'What's with these kids?'
A cold dread began to settle in the rogue Sand-nin's gut.
His initial assessment had been one of contempt. Just genin some brats. But then the white-haired one obliterated the main gate with a jutsu, forcing him to reconsider their strength.
As a seasoned Chūnin, he'd still been confident he could end this quickly.
Yet his first ambush had failed.
Not only had they parried his attack, they'd countered with enough force to push him onto the defensive. Now, the three were reunited, a cohesive unit, while a fourth lurked somewhere in the shadows, an unseen threat.
The pressure was mounting.
'I need to split them up,' he thought, eyes narrowing to slits. 'Pick them off one by one.'
He tensed to move, but Shimura Yuta was faster. In a blur of motion, the boy reappeared—impossibly—right at his back. And in his palm, a sphere of churning blue chakra pulsed with raw, devastating power.
'That jutsu... A direct hit would be fatal.'
The Sand-nin's eyes widened in pure shock. Before his muscles could even react, Yuta lunged at him.
'Damn these brats!' he cursed inwardly, throwing himself sideways.
It was a futile effort. Another figure dropped from the sky above him—a pincer movement. The other boy's hand was also clenched around that same terrifying blue sphere.
The tactic was simple, almost brutally so. And it was perfectly executed.
Trapped between the two converging attacks, the rogue ninja had no time to form a single hand seal. Yuta's Rasengan slammed into him with finality.
As the man's body fell, Yuta let out a soft, appreciative breath.
'No wonder Naruto used this for everything. It's just... reliable.'
He turned to find three pairs of eyes fixed on him, wide with disbelief. Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and his teammate, Osamu, were all staring.
Osamu found his voice first. "Yuta... that jutsu. I've never seen anything like it."
Orochimaru's gaze was pure fascination. As a ninjutsu freak, he could not recall this jutsu. It was alien, revolutionary. The chakra control required to compress chakra into such a volatile, spinning form... the lack of hand seals... the raw destructive power.
It was at least an A-rank Jutsu. His mind raced further, imagining the potential of infusing it with a chakra nature. The possibilities made his breath catch.
"Yuta," Orochimaru said, a thin, intrigued smile gracing his lips as his tongue darted out. "This is a Jutsu you created, isn't it?"
If this were the older, more creepy Orochimaru, the expression he had would have been unsettling. But from this younger version, it merely looked intensely curious. Almost earnest.
Yuta simply nodded. A seven-year-old creating an A-rank jutsu was absurd. But then, he wasn't exactly playing by the rules, he was a transmigrator.
Besides Danzō, seemed to want a prodigy—a student to outshine the Hokage's own students to one up his old rival. So the more of a genius he appeared, the more it served to keep him from troubling him too much.
"Truly remarkable," Orochimaru murmured, his tone respectful. "I would be very grateful for an opportunity to discuss it after the mission."
Jiraiya, meanwhile, was the picture of unrestrained enthusiasm. The initial shock had worn off, replaced by a wide, shameless grin as he bounded over to Yuta.
"Hey, Yuta! Buddy! So, uh... can I ask you a little favor?"
"What is it?"
"Well, it's just..." For once, Jiraiya seemed almost bashful, scratching the back of his head. He was captivated by the spinning sphere. A deep instinctual pull told him he was meant for this jutsu.
The perceptive Yuta didn't need it spelled out. "Want to learn it?"
Jiraiya's head bobbed up and down with frantic energy.
"I'm not saying no," Yuta said, stroking his chin in mock deliberation. "But a jutsu of this caliber... I can't just give it away. It needs to be an equal exchange." He let the silence hang for a beat. "Tell you what. You treat me and the team to fifty barbecue meals, and I'll teach you."
"How many?!" Jiraiya's jaw dropped. "Fifty?!" His face fell into a mask of pure despair. He could barely afford one barbecue.
"Don't worry, it's not due all at once," Yuta said cheerfully, clapping a hand on Jiraiya's shoulder. "We have time. Just agree to the debt, and you can pay it off... gradually."
He then glanced at Orochimaru. "You're the intellectual. For the price of fifty barbecues to learn the Rasengan, is he getting a fair deal?"
Jiraiya shot his teammate a look of desperate appeal.
Orochimaru, however, was not in the business of haggling. He was in the business of analysis.
"The 'Rasengan'... a fitting name," he mused clinically. "Considering the mechanics of high-speed chakra rotation and compression." His golden eyes slid to Jiraiya. "He is getting a significant bargain."
"See? No cheating," Yuta said, his triumphant smile widening as he gave Jiraiya's shoulder a final pat.
Strictly speaking, a part of him knew Jiraiya was intrinsically linked to this technique's future. But liking a character was one thing; sharing a world with him was another. When life gave you a chance to mess with the future Toad Sage, you took it.
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