"Man, I knew it was bad but I didn't think it was this bad."
Uncle Arashi's voice cut through the silence of the hidden Uchiha meeting room like a blade through silk, smooth, inevitable, and somehow worse for its gentleness.
I was sitting now, cross-legged on the tatami mat, hands folded in my lap in a way that probably looked calm to anyone who didn't know better.
My fingers were white at the knuckles.
The air in the room tasted like old wood and incense, and beneath that, something metallic.
Fear, maybe.
Or anger that had nowhere left to go except inward.
I'd just finished my report.
All the things I'd gleaned from walking through the dreams of civilians and low-level shinobi who orbited the Hokage's office like moths around a flame that would eventually burn them.
The secretary who filed reports and noticed patterns.
The chunin who delivered messages and overheard conversations.
The merchant who supplied the Hokage Tower and saw who came and went at odd hours.
Dreams were honest in ways people never were.
In sleep, the mind couldn't lie to itself about what it had seen, what it suspected, what it feared.
I'd waded through their subconscious fears and half-formed suspicions, collecting fragments like a scavenger picking through ruins.
And yeah, maybe I'd added some things on top of that.
Things I knew would happen because I'd watched them happen in another life, through a screen, in a world where this was all just a story and the Uchiha massacre was a done deal.
A tragedy already written.
Not that I'd mentioned that part to anyone.
How do you explain that you're both Ren Uchiha and someone else entirely?
That you died in one world and woke up in another, carrying memories of a manga and anime that showed the future like a prophecy carved in stone?
That you watched your clan get slaughtered in grainy animation while eating snacks on a couch, and now you're living inside that same nightmare except this time you might be able to change it?
You don't.
Not yet.
Not until you're ready to be locked up or studied like some kind of freak experiment.
So I kept my mouth shut about the how and focused on the what.
The meeting hall was packed.
Dozens of Uchiha, most of them Chunin or higher, all with the kind of presence that made the air feel heavier just by existing in it.
Red eyes watched me from every corner, some with two tomoe, some with three, all of them sharp enough to cut.
Uncle Arashi sat at the head of the room, his back straight despite the weight I'd just dropped on his shoulders.
He looked as if he was barely in his thirties, which meant he'd become clan head way too young, and the lines around his eyes said he knew it.
His sharingan wasn't active anymore, but I could feel it there beneath the surface, coiled and waiting.
"Many forget it," he said slowly, his gaze moving across the assembled faces, "or even aren't aware of it, but Konoha is young."
Someone shifted uncomfortably.
The tatami creaked.
"At that, most of you here would say how?" Arashi's lips quirked into something that wasn't quite a smile. "How can I tell such things when Konoha feels eternal, when the Will of Fire burns so bright we're all supposed to be moths throwing ourselves at it?"
He paused.
Drew a breath.
"But my father and his brother, your grandfather, were past their infancy when Hashirama and Madara, when the Uchiha and the Senju clans, came together with a vision. The realization. The creation of a place where children wouldn't have to fight, to die. Where they could be friends, family, no matter what clans they came from, no matter what grudges their forefathers carried like heirlooms of hate."
His eyes found mine.
Held them.
I felt something cold settle in my chest.
"Did you know," Arashi said softly, and the softness made it worse somehow, "that my grandfather—your great-grandfather had seven children?"
I didn't.
The cold spread.
"That my father and his brother, your grandfather, were not of a siblinghood of two but seven? And do you know why none of them are known here except for the few? Do you know why you don't have more direct cousins and nephews and nieces and aunts and uncles?"
The silence was the kind that had weight.
That pressed down on your lungs and made breathing feel like work.
"It is because they all died," Arashi said, and his voice cracked just slightly on the word. "It is because they were all murdered. Because they went through things none of them should have when they weren't even fifteen, because none of them reached it. They suffered and died and they are one example amongst many."
He stood.
The movement was fluid, controlled, but I could see the tension in his shoulders.
His gaze swept the room, touching each face like he was counting them.
Making sure they were still there.
Still breathing.
"One of the duties of the head of the clan," he said, voice gaining strength, "is to know and care as much for his living members as for his dead ones."
Then he started speaking names.
"Hikaru Uchiha."
The words fell like stones into still water.
"Seven years old when a Senju squad ambushed his team near the border. They cut off his hands first so he couldn't make seals. He bled out watching his teammates die."
Someone made a sound that might have been a sob.
Arashi didn't stop.
"Kasumi Uchiha. Nine years old. Captured by the Uzumaki during a supply run—they were Senju vassals then, remember. They kept her for three days before we found the body. What they did to her—" His voice hardened. "What they did to her isn't something I'll speak aloud, but her father knows. Your father knows, Fumiko."
Aunt Fumiko's face had gone grey.
"Shiro Uchiha. Twelve. Poison. The Senju said it was meant for a squad commander instead of someone so low on the totem pole, someone so young, a trap gone wrong. We buried what was left of him in a box no bigger than a storage scroll because that's all there was."
The names kept coming.
"Yuki Uchiha. Thirteen. Drowned during the river campaign when Tobirama redirected the current. We never recovered the body."
"Daichi Uchiha. Eight. Crushed when a Senju earth user collapsed the cave system where our civilians were hiding. Took us six days to dig him out. He'd tried to claw his way through solid rock. We could tell from his fingernails."
"Emi Uchiha. Eleven. Genjutsu specialist. A Senju caught her, one of Tobirama's students, they said. Turned her own techniques against her somehow. She tore out her own eyes trying to escape what they made her see."
Arashi's voice was steady but his hands weren't.
They trembled at his sides, fingers curled like he was gripping something invisible.
"Kaito Uchiha. Fourteen. Made chunin though we didn't call it that then two weeks before a Senju strike team killed him. They sent us back his armor with forty-seven holes in it. We counted."
"Akane Uchiha. Six. Six years old and someone thought it was acceptable to send her with the supply convoy. A Senju patrol found them. The Uzumaki seal masters were with them. What those seals did to her—"
He stopped.
Swallowed hard.
"Ryu Uchiha. Ten. The Inuzuka allied at that time with the Senju, as they sometimes did back then, their ninken tore out his throat during a border skirmish. He was wearing his brother's hand-me-down armor. It didn't fit right. Left gaps."
The room was full of ghosts now.
I could feel them pressing in from all sides, cold and accusing.
"Misaki Uchiha. Thirteen. Hagoromo a previous Senju vassal clan got inside her head during interrogation. Broke something. She never woke up, just... stopped. Like someone had blown out a candle."
"Kenji Uchiha. Eleven. A young Hashirama, before he learned control, caught him in the crossfire. Wood jutsu pierced straight through. Hashirama apologized afterward. Kenji was already dead."
"Hana Uchiha. Nine. Sickness brought on by a Senju medic's poison that mimicked natural fever. We didn't realize until after—when we found the same symptoms in three other children. By then it was too late."
"Takeshi Uchiha. Fourteen. Explosion tags during a Senju raid on our compound. They found pieces of him scattered across three hundred meters."
"Sayuri Uchiha. Eight. Disappeared during a cease-fire negotiation. Found two months later near a Senju encampment. What they did to her, what they carved into her they left her where we'd find her. As a message."
Arashi's sharingan activated.
Three tomoe spinning lazily, the red so bright it seemed to bleed color into the air around him.
"Hiroshi Uchiha. Twelve. Arrow through the lung during a caravan defense. Senju archer. Took him four hours to die. He kept apologizing to his squad leader for being too slow."
"Natsumi Uchiha. Seven. Trapped in a burning building when the Senju fire brigade set our settlement ablaze. We got there in time to hear her screaming. Not in time to save her."
"Masaru Uchiha. Thirteen. Tobirama Senju himself—"
He paused.
The name hung in the air like poison.
"Tobirama Senju himself captured him during a skirmish. They wanted information about clan defenses. He didn't talk. Tobirama made sure we knew that when he returned the body."
"Aiko Uchiha. Ten. Caught in crossfire between Hashirama and our clan head at the time. She wasn't even the target. Just wrong place, wrong time. Her sister watched it happen."
"Satoshi Uchiha. Eleven. His own fire jutsu reflected back on him by a Senju water user. Burned so badly we couldn't, we had to identify him by his teeth."
"Yuri Uchiha. Fourteen. Made it all the way to the end of a mission. Died on the way back from an infected wound—arrow was Senju-made, tipped with something that prevented healing. She'd hidden it because she didn't want to seem weak."
"Daiki Uchiha. Nine. The Senju liked capturing our children. Testing how far the sharingan could be pushed before it before they—"
Someone was crying openly now.
I couldn't tell who.
"Kohaku Uchiha. Twelve. Suicide mission to cover a retreat from a Senju offensive. Our elders called it a 'necessary sacrifice' because it was better, kinder than admitting that we were too weak to protect one of our young, that we needed to be protected by one of them instead of the contrary. He was twelve."
"Mai Uchiha. Eight. Kidnapped by Senju-allied bandits. Ransom paid. They killed her anyway and sent us back her eyes in a box as a 'gift' to Madara."
"Ryota Uchiha. Thirteen. Bled out from a gut wound because the Senju medic prioritized their own over ours during a temporary truce. The Senju lived. Ryota didn't."
"Chiyo Uchiha. Ten. Captured by the Uzumaki, the Senju sister clan, experimental sealing jutsu. She screamed for three days before her heart gave out."
"Hayato Uchiha. Fourteen. Made chunin—or our equivalent. Celebrated with his squad. Died the next morning when someone slipped poison into his rations. We found Senju insignia nearby. Could never prove it."
"Suzume Uchiha. Seven. The Senju thought it would be interesting to study us, to see if a child could activate the sharingan under extreme duress. She couldn't. They killed her anyway."
Arashi stopped.
Breathed.
The silence that followed felt like the moment after lightning strikes, when you're waiting for the thunder.
His shoulders sagged just slightly, like the weight of all those names had physically pressed down on him.
When he spoke again, his voice was softer.
Gentler.
The kind of gentle that preceded violence.
"We lost so many," he said, looking directly at me now, "yet when Venerated Madara Uchiha wanted us to secede, to leave, to betray this dream that was Konohagakure, what we answered was an unanimous no."
His sharingan spun faster.
"Even though we respected him. Loved him. Exalted him above all. We bled. We killed. We stayed loyal to Konoha even though the promise we were given, that children, our children, would never have to fight, kill, or be killed again—was broken before the ink dried."
He started pacing.
Slow, measured steps that made no sound on the tatami.
"We stayed loyal and fought and put the fear of our existence, our presence, of the sight of our eyesinto all those who wanted and wished to harm the Leaf, to harm Konoha. We did all of this even though we were betrayed again when another Senju—Tobirama, as if it couldn't be worse was chosen when an Uchiha was supposed to be chosen. When it was what was promised by Hashirama."
The bitterness in his voice could have stripped paint.
"Hashirama is someone we respected, respect, no matter how many of his promises were not true, were proven false in the end. Because the only thing that couldn't in any word be called false when it came to him was his desire for peace, for all to get along."
Arashi stopped pacing.
Stood in the center of the room like he was about to pronounce judgment.
"He was a fool with the power of a god. A madman of kindness. And that is something much different from what Tobirama is."
His hands clenched into fists.
"Tobirama wants himself to be seen as logical, dependable, the second coming of his brother, but he isn't. Tobirama is someone hateful, paranoid, who, had he been as strong as his brother would have personally killed us all or enslaved us instead of proposing peace like Hashirama did."
The words landed like blows.
"We all lost people in the warring clan era," Arashi continued, his voice rising. "We all lost family here to the Senju. Us, who saw family as the most precious thing. Whose family and the fear of their loss, of them being hurt, is what literally fuels our sight, our sharingan."
He tapped the corner of his eye.
"We did. We lost them. And our sight would never allow the survivors, those who saw, heard to forget. Yet we, the Uchiha clan, forgave."
The emphasis on that word was like a knife.
"Tobirama didn't forgive the death of his siblings, of Itama Senju, and he's trying to make us pay for it."
Arashi's expression shifted.
Something almost like acceptance crossed his features.
"But it's alright. It's okay even. I knew things were not perfect but…I think I was lying to myself, that we were all lying to ourselves, us who know and remember a little. All this time, I thought that if we did our best, if we shouted hard enough, if we killed hard enough, if we bled hard enough, it would be alright, that things would correct themselves to the way they ought to be."
His eyes found mine again.
Held them like a vice.
"But you, through your novel abilities, showed me that I was mistaken."
The room seemed to lean in.
Everyone watching.
Waiting.
"If being meek isn't enough," Arashi said quietly, "if being kind isn't enough, then we will not be."
He took a step toward me.
"We were refused the seat that was ours by right, so there is only one thing left to do."
Another step.
"And we would need your help for this, kiddo."
I looked up into my uncle's eyes—three tomoe spinning in seas of red and felt my own sharingan pulse in response.
Three tomoe.
Lazily spinning.
Shading the world in red and would be madness.
"To do what?" I asked.
My voice came out steadier than I expected.
Uncle Arashi smiled.
It was sweet.
Serene.
Peaceful even.
The kind of smile that promised bloodshed wrapped in silk.
"It's better to take from the gods than asking for absolution. In making the next Hokage one of us," he said, "by all means necessary."
The words hung in the air like a declaration of war.
Which, I supposed, they were.
I felt something shift in my chest like a door opening, or maybe closing, I couldn't tell which.
The weight of all those names, all those dead children, pressed down on my shoulders like a mantle I hadn't asked for but couldn't refuse.
Somewhere in my mind, the other me the one who'd died in a world where this was just a story, was screaming that this was all a bad idea.
This is how it similarly even if later that it must have started in canon. This is how you get the massacre. This is how you fulfill the prophecy you're trying to prevent. This is how you become another Sisiphus.
But that voice was distant now.
Muffled.
Because another voice was louder.
The voice that remembered being eight years old and watching my father's back as he walked to another mission he might not return from.
The voice that felt kinship, closeness with every name Arashi had just spoken even if he could not put faces to most of them.
The voice that was tired of being afraid.
Tired of waiting for the axe to fall.
"Alright," I heard myself say. "What do you need me to do?"
Uncle Arashi's smile widened.
"First," he said, "we're going to need you to dream, dig a little deeper. We're also going to have to explore the rest of your abilities, how to make you stronger, how to make all of us stronger because the only true unforgiving thing in this world is weakness."
The meeting continued long into the night, voices rising and falling like waves against a shore that was slowly eroding.
Plans were made.
Contingencies discussed.
Lines drawn that couldn't be uncrossed.
And through it all, I sat there with my sharingan spinning, recording everything, knowing that I'd just crossed a line of my own.
That the future I'd watched play out in another life was officially dead.
We'd killed it tonight, in this room, with nothing but words and memories and the weight of too many ghosts.
Now we just had to build something else in its place.
Something that wouldn't end with the Uchiha compound running red with blood and a thirteen-year-old boy going mad with grief.
'By all means necessary,' Arashi had said.
I wondered if he knew what that would cost.
If any of us did.
But as I looked around the room at the faces of my clan, scarred, weary, steadfast, still standing I thought maybe the cost didn't matter.
Not anymore.
We'd already paid too much.
It was time to collect.
I guess it Can be argued that the same some things changed/are changing, the same a lot of them remain for the best and the worst. Of course, unlike the Uchihas of the era of Sasuke and Itachi, they are deciding to play it more strategic. Also, there were a lot of things that were said and unsaid in the chapter for a reason. Kudos to anyone who understand. There are a lot of things I want to say about this scene but most of them are in a way spoilers so I can't. Anyways, hope y'all like the chapter. After next chapter, I'll create an index post to show all the perks of Ren.
PS: I got two more advanced chapters on my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / Eileen715. With less than 5$ a month, you have access to everything I write in a month so don't hesitate visiting if you want to read more or simply support.
I was not able to include the perks Ren gained at the end of the last chapter so here they are:
ROLL 1: 50 CP - Chapter 5: Domain
Name: Sorcery - Mana Manipulation Ritual (Shape Mana)Source: World of Darkness: SorcererDescription: The sorcerer alters the flow of magical energy in an area, changing its direction or effects. This can be used to attract luck and spirits of a desired type, at least in a general sense, but it can also be used to redirect ley lines and alter spells that are affecting the area.Note: Requires Sorcery - Mana Manipulation (Two Dots) first.ROLL 2: 400 CP - Chapter 9: Transformation
Name: Royal JellySource: Wonderland No MoreDescription: A transparent jelly used by Flying Elephants to transform into Queens. This special version offers improved healing without risks, and when fed to a wild(ish) animal (sapient or non-sapient), the eater will transform into a "queen" version of the species – an enhanced form that often has greater intelligence, size, power, and charisma over its own kind.ROLL 3: 200 CP - Chapter 8: Divination
Name: WITCH SIGHTSource: Warhammer Fantasy: KislevDescription: You can see even the slightest trace of magic in objects, people and the very air itself. Moreover you can spot Chaotic taint within the souls of those around you, allowing you to see clearly who has been corrupted by dark powers and to what extent.
The world turned to metal.
That was my first coherent thought as I jerked my head to the side, watching a kunai, no, dozens of kunais, scream through the space my skull had occupied a heartbeat ago. The weapon whistled past my ear close enough that I felt the displaced air kiss my skin, close enough to smell the oiled steel.
Then came the rain.
Not water. Not mercy. Steel.
Hundreds of kunai descended from above like the wrath of some forgotten god, each one catching the morning light as they fell. They weren't scattered randomly, no, that would've been too kind. These traced geometric patterns in the air, creating a lattice of death that contracted inward with every meter they dropped. Someone had thrown these with what seemed pure utter precision, calculating trajectories and intersection points to create an inescapable kill zone.
That someone was my aunt.
I took a breath. Deep. Controlled. Let the air fill my lungs completely before releasing it in a measured exhale. The technique, one I'd read about in my past life, in books about meditation and focus, helped center my thoughts even as my ten-year-old body screamed at me to run.
But running wouldn't help. Not against this.
So instead, I looked.
My eyes shifted, and the world changed with them. The Sharingan activated without conscious thought, a reflex as natural as blinking by now. Three tomoe spun to life in each eye, painting my vision in shades of crimson and shadow. Time didn't slow, that was a common misconception I'd had before awakening these eyes. Time moved exactly as it always did.
I just moved better.
The kunai weren't falling anymore. They were arcing, each one following a parabolic path that my enhanced perception could trace from apex to impact. I saw rotation speeds, estimated metal composition from how light reflected off their surfaces, tracked which ones had explosive tags attached by the subtle weight differences in their flight patterns.
My head tilted. Three kunai passed through the space it had occupied, so close I felt one nick the very tip of my hair. My hand snapped out, fingers closing around a fourth weapon mid-flight. The impact should have driven it through my palm, the kunai was moving fast enough to punch through flesh and bone. Should have. Would have, for anyone else.
But I'd caught it at the perfect angle, letting its momentum carry it into my rotating grip rather than fighting against the force. The weapon's handle settled into my palm as naturally as if I'd been holding it all along.
Ten more kunai converged on my position. I pivoted on my left foot, brought the captured kunai up, and moved.
Steel met steel.
The first kunai deflected high and to the left, spinning away with a metallic ching that rang across the clearing. The second I caught on the back edge of my own weapon, using the angle to redirect it down and away. The third, fourth, and fifth came simultaneously, a coordinated strike that would've been impossible to defend against with normal human reaction time.
The Sharingan saw their intersection point. My body moved to meet them.
Ching. Spark. Impact.
Ching. Spark. Impact.
Ching. Spark. Impact.
Each deflection created a brief flash of light as metal scraped against metal. Each impact sent a miniature shockwave rippling through the air, not visible, but I felt them, little pulses of displaced atmosphere that buffeted against my skin. The force of these collisions was wrong. Kunai shouldn't create shockwaves. Deflecting thrown weapons shouldn't make the air itself shudder.
But this was the Naruto world, where physics took a backseat to chakra-enhanced impossibility.
I kept moving. Had to. Because the rain hadn't stopped.
My feet carried me forward in a weaving pattern, each step carefully placed to avoid the growing number of kunai embedding themselves in the earth. The weapons hit with enough force to crater the soil, punching half a meter deep into packed earth that should have been rock-hard. Grass vaporized where superheated metal touched it. The sound was constant now, a drumbeat of impacts that shook the ground beneath me.
Thud-thud-THUD-crack-BOOM.
One struck close enough that debris peppered my left side. I felt rather than saw the shallow cuts open on my arm, thin lines of hot pain that my adrenaline-flooded system almost dismissed entirely.
I kept moving.
Ten meters covered. The clearing, yes, that's what this open space was called, a clearing, though calling it that felt woefully inadequate now that it was being systematically demolished, stretched about fifty meters across. I was one-fifth of the way to relative safety.
Assuming safety existed anywhere when Aunt Fumiko decided to go all out.
Another kunai. This one came from the side rather than above, moving far too fast for a normal throw. I watched its approach, saw the paper seal trailing from its handle like a mocking ribbon, saw the way that seal flickered with contained chakra.
Oh.
Oh no.
My body moved before conscious thought caught up. Every muscle in my legs detonated as I expelled from the sole of my feet chakra-enhanced force, launching me backward in a desperate leap. The amount of chakra I'd just burned through was stupid, reckless, the kind of thing that would leave me wheezing and chakra-exhausted if I kept it up.
Thirty meters. I crossed thirty meters in less than two seconds, landing hard enough to crack the earth beneath my feet.
The explosion seal detonated.
Sound came first. Not the quiet 'poof' of smoke bombs or the sharp 'crack' of a firecracker. This was pressure, a wall of compressed air that slammed into my chest even at this distance. The noise came half a second later, a roar that rattled my teeth and made my ears ring.
Then came the heat.
I crossed my arms in front of my face on instinct. Felt the wave of superheated air wash over me like standing too close to a forge. My skin prickled, then burned, layers of epidermis protesting the sudden temperature spike. I bit down on my tongue to stop the scream that wanted to escape, tasted copper as teeth broke skin.
The pain was... God, it was everything. Like a bad sunburn concentrated into three seconds. Like someone had pressed a hot iron against every exposed inch of skin. My arms took the worst of it, positioned as they were to shield my face.
But I was fine. Whole. Unbroken.
When I lowered my arms and blinked away the spots dancing in my vision, I saw the crater. Three meters across, maybe a meter deep at its center. The grass around it had been reduced to ash. The soil was scorched black in a radius that extended nearly ten meters from the detonation point.
I'd been thirty meters away and still felt like I'd stuck my head in an oven.
What the original Ren and thus I'd learned about explosive seals in the Academy, basic theory, handling procedures, how to store them safely, hadn't prepared me for this. The sterile explanations about "concentrated chakra release" and "controlled destruction" failed utterly to capture what it felt like to be on the business end of one.
In the anime, explosions looked cool. Bright flashes of light, maybe some smoke, characters emerging dramatically from the blast with tastefully placed scuff marks on their clothes. Clean. Sanitized for television audiences and weekly publication schedules.
Reality was messier. Louder. Hotter. Reality was standing thirty meters from the epicenter and still feeling like your skin was about to slough off.
"This is insane," I muttered, and couldn't stop the grin that split my face.
Because it was insane. Gloriously, impossibly insane. I was ten years old, dodging weapons that moved faster than sound, surviving explosions that could level buildings. My body, this child's body, was doing things that should be impossible.
And I loved it.
The memories from my past life stirred, bringing with them context that my ten-year-old self shouldn't have. I remembered jokes made in Reddit threads, memes shared on forums. "Nawaki killed by an explosion tag" had been a whole thing in the corner of the Naruto community I was familiar with, people poking fun at how the descendant of someone like Hashirama and the brother of Tsunade, such powerful characters could be killed by basic ninja tools.
Except now, having felt the edge of one's wrath, I completely understood. These weren't "basic tools." These were weapons of mass destruction used by murder hobos punch wizards masquerading as ninjas wrapped in paper and sold at the local shop.
A sound cut through my thoughts. A whistle. Multiple whistles. High-pitched and getting closer.
I looked up.
Shuriken now. Because of course it was shuriken. Couldn't just be one type of projectile, that would be too simple.
These weren't falling from directly overhead like the kunai had. These came at angles, dozens of throwing stars converging on my position from every direction. I saw their paths intersect, saw that in approximately 1.3 seconds, every single one would occupy the same space I currently stood in.
This is supposed to be training, not an assassination attempt!
But complaining wouldn't help. Neither would panicking.
My hands moved. Not with thought, but with muscle memory burned into my brain from countless hours watching, studying, memorizing. The Sharingan had copied this technique months ago, stored it away in perfect detail. Now my body executed what my eyes had learned.
I held the kunai horizontally, edge facing outward. The first shuriken came from my right. Instead of blocking it directly, I angled my kunai thirty degrees and tapped the incoming projectile. Metal kissed metal for a fraction of a second. The shuriken's trajectory shifted, just slightly, just enough.
It collided with a second shuriken coming from my left.
Both weapons deflected each other, spinning away in new directions. But I was already moving, already repositioning my kunai to intercept the third shuriken. Another tap, another precise angle. This one ricocheted into the fourth.
Tap. Deflect. Ricochet.
Tap. Deflect. Ricochet.
The rhythm built itself naturally. My kunai became a conductor's baton, orchestrating a symphony of colliding steel. I didn't block the projectiles, I redirected them. Each shuriken I touched became a tool to deflect two more. Those two would hit four others. Those four would scatter eight.
Progression. One became two became four became eight became sixteen.
Using the enemy's attacks against themselves, turning quantity into a liability rather than an advantage. The Uchiha specialized in this, in turning overwhelming force into elaborate traps.
My wrist flicked. A shuriken heading for my throat met my kunai at a forty-five-degree angle. It spun away, collided with three more projectiles, and all four scattered like billiard balls after a break.
Tap-tap. Clink-clink-CLANG.
The sound of chain reactions filled the air. Metal struck metal in cascading patterns, each impact spawning more impacts. My Sharingan tracked every trajectory, calculated every angle, fed the information to my muscles before my conscious mind could process it.
Another shuriken. This one came low, aimed at my ankles. I dropped my kunai's point down, caught the projectile on the blade's edge, and flicked upward. The redirected shuriken shot straight up, intercepted a descending throw, and both weapons spiraled away into the tree line.
Tap. Redirect. Eliminate.
But even as my body moved through this deadly dance, even as my hands played out the technique with increasing confidence, another part of my mind was doing something different.
I closed my eyes to the purely visual information and opened them to something else. That other sense, the one that came with my psychic abilities. The one that let me touch the minds of animals.
Reach.
The world exploded into sensation.
Not sight. Not exactly. This was something older, something more primal. I felt the presence of every living thing within a hundred meters. Felt their awareness as distinct points of consciousness, each one a tiny spark of life that burned with its own unique color.
A sparrow in the tree line: nervous, alert, ready to flee at the first sign of danger.
Three squirrels in the branches: curious, watching the strange two-legs make noise and light.
A fox in its den: sleeping, unconcerned with the chaos above.
Two dozen insects crawling through the grass: each one registering as a minute pinprick of awareness, tiny sparks of instinct-driven existence.
My psychic sense washed over them all, and I pulled.
Not with my hands. With my mind. With that strange ability that I still didn't fully understand, even months after discovering it. I reached out to every creature I could sense and commanded them.
Come.
Not words. Animals didn't think in words. Instead I projected intent, purpose, direction. Showed them images of where I needed them to go, what I needed them to do. Promised them safety, protection, food, whatever their simple minds desired in exchange for this service.
They came.
All of them. The sparrow exploded from its perch in a burst of frantic wing-beats. The squirrels bounded from branch to branch, moving with acrobatic grace. The fox emerged from its den, shaking off sleep and confusion. The insects, too small to be individually controlled, moved as a swarm, a living carpet of chitin and compound eyes.
And as they moved, I saw.
Not through my own eyes, I was too busy deflecting shuriken for that. My hands moved in patterns I'd copied from Itachi, rapid strikes that turned my stolen kunai into a blur of metal. Each impact jarred my bones, sent vibrations up my arms that promised bruises later. But I kept at it, because stopping meant dying.
While my body worked on autopilot, my mind was elsewhere. Distributed. Fractured across two dozen points of consciousness.
Sharp-sky-predator-vision: The sparrow's sight cut through distance like a blade. Colors I couldn't name, couldn't comprehend, painted the world in spectrums beyond human perception. Infrared heat signatures bloomed like flowers. The woman against the tree registered as warm-prey-big-danger. Her position locked in my mind with absolute clarity. Fifty-three meters, northeast direction, elevated two meters on a thick branch disguised by her dark clothing that shouldn't work but somehow did because of the way she held herself, still, patient, like stone-that-breathes.
Ground-level-scurry-awareness: The fox moved through underbrush, navigating by scent maps invisible to human senses. Chemical trails painted paths through the forest. The woman's scent was sharp-metal-danger-wrong, the kind that made prey-instinct scream to run-hide-burrow-deep. But louder than that instinct was my command, pulling puppet-strings attached to its primitive brain stem.
Multi-angle-small-nervous-food-seeker: The three squirrels offered triangulated perspectives. Tree branches became highways, three-dimensional space collapsed into efficient route-calculations. The woman's position visible from different angles simultaneously, creating a composite map that updated in real-time. She shifted her weight, micro-adjustment barely noticeable. Left leg supporting more, right leg ready to push off and move.
Collective-tactile-chemical-simple: The insect swarm didn't see or hear in any way I understood. Their world was pressure-gradients and chemical-signals and vibration-patterns transmitted through earth and air. The woman existed as a mass of disturbed-air-pressure and heat-source-different-from-ambient and ground-compression-weight-distribution. Pure data, stripped of interpretation, building a picture through mathematics rather than senses.
My consciousness fragmented further, spreading itself thinner and thinner across more and more minds. Each animal became a node in an expanding network. The sparrow recruited another bird. The fox's awareness touched a rabbit's terror and I grabbed that too, added it to my collection. The squirrels chittered signals that reached more of their kind.
Dozens became hundreds.
Flight-patterns-air-currents-thermal-columns: Birds spiraling upward on rising heat, seeing the clearing from above, seeing the full scope of destruction mapped out in craters and scorched earth.
Burrow-sense-earth-memory-safe-routes: Underground creatures feeling vibrations through soil, mapping the clearing's boundaries by where-it-shakes and where-it-doesn't.
Predator-distance-calculation-strike-timing: A hawk high above, tracking movement with mathematical precision, its killing-instinct repurposed to serve my reconnaissance needs.
Pack-thought-shared-awareness-distributed-consciousness: A family of raccoons thinking in almost-we rather than I, their collective intelligence multiplying my processing power.
The amount of information pouring into my mind should have been overwhelming. Should have shattered my sanity like glass under a hammer. Hundreds of sensory inputs, each one filtered through a completely alien nervous system, each one interpreted by a brain that evolved under completely different selection pressures.
But the psychic ability didn't just let me see through their eyes. It translated. Converted their perceptions into formats my human brain could process, then seamlessly integrated that processed data into my understanding of reality.
I knew where Aunt Fumiko stood. Knew how she was positioned. Knew she was watching me with an expression that had shifted from bored-patience to genuine-interest. Knew that a cloud of creatures, hundreds of insects and dozens of small animals, were converging on her location with wild abandon.
My body continued deflecting shuriken. Tap-tap-tap. Ricochet patterns creating empty spaces in the metal storm. But my attention was already shifting, already looking ahead to what came next.
Through the sparrow's eyes, I watched Aunt Fumiko notice the incoming swarm. Watched her eyebrows rise slightly. Watched her push off from the tree trunk with economical grace.
The boredom vanished from her expression. What replaced it made something deep in my hindbrain whimper and want to hide.
Excitement. Pure, undiluted, barely restrained excitement.
She looked like someone who'd just been given the most interesting toy in the world. Her smile was too wide, too sharp. Her eyes too bright. The casual aunt-energy evaporated, replaced by something predatory and eager.
This was the expression of a battle maniac who'd been holding back and just received permission to stop.
Her hands blurred through seals. Even distributed across multiple viewpoints, even with my Sharingan processing the movements, I only caught fragments. Tiger. Ram. Monkey. Something. Ox. Dog. And then her hands were at her mouth, drawing breath.
I knew the signs. Knew the sequence. My father had taught me this technique not a long time ago. The Uchiha clan's signature fire jutsu, the one every member learned as children.
Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu.
The Great Fireball Technique. Simple. Basic. Entry-level fire manipulation. A large ball of flames that traveled forward, impressive to look at but ultimately straightforward in its application. My father's demonstration had been controlled, measured, the kind of display meant to teach rather than destroy.
What came out of Aunt Fumiko's mouth bore no resemblance to my father's teaching demonstration.
The flames weren't red. They didn't form a neat sphere. What erupted from her lips was a cone of white-blue plasma that expanded outward like the breath of an angry god.
Trees didn't catch fire. They exploded. Moisture inside the wood flash-boiled so fast that the trunks burst outward, showering the area with burning splinters. The undergrowth beneath the flames didn't ignite, it vaporized, organic matter reduced to component molecules before combustion could even begin.
The grass turned to ash. Then the ash turned to nothing. The topsoil beneath blackened and cracked and began to glow, superheated earth radiating visible light.
Through my animal network, I felt the wall of heat approaching. Felt it as a physical force that pushed against the air itself. The creatures closest to the flames registered one instant of searing-wrong-pain-ERROR before their nervous systems overloaded and shut down completely.
I severed the connections. Cut the psychic links before the backlash could reach me. Felt it anyway, a spike of phantom agony that made my vision white out for half a second.
When sight returned, the forest was gone. Not burning. Gone. A semicircle of absolute devastation stretched out from where Aunt Fumiko stood. Twenty meters of woodland reduced to scorched earth and glowing embers. The air above the destruction rippled with heat distortion, creating a mirage-like shimmer that made it hard to focus.
And through that shimmer, through the smoke and heat and ash, Aunt Fumiko walked.
Not quickly. Not urgently. Just... walked. Like someone taking an evening stroll through a park rather than standing at ground zero of localized apocalypse.
The flames parted around her. The heat that would cook human flesh in seconds seemed to caress her skin like a pleasant breeze. Her clothes, standard Jonin uniform that should have ignited immediately, showed not even a scorch mark.
She emerged from the inferno looking exactly as she had before, except for her expression. The excitement had intensified. Her pupils were dilated. Her breathing was faster, deeper. She looked almost drunk on the destruction she'd just unleashed.
High. She looked genuinely high on violence.
"How?" The word came out before I could stop it. My voice stayed steady despite the primal fear making my hands tremble. "My fireball doesn't look like that. When Dad taught me, it was impressive but it wasn't... it wasn't that."
Aunt Fumiko's grin widened impossibly further. She tilted her head like a predator examining interesting prey.
"Simple," she said. Her voice had changed. Less the fun aunt who snuck me sweets and ruffled my hair. More the veteran shinobi who'd survived two wars by being very, very good at killing things. "Your father was teaching you, showing you the technique. Nothing more, nothing less. He wasn't trying to kill you. Wasn't even trying to hurt you. Just... demonstrate."
She held up one finger.
"Second." She raised a second finger. "You're talented, Ren. Very talented and special. If given enough time, you'll probably reach heights that Madara and Hashirama themselves would be proud of." Her smile softened briefly, showing a glimpse of genuine affection beneath the battle-hunger. "But right now? Right now you're just an Academy student. Sure, you jumped grades. Sure, you're quite a special not beyond ten years old yet. But there's a difference between potential and power."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to point out that I had Sharingan, that I had memories of a past life, that I had abilities no one, well, most didn't know about with me revealing my abilities to the leadership of the clan. But she wasn't finished.
"Normally," Aunt Fumiko continued, starting to walk toward me with slow, deliberate steps, "a good Genin-level shinobi should be able to handle a hundred fresh Academy graduates without breaking a sweat. Not because of fancy jutsu or overwhelming power, just experience, training, and genuine understanding of how to fight."
I thought about that. Tried to picture one skilled Genin against a hundred Academy students. At first it seemed impossible. Then I remembered the gap. Remembered that Genin weren't just "Academy students who graduated." They were shinobi who'd survived their first real missions. Who'd fought. Who'd killed.
A hundred children with basic kunai skills against one trained killer. Put that way, it almost seemed unfair to the Genin, too many targets cluttering the battlefield.
"Even what I just did?" Aunt Fumiko gestured casually at the devastation behind her. "The fireball that probably looked apocalyptic from your perspective? That should be doable for an average Chunin with a fire nature affinity. Maybe a very, very good Genin who's specialized in fire jutsu and has perfect chakra control."
I looked at the destruction. At the circle of scorched earth. At trees reduced to ash and soil turned to glass.
Average Chunin.
The implications hit me like a physical blow. If that was average for Chunin level...
"How many?" I asked, voice barely above a whisper. "How many Genin could an average Chunin defeat?"
Aunt Fumiko's predatory grin returned.
"Think about what you just saw. A Genin might create a fireball the size of a person, something that could roast an opponent if it hit directly. What I just did would have incinerated fifty people standing in that area without them having time to scream." She paused, letting me process. "Now multiply that principle across every technique, every skill, every advantage. A Chunin isn't twice as strong as a Genin. The gap is..." She made an expansive gesture. "Vast."
I did rough math in my head. Based on what the original Ren knew about his family, what the part of me that was from another world knew, if a Genin could handle a hundred Academy students, and a Chunin was to a Genin as a Genin was to an Academy student...
"Ten thousand?" I guessed. It sounded insane. "No, that's... that can't be right."
"Scale doesn't work linearly," Aunt Fumiko said. "Combat isn't simple multiplication. But yes, a skilled Chunin could probably eliminate fifty Genin, maybe more depending on terrain and preparation. Area-effect techniques like what I just showed you change the math dramatically."
Fifty. Fifty skilled shinobi, each one capable of defeating a hundred Academy students. And that was just Chunin.
"What about Jonin?" I asked, dreading the answer.
Her expression shifted. The manic excitement faded slightly, replaced by something colder. More professional.
"Jonin-level shinobi like me?" She paused, calculating. "We should be able to handle... probably between five hundred and a thousand Chunin-level opponents. Maybe more if the situation favors us."
The number didn't make sense. Couldn't make sense. A thousand Chunin. Each one capable of that fireball technique. All attacking simultaneously. And she was saying she could win that fight?
"What about Kages?" The question slipped out before I could stop it.
Aunt Fumiko stopped walking entirely. Her expression went completely serious, the excitement draining away like water through a sieve.
"Kages?" She shook her head slowly. "You don't fight Kages, Ren. Not unless you're on their level. You don't challenge them. You don't try to overwhelm them with numbers."
She met my eyes directly, and for a moment I saw something almost like fear in her gaze.
"You survive them. That's all. That's the only goal that matters. Because Kages aren't ninjas who got promoted to a fancy title. They are Gods and Demons and Monsters. They're natural catastrophes wearing human skin. They're what happens when you concentrate so much destructive power into a single person that the world starts bending."
I thought about the Kages I knew from the manga. Hiruzen with his mastery of thousands of jutsu. The Third and Fourth Raikage, moving faster than lightning, their bodies wrapped in chakra cloaks that could shatter mountains. Tsunade punching the ground hard enough to split the earth for kilometers. Gaara controlling enough sand to bury entire armies. Minato being flight on sight. Gengutsu Hozuki literally guiding the ninja of the alliance Shinobi to help defeat him and even then, it was clear that even though he had to fight them, he was going easy on them. The Tsuchikages with their fuck you and everything in this direction disintegration beams. Tobirama who no matter how much I disliked him was still Tobirama.
"They're army killers," Aunt Fumiko continued, her voice quiet but intense. "Country killers. You don't defeat them. You don't even slow them down. You just hope they have bigger concerns than erasing you from existence like another Kage. Because that's what they do. They don't just defeat you. They erase you. Your whole squad. Your whole battalion. Your whole village if they feel like it."
The weight of those words settled over me like a burial shroud. The power scales in this world weren't just steep, they were exponential. Vertical. Every rank up represented a gap so vast it might as well be infinite to someone on the lower level.
I was Academy student level. Maybe low Genin with my Sharingan and extra abilities. Aunt Fumiko was Jonin. The gap between us was measured in orders of magnitude. And above even Jonin stood the Kages, so far beyond normal shinobi that they might as well be a different species entirely.
This world was a xianxia world in disguise wasn't it? This would explain a lot.
Then Aunt Fumiko's manic grin came roaring back, bright and terrible and absolutely terrifying.
"But enough heavy talk!" she announced, her whole demeanor shifting back to predatory excitement. "That was just the warm-up! I haven't even shown you my good stuff yet!"
Oh no.
"Wait, Aunt Fumiko, I think maybe we should—"
"Ren!" She was already moving, hands already forming seals. "Did you really think we'd stop after one technique? We haven't even gotten to the fun part!"
I ran.
Behind me, I heard her laughter, bright and delighted and absolutely unhinged.
You know when in mangas and animes, we are shown characters supposedly moving faster than bullets, create literal craters with simple fireball, cut through huge trees and stones just with Kunais? Well it's cool and all of that but when you take your time to think about it a little, you begin realizing that either all of it is wrong or the authors/studios really don't know what they are talking about/doing it because it's cool. Maybe it's my past as a powerscaler, don't hurt me, I found Jesus but I kinda wanted to write what would happen if what was shown in the manga was still possible but with 'realistic' consequences of that makes sense. It made me realise something I should have a long time ago, Naruto is a Xianxia, think about it, young masters unaware of their legacies, favoured by the heavens to do what most would call bullshit in a world full of bullshit. Anyways, hope y'all like the chapter, tell me what you think about it, about what Fumiko said. Also, what would y'all think would happen if someone from the Uchiha clan, the Uzumaki clan, the Hyuga clan, the Senju clan, a clan that doesn't descend from Otsutsukis like the Yamanakas or the Akimichis or something without any interesting ancestry like a civilian was fed the pink slime and thus turned into the queen version of their species?
"Never again."
"Oh, don't be like that, little Ren. It's always like that when you begin something new," the too bright and cheerful voice of my aunt said.
I was now sure of one thing. She was the greatest evil in this universe, not Madara or Black Zetsu or Kaguya, because what would be another reason for her to be so cheerful after she made me go through hell?
"There is a difference between training and 'I am going to turn my supposedly favourite nephew into cinders.' I know we're training so that I become stronger, so that we can explore my abilities and all of that, but it felt as if I was more a punching bag than anything else."
"More a chicken running from fire than a punching bag," she said before her eyes widened. "Oops, thought out loud."
Chicken? Seriously? Who was supposed to be the child between the two of us?
I don't know what expression I must have had on my face, but hers became apologetic.
The older Uchiha slid to my side and before I could ever blink, I found myself being moved so that my head was now laid on her lap.
"Better like this ain't it?" she said with a cheeky grin. "So many would kill to be at your place you know, a lap pillow from such a beautiful ninja like me."
I looked at her with a deadpan expression. "Firstly, you're my aunt so no. I am an Uchiha but not that much Uchiha. Secondly, you never had a boyfriend. You're always the one coming crying to me about how everyone is running from you when it comes to relationships."
"Running? That's an overexaggeration!" Fumiko protested. "I mean, look at me, I am the perfect cold beauty, you know, the kind of beautiful everyone in books can't help but pine for without daring to approach."
I gave her an even more unimpressed stare. "Auntie, that's real life we're talking about. You're not a book character. You just proved to me that it was worse than I thought. Now, thirdly, the behaviour is probably what makes them run."
I continued in fake concern, "At this rate, I fear that one fate will befall you, dear aunt, one worse than an old lonely bitter spinster with only cats."
Fumiko reacted as if she had been stabbed. "Spin-spinsters?!"
I nodded gravely. "Yes. You'll become a femcel." I said the word softly, as if it was a cursed word I didn't want to utter.
"Femcel?!" Fumiko said in outrage before pausing. "Huh? What's a femcel? It sounds kinda embarrassing but I don't know what that means," she said while rubbing the back of her head.
"Femcels are women who are unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one and prefer discussing and talking about the other gender in its entirety as the cause. But at least, it's better than the male version. Don't worry auntie." In a sign of comfort, I tapped on her arm. "No matter your sure future as a femcel, you'll always still have a tiny place in my heart and my future home."
"Ugh," Fumiko groaned, reacting as if she had been stabbed again.
After a moment, she said quietly, "Usually, I am the one bully-teasing you."
I looked at her even less impressed at her slip up. Bullying, I thought. So you know and still do it? You truly have no shame, auntie.
"You really didn't like the training session, did you?" Fumiko asked, her tone shifting to something more gentle.
I responded more seriously now. "I know it would not be easy and that because it was the first time, it probably was harder than ever, but it feels as if I had learned nothing, as if I had passed all my time running, fleeing and trying to dodge or deflect."
"That is training, Ren," Fumiko said, her voice taking on a weight I rarely heard from her. "Running, dodging and all of that, even if it's not funny or doesn't feel good. But all the right things rarely are." She paused, and when she continued, her voice was softer, more vulnerable. "You are special, Renny, and things, people that are special in this world are coveted. They are coveted and if they can't be obtained, can't be used, people try to destroy them, to ruin them. I don't want to lose you, to ever feel again what I felt when you were in that hospital, when we all thought, when I thought you would die."
Her hand moved to rest on my head, gentle in a way that contrasted sharply with the hellfire she'd subjected me to earlier.
"Do you know some of the clansmen who found you, who saw you while you were in the hospital unlocked their Sharingan or gained tomoe? We all love you, differently and we probably show it in different manners, but we're Uchihas. Even if the others would not like this description, we're yanderes at heart when it comes to family."
The weight of her words settled over me like a blanket. I'd known, intellectually, that my near-death experience had affected the clan. But hearing it stated so plainly, hearing the emotion barely restrained in my aunt's voice, made it real in a way my memories of the hospital couldn't.
Aunt Fumiko continued to speak, her tone shifting back to something more instructional, though the underlying care remained. "You may not see it, you may not feel it, but that training session was not in vain. It was just one and you became better. Do you know why I wanted you to keep your Sharingan activated all along?"
"I got an inkling of an idea but not really, to be honest," I admitted.
"You have a mature, three-tomoe Sharingan in both eyes," Fumiko began, settling into what I recognized as her teaching mode. "The Sharingan is not just a weapon, Ren. It's a tool for learning, for understanding, for becoming better. At its most basic level, the Sharingan grants enhanced perception. Your eyes can track movements that would be invisible to normal humans. You saw that today, didn't you? How you could follow the kunai, predict their trajectories, see the patterns in attacks that should have been overwhelming?"
I nodded. That much had been obvious during the training.
"But that's just the surface," she continued. "The Sharingan also grants you what we call the 'Eye of Insight.' With it, you can see chakra, distinguish between different types and qualities of chakra, and even perceive the flow of chakra within someone's body. This makes it incredibly difficult to fool a Sharingan user with genjutsu, because we can see the chakra disrupting the target's flow."
She held up a finger. "More than that, the Sharingan allows you to copy techniques. Not perfectly, not instantly at your level, but you can observe how chakra is molded, how hand seals flow together, how a technique is executed, and with practice, replicate it. That's why people call us the 'Copy Ninja Clan,' though most don't realize that copying is actually the least impressive aspect of our eyes."
"The most important feature, especially for training, is perfect recall," Fumiko said, her tone growing more intense. "Everything you see with your Sharingan active is recorded perfectly in your mind. Every. Single. Detail. The way an opponent shifts their weight before attacking. The micro-expressions that telegraph their intentions. The exact sequence of hand seals. The precise pattern of chakra flow."
She looked at me directly, making sure I understood. "In other words, it makes the Sharingan the perfect tool to learn very quickly. Our Dōjutsu allows you to never forget, which means all the errors you made today and you were punished for in the training session are ones you will never forget in the future. The Sharingan also allows you to see chakra, which means that it is a perfect tool to teach chakra nature transformation. You've seen me in our training session use Katon many times. I purposefully slowed my hand signs so that you could learn, analyze the way each of them helped in the variation of my katon attacks. You've seen the way I controlled it, the way chakra was manipulated and turned into fire chakra before being expelled, how I made it as hot as I did in our training session."
She looked me in the eyes, her Sharingan briefly flickering to life in a mirror of my own. "Of course, it doesn't mean that you're a master of fire chakra transformation. What you saw was me seriously holding myself back, and I think that me officially mastering fire chakra is false because I kinda think that I am barely adequate for an Uchiha Jonin at least. Still, the control I have over fire chakra means that I can walk through fire as long as I am not caught off guard and it doesn't go over the max temperature I am myself able to create."
As she spoke, flames began to bloom on the tips of her fingers without her using any hand sign. Just... appeared, as naturally as breathing.
The fire changed intensity and colors, shifting through a spectrum that shouldn't have been possible. At one moment, the flames burned so hot they seemed to warp the air around them, creating visible distortions in space itself. Then, in the next instant, they appeared almost cold, taking on a blue-white hue that paradoxically seemed to absorb heat rather than radiate it.
Then the fire left the tip of her fingers entirely and began to move by itself. It took the shape of a worm first, a sinuous curve of flame that writhed in the air. Then a rodent, compact and quick-moving. A hawk next, wings spread wide in flames. A cat, lithe and predatory. A tiger, massive and imposing. And finally, a dragon, growing bigger and bigger with each transformation until it dominated the space above us, a creature of pure fire that shouldn't exist but did because my aunt willed it so.
The dragon of flame rushed toward Fumiko, and I tensed despite myself. But instead of consuming her, it wrapped around her head to form a crown of fire, perfectly controlled flames that danced without burning. The remaining fire coalesced in her hand, taking the solid shape of a katana with an edge that gleamed with heat.
"Touch it," she said to me, offering the blade. "It won't hurt you. I promise."
I hesitated. Not because I didn't trust her, I did, at least when it came to my well-being. But because touching fire went against every survival instinct I possessed, past life or current.
Still, I had discovered something after the clan meeting. Three new abilities, granted by something called the Celestial Grimoire. Powers that had simply... appeared in my mind, knowledge and capability blooming like flowers in previously barren soil.
The first ability, the one I'd internally labeled "Shape Mana," was a strange one. In my past life, I'd read enough fantasy novels to understand the concept of mana, of magical energy that permeated the world. But this wasn't quite that. Or rather, it was, but it worked with any form of supernatural energy.
In the Naruto world, that energy was chakra.
The ability allowed me to alter the flow of magical energy in an area, to redirect it, to shape its effects. It was like being given the ability to see and manipulate invisible currents in water. I could encourage chakra to flow in certain directions, could subtly influence how it manifested, could even, with enough focus and a ten-minute ritual, redirect what the knowledge in my head called "ley lines," the natural pathways that chakra followed through the environment.
The practical applications were limited at my current level. I couldn't, for instance, reach out and shut down someone's jutsu mid-cast. The ability was more subtle than that, more about environmental manipulation than direct intervention. But what I could do was influence probabilities.
By encouraging chakra to flow in beneficial patterns around me, by subtly redirecting the ambient energy to favor fortunate outcomes, I could make myself... luckier. Not in any obvious, reality-breaking way. I couldn't make kunai spontaneously miss me or cause my enemies to trip over their own feet. But I could make it slightly more likely that a deflected kunai would ricochet away from me rather than toward me. Could make it marginally more probable that I'd spot a trap before triggering it. Could nudge circumstances in my favor in ways too small and too numerous for anyone to consciously notice.
In a world with punch wizards, chakra kaiju, and gods walking among mortals, being lucky was the bare minimum required to survive. So I'd been maintaining a constant, low-level alteration of the chakra flow around me since I'd discovered the ability. A gentle nudge toward fortune, nothing more. But in a world where the difference between life and death could come down to being a centimeter to the left or arriving one second earlier, those small nudges could be the difference between dying and surviving.
The second ability was one I hadn't tested yet, though I desperately wanted to. Royal Jelly, the knowledge called it. The power to manifest a transparent, golden substance that could heal wounds and, more intriguingly, transform animals into "queen" variants of their species.
The healing aspect alone would have been valuable. The jelly could mend injuries without risk, could speed recovery, could potentially save lives in ways that even medical ninjutsu might struggle with. I'd felt like a giant bruise after today's training, and part of me wanted nothing more than to manifest some of that jelly and slather it all over my aching body.
But I hadn't. Couldn't, actually. Uncle Arashi, the clan head, had been very specific in his instructions. For the first use of my new abilities, I needed supervision. Five adult Uchihas minimum, three of them being my mother, my father, and my aunt. The other two needed to be Uchiha medic-nin, specialists who could intervene if something went wrong.
It was a sensible precaution, really. Unknown abilities in a world where power could corrupt, where kekkei genkai were coveted and stolen, where even allies might become enemies if they thought they could gain an advantage. The supervision served multiple purposes. The medics could act if the ability backfired. The other Uchihas could study my abilities with their Sharingan, documenting how they worked for clan records. And most importantly, it kept knowledge of my abilities within the clan, preventing Konoha's ANBU, the secret service, from learning about them before the clan or I deemed the time right.
But beyond the healing, it was the transformation aspect that truly fascinated me. The ability specified that it worked on "wild(ish) animals," whether sapient or non-sapient. Fed the jelly, they would transform into a "queen" version of their species, gaining enhanced intelligence, size, power, and charisma.
The question that had been gnawing at my mind since I'd discovered this power was simple but profound. What would happen if an Uchiha consumed the jelly?
After all, when you traced the bloodline back far enough, all Uchiha bullshit ultimately originated with alien bullshit. Indra Ōtsutsuki, the primogenitor of our clan, the son of the Sage of Six Paths himself, was a quarter alien. The Ōtsutsuki were the source of all chakra on this planet, beings from beyond who had seeded this world with the energy that shinobi now wielded.
So if an Uchiha consumed Royal Jelly, would it push them toward their Ōtsutsuki heritage? Would it make them more like Indra, or even more like Kaguya herself? Even if it only made an Uchiha half as capable as Indra, that would still be monumentally significant. Madara and Sasuke had demonstrated exactly how powerful being a reincarnation of Indra could make someone.
The thought both excited and terrified me. Power on that scale came with proportional risks. But in a world where godlike beings walked and wars could destroy nations overnight, having that kind of power might be the only way to ensure survival.
Still, I wasn't foolish enough to test it without proper precautions. That experiment would wait until I had my family's full support and supervision.
The third ability, however, I'd been using constantly since acquiring it. Witch Sight, drawn from a world I vaguely remembered from past-life gaming sessions, a dark fantasy setting where magic was dangerous and corruption lurked in every shadow.
The ability granted me the power to see magic in all its forms. In objects, yes. In people, certainly. But most importantly, in the air itself, in the very environment around me.
In the Naruto universe, magic was chakra. And with Witch Sight, I could now perceive chakra even without activating my Sharingan. Every person glowed with it, their chakra coils visible as networks of light running through their bodies. Objects imbued with chakra, like my aunt's fire blade, showed their nature clearly. Jutsu appeared as structures of shaped energy, their construction and weak points laid bare to my enhanced perception.
But there was one aspect of Witch Sight that made it truly invaluable, one application that had made me consider it the perfect complement to my Sharingan.
I could see nature chakra.
Natural energy, the third component necessary for Senjutsu, had been invisible to normal perception. Even the Sharingan couldn't perceive it directly, couldn't distinguish it from normal chakra without extensive training and knowledge. But with Witch Sight, nature chakra appeared as a distinct phenomenon, an ambient energy that permeated the world in ways that personal chakra did not.
Senjutsu. Sage techniques. The power that had allowed Naruto and Jiraiya to fight almost on equal ground with someone possessing the Rinnegan, the eyes of the Sage of Six Paths himself. The power that allowed Naruto to defeat the Nine-Tails' attempt to take control of his chakra. The power that gave Naruto sensory abilities so advanced he could perceive events happening countries away. The power that was the only thing capable of harming a Ten-Tails Jinchūriki like Obito.
Kabuto had become a snake sage and had been overpowering both Sasuke and Itachi combined, forcing Itachi to use a forbidden technique that literally sacrificed one of his Sharingan to defeat him. Hashirama Senju, the First Hokage, had used Senjutsu as part of his toolkit, and that alone spoke volumes about its importance and strength.
Of course, I wasn't crazy. I wasn't going to try using Senjutsu now, not without proper preparation and training. I didn't want to turn into stone or worse. Imperfect Sage Mode was a death sentence, and the requirements to achieve it safely were steep.
From what I remembered, successfully using Senjutsu required not just enormous chakra reserves but also exceptionally refined chakra control. You needed to perfectly balance your chakra in thirds, one-third physical energy, one-third spiritual energy, and one-third natural energy. The slightest imbalance could result in petrification or transformation into some kind of animal hybrid. Too much nature chakra and you'd become a stone statue. Too little and the technique wouldn't work at all.
But having the ability to see nature chakra, to perceive it clearly and track how it flowed and concentrated in different areas, that was an advantage that very few possessed. When the time came to learn Senjutsu properly, when I had the chakra reserves and control necessary to attempt it safely, Witch Sight would make the process infinitely easier.
And then, just as I was processing the implications of being able to see nature chakra, something shifted in my mind.
It wasn't painful. Wasn't dramatic. It was more like... a door opening in a room I'd been living in my whole life, a door I'd never noticed was there. And through that door came understanding.
Telepathy.
Another gift from the Grimoire, manifesting at what felt like the perfect moment. Or perhaps not so perfect, perhaps orchestrated by whatever mechanism governed these abilities.
The knowledge settled into my brain like it had always been there. I understood, instinctively, that I could now reach out with my mind to touch the thoughts of others. Not deeply, not invasively, not yet. The ability was nascent, undeveloped, like my Animal Psychic powers had been when they first appeared.
But I could read surface thoughts. The immediate, unguarded mental chatter that everyone maintained, the internal monologue that ran parallel to spoken words. I could sense the general emotional state of those nearby, could pick up on strong feelings and immediate reactions.
More than that, I could project simple concepts directly into someone's mind. A single word. A basic idea. An image. Nothing complex, nothing that would require sentences or explanations, but enough to communicate in situations where speech might be impossible or inadvisable.
And perhaps most intriguingly, I could influence. Could suggest a single, simple action to someone, plant the idea so subtly that they'd think it was their own impulse. Nothing they were fundamentally opposed to, nothing that would endanger them, but small things. Look left. Take a step back. Reach for that kunai instead of this one.
The tactical applications made my mind race even as I lay there on my aunt's lap, pretending to simply rest. In a fight, I could read what my opponent was planning to do, not just predict from body language and combat patterns. I'd know if they were about to use a substitution jutsu, if they were reaching for an explosive tag, if they were preparing a specific hand seal sequence. The Sharingan let me see movements and chakra flow, but this... this would truly instead of cold reading let me see intent.
Even better, I could potentially disrupt that intent. Make them hesitate at a critical moment with a projected thought. Suggest they dodge left when right would have saved them. In the split-second decisions that determined victory or death in shinobi combat, that edge could be insurmountable.
And the control aspect, subtle as it was, opened even more possibilities. Make a guard turn their head at the wrong moment. Convince someone to take one more step into a trap. During interrogations, I could plant suggestions that made subjects more compliant, more willing to speak. Nothing as crude as full mind control, but gentle nudges that accumulated into significant advantages.
Combined with my Animal Psychic abilities, I could coordinate attacks from multiple vectors simultaneously. Animals responding to my mental commands while I read the enemy's thoughts and fed them subtle misdirections. The Yamanaka clan had built their entire combat doctrine around mental techniques, and they were respected enough that most villages had countermeasures specifically for them.
Now I had something similar, but different enough that those countermeasures might not apply. Mental barriers designed to stop Yamanaka jutsu might not even register my telepathy as a threat since it worked on completely different principles.
The synergy with Witch Sight was particularly elegant. I could see someone's chakra signature, read their surface thoughts, and understand both what they were doing physically and what they intended to do next. The combination would make me incredibly difficult to surprise or outmaneuver well unless my opponent was full of bullshit like some of the top tiers of this universe were.
Of course, I'd need to be careful. Accidentally reading the wrong person's thoughts could expose secrets I wasn't meant to know like said cousin like another cousin maybe too much to be healthy secret if you see what I l mean. And if I projected something inappropriate into someone's mind, or got caught influencing someone's actions, the consequences could be severe.
Konoha had literal laws about mental manipulation. The Yamanaka operated under strict oversight specifically because their techniques could so easily be abused. I don't think anyone would be happy with living in their vicinity without said laws. Having similar abilities appear in an Uchiha would raise questions, suspicions. I'd need to test this carefully, probably with family supervision like the Royal Jelly, and I'd need to develop a cover story for how an Uchiha developed telepathic abilities.
I will probably use the Yin imbalance excuse most of my clan seem to think as sufficient.
Maybe I could claim it was an unusual evolution of the Sharingan? The Sharingan's genjutsu capabilities already involved mental influence. If I framed the telepathy as an extension of that, as my eyes developing in an unconventional direction, it might be believable enough to deflect deeper scrutiny.
But those were concerns for worst cases and later. For now, I simply let the knowledge settle, integrated it into my understanding of my own capabilities, and began mentally cataloging how I could use this in training, in combat, in daily life.
The ability to know what others were thinking, to subtly guide their actions, to communicate silently across distances. Combined with everything else the Grimoire had given me, I was becoming busted as hell wasn't I.
I was becoming dangerous in ways that wouldn't be obvious until it was far too late for my enemies to counter.
Perfect thing to be to live long in this world. I'll try exploring it more later.
For now, though, I used the sight to observe my aunt and the way she controlled her chakra. The connection between her and the fire blade she offered me was clearly visible, a thread of chakra that maintained the fire's shape and temperature. I could see how she was actively preventing the flames from burning at their natural intensity, how she was constraining and controlling every aspect of the fire down to the molecular level.
The sight reassured me. But even without that reassurance, I think I still would have touched the blade. After all, I trusted my aunt, at least when it came to my well-being.
I reached out and grasped the katana's hilt. "It feels cold," I said, surprised.
"Yep," Fumiko confirmed with a pleased smile. "Normally, when it comes to training fire nature, you first begin by learning to generate heat and ignite materials with chakra alone. You probably realized it already, but the characteristic of fire chakra is that it is supposed to be compressed and heated within the body before release. It's supposed to take days to weeks for a successful ignition. It took someone I know that is not bad with fire chakra four days."
She gestured with her free hand, creating small sparks that danced between her fingers. "The second phase is to create and maintain a stable stream of fire. You're usually supposed to do so by practicing exhaling continuous flames of increasing size and duration, by learning to control the intensity and temperature by adjusting chakra kneading, by practicing shaping flames into specific forms like waves, orbs or streams. Remind you of something?"
It did remind me of something. My eyes widened. "The Great Fireball Jutsu!"
"Exactly!" Fumiko said enthusiastically. "We Uchiha go directly to the second phase in order to be recognized as, quote-unquote, 'adults.' It usually takes months or a year for those who aren't us, at least."
She paused, letting that sink in. The fact that the Uchiha coming-of-age test was something that took normal shinobi months or years to accomplish spoke volumes about both our clan's natural affinity for fire and the expectations placed upon us from a young age.
"After that," Fumiko continued, "there is what most call, think of as the last stage, and this is where I am at. The goal at that third stage is to increase flame temperature and destructive power, and you do so by training to create flames hot enough to overcome Water Release techniques, practice creating larger-scale fire techniques, and by larger, I mean much more large than what I did in your training, and making fires that continue burning and are hard to extinguish after release."
I caught something in her phrasing. "Auntie, you said that this is the stage what most think is the last, which means you don't think it is the case."
Fumiko looked at me with an approving smile. "Of course, you caught that. Indeed, there is one more stage, but it is one only us Uchihas have been able to reach, a stage no non-Uchiha has achieved, a stage that even amongst us is hard to reach, one I wish to reach."
Her voice took on an almost reverent quality. "I'm talking about flames said to be hotter than the inside of the sun, flames that can't be extinguished even days after burning, blazing forever more, flames that can swallow and eat anything, that can't be stopped, only avoided, run away from, flames so voracious that they become as dark as the space between the stars."
She met my eyes, her own Sharingan spinning slowly. "In some of the clan texts I read, it is called Blaze Release. But in most of them, that flame is known by another name."
The fire blade in my hand flickered, as if responding to her words.
"The divine flames of Amaterasu."
The sky is blue, the grass is green, birds are singing and of course, Uchihas are pyromaniacs. Chakra is really fascinating as an idea when you think of it. It's literally magic in another name, a soft magic system masquerading as a harsh one. In canon, we are not told how elemental chakra is trained when its not wind so because it's fanfiction and thus I am a demiurge, I tried to create equivalent that would make sense with fire release. in canon, Asuma with a kunai infused/coated with a wind chakra literally pierce through a big ass tree and literal stone. A kunai coated Wind should not be able to do that. Anyway, what do y'all think training other natures would look like? Do y'all think that someone to master water Chakra would need to be able to create it from nothing or take it directly from the environment like the humidity in the air or something like that?
PS: I got two more advanced chapters on my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / Eileen715. With less than 5$ a month, you have access to everything I write in a month so don't hesitate visiting if you want to read more or simply support.
Perk gained this chapter:
Perk Name: Psychic Abilities - Telepathy (Two Dots)
Source: World of Darkness: Sorcerer
Cost: 100 CP
Description: Telepaths can speak to the minds of and alter the memories of other sapient beings. It primarily affects those that the telepath can sense, but can also affect those who are nearby, so long as the telepath knows where they are.
At Two Dots, the telepath may now read the surface thoughts of their target, or induce them to make a single motion, or otherwise project a single word or idea to another person.