The Awakened Soul (Naruto SI)

[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…

---

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

 

[AAAustinYu]

Magnificent

 

[Finnish_man]

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…

Click to shrink...

Will he give him the ability to use chakra or was it just lee who could not really use chakra

 

[caspian1a]

Will he give him the ability to use chakra or was it just lee who could not really use chakra

Click to shrink...

Lee was the one. Also Lee's problem from what I have been able to confirm was that he has almost zero talent at ninjutsu and genjutsu, or anything that requires hand signs in general, so that when he tries to perform a nin or genjutsu he just sucks at it to the point that training in those disciplines barely helped. While his talent for taijutsu is basically average which is why he compensates with a truly absurd amount of hard work.

 

[Lillie Jones]

Absolute Cinema
10/ 10
Continue on
Cheers!

 

[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.

---

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

 

[Lillie Jones]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[AAAustinYu]

By the time the Chunin Exams roll around, he'll be able to throw down with Madara and win

 

[sergey54321060]

By the time the Chunin Exams roll around, he'll be able to throw down with Madara and win

Click to shrink...

I think he might be able to do that already? If we're talking about base Madara, not 10t jinch Madara. We've just seen him completely overpower 7 gates Gai without using anything but basic stuff, and he said he could open the gates himself if he wanted to, including the last one, so that's already massive overkill for normal Madara or even Hashirama. Naruto doesn't have the answer for Izanami yet, or at least I don't think he's shown any, but other than that Madara's got nothing on him

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…

Click to shrink...

Ah, yes, he's into that stage of Mad Scientist's Life Cycle already. The sleazy pedo stage

 

[AAAustinYu]

I think he might be able to do that already? If we're talking about base Madara, not 10t jinch Madara. We've just seen him completely overpower 7 gates Gai without using anything but basic stuff, and he said he could open the gates himself if he wanted to, including the last one, so that's already massive overkill for normal Madara or even Hashirama. Naruto doesn't have the answer for Izanami yet, or at least I don't think he's shown any, but other than that Madara's got nothing on him

Click to shrink...

Do you think that he can acquire the full Rinnegan? Shove that together with Hashirama cells and he's basically a discount Otsusuki

 

[sergey54321060]

Do you think that he can acquire the full Rinnegan? Shove that together with Hashirama cells and he's basically a discount Otsusuki

Click to shrink...

I mean, if Madara could pull it off based on vibes and that ancient stone tablet he found, then surely someone who got a look behind the curtain could do so as well. If I understand the idea of template constructs correctly, then in theory all Naruto need is to mix and match Ashura's and Indra's constructs to get functional rinnegan out of it and at the rate he's going we'll probably see it happen in next chapter lmao

 

[AAAustinYu]

I mean, if Madara could pull it off based on vibes and that ancient stone tablet he found, then surely someone who got a look behind the curtain could do so as well. If I understand the idea of template constructs correctly, then in theory all Naruto need is to mix and match Ashura's and Indra's constructs to get functional rinnegan out of it and at the rate he's going we'll probably see it happen in next chapter lmao

Click to shrink...

Wait ain't there Otsusuki Shibai flesh pieces around on this world? He could get to Isshiki levels with that

 

[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

 

[Kapuchinik]

Thx for the chapter. Are you planning anything involving vers-trevel? You've got plenty setup for that.

 

[Da0L1]

Where was the img. Link?

 

[Lillie Jones]

thanks for the chapter

 

[sergey54321060]

Man, Konoha Crush is gonna be bizarre as fuck this time around.

Edit: holy shit, if Naruto learns how to cast Izanami then he has basically won, especially if he grows a bunch of spare eyes in vats to spam it. He could do absolutely massive amounts of trolling by subverting Danzo/Orochimaru/Obito/Nagato before the plot really kicks off and nobody could do shit about it

 

[AAAustinYu]

I want him to fight the Raikage and Tsuchikage, then copy their techniques mid battle while spamming Hiraishin, thus making them die of heart attacks

 

[Welydora]

Thx for the chapter. Are you planning anything involving vers-trevel? You've got plenty setup for that.

Click to shrink...

Glad you liked it! Naruto's story will conclude in his own world. However, I'm planning a spin-off where a soul created by Naruto in this fic begins its own journey in another universe.

Where was the img. Link?

Click to shrink...

Sadly, I couldn't get the image to attach properly here. Honestly though, the Susanoo image wasn't that interesting anyway, so I removed the note about it.

Man, Konoha Crush is gonna be bizarre as fuck this time around.

Edit: holy shit, if Naruto learns how to cast Izanami then he has basically won, especially if he grows a bunch of spare eyes in vats to spam it. He could do absolutely massive amounts of trolling by subverting Danzo/Orochimaru/Obito/Nagato before the plot really kicks off and nobody could do shit about it

Click to shrink...

Sounds funny, but I'll just say this: Naruto is still going to face some very worthy opponents.

I want him to fight the Raikage and Tsuchikage, then copy their techniques mid battle while spamming Hiraishin, thus making them die of heart attacks

Click to shrink...

Lol, that's funny too. Sometimes I honestly can't help but smile when I log into QQ. There's going to be a fight in the fic. Maybe not as funny, but definitely epic

 

[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.

---

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[Lillie Jones]

thanks for the chapter

 

[Akuma-Heika]

"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.

Click to shrink...

Shouldn't he be saying Tobirama, who was renowned for his water release (able to use Water Jutsu that normally required 40 handsigns with 1, as well as use Water Jutsu without a source of water)?

 

[Welydora]

Shouldn't he be saying Tobirama, who was renowned for his water release (able to use Water Jutsu that normally required 40 handsigns with 1, as well as use Water Jutsu without a source of water)?

Click to shrink...

Nah, here it was more about overall power in general. But your version would work well too

 

[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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[Finnish_man]

Thank you for the chapter it was peak i am so addicted

 

[Lillie Jones]

Absolute Cinema
10/10
Continue on
Cheers!

 

[sergey54321060]

"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.

Click to shrink...

Chotto a fucking minute, that came out of nowhere. Wasn't she just his student/charity case?

"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."

Click to shrink...

*Naruto lied as naturally as he breathes*

 

[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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[Despacitoleo]

Yay cousins to chill wit

 

[Lillie Jones]

thanks for the chapter