“Kai, I’d like you to meet Sasuke Sarutobi.”
Oh. So this was the guy Hashirama said would be leading my training. It took a moment longer than I liked for the gears in my head to start moving again before I could bow my head in greeting.
Damn, why is he so hot?
“Nice to meet you! Hokage-sama filled me in on the necessary details. So you want to be a shinobi, do you?” Sasuke—er, Sarutobi said. Would I ever be able to get used to calling him by his first name? No, probably not.
“Uh, yes, sir! That’s the goal, anyway…”
Sasuke laughed.
“Sir? Please, no need for formalities. You can call me Sasuke!”
Dammit.
“Yes…Sasuke-san.”
The man wore a black happuri like Tobirama, though his was sharper around the edges, and dark green and black clothes. His chestnut brown hair was spiked back and, while he already stood taller than Hashirama, he looked even more colossal for it. I only reached his shoulders if I stood up straight…
Monkey—tree. You get the idea.
“Well, what are we waiting for, then?” Sasuke braced his hands on his hips and nodded toward Hashirama. “I’ll take it from here, Hokage-sama.”
“Thank you very much, Sasuke-san. I’ll check in with you at noon, okay Kai-san?”
I nodded at that and Hashirama leapt off to do who knew what. Probably boring Hokage things. I turned my attention back to Sasuke, who seemed to be sizing me up.
“Let’s see… I guess we should start with basics, hm?” he said, lifting a hand to frame his chin.
He began to walk around me in a circle and I tried to remain as still as possible despite my discomfort at being scrutinised like this.
“I don’t really sense a chakra signature in you… Well, there’s something, but it’s very faint. Let me try this…”
Without warning, I felt a rapid series of sharp jabs along my spine. I arched my back with a pained gasp, the feeling of nerves popping in and out of place in a wholly unnatural way. For a moment I was paralysed and I could have sworn my heart stopped, but once I came back to and could breathe normally again, I felt…different. Or rather, everything around me felt different. My senses were sharper somehow—the sounds of the village goings-on carried up to me from the base of the cliff on which we stood, miles below; my blood rushed through my veins with a newfound ferocity, as if carrying an energy I hadn’t noticed before; I felt vibrations in my feet, through the soles of my shoes, whenever something around me moved; my own movements felt faster, more precise, ready to react to anything.
“So that was all,” Sasuke mused aloud, walking around to stand in front of me again with a satisfied smile on his face. “Some of your tenketsu were blocked and disrupting your chakra network. Usually that’s the result of a bad run-in with the Hyuga… You wouldn’t happen to have been involved in anything like that, would you?”
“Uh…no,” I said, almost disoriented by the sound of my own voice in my head now. “What are…tenketsu?”
“Oh, boy. We’re starting from the basic basics,” Sasuke muttered. I squinted at him and he cleared his throat. “Tenketsu are little nodes in your body that can expel chakra, like when you’re using jutsu. There are over three hundred tenketsu along your chakra network, and if the right ones are blocked, it can stop up the whole thing. If yours weren’t blocked from an attack, then it’s likely from years of disuse and bad posture.”
Wow, call me out a little louder, please.
“Not to worry! Now that they’re all cleared up, you’ll be able to use your chakra without any issue,” Sasuke said, giving me a thumbs up. That seemed overly optimistic, but he was the sensei, after all. “Now, let’s find out what your chakra nature is. That will determine the best course of training for you. Although, full disclosure: if it’s Raiton, I’m probably not the best choice of mentor. Lightning and I don’t mix well, I’m afraid.”
“...Noted. So how do I find out what my chakra nature is?” I asked.
“Hold out your hand, like this.”
I followed his demonstration, extending my arm with my palm facing upward.
“Now I want you to concentrate your energy into the palm of your hand. Focus it like you’re trying to manifest something out of nothing. Imagine your chakra flowing down your arm, between your finger tips, and swirling right in the centre.”
Those were some incredibly vague instructions, but I would give it my best shot anyway. I closed my eyes, focusing on the sensations of my arm. From my shoulder down to the muscles in my biceps, the curve of my elbow, into my forearm where my wrist connected it to my hand, and each of my fingers, culminating in the centre of my palm like Sasuke instructed. I could feel the buzz of energy he mentioned—my chakra—and gradually a kind of warmth began to pool in my hand, except it wasn’t a normal kind of warm. It was just…energy, sitting there, waiting to be used. I had to control my breathing to maintain it, but when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see that anything had changed.
“...What now?” I asked, staring at my palm as if something would magically appear from it.
“Now…we find out.”
Sasuke produced a small square of paper and held it over my hand. We locked eyes for a moment, and I nodded for him to continue. When he dropped the paper into my hand, it sagged the moment it touched my skin as if it had been drenched in water. Did that mean…?
“Suiton it is,” Sasuke confirmed. “You’re in luck! I can work with that.”
I hummed quietly in acknowledgement, still staring at the damp paper in my hand as the chakra retreated back into my body. I couldn’t help but think it would have been cooler if I could use Katon or Raiton, but…Suiton was okay, I guess. At least it wasn’t Doton. That would have been lame.
“As a Doton user myself, that means my jutsu has an advantage over yours.” Oops. “I trust you can tell me what Suiton is strong against.”
“Fi—uh, Katon.”
“That’s right. Katon is strong against Futon, Futon is strong against Raiton, and Raiton is strong against Doton,” Sasuke explained. “Those are the five basic chakra natures. You’ll need to keep your advantages and disadvantages top of mind when you’re faced with an opponent. In addition to that, there are two fundamental rules for shinobi.” He held up two fingers. “One: always watch your back. Two: always be two steps ahead of the enemy.”
“So…keep your eyes behind and ahead,” I said. “Sure. That makes sense.” Sasuke chuckled.
“It makes more sense in practice, trust me. Now, the first step toward becoming a shinobi is to learn how to control your chakra. Any jutsu requires precise chakra control to wield it appropriately. If you get distracted and let your chakra get out of hand, the jutsu will spiral out of control or fizzle out completely. Let’s try… Hm. Stay there; I’ll be right back.”
Sasuke disappeared from sight before I could even respond, and I barely had time to peel the wet paper off my hand before he reappeared in front of me, now holding a small leaf between his fingers. I opened my mouth to ask what that was for, but again he moved before I could speak, pressing the leaf to the middle of my forehead with his fingertip.
“I want you to use your chakra to hold this leaf right here,” he said. “No hands, no balancing acts. Just chakra. Got it?”
“Oh…kay.”
Closing my eyes with knitted brows, I tried to summon that same energy from before, this time drawing it up from my stomach, through my chest, and into my head. Dizziness struck me abruptly and I felt myself tipping over as my eyes rolled back in my head. Next thing I knew, I was half-lying on the ground with Sasuke supporting me in his arms, a concerned, yet amused look on his face.
“Not all at once, kid. You’ll knock yourself out doing that,” he warned. I breathed a sigh as I regained my bearings and sat up.
“Gee, thanks for the heads up,” I grumbled.
Sasuke chuckled and patted my back, then stood up to offer me a hand to get back on my feet.
“Let’s try that again.” He pinned the leaf to my forehead again, a little more gently this time. “Slowly, a little bit at a time, and concentrate on the leaf.”
I closed my eyes again. Slowly. I imagined bubbles of chakra floating up from my stomach this time, instead of the direct stream it had been before, rising to the top of my head and gathering at the leaf’s point of contact. I felt the pressure from Sasuke’s finger disappear, and I slowly opened my eyes to look up at the edges of the leaf I could see.
“There you go. Now hold it, just like that…until I get back.”
My eyes snapped back to him as he turned to start walking away.
“W-wait—where are you going?” I called after him.
“I just have a couple errands to run! I’ll be back soon! Don’t let that leaf fall!”
Son of a bitch. I gritted my teeth and fought to keep my focus on the leaf. I knew this trope well enough to guess that that bastard wouldn’t be back “soon” at all. With my luck, it would be sunset before he returned.
…Well, it didn’t end up being quite that long, but enough time had passed to pique my ire as my stomach began to growl. What time was it now? Mid-afternoon? Why, oh why did I decide to skip breakfast that morning? Well, it wasn’t so much a decision as it was a forgotten afterthought in the midst of the Uchiha bodyguards switching out when I awoke and stepped outside Madara’s house to find yet another person waiting for me—a reserved, but polite man named Mitsuri. He hadn’t bothered trying to make friends, either, but at least he didn’t make me feel like a science experiment being kept under surveillance. Actually…I hadn’t seen him since Hashirama took me up here to meet Sasuke. I wondered if he were still lingering around…
“...What are you doing?”
I jumped as Chigiri’s face popped into view from over my shoulder. The surprise made me lose my concentration and the damned leaf gracefully drifted to the ground. I groaned out a huff and kicked my foot at the ground.
“I was training to hone my chakra. You distracted me,” I informed him through a pout. Chigiri snorted, walking around me into full view with a hand on his hip.
“That’s your training? What kind of stick in the mud did they set you up with?” he joked.
“Hi there.”
This time it was Chigiri’s turn to jump clean out of his socks when Sasuke’s voice came out of nowhere. The Uchiha turned around to see my sensei standing behind him, waving casually.
“I’m the stick in the mud. And you are?”
“Uh—Ch-Chigiri Uchiha. Sorry…”
He scratched the back of his head with an awkward laugh. In spite of the easy smile on Sasuke’s face, he looked far from impressed.
“I’m assigned to keep watch over Kai-kun. I didn’t mean to…interrupt your training.”
“No, no, not at all,” Sasuke dismissed. “You seem to have your own bright ideas about what kind of training he should be doing, don’t you? Feel free to share. I’d love the feedback.”
Chigiri shrank back into himself, a withering look crossing his face. He closed his eyes and dropped his head in deference to Sasuke.
“...Sorry, Sarutobi-sama.”
Sama? I glanced at Sasuke curiously. Was he the leader of the Sarutobi clan right now? I knew he was a man of legend who inspired Sasuke Uchiha’s name, but I didn’t quite connect the dots until now. His expression seemed to relax as he huffed out a breath of laughter.
“It’s alright, Chigiri-san. Take this as a lesson not to pass judgement so quickly, hm?” He turned his attention toward me, then down to the leaf on the ground. “Oh.”
“I kept it there this whole time!” I claimed frantically. “I only dropped it because he snuck up on me!”
“I didn’t sneak up on you! I walked right up to you!”
“Yeah, and you didn’t announce yourself or anything! That’s called sneaking up on someone!”
“Now, now, there’s no need to argue,” Sasuke said, waving his hands at both of us. “I believe you, Kai-san. You wouldn’t be sweating like that if you weren’t concentrating your chakra this whole time.”
As soon as he mentioned it, I felt the sweat on my face that had gone cold in the light freeze that wafted over the cliff. I breathed in deep and let it out, only now feeling the unfamiliar strain in my temples. Was that just from prolonged usage of my chakra? I hoped that would go away at some point…
“I’ll consider this lesson a success for today,” Sasuke said. “Tomorrow, we’ll meet here again to continue your training. Now that you know the basics of chakra control, we’ll move on to physical endurance training. No offence, but you look really out of shape.”
As much as I wanted to take offence to that, I knew he was right.
“Yeah, yeah.” I paused, thinking better of my tone. “Um. I mean, yes, sensei. Thank you.”
Sasuke laughed.
“So formal! I’ll see you tomorrow, kid.”
Once he left, I felt myself relax a little. Being around all these historical figures really took a lot out of me. It wasn’t enough to keep me from throwing a meagre punch at Chigiri’s arm, though.
“Ow! What was that for?” he complained, rubbing at the spot.
“That was for sneaking up on me. Don’t be a baby. I didn’t even put any chakra into that,” I said, waving him off as I turned around to start making my way back down the path that led to the bottom of the cliff.
“It still hurt… Hey, where are you off to, anyway?” Chigiri asked, following close behind me. I shrugged.
“Not sure. I guess I’ll try my luck around town again to see if anyone needs work.”
“Again? I think we kind of exhausted our options yesterday…”
“So I’ll keep trying,” I said with finality. “Eventually someone will give in if I’m annoying enough.”
I tossed a smirk over my shoulder at him as we kept walking. Chigiri shook his head at me, but he smiled back anyway.
Nobody gave in that day, but it was admittedly still fun to roam the village with Chigiri again, anyway. We happened across a group of children playing some kind of game (one that I recognized as simply “don’t let the ball touch the ground”, but Chigiri called it kemari) who excitedly invited us to join in since they apparently didn’t have enough players. I had thoroughly enjoyed these kinds of games as a kid and was more than happy to accept, though Chigiri seemed reluctant at first. Of course, it didn’t take long for us to start getting a little competitive, and once Chigiri accidentally kicked it high enough to get the ball stuck on top of someone’s roof, we decided it was best to leave the rest to the kids (after he kindly went to retrieve the ball, of course).
He treated me to dango after that. I was pleasantly surprised by the sweet taste. I had planned on being underwhelmed since most foods depicted in shows were drawn to look much better than they really were, but that wasn’t the case this time. He also showed me a couple of hidden gems around the village, like the spot where he and his friends would meet to drink in a wooded area behind the Uchiha District, and a beautiful lakefront that reflected the colours of the dusky sky like one large mosaic and all kinds of freshwater fish swam around within. We stayed there for a while, sitting by the lakefront where I could bare my feet and dip them into the cool water.
In retrospect, it made sense to me now that I would have an affinity for Suiton. I had always had a connection to water, even in some of my other past lives, and I had had tragically little experience with it in the one before this. I loved to swim and be submerged in water, but waterproof binders were expensive and…well, it just generally wasn’t comfortable to be in public like that.
“You look sad again,” Chigiri noted from where he sat perched atop a protruding boulder, skipping stones across the surface of the water. I shook my head a little.
“Not really. Just…thinking,” I said.
“What are you thinking about?”
He tossed another stone and I watched it skipped no less than six times before disappearing into the lake. I hummed.
“Stuff.” I heard him snort from above.
“What kind of stuff?” he asked. I took a deep breath and let it out in an airy sigh.
“...Fate? Destiny? The meaning of life?”
I looked up at Chigiri when he didn’t respond to find him staring down at me with a bewildered expression.
“...That’s heavy stuff,” he noted. I chuckled.
“Yeah, well… It’s kinda all I got going on right now.”
“You can sleep with all that riding on your shoulders?” he asked, hopping off the boulder to crouch beside me on the bank.
“So far it hasn’t been voluntary,” I admitted. “If I don’t wear myself out enough to crash on the spot, it’ll keep me awake at night. I’m not looking forward to when it happens.”
“...I can help wear you out, if you want.”
A scandalised noise bubbled out of my mouth as I pinned him with a wide-eyed look, cheeks flaring against my wishes. Chigiri’s expression matched mine in an instant as he started waving his hands frantically.
“Not like that! I didn’t— Shit, sorry. That came out wrong.” He bit out a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose before trying again. “What I meant was that I could try…you know, keeping you busy? At least until you go to sleep. If that’s okay with you, I mean. Like—how about we go swimming? That usually tires people out.”
Chigiri stood up to start shedding his clothes without a second thought while I was left to flounder silently in my panic. I crossed an arm over my chest and stared down at the water. I couldn’t do this right now. Even though this was a fairly secluded spot, I couldn’t get in the water with my binding wraps on. That was too dangerous. And it wasn’t like I could…
“...What’s wrong?” Chigiri asked, pausing after shedding his yukata when he noticed I hadn’t moved.
I pursed my lips, flattening my hand over my chest while I kept my eyes averted. A few more seconds passed before it seemed to click in his mind.
“Oh…right. Sorry, I forgot.”
Any other time I would preen under the veiled compliment, but right now it just felt…kind of depressing. I heaved a sigh.
“I appreciate the thought. I just…can’t.”
Chigiri slowly sat back down again, though he neglected to put his yukata back on, leaving him bare-chested as he drew up a knee to prop up his arm. A few beats of uncomfortable silence passed before he spoke again.
“You know, when you learn a little more about how to use your chakra, you could use a henge,” he suggested. I furrowed my brows and glanced over at him.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a transformation jutsu that changes your appearance,” he explained. “Usually people use it to impersonate an enemy to infiltrate their ranks, but I don’t see any reason you couldn’t use it to look however you want.”
That was…a real possibility here, wasn’t it? I blinked. Could the solution really be that easy in a place like this? I was convinced that I was more or less doomed to suffer in my dysphoria for the rest of my afterlife-life considering the lack of medical technology and research in this era, but if I could just use a jutsu…
“...Wouldn’t that take up a lot of energy and concentration, though?” I asked sceptically. “I nearly passed out just trying to hold a leaf on my face with chakra earlier.”
Chigiri snorted.
“Well, yeah, but it’s not like you’d have to do it all the time,” he pointed out. “You could start out by just holding it for a little while at a time until your stamina develops enough to maintain it for longer.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“Because it is easy. Watch.”
With a simple hand sign and a cloud of smoke, Chigiri no longer looked like Chigiri beside me. Instead, I was met with the likeness of Sasuke. Even though I knew it was Chigiri and the logical part of my brain recognized this as the jutsu I had seen countless times through a screen, it still startled me enough to make me scramble back a bit. Chigiri laughed in Sasuke’s voice in the same moment that he released the jutsu, resuming his true appearance.
“Pretty cool, right?”
“Uh…yeah. How long did it take you to learn how to do that?” I asked, relaxing again as the shock faded. Chigiri hummed, glancing up in thought.
“Hard to say… I learned everything so young that it all blurs together a bit,” he said. “Maybe…a week or two?”
“Just a week?” I asked, more hopeful than I likely should have been.
“Or two… Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he said, levelling me with a cautious stare. “You still have to learn the basics before you can do any jutsu. It might take you a little longer.”
“But…probably not longer than a year, right?”
That was an acceptable period of time in my mind. A year seemed like a long time, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that long to wait to refine a skill that could improve my overall quality of life here exponentially. Chigiri pursed his lips.
“Maybe…but it takes most people at a beginner’s level a little longer than that to master control over their chakra…”
“I’ll just work harder then,” I said resolutely. “I’ll have Sasuke teach me more. It felt like he was holding back today, anyway.”
Chigiri scoffed in disbelief.
“You’re kind of nuts, you know that?” he teased. I threw him a wry look.
“You have no idea.”
Chigiri traded places with Shirayuki again when we returned to the compound that night, a little earlier than before, but I still managed to fall asleep all the same. Well, I did lie awake in Madara’s bed for a little while, but instead of worry and dread filling my mind, I was anticipating my training with Sasuke in the morning.
True to his word, he put me through physical training exercises this time around, which was infinitely more taxing than I had convinced myself it would be. After watching me collapse after just a few drills, Sasuke ordered me onto a new strict diet, which sadly meant no more visits to the dango shop or even a sip of sake, much to Chigiri’s dismay. The day after that, Sasuke had me continue those drills, and the day after that, and the day after that. On my walks with Chigiri, we continued the hunt for a place that would hire me temporarily, to no avail.
After a week, Sasuke introduced chakra to my drills, explaining that it would help me burn more fat by balancing physical exertion with spiritual exertion. Handstands took a ninety-degree turn when he had me hanging off the side of a tree by the palms of my hands, the muscles in my core burning with scorn. One day during a break, before Chigiri had come to take Mitsuri’s place, the Uchiha finally approached me to suggest that I tighten my form more, since a loose stance would make it more difficult to hold the position. The advice helped.
Two weeks after that, instead of our leisurely strolls through the village, Chigiri began to accompany me to the private training grounds within the Uchiha District, where he built upon Sasuke’s training with me to refine my chakra control in tandem with my physical endurance training. I insisted that it didn’t make sense to train for only half the day when the diet Sasuke put me on was keeping me energised even after our lessons. Chigiri even managed to rope Hikaku into overseeing our personalised training one day. He’d had little to say about how much progress I had made and more than enough to say about all the areas that still needed improvement. Normally I was motivated by praise, but in this case, the criticism helped me see the weak points in how I approached my training. I was still succumbing to the urge to find shortcuts, to which Hikaku explained under no uncertain terms that there were no shortcuts to becoming a shinobi.
Four weeks into my training, I was already stronger, faster, more agile, and I had enough control over my chakra to walk all the way down the sheer face of the cliff without one slip. Sasuke congratulated me at the bottom, meeting me with a rough pat on the back as he praised my accomplishment. Surprisingly, Hashirama was there to greet me as well.
“I’m glad to see your training is paying off, Kai!” he said with his signature grin that didn’t grate on my nerves quite so much anymore. “You’ll be a full-fledged shinobi in no time at all!”
“He’s been a model pupil, Hokage-sama,” Sasuke boasted. “Hikaku-san tells me he’s even training at home.”
“Is that so? Quite the show of determination! I look forward to adding you to our ranks,” Hashirama said.
I felt my chest swell with pride at that. I had learned to grow from constructive criticism, to be sure, but I was still partial to a good ‘ole “job well done”. It was just in my nature.
“I come bearing good news,” Hashirama said then, seemingly revealing the true reason for his visit. He smiled at me. “Tobirama and Madara have returned. They’re in my office now. Come. I’ll take you to see them.”
I blinked, and then a wide grin split my face. I paused just long enough to bow toward Sasuke before I jogged to follow behind Hashirama, inexplicably excited to see those two again. It had been over a month since they set off on the mission to locate and eliminate Zetsu at Mountain’s Graveyard. I had begun to worry for their safety, but Hashirama had been quick to assure me that he had received one of Madara’s falcons two weeks ago with an explanation of their whereabouts and findings. In fact, we had indulged in a little bit of gossip about how well Tobirama and Madara must have been getting along, given the state of Madara’s immaculate handwriting at the time. Not that either of us would be privy to any of the details.
When we entered the Hokage’s office, however, I was taken aback by the overwhelming sour atmosphere that filled the room. Tobirama and Madara sat in chairs on opposites ends of the room, looking away from each other with identical scowls on their faces. I raised my brows a little, sharing a glance with Hashirama, though he looked less surprised and more so just exasperated.
“Madara, Tobirama, I brought Kai to see you,” Hashirama announced, walking over to sit behind his desk.
Madara glanced over his shoulder at me, his scowl softening to a look of…relief? That wasn’t quite the right word to describe it, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it a happy look, either. He stood from his chair to face me, giving me a once over.
“...You’ve gotten stronger,” he observed. “And your chakra signature is visible now.”
I nodded, straightening my shoulders a little.
“I’ve been training with Sarutobi-sama,” I said. He raised a brow, casting a glance back at Hashirama as if for confirmation. The Hokage smiled and nodded.
“He insisted on learning the way of the shinobi. He’s made great progress with Sasuke-san.”
“Is that so…” Madara turned back to me, nodding with what I hoped was approval. “I’m impressed.”
Now those words coming out of Madara's mouth nearly gave me goosebumps. My chest felt all light and fuzzy as warmth filled my cheeks, but I didn't have long to revel in the feeling.
“Enough small talk,” Tobirama bit out, finally rising from his seat, as well.
I could almost feel Madara bristle at the movement and I had to resist the urge to take a step back. Standing in a room with these three felt leagues different now that I could sense the nuances of their moods and movements. I couldn’t help but compare it to standing before the Greek gods of Olympus.
“Your intel was correct,” Tobirama said, producing a scroll seemingly out of thin air that he unfurled to reveal a more detailed map of the Mountains’ Graveyard. “We found a mass of the dormant Zetsu you predicted would be here. However, there was no sign of what you called the ‘Black Zetsu’.”
I pursed my lips.
“Nothing? No clues, or…or a trail?” I asked. Tobirama shook his head.
“Nothing,” he confirmed. “Madara mentioned that you claimed the tablet in the Uchiha shrine had been altered by this ‘Black Zetsu’. As of right now, that’s our only lead. Do you have any other information that might lead us to him?”
I racked my brain for something, anything, but nothing came to mind. Black Zetsu was little more than an amorphous manifestation of Kaguya Otsutsuki’s will. He could have been anywhere, possessing anyone. If only I had access to the articles that explained the more intricate details… I closed my eyes and shook my head with a sigh.
“I’m sorry… I don’t. I would tell you if I did,” I said. “The only thing I know for sure is that Black Zetsu merges with a White Zetsu years from now. I have no idea where he could turn up between now and then.”
“Then we’re at an impasse,” Tobirama said, rolling the scroll back up with a flick of his wrist and sending it back to whatever storage dimension he had summoned it from. “We’ll need to devise a strategy to identify and capture Black Zetsu if and when he makes an appearance within the village. Madara, that means—”
“I know what it means,” Madara snapped before he could finish.
He breathed deeply through his nose, letting it out slowly as he levelled his gaze on me. I waited for him to explain what was going on.
“...If Black Zetsu intends to corrupt me, I must act as if I’m succumbing to his whim,” he said.
I furrowed my brows, trying to understand what he meant by that.
“...What—”
“We’ll be staging Madara’s exile from the village to implicate him in attempted treason,” Tobirama said, crossing his arms over his chest. “He will then stage his own attack against the village, under the assumption that Black Zetsu will be observing him, and execute his original plan to battle Hashirama to the death. If your recount of how events were meant to unfold on the natural course of the timeline is correct, then Black Zetsu will surface at some point during these events, at which time we can apprehend him and put an end to all this.”
I was at a loss for words. They were planning to villainise Madara and force him into a battle he no longer wanted just to draw Black Zetsu out of hiding? And they called me the basket case?
“Wh… Just— No! No, that’s not— You can’t do that,” I protested. “You can’t just—”
“It’s been decided,” Madara interrupted, his jaw set in a hard line. “We’ve all agreed this is our best chance to lure out Black Zetsu.”
I stared at him, slack-jawed and dumbfounded beyond reason.
“...It won’t work,” I said then.
“And why not?” Tobirama questioned.
“Kurama—the Nine-Tails. He was integral to Madara’s plan to beat Hashirama.” Madara arched a brow at that, seeming surprised by the information himself. “The Sharingan can control the Tailed Beasts, but—”
“But you said controlling the Tailed Beasts was a bad idea,” Hashirama finished. He folded his hands in front of him on his desk, pressing his lips together. “And if we want to establish an alliance with the Tailed Beasts, then forcing the Nine-Tails into that situation is out of the question.”
“Why does it matter?” Tobirama asked. “Obviously Madara isn’t actually going to attempt to murder Hashirama. It’s an act.”
I sighed and rubbed at my face, beginning to pace around the front of the office.
“...What’s the projected timeline for this?” I asked. “How long until Madara is supposed to challenge Hashirama?”
“A couple of months, give or take,” Madara answered. “Enough time to allow for suspicion and upset to take root in the village before I launch an attack.”
“We’re supposed to be meeting with each of the Tailed Beasts any time now…” I bit out another sigh, holding a hand to my chin as I forced the gears in my brain to spin. “We would have to leave Kurama for last. He’s in the Land of Fire, but if we were to manage to earn his trust now, he would come to Hashirama’s aid during the battle.”
“...So that’s why…” Tobirama muttered, a crease forming in his brow. “But if you plan to ally with the Tailed Beasts at all, won’t we run the risk of any one of them leaping into the fray? Why not just postpone that quest altogether?”
“There’s no time,” I said. “If we keep waiting, the other villages will capture the Tailed Beasts and start sealing them into jinchuriki. Hashirama, you’re planning for a Five Kage Summit soon, aren’t you?”
He blinked as his own undisclosed plans were presented to him, but he nodded.
“That’s right.”
“That’s when you were going to try to negotiate with them by offering them the Tailed Beasts in the original timeline,” I said. “If we haven’t solidified their allegiance by then, it’ll be too late."
“Then what do you propose we do? So far you’ve only limited our options,” Tobirama pressed.
I closed my eyes and tried to think. Think, think, think.
“...We have to move up the timeline,” I decided. “No longer than a month at most. Even then we’ll be pushing our window of opportunity…”
“That will never work,” Madara argued. “The whole village is meant to turn against me, my clan included. They may have their reservations about my leadership, but they won’t betray me that easily.”
“They will, but you gotta be one hell of a good actor,” I said, looking up to meet his eyes. He regarded me warily.
“...How good?”
“Damn good.”
And so the board was set. The new plan was for Madara to preach his initial interpretation of Hagoromo’s tablet to his clan like a zealot, as if he had really gone off the deep end. The Uchiha, content in their newfound peace and respect for the village, would shun him, and I would “convince” Chigiri to report his ranting to the Hokage. This would justify Madara’s falsified exile and banish him from the village and, with any luck, garner Black Zetsu’s attention as the current reincarnation of Indra Otsutsuki.
(It turned out that I had forgotten to mention that part before, so that was fun to explain to him and Hashirama.)
Then just a couple of weeks from then, Madara would stage his attack against Hashirama. We agreed that Hashirama would postpone his new pursuit of an alliance with the Tailed Beasts until after the battle had concluded.
Of course, the final outcome of that battle had yet to be decided… In theory, Madara could still leverage the Izanagi, but then he would lose one of his eyes. The Sharingan was precious, so I understood his reluctance to follow through. In lieu of that, I posed an alternative, albeit controversial suggestion: Tobirama could use his Edo Tensei jutsu (evidently a secret experiment until I had revealed it—oops) to summon a deceased shinobi who could then use a henge to pose as Madara. Obviously they wouldn’t be able to replicate Madara’s jutsu, so the idea was for the reincarnated corpse to swap in with a substitution jutsu at the last minute, where the corpse’s invulnerability could mimic Madara’s Izanagi when it “came back to life”. It was a little convoluted, but it would spare Madara’s eye and still produce the same effect as the real deal, with the exception of Kurama’s involvement.
Tobirama, surprising everyone, was the first to voice his support of this strategy.
“It’s completely unhinged and immoral,” he had said, “but it just might work.”
I decided to take it as a compliment rather than try to dissect the psychological implications that statement made about my frame of mind in the moment. Perhaps I was no strategic genius, but I at least knew how to fill a plot hole.
Of course, it wasn’t lost on me that we were more or less staging a series of events that, in some ways, paralleled what happened to Itachi in the original timeline. Madara wouldn’t be massacring his clan at the behest of a corrupt politician to prevent a coup d'état, but he would still be turning the whole village against himself and there was no guarantee that they would all welcome him back even if we explained everything after the fact. This was also something we discussed before concluding our meeting, and to that end Madara had only one thing to say.
“I don’t need anyone’s praise or approval so long as I know I’m doing what’s right.”
He was evidently content to resign his fate to that of an outcast after all was said and done, if that were what it came to. He was, after all, fundamentally a kind man. He was devoted to that which meant justice and salvation for the people he cared about, whether he was being manipulated by a malignant entity from the shadows or forced into the role of the villain to ensure the safety of his people. It seemed that, no matter the timeline, Madara’s core values remained intact, even if honouring those values meant suffering a burden so great as to crush a lesser man.
“I’m sorry you have to go through with this,” I said, voice soft as we walked back to the Uchiha District together after departing the Hokage’s office. Madara glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “In the end, I guess there was never really another option. I wish I had figured that out sooner…”
“How could you?” Madara asked, turning his gaze ahead once more. “We’ve deviated from the path you call the ‘original timeline’. There’s no telling what awaits us now.”
I stayed quiet after that. He was right and I couldn’t find the words to continue spinning this situation as something that was wholly my fault. Technically it was all my fault, but I couldn’t convince myself that this outcome was right or wrong until we saw the results for ourselves. Maybe it would all blow up in our faces with cataclysmic enthuse, or maybe it would all work out the way it was supposed to. The future was shrouded in mystery even to me.
Once we reached the Uchiha clan compound, Madara made a beeline for his house and I followed after him. None of my assigned guards were anywhere in sight this time. Hikaku must have dismissed them upon news of Madara’s return, and yet as I took note of the sun’s position in the sky, I found myself anticipating Chigiri’s arrival. He wasn’t likely to pop up in his usual manner with the clan head around, though. Maybe I would run into him later.
As we stepped inside and I closed the door behind us, Madara paused to turn to me.
“...I’m going to rest,” he said. “We have a long several weeks ahead of us. You’re free to do as you please, but I recommend you do the same.”
“Right… Oh, um— Will you just…wait right here for one second? I’ll be right back.”
Before he could respond, I slipped past him and hurried toward the bedroom I’d been using as my own. I had managed to catch Shirayuki one night before she had disappeared into the shadows to observe me from afar, and she had confirmed for me, albeit with a note of disdain, that I had been sleeping in the master bedroom of the house. She would only know that with her keen observational skills, of course, but it had made me wither a little inside all the same.
I tried to hurry as I grabbed all the clothes I had been piling atop the dresser for fear of disturbing the other items in the drawers, but apparently I wasn’t quick enough for Madara’s liking. With my arms full of garments, I turned around to find Madara standing in the doorway to the bedroom with a deep furrow in his brows.
“...Have you been sleeping here?” he asked. I couldn’t help but feel it was an accusation.
“Uh…yeah? But it was an accident, I swear,” I floundered. “I didn’t know if there was another bedroom and this was the first one I came across and I was just so tired and then Hashirama left my clothes in here, so—”
Madara held up a gloved hand to stop me.
“The details aren’t necessary,” he said. “Don’t bother yourself with moving all your…things. I’ll use the guest bedroom down the hall. You stay here.”
“But—”
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” he warned, flashing a halfhearted glare at me. “It makes no difference to me. I’ll find you at sunrise and we’ll go over the details of our plan again.”
With that, Madara stepped out of the doorway and I heard his footsteps carry him down the hall as he said, evidently into an adjacent bedroom. I sighed and slumped my shoulders, reluctantly putting my clothes back on the dresser. What was that all about? I was more than happy to get out of his way so he could have his room back. If I were in his shoes, I would have wanted that. A bedroom, to me, was a uniquely personal space that was filled with a comforting, calming energy whenever I stepped into it. Then again, maybe that had more to do with my neurodivergence.
I sat down on the edge of the futon for a moment and twiddled my thumbs. It was still mid-afternoon, not late enough for me to feel tired yet. In fact, I still had time to squeeze in some more training before I called it a day. My body ached just as much as it had been for the past couple of weeks, but in lieu of all the distractions that kept me preoccupied from exercising like this in the other world, I felt more determined than ever to persevere. I craved the self-gratification of building myself into the figure of a man I could respect, rather than resigning myself to an image I barely tolerated to begin with.
As I left Madara’s house and made my way toward the Uchiha training grounds, I felt a certain tingle in my skin right before Chigiri appeared beside me, falling into step as if he had been there the whole time. Despite sensing his approach this time, his sudden arrival still made me jump a little.
“Back at it again?” Chigiri asked knowingly.
“I have some free time,” I said. “No sense in wasting it.”
“You wouldn’t be wasting it if you just took a little time for yourself to relax, you know,” he said, raising his arms to link his fingers behind his head as he walked. “If you keep up like this, you’re going to burn yourself out. Or hurt yourself. Whichever comes first.”
I rolled my eyes at him.
“Don’t be so dramatic. That’s not gonna happen,” I assured him. “I’m eating, I’m sleeping, I’m taking breaks when I need them. I’m good.”
“If you say so… Have you made any progress on your Suiton jutsu yet?”
“No… Sasuke-san says I won’t be ready to use proper jutsu for another month or two at my current level,” I said, huffing out a breath of air. “I wish I could just…go through a whole training montage and be powerful already.”
“Mon…tage?”
I glanced over at Chigiri, taking note of his pinched brows. I was still adjusting to the difference in language here. If I weren’t throwing around foreign words that made no sense to the people around me, then my casual, loose dialect was putting them off. Everyone here spoke with a certain refinement, if not in their vocabulary then in their enunciation and inflection. It was hard to navigate conversations like that sometimes.
“A montage is like…when you skip a bunch of pages in a book, but you still get glimpses of the scenes in between,” I tried to explain. “Like everything is sped up the way you perceive it, but it all still happens in real time. It’s a popular method of storytelling where I’m from.”
“I think I get it,” Chigiri said, though the look on his face left room for doubt. “But there’s no shortcut to—”
“Becoming a shinobi,” I finished, recalling Hikaku’s words with distinct clarity. “I know. I’m just…not used to stuff like this taking so long. It feels like I should be further ahead than I am now, but I’m not, so I have to keep working to get where I want to be.”
We reached the training grounds then, but it seemed as though it was already occupied. Hikaku stood at a distance, arms crossed while he observed a young child practising his punches against one of the training stumps. As we got closer and I got a better look at the kid’s face, I recognized him as the same child who had crossed my path the day I arrived at the Uchiha District. Something about his fluffy, curly black hair and sharp, focussed eyes struck me as familiar.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said, turning toward Hikaku. He spared me a glance, but his gaze didn’t linger.
“You’re not. We were just wrapping up for the day,” he said. “Kagami! That’s all for now.”
Kagami? I looked at the child again with new understanding. So this was the Uchiha who would end up on Tobirama’s team during the First Shinobi World War. Well, if things still played out that way, that is. He was so young now… It was a shame that I wasn’t able to meet him as an adult. From what little was shown of him in the original timeline, I was sure he would grow to have plenty of interesting ideas. Perhaps if I lived long enough here, I would still get to see him grow into that man.
The boy’s knuckles were reddened after his training and Hikaku wasted no time in producing a roll of bandages. He knelt down to start wrapping Kagami’s hands. Meanwhile, Kagami stared directly at me. I tentatively raised my hand in a small wave.
“Who are you?” he asked innocently enough. I cleared my throat softly.
“My name is Kai,” I said, offering him a short bow of my head. “It’s nice to meet you, Kagami-kun.”
“Are you from another village?” he asked.
Now, how to answer that… I cast a glance toward Chigiri, debating what would be safe to say in front of him.
“...Yes. I’m from a village far away from here.”
“Are you a ninja?” I shook my head with a small smile.
“Not yet, but I’m learning, just like you,” I said. His eyes lit up at that.
“Really? Can we train together sometime? Can you teach me some jutsu?” he asked, running up to me as soon as Hikaku freed his hands. I laughed a little at his unbridled enthusiasm.
“I don’t know any jutsu yet,” I admitted, lifting a hand to rub at the back of my neck. “Sarutobi-sama is still teaching me how to use my chakra. I’d love to train with you sometime…if that’s okay with Hikaku-san?”
I looked at the elder Uchiha in question. He regarded me for a moment, looking me up and down, then finally gave a curt nod.
“You may join us if you have the time between your lessons with Sarutobi-sama,” he said. “We won’t be waiting for you every day, though.”
“Of course. Thank you.” I bowed again, a little lower this time. Chigiri nudged me in the side.
“Don’t you think you should stick to the more advanced stuff?” he asked with an arched brow. “I know you’re still new to this, but you’re already leagues ahead of this kid.”
Before I could respond, Kagami jumped to his own defence.
“I’m a quick learner! Hikaku-san says I’m really talented!” he boasted, grinning ear to ear as he braced his tiny fists against his hips. Chigiri laughed and reached down to ruffle his hair.
“I’m sure you are! You have a lot of catching up to do if you want to be on Kai’s level, though.”
I pursed my lips at that.
“I’m not that far ahead… I think I could learn a lot from Kagami-kun.” I smiled down at him. “You’re gonna be a great shinobi. I can already tell.”
Somehow Kagami grinned even wider at that. I was never one for the company of children, but I found that I didn’t mind them so much here. Kagami, for his part, had a bright energy about him, as if he were already thinking of ways to change the world for the better. I found that I looked forward to seeing the results.
“We’ll be leaving now,” Hikaku said, ushering Kagami along, but before he took off, he looked at Chigiri. “You’re no longer obligated to guard Kai-san now that Madara-sama has returned.”
Chigiri shrugged.
“I know that. I just wanted to spend some time with him,” he said. “That okay with you, old man?” Hikaku’s brow twitched.
“Learn to respect your elders, Chigiri. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
With a shake of his head, Hikaku offered me a small nod of apology before following after Kagami, who had already run off back into the compound proper. I quirked a brow at Chigiri.
“You’re quite bold, aren’t you?”
He blew a puff of air through his lips.
“Come on, that guy’s as old as rocks. He’s practically my grandpa,” he teased. “Now, come on. I want to see those expert moves of yours~”
“Yeah, yeah. Just keep your eyes off the goods, hot shot. I’m a pay to play kinda guy.”
“So that’s how it is, huh?”
“You couldn’t afford me, anyway.”
The rest of the afternoon passed by steadily, Chigiri’s penchant for banter keeping a smile on my face the whole time. His advice was surprisingly helpful, however, when he noticed my form was a bit off or when he pointed out that I wasn’t focussing my chakra in the right area. Learning how to manipulate this supernatural energy inside my body was still a struggle. It was easy to channel it into a single spot when I was standing still without any other distractions, but redirecting my chakra while I was moving or while Chigiri (un)helpfully chimed in with pointless chatter was another story. I would need to master controlling my chakra in situations like this, though, if I wanted to progress any further. Sasuke had been putting more of an emphasis on my physical condition lately, so I hadn’t had the chance to develop much further in this area yet.
Although, I understood why Sasuke was prioritising my strength. I couldn’t always rely on my chakra to give me the speed or power I needed in a battle. I had to get stronger and faster, I had to last longer when I was exerting myself, and I definitely needed to become more flexible. That was one thing that would be harder to correct, considering I didn’t have the chance in my youth to stretch my muscles the way I needed them to stretch now, or for my bones to set in a way that would let me bend as far as I needed to bend.
The way of the shinobi was a gruelling one to be sure.
We parted ways for the evening once the sun had set and I returned to Madara’s house to retire for the night, suitably exhausted now. I peeked down the hallway toward the guest bedroom he had chosen to sleep in, but no light shone from inside, so he must have been fast asleep now. Tip-toeing into his master bedroom, I quietly slid the door closed behind me and barely spared enough time to take off my bindings before collapsing into the bed. That night, I didn’t dream at all.
The next day came with a looming sense of dread. Now that he’d had a chance to rest after his long mission, the first phase of Madara’s charade was upon us. He had to sew suspicion and distrust within his own clansmen, convince them of the mask of a madman he would wear as he spoke of treason and uprising and the so-called “salvation” etched into Hagoromo’s tablet.
As we sat at the kitchen table, eating the breakfast he had prepared, neither of us spoke. We both knew what was waiting for us outside the walls of his home and we weren’t eager to face it. The silence weighed just as heavily, though, and while I normally preferred to avoid conversation while eating, I couldn’t swallow the urge to fill the air with something while we were here.
“You know…” I began, dipping a piece of simmered fish into the bowl of sauce it was served in. “I never got to thank you for letting me stay here before you left. Hashirama said it was your idea. So…thank you.”
I promptly popped the fish into my mouth, staring intently into the bowl as I awaited his response. I heard his chopsticks tap gently against his plate of tamagoyaki, the sound lingering for just long enough to be uncomfortable.
“...You’re welcome,” he said finally. I chanced a look over at him to find him staring just as pointedly at his food. “I didn’t trust Hashirama enough to leave you in his care and it’s important that we keep an eye on you. For your protection.”
“...Right.” I had a feeling there was more to it than that, but I would accept this excuse for now. “It’s been really nice getting to know your clan. They’re all…much more welcoming than I thought they’d be.”
“Why is that?” Madara asked, his gaze flicking up to meet mine now. I froze, realising how that must have sounded.
“I just meant— Well…” How do I put this without it coming off as an insult? “I didn’t get to see much of the Uchiha from the original timeline. Not all together like this. What I did see was…after it was already too late. They were angry and spiteful and they wanted to fight back against the oppressive system they were forced under.”
I sighed, finding myself saddened by the fate the Uchiha had suffered even more now that I’d had the opportunity to see them and walk amoungst them when they were still happy and whole.
“Part of it was Tobirama’s doing, but part of it was…because of you, too.”
I glanced up at him again, wary of his reaction. Oddly, he didn’t react for a long time, seeming to stare through me as he got lost in his own thoughts.
“...What we’re going to do may still lead my clan down that road,” he concluded eventually. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, resting his chopsticks across the unfinished bowl of fish in front of him. “I guess there’s no escaping fate, is there? Perhaps that bastard Senju was right, after all. The Uchiha are cursed by hatred…”
“Don’t say that,” I hurried to interrupt, frowning. “That’s a stupid, cruel lie that doesn’t mean anything. Nobody’s cursed to be filled with hate. He thinks that way because of how your Sharingan is awakened, but it’s not because of hatred. It’s because you love so deeply that losing the people you hold close is…soul-shattering. Your grief is so strong that it changes the way your chakra manifests. You can’t tell me that all that boils down to is hatred.”
For the second time, I had rendered Madara Uchiha speechless. He stared at me, no longer distanced by his thoughts, and for a moment it looked as though he wanted to cry. The glassy sheen in his eyes vanished in a heartbeat, though, quickly replaced by a hardened determination as he balled his fists on the table.
“When this is over and I return to the village, I’ll make them understand that I will never abandon them,” he pledged with finality, straightening his back. “You said that the path I followed in the original timeline led me astray, but I will not allow that to happen here. I’ll be the leader they deserve and fight for their peace and freedom. No one is going to bring my clan to the verge of despair so long as I’m alive.”
Awe didn’t begin to describe what I felt in Madara’s presence at that moment in time. No artist could hope to capture how alive and brimming with resolve he looked now. He was truly in his prime, strong and fierce and brave. Not even the version of Madara who stood alone against an army of nations with the power of the Rinnegan at his disposal held a candle to this one, who vowed his life to his people. Now I was the one who wanted to cry. And yet, I smiled.
“I believe in you.”