The scene shifted to a rainy place where the downpour never seemed to stop. Rain kept falling over a giant building while two strange eyes stared at the different pair of strange eyes drawn on a bounty poster.
"Ryu Hamura."
Konan arrived in a scatter of paper sheets that swept across the room and folded back into a woman. Her eyes went first to the notice in Pain's hand.
"That kid again... he is interested in him... is it because of his good work?"
Konan said, "Sasori of the Red Sand has been located."
Pain lifted his gaze from the bounty. "What are his abilities?"
"He is a puppeteer," Konan said. "Not merely talented. He is said to stand above even Chiyo and Ebizo now, and those two are retired legends of Sunagakure known throughout the ninja world... the elders who helped shape the previous Kazekage's era. There are also persistent reports that he can turn human bodies into puppets and preserve their techniques inside them."
She continued, "After the deaths of his parents at the hands of Konoha shinobi, he came to despise mortality itself. His views would make it easy for him to join us."
The mention of the Leaf Village carried old weight for both of them.
Their teacher had come from that village.
So had the ninja who killed Nagato's supposed parents.
Konan added, "He is also highly skilled in Fuinjutsu and controls many, many puppets, each with the combat equivalent of a chunin and there are reports that his work has already hollowed out a small country in the west."
"He would be a worthy addition," Pain said. "He seems powerful and has special skills. Rogue grandmasters are rare. We will need a few."
Konan gave a small nod. "I will contact him."
"No."
Her eyes shifted to him.
"I will do it myself."
Pain threw the bounty poster into the rain.
*
Back at the Hamura estate, the genjutsu projection of the seal still hung above them.
Ryu had already explained what InstinctGPT was, what it could do, what it could become in the wrong hands, and what people thought of seals placed by others.
A choice was all that remained.
"I'll take it," Kaori said immediately.
Ryu turned to her. "That was fast."
Kaori held his gaze. "I almost died on the first mission with you. I saw the kind of enemies that come after you and what that means for anyone standing beside you."
"I also saw you stay when you could have run. You could have saved yourself, but you didn't."
"Back then I was useless," she said. "I am not staying that weak. I want enough strength to support you. That is enough reason for me. And I trust you, Boss."
Ryu watched her for a moment, then gave a single nod.
He turned to Arata.
Arata gave him a faint, dry smile. He was too observant for his age.
"I am also in."
Ryu waited to hear him. His consent was flawed if he didn't have a good reason due to his
Urbach-Wiethe disease.
Arata looked at him directly. "If you had bad intentions, this would be a stupid way to do it. You explained everything. You warned me properly. You have money, power, and a large house. If slaves were all you wanted, you could have found healthier children and easier targets than me using all the resources you have."
He tilted his head slightly.
"You would not waste this much effort on me."
Then he said, "So yes. I trust you."
Ryu smiled a little. "Thank you."
Then he looked at Kohinata.
The older man did not answer at once.
His eyes were still on the projected seal, but he was no longer seeing elegant lines of chakra logic. He was seeing the history of his ancestors, the Bird Cage Seal of the Hyuga clan and the deep-binding kill switches used by Kumo's Jisatsu squads he got to see in action when he was in the Land of Rivers. He thought about his son and his own helplessness in that battle with the cloud ninja.
Kohinata had watched Ryu for months. Ryu did not chase power for the joy of standing over others. He chased it because he wanted to stand with them.
"Kaori is right. To stand beside someone like Ryu, weakness could become its own burden."
At last Kohinata exhaled.
"You are not Danzo," he said. "And you are not the Hyuga."
He looked once more at the seal, then back at Ryu.
"And this is not a bird cage."
His expression settled.
"I trust you. Let's do it."
Ryu gave a small nod and let the projected world collapse.
The lecture hall of his Mind Palace folded inward. The book shelves, overlays, models, and suspended diagrams dissolved back into the ordinary room as if none of it had ever been there.
Naruto blinked, looked around, then pointed accusingly at Ryu.
"Hey! I was just starting to hit the target properly."
"You will get another turn," Ryu said. "Now go take twenty laps around the ground."
Naruto stared. "Not fair..."
"After that," Ryu said calmly, "your chakra control exercise starts again. You wanted ninjutsu like this, didn't you?"
He raised one palm.
A tight flame bloomed above it, small, controlled, and bright enough to seize Naruto's full attention at once.
Naruto's face changed immediately. "Cool..."
Then the outrage vanished under fresh reckless confidence.
"I can do twenty laps in a minute," he declared. "Believe it."
Ryu turned back to the others. Let's put this seal on Arata first. We will place your seals later."
Kaori nodded. "We will come later."
Kohinata gave a short nod. "Ok."
Naruto had only made it a few steps toward the door when he glanced back.
Ryu had already begun forming chakra ink at his fingertips.
*
Kushina stared. "Wait... he is placing it now?"
Minato's eyes narrowed. "A seal like that needs permanent chakra markings... like my Flying Thunder God markings."
Even he sounded impressed.
"A permanent seal," Kushina said. "And this large… you said you need to do it in many phases."
"Not every grandmaster can do permanent seals using chakra alone," Minato said. "And yes, for a seal this big, you need to do it in phases. But you forgot what else he has. Photographic memory for instant capture. Eidetic recall for retention. And a brain that does not work like other people's. That is probably why Fuinjutsu comes easy to him."
"Then why is Lord Third still keeping him in the Academy?" Kushina asked. "He is ready for chunin work... maybe jonin work in some areas."
Minato stayed quiet for a moment.
"Maybe Hiruzen is trying not to take the last of his childhood away," he said. "Or maybe he thinks the Academy is the safest place to hide someone like him."
Kushina's expression softened.
"To me, he stopped feeling like a child a while ago," she said. "He feels more like a tired parent of a house full of orphans."
Minato gave a faint smile. "You are right."
*
The room became noticeably quieter once Naruto was gone.
Kaori and Kohinata left for Yin-Yang control training, leaving Arata alone with Ryu.
Ryu looked at him. "Let's place the InstinctGPT seal."
Ryu formed chakra ink directly from his fingertips. Each line emerged under exact control, settled onto skin, then sank deeper into the body close to nerves. The seal was broad, layered, and deeply structured, but his hands did not hesitate once. What, for others, had required phases, support, and careful staging was something he could place with mastery due to his high mental capacity and his perfect memory.
Ryu was done with the seal placement. That left the next problem.
Ryu looked at Arata. "Now I am going to run tests and map your brain activity using an MRI."
Arata tilted his head. "M. R. what?"
Ryu answered in the simplest way possible. "A way to observe brain activity."
Arata nodded but he did not understand.
Ryu extended his hands.
A seal spread across both his hands in concentric layers and branching lines, fine enough to look delicate and complicated enough to make most people's eyes slide off it. Ryu fed chakra into them. One set of [Chakra Fusion Seals] established the magnetic field he needed.
- [Temporary Enhance] running on [Improved Eyesight] and [Infrared Vision]
- [Electromagnetic Vision] enabled
- [Temporary Enhance] is running on [Fast Thinking] and [Parallel Thinking]
- [Overclocking] enabled
What Ryu called MRI was not one jutsu in the usual sense but a chained method. Seals forced chakra to imitate [Magnet Release - Kekkei genkai]. His vision enhancements allow him to see those magnetic fields and how the small changes in the field occur when passing through the brain. Ryu recreated a brain model in his [Mind Palace] using his [Hyperphantasia], [Electromagnetic Vision], and his seal to detect the changes in the field. His eidetic memory preserved every detail for comparison.
To Arata, it probably looked like Ryu had simply become more focused.
To Ryu, the world changed.
He was not reading thoughts. But tissue contrast sharpened. Local activity patterns emerged. Tiny response variations became visible enough for inference.
Ryu said, "Clap."
Arata nodded and clapped at once.
The sound cracked through the room.
Ryu watched.
Activity rose.
Not everywhere. Not randomly.
Specific pathways are lit in sequence, then spread. The auditory regions responded first. That much was expected.
What mattered was what happened after.
Secondary activation.
Translation.
Cross-sensory involvement.
Ryu's eyes narrowed slightly and recorded everything.
"Again."
Arata clapped once more.
The same larger pattern reappeared, though not identically. Real brains were not scrolls. They breathed. They varied. They compensated. But the structure was there.
Ryu said, "When you hear that sound, what do you see?"
Arata answered without embarrassment. "Waves. Colourful ones. They spread from the sound."
Ryu gave a small nod. "Close your eyes."
Arata did.
"Clap again."
A third sharp sound.
Ryu watched the broader conversion pattern return even without visual input.
Arata opened one eye slightly. "Still seeing colours," he said. "Very inconveniently useful."
Ryu almost smiled, but the thought forming in his head was too large and too unfinished to spare much room for amusement.
Promising, useful, but nowhere near enough.
He needed references and a few more scans to compare.
One brain without cross-sensory translation to get the different brain activity compared. May be a normal civilian with no meaningful chakra training at all. A clean baseline. Only then could he start isolating the exact regions and subregions he needed to map with InstinctGPT.
"If sound could be translated into optical-style processing here, then other inputs might be forced down similar routes later. If that happens, then the jutsu would be more perfect, and the person could see like how Admiral Fujitora sees using observation haki. Kaori…"
One shinobi with chakra-sensing training. So he could compare and see brain activity when sensing chakra. If he were going to mix chakra sensing into this abnormal cross-sensory translation, he would need to map a sensor's brain. Kaori was fit for this role.
He recorded everything from Arata in multiple scans using claps to recreate the audiovisual cross-sensory overlap.
Ryu lowered the field at last after getting enough data.
Arata opened both eyes. "Was that bad news or good news?"
"Neither," Ryu said. "It was useful news. I will start working on it now..."
Arata seemed to think that was fair.
Ryu added, "Your training starts today. Go run a few laps with Naruto. Mr Kohinata can handle your basics later."
Arata stared at him. "Brother Ryu... this is not fair. I am physically fit. I used to do odd jobs."
"All training starts with body conditioning," Ryu said. "And now that the seal is on you, it also needs to familiarise itself with your movement patterns, posture, and baseline habits."
Arata sighed. "Fine. I am going to sleep through half the laps anyway."
Ryu watched him go, but his mind had already moved ahead and was forming plans for what to do with data he recorded from Arata.
And elsewhere, far from Konoha, another red-haired man was at work.
Just as Ryu Hamura, an Uzumaki by blood hidden beneath another name and another family history, was slowly gathering a team around himself, this other hidden Uzumaki was doing the same in the rain and ruin.
One gathered the broken and tried to build them into something stronger.
The other gathered monsters and missing-nin, believing that you needed to unmake the world to make it right.
Both wanted to change the world.
One day, perhaps, those two redheads and the teams forming around them would butt heads to see whose beliefs and whose team were the strongest.
A/N:
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