Chapter 512: "Naruto"
While Naruto and Satsuki were enjoying their honeymoon in the Pure Land, there were two other matters he had quietly seen to -- neither particularly dramatic on the surface, yet both significant in their own right.
Both involved eyes.
The first concerned a Mangekyo Sharingan.
The eye had originally belonged to Obito Uchiha. After Obito's death, Naruto had recovered it and kept it with him. Now that order in the Pure Land had stabilized, and Kakashi had completed that long-overdue reunion with Obito and Rin across the boundary of life and death, Naruto felt it was time to return it to someone who could use it.
He tracked down Kakashi and held the eye out to him.
Kakashi stared at it in silence for a long moment.
He knew that eye better than almost anything in the world. Three tomoe arranged on a crimson background -- it was the eye he had relied on for over a decade, the keepsake Obito had entrusted to him. And yet the one resting in Naruto's palm felt different from his own. It radiated a pressure that made his chest tighten.
This was Obito's other eye. His Mangekyo.
Looking at it, Kakashi could piece together who had ended Obito's life without needing to be told. There were very few people capable of defeating Obito at that level, and fewer still who could have taken this eye afterward. The young man standing in front of him -- his student, his golden-haired successor -- was Obito's end. He was also the orphan that Obito had made.
Kakashi said nothing. What was there to say?
Obito had done what he had done. He had taken so many lives -- Naruto's parents among them, along with countless civilians and shinobi who had never deserved it.
Naruto killing him was, by any measure, just. If Kakashi were honest with himself, if Obito had somehow survived and the chance had ever presented itself, he would have found a way to do it himself. Some sins could only be answered with a life. And so Kakashi accepted that truth in silence and gave a single quiet nod.
He took the eye. It was Obito's -- the last thing he had left behind in this world. Kakashi would use it. He would do what Obito had never been able to do.
Protect the world that Obito had spent so many years trying to break. Carry his friend's debt forward.
Naturally, Naruto did not simply hand over the eye and leave. He understood Kakashi's situation well enough -- a person without Uchiha blood forcing themselves to use a Mangekyo Sharingan was already a significant strain on the body. Running both eyes at once could be genuinely dangerous.
So before he left, he placed a portion of Yang chakra inside Kakashi -- the creative, life-giving power of the Six Paths. With that bolstering him from within, Kakashi no longer had to worry about the eyes burning him out.
And so, in a moment that almost no one witnessed, the living world gained its third shinobi to stand at the threshold of Six Paths power.
Kakashi of the Double Kamui.
The second matter involved another pair of eyes entirely.
These were Rinnegan -- originally Madara's, later transplanted into Nagato, and eventually recovered by Naruto. His initial intention had been to set them aside for Satsuki. But then Satsuki awakened the Six Tomoe Rinnegan and the Rinne-Sharingan on her own.
The level those eyes had reached made Madara's Rinnegan look like a candle beside the moon. There was simply no comparison.
So what was he supposed to do with them?
Naruto turned the question over and eventually landed on an answer: perhaps Shisui could use them. Shisui was one of the Uchiha clan's greatest talents, an indispensable asset within Ember, and one of his most reliable partners in the shadows. Giving Shisui's strength another boost would benefit the entire organization.
He was still working through that idea when a memory arrived from one of his shadow clones on a routine task.
Satsuki might be getting a nephew or niece.
His first instinct was to assume he had misread the memory. Yuu -- the woman who had once been consumed by obsession and extremity, now living under Shisui's watch within Ember -- how could she possibly...
But when he looked more carefully at what the clone had seen, he realized it was not a misreading at all.
In the memory, Yuu sat on the edge of a bed, one hand resting gently over the slight curve of her stomach. Her face held an expression that was difficult to name -- tenderness layered with wonder, with disbelief, with something that looked almost like joy she did not yet know what to do with.
The room around her was neatly arranged with everything a pregnant woman could need: nutritional supplements, soft fabrics, small pieces of infant clothing -- all organized with the careful precision that could only be Shisui's work.
Naruto stared at those memories for a moment without finding any words.
Shisui. That Shisui. The composed, methodical, never-a-step-out-of-line Shisui. How exactly had this happened?
He turned it over several times and arrived at the only explanation that made sense -- it was not as if Yuu could have been the one to initiate things, was it?
Then he reconsidered and decided that scenario was somehow even more absurd.
He let it go.
Naruto sighed and moved on without saying anything more about it.
He did leave behind a functional pair of ordinary eyes for Yuu. She had been blind for years, and now that she was pregnant, it seemed unreasonable to leave her without sight. She deserved to know what her child looked like when the time came.
As for the rest of it -- he figured he ought to find the right moment to tell Mikoto and Fugaku. It was their grandchild, after all.
----
Neji had not actually expected to run into a bandit.
He had barely been on the road twenty minutes after leaving the border village when he spotted a figure standing in the middle of the path ahead, two trees already felled across the road to block the way, and arms spread wide in what was apparently a deliberate pose of menace.
The man was enormous -- a full head taller than Neji, with a shock of vivid red hair and a thick club resting across one shoulder that was taller than Neji himself. He had the posture of a mountain highwayman who considered himself quite threatening.
More absurdly, the man had a Leaf headband tied around his forehead.
Neji's Byakugan activated briefly. One glance was enough. The metalwork along the headband's edges was uneven, the engraving shallow and inconsistent in depth. It was handmade. Rough. An obvious fake.
He had made it himself.
"Even though we've never met!" the red-haired man bellowed, his voice loud enough to scatter every bird within a hundred meters. "And even though you don't know me! Fate has clearly brought us together today! Hand over everything you're carrying!"
Neji looked at him without expression. "...A fake Leaf ninja?"
"How dare you show such disrespect!"
The man reacted like he had been stepped on, puffing up immediately. He swung the club through the air in wide arcs, producing a heavy whooshing sound that was presumably meant to demonstrate his power and authority.
"I happen to be the extremely famous! A ninja who emerged from Konoha! On a highly classified mission!"
He drove the club into the ground with a thud, planted his fists on his hips, puffed out his chest, and announced his name at maximum volume.
"Uzumaki Naruto!"
Neji was silent for three full seconds.
He was not sure where to even start.
Uzumaki Naruto? This enormous red-haired man was claiming to be Uzumaki Naruto?
Neji had eaten meals with Naruto more times than he could count over the years. Naruto was a year behind him, but they had crossed paths frequently since the Chunin Exams and the acquaintance had grown into something genuine. Even as Naruto's strength grew to legendary proportions, the connection between them never faded. When they ran into each other in the village, they would sit down for a meal, exchange a few words. It was easy.
For Neji, Naruto occupied a particular place that was hard to describe. He had never been able to fully identify why, but there was something about Naruto's presence that settled him. Something in the way Naruto existed -- warm and bright in a way that was specific to him, like sunlight, the kind that made people drift toward him without quite realizing they were doing it.
This person in front of him, on the other hand...
No. He was not even worth the comparison. Calling him a meteorite would be too generous.
"Move," Neji said. His voice was flat and cold as a blade left in winter water. "Fraud."
He did not spare the man a second glance. He simply stepped around him and continued walking.
The red-haired man stood frozen in place, club still raised, arm hanging in midair.
He knew, obviously, that he was not Uzumaki Naruto. He knew he was just a bandit, that he had made his own headband, that he was a complete fabrication. But he had considered himself a capable one. Shinobi-level, at least. Practical ability, real skill -- or so he believed.
And this passerby had walked right past him without even acknowledging his existence?
Blood rushed to the man's face. A wave of indignation crashed over him. "You stop right there!" He grabbed his club and came charging after Neji in long, thundering strides.
***
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