"Teuchi-san….are you sure this is the right address?" I asked the old man before me who was already busy cleaning up after making food for the deliveries so that he could handle the morning rush that was still present at his store.
Teuchi merely glanced at the place I was pointing on the scroll for a second before nodding, "Yes, it is, an Uchiha boy came in late yesterday night right before we closed to submit his order."
I thought for a second and then nodded.
'It should have nothing to do with me that the Uchiha are also interested in the best ramen in the world…'
'Obviously they would be, anyone would be, it would be strange if they weren't….'
Yet I felt a sort of unease at the fact that I'd have to step into the Uchiha compound knowingly since the last time I entered one of their places knowingly, things didn't go swimmingly.
"Alright, Teuchi-san, I'll be off then, I'll see you in a couple of hours, make sure you have the best ramen to calm the beast in my belly!"
Teuchi simply chuckled before going back to work, apparently to make the best ramen in the world while I went out on my deliveries while listening to the 'Tribute' by Tenacious D since that was a tribute to the best song in the world.
I soon reached the gates of the dreaded place I was supposed to visit on my fifteenth rerun of the song, the Uchiha Compound.
The gates were wide open this time, and there were still a lot of people present. Each stared hard at me as I stepped through the main street that travelled along all the houses.
I felt a little scared that someone would jump out of the shadows cast by the rising sun and launch a fireball at me but relaxed when I remembered that the fireball never actually killed anyone in the show so it would only be a warning shot.
However none of that happened and I continued counting houses until I reached a rather modest but still large house in the centre of the Uchiha district.
Am I supposed to knock on the door or is the proper Uchiha etiquette to just stand there and say 'Hmm' repeatedly like a villager?
I decided to go with the "Hmm…" strategy and surprisingly for some bizarre reason, after my first "Hmm…" the door cracked open before a single eye peeked out at me from inside at about my height.
"...sasuke-kun?" I mumbled slightly confused without control over my tongue, "Shouldn't you be at school?"
The door opened fully after that as a woman asked, "Why are you at the door already Sasuke? I'm sure the delivery person will ring the door bell if he arrives!"
Only I hadn't and once the door was fully opened a rather tall lady looked down on me with equal parts confusion and surprise, as if to say, "No way, since when did other people start following the Uchiha guidelines and etiquette?"
I quietly pulled down my backpack and handed over the four bowls of Ramen that the family had ordered and passed them along to who I assumed was Mikoto Uchiha before waiting patiently for her signature.
I noticed her gaze softened when she noticed my missing arm and the rather obvious burn mark scars on my face but I didn't react to it in any way, instead I patiently held out the scroll open where she had to sign that she'd received the delivery.
She did so with a simple brush dipped in ink before I quickly stuffed it into my backpack to continue on, only I paused at the last second and turned towards her.
"Erm…I don't know which Uchiha it was that saved me at the last second, but I do remember someone young shouting for everyone to save me when the incident happened…so erm…what I'm trying to say is, please thank them for me."
I don't know why, but I felt that it was important to say so at the moment. A strange intuitive feeling as if saying so right now would get something off my chest.
Mikoto's face blossomed into a smile as she spoke happily, "You should come around more often Katsumino-kun, Sasuke-kun doesn't really have any friends his age to play around here."
I looked at Sasuke and then back up at Mikoto herself wondering if I could hug her thigh to mooch off a few high level Uchiha jutsu in the future before nodding, "Alright."
I could play house with a few kids if it meant I'd get something worthwhile for my efforts.
However, it seemed that Sasuke didn't see eye to eye with his rather gracious mother since he said, "Mom…he probably can't even hold a shuriken and throw it without falling over…why do I need to play with such a weakling!?"
My brows twitched along with Mikoto's before we both mutually nodded as I turned around and quietly walked away even as I heard Sasuke's screams ring out into the entire district shouting.
"Moooom nooooo!!!! Stop twisting my ears!!! What did I do wrong?!? I was speaking the truth!!!!!"
"Tsk… only pulling his ears… should've given him a good spanking…" I complained before walking out of the Uchiha compound to finish the rest of my deliveries.
There were only five more boxes remaining and I was done with that in the next twenty minutes.
Sweat made my t-shirt cling to my skin and my skin itch but I remained calm as I reached Ichiraku ramen once again with an empty carrier box.
"Why can't we just use storage scrolls for all this? Aren't they supposed to be able to store anything?" I asked Ayame who entered at about the same time as me.
"The cheaper ones that are available to civilians can only store solid food stuff; Water and the rest of the liquids make them wet or simply dissolve them rather easily so it's not good for food, only dry military rations."
I sighed before nodding and wondering if I should invent a bicycle in this world to reduce my burdens.
'Nah…this feels like good training.'
And I didn't know how beneficial a bike would be in a world where children could run faster than actual horses.
Maybe I'll look into it if I ever need money really badly.
I took a quick bath after that and stepped back down to eat some food and quickly realised why Sasuke wasn't in school today, it was because today was Sunday.
It was hard to keep track of days when I wasn't really doing much with my own so I decided to bring a calendar with my first salary when I got some.
Once I returned to my room to avoid the rush below after finishing my breakfast, I quickly sat down to meditate and practice the Yin Release Mindscape Prism Jutsu.
But today instead of all those times I spent trying to manage the jutsu with a single seal, I decided to use my idea from before.
'Let's see if I can mimic the chakra flow from the left side of my body onto my right…'
I began by copying each minute chakra pathway but since that was taking too much time and not really going anywhere I decided to do the broad strokes first.
I copied the major pathways and began by moving chakra through them in the same pattern as it was on the left when I was sitting in the lotus position.
Only my copying was terrible right now.
It was almost as if I was writing with my left hand, the flow was all wobbly and shaky as if someone had been shivering with a cold while doing so.
But I could feel an inkling of a solution to the entire problem.
'As long as I tie the currents of the right side into the left side, I can ride on the hand seals of the left side and make it carry the right side perfectly too…I just need to find and match those currents to the right side first.'
What I was planning to do was a bit like getting caught in the undercurrents in an ocean that dragged you irrespective of your wishes and I aimed to tie the two sides together so that I would only have to perform seals on one side to make myself complete the jutsu by forcing my right side to obey my left and merge its own containment of chakra with it.
'...but how do I tie them together though…'
I quickly noticed that bringing the chakra from the right side of my pathway to the left wasn't enough by itself.
Doing that just led to the chakra being stolen without it dragging the rest of the chakra to the left side. The currents in the left would simply tear the chakra on the right into bits before carrying them away since I wasn't fast enough in controlling the right side to keep the flow up.
It was also rather painful to have my focus suddenly torn apart before some of it was carried away.
'Do I need to do some chakra control exercises before I attempt this?' I asked myself softly.
It took a while but even after trying again and again when I wasn't having any success I gave up.
I'd practice chakra control first and only then try this again.
Since it was still quite early in the day when I stopped practicing I decided to take a break and go sightseeing around the village since it had been on my bucket list for quite some time.
I hadn't really viewed much of it since most of the deliveries happened in the housing designated areas, and so much of the sights of the village had been hidden from me by my rather short stature.
I greeted Teuchi and Ayame on my way out before going straight towards the Hokage rock visible from nearly every angle in the village.
It was the highest point in the village and so I wished to stand atop it all to see the village in all its glory at once.
And so I began my pilgrimage to the top of the Hokage rock, and it truly was a pilgrimage.
The staircase was made out of steel or iron, and it thumped each time I stepped onto it. But it carried me higher, away from the hustle and bustle of the village, plunging the world into a short undecorated silence that gave me peace of mind that I hadn't had before.
I reached the top quite soon with my physique which I guessed was thanks to my constant morning workouts in the form of delivering food for Ichiraku.
The world on top was silent and lonely, perfect for music but I let it stay silent since it felt almost sacred.
The view of the village was nothing short of breathtaking, merchants rushing about, shinobi jumping on rooftops, kids playing around in training grounds, the elderly all talking to each other and laughing over some tea while discussing the good old days, it all seemed harmonious and thankful.
And even though I didn't have any strong connection to this place, yet, it still felt like something worth protecting.
"This is what Hashirama and Madara fought to protect…didn't they?"
I mumbled.
And as soon as I did something rather strange and bizarre occurred.
My senses spread.
I felt a strong connection to every single living and non living thing in the village.
It was almost as if I had blanketed the entire world in front of me.
I could feel the emotions of the rock being kicked around by some kid trying to take it home, I could feel the emotions of the cat being chased around by inexperienced genin trying to catch it, I could feel the emotions of the young and the old all busy in their daily lives each trying to earn a living.
I could feel it all.
I could even feel the emotionless puppets keeping guard at various points in the entire village. Their lack of any emotions glaringly apparent because it wasn't really a lack of emotional connectivity but an apathy born of ignorance, a thorn that felt harsh to incorporate into my view but one included nonetheless.
It was a world connected visibly in my mind, as if everything was one and the same.
"Wh-"
"What just happened?!?"
I mumbled to myself carelessly, almost completely ignoring the fact that I could distinctly sense someone behind me slowly fading away and out of sight of my new sense.
But I snapped out of my emotions quick enough and turned around to look into the forest behind the Hokage rock and my eyes popped out of my sockets.
"Mi- Mito Uzumaki!?"
The beautiful figure with the vibrant red hair and a calm and gentle smile blossomed into a fragrant display of light before she vanished into the world, as if she never existed.
I only heard a few short words after that.
"Take good care of my legacy, young one…"
"..."
"...the hell."
…
Mito felt another young boy walk up to the Hokage rock.
She had long since given up hope that another person who could carry her legacy would arrive in this place.
It almost made her wonder if she was even right to plant herself here and not in another village perhaps.
However there was a rather different air around this young boy that intrigued her quite a bit.
And when he came into full view she nearly gasped.
What had the boy been through to have lost his right arm and become marred by such scars on his face while so young?
For a second she nearly assumed that Nawaki had walked back from the grave before she calmed down to evaluate the boy who had come up.
And so Mito did something she rarely did anymore, she peeked at the boy's emotions using the Mind's Eye of Kugara technique she was proud of.
She had expected another young naughty boy like the current jinchuriki who had hoped to paint Hiruzen's face again this morning only to be blown away by what she felt.
Despite all his setbacks, the young boy's chakra remained warm and uplifting. It carried a certain quality to it that reminded her of the first spring breeze when she met Hashirama.
She watched patiently as the boy's spiritual energy settled from the churning state it was in because of his worries, to a slow rhythmic trance as it pulsed inside his body while he observed the village.
'Is he the right one?' Mito thought to her self.
She had seen another boy like him before.
Unfortunately for her he was the jinchuriki and rashly giving him her legacy might prove risky for the village. So she decided to wait for when he was older to see if he would still remain the same.
But to her surprise, she'd seen a second boy like him now.
'I should see if he can bear my legacy in the first place before I become excited.'
Uzumaki techniques required a large amount of chakra to complete and use. And so it depended on one's ability to generate a large amount of chakra which depended on their spiritual energy. So she hoped to learn the limits of the boy's spiritual energy to track how much it would improve in the future.
Mito gently touched his spiritual energy in an attempt to merge it with her own senses, much like the technique propagated by the Sage of Six paths himself, and felt herself blown away by what she saw.
The boy's spiritual energy was dense and nearly infinite in practice.
It was dense enough to rival the amount she had in her yin seal when she was alive. Enough to fill it three times over in fact.
'Will he be able to bear the burden of the legacy?' Mito pondered softly and that was when the boy spoke, as if he could hear her thoughts.
"This is what Hashirama and Madara fought to protect…didn't they?"
And that made her sure. The tone of those spoken words, the calm maturity and acceptance, and above all the warmth of his chakra when the boy said those words brought her surety that he would never disappoint her.
Especially since he was so warm even after his early life seemed to have dealt him the wrong cards.
And so Mito performed the final test.
She would gently expand his perception to include Danzo's root. And if his emotions hastily turned for the worse, she would retract her support from his back and leave him to fend for himself.
She only gave the boy's sensing a nudge in the right direction and to her surprise the boy's yin chakra was so dense that it expanded outwards from him as he calmly observed the village and blanketed it in its entirety in an instant, leaving not a single stone unturned.
Granted it was currently only possible because it took root in her sensing capabilities, it was still a great achievement.
He should have also already been able to tell people's intentions apart, even if rather unclearly if he hadn't learnt to control it yet.
And when the boy's sensing, mixed with hers, fully blanketed the ROOT shinobi without a hint of reluctance, accepting them for what they were without rejecting their cold apathy to know that they had been morphed into such a dejected state of existence through force and coercion.
Mito quickly unhid herself, undoing the seal that had sealed her remnant will for decades in the roots of a tree of her choosing.
For the first few seconds she felt slightly disappointed that the boy didn't have the trademark Uzumaki red hair since he was most definitely an Uzumaki even if only partly, but the next second she quietly dropped all her legacy into the boy using a seal on his soul.
If this boy wasn't the one she was looking for, none after him would be.
With that she gave him an entire course for her legacy, from zero to hero where each lesson would unlock once the boy completely mastered the last.
And so with all the chakra within her depleted, she left after speaking a few short words of encouragement.
"Take good care of my legacy, young one…"
'Ah…it would've been nice to at least know his name…'
…
I didn't wait a second after that.
I rushed back home at the speed of light or rather perhaps even faster than that since I couldn't believe what had just happened and things were moving at a blur past me as I ran.
Did I grow back my arm?
No.
Could I grow it back?
Also no.
But then why was I so happy and excited about it all?
It was simply because I could now feel the entire village in my vicinity and I somehow knew exactly what that meant, even though it was rapidly fading away, for now.
Mito, or her remnant will, had unlocked a latent ability hidden within me, one that I had failed to notice myself, chalking it up to instinct instead of an actual bloodline limit.
And that ability was the Uzumaki sensing technique, Mind's eye of Kagura.
But that wasn't all.
I was half sure that as my chakra control increased and Mito approved, I'd unlock even more Uzumaki techniques automagically, like the Uzumaki sealing techniques and the Adamantite sealing chains technique.
'Were one of my grandparents Uzumaki for me to have been blessed with such fortune?'
'If not, why was I chosen to inherit such a legacy?'
'Wait…why wasn't Naruto chosen to do so in the first place?'
'Doesn't he spend most of his time on the Hokage rock too? Painting it often?'
I didn't have an answer to the question but I had something else to be happy about.
'As long as I achieve good enough chakra control, I can replace my missing limb with an adamantite sealing chain!'
'What if I disguise it as a puppet arm and then touch my opponents with it to completely seal them away in an instant?'
'Hahahahahahah~ Fear me world for you have unleashed someone you cannot handle!'
Once I returned to Ichiraku ramen I rushed back into my room, stopping only once I was under the blankets where I couldn't stop myself from grinning wildly because of what had happened.
I slept peacefully that afternoon since the exhaustion from all the practice during the morning was catching up and the waves of excitement finally passed over.
I woke up late in the evening, and went back down to help Teuchi with a few more deliveries before returning to take a shower and attempt the first sealing technique on the list.
The storage seal.
And I quickly realised the problem I was going to face for the foreseeable future.
'I can't draw with my left hand…'
'Forget about drawing, I can't even write…'
'Sigh…all this knowledge in here and I can't even express it fully. What a scam…couldn't I have gotten the adamantite sealing chains jutsu first? And then everything else?'
And so my days as a scribe finally began as I began writing down random things that came to mind to improve my writing skill.
…
I woke up the next day with a slightly sore body from overusing chakra yesterday but I was energetic nonetheless since I still felt excited because of Mito's legacy.
And when I went down to meet Teuchi for the deliveries he surprised me by saying, "You don't need to deliver to as many people today, we hired more people. You can finish yours quickly and head to the Academy today."
"...academy huh…?" I thought for a moment before nodding softly.
I hadn't visited the academy in over a month now so I didn't really know how much I had missed out on, but I hoped it wasn't a lot.
Either way, I found it a little redundant to still stay in the academy now that I had Mito's legacy embedded in me.
But it seemed like Teuchi read my mind since he said, "Not many people get accepted into the academy and since you haven't been kicked out yet, you should make the most of it."
I nodded in understanding.
'Even if I can't follow the course work at the same pace as the rest of the students, I should at least learn the basics so that I can have a cover story for when I inadvertently reveal my true strength since I can't just keep it hidden forever.'
I finished my deliveries that day and ran to the academy after a quick shower, wet hair and all since I was late.
I couldn't yet activate the Mind's Eye of Kagura on my own right now and could only sense a short range even if I did, so I stopped myself right outside the classroom door as I worked up the courage to hear the scoldings of the teacher inside the class before sliding open the door and rushing in.
The class fell into silence for a few seconds before the usual chatter continued as I realised that the class hadn't been progressing at all.
I looked at the empty teacher's desk at the podium and then at the board which read-
'Self Study. Substitute teacher unavailable.'
"Ah…"
I made my way to the seat at the back of class before settling in and nudging Shikamaru up with my leg to ask him a question, "Hey, Shikamaru, has it been like this all month?"
Shikamaru looked annoyed at having been woken up so suddenly but he responded nonetheless, "No. There is a substitute teacher sometimes but that is only on physical test days. I heard from dad that they're currently holding an internal examination to pick out the next homeroom teacher."
"I see…thanks for letting me know."
He nodded and fell back asleep while Choji beside him looked at me like he had a question to ask but because he was busy eating he didn't find the time to speak.
While this might have been an inconvenience to the other kids, this arrangement was perfect for me and I began to practice writing with my left hand once again.
Lunch arrived soon after and I placed my lunch box on the table to reveal a tantalising still steaming box of Ramen which I wanted to devour quickly only to have a couple of rough looking kids surround me out of nowhere.
"Ah…" I released a sigh as I recognised some of those kids from my vague memories.
They were kids 'I' had bullied before.
"Can we not do this?" I asked them softly but they simply sneered.
One kid raised his hand to hit me, only to pause at the last second when someone else stepped up behind me.
I didn't have to look to tell who it was since I could sense the person well enough without looking because of how close he was.
"Sasuke?" I asked slightly surprised as I turned back.
He looked annoyed and also slightly frustrated before he placed his box on the table beside me and looked at the hoard gathered around my table with an expression that screamed, "Scram, or I'll make you eat your shoe!"
Shikamaru too mumbled, "Troublesome." before sitting on the same bench as mine with Choji who looked ready to devour my lunch instead of his own.
I felt touched.
The kids who wanted to beat me up, not so much.
They looked like someone had kicked them in the shin and run away with their money. But the effect was quick since everyone gathered around me quickly turned around quietly and rushed away before things could escalate and get worse.
And with the group disbanding, even the most ardent of believers in 'justice' turned away and returned to their classes.
I whispered thanks and received grunts of acknowledgement from Sasuke and Shikamaru before Choji wordlessly dumbed half of my Ramen into his and began slurping on it.
School became a routine from the next day on, but with one arm missing the occasional substitute teacher ignored me for the most part during practicals as did the other kids.
Sasuke sat beside me all the time now causing girls to look at our desk more, with some even cursing at me for having the 'fortune' to sit beside a statue that only knew how to 'Hn' all day.
We never really spoke about anything other than training, but Sasuke did seem enthusiastic to share with me shuriken throwing techniques with the off hand.
While Shikamaru usually stayed asleep and Choji only ever spoke when he wanted my Ramen during lunch.
It was a harmonious friendship, or I assumed it was such.
And for some reason, Naruto hadn't appeared yet. Both at school and at Ichiraku ramen.