The morning sun climbed slowly over the eastern horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and gold. Two figures cut through the winding paths of Uzumaki Village at a steady pace—Renji Uzumaki and his son, Elric. They'd already reached the outskirts, leaving the main village behind them.
Renji slowed his pace slightly, his eyes drifting sideways to observe the small figure running beside him. Elric's face was absolutely glowing with anticipation, his short red hair bouncing with every energetic step. His breathing was starting to get ragged from the sustained sprint, coming in short huffs, yet his eyes remained fixed straight forward, lit up like bright lanterns in the morning light. Pure, unfiltered excitement coursed visibly through his entire body. After all, today was the day he would finally learn his first ninjutsu.
Renji watched him silently for a long moment, and a soft, nostalgic smile tugged slowly at the corners of his lips. There was something about Elric's expression right now—so completely full of hope and raw determination—that tugged at an old memory buried deep in his mind.
A face, both familiar and painfully distant, floated up from the past. A child, just like Elric, with bright eyes, laughing freely in the courtyard of the Senju compound. His cousin—yes, from the Senju clan side of the family. They used to play together constantly as kids, throwing stones at trees, pretending to be great legendary shinobi. But that child had died young, only seven years old, already taken by the endless, brutal conflict between the Senju and Uchiha clans.
Renji's smile faltered slightly. The world really is messed up, isn't it?
The Uzumaki were fortunate, he reminded himself quietly. Their clan had always been exceptionally powerful, and with their unique isolated location on this island, they were rarely forced to send their children to war at young ages. While other clans armed their toddlers with kunai and sent them to battlefields, the Uzumaki still let their children chase butterflies and play games.
He remembered clearly the changes that came later in his youth. After Senju Hashirama—the man of impossible dreams, the legendary God of Shinobi—built the Hidden Leaf Village alongside Uchiha Madara, things had started to shift across the entire shinobi world. That single move had set off a massive chain reaction, every nation scrambling desperately to build their own hidden villages, to consolidate power, to organize their military forces.
Wars didn't stop after that. In fact, they got bigger, more organized, more brutal and efficient. But thankfully, fewer children were forced to fight on the front lines. Still, Renji thought bitterly, how messed up is it that this counts as "progress"?
He exhaled quietly, his heart feeling heavy. As a boy himself, he too had dreamed big—perhaps even bigger and more ambitious than Hashirama himself. He'd wanted to go beyond what the First Hokage accomplished, to end all wars completely, to create a world where children never had to pick up weapons at all, where shinobi could live peacefully with their families without constant fear.
But dreams like that? The world laughed at them. Crushed them. The world chewed up people like him—too weak, too idealistic, too soft-hearted—and spat them out broken. Dreams as high as mountains needed strength just as great to support them, and Renji had eventually come to believe he simply wasn't strong enough to achieve something like that.
But now, things were different. His eyes softened considerably as he looked once more at Elric's smiling, panting face. Even if I couldn't change the world myself, maybe I don't need to anymore. Maybe seeing Elric grow up happy and strong—that's more than enough for me.
Without saying a word of warning, Renji suddenly leaned forward and quickened his pace dramatically—a burst of speed. He surged past his son in a single heartbeat, his crimson clan cloak fluttering impressively in the wind behind him.
"Hah! Come on, Elric! Pick up the pace or I'm leaving you behind!" Renji called back over his shoulder, a mischievous grin spreading across his face.
"D-Dad! Wait up!" Elric huffed immediately, pumping his short legs harder to try keeping up. His mind raced as he ran. Okay, okay, I've read about this technique a hundred times in the clan scrolls. Channel chakra to the soles of the feet, enhance speed and physical strength. Easy... right?
He closed his eyes briefly while still running, focusing intently on his legs, trying to mimic everything he'd ever seen older clan members do, everything he'd read about in training manuals. The flow of chakra—it was there inside him, raw and completely untrained, but definitely pulsing with tremendous energy.
And then—"Ha!"
He slammed his foot down hard on the earth, pushing chakra through it.
CRACK—!!
A sudden explosive boom erupted beneath him as far too much chakra surged through his leg all at once. The ground cracked violently, forming a small crater directly beneath his foot as raw, uncontrolled energy exploded outward with reckless force.
Physics, however, remained a cruel and unforgiving mistress. The blast of energy launched him upward and completely off balance, his body twisting awkwardly in mid-air.
And in the next moment—THUMP!
Elric met the dirt. Face-first. With absolutely all the grace of a sack of potatoes dropped from a wagon, he skidded directly into the ground. Dust flew dramatically into the air around him, a poor victim to the mighty and terrible power of chakra miscalculation.
Renji froze instantly at the sound of the impact. He stopped mid-stride and spun around quickly, eyes going wide with alarm. A beat passed in silence, then another. And then he saw it—there was Elric, legs tangled awkwardly beneath him, his young face half-buried directly in the soil. Dirt clung stubbornly to his eyebrows and forehead, his red hair stuck up at completely comical angles, and his entire expression was twisted in the specific kind of despair that only young children and failed ninja truly understand.
"P-Pthu! Bleh!" Elric sat up suddenly, spitting clumps of dirt from his mouth with obvious disgust. "Why does it taste like worms?!"
Renji blinked once. Then he chuckled. Then he burst into completely uncontrollable laughter.
"Pfft—PWAHAHA!"
"H-Hey! Don't laugh! That was my first time trying it!" Elric shouted indignantly, his cheeks burning bright red as he frantically tried brushing soil off his face with both hands.
"I-I know, I know... sorry...!" Renji gasped between fits of laughter, actually bending over with one hand pressed against his knee for support. "But—hahh—that was absolutely glorious...!"
He walked over quickly and reached down, helping pull his disheveled son back to his feet. "Maybe next time," he said with a barely suppressed smirk, ruffling Elric's messy dirt-covered hair affectionately, "try not to break both the ground and your face in the same move."
"Ughhh..." Elric groaned miserably. "I thought I was gonna blast off like a lightning flash. Not faceplant like a potato sack..."
The two of them stood there together for a moment—one sulking dramatically, one still chuckling, the morning sun shining warmly down upon them both.
"You little brat! Didn't I just tell you not to use your chakra recklessly?!"
Renji Uzumaki's voice suddenly thundered across the empty field, echoing loudly among the trees that bordered the training grounds. His hand was still resting on top of Elric's head from helping him up moments ago, but now it twitched ominously, veins visibly popping, his eyebrow twitching with pure fatherly frustration.
Elric, cheeks still slightly puffed out from spitting dirt just moments earlier, looked up with an awkward, sheepish grin. "Ehehe... sorry?"
Renji didn't smile back at all.
"You have way more chakra than the average person—heck, even more than me!" Renji snapped, folding his arms across his chest sternly. "You think you can just control it naturally without any practice whatsoever? What do you think chakra is, some kind of magic toy?!"
He sighed heavily and began pacing slightly, clearly switching into full lecture mode. "Listen carefully, Elric. This is the absolute first rule of using chakra properly: The more you have, the stronger your jutsu will naturally become—but that also means it becomes equally harder to control precisely." He paused for emphasis. "It's not a blessing if you don't learn how to actually handle it correctly!"
Renji continued without waiting for a response. "But even the strongest techniques in existence—like S-Rank jutsu—aren't hard because of raw power alone. They're hard because of the incredible precision they demand. You need to move a massive amount of chakra with pinpoint accuracy. One mistake, and you're the crater instead of the creator."
He jabbed a finger pointedly at the small dent Elric had accidentally made in the ground earlier. "That's exactly why, before anything else, before even learning a single jutsu, you need to master basic chakra control first!"
Renji took a deep breath, ready to continue his important lecture, but then he stopped mid-sentence. Because his son wasn't listening at all. Instead, Elric was staring up at the sky blankly, eyes narrowed, expression completely serious, as if contemplating the deep mysteries of the universe itself—or perhaps just counting clouds to mentally escape the boring lecture.
Tick.
A visible tick mark pulsed prominently on Renji's forehead. His right hand rose automatically.
BONK!
"Gah! Dad!" Elric winced sharply, clutching his head where Renji's palm had landed cleanly.
"Don't give me that look!" Renji barked. "Every single time you don't want to do something, you stare at the sky like some deep philosopher pretending to unlock life's greatest secrets! I invented that look! You think you can fool me?!"
"I was thinking about something important," Elric grumbled with exaggerated suffering in his voice. "Really important..."
"Important, my foot."
Renji's eyes flared with fresh annoyance, his face starting to resemble an angry tomato. Elric wisely shut up this time. He rubbed his chin absently—still slightly sore from its earlier violent introduction to the earth's surface. Oddly enough, the scratches were already completely gone, as if nothing had happened at all.
Renji noticed it too. He stared quietly for a long moment, his anger slowly simmering down into something softer. Something proud.
He really is going to be something incredible someday...