Mito unfurled the ancient scroll with a flourish that sent a small cloud of what one could only assume was historical dust (and probably a few dead skin cells of legends past) into the air between them.
"So," Mito spoke gently. "The Flying Thunder God Technique was Tobirama's proudest technique, although not completely because of its strength."
Azula, who had been practically vibrating with excitement since the scroll appeared, immediately understood what she meant. His pride in it was probably because it helped him kill a certain evil Uchiha.
"Officially," Mito continued, tapping the intricate seals drawn on the parchment, "he based it on the principles of the Summoning Technique. But instead of calling the slug from Shikkotsu Forest to your location, you call yourself to a strategic place marked with the Flying Thunder God seal."
She had known of Azula's near-obsessive interest in the technique for a while. As for how she, Mito, came to possess it?
The Senju clan might have officially disbanded, but did anyone truly believe Tobirama Senju would have dared to refuse his beloved big brother's descendant access to the family library?
The man may have been a stone-cold pragmatist, but he wasn't suicidal. The only techniques kept under lock and key were the truly horrific ones, like the Impure World Reincarnation and the messy business about stealing people's bodies. Everything else was fair game.
"Now," Mito said, leaning forward conspiratorially. "The prerequisites. First: perception. You need spatial awareness. Second: sealing technique. You need to be able to create seals, preferably to the level of doing it instantly with a touch, to the point that you could even put it into someone without them knowing. And of course, a strong body."
Azula raised a perfect eyebrow.
"Oh, don't give me that look," Mito chided. "You have met all these requirements. As for the need of a strong body, it's like a Jonin using the Body Flicker while carrying a Genin. The Jonin arrives without problem and ready for action.
The Genin arrives disoriented, and might even vomit. Let alone teleporting—in one moment you are here and the next you are somewhere else. Unless, of course, you just want to use it for long-distance movement and not for fighting."
A slow, supremely confident smile spread across Azula's face. It was the kind of smile that suggested she had already mentally completed the technique.
Perception? Her range was currently a full kilometer. And not just sensing her own chakra; she could sense that of others. As for sealing techniques, although she didn't have the Uzumaki bloodline, she was good—she had at least mastered five more sealing techniques than Tsunade, a half-Uzumaki.
Mito looked at her disciple, who looked very proud, and was exasperated. "You're not going to be this insufferable the whole time, are you?"
"Only if I'm good at it," Azula replied without missing a beat. "But this 'spatial awareness'—it's simply an extension of high-level perception, isn't it? Right now, little Nawaki is with Tsunade. There are hundreds of meters and two solid walls between us.
Technically, we occupy entirely separate spaces. And yet, I can sense his bright little chakra signature perfectly. I can tell you that Tsunade is currently trying to sneak a vegetable into his stew, and he is pretending not to notice. That's it, isn't it? Seeing the threads of space itself?"
Though she phrased it as a question, her voice held the absolute certainty of a proven theorem. It made her think of that bizarre fanfic with a protagonist called Boruto Uzumaki, who, with a fraction of the raw data she possessed, somehow reverse-engineered his own 'Flying Thunder God: Youth Edition' to teleport to any piece of metal.
The thought sent her mind spiraling. Honestly, the people most perfectly suited for this technique weren't the Uzumaki or even the Senju. It was the Hyuga! The sheer, blinding irony of it!
Their Byakugan gave them a natural perception range that put most sensors to shame—they could literally see for kilometers. Their chakra control was so monstrously precise they could perform the Kaiten, spinning like a top while emitting perfectly equal chakra from all 361 tenketsu at once.
They could probably paint a Flying Thunder God seal with their eyes closed, using only the chakra from their little finger, and make it a masterpiece.
But of course, the Hyuga were the Hyuga. And the shinobi world was the shinobi world.
They were so busy perfecting the art of poking people full of holes from a centimeter away that they never once thought to use their god-like gifts to simply… avoid the walking part. It was a tragicomedy of wasted potential.
After Mito finished speaking, she gave Azula the scroll recording the Flying Thunder God, including Tobirama's insight. Of course, it was a copy.
Anyway, she had made three copies of all these—one for Tsunade, although the latter was unlikely to learn it due to her fighting style, and one for Nawaki.
The latter, who could be killed by an exploding talisman, wasn't the kind to make one worry-free. It was better for him to learn this technique so that he could teleport to Tsunade every time he was half-dying.
As for Azula, as soon as she got the scroll, she looked at it and roughly understood. Learning the Flying Thunder God wouldn't be difficult; she felt it would take two to three years.
Although it may seem long, she was just eight. By then, she should be about twelve years old. What would be difficult would be using the technique for fighting.
Her fighting was already fixed, something that was her pride when fighting Futake, even though now she just needed to use ninjutsu—instead of bending, just forming hand seals for show.
By the time she learned the Flying Thunder God, she would need to change: instead of straight combat, she'd need to be more elusive and use it to her advantage.
But then again, it also shouldn't take three years, especially after awakening her Sharingan, and could be much shorter depending on its level.
...
...
...
"Haha, Azula-san," Futake spoke, his voice dripping with a level of unearned confidence that would make a peacock blush. He presented a thick, meticulously bound stack of papers with a flourish usually reserved for revealing hidden treasure maps. "Look! This is my Futake Uchiha masterpiece of manga, created after a year of art, and you—lucky you—are its first witness. Try not to be too overwhelmed."
Azula's black eyes flicked down to the offering. She had to admit, the cover was… professionally done. Dynamic lines, a compelling silhouette—it screamed 'Shonen Jump' in all the right ways.
But this was Futake. An Uchiha through and through, a breed of human genetically engineered to be as emotionally transparent as a brick wall, yet as soft and gooey on the inside as a half-baked mochi.
The bravado was a performance. A great one, mind you—convincing enough to fool 99% of the village, who'd just chalk it up to 'Uchiha Things™'.
But Azula was a connoisseur of the human psyche, and Futake was an open book written in very large, very desperate print.
He wasn't here to show off; he was here seeking her approval. Why else bypass the official submission channels at the Azula Jump magazine for this… backdoor audition?
Please. Uchiha pride was too colossal for such underhanded nonsense. Their pride demanded they fail spectacularly in public, not quietly in private.
A plan, deliciously devious and utterly perfect, ignited in her mind.
As Futake preened, admiring his own handiwork from an angle he deemed most impressive, Azula's hands moved with the silent, lethal grace of a shadow clone.
A quick substitution—his precious manuscript for one of the many forgettable ones on her—and without doing hand signs, a flicker of chakra, and her developed "Projection Jutsu" settled over the fake, making it a perfect visual replica of his masterpiece.
She took the decoy, her face a mask of casual indifference.
"Let's see, then," she murmured, flipping through the blank pages with an expression of profound boredom. She even had the audacity to tap her foot, sigh intermittently, and spend a solid ten minutes pretending to be engrossed in a particularly riveting chapter about… absolutely nothing.
Finally, with a sound that was less a sigh and more the vocal equivalent of a death knell, she snapped the manuscript shut.
"Futake," she said, her voice flat and devoid of all hope. "This is the most profoundly trash-like substance I have ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes upon. It doesn't just fail as a narrative; it actively insults the very concept of trees that died to provide its paper. It's an affront to manga itself."
Before his brain could even process the verbal evisceration, she nonchalantly tossed the fake manuscript into the air. Her hands flew through a familiar sequence of seals. "Fire Style:" she announced, as if commenting on the weather, "Fireball."
WHOOSH. A magnificent sphere of orange fury engulfed the papers, incinerating a year of his life into a flurry of ash and disappointment that drifted away on the breeze.
She turned on her heel, nose in the air. "Now, if you'll excuse me," she said with arrogant finality, "some of us have actual training to do."
Futake stood frozen, a statue of pure, unadulterated shock. The gears in his brain had not only stopped turning, they had melted into a sad puddle of molten metal.
It was only when the last speck of ash vanished and the echo of her words died that the dam broke. "AZULA!!!!!"
The roar that erupted from him was primal, fueled by a rage so intense it practically shimmered in the air around him. His vision tinged with red, and the world sharpened.
With a visceral surge of chakra, the single tomoe in each of his eyes—unchanged and frankly a little embarrassing since he'd first activated his Sharingan years ago—spun and duplicated. Two tomoe. Two!
Hearing his apoplectic cry, Azula glanced back over her shoulder. She saw the new, spinning tomoe in his eyes and allowed herself a microscopic, internal flicker of… something. Envy, perhaps.
She'd induced this on purpose, of course. For an Uchiha like Futake, having his life's work publicly declared trash and then barbecued was a fate worse than death. It was the perfect emotional trigger.
And it worked. At just twelve years old, he was now a two-tomoe user. Not quite Itachi or Shisui levels of prodigy, but without her influence, he'd undoubtedly be the strongest of the new generation.
"Okay, okay, simmer down," she said, her tone shifting to one of practical impatience. "Don't have an aneurysm. Here, take your mirror."
It was the most Uchiha sentence ever uttered. Of course he carried a mirror—every good Uchiha kept one on hand, lest they spontaneously evolve their eyeballs and miss the chance to admire their own dramatic progress.
Snapped from his rage by the bizarre normality of the request, Futake fumbled in his scroll, pulled out a small hand mirror, and stared.
His anger evaporated, replaced by sheer, dumbfounded awe. Two tomoe. She'd… she'd burned his manga… but she'd also…
As he stood there, emotions warring between the urge to strangle her and the urge to thank her, his newly enhanced eyesight caught a glimpse of something tucked under her arm. His manuscript. The real manuscript. His Sharingan, active and unclouded, confirmed it was no illusion.
Azula followed his gaze and gave him a small, rare, genuine smile.
"Don't short-circuit your new eyes thinking about it. It was a tactical decision. You've been whining about your stagnant Sharingan for so long. Consider it… aggressive encouragement. As for your actual masterpiece," she said, tapping the real pages, "I'll give it a proper read when I'm at home. Now, if the drama is over, I really do have training to do."
Just like that, the confusion and resentment melted away. Uchiha were nothing if not straightforward. Emotions were binary: gratitude or hatred. And he knew, with every fiber of his being, that Azula would never lie about something like this.
What she didn't realize, as she turned back to her training, was that in that single, chaotic moment, she had successfully performed the most complex jutsu of all: she had transformed her potential biggest rival for the title of Uchiha leadership into her most fiercely loyal follower. All in a day's work.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
Hello guys, I'm thinking about introducing parallel world after the second Ninja War, do you have some ideas and like, should Azula exist in another parallel world or not?