7:30 AM.
Namikaze Minato finished getting ready, slung his bag over one shoulder, and headed next door to drag Hoshino Yu out of bed.
They'd agreed the night before to leave early for breakfast. Academy life meant no more sleeping in — a fact Minato had accepted gracefully and Hoshino Yu had accepted under protest.
He knocked.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
"Yu. Time to get up. Don't make us late on the second day."
Silence.
Minato waited. Glanced at the door. Knocked again.
"...Yu?"
More silence. Then, finally — a voice. Slow, ragged, carrying the specific energy of someone who'd had a night:
"...Minato. Just come in."
Minato's brow furrowed. He reached into his bag for the spare key.
They'd made the arrangement early on — each kept a copy of the other's house key. The rule was simple: knock first, no answer, let yourself in. No questions asked.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside.
And stopped.
The house looked like something had happened in it.
The vase on the table — fragments across the floor. The wooden table itself was chipped and scorched along one edge. And hanging in the air, faint but unmistakable:
The smell of something burned.
"Yu—" Minato was already moving upstairs.
The bedroom was worse.
And in the middle of it, Hoshino Yu was sprawled across the bed making faces at the ceiling, limbs arranged at angles that suggested he'd been testing their range of motion and deeply regretting the results. His hair had developed a texture it didn't normally have.
"Yu!"
"Don't — ugh — don't move me." Hoshino Yu hissed through his teeth. "Muscle strain. I went too hard last night."
Minato crossed the room immediately, then caught himself at the warning look and stopped, hovering uselessly with the expression of someone who wanted very badly to help and had no idea how.
"What happened in here?"
Hoshino Yu's eyes slid sideways. The excuse was already loaded and ready — he'd had it prepared since approximately 3 AM.
"My dad left some jutsu scrolls," he said, pitching his voice at the right level of sheepish. "Said to open them after I started school." A rueful exhale. "Last night I got curious. Tried one of the Lightning Release techniques. Lost control of it for a second."
He tilted his head toward the nightstand, where three scrolls were propped in plain view — deliberately retrieved from storage, dusted just enough to look aged.
His parents had been ordinary chunin. Killed in action. Leaving behind a set of jutsu scrolls as a final inheritance was completely plausible. Completely natural.
Minato looked at the scrolls. Looked at the wreckage. Looked at Hoshino Yu.
Let out a slow breath.
Then frowned with the energy of someone's disapproving older sibling:
"You cannot practice ninjutsu inside the house, Yu."
He was already moving — opening the right cabinet from memory, pulling out the liniment, tossing it over before beginning to straighten up the room with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd been picking up after this particular disaster area his entire life.
By the time the bedroom looked livable again, he'd already gone home and come back with bread and milk.
"Eat something. I'll get proper breakfast on the way to school." He set it on the cleared table. "Do you want me to tell Yuichi-sensei you're sick?"
"Yeah." Hoshino Yu pushed himself upright with considerable effort. "Give me a couple of days. I can't really move right now."
Minato looked him over once — confirming no serious damage — then pressed his palm briefly to his own forehead and shook his head with the affectionate resignation of someone who had long since accepted his lot in life.
"What am I going to do with you."
He issued a series of instructions about rest, food, and not touching the scrolls again, then headed out alone.
Hoshino Yu listened to the door close. Looked at the freshly tidied room. The breakfast on the table. The bottle of medicine within arm's reach.
He smiled, quiet and genuine.
"That guy. Sunshine incarnate."
Hss— He pressed a hand to his ribs. "Still need to get used to this speed though."
He prodded experimentally at a bruise on his shoulder. Dark and impressive.
The muscle strain was real. The all-over soreness was real. But can't move was an exaggeration — more like shouldn't move carelessly until he had a better grip on what his body could do now. Pushing too hard before the calibration was complete would create problems he didn't want to explain.
He sank back into the pillow and pulled up his panel.
[Name: Hoshino Yu][Age: 6]
[Chakra Volume: 0.9 (Trace)]
[Five Stats — STR: 1.0 / SPD: 1.2 / CON: 1.3 / MND: 6.1 / SEAL: 0.7]
[Chakra Affinity: Lightning · Water · Fire · Yin · Yang]
[Ninjutsu / Taijutsu / Genjutsu: None]
[Items: None]
[Unallocated Stat Points: 0]
One night. STR had hit the adult baseline. SPD and CON had blown past it.
He stared at the numbers with something between awe and mild offense at how unreasonable Devil Fruits were.
To be fair — before transmigrating, he'd been a fully grown adult. The body catching back up to that baseline wasn't exactly surprising. What surprised him was how far it had overshot.
The speed was going to be the main issue. Speed was the hardest thing to internalize when your perception of your own body was built on six years of much slower reflexes.
He ate breakfast slowly, lay back down, and was asleep again before the thought finished forming.
Somewhere in Konoha. An unremarkable building. A very particular office.
"Lord Danzō." A masked shinobi knelt on one knee, voice level and professional. "There was a disturbance at Hoshino Yu's residence last night. Signs of activity inside — minor chakra fluctuations detected. Consistent with someone practicing in an enclosed space."
"Namikaze Minato's household showed nothing unusual."
Danzō didn't look up from the scroll he was reading.
Several seconds passed in perfect silence.
"Any casualties? Structural damage beyond the ordinary?"
"No, my lord. Namikaze Minato arrived this morning and let himself in. The interior was disorderly but intact. No injuries reported."
"Understood. Maintain surveillance."
"Yes, sir."
The operative disappeared.
Danzō sat alone. A moment passed.
He reached into the cabinet beneath his desk and withdrew a book.
The cover read: The Grand Voyage. Author: Hoshino Yu.
He looked at it with the particular expression of a man who would never admit to owning it.
"Hiruzen," he said, to no one. "You've grown soft. Reading picture books written by children."
He opened to page one.
Two days later. Pre-dawn.
Hoshino Yu had spent two full days horizontal.
Worth it. The Rumble-Rumble Fruit's abilities had settled into something he could actually control now — not perfectly, not completely, but enough to work with. Lying still and doing internal calibration for forty-eight hours had been more productive than it sounded.
He turned his focus to development priorities.
Elemental Transformation first. The absolute conversion of his body into living lightning — that was the cornerstone of everything. Move at speeds approaching light itself, pass through physical attacks like they were smoke, become fundamentally unhittable by conventional means.
Genjutsu and sealing jutsu were separate categories, different rules. He'd need to study both eventually — more options meant more insurance.
The big-ticket lightning techniques, things like Raigo — those were long-range goals. His body wasn't ready to channel that kind of output yet. Small-scale lightning applications were more immediately practical, and having actual Lightning Release ninjutsu as cover would keep things from looking suspicious.
He was working through the development roadmap when the sound reached him.
Faint. From outside. The specific quality of careful movement.
Hoshino Yu's eyes opened.
He was out of bed in one motion, hand closing around the kunai from the cabinet — a family heirloom, kept sharp, kept close. His body moved faster than the old version of himself would have managed.
Not my imagination. He'd had eyes on him before. But before had been distant, watchful. This was closer.
Much closer.
He pressed his back against the wall beside his bedroom door, eyes fixed on the window down the hall.
Root, he thought. Has to be. Nobody else runs covert ops inside the village at 3 AM.
Which meant Danzō.
The question was why now. He hadn't shown anything that would justify this level of personal interest. Unless...
The novel.
Actually — yeah. That tracked.
The window began to slide open without sound.
Hoshino Yu let his focus narrow. A few arcs of electricity crawled quietly across the surface of the kunai in his hand, barely visible in the dark.
I've got the fruit now. Might as well start establishing a reputation for 'unusual natural talent.' Kakashi graduated the Academy at five, made chunin at six, jonin at twelve. A six-year-old noticing a Root operative and throwing a kunai at them isn't crazy. It's just impressive.
The figure came through the window with the smooth economy of someone who'd done this hundreds of times. Landed without sound. Pulled the window shut behind them.
Then stopped.
Something in the room felt wrong.
The masked shinobi's eyes swept the darkness — fast, systematic, professional.
From the shadows, a kunai came screaming across the room, electricity crackling along the blade.
"—!"
The Root operative's hand moved on pure reflex, short blade clearing its sheath in one motion. The kunai was deflected cleanly.
CLANG.
Metal on metal. The kunai buried itself in the wall, its charge dispersing on impact, sparks dying in the dark.
By the time the echo faded, the window was open again and the operative was gone.
The curtain drifted in the sudden breeze.
Silence reclaimed the room.
Hoshino Yu stepped out from the doorway and looked at the kunai embedded in his wall. His expression was cold and considering.
That's not right, he thought. Danzō doesn't move this impulsively. I haven't shown him anything worth acting on yet—
He pulled the kunai free.
Unless it's the book.
He turned it over in his hand.
The throw had been at full force — Lightning Release enhanced, all the physical output he could currently generate. That was low-end chunin speed and power at best. The Root operative had deflected it without apparent difficulty.
The gap is still significant.
For now.
Danzō's office. Forty minutes later.
"Lord Danzō." The operative knelt, mask still in place, voice carefully neutral. "Mission failed. I was unable to retrieve the manuscript. This failure is entirely mine — please assign whatever punishment you see fit."
Danzō's gaze sharpened. "You're telling me you infiltrated a six-year-old's home. And were detected."
The operative's throat moved. "My lord — the moment I entered the room, a kunai was thrown at me. The speed and force exceeded what you'd expect from a standard Academy graduate. And the kunai itself carried Lightning Release."
A pause.
"Lightning Release." Danzō leaned back. His hand moved to his chin. His eyes drifted to the book sitting on his desk. "Hoshino Yu. Six years old." A slow exhale through his nose. "Interesting."
Excellent raw material.
Hoshino Yu was up before dawn, washed, and wearing the new set of clothes Minato had bought him while he was bedridden.
Minato's still asleep. He slipped out quietly. Two days of the man cooking and cleaning for him — the least he could do was go pick up breakfast.
After the night's visitor, the area had gone quiet. No further activity. He'd expected that — whatever Danzō's people had been after, they'd retreat to regroup after being spotted. He'd have breathing room for a while.
What he still couldn't work out was the timing. Why now, specifically? What had triggered the move?
The Will of Fire speech, maybe. But that felt thin. Something in the novel seemed more likely — he'd threaded in too many ideas that someone with Danzō's instincts might find interesting for the wrong reasons.
He filed it and moved on. Problem for later.
The village at pre-dawn was quiet and unhurried. He found his way to the shopping street, discovered that essentially nothing was open yet except the bakery, and turned toward it.
"OI! YU-KUN!!"
He turned.
Kaito came jogging down the street toward him, Luffy-coded from head to toe — red shirt, rolled-up pants, straw hat, the scar catching the early morning light. He had a hatchet in one hand and the kind of energy that had no business existing at this hour.
Hoshino Yu considered the image for a moment.
If he didn't know this person, and hadn't read approximately eight hundred chapters of context on someone with this exact face, he would have already made three separate decisions to run.
"Kaito-senpai." He kept his voice even. "Buying breakfast?"
Kaito skidded to a stop, breathing hard from the jog but already grinning. Less frantic than at the enrollment ceremony — still extremely enthusiastic, but the star-struck edge had worn down to something more comfortable.
He held up the hatchet with the air of someone presenting evidence.
"Nope! Just got back from the forest — I've been cutting lumber." He planted a fist on his hip and rubbed the underside of his nose with one knuckle. "Heading to the pond now. You should come see it!"
"...Cutting lumber for what?"
"Building my ship, obviously!" Kaito declared, with the absolute confidence of someone for whom this required no further explanation. "The Going Merry! My Going Merry!"
He grabbed Hoshino Yu's wrist before a response could form and started walking.
"Come on, come on! You wrote the book — you have to tell me if it looks right!"
Hoshino Yu let himself be dragged.
They walked through the quiet pre-dawn streets, past the last of the residential blocks and into the open ground near the treeline, until a small pond came into view.
"This," Kaito announced, releasing him and spreading his arms wide, "is the Going Merry."
A pause.
"She's in early development."
Another pause.
"...Very early development."
What sat at the edge of the pond was, generously speaking, half a small wooden boat. Several planks had been laid out nearby in a configuration suggesting ambition. The overall impression was of something that had big plans for its future.
Hoshino Yu looked at it.
His quest panel blinked.
[Main Quest: Help the future King of the Pirates — Monkey D. Luffy — acquire his first true ship and set sail upon the open sea.]
[Quest Reward: 0.2 Free Attribute Points]
[Current Progress: 50%]
There it is. Half complete just from looking at it. Same as always.
He stood with his arms folded, studying the half-assembled wooden structure, studying the boy standing next to it with dirt on his hands and sawdust on his shoes and that permanent sunlit expression —
And felt something shift, quiet and certain, somewhere in his chest.
Luffy's first vessel was technically a barrel. Then a small rowboat. The Going Merry came much later — that was never the first ship, that was the right ship.
But this quest isn't asking me to be technically correct.
It's asking me to look at what's actually in front of me.
He turned to Kaito.
The boy who wore the same face, carried the same energy, built his ship before he had any reason to believe the sea was even possible from where he stood.
Hoshino Yu exhaled slowly.
Shook his head once.
And said, with complete sincerity:
"And you, my friend."
He looked back at the half-finished boat, then back at Kaito.
"You're the real Luffy."
TO BE CONTINUED