The Awakened Soul (Naruto SI)

[Welydora]

I mean, he could have done that as soon as he hit the wall, no? Just send a few clones to other countries, leave some hiraishin marks and farm as many bandits and nukenin as you need. I suppose he could do it in Fire country as well, but the chances of being found out would increase and if that happens Hiruzen would immediately try to murk him out of Orochi PTSD. Then again, he did build a lab in his own basement like a dumbass instead of hiding it somewhere accesible only with hiraishin

Click to shrink...

He could have, and he was already planning to start hunting criminals on his own, but the opportunity to get them basically presented itself.

Hiruzen won`t touch him as long as he`s not putting his own people under the knife like Orochimaru did. The lab is in the village because he needs the logistics, and besides, no one`s actually forbidding it.

 

[Welydora]

In a flash, we found ourselves on a wide street by a river in a small town. Small by the standards of the Land of Fire, anyway. From what I knew from the rather sparse info in the textbooks about this area, this was the second-biggest city in the Land of Waves. It was closest to the mainland of the nearest country on the continent—the Land of Fire—and it was a trade hub. There was another similar city on the other side of the country, to the east, toward the Land of Water. But since the Land of Water was farther away and this city had the better location, this one ended up being the largest.

It was evening; we'd already completed a D-rank mission that day, so it was getting late.

We looked around and spotted two old folks a short distance away, who recoiled when we popped in. Their faces went wide with surprise, and when they noticed Tazuna among us, once again bent over like a pretzel, their jaws dropped even more.

"Is this the right place?" Sakura asked curiously, looking around. "There are no tall buildings at all and… wooden buildings with sloping roofs?"

Sasuke was looking around too, his gaze so contemptuous you'd think the buildings were made of shit.

"Exactly," I confirmed. "This is the merchant quarter. See that tower on the river, the one with part of its floor collapsed into the water? That's city hall. But in the locals' defense, it's not all bad. It doesn't reek here, which is already an achievement. I've been to some port towns in the Land of Fire. Our countrymen could learn a thing or two."

"Also…" Tazuna finally straightened up and added heavily, "the Land of Waves is famous for its mangrove forests, haaah."

"Yeah, because we've never seen a forest in Konoha," I turned to the old man. "Lead us to your house. We'll start organizing your protection."

Nodding, he led us to the place. The walk wasn't very long, but the whole time, walking in front, the old man tried to stay close to Kakashi and as far from me as possible. He kept shooting me side‑eye, too.

Tazuna's house turned out to be pretty big, even if it was shabby and looked poor. The wings of the house spread maybe twenty meters across, and part of the building jutted out over the Kanzoku Sea, making a good spot to sit and stare at the water on the horizon.

Soon a woman with dark blue hair in a pink dress came out to meet us. Waving a hand, she walked up and bowed in greeting.

"Welcome to our home. Are you the shinobi protecting my father?"

She nodded toward the old man and got a nod back from him. Even though she'd asked us, yeah.

"Good day," our jonin began, a bit formally. "I am Kakashi Hatake, the team commander. That is correct. May I ask—"

"Oh, forgive me. My name is Tsunami," she covered her mouth for a second, looking us over. "Shall we go inside? We were expecting you later, so the meal after your trip isn't ready. But I'll think of something."

"Don't worry about it," Kakashi kept the conversation going. "We used a space–time technique, so the journey took less than an hour."

"Wow… Shinobi can do things like that?"

While those two were talking, I gave Hatake a fresh look. Turns out he can talk without all his "M‑ma, M‑yeah, A‑aaah, E‑eeeh," and the rest of the "master orator" phrasebook.

As for Tsunami… I liked the client's daughter way more than the client himself. In a whole minute of talking she hadn't insulted us even once. Plus, she was polite.

Soon we went inside. In the hallway we ran into a dark‑haired kid in a fisherman's hat. He looked gloomy.

"Inari, say hello to these people. They're the ninja who are protecting your grandfather."

"Why?" he turned to his mother—Tsunami, apparently. "They're just going to die soon anyway."

"Now that's some fatalism," I noted, focusing on him. "Care to explain your reasoning?"

"Gato. Don't you know? He runs everything here… And if you try to stand up to him, you'll die. Just like the people before you…"

"Hmph." I gave him a skeptical look and, just in case, once again proved who the biggest smartass in the room was. "Your assertion lacks empirical support and is derived not from observable facts, but from subjective a priori assumptions. Since your argumentation is built on biased premises and a cognitively limited perception, any further continuation of this discourse on your part appears irrational. Refrain from making assertions that can't withstand elementary logical scrutiny."

"…What?" He didn't get it.

"I'm saying I doubt you know enough about me and my team to be drawing conclusions. So don't spread doom and gloom for no reason. Go mind your own business. Go beat some nettles with a stick, or whatever it is you do."

Throwing me a disgruntled look, the kid walked out of the house and headed for the pier.

"Please… forgive Inari. He doesn't mean any harm," Tsunami started.

"Kids." I waved it off so she wouldn't think I was offended or waste brain cells on it. She gave me a strange look in return.

Soon we were settled into different rooms—turns out this Tazuna was quite the rich guy by local standards, with a really not‑small house. After that, the locals left my team alone in the main hall.

"Well, I propose we discuss our information‑gathering strategy," I began, sitting in the center of the room across from Kakashi, with Sasuke on my left and Sakura on my right. "For now it'd be smart to interrogate Tsunami and Tazuna. After that, we can split up: Sasuke and Sakura, staying together for safety, will question the locals. Kakashi and I will handle deeper recon and separately infiltrate places where the enemy's concentrated. We'll regroup in the evening and build a plan…"

Kakashi cut me off with a raised hand.

"Naruto, none of that is necessary right now," he waved his hand dismissively, and my eyebrow twitched. "Well, it is necessary. But you'll do it tomorrow. Consider it training."

My eyes went wide at the balls on that masked bastard, who had basically just said he wouldn't be doing any recon. Like… what? That went against everything I'd been taught.

If you've got a chance to scout in a dangerous situation, you take it. Information is what can give you a huge edge over the enemy. And this guy… this guy… if only Koharu were here to see him—spouting such crap!

Tomorrow… he says. When we might not have the advantage anymore, and they might already know about us… That's bullshit.

I tried to lay all that out, but Hatake just waved his hands again, like I was worrying too much.

"It's already evening. Questioning the locals won't get you anything now; everyone's already gone home."

"If we hurry, it could still give us a lot," I pointed out.

"Or it might not," he spread his hands. "You'll get up tomorrow and start working on it. It's just a C‑rank mission, after all."

"Don't play dumb, Kakashi. You know about Gato. And that he could easily have hired shinobi."

While we argued, Sakura just moved her head back and forth between us, while Sasuke sat there with his eyes closed, looking all mysterious and wise.

"M‑ma," he looked away. "Yeah, I know. The local shipping monopolist, a fairly wealthy guy. Maybe he did hire shinobi, but don't bother your head with that. It's unlikely to be anyone even at genin level. Hiring strong shinobi on a permanent basis for shady work is not easy at all, you know. Naruto, you think too much. Go get some sleep."

"So we're just supposed to sit here and wait until we get attacked?" I clarified, my face clearly showing what I thought of that plan.

But he just waved his hand again.

"If something extraordinary does happen," Kakashi drawled sarcastically, already tired of this conversation, "the two of us can handle it."

"Hn," was Uchiha's contribution.

"I agree with Sasuke. And yeah. If you're so smart, you're going in first if something does happen."

"Deal," Kakashi said irritably, folding his arms across his chest. "But this conversation isn't over yet. Naruto, I decided to ignore it before, but I'll say it now. What you did at the gate was a gross violation of shinobi protocol. I'll mention it in my report and file a complaint against you."

"Hah," I snorted. "Be my guest. Write it in triplicate if you want. You're not getting anything out of it anyway."

"That was highly irresponsible."

"Yeah, yeah, sure. It would've been better if I'd started threatening Tazuna outside the village? When he was completely dependent on us?"

"…That's not what I meant. But yeah, that would have been better. For now, I suggest we wrap this up."

"Good idea. You, 'Kakashi‑sensei,' could use some sleep too, before your head turns completely to mush."

"Mngh." He showed me the middle finger, and I cheerfully returned the gesture. Then he left the room.

"Sakura, Sasuke. What do you think of my ideas?" I asked the two who were left.

"According to my regimen, I've got evening training," the boy said, then got up and left too.

"…"

"…"

Sakura and I watched Uchiha's back disappear.

Apparently my authority isn't that high, hmm. Then again, I didn't use any heavy leverage to make them do what I want.

"Sakura, be a sweetheart, please. Interrogate Tazuna and Tsunami according to the A6 structure and give me an oral report in two hours."

She sighed, dragging her gaze away from the door Sasuke had vanished through.

"Fine."

"Thanks." I gave her a warm smile, patted her on the shoulder, and stood up. "My mark is on you. I really doubt you'll be in any danger. But if something unforeseen happens, just release your chakra and I'll show up right away. For now I'm going to do some recon…"

"Naruto…"

"Hm?" I'd already reached the doorway.

"I just wanted to ask: what do the words on your kunai mean?" She looked away, like she'd asked something inappropriate. "And on the markers… 'Ruthlessness,' 'Right,' 'Love.'"

"Oh…" I leaned against the doorframe, slowly spinning a kunai with three characters on it between my fingers. "'Ruthlessness for the Right to Love,' if you want the full version. I'm afraid this might turn into a bit of a long monologue."

She nodded silently, showing she was ready to listen.

"Life is a cruel thing," I started anyway. "It's filled with light, sure. But you need strength if you want to be able to fight for what matters to you… I guess I should've told you this after you talked with Tazuna and Tsunami, but whatever, this works too. Let's back up a little: did you see the people on the street?"

The girl nodded carefully.

"Dirty. And under those sackcloth rags you couldn't see it, but they were hungry too. They had the right to a life—maybe not a rich one, but a good one. I'm sure there are plenty of skilled people here; they could be providing for themselves and for their country. But you saw how the buildings on the street were all wrecked. That's because this Gato showed up with his cartel and took away their right to a normal life. He robs them and does far worse things, because he's stronger, and with that strength he just hands himself that right. All those rights are worth nothing if you can't protect them. The world isn't the Academy. Hardly anyone out here is gonna listen to your arguments. The strong devour the weak and take their rights. That's the law. There's almost no third option.

"Ruthlessness is what I have to pay for strength. It's the readiness to do what others can't, or are afraid to do, to protect what you believe in. For years now I've been working hard, digging through corpses… Can't say it's all that hard on me. But it's what I have to do to move forward. To get stronger and at least try to earn the right to live the rest of my life the way I want. For years I've worked so that now, knowing we're up against a danger hundreds of people couldn't overcome… I can just sit here calmly talking to you. And know we'll be fine.

"Right now… I have to go do something else cruel. So that in the future, my loved ones and I will again have the chance to just smirk in the face of a threat. Even if that threat becomes way bigger than this one. That's the path… By walking it, I keep the abyss away."

When I finished, I only then noticed my eyes had gone unfocused and I was just staring straight ahead with a glassy look. Snapping out of it, I looked at Sakura and saw her gaze was practically bursting with mixed emotions: surprise, pity, sympathy, sadness… and a bit of understanding?

"So… that wasn't just you being a jerk? You just wanted to—" she started, then cut herself off.

"..?" My face made it clear I was interested and she could go on.

"No… nothing. Thank you… I don't have any more questions. G‑good luck… out there."

It was obvious Sakura suddenly really wanted to be alone.

"Thanks… And hey, about my request for the interrogation…" I was about to say she didn't have to do it, but she interrupted.

"It's fine."

I don't believe you.

"I'll do it."

"…," I stared at her for a moment, then just nodded in thanks.

Leaving the room, I headed for the exit. I wasn't going to get much sleep tonight.


After creating a few dozen clones, we got to work.

Finding the main hideout of this "Gato" was easy. I walked up to the first local I saw and made sure it was that building on that island. The entire Land of Waves basically consisted of about two dozen such islands, with rivers flowing between them.

When I reached the round three‑story building, I didn't even have to go inside. Taking on the appearance of some unremarkable guy, I slipped into a nearby bar and calmly drank juice while the whole HQ lay open to me like it was in my hand, thanks to my soul Sphere‑Sight.

Fifteen minutes later I had all their paperwork, an approximate headcount for the cartel, their concentrations, and Gato's plans in my head. Reading texts that aren't visible to normal sight with Sphere‑Sight is an obvious application for me. But reading separate sheets of text pressed right up against each other—that was a skill I'd only developed less than a year ago, and it took some work.

Gato himself, as you'd guess from the reports and his record, was one corrupt… ahem. Also rotten, cruel, and greedy bastard, ready to do anything for his business. Short but stocky, with medium‑length spiky brown hair. Black suit, yellow shirt, purple tie.

Once I had the basic info, I pushed it through our link—to the clones. A plan started putting itself together in my head. The main goal was to herd all these rats into one place, so we wouldn't have to run around hunting them down.

The plan had several points…

And the clones started carrying each one out in parallel.


On the roof next to yet another bar, an invisible figure sat lazily, legs dangling over the edge. Slowly turning his head from side to side, he watched the conversations of the already tipsy crowd.

This bar was where one of Gato's closest associates was hanging out. While he drank, he was talking about some shinobi that had shown up in one of the Land of Waves' towns.

"It's all bullshit, guys," a muscular man with a bare, scarred torso went on. This was him, one of Gato's deputies. "There are three kids and only one real shinobi."

His words set the whole bar roaring with laughter.

"Our little demon will carve 'em up like a butcher carves a…" He snapped his fingers.

"A cabbage?" one of the guys laughing the loudest prompted—and immediately got smacked on the back of the head.

"What fucking cabbage, you idiot? You a sheep or what?"

The bar exploded in laughter again. No one noticed the black Bingo Book—where all wanted shinobi are listed with info on them—appear out of nowhere on one of the tables. But when it slid off and hit the floor, opening to one of the pages, one of the regulars, a tall man, finally noticed.

"What's this?" he bent down for the little book. What he saw inside froze him for a few seconds. "Boss!!"

He screeched it, jabbing a finger at the book.

"Shut the hell up, you bolt, before I strip your threads. Say what you're yelling about."

"S‑rank shinobi! It's him! Our guys saw him!"

"Wha…" The book was in the "boss's" hands almost instantly. "Yeah, we're screwed."

Gato's deputy—whose name, by the way, was Shinto—chewed on his lip.

"Fucking hell!" he repeated his favorite word and turned to his subordinates. "Alright, you disgraceful bastards. I'm going to the boss. There better be booze left for me, or I'll, you know… and you'll, you know. Got it?!"

"Yes, boss!" came the ragged chorus.

"That's more like it." Flashing a gap‑toothed grin, he swaggered proudly out of the bar.

The rumor about how strong the new shinobi were had been planted.

At the same time. On another island

Another bar. Me—one of the other clones—really liked manipulating drunk people.

Such pliable material.

An invisible thread latched onto one of the local gang members. The local boss wasn't that expressive; the real ringleader here wasn't him but some random thug.

The thread, slowly and imperceptibly feeding chakra into him, kept planting more and more fake images and thoughts—ones I wanted said out loud.

After a few minutes of work, we got the result we needed:

"And that demon swordsman… Did you see how bandaged up he is? That Mist scum… Why do you think he needs all those bandages? I heard someone saw him limping…"

"Definitely got wounded back in Kiri," a voice came from the back.

"Exactly!" the local loudmouth agreed, then went on babbling nonsense.

But that didn't matter anymore. Gato's attentive but silent associate remembered everything and was going to bring it up with his boss.

The rumor that Zabuza might not be all that invincible was successfully set loose.

Another island, again

One more of the gang's, so to speak, local governors, and another of Gato's deputies, wasn't in a bar or any other fun place. But the role he was meant to play was the most important…

A skinny man with cunning, but currently relaxed, eyes was just getting ready for bed. He lived alone, but with good security outside by local standards. So he didn't worry about anything.

But when he walked out of the shower in his robe into the dark room, he didn't even make it to the light switch before a steel grip clamped around his throat.

He was forced to his knees.

The horror that hit him was so strong he couldn't even twitch, never mind make some futile attempt to scream.

There was nothing to see in the darkness in front of him—until two blue spotlights lit up out of it.

"The pirates from the Land of Noodles found out about the bridge and Gato's money. Word is they're going to attack and take it all for themselves while everyone's busy dealing with the ninja," the blue light spread, screwing itself into his head. "In four hours your scouts will report this to you. You'll go straight to your boss and tell him he needs to hurry. As for me, you'll forget…"

The grip loosened, and the man's body dropped to the floor.

Like a wind‑up toy, he repeated what he'd been ordered.

"Excellent…"

A green, healing light flooded the thug's vision. When it faded, the blue spotlights were gone.

The man, without a single mark on his neck, simply got up and headed for his bed. The toy had been wound, and soon it would wake again to do exactly what had been programmed into it.

This rumor would force Gato to move. And more importantly, it would force him to gather his forces into a single fist so that, taking the previous rumors into account, he'd quickly stage a fight between the arriving shinobi and the Demon Zabuza. The newcomers might be too dangerous to deal with separately, and then he could finish off whoever lost. Zabuza might be wounded and weak, and there was a good chance he'd lose to the arrivals. But against worn‑out and most likely injured shinobi, Gato's combined army would handle it. And he wouldn't even have to pay for an elite shinobi's services—profit everywhere.

All so that afterward, according to plan, he could just as quickly move on the southern port, on the side where the Land of Noodles lies. Luckily, that wasn't far from the first position, and organizing it wouldn't be too hard.

And a light genjutsu suggestion, if needed, would definitely help him make the decision I wanted.

---

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
Continue on
Cheers!

 

[Despacitoleo]

Umazing chapter

 

[Welydora]

Morning. Original Uzumaki Naruto's POV

Stretching, satisfied and actually rested for once, I walked into the big kitchen, where everyone but me had already gathered.

Sitting down at the table, I greeted everyone, thanked them for the food, and dug in.

Last night I'd managed to shove a small wad of cash into Tsunami's hands so our whole pack could actually be fed properly. On top of that, I'd slipped some money to a local merchant so he'd drag some pre-marinated meat over here by morning. So breakfast turned out pretty damn good. Could've been even better if the woman hadn't fought off my offer to help with the cooking so fiercely—but it was still very good.

See, I "wasn't supposed" to be doing any of that—paying for groceries and all—since she's the one running the house, I'm the guest, plus a couple other excuses. In the end, the only help she couldn't refuse was my clone doing an evening run through the market, since I wasn't sleeping anyway. As for her trying to talk me into sleeping in a bit longer in the morning—fine, I gave in.

And it was worth it. Even though I'd farmed the work out to my clones so everything would go smoothly, I still had to stay up late. But six hours of sleep was more than enough for my body.

Not everyone at the table was in a good mood, though. Sakura sure as hell wasn't. After grilling Tazuna and Tsunami and really diving into what life is like for people under a crime cartel's heel, she wasn't exactly feeling upbeat. She'd been pretty down yesterday when she gave me her report.

It was actually important overall; it helped me tweak my strategy for manipulating the cartel, and gave me a few key details for manipulating Gato himself—stuff that came out of his personality and the people around him. He was especially scared of the pirates from the Land of Noodles—who really do exist out here, even if the reports don't show it, since they haven't made direct contact yet. That made it easier and safer for me to push him into making sure what's about to happen… happens.

As for Sakura herself, well, she couldn't sleep last night. I really am sorry I let her see how brutal the world can be. But on the other hand, that's what'll make her stronger.

Breakfast wrapped up soon enough. My team and Tazuna were just about to head to the bridge when one of the few guards from the construction-materials warehouse came running up.

"Tazuna-sama!"

The old man was almost bowled over by a kid of about fifteen, right as we were heading out from the living room.

"The Demon Swordsman! He's on the bridge, ha—" The guy bent over, unable to get it all out in one breath. "He said… if the shinobi don't hand you over, he'll start slaughtering civilians."

Tazuna went pale.

Tsunami, walking behind us, brought her hands to her face in fear.

I turned my head toward Kakashi, who'd been acting all indifferent till now. My face was screaming "I told you so" so loud they could've heard it back in the Leaf.

Yeah, I set this up. But all I really did was speed things up. They'd have reacted to us anyway. And with Gato's personality, things could easily have played out almost the same.

We quickly questioned the kid, and from his description our silver-haired sensei guessed, based on the weapon and appearance, that this might be a certain Momochi Zabuza, one of the former Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist.

Hatake's expression darkened.

"This just got very serious," he said.

"Yeah, who could've seen that coming," I said, slightly sarcastic. "Alright. We've 'waited' long enough. Let's go to the bridge."

Two clones popped out of me right away, one of them immediately taking on Tazuna's appearance.

"Old man, hide in the house with your family. My clone'll protect you." Then I turned to the kid who looked older than me. "You wait here too. We'll be back."

Leaving the extras somewhere safe, our little group headed for the bridge.

Sasuke looked as gloomy as always. Sakura looked similar, but also tired, and there was a clear flicker of anxiety on her face.

We moved at a brisk pace so the "ordinary person" in the form of "Tazuna" could still keep up.

"Remember our deal, Kakashi?"

"What are you talking about?"

"That you're the one who goes in first. Mister Wait-and-See."

He grimaced.

"Yeah. I'll do that."

As we approached the bridge, we noticed the surroundings getting more and more choked with mist.

"The Hidden Mist's signature technique. Their shinobi can navigate this fog just fine; it's saturated with their chakra," Kakashi warned us.

I nodded to confirm it.

Soon we were out on the bridge itself, stretching out for dozens of meters ahead and wide enough that forty people could walk side by side without bumping into each other.

The mist thickened until visibility dropped to maybe seven meters.

Farther off, we saw the silhouette of a massive sword, close to two meters long, stuck into the bridge. Perched in a crouch on its guard was the silhouette of a big man, the tails of his headband slowly fluttering behind his head.

"The Kubikiribōchō," Kakashi immediately recognized one of the Legendary Swords of the Mist as we stopped. "Momochi Zabuza, I presume?"

"So it is you," a rough voice came, and the figure jumped down. With a smooth motion he grabbed the long hilt, ripped the sword out of the bridge, and slung it over his shoulder. "The Copy Ninja, Hatake Kakashi."

When the man came closer, we could finally see him clearly: short black buzz cut, tall and heavily muscled. Blue pants with vertical blue stripes, camo-print arm guards, bare torso, and bandages covering half his face.

"Go on, hero," I patted Kakashi on the shoulder and pointed at the swordsman.

Zabuza focused his gaze on the trembling "Tazuna." The clone was playing the role perfectly, even matching his chakra to Tazuna's. The identical face went without saying.

"I don't know what you let your genin pull," Zabuza said, getting straight to the point as he threw me a look. "But I need the bridge builder. Hand him over and we can all walk away."

Kakashi also shot me a very unhappy look, then stepped forward and answered:

"Unfortunately, we'll have to fight."

"Hmph, really?" Zabuza rumbled from his chest, lifting his head and looking, as if from above, past Kakashi at the rest of us. "You'd rather drag them down with you?"

"Protect the client," Kakashi ordered instead of replying, and drew a kunai.

The swordsman's face twisted into a crazed grin under the bandages.

"So be it," Zabuza said—and a powerful violet aura erupted from him.

I felt my teammates flinch. The clone collapsed to the ground, still acting his part.

The air filled with killing intent.

"Watch closely, you slugs. I'm about to tear your commander apart. Then I'll start on you."

With that, the swordsman lunged forward. Kakashi mirrored him.

Sasuke and Sakura stared, spellbound, as two shinobi of elite jōnin strength clashed.

Which is why they didn't react when ice senbon nearly reached their necks.

One quick movement, and a spray of shuriken from my hands knocked down more than a dozen senbon aimed at them, me, and "Tazuna."

"Hey. Don't listen to the enemy," I said after the ring of metal on metal, my words finally snapping my teammates out of it. "Enemy at nine o'clock."

Seeing my shuriken lying near him, Sasuke moved the way I'd pointed.

"He's mine."

"Wait, Sasuke-kun… We're a team," Sakura cut in, having come back to her senses.

The Uchiha was about to snap something back, but I cut him off:

"You'd better listen to Sakura."

His teeth ground.

She's faster than you and smarter about movement. You're better in a straight-up clash. Use your strengths instead of measuring your egos. Otherwise you'll both die, my voice sounded in their heads.

Sasuke's face darkened, but he still nodded.

A silhouette appeared in the mist: a slim figure in a Mist Hunter-nin mask and a green haori. His name was Haku.

"I don't want to kill you," came a soft, almost musical voice. "But you're not getting past here."

"We'll see," Sasuke growled, and, not waiting for any order, rushed in, sending a fan of shuriken flying.

Sakura, come in from the right! I ordered mentally.

To her credit, Haruno had a great sense of space. She could dive deep into the fog and pop out exactly where she needed to.

While the two of them were starting their own fight, the main bout was already in full swing. Kakashi had clashed with Zabuza in a vicious melee. The air rang with steel—Kakashi's kunai against the enormous Kubikiribōchō. Their movements were so fast Sasuke and Sakura probably couldn't follow them at all.

Kakashi, to my surprise, was being pretty damn cocky—no Sharingan, and he was sticking to close combat. Only from time to time did he and Momochi trade Water Style techniques.

Zabuza was strong—a veteran of the Mist's blood-soaked wars, a master of silent killing. And he handled that giant sword expertly. Both of them hit hard. The bridge under their feet cracked from the force of the blows.

At one point, after batting Hatake away with a swing of his sword, Zabuza formed hand seals.

"Water Style: Water Clone Jutsu!"

His exact copy rose out of a puddle beside him. Kakashi frowned, bracing to fight two at once. Both Zabuzas rushed in from different sides. The fight got even nastier. Kakashi had to give it everything just to parry attacks from both of them.

From the very start Hatake hadn't activated his Sharingan and never took the free advantage. Now they weren't just keeping him from getting that edge—they were starting to dominate him.

Finally, Kakashi spotted an opening in one of the Zabuzas' defenses. Throwing a feint, he slipped past the sword swing and drove his kunai into "Zabuza."

The clone burst into water. It was a trap.

"Idiot," the real Zabuza's voice came from right behind him.

Kakashi didn't have time to turn. Strong arms grabbed him, and a dense sphere of water snapped into place around him—the Water Prison Technique.

Standing next to "Tazuna," I just rolled my eyes.

What the hell, man?

"Got you, Copy Ninja," Zabuza sneered, holding Kakashi in the prison with one hand. "Your famous Sharingan didn't save you. And you're pathetic as hell if you fall for such a basic textbook trick."

Not true. To be fair to Hatake, that's far from the simplest trick. But yeah, yeah, keep talking, blowhard…

I turned my head toward Kakashi, and when our eyes met, my own flared with chakra. My genjutsu. Through it I told Kakashi I was handing this fight over to Sasuke and Sakura so they'd grow more as shinobi. That I'd pull them out if things crossed into lethal territory. That he needed to listen to me and follow my orders on intel work and tactics. That I could handle Zabuza. And, last of all, that sitting in this bubble was his punishment—so he could sit there and think about what he'd done.

Zabuza didn't notice this quick information dump, or the way Kakashi suddenly really wanted to tell me to go to hell but couldn't. The swordsman threw me a meaningful look instead, his widening grin still clearly visible through the bandages, then turned away.

"Haku!" he shouted toward the second fight. "Quit playing with those runts! I want you to show them what happens when you cross Momochi Zabuza! Take them out!"

Right then, the fight between Sasuke and Sakura shifted. Hearing the order, Haku stopped holding back.

He didn't hesitate—he immediately attacked with a hail of senbon. Sasuke, already used to the rhythm of the fight, knocked them aside with his kunai, while Sakura used Shunshin to dart away and swing around the flank again.

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!" Sasuke yelled, exhaling a huge ball of flame to light up the mist and box Haku in.

Haku, moving a bit faster than before, slipped out of the line of fire. At that moment, Sakura came in from the side with a chakra-charged kick. Haku caught it on his arm at an angle, parried it, but still had to retreat a few steps.

A short clash followed, during which Sakura quickly switched places with Sasuke, forcing Haku even farther back.

They worked in sync, making him constantly move. But it still wasn't enough.

"Time to stop playing," Haku's voice went cold as he formed special one-handed seals. "Ice Style: Demonic Ice Mirrors!"

Around Sasuke, massive ice mirrors instantly formed from the moisture in the air, growing into a deadly cage around him.

Sakura, left on the outside, ran straight up and started hammering on the ice in desperation.

"Sasuke-kun!"

From inside came the ring of steel and Sasuke's cries of pain.

Haku's image appeared in every mirror at once. He began to move rapidly between them, driving senbon into the Uchiha from all angles. Sasuke was too slow to dodge them all. The storm of senbon from Haku, flickering between mirrors, tore into him mercilessly.

"Sakura! Break them from outside!" Sasuke shouted, dodging another attack.

Haruno stopped. She drew back her right fist, while her left hand formed a concentration seal, packing more chakra into her right arm.

She struck, and with a burst of Sakura's chakra the mirror webbed with cracks.

Haku, noticing, appeared in one of the mirrors near the girl, ready to throw needles at her.

Sasuke saw it. This was his chance.

"Stay out of it, Sakura!" he shouted.

To the side! my voice sounded in the girl's head at that same moment.

She hesitated, hit by two different orders at once, trying to grasp what exactly the Uchiha wanted from her.

Holy shit… Instead of warning Haruno about the attack, Sasuke had just distracted her with some vague command. Then he calmly focused chakra inside himself for a technique, as long as the needles weren't flying at him.

So what, he decided to use her as bait? Or is he just an idiot? You don't pull that crap in the middle of a fight…

While Haku was aiming at Sakura, Sasuke exhaled a powerful Fire Dragon Flame Jutsu straight at that mirror.

Haku was forced to shift position, but his attack had already been released. A dozen senbon shot straight toward Sakura, frozen in place by the Uchiha's yell.

She didn't react in time. The needles slammed into her body, and she crumpled to the bridge without a sound. Her last look—full of shock and betrayal—was fixed on the ice prison holding Sasuke.

Yeah… Maybe I should've just teleported her after all. But the senbon trajectories shouldn't have hit anything vital… And this is their fight. Better she learns the important lessons while I'm right here and it's still safe.

"SAKURA!"

Seeing her fall and realizing what he'd just done, Sasuke roared with rage and guilt. Crimson light flared in his eyes, and two tomoe in each eye spun in a sinister dance. The Sharingan had awakened, and now the Uchiha could track Haku's movements. Rage gave him strength; Sasuke started batting the needles away, and his speed spiked.

But it was just the lead‑up to his loss. His attacks lost all strategy and turned into pure blind fury. Haku, perfectly calm, just waited. The ice ninja let Sasuke burn himself out, drain his last reserves. When the Uchiha finally slowed for a moment, panting hard, Haku struck. A series of precise senbon hits—and Sasuke, like Sakura before him, went stiff and collapsed, unconscious.

Silence. Haku stepped out of the mirrors, which were already starting to melt away before our eyes, and looked down at the two defeated genin. The fight was over.

I traded a look with Zabuza.

Kakashi was already out cold inside the water prison.

"You're next," the swordsman said, almost savoring it.

Only a tired sigh came out of me as Haku moved toward me.

Three clones burst out of me at once, sprinting off along three different paths—two curving around toward my teammates, one heading straight for Zabuza.

Head snapping back and forth, still closing in on me, Haku tried to keep track of me and the copies. I didn't even bother turning his way.

When the distance was perfect for a senbon throw and his arm had already come up, it was a huge shock to Haku how fast the previously-shaking old man suddenly moved at him. He barely managed to twitch aside before a brutal blow to the head shattered his mask to bits. The frail little body slammed into the bridge, sending tiny cracks out through the concrete.

The clone, having used the scraps of chakra left in the original Tazuna's reserves, just dissolved into the air.

At the same time, the two clones who hadn't yet reached their targets skidded to a stop. The enemy was down, the distraction had worked, and they could drop the extra caution.

They just teleported hundreds of kilometers away—to Konoha's hospital—while a second later, a stream of blue chakra appeared straight from the sky above my teammates. The mist pulled back a few meters from two points at once.

A flash—and in place of Sakura and Sasuke, two clones appeared. One immediately dispersed into the air, this time dumping its remaining chakra back into me, the original. The second teleported away to the hospital—he had people to look after.

At the same time, the last clone, now in close with the swordsman, slipped in on Zabuza's flank. Zabuza had already whipped the water sphere with Kakashi around in front of himself as a shield.

He was forced to drop the prison immediately and bring up the Kubikiribōchō to block the tanto.

The tanto's blade flared with chakra, transferring a sealing formula onto the other blade. In a suicidal attack, the clone reached out and touched Momochi, leaving another seal script on him before dispersing—so I wouldn't feel the pain of Zabuza's kunai, which had nearly gutted him.

Another clone stepped out of me, right in front of me.

A flash—and Kakashi's body was suddenly in my arms, while the clone that appeared next to Zabuza drove a heavy blow into his chest.

Momochi spun through the air, flying several meters before he managed to slow himself, digging his huge sword into the bridge. I lowered Kakashi and sent him sliding along the wet bridge deck a good ten meters back behind me.

"…What the hell is this?!" a wild‑haired Zabuza roared. In all his experience, he'd never been in a fight like this.

"Preparation," I said coldly. "And it's finished."

Another clone stepped out in front of me.

A flash—and Zabuza's sword vanished right out of his hands, while the newly appeared clone beside him struck again, knocking him back.

I grabbed the hilt of the Kubikiribōchō that had appeared by me. Looking over the hilt—where most of the sealwork was layered—I snorted.

My hands slid up to the base of the blade.

Tension.

Already getting back to his feet, Momochi stared in shock as I snapped the blade in my bare hands.

Crack.

"Don't need this," I said, lazily tossing the heavy chunk of metal aside. It hit the bridge with a loud clang. With my other hand I brought the remaining part of the sword up to my bracer and sealed it away.

"Who the hell are you…?"

Disarmed, Zabuza tensed up.

Yin and Yang ground together, and a powerful blue wave of chakra burst out of me, blowing the mist back for dozens of meters.

The air vibrated, filled with a low hum. The wind that had been blowing across the bridge shifted direction—now it only blew from me.

Zabuza's tension cranked up even more.

"Still can't guess?" I raised my hand, and the pressure spiked.

The bridge shuddered, and the water beneath it rippled.

Momochi started to say something, but the humming in the air suddenly cut off.

Instead of the hum, a high note bored into the ears and rolled out across the world—like the echo of a quiet moan from a thousand doomed throats.

Then the world turned red.

The spreading seeds of terror were reflected in the swordsman's eyes… This was the strongest killing intent he had ever felt.

"No…" I turned my head away. The world's colors snapped back to normal. The rush of wind filled my ears again. "There's too much I can squeeze out of you. So you're staying alive."

Zabuza hunched over and let out a sharp, shaky breath.

My raised hand closed around my tanto's hilt.

"You… You're just like Him."

"The Mizukage? I think I'm worse."

The swordsman only had time to blink before he saw a clone step out of me. He didn't even get to brace for the next strike—because in the flash, it turned out he was the one who'd been moved.

Held horizontal, the blade rammed into Momochi's back and out through his gut, and then I lifted his body like it weighed nothing.

Seventy‑two kilos? That's it? Don't make me laugh.

Chakra rushed down the blade without delay. An instant later, lightning wrapped the swordsman's entire body.

"A‑A‑A‑A‑A‑A‑A‑A‑A‑A!!!" A scream of agony tore across the bridge.

The all‑encompassing torture went on for about twenty seconds before Zabuza finally went limp and passed out.

Lowering the blade, I watched without much interest as the charred body slid off it and hit the bridge.

"Didn't even have to go all out. Again," I sighed. "That's what happens when you play to your strengths."

I pressed my chakra back down and noted how the hum around me faded.

Still… this is only the first act of the play.

I looked around.

They're dragging their feet… Guess I'll start patching Zabuza up. He's not gonna bleed out from the burns, but his body definitely isn't feeling great right now.

After that, I'll deal with the ones who are just getting here.

---

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]

impressive
Thanks for the chapter
Continue on
Cheers!

 

[AAAustinYu]

I really wanted him to throw a Hiraishin kunai and watch Zabuza shit himself

 

[Welydora]

Twenty minutes later, the mist, no longer sustained by a jutsu, dissipated pretty fast.

In that time, I'd managed to patch up Zabuza, then heal Haku, and even send Shadow Clones to transport them, along with Kakashi, to the Konoha hospital. There, our special guests would get an equally special reception, and they wouldn't be able to run.

Now I was standing at the start of the bridge, watching as an entire mob approached me. There were nearly three hundred of them.

Stopping about ten meters away from me, this united army started to spread out, surrounding me to cut off any route of retreat.

After a bit, out of the crowd that was just standing there staring at me, a short man with a cane shoved his way forward, yelling at people to let him through. That was Gato.

"You, brat!" he poked at me with his cane. "Where are the others? Answer me!"

Folding my arms, I narrowed my eyes.

"I don't like canes," I remarked. My face went melancholic, my head tilting up to the sky as if on its own. "Though it doesn't matter. You came here to kill me. And I'm going to take everything from you."

Gato shouted something, but his words were drowned out by the roar of chakra spilling out of me. A golden aura flared up around me.

And right away, dozens of Adamantine Chains burst from my back, clanking as they arced up into the sky.

The mob flinched at my chakra, then stared in shock as the thick chains formed something like the outline of a dome around them.

A few seconds later, loud, booming thuds started coming from all sides, like something heavy was being driven deep into the ground, hard enough to make it tremble. At the same time, there were loud explosions out on the water behind me.

Then, suddenly, between the chains, a barrier glowing red flared to life. The bandits had no idea what it was. Not knowing just made them even more nervous.

"Neither by land, nor above it," I slowly enunciated each word as I started walking toward Gato. The chains behind me rang with every step. His underlings, still in shock, didn't even move to shield him. "Neither by water, nor above it. No one's getting away from me. You're all doomed."

Stopping halfway to Gato, I finally saw the people in front of me snap out of it. Fear and horror were written all over their faces.

"Waste the little bastard!" he shrieked hysterically, pushing his way back between the ranks of his bandits. "We'll figure out how to get rid of this shit later!"

That was the last thing he managed to yell before disappearing.

The mob still didn't dare move forward. I went on:

"You dug up information on the Copy Ninja, and fear started smoldering in your minds. You found out about Zabuza's weakness and lit up with greed. You gathered almost your entire force here. All of this, only because I let you."

My eyes searched the crowd. I picked out Shinto's face and a few of Gato's other lieutenants I knew. But even they… not even they dared to step forward.

And really… who here was there to move against me? Ragged, filthy. Whatever random weapons they could grab. Talking about armor would be a joke. That was enough to keep this tiny-ass country under control. But for them, everything was going to change today.

"Every one of you is just a puppet in my hands. But the show is over." I raised a hand in front of me. "And when the puppeteer hangs up his property, the puppets come together in one last, chaotic dance."

My hand clenched, and a much stronger torrent of chakra burst out of me.

The world, already red from the light passing through the barrier, went fully crimson. The air seemed filled with the smell of metal, and once again, a quiet moan of agony spread through it.

Everyone froze, unable to even breathe. Then, like a wave, a low murmur filled with animal terror rolled through the crowd.

People who a moment ago had been all fired up to fight me were methodically crushed by me mentally, until they scattered in panicked chaos, sprinting the pathetic hundred meters toward the edge of the barrier.

What they had just seen had made their hearts clench for endless seconds. The most terrifying scenes. The cruelest executions—with themselves as the victims. For some, the phantom pain was so strong and so real that they dropped to the ground in convulsions, unable to stand back up.

Unhurriedly, I started moving forward again. The clanking of the chains still echoed with my steps, but it was barely audible over the deafening screams of the crowd.

The bandits soon reached the barrier and started hammering at it with their fists, their blades, hammers, anything they could get their hands on. Completely pointless. Even if you put a couple of Nine-Tails in here, they wouldn't be getting out of this barrier. Just regular people, plus a handful of… samurai and some bargain‑bin knockoffs of shinobi? Not even funny.

They could literally feel me getting closer. Once they realized how futile it all was, they just bolted to the sides like terrified rats, just to be a little farther away.

But some of them were so terrified they couldn't run anymore. Gato was one of those.

When I appeared in front of him, he just dropped to his knees, unable to look away.

Only when my hand, one finger extended, moved toward his forehead did Gato start to shake.

Chakra lit up along a couple of joints of my finger. With a hiss and the spreading stench of burnt flesh, I drew a single horizontal line on his forehead. Ichi.

Tears of pain rolled from his eyes. But he still couldn't move.

"Your name is now 'Test Subject Number One,'" I said calmly, after drawing the number "one." "Or just 'the First.'"

All that came from him in response was a pitiful sob.

The capture had begun.


The roundup of the test subjects went fast. Especially after I made some clones to help. Knock them out, seal them away—basic routine.

After that, grabbing a couple more people that a clone had snatched at Tazuna's house, I headed for the southern port, where the rest of the crowd had gathered. Some of them had even come from the far end of the country, waiting for the boss to finish his business with the ninja.

A couple of small manipulations, a false alarm—and they all gathered on a pier that was just perfect for me.

Another barrier, more clones. And my stock got topped up with another hundred numbers.

I didn't get any enjoyment out of it, though I tried to when I was taking Gato's group. Guess I'm not that much of a sadist after all. The feeling of power, of absolute authority, and… how badass the image was—that's what really got the blood pumping. The terror on people's faces—that's just boring, even if it's necessary.

Looking at their fear, at their shaking hands, at the pleading in their eyes… I felt nothing. No satisfaction, no pity. It was… again, boring. Their reaction was predictable, animal. No complexity in it, no game, like in a match with Koharu or Kakashi. This wasn't a fight, it was just… pest control. And realizing that left me feeling a bit empty.

The moment I burned the number "one" into Gato's forehead, he changed in my eyes. He no longer had a past, a personality, a will, or a name. Now he, like the rest of his buddies, was just a test subject I'd use when I needed to… But even that didn't stir anything in me. If anything, it cut my sympathy off even more.

It was more of a ritual for me. And yeah, in that persona, that crushing pressure under the dome made sense.

Once I finished cleaning up the Land of Waves, I only briefly went back to the town where the bridge was being built.

After the thugs had stormed through, then some kind of earthquake had started, then some weird thing appeared off in the distance—it took several minutes after it all stopped before the locals finally began slowly coming out of their homes.

My ruthlessness was already bearing its first fruits, turning into freedom for a lot more people.

After watching for a bit, I warped over to the hospital. By then, my teammates should've been patched up. And I didn't mind waiting for them to wake up.

Interlude. Haruno Sakura

Smell was the first thing to return to her. The sharp, sterile stink of medicine, mixed with the faint scent of clean linen.

Then came a dull, nagging pain spreading across her back and shoulders, and a feeling of all‑consuming weakness.

Sakura slowly opened her eyes. White ceiling. White walls. She was in the Konoha hospital.

Her memory didn't come back all at once, but in torn, jagged flashes.

The thick, damp fog on the unfinished bridge. The cold radiating from the ice mirrors closing in around Sasuke‑kun. The desperate, useless blows of her fists against the smooth, unbreakable surface. The sound of steel, and Sasuke's short, pain‑filled cry.

And then… that one moment, frozen in her mind like an insect in amber. His desperate shout: "Stay out of my way, Sakura!" The sharp, piercing pain of dozens of senbon driving into her body. And the last thing she saw before her consciousness went dark—the cold, indifferent ice.

Her heart clenched, but not from fear for herself. Her first instinctive thought was of him.

Sasuke‑kun… is he okay?

The door to the room slid open quietly, and an elderly medic‑nin walked in. His face was calm and kind. He went over without a word and sat down on the chair by Sakura's bed.

"It's good you're awake," the medic said gently. "You're in the Konoha hospital. Everything's fine, your wounds weren't fatal, just unpleasant."

"Sasuke‑kun…? Kakashi‑sensei…?" the girl's voice was weak and hoarse. "Naruto…?"

"Everyone's alive, don't worry," the medic‑nin reassured her. "Uchiha‑san is in the next room, he's already coming around. Hatake‑san is here too. And Uzumaki‑san… he brought all of you here, and he's perfectly fine. I saw him in the hospital not long ago."

The girl nodded silently. The fight was over. And Naruto was the one who'd finished it.

After making sure his patient was stable, the doctor left soon after, leaving her alone with her thoughts. Free of the fog of unconsciousness, they all came crashing down on her at once.

Sakura replayed that moment on the bridge over and over in her head. "Stay out of my way." Those words, thrown at her with cold fury, drilled into her skull harder than any sound.

When she tried to help him, he just said, "Stay out of my way." He hadn't protected her. He'd used her as a tool to help him get out, then tossed her aside as a useless obstacle. The moment that ninja apparently got distracted by Sakura, she turned into something in Sasuke's way. And he'd been ready to sacrifice her…

And then, like a corrosive poison, Naruto's harsh, prophetic words rose up in her memory. "He'll use you," "you're just a thing to him, like everyone else around him," "at best an incubator for his clan." Before, she'd taken that as cruel, cynical mockery.

But during that talk about what Naruto's mark meant… Sakura had decided it was just his clumsy exaggeration, just a way to push her to get stronger and give her a chance to live how she wanted. That had honestly warmed her, even if the way he'd put it… wasn't perfect.

Now, though… it looked like bitter, naked truth. Her beautiful, idealized image of Sasuke as a suffering, tragic hero, which had already started to crack around the edges thanks to his indifference, contempt, and Naruto's words, split down the middle like glass in a frame, shattering and giving way to the portrait of an egotist, blinded and consumed by his revenge.

And Naruto? She remembered his monologue. "Ruthlessness for the Right to Love." His strange, frightening words about "digging through corpses," about "the abyss," about his desperate wish to protect "his close ones." Back then, they'd shocked her. Naruto had always seemed unreal to her—too strong, too confident… like he couldn't have problems, like he physically couldn't be defenseless. But that evening, he'd shown that he could be vulnerable too—and that he was carrying a huge, invisible weight just to keep that vulnerability from ever showing. He was paying a horrible price for his strength.

Now, after Sakura had seen the despair and fear in the eyes of the people of the Land of Waves, she fully understood what Naruto had been talking about. Structure A6—that was a protocol, one of the framework plans you followed to build an interrogation in a specific set of situations. And by following it, the kunoichi, besides compiling the intel her team needed for their next moves as shinobi, had also learned a whole lot of other things about the Land of Waves. Robbery, plain daylight robbery, and public executions of anyone who spoke out. Tsunami's second husband had just been grabbed and executed right there in the street because he stood up to Gato and his cartel. The locals were helpless, doomed to just suffer grief after grief.

And on top of that, the cartel had an entire list of other extremes and crimes they kept committing every single day. There really was a "tumor" in this world that had to be "cut out." With a fast, precise, doubtless stroke.

The strength Naruto had tried to give her, the strength she'd once so desperately wanted just to win Sasuke over… in Sakura's mind it had become something way more valuable and almost sacred than just a way to make an impression.

Sakura compared them. Sasuke, who wanted to destroy a single man for personal revenge, willing to sacrifice a teammate—her—for it. And Naruto, who was ready to be ruthless for the sake of protecting others. And with crushing clarity, she saw who of them was truly strong, and who was simply broken and obsessed.

"We'll be fine." That phrase surfaced in her memory, and her heart clenched painfully. Naruto had included her in his circle of "close ones." He, who always seemed so strange—one moment open and energetic, the next distant and sharp‑tongued—actually cared about her. Not just cared—he'd saved her. If she was here, in the hospital, alive and in one piece, that meant he had taken good care of her.

Sakura looked down at her hands—hands she'd trained to exhaustion to make stronger. But why? To impress Sasuke‑kun? To make him notice her? Suddenly, all that motivation seemed so pathetic, so small, so… childish.

Naruto had used his strength to try and save an entire country pretty much on his own. And her?…

Naruto's philosophy was becoming her new reference point.

What am I willing to fight for? What price am I willing to pay?

Sakura no longer wanted to be "Sasuke's girl." Like she once had, she wanted to be a strong kunoichi. Someone who could protect, not be dead weight. Someone who deserved to be in Naruto's "inner circle" not because she was in love with him, but because she respected him and wanted to be just as strong and reliable.

The door to the room slid open quietly again. The blond she'd just been thinking about walked in. He looked a little awkward.

Coming in, Naruto gave a hesitant little wave in greeting and tried to smile encouragingly, but the smile came out a bit crooked.

"How are you feeling, Sakura?"

As he walked over to the chair beside the bed, Sakura looked at the one who had warned her. The one who had taught her. The one who had saved all of them. And the one who had called her "close."

The whole weight of her realization, the sharp pain of Sasuke's betrayal, and the overwhelming wave of gratitude to Naruto all crashed down on her at once.

The self‑control Sakura had been clinging to fell apart. Her eyes instantly filled with tears. But they weren't tears of weakness—they were tears of understanding and relief.

Before the boy could say anything else, she jerked upright in the bed and threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her face into his shoulder. By then, he was already sitting beside her, so she could reach him easily. She wasn't just crying—she was sobbing, pouring out all the pain, all the disappointment, all the pent‑up tension, her whole body shaking in his arms.

Naruto froze for a moment, clearly stunned by such an outburst. Then, a little awkwardly but steadily, he put a hand on Sakura's back and started gently stroking her hair, letting her cry it all out, silently giving her the support she needed more than anything else in the world right now.

Uzumaki Naruto's POV

With a mix of surprise and sympathy, I stared straight ahead, absent‑mindedly stroking Sakura's head. By now she'd calmed down and seemed to be starting to doze off.

Yeah… she really had a lot built up. I don't know exactly what triggered that kind of reaction, but I'd put, say, eighty percent on Sasuke's not‑so‑brilliant tactical decision that ended with Sakura catching Haku's senbon. At the very least, back then her look toward the ice, toward where Uchiha was, had been really miserable. And it looked like that might have grown into some resentment. Given Sakura's habit of overthinking and turning everything into drama… I'm honestly scared to imagine what she might have cooked up in her head. Because judging by that reaction, this is definitely not some "he's only mean because he likes me" crap.

Well, time will tell.

The girl had fallen asleep. And maybe it'd be nice to stay with her, but… considering how things are between us, that'd be a bit weird. Besides, I still have a few things to do, even if they're not exactly urgent.

So I left a big, fancy fruit basket I'd brought in a storage seal on the nightstand on the far side of her bed. And also a sheet of paper with the words "Get well soon" and a smiling face. At the bottom, in smaller handwriting: "Unfortunately, I've got things to do, and our mission hasn't been canceled, heh‑heh. If you need me, or when you're fully recovered, tear this paper.

P.S. You look really cute when you're sleeping."

After that, I left her.

---

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

 

[Finnish_man]

Tahnk you for the chapter this is getting pretty intresting

 

[Lillie Jones]

thanks for the chapter
Continue on
Cheers!

 

[sergey54321060]

P.S. You look really cute when you're sleeping."

Click to shrink...

Lol, she's cooked. There's no way she won't grow obsessed with him now, because this Naruto is literally everything she thought Sasuke was, but even better.

 

[Welydora]

The next person my illustrious self decided to grace with a visit was Kakashi. A few doors down the hallway and I was at the right one.

I opened it and saw the same old white‑haired mug lying in the bed, jonin vest missing. A second ago he'd been staring into his little orange book; right now he was staring at me.

"How's life, 'Captain'?" I leaned against the doorjamb, putting some extra sarcasm into the last word.

"M-mm… I've been better. What do you want, Naruto?"

"Just decided to check on your health. What's the big deal?"

"Plenty," he said flatly. "I've landed in the hospital more than once because of you. But this is the first time you've ever visited."

That last part came out a bit annoyed.

"Oh, give me a break," I waved a hand at him. "You should be thanking me for dragging your soggy ass out of danger."

He set the book down on his legs and folded his arms.

"Actually, I wanted to say that I'm deeply insulted and offended. Got it? You should have pulled me out right away."

"You were supposed to do a lot of things too," I pointed out, and Kakashi looked away. "So how about you don't start. Or I might forget I've already taken my revenge and decide to do it again."

Hatake's eye snapped back to me.

"So you did do it on purpose! I've already brought you a ton of cakes, and you still made us pay for dinner. Naruto, you're just…"

"Irresistible? I know."

Kakashi fell silent and started glancing around, clearly looking for something heavy to throw at me.

"About you being offended and not doing your job as captain. You're the one who filed those complaints on me, right?"

Hatake finally stopped fussing around; his visible eye curved into a nasty smile.

"Yep. Hokage-sama is waiting for you at the Residence. Today."

"Mhm-hm." I nodded. "That's manageable. Anyway, back to your screw‑ups. Someone else will be dropping by to see you today too."

Kakashi's face went sour again.

"It would've been better if you'd just quietly brought some fruit. Kids these days," he started to grumble.

"You didn't earn it," I said, stepping away from the door. "Alright, I've got other things to do. See you… when are you getting discharged?"

"In three days," he grumbled and waved his hand to shoo me out faster. "Alright, get out of here. You interrupted me at the best part."

He picked his book back up and covered his face with it.

"You didn't even have any serious injuries… Ah, screw it, enjoy lying around. Have a nice vacation."

I finished that last line with a tone that made it impossible to tell if I was being sincere or not, then closed the door.


"'Sup, you big lug?" I walked in on Sasuke, who raised an eyebrow slightly at the greeting. "Congrats on awakening the Sharingan."

I came closer and, in honor of the occasion, handed him a banana.

With a weird look on his face, the Uchiha accepted the fruit.

"By the way," my face went serious, "I'd have a few things to discuss with you about your actions in battle. But I figure I'll let Kakashi handle that. He's, like, our captain, after all. So just rest."

With Sasuke silently staring after me, I simply walked out.

For him, that was enough attention from me.


"How's life, Hokage-sama?" I walked into the old man's office and dropped into the chair across from him.

"Ah, Naruto, I was just waiting for you," Hiruzen lifted his gaze from his papers. For once he didn't have his pipe in his mouth, but he was still wearing the hat of the village leader. "Kakashi has already filed his report on the mission. It was… unexpected. He also filed three separate complaints against you. Care to elaborate on what happened?"

So I gave him the short version: the client had kinda… screwed us over, and it turned out the head of the local cartel sicced a Swordsman of the Mist on us.

Sarutobi nodded, and for now we shelved that topic and moved on to the complaints against me. The first was for the forced sparring sessions with Kakashi; apparently, he doesn't enjoy getting his ass kicked after missions. I wouldn't enjoy it either, but who told him to agree to lead a genin team? Someone probably did. But it sure as hell wasn't me.

The second, written in tiny cramped handwriting, was all about how I crudely violate every possible ninja protocol. Subordination. And how I, you know, threatened the client at the gate.

And in the third he described in vivid detail how I threw my poor captain and slightly‑less‑poor teammates into battle while I stood off to the side with the "client" and just watched. How my inaction put everyone in danger, blah blah blah.

He let me read through the papers, and while I was reading I did note there was a certain logic to it, and the facts more or less lined up with reality, but mostly it just made me snort.

The whole "three separate complaints" thing had actually been a joke. But he really went and wrote them.

"Regarding the first point," I began, "it's a necessity. Kakashi has only sparred with me voluntarily once. And that was on your orders."

"Perhaps that's because you two already spar so much?"

"Probably. But Hatake is about as much a 'sensei' as a chocolate eye is a Sharingan," I started bitching. "Seriously. If he does teach my teammates anything, it'll be basics at best. And even that will be because we'll figure out what to do ourselves, not because we understand his 'explanations'… Well, okay, maybe now he'll actually teach Sasuke something. But only if Sasuke turns his Sharingan on. Otherwise? Don't see it happening."

"Hmm." Hiruzen stroked his little beard. "In that case, your actions look more justified. What about the rest of the report?"

"Well. So I threatened the client. So what? Happens to the best of us." I shrugged carelessly. "He was way too cocky from the start. And then he set us up like that. I regret not smacking him in the face a couple of times… But there's still time to fix that."

"Ahem, ahem," Hiruzen cleared his throat. "I think that would be excessive."

"As for the third complaint, I didn't put anyone in danger. Koharu taught me along the same lines: let them feel pain, make mistakes, but don't put them in mortal danger. I would've pulled them out if it came to that. And by doing what I did, I gave them a chance to grow as shinobi."

"Your logic is clear, Naruto," the old man sighed. "And you're right, in a way. Experience is the best teacher. But your 'punishment' for Kakashi… keeping him in a Water Prison… that was excessive."

"Nope," I cut him off. "Not excessive. That 'elite jonin' has been acting like he couldn't give a shit from the very beginning. He ignored my request for reconnaissance, called it 'unnecessary,' and because of his laziness we walked into an ambush we weren't ready for. He's the one who put not only himself but his genin in danger. Keeping him in the water for a few minutes so he could think about his behavior was the mildest thing I could've done. But it's fine, I already came up with another way to get back at him…"

Hiruzen froze for a moment, then just waved his hand, cosmic weariness all over his face. Looked like little things like that really didn't get to him anymore.

"Alright, alright, I get it. Let's leave Kakashi. Please, continue. How did you manage to deal with Zabuza and his partner? And where is the Kubikiribocho? Kakashi mentioned in his report that the swordsman had it with him."

"Dealt with it easy," I answered shortly. "Evacuated the injured, took care of the threat. The sword… uh, I broke it. The important fuin are on the hilt, so the blade was just in the way. And... maybe I wanted to humiliate Zabuza a little. Although, for the record, that bandaged guy was more decent than the client. He insulted us less."

"A-and that's… all?" Hiruzen raised a skeptical eyebrow. "'Took care of the threat'? Naruto, we're talking about one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist."

"Yeah. That's it." I shrugged, not planning to go into the details of "disinfestation" and "test subjects."

Hiruzen narrowed his eyes shrewdly, leaning back in his chair. Ah, crap, there he is, the old fox. He's guessing something.

"You know, Kakashi suggested something… He's convinced you ran that reconnaissance at night after all. You wanted it so badly. And therefore," the old man smiled, "I'm ninety‑nine percent sure you have more to tell me about the Land of Waves. And maybe to share your future plans for that region."

Hmph, right on target.

"The Gato problem is solved. Completely," I finally said, letting him know he was right and that the topic was closed.

"I see…" After a few seconds Hiruzen nodded and fell silent, thinking. Then he looked off to the side, like he was remembering something, sighed, and decided not to dig for the sharpest details. "Alright, Naruto. I see the mission was… a success. But still, given your personality… what are your plans for the Land of Waves?"

Man, he really latched onto that. Though to be fair, I really did have some plans…

"Let's just say I'll be getting some benefits out of them. But if we're talking about benefits…" I took the perfect chance to change the subject. "Zabuza is the former leader of Kiri's revolutionary movement. And a Legendary Swordsman. Konoha has a lot of ways to use him. And I'll be waiting for my cut for making those possibilities exist for Konoha in the first place."

Another sigh came from Hiruzen. He leaned on the desk and thought for about ten seconds.

"There are some ideas. But you'll have to return the sword."

"M'kay. Later, after I've studied it in more detail."

"Don't be in a hurry, Naruto. Things like that don't get settled quickly."

That was where our conversation ended. I liked that Hiruzen didn't pry into pointless details, and that he trusted me.

Leaving the Residence, I just shook my head disapprovingly at the "bubble-bubble-bubble-bubble-bubble" that started up in the Hokage's office. Still, it's probably better than alcohol. And the Third doesn't go on drunken rampages, so it's fine, right?

After that I headed for the Land of Waves. I really did have some plans for that country. And now, some time after I'd finished with the bandits, when the locals had had time to check everything and realize something had happened to Gato, it was a pretty convenient moment for me to put a bit of pressure on them.


The situation turned out even better than I'd thought. The daimyo had come to the town where Tazuna lives and where the bridge is being built. On paper, he's also the ruler of the country. He'd brought a few officials with him, supposedly important ones.

The citizens of Waves, of course, were happy the cartel was gone, but that just made them probably shit themselves even harder over the fact that this same cartel had just been erased, just like that. They'd definitely seen the domes of my barriers and they definitely understood where they came from. Ninja from Konoha show up, early in the morning Gato mobilizes his forces, late in the morning weird domes appear over the concentration points of those forces, and when the domes vanish, no one ever sees Gato's men again. Hell of a coincidence, right? And scary as shit to look at.

That's why the daimyo himself dragged his ass over here—to start bending his back before such valiant Konoha shinobi, if necessary. Wouldn't want them to take it as an insult if he didn't come to say thanks.

That's more or less how the town's mayor told it, practically groveling every four words.

When I ordered him to gather this whole "important" crowd in the square in half an hour, he assured me everything would be done in the best possible way and ran off to comply.

Half an hour later I was in that same square. It was already packed, even though I'd clearly asked for fewer people. But whatever, it would do.

The residents—who had already managed to send riders out and confirm that Gato's posts were really empty—stood silently, a mix of fear, hope, and awe on their faces. In the center of the crowd, surrounded by a few terrified officials, stood the daimyo of the Land of Waves himself—an older, but still sturdy man in rich, if slightly rumpled, clothes.

I showed up silently, dropping down from the roof of the nearest building. The crowd gasped and parted, forming a living corridor.

"People of the Land of Waves," I began, my voice loud enough for everyone to hear, but lazy. "I'm pleased to inform you that Gato's tyranny has come to an end. His cartel no longer exists. You can freely finish your bridge, trade, live. In short, you're free again."

A murmur swept across the square, rising into joyful, if still uncertain, shouts. Now they had official confirmation. I gave them a few seconds to celebrate, then raised my hand, calling for silence.

"Daimyo, officials, I like that you're keeping quiet instead of praising me for hours. And that while you're listening, I can get straight to business," I said as I reached the center of the circle and turned to them.

The ruler and his entourage traded glances and hurried to bow in greeting. What made me chuckle in satisfaction was that they understood they didn't need to open their mouths.

"I'm no Good Samaritan," I went on once they'd straightened. "And I'm not happy. Your citizen, the bridge builder Tazuna, hired my team for a C‑rank mission. Escort duty. But instead of a handful of bandits, we ran into an armed cartel, hired samurai, and, most importantly, an S‑class nukenin, one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist."

The officials' and the daimyo's faces went pale. The local ruler looked like he was about to say something, but I cut him off.

"The task we ended up completing—that's not even just an S‑rank mission. It's an operation that costs more than what you're building. But," I paused, sweeping them with my gaze, "I understand the Land of Waves is at rock bottom right now. And it's not going to recover from Gato's rule anytime soon. Still, debts have to be paid."

I watched them all tensely waiting for my verdict.

"So, as an investment, so to speak, I'm leaving you all of Gato's assets. His ships, warehouses, accounts, goods. You can nationalize his business. That'll be enough to lift the country off its knees. Everything… except for one thing. His mansion on this island. From this moment on, it belongs to me." I turned my head to the mayor, who was standing nearby. "Until my mission to protect Tazuna is over, and maybe sometimes after that, I'll be using it. Find trustworthy people to look after it. And I want a full cleaning done there by the time I arrive in three or four days. Replace the beds, the plumbing. And the wallpaper, if it's ugly."

The mayor and, for some reason, the visiting officials all bobbed their heads hastily.

"Back to the country's business," I continued, "and your debt to me. My… financial consultant will go over the details with you."

Next to me, without smoke or noise, my shadow clone appeared, dressed in a perfectly tailored business suit, a black briefcase in hand. He adjusted his illusory glasses and looked at the daimyo with a businesslike air.

"In seven years," the clone began in a professional tone, "when your economy has recovered, over the following three years the Land of Waves will be required to repay me a debt of forty‑five million ryo. For a country of this size, with competent governance, that's not an overly burdensome sum."

The clone paused, letting them process the terms.

"However, if you can't manage it…" my voice went quiet again as I looked the daimyo right in the eye, "or if you start milking the citizens to get rid of the debt faster… then the Land of Waves will have to ask the Land of Fire for help hiring competent officials and managers. I don't need to explain what I mean by that, do I?"

The daimyo and his advisors quickly, fearfully shook their heads.

"Excellent," I nodded. "And one last thing. You're not to spread it around that it was Konoha shinobi who saved you. I know you won't keep it completely secret. But you'll at least try. And now you know where to turn if something like this happens again."

I turned, making it clear I was leaving, and vanished in a flash of Hiraishin. The clone in the suit stayed behind to take care of all the paperwork. My terms had been stated, which meant they'd been accepted. The Land of Waves was free. Well, in a way. And now it was also a little bit… mine. Heh.

The clone, of course, would hash out a lot of details. To make sure, for example, that Tazuna didn't get "accidentally" executed. He'd explain that the debt would be paid specifically to me, because, in practice, I was the one who wiped out Gato's organization. He'd tell them how I'd be sending inspections of their officials' work—cheap C‑rank missions that would let me keep my finger on the pulse of the Land of Waves using Konoha specialists. And of course, he'd go over a whole bunch of other stuff.

All in all, it worked out pretty conveniently. Gato had a lot of different property worth serious money. But in terms of actual cash, numbers on paper, or other securities, he didn't have that much, relatively speaking. Liquidating Gato's business would've been a bit of a hassle and taken a long time. This way, I just did this little country a royal favor, and later they'll pay me even more than I could've squeezed out of it in the near future.

For now I'm done with the Land of Waves, and while my teammates are laid up, I can, for example, drop by and relax with Hinata. I've got a lot of work ahead of me—I've got a ton of new material, and I need to process it. But before that, it'd be great to rest up and recharge. That's what I'll do—tomorrow. Right now, I need to take my revenge...

---

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

 

[dman1345]

I like how you are portraying Naruto the little sociopath makes me laugh. I look forward to your future chapters.

 

[Welydora]

Same day. Kakashi's hospital room

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Just like that, I threw it out there.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

"Y-yes, but—"

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

He gave a barely noticeable nod.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Eight Trigrams, Thirty-Two Palms!"

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

Thirty-two palms…

Hinata exhaled heavily as I knocked aside her final strike.

The fight stopped.

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

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

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

"Thank you… Naruto-kun."

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

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

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

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

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

It was time to push science forward.

---

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

 

[Welydora]

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

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

Soul research.

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

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

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

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

Whatever. That problem was fixable for analysis.

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

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

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

"Green-yellow?" I noted the color.

As expected, souls came in different colors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But at first, I couldn't find it.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She got even more flustered.

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

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

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

"Yeah. Five minutes."

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

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

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

The guy slowly turned his gaze to her.

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

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

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

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

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

Sasuke snorted and turned away too.

So we stood there like that for about twenty seconds.

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

"Yeah," I agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's not a bright story."

"Please."

I glanced at her. At least her curiosity survived.

"Fine."

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

Days moved forward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

 

[Finnish_man]

Thank you cant wait for more lovw this keepr it up

 

[Lillie Jones]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[Welydora]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

But in order, and relatively brief.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Except it didn't work.

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

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

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

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

That was not okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

 

[KepH028]

Praise Lord Welydora.

Now he will really become a God, quite literally. If improving the soul improves intelligence and chakra control, he can use those to optimize to grow stronger faster. A feedback loop. And if his soul grows in percentages, aka. multiples, that is by definition exponential growth.

I guess there won't be many enemies left to threaten him in this world, unless you artificially sniffle his growth. Though, if you made your character too OP, go all in, make him more OP. Exploration of magic (chakra based) to see what are the limits of what can be done, perhaps a portal to other worlds? Or train/coach/enhance his battle harem with his discoveries? Maybe build spaceships?

With intelligence enhancement, I also wonder whether he can do parallel thought / acceleration shenanigans. Also there's a huge difference to simple eidetic memory where one remembers facts as a list of things to where one does some mind mapping, dusting, and organization: intelligence can be augmented through being methodic. Perhaps he could even build something akin to Rimuru's great sage?

Can't wait for more

 

[Lillie Jones]

God hood has come for Naruto Uzumaki SI.
Continue on
Cheers!

 

[Dr. Professor Robot]

A bob cut? Dear lord, Sakura has decided to seek power by walking the path of the Karen.

I'd be worried about the fact that the Asura and Indra constructs are designed to reshape the body. Our SI knows that these constructs aren't truly part of their soul. They're more like a parasite latched on. Are they just readying their host for takeover?

The entire chakra system is suspicious in general. I forget, is it fanon or canon that chakra is something that was imposed upon the world by the Shinju tree? Something that was never meant to be part of the world's natural order. What's more, chakra seems to be hostile to soul energy by default, and it's only the SI's circumstances that allow him to work around that to convert chakra into soul.

I have a feeling that the default is very much the other way around. That the whole ccs is essentially a tap and a trap, to turn natural energy and soul energy into more chakra, to feed the Otsutsuki. That's why the Shinigami took what looked to be a chakra construct out of Minato rather than a soul. Death converts the energies. The Pure Lands might be nothing but a big bucket to hold converted souls until it's time for the parasite tree to drink them all down.

I wonder if our SI is only just making himself more weak to the Otsutsuki's real danger every time he makes his chakra stronger.

 

[sergey54321060]

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

Click to shrink...

They're more like a parasite latched on. Are they just readying their host for takeover?

Click to shrink...

Yeah, that Asura construct sounds awfully similar to Kama, I wonder if it's a failed attempt to recreate one by Hagoromo/Hamura or they actually succeed and SIruto simply isn't good enough to spot the bodysnatching function yet. Either way, making his own custom-made construct should combat that danger, as long as he gets rid of Asura one afterwards.

I wonder if our SI is only just making himself more weak to the Otsutsuki's real danger every time he makes his chakra stronger.

Click to shrink...

If it was the only direction he's working in then it would be a bit unsafe, but he's also looking into strengthening his body, which seemed to be pretty effective against chakra-eating aliens. Besides, with more chakra you'll have a safer, easier time mastering Sage Mode, since it's entire point lies in balancing natural energy, Yin and Yang chakra in 1/1/1 ratio