The truth about my parents didn't change anything since the war didn't care where I came from. The battlefield certainly didn't. Whether my parents had been civilians, shinobi, merchants, or the Daimyo himself, enemy kunai still flew the same way.
A few days later in the morning, I reported for duty.
The morning after that, too.
Then the one after that.
Life moved on as it always did.
Though before it did, Hiruzen apparently decided that telling me half the truth about my parents wasn't an appropriate reward for inventing a new A-Rank technique. Personally, I disagreed. Information was useful, and rather valuable to me, but still, the old man insisted. When I pointed this out, he simply told me to ask for something else.
So I did.
"Put Yahiko and Konan in the Ninja Academy."
Hiruzen blinked at me like he hadn't expected that, then laughed heartily and the request got approved within the week. Which meant two very confused, near ten-year-olds suddenly found themselves attending the Academy.
Knowing what awaited them, I wished them luck, as they were going to need it.
But hey, who am I kidding, those two are strong. They'll handle anything the good ol' clan youngsters throw at them. Plus they have each other, so, that's a big bonus!
Poor lonely academy me...
...
After that, life became busy.
Very busy.
The war continued.
Mission followed mission.
Escort assignments.
Reconnaissance.
Assassinations.
Sabotage.
Rescue operations.
Border patrols.
Battlefields.
For a while, everything blurred together, and the Second Shinobi War entered its final stretch. Which made it more dangerous than ever. A wounded beast fought hardest when it realized it was dying, and the great villages were no different. The fighting became desperate as every nation wanted one final gain before the negotiations inevitably arrived.
Which meant shinobi died.
A lot.
Some names stayed with me.
Most didn't.
That was another thing war took from people. Eventually you stopped remembering every face. You just couldn't. There were too many. Too many funerals. Too many names carved into stone. Too many people who didn't come home. So, you focused on the living. You had to. Otherwise, the dead would drown you.
Team Jiraiya changed somewhat during the last year. Our strength had reached the point where keeping us together no longer made sense. Jiraiya himself spent increasing amounts of time attached to larger operations alongside Tsunade and Orochimaru.
The Sannin were becoming famous.
As for the three of us...
We were becoming problems.
But the useful kind.
The kind commanders liked pointing at enemy fortifications.
Minato was assigned independent missions more frequently. Sometimes I joined other units. Sometimes Yukino did. Rarely did all three of us work together. Most times we didn't, and at first it felt strange. I'd spent so long fighting beside them at this point, and we'd spent years together, then suddenly we'd go weeks without seeing one another. Not because we wanted to, but because war demanded otherwise.
At least...
That was how it worked for a couple of months, then that was only true for Minato.
Yukino eventually started to somehow end up on all my assignments with me.
I stopped questioning it after the fourth time.
The answer was almost certainly political manipulation, and if there was one thing I'd learned about Hyūga Yukino, it was that she became frighteningly effective whenever she decided she wanted something.
Apparently, what she wanted was to continue keeping an eye on me.
Literally and figuratively.
Not that I minded, it was reassuring to have her around.
Plus I did miss her when she was gone.
Ahem. Speaking of Yukino. she fully recovered. The lingering effects of her injuries disappeared, all the stiffness vanished, she had no lasting issues with the battlefield. Within a couple of weeks since being redeployed, she was fighting exactly as she had before.
Maybe better.
War had a way of sharpening people.
I wasn't convinced that was healthy, but it was effective. Very effective.
A month after our fight with Minato, Yukino was promoted to Jōnin.
A week later, I was too.
Nobody seemed surprised. Honestly, I wasn't either. At some point, people had stopped asking if we were strong enough for the rank and started asking why we didn't already have it.
The answer, as always, was paperwork.
Paperwork remained the most powerful force in the Five Great Nations.
Regardless, we'd been promoted, so that was good enough.
In other news... Minato became terrifying. Like, more terrifying than he already was, which was saying something. Every month he learned something new. Every month he became faster. Every month his Flying Thunder God improved and the Rasengan became second nature to him. His tactical instincts somehow became even more ridiculous.
At one point, he predicted an enemy retreat route three days before it happened.
Three.
Days.
I didn't really have a mind for tactics, and I hated that, but it wasn't something I could realistically compete with the guy for, so I ignored it and focused on other areas.
The Strength of a Hundred Seal on my forehead had finished accumulating enough chakra to be made use of. A little over a year's worth.
Ready.
Waiting.
Dormant.
The diamond mark had become a permanent fixture on my forehead, a loaded weapon I hoped I wouldn't need to use anytime soon, as I believed some techniques were best treated as insurance policies.
And if I did need to use it, I hoped it was to get rid of Hanzo.
As for my other techniques, my shadow clone limit increased to five. Big nice number. Honestly, five wasn't all that bad, not bad at all if I do say so myself.
Another thing, my training weights got out of hand.
Again.
Each one eventually reached a full ton.
One.
Ton.
Each.
At that point, I stopped wearing them during missions because stealth became difficult when every step damaged the terrain. Apparently leaving footprints that looked like artillery impacts was considered suspicious behavior.
Who knew?
Being a ninja required surprising amounts of subtlety.
Something else I was proud of was that now, opening the Fifth Gate was something I could more or less do casually without any backlash whatsoever. I really don't know if it's because I trained the gates at this early age or what, but it felt too soon even still. Regardless, Might Dai looked proud enough to cry, so I was happy with the results of my labor.
Of course, since the Fifth Gate was something I could reliably use, opening the Sixth gate was also something I could do without worrying too much, but that one exhausted me afterwards, so I've only used it like twice the whole year to fight some elite Sand Jonin who were being problematic. As for the Seventh... Well, I kept that one for emergencies. So far I hadn't yet needed to use it in battle, but I did open it several times in training to see what it felt like.
It's crazy. The Strong-Fist Taijutsu techniques of the sixth and seventh gate are on a whole other level of busted. I'll leave it at that for now.
Enough about what I can do, the problems are still the things I've yet to master. The Raikage's Lightning Cloak recreation project continued to no avail.
One could say it continued poorly as every attempt produced another incomplete version.
Bootleg lightning armor.
Discount lightning armor.
Lightning armor at home.
Still.
Each version was slightly better than the last.
The theory remained simple, wrap the body in lightning, increase speed, increase reaction time, increase strength and durability. Then become terrifying.
The execution disagreed, and I was always missing something, as it mostly only ever increased my speed and gave me lightning strikes among blowing me up at times when I tried new methods.
Work in progress...
And while discussing my WIP, I can't not mention the thorn in my arse. The Rasengan remained even more stubborn. I still couldn't successfully fuse Lightning Release into it.
Every attempt exploded.
Every.
Single.
Attempt.
Sometimes immediately.
Sometimes after several seconds.
One memorable version exploded before I finished naming it.
Progress.
Probably.
The unstable variant worked beautifully, though.
The Rasengan Railgun became one of my favorite techniques to use whenever I was solo or in a small group, as it was terrifyingly unsafe, but also wonderfully effective. Very few people could avoid being assassinated by a tactical mini-nuke flying at mach speeds from a few hundred meters away, and Yukino's Byakugan helped a lot as my trusty scope and locator for the detonation zone. We were a good little sniper team with her whenever we needed to be.
I considered that a successful compromise.
For now.
Eventually I'd figure out the proper Jutsu, at which point the potency should drastically increase.
...
The year passed faster than expected, and now something rather interesting came to my attention as a summons arrived.
Three names.
Mine.
Minato's.
Yukino's.
Immediate deployment.
Top priority.
That alone was enough to get my attention.
The briefing was what kept it.
Entire platoons were disappearing. Not random patrols. Not isolated teams. Entire platoons of veteran experienced shinobi, vanished without a trace. The names attached to those disappearances made matters worse as a lot of them were from Konoha's elite clans.
Hyūga units.
Uchiha units.
The sort of shinobi who weren't supposed to disappear, and the ones who were Konoha's backbone.
Rumors spread quickly across the front lines of a new weapon. Some sort of secret Sand Village project and nobody knew exactly what it was, but we all knew it had to be something devious if it was powerful enough to erase elite units.
Which was why we were being sent.
Not to destroy it.
Not yet.
First, we had to find out what it was.
The mission was both intelligence gathering and a rescue operation, as we believed there could still be survivors of those platoons.
Leading the operation were two names that immediately made the room feel smaller.
Hatake Sakumo.
The White Fang of the Leaf.
And Kato Dan.
One of Konoha's strongest shinobi and a candidate for the seat of the Fourth Hokage.
The moment I saw both names attached to the same mission, a familiar feeling settled into my stomach. The kind every shinobi eventually learned to trust. The kind that usually meant things were about to go horribly wrong.
Looking back?
That should have been my warning.
...