"You look like shit." Naruko said flatly as the toad sage stumbled into my room, reeking of sake and vomit.
"No argument here, kid. I feel like it too." Jiraiya pulled up a chair, turned it backwards, and slumped into it, folding his arms atop the backrest and burying his head.
He just sat there.
So long, in fact, that I started to wonder if he was ever going to speak.
Finally, he looked up and met Naruko's eyes. "I'm sorry about last night." he said, voice rough but sincere. "I shouldn't have said what I did. I wasn't at my best."
He sounded genuine, but he was a master shinobi—hard to trust at face value. Naruko didn't seem to be buying it either. Her brow was drawn tight, eyes narrow with suspicion. Jiraiya grimaced under her silence, his chakra swirling with shame and regret.
"You don't look at your best either," I offered, just to break the tension before it got awkward.
"Thank your little girlfriend for that," he muttered—but there was no heat in it. Just tired amusement… and something like existential relief bleeding through his chakra.
"Which one?" I asked without thinking, still distracted by the odd mix of emotions in his presence.
"'Which one?' he says." Jiraiya echoed, incredulous. It took a moment for my brain to catch up with my mouth—and when it did, I flushed deep red. Naruko, thankfully, didn't react either way.
"Creepy eyes," he clarified. "Hit me with one of the nastiest genjutsu I've ever seen. I couldn't break out. How the hell does that even work?"
I paused, thinking of whether to answer that or not. I decided to elaborate. It's not like he could reverse engineer it with some vague comments.
"The human mind's a weird thing," I said. "Once it believes something, it doesn't take much to keep it going. Just the occasional nudge here and there—eventually, it starts doing all the work for you."
"'Occasional nudge,' huh…" Jiraiya stared into the middle distance, clearly reliving some personal nightmare. Whatever Kuro had shown him… it really left a mark.
"Which one did she use?" I asked.
"'Death of a Thousand Regrets,'" he said grimly, as though the name alone curled his blood.
I winced.
"Yeah… that one's brutal."
"It was… enlightening."
For a man of his age and experience?
"I'll bet."
He gave a bitter chuckle. "Also, I may or may not have bet that I'd take Blondie here as my student and do whatever she says for a month."
Naruko arched an eyebrow. "You're actually going along with that?"
Jiraiya sighed deeply. "Look, kid. I'm sorry, alright. How about we start over?" He offered the most sincere smile I'd seen on him.
Naruko watched with the same suspicion but took pity on him when his smile began to falter.
"Fine," Naruko said, smiling warmly and reaching out a hand. "I'm Naruko, future Hokage!"
"Jiraiya." the toad sannin replied with a chuckle.
They shook hands.
"…There are some things I need to tell you, Naruko. But first—I have to talk to my sensei." Jiraiya said his smile was still there but his tone was surprisingly solemn.
He stood up.
"See you around, kids." he said then disappeared in a Blur of movement neither myself nor Naruko could keep track of.
And just like that, the toad sannin was gone.
Now all I had to do was ask Kuro what the hell she was thinking, throwing that jutsu at one of Konoha's legendary shinobi.
XXXXXXXXX
Naruko went to school and Kuro showed up.
She was in an exceptionally good mood and spent the first couple minutes we had alone cuddling up to me and mauling my face. I managed to calm her down long enough to come up for air and question why she used our Genjutsu on Jiraiya.
The answer was as simple as I had guessed.
"He hurt Ko-chan."
I couldn't really argue with that but maybe add some qualifiers to prevent more extreme incidents.
"Alright how about next time you ask who was hurt what they want done you know to prevent misunderstandings."
Kuro seemed confused for a brief moment before the parallels between this situation and her actions with her mother hit, then she almost started hyperventilating.
"Hey, hey, hey. It's okay, nobody is mad at you. Not even Jiraiya." I said holding her close.
"Just...ask next time okay."
Kuro promised she would and that ticking time bomb was forestalled. Forestalled not diffused. I had no illusions of what I was getting into when I accepted Kuro. There will most likely be more incidents like these in the future for different reasons. I'll just have to be prepared.
Then my door swung open with a BANG! It hit the wall so hard it rattled the room. Then a green blur came flipping into the room before landing on the guard rail of my bed and striking a pose.
"Izuku! My dearest friend!"
Team 10 was back.
XXXXXXXXX
Hiruzen chewed thoughtfully on his pipe, the smoke curling lazily toward the ceiling as he absorbed the latest intelligence his shadow clones had brought back.
Orochimaru was planning something.
He had many suspicions—plausible theories built on fragments and whispers—but nothing concrete. Not yet. Still, he'd managed to inflict significant damage on the infrastructure of the so-called Hidden Sound. The horrors he'd uncovered in those tunnels had conjured memories of the Second Shinobi War—the worst of it.
Not quite there, he admitted. As depraved as Orochimaru's actions were, they still lacked the absolute hatred that had defined that dark era. But even so… it turned his stomach that someone he had once loved as a daughter could even approach such depths. He understood now why Danzō had considered letting her fall. If his old friend had thought it necessary, he would have sacrificed her in a heartbeat—for the good of the village.
And yet, as with so many of Danzō's choices, no matter the intention, the judgment had been flawed.
Thankfully, those powers had been stripped from Danzō's hands. Hiruzen now had the chance to steer their village toward true prosperity—and to atone for his own many failures.
With one of his dearest friends at his side, still serving their home.
Forgiveness was such a beautiful thing.
He sensed Jiraiya's chakra before the man even entered. The door opened and his student walked in with much less swagger than the norm.
"Sensei," Jiraiya said simply, before slumping into the chair opposite the desk. He stared at nothing in particular, his expression tired with repeated contemplation, a tired dog coming back to the same old bone.
Hiruzen offered a nod, then returned to his paperwork, giving his student space to gather his thoughts.
The silence lingered for several moments.
"Sensei?" Jiraiya's voice finally broke the stillness, low and vulnerable. That tone—so rare now—was a relic from the days when he was just a boy who looked up to the man across from him as more a father than a teacher.
"Am I a coward?"
"Yes."
The reply came instantly.
The silence that followed was not stunned. Jiraiya had always been introspective—an artist at heart. This truth, harsh as it was, did not surprise him.
The fact that his sensei confirmed it so mercilessly surprised him even less.
The question now was what he would do with that truth.
Hiruzen watched him closely, hope stirring in his old chest—an old hope he had long buried. A hope he had dared not believe in, not until those words left his student's mouth.
"Sensei," Jiraiya said, and when he looked up, his eyes burned with purpose. "I want the Hat."
Hiruzen's answering smile nearly split his weathered face.
XXXXXXXXX
My sensei had not explained what I had done in my fight against my bespectacled assailant, telling me that Gai-sensei would be much better for this particular subject. Suppressing my curiosity was painful, but my sensei made it perfectly clear that playing around with whatever I had done in that fight would kill me, so I left it alone and focused on genjutsu for Kuro and chakra control in the meantime.
Now that Gai-sensei was back, I could finally get some answers—with the added bonus of me being too hospitalized for his usual training from hell.
How naïve.
Sweat poured down my back as I jogged in Konoha's midday heat with weights strapped to my arms and legs.
"The Eight Gates is the most dangerous and most powerful taijutsu technique ever devised. Stumbling onto it is the most controversial of fortunes, young Izuku—one that could have ended in your death. But do not fear," Gai-sensei said as he jogged ahead of me wearing at least ten times as much weight.
On his hands.
At least Lee had the decency to remain upright while flexing on me. Then again, I thought as I glanced to the side, taking in Lee's crimson face as he huffed and puffed with exertion while jogging beside me with at least twice my weights, he might just be too close to a heat stroke to bother.
"Thankfully you did not engage in a great deal of movement while your Gates were open, so while your chakra system is significantly strained, a seal to prevent use of it is more than enough to leave your body perfectly capable of expressing your youth!" Gai-sensei exclaimed, picking up the pace and forcing Lee and me to keep up if we wished to hear his lecture.
"You can do it, Ku-kun!" Kuro cheered me on from the shade under one of the trees surrounding the training ground.
The other members of Team 10 had dropped out after the first twenty laps—not because they were tired, but to take part in their own personalized training. Both were running through kata—Neji doing the Jūken, and Tenten with a variety of weapons.
"There are Eight Gates: the Gates of Opening, Healing, Life, Pain, Limit, View, Wonder, and Death," Gai-sensei continued, stopping in place.
Gai-sensei flipped to his feet, his voice losing all joviality.
"Opening the Gate of Death is, as its name implies, the promise of death with no cure," Gai-sensei said. Lee and I took his stopping as a sign to pop a squat and catch our breaths.
Well, I did. Lee just kept jogging in place.
"The Eight Gates exist in order to limit the flow of chakra within an individual's body. Normally, no one can use more than 20% of their body's full potential—the brain's way of protecting us from harming ourselves through overexertion. With intense training, we can learn to remove these limiters, referred to as 'opening' the gates. With each opened gate, we gain access to more and more of our body's chakra, thus increasing our physical strength and speed."
"Though it is also possible to open a gate unintentionally in exceptional circumstances—like a battle to the death," Gai-sensei said while looking at me.
Wait, is that what they thought happened?
"I didn't open the gate by mistake, Gai-sensei."
"You did not?" The response didn't come from Gai-sensei, but from my official teacher—
The Third Hokage.
Everybody jumped at the seemingly sudden appearance of the Hokage, everyone except for Gai-sensei of course. Naturally, everyone moved to show respect, but a wave forestalled all that in lieu of speaking to me.
I, on the other hand, wasn't shocked. I hadn't sensed him before his arrival, but I was growing very comfortable with my teacher's habit of appearing unannounced.
"No," I replied to my sensei's shadow clone without missing a beat. It had taken some time to learn to tell the difference, but with my improving sensory skills and my sensei's willingness to inform me whenever he was a shadow clone, I was picking up the nuances in his chakra that let me tell which was which.
"Then how did you come across such knowledge? The Gates are a forbidden technique that is not easily accessed or mastered."
"I found the gate at the base of my spine—"
"The Gate of Pain," Gai-sensei specified for me.
"I found the Gate of Pain in my spine while searching for my chakras."
"Chakras?" my sensei questioned, both older men looking at me like I had said something ridiculous.
"You know, the chakras. They're mentioned all the time in Buddhism."
"You opened the Gate of Pain while looking for chakras depicted in Buddhist legend?" Gai-sensei said in what sounded like awe, while my sensei sighed with what could only be described as exasperated pride.
"Yes?" I said hesitantly, beginning to realize maybe I had made another oopsie.
"The chakras are myth, Izuku—like Buddha himself. It is a religion," my sensei said.
That didn't sound right.
"But the monks of the Fire Temple are said to possess secret techniques."
"They do, but they are no doubt a result of secret chakra techniques, not… prayer to the Great Buddha," my sensei said with a chuckle.
"But I found them."
"What?" my sensei said, his face completely blank with incomprehension.
"I found the chakras."
Silence reigned over the clearing as both my teachers looked at me like I was a particularly odd duck.
"Show me," my sensei sighed, placing a liver-spotted palm on my head.
I cast the Mind Meld jutsu and replayed the memory of finding the Root Chakra at the base of my spine. After having to replay the memory four times at my sensei's request, he let go of my head and pulled out his pipe, lighting it with a negligent flex of chakra before taking a long, deep drag of what smelled like… weed?
"You made assumptions on jutsu theory based on religious doctrine?"
"Yes?"
"Why?" my sensei said in a tone that was almost pleading.
I winced at the stress piling up in his chakra. He was an old man, and this couldn't be good for his heart.
"Why not?" I asked hesitantly.
The Third Hokage took another drag of his pipe and let out a ring of smoke, as though expelling all his worries.
"Why not, indeed," he said with a chuckle, which Gai-sensei joined.
I was confused at their incredulous reaction. These people could punch boulders to smithereens and fling elements left and right with some hand gestures and meditation, yet they drew the line at Buddha being real?
Though, on reflection, I realized I was the weird one here. Jutsu happens every day. Jutsu had rules. Jutsu made sense. The existence of jutsu—and the occasional anomaly like incorporeal chakra entities—did not, in fact, mean that there was an afterlife, a reincarnation cycle, and a Buddha who oversaw it.
"There is no proof of the soul or an afterlife?" I asked.
"There is," my sensei said, causing everyone in the clearing except Gai-sensei to stare at him like he had grown a second head. The stare from Neji was particularly intense. "But there is nothing that indicates a cycle of reincarnation or sentient entities that rule over it…" My sensei paused here, as though rethinking that statement, before his eyes widened.
"At least, I thought there wasn't," he said, his free hand beginning to comb through his goatee.
"So,there is an indication of beings that run the afterlife?" Neji asked, his voice more emotional than I had ever heard it—then again, that wasn't a high bar to clear.
My sensei looked at the young Hyūga, who seemed to realize in real time who exactly he was speaking to. But my sensei must have been aware of whatever reasoning existed behind the question, because his face softened with sympathy and he responded.
"There is a jutsu known as the Reaper Death Seal," he said, and we all listened with bated breath.
"It summons the Shinigami," my sensei said, and the jaws of all present dropped—except Gai-sensei's, who was simply unusually solemn.
At my incredulous look, my sensei shrugged.
"I assumed it was simply a very complex chakra construct, not a sentient being."
"You mean like the tailed beasts, who are sentient."
"True," my sensei said, conceding the point.
"You have given me much to consider, Izuku. Be aware—the only reason you are not facing punishment is that you had no intention to act on the existence of these 'chakras' beyond finding them before bringing this to me. But simply the act of finding them could have been dangerous for you."
"It is clear I have been much too lackadaisical in my supervision. From now on, I will be informed of all your potential projects before you pursue them. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sensei."
"That being said, for your own safety, we must be assured of what these chakras are. Find them again—I will stay connected and observe."
I nodded and popped a squat into a crisscross seat.
It took me about forty-five minutes to reach the level of stillness necessary to feel that spot of light at the base of my spine. With my chakra system sealed, I was doing it with what felt like pure spiritual energy. That changed things—it changed things a lot.
What had once felt like a pin of light now burned like the morning sun.
Then, as soon as my spiritual energy met that sun—
My mind was filled with blinding light.
—Scene break—
"He's dead?"
Cold, golden, slit-pupiled eyes rose from the open cadaver on the operating table, unblinking, unhurried.
The ROOT agent didn't answer. Words felt impossible with their throat locked tight, lungs working in shallow, trembling pulls. They'd reached this place on sheer conditioning alone. Even now, in the dim light of the underground theatre, they could still hear the whirl of a bō staff carving through the air—each sound chased by the memory of crushing impact.
There would be time to break down later.
The mission came first.
The mission always came first.
"So much potential… wasted." The Snake Sannin's sigh slithered out between sharp teeth as she set down a glistening scalpel. The click of steel against the tray echoed in the sterile silence.
"And now I have to go through the trouble of finding another mole." Her tongue flicked briefly across her lips. "What a bother."
She turned away from the table, the faint drag of her footsteps whispering over tile. "At least that one-eyed fool is gone. Though…" Her voice dipped into a purr. "…it seems Sensei has regained some of his old fire. That could be troublesome."
A pause. A shadow seemed to coil tighter around her frame.
"But then again—" her grin widened, impossibly slow "—what wondrous jutsu might the mighty Professor create… when driven to the depths of despair?"
Her eyes gleamed like molten gold.
"…I want to see it."
The laugh that followed curled along the agent's spine like icewater—soft, sensual, and predatory all at once.
"Ufufufufufu…"
It took every thread of ROOT discipline not to collapse in panic.
To test that… force of nature—purely for amusement. Madness. Just madness.
Of course they should have expected it.
A man like that could never have produced normal students.
Their gaze, almost against their will, shifted to the operating table—where the "patient" still breathed in shallow, twitching spasms.
The skin peeled back. The ribs parted.
Not normal at all.