh, screw you guys!" Kiba growled. He crouched and jumped in the direction he smelled those genin… but he didn't even make it five meters before something grabbed him right across the back and yanked so hard it knocked the air clean out of him, flinging him back toward the branch.

"You should listen to your teammates' opinion, Kiba," I said from behind him, and then the "something" set him down on the branch.

He turned and saw threads dispersing in the wind, and me looking at him with annoyance.

"One of the teams up ahead will give you a lot of trouble. Pick a weaker target."

"Naruto! What the hell are you doing?!" Inuzuka snapped toward me, recognized me instantly, and rushed me.

He got slapped and flew off the tree.

Sakura was up on the branch with us too, and Hinata's team—meaning besides her, Shino and Akamaru, who I'd placed nearby with a thread earlier—looked at us.

"God, he's so damn rabid," I said, shaking my head. Then I looked at the others. "How's the exam going? Anyone besides those guys?" I pointed toward where something like a fight was happening between Suna and Rain.

"Good." Hinata nodded, turning off her Byakugan. "We already got the scroll we needed," she said, then shyly looked away at the end.

"Oh yeah? You're fast. Nice work," I said with a smile, stepping in and ruffling Hinata's hair.

"So why'd you show up?" Shino asked. "To visit your girl… or?"

"The first," I said, reassuring Aburame. Then I turned my head a little to the side and down, where there were already thumps of someone climbing.

A second later, a battered Kiba jumped back onto the branch. He was breathing a bit hard now, not as furious—but his eyes still said he wanted me dead.

"So," I said, "in the direction your short-sighted teammate was about to run to, there's an execution of the Rain team happening right now. One of them—like I can feel—was literally just ground into a pulp and splattered all over the clearing. The same thing's about to happen to the other two."

"…Sounds like some kind of shit. Why the hell should we believe you?!" Kiba spat, voice full of anger.

"You don't have to," I said, shrugging. "Give it a couple minutes and you'll see for yourself. Suna's team has the One-Tail's jinchuriki. If you walked into that, you could've died just as easy. That's also why I'm here."

My eyes flicked to Hinata, careful.

After my words, said in a lazy, almost melancholic tone, Kiba clenched his fists and was about to move again—but froze in place.

"The blood smell's already here," I said with a snort, sensing the air fill with that iron stink. "You feel it just fine, don't you? Anyway, I wasn't trying to put you down. I'm just stating facts. If you wanna go look, go ahead—the Sand team already left." I glanced at the stunned Inuzuka with his eyes wide open, then turned to Hinata and Shino. "Alright, good seeing you again. I'm kinda busy. We can talk about it tomorrow at the tower. I suggest you head there now. I've still got stuff to do. Bye-bye."

I waved, nodded to Sakura, and we left Team Eight alone.

After that, they still decided to check what happened to the Rain team. But when they got closer, Kiba ditched the idea—because it reeked too much of blood. The others weren't exactly dying to go stare at corpses either, so they all went straight to the destination together. Right call. The sight really wasn't pleasant. At least they'd sleep without nightmares tonight.

After that, nothing interrupted mine and Sakura's path, same as nothing interrupted Suna's. Except we ran into a weird big tiger that looked familiar. It stared at me, eyes bulging, then—clamping its hind legs onto a tree—arched its whole body and played "I'm a branch." The camouflage was pretty trash, but since it didn't touch us, we left it alone.

All in all: 118 minutes to finish the second stage. Suna's team cut the previous record in half, and Gaara reached the building without a single scratch. The examiner and ANBU would have plenty to be shocked by today.

Though Anko still hadn't made it to the designated spot yet—she was destined to show up later.

Sakura and I just stayed in the woods, kept talking about one multi-gender snake, and waited.

And it didn't even take half an hour before the snake reminded us he existed. The Sannin ran into Sasuke, and Sakura and I moved in closer so I could watch the meeting.

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