The flames tore at me, searing not flesh but thought. They licked and raked across the surface of my mind, attempting to strip away my will, until only a hollow pit yawned where my passions once burned.
The flames burned hot. Born from and powered by Kurama's chakra, but poisoned, twisted, and dragged forth by every drop of hatred festering in Naruko Uzumaki's heart. It was a darkness that hovered in place, swallowing everything. It pulled at me, hungry to devour, to dissolve me into its churning void.
But I resisted.
Here, in this mental world, my focus was not a mental quality but a physical weapon. I was luminous. My silhouette burned white, forged from certainty itself, as I pressed forward into the abyss.
The shadows thickened, blacker than pitch. Opaque. Beyond my glow, there was nothing. I wandered through that blindness, time stretched thin and endless, until at last I found her.
A figure. Small. Fragile.
Naruko.
But not the Naruko I knew.
Her orange jumpsuit hung loose, tattered, draping her as though she wore a burial shroud. Her body was skeletal, her hands and bare feet so thin they seemed carved from bone with skin stretched taut. She trembled, shoulders quaking as though she wept, yet no sound escaped her lips.
"Naruko?" My voice cracked the silence. No reply.
I stepped closer, laying trembling hands upon her shoulders. They were stick-thin, hollow, brittle as dry wood. She collapsed against me, weightless. When her face turned toward mine, her eyes were not eyes at all but caverns—twin abysses that stared into nothing.
Black voids.
Blood spilled from them in thick streams, rolling down her cheeks in a mockery of tears.
My stomach twisted, bile rising. Horror pressed cold and suffocating on my chest.
Now that I was present in her mind, I felt it. This darkness, sealed away so long, had rotted. Festered. It was a scar—A scar that was becoming something else. A shadow self.
A Yami Naruko.
But I had torn it out too soon, too violently. I didn't mean to but In my attempts to heal Naruko I had opened festering wounds, spilling long held bile and pus back into her system. Now it ran wild, poisoning her. And she—Naruko—was no ordinary girl. She was a jinchūriki. This formed a deadly combination. A living swamp of hatred wrapped around a monster.
This darkness was kindling pressed against a wildfire, and Kurama's chakra steeped in hatred as it was already. Happily caught ablaze.
If I left her to it, if I failed, I didn't know what would be born from it. But I knew it would be nothing good.
"Naruko?" No response.
"Naruko?" Her hollow gaze did not shift.
"Naruko, please—say something."
Silence.
The panic rising in me felt like drowning. The mind-meld jutsu was already stretched to its limit—unless I could push it further. Unless I could go deeper.
Deeper, like Kurama had with me.
A word bloomed in my mind, pulled from the fragments of the fox's ancient memory that still roamed my mind: Ninshū.
The legacy of Kurama's father.
I needed that legacy now.
I gripped our connection and twisted it, reshaped it—until suddenly, I was no longer Izuku.
I was Naruko Uzumaki.
And I remembered.
I remembered the orphanage, and the cold eyes of caretakers who should have loved me but never did.
I remembered the color pink—the first fragile spark of friendship—and the choking void when it was ripped away.
I remembered the vow to chase that bond again, to chase it until my legs gave out, no matter how many times the world turned its back.
And above all, I remembered the hunger.
The endless, bone-deep hunger. For communion. For a family. For love. It gnawed and gnawed, twisting into violence, into temptation. The urge to scorch everything, to make them all feel my pain, to burn the world until it could no longer look away. To set all that harmed me ablaze if only to warm my battered soul.
But hate was hollow. Hate could not heal. I didn't know how I knew it, only that I did: only love could fill the void. Only connection could cure the hunger that gnawed at my mind.
So I buried it. Buried the darkness. I forced my light outward, bright and smiling, desperate that someone—anyone—would see me and choose me.
And at last, someone did.
Not Jiji. Not old man Ichiraku and Ayame-neechan. Their love was real, yes, but fragile. Conditional. Always wary, always quick to falter when shadows crept too close. Could they have survived seeing the whole of me? The raw truth?
But Izuku saw. He saw my cracks, my envy, my fear. And he did not look away.
Still, I kept something hidden. Still, I chained the worst of it down. Until the pervert told me the truth: that I had been abandoned. That I had been denied family. That the void could have been filled, and it wasn't.
And all the hate I had locked away for a decade broke loose.
Outside, I raged and burned. Inside, I died quietly, a thousand deaths, as the fragile light I had tended all my life flickered out.
I could not go on. The weight of it was too much.
With desperate will, I tore myself back from her memories, back into myself. But I clung to our bond, letting my voice echo through the storm.
"Naruko! Please—listen! I know your pain now. I feel it. I know what it is to hide yourself, to fight this alone."
Blood and tears mingled on my face, a mirror of hers.
"I can't promise the pain will vanish. But I can promise you this—you won't face it alone again."
I pulled her closer, my grip steady and unyielding.
"You carried your own light for so long, Naruko. But you don't have to anymore. If it's too heavy—if it's too much—you can have mine."
And through the bond, I poured it into her: my hope. My faith. My courage. My love.
"As much as you need. Always."
Her abyssal eyes flickered. Tiny motes of light broke the surface.
I gave more. The specks grew brighter, blooming into constellations. Until her face itself became a sun rising in the void. Until the darkness screamed, shattering, and the whole mental world flooded with blinding light.
Then—impact. My body snapped back into itself, gasping.
I fell to the grass of the academy training ground gasping for breath feeling as though I had walked a marathon, my chakra system aching from using it while it was still recovering.
It felt very similar to when I had opened my root chakra. A mental sluggishness and spiritual ache, no doubt a symptom of my overexerted spirit.
"oh wow, that sucks." I said clutching at my pounding temples. "That sucks so hard."
I felt a weathered and familiar hand settle on my head and the unmistakable sensation of medical ninjutsu. I blinked my eyes open into the piercing light and took in the stern visage of my sensei.
"Your continued recklessness is worrying, izuku-kun." he said, his brow furrowed in worry.
"Yeah, but it keeps working." I said, managing a cheeky grin.
"Until it does not."
"I'll work around it when it happens." I replied as he took his hand off my head.
The feeling of violent malice faded from the clearing as we spoke. We both turned our attention toward the cage of wood that had covered Naruko entirely—most likely while I was in Naruko's seal.
I sensed my sensei's chakra flare in a specific pattern and without a word, Kinoe's chakra flared in response and the wooden cocoon began to pull back to reveal a glimpse of Naruko on her knees in the dirt.
I was on my feet and heading toward her in moments. I felt all the chakra signatures of the present ANBU flare as though they would intervene but another flash of my sensei's chakra had them stand down.
Chakra Morse code. Cool.
When the wood fell away to reveal Naruko under it all, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw her. She seemed perfectly fine, her skin was a bit raw where it had been peeling off but her clothes weren't even cut up. She was fine.
Physically at least.
"Izuku?" she asked, her eyes fluttering open, her voice weak and scratchy.
"Ssshhh, it's okay. I'm right here." I said as I leaned down and enveloped her in a hug. She trembled in my arms as she broke into loud heaving sobs. I realised this was probably the first time I had ever heard her actually weep. Every time she cried around me before she always cried in silence. Not this time. Now she screamed into my shoulder unloading her soul of the pain of a lifetime of isolation.
XXXXXXXXX
I was in the hospital, again.
I hoped this wouldn't become a habit, but I doubted it. Magic was dangerous business—any wizard actually pushing the boundaries ends up with a close call from time to time. The solution wasn't to hope it happened less often, but to take precautions. Operation Wizard Drip had been on the back burner for too long. I was lacking any mystical tools but my staff, I had to do something about that too.
Not to mention medical ninjutsu. I had to at least learn the basics of that.
Naruko snored away in the bed across from me. Standing beside her with a pained fondness was my sensei. His original body—not a shadow clone. He had been here this entire time, watching over Naruko every step of the way. His chakra was laced with guilt and shame, but it was a well-worn feeling, something he had long ago learned to accept and sit with.
My sensei was a great man, but like he once told me, even great men make mistakes—theirs greater than their lessers'.
With a sigh, he turned in his seat to look at me.
"Hold those you love close, Izuku-kun, and always choose honesty… as often as you can, at least."
I sat in silence and absorbed those words and what they meant. The mistakes and regrets behind them.
With another sigh, my sensei gathered himself and buried all that pain and guilt so deep it vanished from his chakra entirely.
"Your focus was very successful in live application," he said with a small, humorous smile.
"If only you had chosen to use it under less dire circumstances," he added, tone carrying a faint reprimand.
"…I couldn't sit back and watch, Sensei."
"No, I imagine you could not." He sighed, pulling a pipe from his robe and lighting it with a flicker of fire-natured chakra.
"…I often wonder what I would risk to have Biwako back. I imagine there is very little I would not give…" he said, staring off into the distance.
I found myself squirming in my bed, unsure how to handle the display of raw emotion. It was hard to remember that my sensei was just a man sometimes, with his own pains and regrets.
"Ah, but these are just the ramblings of an old man." He chuckled—cut short when I placed my palm gently on his arm.
"It's okay to be sad, Sensei," I assured him, meeting his eyes.
He gave me a warm smile.
"Thank you for the kind words, Izuku-kun, but grief is not a luxury I can afford myself. Not yet, at least." He patted my hand.
"Regardless, why don't we use this bit of free time for a lesson?"
"Don't you have things to do?"
"My duties are many and varied, but chief among them is ensuring the safety of the village as its foremost combatant. By my own hand, if necessary."
My eyes drifted to Naruko—her face white with salve for raw skin, body swaddled in blankets. The container of the Nine-Tails, who had just proven herself to be unstable. Who better to contain her than the most powerful man in the village?
A bitter taste rose at the back of my throat.
"She's not…"
What was I going to say? That she wasn't dangerous? I'd seen firsthand just how dangerous she was. Even if Kurama and I had come to some sort of understanding—even if he might have spared me—the rest of Konoha?
The Leaf would burn.
"I understand."
My sensei's eyes shimmered with sympathy, but he only nodded.
"Now, let's go over what you've been able to learn from the materials I've given you."
I began to explain everything I had understood and theorized under his tutelage. I got somewhat lost in my own thoughts as I spoke, and when I finally refocused, it was to the sight of my sensei massaging the bridge of his nose with one hand while holding his pipe in the other.
"I will concur that your theory about the… directness of current senjutsu practices is somewhat accurate."
I nodded. I had figured as much.
"But."
I blinked.
"Your assertion that ninjutsu is too easy is blatantly false at best and incredibly arrogant at worst." my sensei said with a patient but stern tone.
I was left reeling at the sudden reprimand. My sensei continued regardless.
"There are thousands of shinobi who never breach the barrier between chunin and the truly elite—that is, the jonin, not to mention the kage. Hundreds of thousands that never make it past genin rank, and many more that cannot even achieve academy standards. Mastering chakra is not easy."
"…But that's—" I began to question that reasoning, unconvinced of what I was hearing but my sensei continued on.
"Just because it's easy for you does not mean it is easy for everyone. I felt similarly at your age. 'Why did no one else understand what was so obvious to me?' The truth was: I was a genius. I am a genius. Just like you, and an odd number of others this village has produced."
My mouth worked soundlessly as I processed his words. I thought I had gotten better at this—after Kuro pointed out that I might be operating under false humility, I had tried to fold my elevated talent into my worldview. Apparently, I hadn't done a good enough job.
"That does not invalidate your theories," my sensei continued, slowly stroking his beard. "The reasoning behind many of them is sound. It just means whatever techniques result from these theories will be restricted to those of similar ability."
He puffed his pipe, then added, "Your ideas on fuinjutsu as a computational system are also—while interesting—already done. Fuinjutsu calculators already exist."
"How good are they?" I asked, my tone carrying my thirst for knowledge. I wasn't disappointed by not blazing the trail in this field instead I was ecstatic the more knowledge I had to draw on the farther I could go.
"Adequate. But not widely used. The skill required to make one is extremely high, too high to be mass producible. Not to mention the programming languages used in physical computers—and therefore those that could be translated into a fuinjutsu analog—are the closely guarded secrets of powerful international conglomerates."
Ah, the Greedy Businessman strikes again. Still, businessmen that could keep secrets from Shinobi? That was news to me.
"So powerful that the other villages don't just… take it?" I voiced my thoughts.
My teacher gave me a strange look before his gaze drifted into contemplation.
"…Konoha is somewhat sheltered. Your ignorance of these topics is understandable—and my duty to remedy."
"Is this a political thing?" I asked.
"Yes, this is indeed a 'political thing,'" he said with a chuckle, puffing his pipe before growing contemplative again. "I will have to acquire a tutor for you in such matters."
I blinked.
"My schedule is already pretty full, you know, with school and such." I replied. I wouldn't mind a political tutor, but my time was not so abundant.
"…That is true. Then you will simply have to drop out." my teacher said easily, almost absent mindedly.
"What? No!" I replied, drawing my sensei out of whatever thoughts had gained his attention and earning a raised eyebrow.
"Why?" my sensei asked patiently.
I sat there, genuinely thinking it through, before finally landing on the original reason I had wanted to attend that school in the first place.
"Networking?"
My sensei scoffed.
"You are my student. Others curry favor with you, not the other way around." His voice held ironclad certainty—without a drop of arrogance or conceit in his chakra.
My mouth worked uselessly as I scrambled for a reason to stay. Why did I want to stay? Ah, that's right.
Mulish, stubborn pride.
I had entered that school with goals and plans. Most of those goals had been met—though in the most unexpected ways. Ways I didn't plan for.
Get a cushy government job? Proxy status made me Konoha's number one sugar baby.
Get some pretty girls to go through life with? A smashing success—bumps along the way aside.
Build a network of allies? I had the literal leader of the village in my corner.
It all happened, though it happened in ways I didn't expect and were almost entirely out of my control. Quitting now felt like giving up.
But my sensei was right. There wasn't really a reason to stay beyond pride. And while I might have insisted if it was only my ass in the line of fire, the truth was: how strong I became could one day mean life or death for the people I cared about. Wasting time in a classroom—learning things I already mostly knew—would be unbelievably stupid.
My pride smarted, but my sensei was right.
I sighed and nodded. Not like I could have fought him on it anyway.
"Good," he said with a nod. "I will be entering deep meditation soon to coordinate my clones around the village. Any other thoughts to share before I do so?"
I was about to wave him off with a no when a thought struck me—something I'd had while reading about the Fourth Hokage's encounter with the Raikage.
"Well, I have one more theory." I said.
My sensei raised an eyebrow, inviting me to continue.
"It's just a thought, but… what if the lightning armor isn't actually armor?"
"Explain." my teacher commanded, giving me his undivided attention.
"Are you familiar with the term investiture?"
I launched into my theory. As I spoke, my sensei's eyebrows climbed higher and higher, his chakra bubbling with astonishment, humor, and then gleeful schadenfreude. When I finally finished, he hurried to the corner of the room, sat down cross-legged, and—with a last instruction to wake him if anything important happened—closed his eyes.
…I wonder what that was about.
XXXXXXXXX
It was hard to accept that it was mostly luck at play, his poor decisions only exacerbating the issues.
What were the chances that someone would have the gall to set off explosive tags in Konohagakure to serve as a distraction—just to attack, at the time, some random civilian boy? Very low, if you asked Kakashi.
Still happened.
The chances that an elite jōnin-level combatant, with multiple fuinjutsu-fortified and obscured hideaways, would attack that same civilian boy not long after the first encounter? Even lower, he would think.
Still happened though.
It had Kakashi revisiting his well-worn self-hatred in new and interesting ways. Suicidal thoughts were never far from his mind, but recently they had taken on a life of their own. Having to witness the damage his absence had caused in Naruko's life—up close and personal—only made those urges grow in scope every day.
So, after handing over Goggles' head to Inoichi to plumb for information, he took a break from being in the village. A break that even Lord Hiruzen could not refuse him. The village was getting to be too much—he needed to step away before he went the way of his father.
And so, he partook in the only real relief he could find these days.
A suicide mission.
Kakashi cut through the misty boglands between the Land of Waves and Hidden Mist territory. His quarry was a lesser noble who had instigated treason against the Daimyo, fleeing the Land of Fire with his most capable retainers.
Things had been tense in the elemental nations since rumors began to spread of entire shinobi settlements disappearing in the Land of Rice. Many suspected Konoha, since those settlements were loosely associated with the Snake Sannin.
And they were right. Lord Third's ire had not cooled since his disciple was attacked, and the death toll climbed higher every day as a consequence.
There was no evidence or witnesses, though, so no one could point fingers.
But the cold war that had been going on in the shadows had intensified. Rivers of blood flowed in the shadows of the elemental nations, so much so that there was talk of war on the horizon.
To prevent further escalation, this mission required a lone operative. Practically suicide, given that Rayuma Nobu had a squad of jōnin-level samurai with him.
To add to the already significant peril, signature techniques were off-limits. Every jōnin of notable ability—or at least with the power to take on an entire squad of jōnin-level combatants—was recognized by the techniques they were known for, the same techniques that would allow them to survive this mission.
Every jōnin… except one.
Kakashi spotted the first assailant as he closed in on the encampment. He could have snuck up, used silent killing methods, and ended the man with no one the wiser.
But that wasn't what Kakashi wanted.
He didn't want this to be clean. He wanted a mess.
The earth rumbled as Kakashi flashed through the hand seals for an earth jutsu he had copied during the latter part of the Third Shinobi War.
Earth Spike.
The ground in front of the samurai erupted in a spray of dirt and stone. But jōnin-level samurai were not to be trifled with—renowned as unmatched in open combat. With a blinding display of Iaijutsu, the man's blade left its sheath and cleaved the spike clean in half before it could reach him.
Kakashi could have kept his distance, could have buried the samurai beneath a barrage of copied jutsu until he was either dead or his comrades forced to intervene.
But that would be boring.
The son of the White Fang drew a weapon he didn't use often but had mastered nonetheless. An advantage of the Sharingan—he could learn as many fighting styles as there were practitioners to copy.
The kusarigama was matte black, matching his nondescript attire.
The samurai, ever the chivalrous sort, simply stood back and watched as his opponent drew his weapon and took a stance. Kakashi found that hilarious. Still, even bushidō had its limits. In a blur of movement so fast it rivaled a shunshin, yet achieved through sheer physical prowess, the samurai lunged.
Kakashi wasn't sure if he could withstand a direct clash. He was no slouch at taijutsu, but physical combat was a samurai's bread and butter. He decided not to bother. He caught the opening blow of the samurai's blade on his sickle, letting himself be pushed back by the force. The chain lashed out, wrapping around his opponent's ankle, and with a slight tug he widened the man's stance. Only by an infinitesimal margin—yet enough.
With a lightning-quick strike, Kakashi opened the samurai's jugular, exploiting the weakness he had created.
With a choking noise the nameless Samurai collapsed into the mud clutching at his bleeding neck, his life's blood staining the brown water red for a moment before it faded into the muck.
Kakashi stared down at his dying enemy and found himself… bored.
He thought that would be harder.
He gave himself handicaps just so it would be harder.
Hopefully his friends would put up more of a fight.
"Reckless as ever, Kakashi-kun."
Kakashi stiffened at the sudden voice but relaxed a moment later in recognition.
"We all have to get our kicks somehow, Hokage-sama."
The Third Hokage loomed in the trees, clad in all black battle attire, his bō staff resting across his shoulders. Kakashi knew it was a clone, not because he could tell but because the Hokage would never be this far away from the village.
Not without a truly disastrous set of circumstances at play.
"That may be true." Hiruzen replied, "but sadly such things must be left aside. I've recently come across some very useful information—useful especially for you."
Kakashi listened with his patented indifferent mien, a mask that vanished with the old man's next words.
"Tell me, Kakashi. How would you like the power to protect what you hold dear?"
"…No such power exists," Kakashi said, with weary certainty.
"But that's no excuse not to try." Hiruzen countered.
For the first time in days, Kakashi's single eye flickered with something other than self loathing.
His silence was all to the answer required.
"Good. You've had your fun. Wrap this up—we have training to do." the clone of lord third said with a smile that dripped sadistic glee and promised pain.
Kakashi was very glad to see it.
He nodded, turning toward the direction of his fleeing target. They had chosen to run instead of reinforcing their comrade—a smart move, doubly so with a clone of Lord Third present.
Too bad Kakashi was the one assigned to this mission, they might have gotten away otherwise.
Blood smeared across his palm, followed by a puff of smoke and the huffing breath of Nin-ken in pursuit of their master's quarry.
There weren't many Jonin who were as good on the pursuit as him.
—Scene break—
It was late into the night, and I was half-asleep when my daze faded at a dip in my mattress. Someone slid under my covers.
I tensed at first—a reflex reaction—but the warmth and familiar shape of my intruder calmed me almost instantly.
I extended my arm, and Naruko wordlessly took it, nestling against me, using it as a pillow as she was wont to do.
We lay there for a while, Naruko seemingly soaking in my presence, and myself quietly reveling in the simple fact of her continued well-being.
Then she spoke.
"Hey, Izuku…" Her voice was low, hesitant, and still scratchy from all the screaming she'd done earlier that day.
"What's Dungeons and Dragons?"
I blinked my eyes open in the dark and found her inquisitive blue gaze locked on mine.
Ah… fuck.