[https://i.imgur.com/MzaRLxn.jpg]
“-. July 23, 6 ANB .-“
The Littlest Great War of 743 AS began with a border incident along the hastily drawn line between the Sovereignty of Pond and the Great Myrtle Nindocracy. Its first engagement was the Rubber Kunai Strike of 15:15. It was followed by the Gum Shuriken Counterstrike of 15:20. A fallow period ensued during which the two sides conducted raids on each other’s food stores while preparing new strategies. The renewal of hostilities looked like it might be averted at 15:45, only for peace talks to break down in the face of the Perfidy of Perfidiousness, putting the advantage firmly in the hands of the Sovereignty.
“I can’t believe this, attacking under a flag of truce? By Hinata! Hinata. How could you, Hinata!? You’ll pay for this, Naruto, Shino did nothing wrong!” “Arf!”
“Alright, everyone! We got their sand fort and a hostage, but they’re not finished yet! Hinata is now our most valuable player, protect her at all costs!”
““YOSH!””
The Pond Sovereignty quickly pressed their advantage, only to run into an ambush that saw them completely routed and down both their diplomat princess and chief strategist. Because that’s what happens when you decide to prioritise one person over the entire war effort and your chief strategist is sleeping on the job.
“Alright troops, we’ve got them on the ropes, but it’s not over yet! Bring me the prisoners, I have plans for them.”
“Like hell! Chouji, secret strategy meeting, stat! It’s just the two of us now, so we have no choice, we’re switching to asymmetrical warfare!”
““RIGHT!””
The Great Myrtle Nindocracy cut a swath through the Sovereignty of Pond, meeting no resistance until only Fort Trash Bin was left. Unfortunately, the blitzkrieg of 16:15 ended in a stinking rubbish explosion followed by screams. Theirs, and others coming from far behind them. They ran back to their realm only to find it in complete disarray, their food stores ruined, their armory empty, and their hostages nowhere to be found.
“NOW!”
“NOW!”
““EH?””
Surprise nullified home field advantage, only for the Great Cutlery Counterstrike of 16:25 to degenerate into abject confusion when the Byakugan Princess betrayed her Sun King to the wily Dark Emperor.
“Hinata, how could you!?”
“That’s what I want to know!”
“Not that I’m complaining this time.” “Arf!”
“I’m s-sorry, N-Naruto, I-I just can’t bear to follow someone so treacherous!”
“You only say this now!? You attacked under a flag of truce!”
“B-because y-you asked, I… I can’t do it!”
“What do you mean you can’t do it, you already did! Get off me, you damn mutt!”
“Arf!”
“Not you!”
“That’s it, you’re dead!” “Woof!”
“Dogpile!”
“What is even happening right now?”
“Dogpiles are such a drag.”
“The end of the game is nigh. Why? Because Hinata continues to act illogi-"
“Dogpile!” “Arf!”
“I swear to god, Shino, if you turn coat too I’ll set your bugs on f-!”
“Don’t let them distract you, troops, press forward! We’ve totally got them this time!”
“Like hell! Chouji, CHOUJI, PROTECT YOUR LIEGE!”
“ORAAA!”
The Human Avalanche of 16:27 went down in history with all the grace of an upturned snack table and degenerated into a food fight from there.
As I sat there watching and hearing the unfolding disaster from both perspectives – as you do when you can control every sensory organ individually and your hearing is about as good as a great wax moth – I could only wonder how it had come to this. What was with the big words? Where was the brooding Uchiha? Where was the gentle Chouji? Where was the browbeaten Hinata? Uzumaki Naruto, what have you done?
Then there was the last question I needed answered to properly reassess the day’s mental model. “How has nobody still not stepped in to corral them?”
“Because we are closest, I expect,” Itachi confirmed my first suspicion. “Acting before me would be a slight to the Uchiha clan, and most of the other visitors would rather discipline their scions later in the privacy of their homes, I imagine. As for my parents, I assume my father does not want to show disunity, and my mother likely enjoys the sight of Sasuke so carefree.”
You gotta love them optics. “And you?”
“Besides the fact that I have never seen Sasuke so animated? It is because of what you did with Uzumaki.” Well now, that was a new one. “No offense to him, but he was a disaster of a child. So long as the situation is still a net benefit to Sasuke’s happiness, I am willing to stand aside and watch you work.”
It always goes back to Naruto, how much more of this must my poor ego endure? “Way to put all the responsibility on me,” I grunted. “Well, since you’re so accommodating, who can I talk to for a spot of supply requisition?”
“What do you need?”
“A case of water balloons. Actually, make that two, to be anonymously delivered to both sides of the conflict.”
Itachi blinked, then shrugged and nodded. “I will see to it.”
Then he left. He left to play gopher rather than stay in my presence, he just left me there defenceless, that half-grown miscreant!
“Ribbit.”
“No offense to you, big boy,” I pat Gama on the back. I’d called it over as soon as the war began, wouldn’t do for Naruto to take asymmetrical warfare the wrong way. “It’s not your fault you’re still just a dumb animal.” For what little sense it made in such an empathetic life form whose cognitive foundation never stopped evolving. Wasn’t the holographic mind supposed to come with automatic progression to self-determination?
“Ribbit.”
“Go on, torment the other frogs why don’t you.”
“Ribbit.” Gama hopped over to where the bulrush was thickest but still within the great myrtle’s growing shadow. The tree was in full bloom, so it was not only beautiful but cast the perfect shade for Gama to lounge in. Which was good because it meant the beast would stay within Naruto’s shouting distance.
I heard five different conversations change the moment I was left alone, and those were just the ones I’d been passively absorbing without putting effort into it. Omnidirectional hyperawareness would no doubt be a significant information gathering tool if I were a ninja. But since I’m not a ninja, I was more interested in learning how to engage and disengage socially with Konoha’s bigshots. It would probably save me a great deal of annoyance depending on who came my way first.
Not for the first time I wondered what I was even doing here. Whatever reasons Fugaku had for inviting me were obsolete. My influence over village policy expired within the first month. My seeming influence over the Hokage – the true dynamics of which were the opposite of what people thought – became null when I didn’t see the man again after my second stay in the hospital. My ‘one-time Anbu hotline pass’ was a secret nobody knew but us two. And whatever the Hokage got from Shisui reporting on the unspeakably confounding experiments I inflicted on my own person, nobody else was privy to that either. Officially anyway.
Since I’d kept precisely nothing secret of the information and means I’d used to achieve my known level of ‘sway’, I was all out of political leverage to give or be given. That just left my indirect influence through ‘control’ of Konoha’s jinchuuriki, but even that didn’t apply because the invite was given well before Naruto became a mainstay of my life. Having the usher call me ‘Konoha’s Preeminent Loremaster’ even supported my conclusion. It was an honorary title that was completely made up so that, I assumed, Fugaku could still claim he didn’t invite just anyone to… the grandest Uchiha political event with the highest risk and reward prospects in the entire Clan’s history post-Madara.
Except that I had Uchiha Itachi attend to me in particular.
“You should be dead.”
And then there was that. “Lord Hyuuga.” I rose from the bench and turned to greet Hyuuga Hiashi with a nod. I made sure not to sound like I was talking down to him, hard as it is when you’re so much bigger than everyone else and the guy intruding on your peace is a slaver. The other two who were on their way over, Akimichi Chouza and Yamanaka Inoichi, stopped just far back enough that any accusations of eavesdropping would be deniable. “How may I help you?”
“In ways my clan will prove no less aforethought or appreciative than our hosts, I’m sure.” That told me everything I needed to know about how Konoha’s third Royal Bloodline felt about ‘The Masanari Treatise.’ Never mind the idea that I might have something similar in the works for them. Or others. “The Hokage informs me you appreciate direct words.”
Because naming literally anyone else wouldn’t be elevating enough. “The Hokage is correct.”
“Then I will be direct: I wish to study you with my Byakugan.”
Something that came as a surprise to precisely no one. Honestly, the real surprise was that he asked at all, instead of stalking me on a random day before or after. “What are the experimental parameters?”
Hiashi withdrew his arms form his sleeves. “Clarify, if you would.”
“When, where, for how long, are you just going to look at me or were you thinking something more invasive, will I be actively or passively involved, is this a favour or a transaction?”
“You are as upfront as you are thorough.” Which could be good or bad. “Then in order – now, here, only for a few minutes, I will only inspect you with my eyes, you can contribute verbally however you wish, and… we will call it a minor favour.” Hiashi looked at me seriously. “From one Clan Head to the other.”
… I wish I could claim to be blindsided by this. Alright, first order of business when ‘minor favour’ covered everything up to donating entire properties with equally sizable caveats – stall. And look at that, I didn’t even need to do it myself because I could hear a convenient distraction. Glancing across the children’s area, I saw a pair of unfamiliar Uchiha bringing in the cases of water balloons. Discreetly. So discreetly that none of the children noticed except Shino. One of them stomped on his bugs, from what he was mumbling to himself. A habit he was still being trained out of? Alas, in his distraction he ignored the pie slice that Naruto failed to nail Sasuke with. Having a face full of cream finally broke the poor boy’s composure. Shino grabbed an apple and nailed Naruto in the forehead so hard that he got face-slapped off the jetty right into the lake. New battle camps swiftly formed and the food fight promptly devolved into a mud war.
A mud war which, as it happens, would need even more copious quantities of water to wash off than the food. Like from the water balloons that the little devils promptly began to bombard each other with. I looked back to Hiashi just as Sasuke and his side began to pelt the others, precipitating immediate retaliation.
Apropos of nothing, being able to run true-to-physics holographic simulations with your mind is an easy ticket to being called a prophet.
Now to discuss the thing that isn’t nearly as convenient. Clan head, honestly. “As loath as I am to impose on your patience, Lord Hyuuga, I’ll need you to explain what you mean by that last bit.”
“Surely it must come as no surprise, being that it was you who introduced the method of verification.” Hiashi sounded neither condescending nor facetious. “There are few who consider your confirmation as Uzumaki Elder to be anything other than a foregone formality.”
So it was my less flattering hypothesis – everyone was behaving on the conjecture that I was Uzumaki, just so they could side-step the issue of social class by treating me like a fellow clan head. Or Elder, at least. Which, fair enough, I had sufficient DNA overlap with Naruto to qualify – I’d absorbed a bit of his blood and compared his DNA to mine back when he was still accumulating scrapes from playing with the toads a bit too enthusiastically. But I’d kept mum on just what control I’d gained over my anatomy – and everything else – and the hospital still hadn’t isolated the enzymes for DNA mapping, so there wasn’t any actual proof. Also, I was genetically so far away from the main branch that it was ludicrous. “I suppose it’s an understandable position,” I finally said a quarter of a second after his reply. “But to be honest with you, it seems like a lot of effort to put into rationalising all this privileged treatment. I’d much rather have the opposite.”
“You would rather be condescended to like a commoner?”
Testing the bounds of direct words, are you? How loath are you really, Hyuuga, to ‘lower’ yourself? “You misunderstand, my issue is not with being treated like an equal by you and peers, it’s that you consider other Konoha citizens to be inferiors at all.” Hiashi didn’t interrupt, but his eyes did exhibit micromovements not too different from mine while I was studying my own microexpressions in the mirror. “Granted, your status claims are more legitimate than most, what with being Hamura’s descendants and everything, but still, you joined the Senju-Uchiha kingdom, so to speak.” And certainly not as rulers. “The Senju name may be reduced to just one person, but the Senju blood is hardly thin in Konoha, as you know.” The Senju had spent the bulk of the Warring Clan era marrying other bloodlines into theirs and collecting techniques. Then, when they established Konoha, they did the opposite as a way to put their faith into Hashirama’s vision – they married out to strengthen incoming bloodlines and granted their wealth of techniques to the Village as a whole. “The average Konoha citizen has more Senju in them than I have Uzumaki. Coupled with the fact that my family isn’t from the original settlers, I’m technically lower on the echelon than all those commoners you mentioned. Konoha’s citizenry are the Senju.”
“Then I shall keep looking forward to the day when they, too, stop squandering their heritage, Senju name or not,” Hiashi said evenly.
“Well, that’s me told.” Tsunade too. “I guess I can hardly complain that Konoha’s meritocracy is still functional.” However ridiculous the argument sounded coming from a man who kept his equally capable twin as a slave even after he got power.
“Though perhaps their approach will not be as self-hazardous as yours,” Hyuuga was saying now, his tone a bit milder. “Should we be expecting another treatise soon?”
Should you be concerned, you mean? The answer was obviously yes, but also no. I shook my head. “I’ve moved on to more physical means of advancing mankind.”
“Your vehicle.”
“And other things.” Most of which wouldn’t even clash with the ninja way. At first. But that thought would have to go to a background mental partition because I was hearing Sasuke absconding from the chaos to try and pilot his little aircraft without knowing what he’s doing. “You may examine me, Lord Hyuuga. Do you need me to stand still?”
“Preferably.”
“Alright, let me just…” Casting my eyes along the ground, I spotted a little pebble nearby and crouched down to pick it up. “There. You can go ahead.”
Hyuuga Hiashi raised an eyebrow at me, but decided not to ask. His hands came together in a sign.
Third Eye of the Anchorite.
“Byakugan.”
Hyuuga Hiashi’s eyes emitted one – and only one – omnidirectional chakra wave on activation. But it wasn’t the only emission, it was followed by regular pulses of Yang energy, sixty of them per second – same as the average eye’s frame rate? I couldn’t actually see Yang energy any more than I could Yin, but I could feel it. I’d have expected Yin to be involved instead, but then… that was more of an Uchiha thing, and you don’t need magic to use echolocation, or whatever this visual equivalent was called. It explained why using the Byakugan was physically tiring too, better than the extra blood flow anyway. The outflowing of energy also explained why visual genjutsu on Hyuuga were impossible, it would be like trying to push water back into a running tap.
Also sidestepped that little issue of changing energy states. Solid matter was mostly empty space between atoms. The only reason you couldn’t see through walls was because of the swarm of electrons around atomic nuclei. Each electron mostly kept to the same pattern, but once in a while it could change to another, as long as no other electron was doing that pattern already. And this came with a change in energy state – moving up to a faster pace took energy, and moving down to a slower pattern lost energy. That energy was released in the form of light, which could in turn be absorbed by whatever electrons it fell on, prompting yet another change to a faster pattern, and so on ad infinitum, with a lot of that light escaping the object altogether. That’s how you got color. Opacity.
Any form of passive sight would have to compensate for those changing energy states of electron particles. All the electron particles. All the time. Somehow.
Clearly, the Byakugan did not possess this ability. Neither did Hyuuga brains.
After ten seconds without new data inputs, I briefly cast my Third Eye across Konoha to check on my neighbours and my home – not currently being infiltrated, the toads were fine too – then in the opposite direction to the Hokage Rock and beyond it, where I sensed Shisui more clearly than I could anyone else. It was something in his Spirit that made me as aware of him as I was of Naruto, despite the latter’s oh so intense and distinct mix of ‘flavor’. For better or worse, Shisui’s last big character shift occurred almost entirely due to my influence, so much so that I myself became a fundamental part of his experience. His Yin. The Uchiha weren’t the only ones who could bestow their spirit, it turned out. Though this wasn’t Yin bestowal, exactly, more like Yin resonance. ‘I will carry you in my heart’ had an entirely new meaning for me these days.
I’d have to do something really nice for Uzumaki Karin someday. Mind’s Eye of the Kagura was a terribly useful skill, especially when backed up by a human brain not stuck in low-power mode like everyone else. Those parts of the brain involved in dreams? That react during psychotropic and psychedelic experiences? Those parts of my brain that were calcified?
Yeah. It was natural energy gone wrong.
But what can you do when the thing that lets you make magic is also the thing that sucks your Spirit up into a tiny, wrinkled, tangled ball of Yinny-Yangy stuff? It’s why we humans can’t have nice things. Like poetry from your mother’s ghost that makes you invulnerable.
Or necromancy.
Shisui was with the Hokage, Kakashi and a bunch of unfamiliar auras. Well, they were close by in ninja terms, anyway. He felt healthy, his chakra vibrated in that way that he only got when he was wired, borderline eager. I was tempted to look closer, but I wasn’t at the point where I could do that without losing track of time and my surroundings. And it wasn’t like I was in any way interested in possessing even more terminally classified information.
I wondered what Hiashi would see if I sat down and sent my mind over to look in on him properly. But then I’d really be cut off from the rest of the world.
Instead, I shifted my awareness of the Third Eye back to the background and refocused on my surroundings. Good thing too, because the final tipping point in the Littlest Great War of 743 AS was upon us.
I discreetly turned my head just enough to listen in on Sasuke’s… not so surprising progress because I did my best to idiot-proof all the stuff I made for public consumption. All the while, I turned the pebble in my hand. I briefly considered taking a bite out of it, that would really give people something to gawk about – oho, quartz and iron in the same chunk, double-check that my cravings are still safely set to ‘human standard’ – but it was a bit too gauche even for me. I spent the next couple of minutes filing it down with my fingernails instead. Hiashi concluded his unblinking examination just as I pulled a notebook out of my pocket and pencilled in some words, then ripped the paper in as thin a strip as I could.
“Mister Masanari,” Well now, whatever happened to Elder Uzumaki? “What have you been doing to yourself?”
Restoring the Golden Age of Man one phenotype at a time. Which included recreating the Uzumaki traits and techniques from first principles, obviously. “You’ll need to be more specific.”
“I can barely see your chakra pathways, it is as though my sight is blocked or obscured.” That might be my much increased tissue density, though since the Byakugan could see through solid steel, it was more likely the Anami finding the Yang emissions a delicacy. I was surprised enough was left to bounce back for him to see anything at all. “And what I do see, let alone the chakra itself, only reinforces my initial conclusion and adds new questions.”
I was surprised it took so long for people to finally bring up the whole ‘leaks chakra as fast as he generates it’ thing, and even more surprised he was being circumspect on this one thing. Was it for me or for himself? Didn’t really matter anyway, there wasn’t anything I wanted from him that he could hold it over me for. “Ask away.”
“How long have you had the Gate of Death open?”
Seven months and 25 days. Akimichi and Yamanaka stopped their conversation, and they were two of many who paused or stirred at the words, even some who were over thirty meters away. “I’m going to invoke the bloodline secrecy clause on that one.”
“Pity,” Hiashi said, clearly expecting that reply and geared to punish me for it in the same breath. “I suppose it is the reason your Gate of Opening has been completely destroyed?”
Dismantled, Mister Indiscretion, not destroyed. “Your mind betrays you where your eyes do not, I’m afraid.” The Gate of Opening was the obvious option to break down for analysis, being one of only two gates whose function was entirely redundant to someone like me. But it wasn’t like I was going to tell anyone that I was reverse-engineering the chakra pathway system for reasons that would make me sound like some heretic. “But I can explain this much – way it normally goes you open the gate of mind to lift biological limits. If you can get the other gates to open without opening the first, though, you can get whatever benefits they can provide without breaking human limits.”
“You should still be dead. The amount of chakra inside your body is less than I have seen in some corpses.”
Yes, most people wouldn’t consider losing chakra faster than you made it to be a good thing. Of course, most people didn’t need it out of the way to use bloodline nonsense, like digestion refinements and intra-cellular biomass and raw substance assimilation. For storage. And tissue density. Blessed be physics for all its sound-cancelling tricks because I was a lot heavier than I used to be. Tougher too. “That falls under bloodline secrecy too, naturally.” I finished wrapping my little message around the rock stick just as Uchiha Sasuke judged himself – wrongly – ready to guide his radio-controlled helicopter on its maiden voyage. Once it was fixed with a rubber band, I did one simulation, 3 simulations, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23-
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Very well,” Hiashi conceded, though clearly unsatisfied. “Then I have just one more element to add to my examination.”
“Hold that thought.”
47, 53 aaand flick.
The stick of not-chalk nailed Naruto right in the forehead.
He went down with a yelp that was completely ignored in the sudden scrum of grabbing and fighting over who got to capture and ransom the airborne ‘superweapon’ that Sasuke had just piloted into the ground with only minimal help from the flowery myrtle branches. The birthday boy very bravely tried and failed not to stomp his foot embarrassment and frustration. Frustration that rapidly degraded into shimmering-eyed resentment as everyone got to play with his new toy but him, and not even the right way.
I caught Naruto’s eye and pointed down.
The confused brat did so and finally saw my message. Bending forward – incidentally dodging two mud balls and three water balloons – Naruto quickly unwrapped it, pocketed the rubber band just in case – good boy – read my message, crushed it tight in his fist, ate it – what the hell, boy? – pulled in a deep, chest-bursting breath and-
“TIME OOOOOOOOOUT!”
The children stopped. The remaining conversations stopped. The croaking of frogs and toads in the bulrushes stopped. Far behind Hiashi and the rest, I saw Fugaku Uchiha pause in his talk with Aburame Shibi to look over with a frown. Behind them, Mikoto Uchiha stuck her head out the window curiously.
“Time out!” Naruto repeated, only to – SPLASH – be pelted with two water balloons in the face. “Bluh – I said time o – buh – TIME OUT dammit, you’ll break the helicopter!”
That finally got to Kiba. “The what?”
“Uncle's present to Sasuke, duh. The one you’re stealing. Water and electricity go sszrt, you know, and it’s not yours anyway, mutt, tell him Akamaru!”
“Arf!”
“You traitor!” But Kiba handed Sasuke back his toy, though he still glared at Naruto. “Don’t think I trust you though, you already showed you don’t play fair!”
“Fair’s for when we’re not on missions, we’re ninja!” Not yet you’re not. ”But that’s not the point, it’s not about fair. It’s un-re-a-lis-tic.” Naruto carefully sounded out the word I’d written on my message. That he just ate because it bears repeating, Naruto, what the hell? I told him that’s something only I can do, he better not be breaking his teeth on rocks when I’m not around.
“What’s unrealistic?” Chouji asked. “You just said…”
“No, he is correct. Why? Because the enemy will always have a better grasp of his own resources and weapons.”
“What a bother,” Shikamaru dropped to lean against the tree with a grunt and began squeezing water out of his hair. “But I can see it. In a true mission, Sasuke would be a master at controlling his flying craft, he’d be able to drop entire loads of water balloons and stuff all over us.”
“Exactly!” Naruto said sagely. “Sasuke! You said you wanted me to show you how it’s done, well let’s start.”
Sasuke scowled at Naruto, filthy and wet like the rest of them, but… “Hn. It’s about time you lived up to your word, fishcake. But no more funny business!”
“Yeah yeah, duckbutt, let’s start with the car first, it won’t fall apart at the first crash.”
I am insulted.
“I don’t crash things!”
“Sure, I was just imagining the poor helicopter-“
“I didn’t crash it, it was a tactical maneuver ruined by outside interference!”
“Alright alright, Kiba’s the worst minion, I hear you.”
“Naruto, shut up or I’ll-” “Arf!” “Not you too, Akamaru!”
There was much more grumbling, but the kids came together to watch Naruto teach Sasuke the ins and outs of the little gift he’d spent the last two months putting together, using the motor and radio I’d let him take as ‘keepsakes’ after they ‘turned out too weak.’ Naruto still acted boisterous and confident, but sent me furtive glances, hopeful but unsure. I smiled and nodded. It made the kid practically glow, and the others responded to his mood and were soon laughing and swearing vengeance over the sorry states of their hair and clothing while calling out encouragements. Some expressed admiration at Naruto for having made such a wonderful machine. Others were openly jealous of Sasuke’s good fortune, which the boy bore with a face that completely failed to hide how smug he was. They weren’t even wrong, it really was a big achievement, especially at that age.
Hiashi was watching the children too, now, eyes lingering on a laughing Hinata. “Impressive.”
I shook my head. “It’s really just Naruto, he’s actually quite charismatic.” I actually felt a little proud of the kid. I still couldn’t stand children for long, they got irritating and exhausting fast, even though I used to have no trouble dealing with worse on a daily basis. I’d fiddled around with my brain hormones and endorphins to compensate, but it wasn’t the same when you were so acutely aware of which feelings were real or fake. I was still working on it, but cognitive behavioural therapy isn’t an exact science. It wasn’t even a brain issue, as I’d since discovered through my continued failure to extend my control to the immaterial parts of me. It was spiritual.
There was something in my Yin, a leech lodged in my spirit, some manner of blob that even the Anami couldn’t directly interact with without being sucked in and devoured. And on that note... “Alright, Lord Hiashi, what was that last thing you wanted to try?”
“Quite. I would like to use the Gentle Fist to block one of your chakra pressure points.”
Do you now, thanks for sparing me the effort. “Normally I’d refuse, since you’re just trying to skirt around the secrecy clause, but I’ll give you a deal.” I indicated a vague area over my right shoulder. “Do you see anything strange over here? Chakra, Yang, Yin, visual distortions of any kind, anything at all?”
Hiashi focused his Byakugan on the area I indicated and spent the next minute increasing his frown, more and more as my pointing finger moved along with the anomaly. Yes, it was varying degrees of mobile. Arbitrarily so.
Finally, he spoke. “Can you control your chakra well enough for controlled bursts? Localized, preferably.”
“Yes.” I was never going to resist the temptation to walk on water.
“Do so in the middle of what you sense.”
Guess doujutsu couldn’t see Yin or Yang energies any better than normal eyes did. Making a snap decision, I decided not to use conventional chakra control and abruptly closed all the tenketsu in my hand – Hiashi twitched – waited a few moments for the chakra to build up, then reopened them and pushed the chakra out in a wave.
“… Again.”
I had to do the same thing eleven more times before he called a halt.
“I have seen enough. It is barely discernible, but small amounts of the expelled chakra seemingly disappear into nothing instead of dispersing like the rest. I will not ask if this also falls under the secrecy clause.”
“Appreciated.” I flexed my hand and ran a cell-grade scan. The experiment didn’t seem to have harmed my soul cells any, which was always good to see. My little nature spirits were learning and adapting too. “Well, a deal’s a deal.” I sent an order to generate a fresh layer of subdermal stem cells that I quickly altered into my latest ‘assimilate dermal material’ configuration. “Here, will the pressure point in my palm do?”
Now it was Hiashi who looked at me wryly. “Yes, it will do fine.”
Incoming delivery, little ones.
I held my palm out.
Hiashi wasted no time in blocking the major pressure point in the middle of my palm with a juuken strike.
I didn’t deactivate my pain receptors so it stung, but a little pain never killed anyone, and I was more interested to know if – yes. Quick as he was, a few of Hiashi’s skin cells still remained behind, caught by freshly-grown microfilaments that quickly pulled them into my body to be analysed.
Doujutsu weren’t strictly natural eyes, they were more like implants that replaced or co-opted the natural organs, either progressively or early on during the pregnancy. The Sharingan was a result of the same alien genetics as the keirakukei, I’d learned this when I pulled this same trick on Shisui a while back. I could already confirm the Hyuuga were no different, so I wouldn’t be getting any Byakugan information I might otherwise be able to apply to my own eyes. Not that it would have helped much when those genetics would be as hardcoded as the rest, the reverse-engineering was going pretty slow, even with my brain playing the part of a quantum supercomputer. Unless an eye or two dropped in my lap for me to stick into my sockets and dismantle one system at a time, I’ll be stuck cycling through animal phenotypes on an as-needed basis for the foreseeable future. Not that I felt the opportunity loss, even my base sight could react to Shisui’s body flickers now that I could leverage its true maximum framerate, and my brain could simulate a lot in the same span of time. The speed of thought was king.
Epigenetics still provided many great data points though. I was already getting ideas for how to align the chakra system to work more with my body instead of off it, and how to improve my precision and hand-eye coordination for small, explosive movements. Should help a lot to troubleshoot engines during live testing. I’d owned several cars in my previous life, so I knew how to change parts and do maintenance, but how to make the parts? The engines? I’d had to figure everything out from the ground up. If I hadn’t stumbled my way into turning my brain into a reality simulator, I’d still be testing piston shapes and casing alloys, and I’d probably need help to do it. Hired help and lots of it. Instead, I could reallocate the money and headspace to something else. I wasn’t just an expert without a field anymore, I was an engineer.
Also, comparing normal cells to mine always gave some insight into what functions could be offloaded from the Anami back to the cell proper, to free up resources. Resources that then aided in their eternal war of adaptation against the ever ravenous chakra system.
Diminishing returns were the order of the day there, unfortunately, but every little bit helped.
“You will pretend inability to unblock your tenketsu after what you’ve just shown?” Hiashi asked after ten seconds had passed.
“No.” I manipulated the surrounding cells to pull on the pressure point like an iris, dislodging the plug and allowing my own chakra to push it out. “I wanted to see if the existing pressure was enough on its own. Apparently not.” For a single block at least, I’d like to see a Hyuuga try to block Maito Gai’s tenketsu in the middle of Morning Peacock.
Hyuuga Hiashi was obviously wise to the same. “Thank you for your forbearance, Elder Uzumaki.” He glanced from my hand to my face, then to the smiling Hinata and Naruto and back. “It was an interesting meeting.” With a final nod, the Hyuuga Clan leader took his leave.
I watched him go, feeling conflicted. While I appreciated him not losing his mind over juuken being useless on me, I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t plotting blackmail and ruination on the inside. Oh well, I’d just have to deal with things as they come, as usual.
Yamanaka Inoichi and Akimichi Chouza took their turn to talk to me. The former made his greetings and stayed largely silent. The latter asked me if I might consider partnering with them on a new range of frog’s legs recipes. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who liked the ‘baffle them with bullshit while I pull the other rug from under him’ approach. I politely declined on grounds of sentience but told them I might be willing to share certain family recipes instead, in exchange for a cut of the profits. I was almost disappointed that Inoichi didn’t try any mindgames, literal or otherwise. While I wasn’t going to goad a Yamanaka shinobi into trying to telepathically assault me, I was fairly sure I’d notice and probably give him a bad time. While I didn’t know how their mind techniques worked, I was reasonably confident they were rooted in holonomic brain theory. While I couldn’t speak as to which models were or weren’t pseudoscience, quantum consciousness was definitely a thing in this world. The electric oscillations in the brain's fine-fibered dendritic webs is where I’d finally found the edge of Yang to see the Yin. It was a mess, but a mess I could at least perceive now.
Their visits seemed to work as an unspoken cue, because I was engaged by a bunch more people after that, alone and in groups, most of them Uchiha of varying interests and professions, all of them curious about my flying craft. I was getting a lot of practice reading microexpressions, recognizing tonal inconsistencies and matching scents to emotions with my enhanced sense of smell, though I had to actively refocus on the distant cooking fragrances after the fourth woman that tried to seduce me. There were a whole lot of them too, not all of them single, and some even lusted after me despite all efforts to the contrary. I suppose I should be flattered that so many of them found me attractive.
Since I’m not a homewrecker, I eventually made a tactical retreat to the restroom – unlike my much improved ability to digest and store biomass, my excretory system still had a fluid output comparable to my times pre-refinement. Afterwards, I took my time rejoining the crowd outside. I even met Mikoto Uchiha, who gave me a tour of their personal art gallery and thanked me for bringing Naruto to the party. We had a grand old time skirting the Kyuubi and Naruto parentage ban and she didn’t lust after me even once, thank heavens. She asked if I could bring Naruto over again in the future and I didn’t say no.
When I finally couldn’t justify not returning to the party proper, I made a slow detour by the refreshments table.
Unfortunately (or not?), Nara Shikaku just ‘happened’ to run into me there. “You like living dangerously, don’t you Masanari?”
“I suppose this isn’t about my means of travel.”
“Hyuuga Hiashi is very big on honor, and whatever techniques you invent are your business, but he is just as protective of his family interests, of which the juuken is second only to safeguarding the Byakugan itself. More importantly, the Hyuuga Clan Elders don’t always see the right line to toe as well as he does. There’s a whole laundry list of other things I’d have to say, but I know you’re smart enough to account for all of them, which makes me think you don’t expect those repercussions to apply to you, if not now then soon. You’re planning to leave Konoha, aren’t you?”
Well, either he’s faking his concern, or I really did make a bigger impression on him than I thought. Also, just how little information does he need to guess everyone else’s plans for the future? It wasn’t outside my list of possibilities, but still. “It’s not like I plan to spread the secret to the whole world, and I doubt anyone but me can actually replicate it.”
“Except as a side benefit of whatever else you’re up to that might be transferable, right?”
I looked at him pointedly. I really wasn’t being glib here, I could have used conventional chakra control instead of effectively telling the Head of the Hyuuga Clan that I could no-sell their unbeatable taijutsu. But Shikaku was right, I did plan to leave Konoha soon to become a proper businessman, and with my bodily autonomy and survivability advancing as fast as I could make them, my ability to monetise leverage and counter subterfuge was all that was left to shore up. I wasn’t exactly goading people here, but I also wasn’t likely to have the opportunity to practice counter-espionage skills in such controlled conditions again. Sometimes, you have to go big or go home.
It was the second biggest reason I wasn’t adopting Naruto.
Shikaku sighed. “I suppose I should be glad you’re spacing things out now, instead of breaking the order of things over your knee every other week like when you started out.”
“I’d apologise, but then I’d have to pretend regret over averting the horrifying massacre of everyone here.”
“I don’t suppose I can interest you in a place with T&I? Ibiki insisted I ask.”
“You may as well ask me to swallow knives. I can do it, though I’m not otherwise equipped to put on a magic show at the moment.”
“I’m starting to see why the Hokage can’t stand to talk about you.”
He can’t? “I can hardly come up that often in conversation.”
“You’d be surprised. Then again, maybe not. Have a good one, Masanari, try not to give any other dynasties an existential scare today, hmm? Good job with your kid, he’s a riot.”
Shikaku left me to my thoughts of shinobi politics and little orphaned messiahs that really did deserve more from me than I literally could give.
My plans to leave Konoha were the second biggest reason I wasn’t adopting Naruto. The main biggest reason was the Yin leech. It was eating up all the goodwill and energy I should naturally possess for dealing with even the least insufferable little brats. It felt like a childish ball of attachment and shame even though I didn’t, in fact, have Kurama’s ability to sense emotions. I wish I could say I didn’t have anything to compare it to, but I did. Sometimes, when I got particularly lucky during my examination of the quantum oscillations in my brain, I could glimpse something of my psycho-spiritual history like I could for my physical body, a flash of retrocognition that told me I was right. Twice over, even, there were apparently two leeches at some point, until the second disappeared. It happened on the same day that Naruto almost got me killed in my own basement, which was totally not suspicious at all.
The other leech had been on my other shoulder, incidentally. And its disappearance was followed, oh so conveniently, by me finally dragging myself out of my suicidal depression. The notion of shoulder angels and devils whispering in my ears had never felt so sinister.
I was still inclined to attribute my better mental health to everything else that happened to me after that month of hell, but I couldn’t discount the other possibilities if I wanted to still call myself a scientist. Depression shouldn’t have taken me five bloody years to recover from. I had a stronger spine than that, since well before I began eating geodes and started to play with carbide ceramic ossification and strontium. I was still building my theories about what it meant, what any of it meant, and I still couldn’t perceive or understand the leech properly. All the Yin I should have available to ‘reflect on myself’ was tangled up in the keirakukei instead. My working theory was Yin bestowal gone wrong, though I didn’t like the direction my thoughts took when I pondered it too long.
I closed my eyes and looked inward, into and past neurons and synapses to the quantum effects between my cells. Double layered balls of plasma were theorised to be the cause behind many paranormal mysteries back on the old world. I still doubted it because I still doubted most theories that try to give a single explanation for everything under the sun. But on this world, the issue was actually more muddled because of how many of those phenomena were absent. On the one hand, kaiju and magic. On the other hand, there were no UFOs despite the moon being literally inhabited by human-alien hybrids, no cryptids that weren’t runaway bio-experiments, no angels, demons, no spontaneous spirits and apparitions, no poltergeists, not a single trumpet sound in the sky, no gods despite the strongest techniques being named after them, I couldn’t even be sure what the ‘Shinigami’ really was. There were possessions, but only through chakra techniques tied into some sort of bioengineering mad science. And then you had the ‘King of Hell’ who was literally a brain-dead abomination slaved to whatever autonomous intelligence the Rinnegan came loaded with. In most regards, chakra seemed to have rendered this world poorer in terms of the fantastic, paradoxically enough, even though the cycle of life and afterlife was objectively defective. Or maybe because of it.
Now, though, the more I thought of Kenzo and watched the resulting disruptions and anomalies in my wave interference patterns, the more I had to wonder if maybe ghosts did exist here in some form. When the only way to affect the anomaly was by thinking of my dead son and throwing energy at his inherited trauma, not many possibilities came up. How bad must it have been for it to have cascading effects on those around him? To linger for so long? I wondered what my son must have thought or felt when he died, how long it must have taken him to bleed out in hopeless agony before cerebral death finally found him.
I wondered about other things too. The way the chakra system monopolised the Yin, how it pulled it into itself so tightly, might explain why ninja lost more and more empathy and self-awareness the stronger they became, but could undergo sudden, extremely major character shifts under the right external stimulus. Especially when said stimulus came with a big, permanent donation of Yin from the guy who just died. Or a big enough Yin resonance, like, say, Uzumaki Naruto punching your lights out after smashing apart your entire lifetime of maladaptive core beliefs in a fit of passion.
“Sir, are you well?”
I opened my eyes and looked to my right. Uchiha, regular black hair, black eyes, appearance of a man entering his middle age. “Sorry, I was thinking about something.”
“Quite deeply, it seems.” The man held out a hand. “Uchiha Ruguru, gatekeeper. I would have been there to meet you on arrival, but the Lord Heir wished to greet you himself.”
I shook his hand. Not something I expected to do today, handshakes weren’t the standard Uchiha thing, or even the standard Konoha or Fire Country thing, but it wasn’t entirely unheard of outside deal signings. “Do you push those big gates open yourself?” His hands were callused. Kind of dusty too, more than traces of it stuck to my palm, had he just come off duty? Oh well, more genetic data points for me-
The dust began burrowing into my skin all on its own.
“I’m glad I get to meet you, sir.”
Isolate, analyse, metabolize mitotic offspring to control contaminant spread.
“While I know much of the clan resents that a random civilian had to come in and solve all our problems, there are others who believe that Konoha birthing a man capable of going to such lengths for us is the greatest validation of the Lord Hokage’s Will of Fire philosophy.”
Parasitic spores, foreign chakra, pre-moulded, wave-form oscillations independent of own input, consistent patterns indicative of remote synchrony, genetic footprint dissimilar to skin cells absorbed from vector of delivery, devote mental partition to mentally screaming the word ‘fuck’ two times per second.
“I’ve read your books. The centrefolds with the dummy’s guide to the scientific method were particularly inspired.”
Physical senses indicate negligible divergence from human standard, third eye detects no chakra aberrancies, partial success by anami gestalt to establish resonance, results consistent with non-cellular dual-layer plasma phenomena, DNA of delivery vector is mix of male human phenotypes and plant.
“I was worried I might not get my chance with everyone else imposing on your time, but I have a question I really want to ask you, Doctor, since you’re the only person I expect to back up your words with hard facts.”
The Uchiha Clan was hosting the biggest clan gathering in Konoha, I was separated from the other guests including the score of ninja, Naruto was twenty-three meters away with seven other child hostages, I had just been infested with Zetsu spores, and Uchiha Obito had me by the hand.
“What’s your informed opinion on the ninja way? Has the Hidden Village system truly helped mankind, or are three Great Ninja World Wars in a single generation the best we can ever hope for?”