The morning of Team 7's first official meeting dawned bright and beautiful.
Roku arrived three hours early.
He was excited. He was prepared. He had packed seventeen different types of snacks, a first aid kit, three extra kunai pouches (all of which he would somehow lose within the first hour), and a small stuffed frog that he'd had since childhood.
The stuffed frog was named Mr. Ribbits. Roku saw no reason not to bring him along.
"Today's the day, Mr. Ribbits," Roku said to the frog, holding it up to face the sunrise. "We're finally real ninja."
Mr. Ribbits, being a stuffed animal, did not respond.
This did not bother Roku.
"You're right. We should stay humble. It's important to remember where we came from."
He tucked Mr. Ribbits into his kunai pouch, where the frog's small button eyes peeked out judgmentally.
By the time the rest of Team 7 arrived, Roku had reorganized the training ground.
Not intentionally. He had been practicing his shuriken throwing—which he was still terrible at—and had somehow created an elaborate pattern of embedded weapons that, when viewed from above, formed a perfect replica of the Konoha village seal.
"What the hell?" Naruto said, staring at the training ground.
"Oh, hey, teammates!" Roku waved cheerfully. "Sorry about the mess. I was trying to hit that target." He pointed at a wooden post approximately three feet away. "I keep missing."
Sasuke looked at the shuriken embedded in the ground. Then at the target. Then at Roku.
"You missed a target three feet away... and accidentally created a perfect ceremonial seal spanning fifty meters."
"Yeah, my aim is really bad."
Sakura's eye twitched. Since the exam two days ago, she had been experiencing what she could only describe as "emotional confusion." Every time she looked at Sasuke, her heart went doki doki as expected. But every time she looked at Roku, her heart went DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI with concerning intensity.
She had decided to ignore this.
It was not working.
"Roku-san," she said, her voice only slightly strangled, "that's actually really impressive."
"Thanks, Sakura-chan! But I really was trying to hit the target. Watch!"
He threw a shuriken.
It sailed past the target, curved around a tree, bounced off a rock, ricocheted off Sasuke's headband (Sasuke didn't flinch, but his eye definitely twitched), and embedded itself in the exact center of Naruto's ramen cup.
Naruto had been holding the ramen cup.
He had been about to eat breakfast.
"MY RAMEN!"
"Sorry! Sorry! Let me try again!"
"PLEASE DON'T," three voices shouted in unison.
Kakashi arrived four hours late.
This was normal for Kakashi.
What was not normal was the expression on his face when he saw the training ground—the elaborate seal pattern, the destroyed ramen, the three students who looked traumatized, and Roku, who was cheerfully doing stretches in the center of it all.
"I see you've been... busy," Kakashi said.
"Kakashi-sensei!" Roku bounded over, beaming. "We've been waiting for you! I used the time to practice, but I think I need more work on my accuracy."
Kakashi looked at the seal pattern.
He recognized it.
It was not just the Konoha village seal. It was an ancient version—one that predated the village's founding. One that was supposedly known only to the Uzumaki clan's most senior seal masters.
Roku had created it by accident.
While trying to hit a target three feet away.
"Right," Kakashi said, his voice carefully neutral. "Well. Let's begin with introductions. Tell me your name, your likes, your dislikes, and your dreams for the future."
Naruto went first, talking about ramen and becoming Hokage. Sasuke went second, being broody about revenge. Sakura went third, alternating between staring at Sasuke and sneaking glances at Roku.
Then it was Roku's turn.
"I'm Roku Tanaka! I'm twenty-three years old! I like training, making friends, and Mr. Ribbits!" He held up the stuffed frog. "I dislike... hmm... I don't think I dislike anything, actually. Everyone's been really nice to me. As for my dreams..." He paused, his expression becoming thoughtful. "I just want to be a ninja who helps people. That's all I've ever wanted."
There was a moment of silence.
It was, somehow, the most genuine thing any of them had ever heard.
Naruto felt his eyes watering. "That's... that's beautiful, man."
"Thanks, Naruto! I like your dream too! You'll definitely become Hokage!"
"YOU REALLY THINK SO?!"
"Of course! You've got the spirit for it!"
Naruto was crying now. Full-on tears streaming down his face.
Sasuke was pretending not to be moved. He was failing.
Sakura's heart was going DOKI DOKI DOKI at dangerous frequencies.
Kakashi just sighed.
This is going to be a long assignment, he thought.
"For your first mission," Kakashi announced, "you'll be delivering a scroll to a village on the border of the Land of Fire."
"A delivery mission?" Naruto complained. "That's boring!"
"C-rank missions are appropriate for new Genin. You'll travel to the village, deliver the scroll, and return. Simple."
Kakashi handed the scroll to Roku.
This was his first mistake.
"Guard this with your life," Kakashi said. "It contains sensitive diplomatic correspondence."
"Got it!" Roku tucked the scroll into his pouch, right next to Mr. Ribbits.
They set out immediately.
The journey was supposed to take two days.
It took forty-five minutes.
"Roku," Kakashi said, his voice strained, "what did you do?"
"I'm not sure! I was trying to use the Body Flicker technique to catch up to Naruto, but I think I put too much chakra in, and then everything went whoooosh and now we're here!"
"Here" was the border village.
They had crossed approximately three hundred kilometers in under a minute.
Sasuke was on his knees, dry heaving. The sudden acceleration had not agreed with his stomach.
Sakura was clinging to a tree, her eyes wide and unfocused.
Naruto was... actually fine. He was built different. "That was AWESOME! Do it again!"
"Please don't do it again," Kakashi said firmly. "We need to understand what happened. Roku, describe exactly what you felt."
"Okay! So I gathered chakra in my legs like you showed us, but then it felt like too much, so I tried to let some of it go, but instead of going away it went into me, and then I could see all these lines connecting everything, and I thought 'I want to be at the village' and then we were at the village!"
Kakashi stared at him.
"You... you saw lines connecting everything?"
"Yeah! They were really pretty. All different colors."
"And you... traveled along them?"
"I guess? It was more like... folding? Like the world was a piece of paper and I just brought the two points together."
Kakashi had read about this.
In theoretical texts.
Texts that described abilities that the Sage of Six Paths might have possessed.
Texts that were clearly mythological and absolutely not based in reality.
"Roku," Kakashi said carefully, "I think you may have just invented a new form of space-time ninjutsu."
"Oh, cool! Is that good?"
"I... genuinely don't know."
The scroll delivery went smoothly.
For about thirty seconds.
"Thank you for the delivery," the village elder said, accepting the scroll. "This will help tremendously with our—"
The ground shook.
Everyone looked up.
An army was approaching the village. Hundreds of ninja, all wearing headbands from the Land of Stone.
"IWAAGAKURE INVASION FORCE!" someone screamed.
Kakashi's eye widened. "This is wrong. We're not at war with Stone. This shouldn't be—"
"They've been massing at the border for weeks," the elder said grimly. "We sent word to Konoha, but no response came. We thought the scroll was reinforcements."
"The scroll was diplomatic correspondence!"
"Well, diplomacy isn't going to help us now."
The Stone ninja were close enough now that their faces could be seen. At the front was a massive man with a beard that could house a family of birds—the Tsuchikage's personal guard captain.
"KONOHA NINJA," he bellowed. "SURRENDER OR DIE!"
Kakashi did the math.
Four Genin, one of whom was the most unpredictable being in existence.
Approximately three hundred enemy ninja.
One Jounin (himself).
The odds were not good.
"Team 7, retreat. I'll hold them off while you—"
"Kakashi-sensei," Roku said, his voice surprisingly calm, "I think I should help."
"Roku, you can't—"
But Roku was already walking forward.
The Stone ninja watched the young man approach with a mixture of confusion and amusement.
"Is this a joke?" the guard captain laughed. "They send a single child to face us?"
Roku stopped about twenty meters from the army.
"Hi!" he called out cheerfully. "I'm Roku Tanaka! I was wondering if you guys could maybe not invade this village? The people here seem really nice, and I think fighting would make everyone sad."
The guard captain's laughter died.
Not because Roku was intimidating.
Because something was wrong.
The air around the young man was... vibrating. Shifting. Colors that shouldn't exist were bleeding into reality at the edges of his silhouette.
"What... what are you?" the captain asked.
"I'm a Genin! I just graduated two days ago!" Roku smiled. "Forty-eighth time's the charm, right?"
"Kill him."
Fifty ninja rushed forward, kunai and jutsu at the ready.
Roku, not knowing what else to do, decided to try the substitution technique.
In the Pure Land—the realm of the dead—something unprecedented happened.
Madara Uchiha, who had been patiently waiting for his eventual resurrection, suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.
This was impressive, given that he didn't currently have a spine.
"Something's wrong," he muttered.
Beside him, the spirit of Hashirama Senju looked up. "What is it?"
"I don't know. I just felt... fear."
"You? Fear?"
"Not my fear. The universe's fear. Reality itself is... cringing."
Hashirama frowned. "That sounds bad."
"It sounds impossible. And yet..." Madara's ethereal eyes narrowed. "I'm suddenly reconsidering my plan to return to the living world."
"The infinite tsukuyomi plan? The one you've been working on for decades?"
"Yes. I'm thinking... maybe I shouldn't."
"What could possibly make you—"
And then they felt it.
A ripple.
A vibration that passed through every realm—physical, spiritual, and conceptual.
Someone, somewhere, had just done something so fundamentally wrong that existence itself had hiccupped.
"What was THAT?" Hashirama gasped.
Madara was silent for a long moment.
"I'm definitely not going back," he said finally. "Whatever that was... I want no part of it."
Roku had meant to substitute himself with a log.
This is the basic substitution technique. You swap places with an object to avoid an attack. Simple. Effective. Academy-level stuff.
Roku did not substitute himself with a log.
Roku substituted himself with a concept.
Specifically, he substituted himself with the concept of "overwhelming victory."
The results were... comprehensive.
The fifty attacking ninja found themselves frozen in place.
Not by ice. Not by paralysis jutsu. They were frozen because they had suddenly and completely lost the ability to perceive themselves as winners. The concept of "victory" had been removed from their personal reality.
"I... I can't attack," one whispered.
"Why not?"
"Because I know I'll lose. I know it. Like I know the sky is blue. Like I know water is wet. Attacking him would be losing. It's not a possibility. It's a certainty."
The guard captain watched in horror as his elite forces simply... stopped.
"What have you done?" he screamed at Roku.
Roku blinked. "I don't know! I was trying to do the substitution jutsu, but I think I grabbed the wrong thing? Sorry, I'm really bad at chakra control."
"The wrong THING? What did you substitute with?!"
"I'm not sure. It felt kind of... abstract?"
The captain's eye twitched.
He was a veteran of three wars. He had killed more ninja than he could count. He had faced the Yellow Flash himself and lived to tell the tale.
Nothing had ever scared him like this cheerful, apologetic young man who casually broke reality.
"RETREAT!" he screamed.
The Stone army turned and ran.
All three hundred of them.
Fleeing from a single Genin who thought he had made a mistake.
Kakashi watched this happen with an expression that had transcended shock and entered a zen-like state of acceptance.
"He made three hundred enemy ninja retreat," Sasuke said flatly.
"By accident," Sakura added.
"THAT WAS SO COOL!" Naruto was vibrating with excitement. "ROKU-NII, TEACH ME HOW TO DO THAT!"
"I don't know how I did it," Roku admitted, walking back to the group. "I think the substitution jutsu is harder than I thought."
Kakashi took a deep breath.
"Roku," he said, "I need you to promise me something."
"Sure, Kakashi-sensei!"
"Never, ever try to use the substitution jutsu in combat again."
"But what if I need to dodge?"
"Just... just don't. Please. For my sanity."
Roku nodded agreeably. "Okay! I'll work on my dodging instead!"
This would prove to be an equally catastrophic decision, but that was a problem for future Kakashi.
The team rested in the village that night.
The villagers treated them as heroes—which, technically, they were. An invasion had been repelled. Lives had been saved. The village elder had personally offered Roku the deed to a house, three goats, and his daughter's hand in marriage.
Roku had politely declined all three, completely oblivious to the romantic implication of the last offer.
The elder's daughter—a beautiful woman named Yuki—had cried for an hour.
She was now part of the unofficial "Roku Appreciation Society," which had somehow gained seventeen new members in the past two days despite having no formal organization or recruitment process.
"I don't understand," Yuki sobbed to Sakura. "I offered him EVERYTHING. My heart, my future, my GOATS."
"He's... oblivious," Sakura said, torn between sympathy and relief. "He doesn't seem to notice when women are interested in him."
"But I was so OBVIOUS!"
"Were you?"
"I literally said 'please marry me and we can be together forever'!"
"What did he say?"
"He said 'that's really nice of you, but I don't want to impose' and then he asked if the goats were okay because they looked tired from the journey."
Sakura didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
She settled for patting Yuki's shoulder and adding herself to the list of women who had been personally victimized by Roku's density.
The next morning, Kakashi announced a training session.
"Given what happened yesterday," he said, "I think it's important to evaluate everyone's... abilities. We'll start with taijutsu."
They found a clearing outside the village.
Kakashi demonstrated proper fighting stances, attack patterns, and defensive maneuvers. Sasuke picked them up immediately. Sakura did well enough. Naruto struggled but showed enthusiasm.
Roku...
Roku punched a tree and it apologized.
"I'm so sorry," the tree said—and yes, it actually spoke, its bark forming something approximating a mouth. "I didn't mean to be in your way. Please forgive me."
"It's okay!" Roku said, patting the trunk. "I didn't mean to hit you so hard!"
"You're very kind. I'll remember you fondly."
The tree then uprooted itself and shuffled away to give them more room.
Kakashi watched it go.
"I'm not going to ask," he said. "I'm just not going to ask."
"Next, we'll practice the Eight Gates."
This was meant to be theoretical. The Eight Gates were a legendary technique, a method of unlocking the body's natural limiters to achieve superhuman power. Opening them was dangerous. Opening all eight was fatal.
Kakashi had no intention of teaching them to actually use the technique. He just wanted them to understand the concept.
"The Eight Gates are located along the chakra pathway system," he explained, drawing a diagram in the dirt. "Each gate, when opened, releases a limiter on the body's power. The First Gate is the Gate of Opening. The Eighth Gate is the Gate of Death."
"Why is it called the Gate of Death?" Naruto asked.
"Because opening it kills you."
"Oh."
Roku raised his hand.
"Yes, Roku?"
"What's past the Eighth Gate?"
Kakashi paused. "There is nothing past the Eighth Gate. The Eighth Gate is the final limiter. Opening it releases all restrictions on the body's power, at the cost of your life."
"But what if there was a Ninth Gate?"
"There isn't."
"What if there was, though?"
"Roku, the Eight Gates system is based on the fundamental structure of the human chakra network. There are eight gates because that's how the body is constructed. You can't just add more gates. That's not how anatomy works."
Roku nodded thoughtfully.
Then he closed his eyes.
Then he started glowing.
Across the Elemental Nations, two men suddenly collapsed to their knees.
Might Guy, who had been in the middle of a training session with his eternal rival Kakashi, felt tears streaming down his face.
"What... what is this feeling?" he gasped. "This burning... this PASSION..."
Miles away, his father Might Dai—who had died years ago after opening the Eighth Gate—suddenly rematerialized in the physical world.
This should not have been possible.
The dead do not return.
But Dai was here, standing in the middle of Konoha, weeping openly.
"Someone has done it," he whispered. "Someone has surpassed us... has surpassed the ULTIMATE LIMIT..."
Back in the clearing, Roku was surrounded by an aura of pure green energy. His skin had turned red. His muscles were bulging. His hair was standing on end.
And behind him, visible to anyone with chakra sensitivity, was a NINTH GATE.
It wasn't located in his body.
It was located in reality itself.
A limiter not on human power, but on the universe's willingness to let humans access power.
And Roku had just opened it.
"THE NINTH GATE!" Might Dai screamed into the sky, his resurrection complete and unexplained. "THE GATE OF ETERNITY! IT EXISTS! MY LIFE HAD MEANING!"
He then promptly died again, having exhausted his resurrection energy on pure emotional catharsis.
Back in the clearing, Roku released the technique.
The glow faded. His skin returned to normal. The Ninth Gate closed.
"Huh," he said. "That was weird. I felt really strong for a second."
Kakashi had not moved.
Kakashi was not capable of moving.
Kakashi's brain had simply shut down and was displaying a "please wait, rebooting" message behind his single visible eye.
"Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura asked nervously. "Are you okay?"
"No," Kakashi said. "No, I am not okay. I will never be okay again."
They decided to skip the rest of the training session.
Kakashi needed time to recover. Sasuke needed time to process. Sakura needed time to update her "things that shouldn't be possible but Roku did anyway" mental list. Naruto needed ramen.
Roku offered to catch fish for everyone.
"I saw a river nearby," he said. "I can probably catch something!"
"Please don't," Kakashi said weakly.
"It'll be fine! I'll just use a basic jutsu!"
"Those words fill me with dread."
But Roku was already bounding off toward the river.
Kakashi didn't have the energy to follow.
The river was peaceful.
Birds sang in the trees. Fish swam lazily through the clear water. A family of ducks paddled by, quacking contentedly.
Roku stood on the bank, considering his options.
He could try to catch fish by hand, but his coordination was bad.
He could use a net, but he didn't have one.
He could try a jutsu...
"I know!" he said brightly. "I'll use a lightning jutsu to stun the fish! I saw Kakashi-sensei do something like that once!"
Roku had never successfully performed a lightning jutsu.
He had also never successfully performed any jutsu.
This did not stop him.
He formed hand signs—wrong ones, but hand signs nonetheless—and called out:
"LIGHTNING STYLE: KIRIN!"
Kirin was not an Academy technique.
Kirin was not a Genin technique.
Kirin was not even a Jounin technique.
Kirin was an S-rank assassination jutsu developed by Sasuke Uchiha's future self in an alternate timeline, utilizing natural lightning to create an unstoppable attack in the shape of a dragon.
Roku had no way of knowing this technique existed.
Roku had no way of performing this technique.
And yet.
The sky darkened.
Thunder rolled across the heavens.
And from the clouds descended a dragon made of pure lightning—sixty meters long, crackling with enough electrical power to level a small nation.
The dragon roared.
The sound shattered windows in villages thirty kilometers away.
And then... it stopped.
The dragon looked down at Roku.
Roku looked up at the dragon.
"Hi!" Roku said cheerfully. "I was trying to catch fish. Are you a fish?"
The dragon—an entity of pure natural destruction, the wrath of the heavens given form—stared at the small human who had just asked if it was a fish.
"I... what?"
"You came from the sky, so I thought maybe you were a flying fish. Do flying fish exist? I've never seen one."
"I am KIRIN. I am the DIVINE LIGHTNING BEAST. I am—"
"You're really pretty! Your scales are all sparkly!"
The dragon paused.
In its entire existence—and it had existed since the first storm, since lightning first touched the earth—no one had ever called it pretty.
"...Thank you?"
"Do you want to be friends?"
"I... I am a force of nature. I do not have 'friends.' I have victims."
"That sounds lonely."
The dragon had never considered this.
It had spent eons being summoned, unleashed, and dispersed. It had destroyed countless enemies. It had been feared and worshipped in equal measure.
But it had never had a friend.
"Perhaps," the dragon said slowly, "I could... try friendship."
"Great!" Roku beamed. "I'm Roku! What should I call you?"
"I am Kirin, the Divine Lightning—"
"Can I call you Sparky?"
The dragon considered annihilating this impertinent mortal.
Then it considered how nice it felt to be called pretty.
"...Sparky is acceptable."
"Yay! Nice to meet you, Sparky!"
The dragon—Sparky—descended from the heavens. As it approached Roku, it began to shrink, its massive form compressing until it was merely the size of a large dog.
It was still made of lightning.
It was still crackling with enough power to level mountains.
But it was now sitting at Roku's feet, looking up at him with something approaching adoration.
"What do friends do?" Sparky asked.
"We hang out! We eat together! We help each other with stuff!"
"I see. And what would you like help with?"
"Well, I was trying to catch fish..."
Sparky looked at the river.
Sparky then gently—so gently, for an entity that had never been gentle in its existence—released a small spark into the water.
Every fish in the river floated to the surface, perfectly stunned.
"Wow! Thanks, Sparky!"
"You are welcome... friend."
Kakashi found Roku twenty minutes later.
Roku was sitting by the river with a pile of fish beside him.
Curled up next to him was a dragon made of pure lightning.
The dragon was purring.
Kakashi looked at this scene for a long moment.
"I'm not going to ask," he said.
"This is Sparky!" Roku said happily. "He's my new friend!"
"Greetings, Copy Ninja," Sparky rumbled. "I have decided to accompany this human. Do you have objections?"
"I have so many objections. So many. But I've learned that objecting doesn't help."
"Wise."
"Can Sparky come with us back to Konoha?" Roku asked.
Kakashi thought about the paperwork.
He thought about explaining to the Hokage that his student had accidentally befriended a divine lightning entity.
He thought about his life choices.
"Sure," he said, his voice hollow. "Why not."
"Yay!"
The journey back to Konoha was uneventful.
This was miraculous.
Somehow, despite Roku's presence, nothing catastrophic happened. They walked. They camped. They ate Roku's fish (which Sparky helpfully cooked with small, controlled lightning bolts). They did not accidentally summon any dead Hokages, open any impossible gates, or terrify any enemy armies.
It was almost normal.
Kakashi was deeply suspicious.
"Something's wrong," he muttered to himself on the second night.
"What do you mean, sensei?" Sakura asked.
"It's too quiet. Roku hasn't broken anything fundamental about reality in almost twenty-four hours. That can't be right."
As if on cue, Roku sneezed.
The sneeze was powerful—a full-body convulsion that launched him backward into a tree.
The tree caught him.
Not in the sense that he hit the tree and stopped.
In the sense that the tree grew arms and caught him.
"Bless you," the tree said.
"Thanks, Tree-san!"
Kakashi nodded slowly. "There it is."
They arrived at Konoha's gates the next morning.
The guards stared at Sparky.
Sparky stared at the guards.
"These are the gatekeepers of your village?" Sparky asked Roku.
"Yep! Izumo-san and Kotetsu-san! They're really nice!"
Izumo and Kotetsu did not feel nice. They felt terrified. A literal lightning dragon was looking at them with an expression that suggested it was evaluating their worth as targets.
"H-hello," Kotetsu managed. "Welcome back, Team 7. And, uh... friend."
"Greetings, gatekeepers. I am Sparky. I have decided to reside in your village."
"O-oh. Okay. Do you... do you have papers?"
Sparky tilted its head.
"Papers?"
"Identification. Immigration documents. Proof of... whatever you are."
Sparky looked at Roku.
"What are papers?" Roku asked helpfully.
Kakashi sighed and produced a mission scroll. "They're with me. It's a long story. I need to see the Hokage immediately."
"Yes. Yes, you do."
The Hokage's office had seen many things.
It had seen war councils. Peace treaties. Assassination attempts. The occasional demon attack.
It had never seen a Genin walk in with a divine lightning beast curled around his shoulders like a very dangerous scarf.
Hiruzen Sarutobi looked at Roku.
He looked at Sparky.
He looked at his pipe.
He decided he needed a stronger pipe.
"Explain," he said simply.
"Well," Kakashi began, "the mission started normally—"
"Define 'normally.'"
"We delivered the scroll."
"Good."
"In forty-five minutes."
"The village is two days' travel away."
"Roku invented a new form of space-time ninjutsu. By accident."
Hiruzen's eye twitched.
"Continue."
"We were then attacked by a Stone invasion force. Three hundred ninja."
"We've received diplomatic protests. The Tsuchikage is demanding to know what 'cognitive warfare' technique we used to make his soldiers unable to perceive victory."
"That was Roku. He tried to use the substitution jutsu and accidentally replaced himself with a concept."
Hiruzen was silent.
"Then," Kakashi continued, now with the cadence of a man who had given up, "Roku opened the Ninth Gate."
"There are only eight gates."
"There were only eight gates. Roku found a ninth one. Or created it. I'm honestly not sure."
"The Ninth Gate."
"Apparently it's the 'Gate of Eternity.' It's not a limiter on the body—it's a limiter on reality's willingness to give humans power."
Hiruzen set down his pipe.
"And the dragon?"
"Roku tried to catch fish using a lightning jutsu. He accidentally summoned a primordial lightning entity. They're friends now."
"Best friends," Sparky corrected from Roku's shoulders.
Hiruzen looked at the dragon.
The dragon looked back.
"I need sake," the Hokage said. "I need a lot of sake."
"Can I help, Hokage-sama?" Roku asked cheerfully. "You look stressed!"
"You ARE the stress, Roku. You are the embodiment of my stress."
"Oh. Sorry! I'll try to be less stressful!"
"Please. Please don't try anything. Every time you try something, reality has a breakdown."
Roku nodded seriously. "I'll try not to try!"
Hiruzen stared at him.
"That's... that's a paradox. You can't try not to try. That's still trying."
"Oh." Roku's face scrunched up in concentration. "Then what should I do?"
"Nothing. Do nothing. Be nothing. Exist quietly in a corner somewhere."
"But I want to help people!"
"And I want to retire, but we don't always get what we want."
Outside the Hokage's office, a crowd had gathered.
News of Team 7's return had spread quickly. News of the lightning dragon had spread faster.
And news of Roku—specifically, what he had done on the mission—was spreading at the speed of gossip, which in Konoha was faster than light.
Ayame was there, holding a bowl of celebratory ramen.
Kurenai was there, holding flowers.
Anko was there, holding what appeared to be a coupon for a couples' massage at a hot spring resort.
Yuki from the border village was there, having apparently followed the team all the way back.
Hinata was there, hiding behind a lamppost.
The elder's THREE daughters were there—apparently he had lied about only having one.
A woman from the Land of Stone was there, claiming to be a "diplomatic envoy" but clearly just wanting to meet the man who had made her nation's entire army flee in terror.
Ino Yamanaka was there, having heard about Roku's "incredible eyes" from Sakura (who had not said anything about Roku's eyes but had blushed when mentioning his name, which Ino had correctly interpreted as competition).
Tenten was there, having heard about his "incredible accuracy" (the shuriken seal incident had grown in the telling).
Temari of the Sand was there, having been sent to investigate the "unusual chakra signature" that had been detected all the way in Sunagakure.
And, most distressingly, the female clerk from the administrative office—the one responsible for Roku's forty-seven failure notices—was there, clutching his file and crying.
"I spent six years processing his failures," she sobbed. "I know everything about him. His favorite food. His blood type. His childhood pet. I KNOW HIM."
"That's creepy," Anko said.
"YOU followed him into the Forest of Death once and watched him sleep!"
"...Fair point."
The door to the Hokage's office opened.
Roku stepped out.
Every woman in the crowd immediately straightened, adjusted their hair, and put on their most appealing expressions.
"Oh, hey, everyone!" Roku waved cheerfully. "That's a lot of people! Is something happening?"
"We're here for YOU, Roku-kun!" Ayame said, thrusting forward the ramen bowl. "I made your favorite!"
"I brought flowers!" Kurenai added.
"I have tickets to a hot spring!" Anko shoved her coupon forward.
"I came all the way from the border village!" Yuki cried.
"I came all the way from Stone Country!" the diplomatic envoy shouted.
"I've loved you since before you were famous!" the clerk wailed.
Roku looked at them all with a confused but friendly expression.
"That's really nice! You're all such good friends!"
A collective groan of frustration echoed through the street.
"FRIENDS!" Ayame shouted. "HE SAID FRIENDS AGAIN!"
"How is he this dense?!" Anko demanded.
"Maybe we need to be more direct," Kurenai said through gritted teeth.
"I PROPOSED MARRIAGE," Yuki screamed. "HOW MUCH MORE DIRECT CAN I BE?!"
Sparky observed the crowd with something approaching amusement.
"Your human is very popular," the dragon noted.
"What do you mean?" Roku asked.
"These females wish to mate with you."
Roku's face went through several interesting expressions.
Then he laughed.
"That's funny, Sparky! They're just being friendly. People don't want to mate with me—I failed the Academy forty-seven times!"
The crowd was silent.
Sparky turned to look at Roku with an expression that, for a dragon made of pure lightning, conveyed remarkable pity.
"Friend," the dragon said gently, "I have existed since the first storm. I have seen civilizations rise and fall. I have witnessed love and hate in equal measure. And I can tell you with absolute certainty: these females want to mate with you."
Roku considered this.
"Really?"
"Really."
He looked at the crowd.
The crowd looked back hopefully.
"Huh," Roku said. "That's flattering! But I don't really think about that stuff. I just want to be a good ninja and help people!"
The crowd's hope transformed into despair.
"HE DOESN'T THINK ABOUT THAT STUFF," Ayame cried.
"IT'S NOT THAT HE'S OBLIVIOUS—HE JUST DOESN'T CARE!" Anko wailed.
"This is somehow worse," Kurenai whispered.
From the Hokage's office window, Hiruzen watched the chaos unfold.
"That boy," he muttered, "is going to cause more problems than he's worth."
Beside him, Kakashi appeared.
"With respect, Hokage-sama, he repelled an invasion force, befriended a divine entity, and may have accidentally created a new fundamental law of physics. He might be exactly as much trouble as he's worth."
"That's not reassuring, Kakashi."
"Nothing about Roku is reassuring."
In the Pure Land, Madara Uchiha was pacing.
This was unusual. Spirits didn't usually pace. They usually floated serenely, contemplating their lives and waiting for whatever came next.
But Madara was pacing because he was worried.
"Something is very wrong," he muttered.
Hashirama floated nearby, watching his eternal rival/friend with concern. "You've been saying that for two days."
"Because it keeps getting worse! Can't you feel it?"
"I feel... something. It's like reality is hiccupping."
"It's not hiccupping. It's flinching. Reality is flinching because something is scaring it."
"Reality can't be scared."
"It can now, apparently."
They both felt it again—a ripple through the fabric of existence. This one was accompanied by a distinct sensation of joy.
Pure, innocent, overwhelming joy.
"What IS that?" Hashirama asked.
"I don't know. But whatever it is... it's happy. And that terrifies me."
"Why would happiness terrify you?"
Madara stopped pacing. His ethereal eyes were haunted.
"Because nothing that powerful should be that happy. Power corrupts. Power twists. Power turns joy into ambition and ambition into destruction. That's the natural order."
"But this thing..."
"This thing is powerful beyond measure. I can feel it from here, from the afterlife itself. And it's genuinely, innocently happy."
Hashirama considered this.
"Maybe... maybe that's a good thing?"
"Maybe. Or maybe it's a sign that the rules have changed. That the game I've been playing for centuries is no longer the only game in town."
Madara sat down—or the spiritual equivalent of sitting down.
"I've spent so long planning my return. The infinite tsukuyomi. The salvation of humanity through eternal dreams."
"Your 'salvation' was pretty messed up."
"Perhaps. But it was a plan. A path to power and control."
He looked toward the living world, toward the source of those ripples.
"And now there's something out there that makes my power look like a candle next to the sun. Something that doesn't want control. Something that just... helps people."
Hashirama was quiet for a moment.
"Are you saying you're giving up on your plan?"
"I'm saying... I need to reconsider. If this being—this force of accidental goodness—is what I think it is, then nothing I've planned matters anymore. The world is going to change whether I want it to or not."
He laughed. It was not a happy laugh.
"I spent my whole life trying to control the world. And now some cheerful idiot who can't even do a basic jutsu right is going to save it by accident."
Hashirama smiled.
"Maybe that's how it was always supposed to work."
"Maybe. But I'm still not going back. Whatever happens next... I want no part of it."
Back in Konoha, Roku was eating dinner with his new dragon friend.
They were at Ichiraku Ramen, because Ayame had insisted.
Sparky was curled up on the stool next to Roku, somehow not setting anything on fire despite being made of pure lightning.
"This 'ramen' is interesting," the dragon said, having somehow consumed a bowl despite not having a conventional digestive system. "It brings joy."
"Right?! Ramen is the best!"
Ayame was behind the counter, beaming at them both.
She had given up on being subtle. She had given up on hints and implications. Her new strategy was simple: be so present in Roku's life that he eventually couldn't imagine life without her.
It was a long-term plan.
She was prepared to wait.
"Roku-kun," she said sweetly, "you know you can come here anytime, right? Free ramen, whenever you want."
"That's so nice of you, Ayame-san! You're such a good friend!"
Ayame's eye twitched.
"Friend. Yes. Friend."
She glanced at Sparky.
"He is very dense," the dragon offered helpfully.
"I KNOW."
"Patience may be required."
"I KNOW."
Roku looked between them, confused. "Did I miss something?"
"No!" Ayame said brightly. "Nothing at all! Just eat your ramen!"
That night, Roku walked home through the quiet streets of Konoha.
Sparky floated beside him, having shrunk to the size of a small cat for convenience.
"You know," Roku said, looking up at the stars, "today was a good day."
"You repelled an invasion, opened an impossible gate, and befriended a primordial entity," Sparky said. "Most would consider that more than 'a good day.'"
"I guess. But the best part was making friends. You, the team, all those nice people who came to see us."
"The females who wish to mate with you?"
"Sparky, I don't think they really want that. They're just being nice."
The dragon sighed—a sound like distant thunder.
"You are hopeless, friend."
"Maybe! But I'm happy."
And he was.
Genuinely, completely happy.
A man who had failed forty-seven times, who couldn't do a single jutsu right, who had accidentally become one of the most powerful beings in existence without even realizing it.
And he was happy.
Because he had friends. Because he had a purpose. Because tomorrow was a new day, full of new possibilities and new chances to help people.
"Goodnight, Sparky," he said as they reached his apartment.
"Goodnight, friend."
The lightning dragon curled up at the foot of Roku's bed, its constant crackling creating a soothing white noise.
Roku closed his eyes.
And somewhere, in dimensions beyond comprehension, in realms of pure concept and abstract existence, the fundamental forces of the universe looked at this sleeping man and felt something they had never felt before.
They felt hope.
END CHAPTER 2
Next Chapter: "The Chunin Exams Would Be Easy If I Could Stop Accidentally Ascending to Godhood"
Preview:
"Roku, you were supposed to fight Gaara."
"I did fight him! I just... I think I accidentally fixed his childhood trauma? And now his demon wants to be friends too?"
"Shukaku is not a 'demon.' He's a Tailed Beast."
"He said I could call him Sandy."
"...Sandy."
"He seems nice! A little grumpy, but nice!"
Meanwhile, in the Pure Land:
"Madara, are you crying?"
"NO. It's just... he gave the One-Tail a NICKNAME. He gave an ancient beast of apocalyptic destruction a CUTE NICKNAME."
"That's beautiful."
"THAT'S TERRIFYING."