The two blind, greyed-out Sharingan eyes lay in Renjiro's upturned palms, still warm and slick with vitreous fluid and blood. They were pitiful things, the magnificent tomoe patterns now just ghostly impressions beneath the cataract-like haze.
From the dark, empty sockets above, twin trails of crimson traced paths down his pale cheeks, a stark contrast to his composed, resigned expression. The afternoon sun in the garden felt obscenely bright, highlighting the visceral intimacy of the moment.
Kushina, despite the gruesome spectacle, did not flinch or look away. Her initial shock had been metabolised into a fierce, clinical focus. She saw the blood beginning to drip from his fingers onto the wooden table. Moving with a swift, efficient grace, she reached into a pouch at her hip and produced a small, clean preserving jar filled with a clear, chakra-infused saline solution.
"Here," she said, "For the... specimens."
She placed it beside his hands, her fingers brushing his briefly—a touch meant to ground them both.
"Now, come inside. We can't do this out in the open."
Renjiro nodded, carefully depositing the eyes into the jar.
"Plink-plink"
The liquid clouded slightly with blood. He stood, his movements sure despite the lack of vision, and followed the vibrant beacon of her chakra. She guided him to the shaded, private interior of the home.
She led him to a back room, cleared a space on the floor, and spread out a clean, white cloth.
"Lie down here," she instructed. As he settled onto his back, she continued. "There's something I need to do. I have to block your chakra. Completely."
Renjiro's head turned toward her voice, the bloody sockets somehow conveying confusion.
"Block my chakra? Kushina, the regeneration is fueled by my chakra. If you suppress it, nothing will happen."
"I know," she replied, "I'm not going to leave you empty. I'm going to channel my chakra into you. A direct, controlled infusion. In theory, it should supercharge the process and give us a cleaner read on the biological mechanics."
Renjiro was deeply sceptical.
'I've tried external chakra infusion before,' he thought. 'It never accelerated the process.'
But he bit back the argument. He had chosen to trust her. To question her now would be to undermine the very foundation of this terrifying vulnerability.
"Alright. Do it."
He felt her move around him, her presence a whirl of focused intent. The first seal was placed on his sternum; it felt like a cold, heavy stone being laid over his heart. His own chakra flow, so constant and familiar, stuttered and slowed.
A second seal on his forehead, and the world as he perceived it through his chakra field dimmed. A third on his abdomen, a fourth on each wrist. Each application was accompanied by the soft tap of her finger activating the ink, and a corresponding wave of hollow weakness that washed through him.
He felt unnervingly empty, a vessel drained of its essential self. It was a profound vulnerability he rarely allowed.
'Years ago,' he reflected, clinging to the analytical thought to distract from the discomfort, 'when she used one of these drain seals on me by accident, it knocked me unconscious for six hours. Now, I can withstand a full array and remain conscious. That's growth.'
"Ready?" Kushina's voice came from beside his head. He could no longer feel her chakra, only hear her breath, sense her warmth.
"Do it."
Her hands came to rest on his shoulders. For a moment, there was nothing. Then, it began.
It was not a trickle. It was a dam breaking. A torrent of raw, colossal, searingly potent chakra flooded into his meridians. This was Kushina's chakra, yes, but woven through with the unmistakable, blazing signature of the Nine-Tails.
It was overpowering, alien, and forceful. It felt like liquid fire and hurricane winds being poured into the hollow shell of his body, threatening to tear him apart from the inside.
He gasped, his back arching off the floor as the energy surged, a violent, golden-red tide that scorched a path through his blocked chakra network.
Normally, Renjiro would have recoiled in horror at such a loss of control, at another's power so violently commandeering his own form. But this was different. Kurama's chakra, even filtered through Kushina's will, was intoxicating.
It was pure, unadulterated power. In his drained state, Renjiro didn't resist; he revelled in it. The weakness was burned away, replaced by a glorious, terrifying strength that made his fingers twitch with the urge to unleash something catastrophic.
He felt Kushina's consciousness riding the tide, directing the flow. She wasn't just dumping energy into him; she was guiding the torrent with exquisite precision toward the two ruined voids in his skull.
Time lost meaning. He floated in a sea of foreign power, every nerve alight, every cell vibrating with forced vitality. The pain of the empty sockets, which had been a dull, throbbing ache, was subsumed by the overwhelming sensation of cellular acceleration.
Then, he felt it. A familiar, yet shockingly rapid, itching deep within the orbits. Tissue knitted at an impossible pace. Nerves spun themselves like frantic spiders. He felt the delicate architecture of lenses and irises crystallising out of pure chakra and biological will.
Two, maybe three hours passed in this surreal state. Finally, the torrent eased, becoming a steady, powerful stream, then a trickle. Renjiro opened his eyes.
And then… he saw.
Light. Through his own, new eyes. Shapes coalesced from the gloom. The wooden ceiling beams. The soft white of the cloth beneath him. And leaning over him, her face pale with concentration and streaked with sweat, was Kushina.
He blinked. The world snapped into sharper focus with each movement. Colours returned. He saw the room, the scattered sealing papers, the jar containing his old, blind eyes on a shelf. The joy was so profound that it was a physical pain in his chest.
A grin, genuine and unguarded, spread across his face. "Kushina, I can—"
"Renjiro," she interrupted, her voice flat, drained of all its earlier warmth. Her expression was grim. "Remove your eyes."
The grin froze.
He stared at her, certain his new hearing, so long paired with his chakra sense, was failing him.
'Maybe the sensory overload damaged my auditory nerves,' he thought wildly. 'Maybe regaining sight has somehow messed with my hearing.'
"I… what?"
"Remove your eyes," she repeated, her gaze unwavering."Now. We need to repeat the process. At least once more."
"Once more?" He had just regained a piece of his soul, and she was asking him to tear it out again. Voluntarily.
"It's the only way," she said, her voice softening marginally, but her resolve unbroken. "I need to compare the second regeneration to the first. I need to see if the change is linear or exponential. Please."
The word 'please' did it. It was so un-Kushina-like in this context, so laden with a dread that mirrored his own. He looked away from her, his new eyes tracing the grain of the wood above. The sight was still so precious. To deliberately excise it…
He let out a long, shuddering sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of his being. It was a sound of ultimate resignation. Without another word, he sat up.
He raised his hand, the chakra scalpels forming once more with their lethal zzzt-hum. The process was no less gruesome for being repeated. He placed the second pair of perfectly healthy, three-tomoe Sharingan into the jar Kushina provided.
The second cycle began. The seals, the draining emptiness, the catastrophic flood of Kushina and Kurama's chakra. This time, Renjiro noted the differences.
The regeneration was even faster. What took three hours before was accomplished in perhaps two. The furious cellular bombardment felt more efficient, more targeted. When the seals released and his vision returned, the world snapped into focus almost immediately.
His eyes were, once again, perfect Sharingan.
He sat up slowly, turning his newly sighted gaze on Kushina.
"Well?" he asked, "Was there a pattern?"
Kushina took a deep, steadying breath, as if preparing to deliver a verdict.
"Renjiro," she began, her voice low and precise. "Every time you regenerate a Sharingan, it isn't a neutral act. It's not like healing a cut. You are forcing your body to perform a miracle of genetic replication—to rebuild one of the most chakra-dense, biologically complex structures known to shinobi."
She leaned forward, "And each time you do it, it draws on the core of your healing—your chakra seinōu. It's not an infinite well. You're draining it. Not in huge amounts each time, but in measurable, cumulative increments."
She paused, letting the horror of the implication sink in. "My theory… what I suspected and what the data confirms… is that repeatedly regenerating Sharingan is actively weakening your innate healing ability. You're sacrificing your soul to feed this… this ocular mass production. If you continue unchecked, forcing this cycle over and over…" Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"You risk permanently burning out your seinōu. You could lose your healing capacity altogether."
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