"Hey, Azula-san," a boy spoke with a hesitant rasp that was at odds with the excitement in his gaze. "Are you absolutely sure it's okay for you to teach us this?"
Orochimaru gestured with a slender finger toward the scroll as if it were a sleeping viper. A very valuable, incredibly alluring viper.
"I mean," he continued, "Ninjutsu of this caliber… it's the biggest, most guarded secret of any clan. They're rarely shared with outsiders who aren't, you know, betrothed or something. And this is the Shadow Clone Jutsu! A B-rank!"
He wasn't wrong. In the world of shinobi, knowledge was currency, power, and legacy, all rolled into one. Sharing a D-rank technique was like lending a friend a ryo. Sharing a B-rank like this was like handing them the deed to your family's compound and all the secret tunnels beneath it.
Jiraiya, who had been making enthusiastic but questionable hand-seals that looked more like he was trying to summon a demon or shoo away a particularly persistent fly, nodded in vigorous agreement.
"The snake-like brat's got a point, for once!"
Azula Uchiha, the undisputed queen of their academy class and a girl who carried herself with the unnerving poise of a kunoichi twice her age, merely let a slow, patient smile spread across her features. It was a smile that said, 'I have considered every possible angle of this, including the ones you haven't even discovered yet.'
She tapped the scroll against her palm. "What are you talking about?" she said, her voice smooth and laced with amusement.
"Since I decided to give it to you, then that's that. As of this very moment, consider it yours. The rest of the class…" She cast a deliberate glance over at the small crowd of their peers who were pretending not to eavesdrop while failing spectacularly at it.
Hiruko was examining a leaf with sudden, intense interest. Might Duy was doing one-handed push-ups, but his ears were swiveled like a radar dish. Ayane was meticulously organizing her kunai, her movements just a little too slow. "…aren't yet ready."
She offered a helpless little shrug, a perfectly executed gesture of 'what can you do?' that was about 90% calculated performance and 10% genuine fond exasperation.
Internally, her plans were unfolding with beautiful precision. Her grand design, 'Operation: Big Sister Supreme,' was in full effect.
The objective? To have every single one of these future shinobi recognize her not just as a talented Uchiha, but as their leader, their benefactor, the one who had their backs when they were knee-deep in the struggles of academy life.
A little strategic jutsu-sharing was a small price to pay for a lifetime of loyalty and, more importantly, the ability to call herself 'Big Sis' with the authority to make it stick.
Her eyes flicked to Jiraiya, who was now trying to balance a kunai on his nose. On paper, the white-haired hyperactive goofball actually had chakra reserves that were kind of… monstrous.
He could probably power a small village with the energy he usually expended on dumb jokes and poorly planned pranks. In theory, he could manage a Shadow Clone. Maybe even hold it for an hour.
The problem was trust. Or more specifically, a complete lack thereof in Jiraiya's ability to exercise even a shred of self-preservation.
Azula's mind conjured a horrifying, yet entirely plausible, vision: Jiraiya, upon mastering the technique, would immediately try to see 'what the absolute limit is, guys!'
He'd create a thousand clones, his chakra would evaporate faster than a rain puddle in the Sunagakure desert, and he'd be found as a desiccated husk surrounded by a thousand equally desiccated Jiraiya-clones, all giving a thumbs-up.
He wouldn't be killed in battle by a legendary missing-nin; he'd be done in by his own spectacular lack of judgment. No, the Shadow Clone Jutsu was a privilege he had not yet earned. It was for his own good.
She saw the flickers of envy on the faces of the others. Hiruko's was the most calculating, a quiet hunger. Duy's was pure, unadulterated admiration, the look of someone who saw magic in things others took for granted.
Ah, but perception was everything! She couldn't have the rumor mill churning out headlines like "Azula Uchiha plays favorites: snake boy gets the goods, everyone else gets dust." A reputation for being partial was a weakness she could not afford.
With a flourish that would make a stage magician weep with envy, she unsealed another, slightly larger scroll from the pouch at her hip. It landed on the ground with a soft thump that drew every single eye.
"Don't you all worry, my friends," she announced, her voice ringing with magnanimous authority.
"For you, my loyal and hardworking underclassmen—I mean, classmates—I have prepared the Uchiha Clan's 'Introductory Ninjutsu!' A curated collection of D-rank wonders! Each of you may choose one that speaks to your soul! Master it, and you may come and ask me for another. Master ten—yes, ten!—and you will unlock the coveted C-rank tier! A path to power, laid out by yours truly!"
She paused, letting the gasps and excited murmurs wash over her. It was a beautiful sound.
Anyway, the Uchiha are the clan with the most extensive ninjutsu library in all of Konoha. Possibly the entire world. Do they personally master all of them? No.
Most of them have the Fire and Lightning natures. Trying to learn a Water Release jutsu would be like trying to teach a cat to fetch. A messy, ultimately futile endeavor. But do they have them, meticulously recorded and gathering dust in the archives? Of course they do.
The sheer, obscene wealth of knowledge her clan casually sat on was a power move in itself.
"Of course," she declared, clapping her hands together, "before we get to the fun part, we have to do the slightly absolutely essential part: we need to know what we're working with. We're going to test your chakra natures!"
This was a big deal. This was knowledge that most academy students wouldn't get until after graduation, a perk reserved for kids from big clans or well-connected families. The fact that Azula was offering this, for free, was monumental.
She produced a stack of pristine, off-white paper from another scroll. Chakra Induction Paper.
It wasn't cheap; this little stack probably cost more than Jiraiya's monthly allowance of questionable things. But Azula saw it not as an expense, but as an investment.
A down payment on future loyalty. A thank you to the kids who had helped her stock shelves at her store, who had shared their lunches, and who had, in their own weird, childlike ways (even now, at this age), done things that had made her genuinely laugh.
Like the time Duy tried to use the Leaf-Sticking Exercise to climb the Hokage Monument and only made it three feet off the ground before becoming stuck to the rock face for two hours.
A sudden, somber thought clouded her mind, a cold splash of reality on her warm, scheming plans. She looked at their faces—Orochimaru's intense curiosity, Jiraiya's goofy grin, Tsunade's confident smirk, Duy's unwavering determination.
She did the math, the grim calculus of the shinobi world. Twenty years from now… how many of them would be left? Would this entire group be whittled down to a handful? Five? Fewer? Such was the life they had chosen, the life they were born into. The thought made her not feel well.
If giving them a few extra tools, a few more tricks in their arsenal, could tilt the odds ever so slightly in their favor… then it was worth it. Even if it was an A-rank jutsu. Knowledge was meant to be used. And what better use than to keep her future assets alive?
She held up a single sheet of the paper. "Gather 'round, everyone, these little sheets are Chakra Induction Paper. You inject a tiny bit of your chakra into it."
She cleared her throat, adopting her best instructor voice. "Observe: If the paper ignites and turns to a dignified pile of ash, congratulations, you're arson-inclined. You have a Fire Nature affinity. If it becomes damp, that's Water Release. If it splits cleanly in half, as if sliced by an invisible blade, that's Wind Nature. If it crumbles into a little pile of dirt, you're an Earth type. And finally, if it wrinkles up like it just heard Jiraiya's latest joke, that's Lightning Nature."
She infused a trickle of her chakra into the paper she held. The result was instantaneous and dramatic.
The right half of the paper blackened, curled, and dissolved into fine, gray ash. Simultaneously, the left half contorted violently, crumpling into a tight, wrinkled ball as if dying of secondhand embarrassment.
"Whoa…" Jiraiya breathed, his previous antics forgotten. He was the first to snatch a piece of paper from the stack Azula had laid on a nearby tree stump.
For all his buffoonery, when it came to practical, hands-on things, the boy had an almost instinctual knack. He focused, his brow furrowing in concentration.
The paper reacted. One section turned dark and soggy, a droplet of moisture beading on its surface. Another part of the same sheet seemed to dry out and disintegrate into a fine, brown dust.
"Well, look at that," Azula said, genuinely intrigued. "Water and Earth. A combination fit for making really high-quality mud. And here I thought you'd be all Fire, given your… explosive personality."
This was a divergence from what she'd expected. In the anime, Jiraiya was a master of all five, but he used Fire Style a lot. For him to have a natural affinity for Water and Earth was fascinating. Had he trained himself into a new shape entirely?
"WOAH! Jiraiya, you have two natures, just like Big Sister Azula!" one of the other kids yelled.
"Yeah! I never expected that someone like him would have two! Is that normal? Does everyone get two?" another asked.
Jiraiya puffed out his chest, his grin threatening to split his face in two. He was not used to being the subject of admiring gazes.
In their class, he and Might Duy were usually locked in a fierce competition for who received the fewest looks of admiration (though Jiraiya privately conceded that Duy, with his spectacular lack of ninja aptitude, was probably the undisputed champion of that particular tournament).
Next was Orochimaru. He took the paper with the reverence of a scholar handling an ancient manuscript. He closed his eyes, his expression one of deep focus.
The paper in his hand… well, it didn't know what to do. A corner ignited and turned to ash. Another section dampened. A third part crumpled. A fourth split. It finally gave up and dissolved into a pathetic little pile of earth.
A perfect, five-element reaction.
The training ground fell silent. The genius wasn't a joke. The boy was a natural wonder, a blank slate upon which any ninjutsu could be written.
Tsunade merely watched, a small, knowing smile on her face. She didn't bother to take a paper. Of course she didn't.
As the heir to the Senju clan and the granddaughter of the First Hokage, she'd likely had her chakra nature tested before she could even walk properly. Azula had done this as well the moment her chakra pathways had stabilized.
One by one, the rest of the class took their turns. Hiruko's paper split with a sharp, precise cut—Wind Nature. Ayane's dampened—Water. Might Duy approached the stump with the solemnity of a man walking to his destiny.
He poured every ounce of his immense, burning spirit into the paper. It shuddered, turned a faint shade of green, but otherwise did… nothing. No fire, no water, no cut, no crumple, no dust. It just sat there, being paper.
A few kids snickered. Duy's shoulders slumped for a fraction of a second before he snapped them back, a brilliant, shining smile on his face.
"It seems my youthfulness has not yet awakened its elemental passion! But this is a wonderful challenge! I will train until my chakra burns so brightly it has no choice but to express itself! ONE HUNDRED LAPS AROUND KONOHA TO COMMENCE IMMEDIATELY!" And he was off, a green blur of undeterred spirit.
Azula made a mental note. No innate affinity. That was a hurdle, but not an insurmountable one. It just meant his path would be harder, his focus needing to be on taijutsu and pure, unadulterated willpower—and, well, it meant he had the protagonist script.
She looked at her classmates, their faces alight with new knowledge and possibility. Hiruko, who would one day be a Jonin-level threat even without his forbidden technique. Duy, who would redefine the meaning of hard work. Jiraiya, the future sage. Orochimaru, the genius. Tsunade, the legend.
Indeed, the future seemed bright.
...
...
...
The Uchiha compound was quiet. A little too quiet. For Azula, a being of pure, unadulterated, and frankly terrifying ambition crammed into the body of a prepubescent girl, silence was not a blessing.
It was a void, and nature—especially her nature—abhorred a vacuum. Usually, that vacuum would be filled with the sound of her father, Tajima, sharpening weapons, or dictating clan ledgers, or doing that low, rumbling hum he did when contemplating which political rival needed a strategically timed fireball to the face.
Today, however, there was only the soft, almost imperceptible rustle of her mother, Asami, moving about in another room. This was… unusual.
Her father was a homebody patriarch, a man who believed ruling the most powerful clan in Konoha was a job best done from his favorite armchair, a strategic command center from which he could project his will and occasionally demand more tea.
Azula, currently sprawled on a plush rug like a tiny, scheming starfish, had just concluded a masterclass in what she liked to call 'Early Childhood Educational Reform.'
In layman's terms, she had systematically broken the spirits of her little classmates with the ruthless efficiency of a seasoned drill sergeant teaching origami to a bag of angry cats.
Her original plan had involved a visit to Mito. Today, however, was for recalibration. Mito had provided the key—herself—and Azula had spent the last two weeks turning that key in the rusty, complex lock of Uchiha politics.
The original, depressingly linear story of the Uchiha was a Shakespearean tragedy written by an edgy teenager: all brooding, betrayal, and a final, fiery genocide.
A bit much, really. Kagami Uchiha's eventual, inevitable death was a cornerstone of that dismal timeline. A useful, loyal man, but tragically mortal. Azula's new and improved plan, 'Project: Golden Rule (But With More Fireballs),' didn't hinge on a single man's survival.
No, she had woven herself into the very fabric of the Hokage's line. She was Mito's fascinating little student, the sharp-minded Uchiha child who played with sealing formulae like other kids played with blocks.
Even if Kagami bought the farm in some glorious, stupidly heroic fashion as per the original script, the Uchiha would still have her—a direct line to the Hokage's wife, a personal relationship with the future leadership.
Her path to the Hokage's chair, once a distant dream on a horizon littered with obstacles, was now clearly paved. The materials needed? Two things: Reputation and Strength.
Reputation was already being handled. She was the Prodigy. The One Who Put the Academy Instructors in Therapy. The Girl Who Made Mito Uzumaki Laugh. And soon, very soon, she would be The Judge. The tribunal in ten days was her stage.
The entire ninja world would be her audience. They wouldn't see a talented child; they would see a power player, a nascent force of nature with the will to decide fates and the cunning to influence empires.
The fact that this influence was currently 90% illusory, backed by the political equivalent of bluffing with a pair of twos, was a minor detail. Perception was nine-tenths of the law, and the other tenth was who had the biggest fireball.
Strength… well, strength was a temporal issue. She literally had the talents, but her body was still that of a child. She couldn't yet summon a Susanoo to squash a village because she'd probably get a nosebleed and need a nap.
Her strength would come with time, and thankfully, her plan was a slow burn. The Second Great Ninja War was her target launch window. That glorious, catastrophic mess would be the perfect catalyst.
It was a festival of merit, a harvest of glory just waiting for a savvy little scythe like herself to reap it. She'd emerge, bathed in the light of her accomplishments (and the ashes of her enemies), a proven leader ready to take the reins.
And the best part? By then, the most tedious part of being Hokage—the paperwork—would be obsolete, for her, at least. The solution was so beautiful it was almost poetic: the Shadow Clone Jutsu.
The plan was simple: achieve the mythical 24-hour, side-effect-free clone. Plant one bespectacled, administrative-minded clone in the Hokage's office with a team of overworked assistants.
The clone would sigh, stamp documents, and listen to complaints about missing cats. The real Azula would be out… well, doing whatever she wanted. Conquering. Innovating. Taking naps. It was delegation perfected. She'd be the first Hokage to achieve a four-day workweek without actually working a single day. Voilà, indeed.
Her current project, the next step in her grand design, was… entertainment. Specifically, money-generating entertainment. The world was crooked, its technology a bizarre pastiche of eras, and its movies were apparently cinematic sedatives.
Films existed, but they were so mind-numbingly boring that less than one percent of the population cared. Ninjas certainly didn't. They got their drama from real-life stabbings.
But Azula, who had already done the Demon Slayer manga, had a better idea, which was the anime, of course—one of the reasons it was so popular in her past life and something that would earn even more money.
Here, she could skip the hundreds of exhausted animators. She had a better idea: magic, Illusion.
The Kurama Clan were one of the obvious choices; masters of genjutsu who could probably project a feature film onto the clouds if they felt like it. She could just waltz in, demand they become her personal Pixar, and be done with it.
But where was the fun in that? Where was the training? The challenge?
Two weeks ago, during a discussion with Mito about the nature of chakra, the old woman had pinpointed Azula's greatest innate gift: her affinity for Yin Release.
The art of shaping imagination and will into reality. It was the foundation of the Uchiha's Sharingan prowess and the Uzumaki's sealing might. Mito had seen that potential in her and issued a challenge: Do it yourself.
What Azula was attempting was, essentially, high-definition projection magic.
She wanted to pluck the images from her mind—the vibrant, kinetic fights of her manga, the expressive faces, the sweeping landscapes—and project them into the air, solid, real, and recordable.
It was a supreme application of the Sharingan, a technique so advanced and seemingly pointless (as it couldn't directly kill anyone) that most Uchiha elders would have scoffed and told her to go practice her Grand Fireball instead.
It was easier said than done. She had devoured the Uchiha and Uzumaki scrolls on Yin manipulation, but it was like trying to build a Blu-ray player using instructions for a hamster wheel.
The chakra pathways involved were ludicrously complex, requiring a finesse that made delicate medical ninjutsu look like smashing rocks with a sledgehammer.
Mito had promised her a reward: master this, and she would officially begin her apprenticeship in the art of Fuinjutsu, the pinnacle of sealing techniques. The power to bind gods, teleport across continents, and create pocket dimensions.
So lost was she in these thoughts, mentally tracing chakra pathways and visualizing the chakra-receptive air as a blank canvas, that she didn't notice her mother standing in the doorway, watching her with a smile that was equal parts fond and profoundly sad.
Asami's feelings for her daughter were a tangled knot of guilt, awe, and confusion so complex it could have been its own sealing formula.
The strangest part was that Azula knew. Asami didn't know how, but the child was acutely aware of the unspoken tension, the history that hung between them like a ghost.
Asami considered herself a champion-level hypocrite. Her marriage to Tajima had begun as a cold, political alliance. The Uchiha were fracturing, and Tajima, the strongest of the new generation, needed to unite the hawk faction. Her father, its leader back then, offered his daughter. She was the prize, the peace treaty made flesh.
She had been resentful. Angry at her father, at Tajima, at the world. When Azula was born, that resentment had manifested as distance.
She hadn't been a nurturing mother; she'd been a caretaker going through the motions. It was only through Tajima's unexpected patience and his own pragmatic, yet genuine, efforts to make the marriage work that she began to see the reality of their situation.
He was the strongest, yet he had sacrificed his personal freedom for clan peace. What was her sacrifice? A marriage? She, who had been protected and privileged her whole life during the brutal Warring States period? The epiphany shamed her. She fell in love with him, truly, and he, to her everlasting surprise, seemed to love her back.
But with Azula, it was different. They loved each other, they communicated, they smiled, but there was an invisible barrier, a pane of glass between them.
Tajima had long wanted another child, a sibling for Azula, a true symbol of their reconciled union. Asami had refused every time. She felt that until she could bridge the gap with the daughter she had first failed, she was utterly unworthy of being a mother to another.
If Azula could have read her mother's mind at that moment, she would have sighed the long-suffering sigh of the eternally reincarnated and said, "You are overthinking this to a truly spectacular degree."
The source of Azula's "distance" was not childhood trauma or latent resentment. It was, put simply, a cosmic, all-consuming, face-melting level of embarrassment.
Azula's conscious mind housed the experiences of not one, but two full lifetimes. She was, in mental age, older than Asami. Significantly older. Could anyone, anyone, possibly comprehend the sheer, unadulterated humiliation of being breastfed when your internal monologue was that of a cynical, world-weary adult?
The horror of being burped? The indignity of having your chubby baby cheeks pinched by cooing relatives while you were mentally calculating geopolitical strategy?
It was psychological torture of the highest order. She could never look Asami in the eye without remembering those early days, and her soul would cringe so hard it practically folded in on itself. It wasn't anger. It was cringe.
Oblivious to this truth, Asami saw only her daughter's pensive, frustrated expression. She approached softly and sat beside her on the rug. "What are you working on, my little girl?"
She asked, her voice warm. She was genuinely curious. This daughter of hers was a perpetual motion machine of strange, brilliant, and often terrifying ideas.
Azula's head snapped up. Her eyes, those sharp, calculating Sharingan-less eyes, lit up with a new thought. Of course! Her mother was a Three-Tomoe Jonin! A master of genjutsu and chakra control in her own right! A live-in consultant!
Azula said, sitting up straight, "I'm trying to animate my manga."
Asami blinked. "Animate?"
"Yes! Bring it to life, make it move. Manga is static, two-dimensional. I want it to be realistic, dynamic! As if the events are actually happening right in front of us, with sound and color and motion. And then, we record that illusion somehow, and people all over the world can watch the recording!"
Asami's mind, sharp and trained for battle, quickly parsed the concept. "I see. So, like a play, but made with chakra. Would it not be easier to use Transformation Jutsu? Have actors play the parts, and use large-scale genjutsu to simulate the backgrounds and effects? The Kurama clan does something similar for festivals."
Azula shook her head, her small face set in a determined frown. "I could, but that's not the goal. The goal is to create it purely from illusion and Yin-based chakra. To project it directly from my mind. It's... a test. From Mito-sensei."
Understanding dawned on Asami's face. "Oh. A challenge of will and control. That is… profoundly difficult, Azula."
A thoughtful look crossed her features. "You know, if you had the Sharingan, it might be easier. There is a technique developed by one of our ancestors after studying the Kurama clan. It was meant to permanently alter perception, but it was always… incomplete."
Intrigued, Azula leaned forward. "Incomplete? How?"
"Like this," Asami said softly. Her eyes shifted in an instant, the onyx black melting into a vibrant, spinning crimson with three tomoe circling the pupil.
It was a sight that still sent a thrill of power down Azula's spine. Without any obvious hand signs, Asami simply pointed a finger at a simple clay cup sitting on a low table across the room.
Azula watched. The cup… glitched. It shimmered, its edges blurring for a nanosecond before resolving into the shape of a rough, grey rock. It was a perfect visual transformation. It looked exactly like a rock that had always been there.
"Whoa," Azula breathed. Then, instinctively, she pushed a tiny trickle of chakra into her own eyes, not to activate a Sharingan she didn't yet have, but simply to enhance her visual perception, to see the chakra construct.
The rock flickered. Like a bad television signal, it dissolved back into the clay cup for a split second before solidifying into the rock again. It was an illusion, but a powerful, persistent one.
"It affects the sight," Asami explained, deactivating her Sharingan. The cup instantly returned to normal. "But nothing else. The scent, the sound it would make if tapped, its weight, its temperature… all remain that of a cup. And as you saw, a simple application of chakra to the eyes reveals the truth."
"It is a parlor trick. A fascinating one, but useless in combat against any sensor or a shinobi with decent chakra control. Our ancestor abandoned it. Why waste chakra fooling the eye when you could fool the entire mind and senses with a proper genjutsu?"
Azula nodded, showing her understanding. Anything that can't help with killing is deemed useless by ninjas, which is also understandable.
But this technique was indeed something she was looking for in the first place. She had been planning to talk to Tajima, but it seemed she didn't need to.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
Somehow feel a little bit bored writing this, let's see, there should be only the Anime creation and Tribunal things before the time skip (maybe?) which will spice things. Don't forget to vote guys.
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