The Chaos Scroll – whatever it truly was, and whatever impossible origin it had – was irrevocably, a source of relief for Yohei. It wasn't just a potential path to power; it was a lifeline, a promise that maybe, just maybe, he and his mother wouldn't be crushed by the madness of the world.
…Or so he hoped.
He had no idea how it worked, after all.
The only reason he wasn't panicking about the three "gifts" he'd already received being the last ones was because he could feel it. Somewhere deeper than skin, deeper than blood or bone, sat the presence of the foreign object tethered to him. It wasn't sleeping, exactly – more like waiting. Heavy. Expectant. Watching the world with him from inside.
But without knowing what would wake it again, Yohei couldn't rely on it. For now, he had to squeeze every drop of use out of what he already had. That meant testing, understanding, and developing the two Bloodline Limits – and learning the technique drawn across the last scroll: Extreme Muscle Assault.
"What the hell!?"
…He might have been a bit overeager.
"Shi-"
Which is why, when his mother – dragged early from sleep by a chorus of grunts, strained breathing, and the ominous creak-creak-creak of tortured wood – burst into his room, she found her son in a state that would haunt her until the day she died.
Half his muscles were grotesquely inflated in uneven patches, like someone had tried to sculpt him out of balloons and raw meat. His skin was flushed red and mottled with bruises from overuse, and every breath came with a wheeze of pain. He had clearly spent the entire night practicing the technique without stopping.
"YOHEI!"
-~=~-
A few moments – and several aborted, half-muttered explanations – later, Yohei was lying on his bed, wincing as the pain finally caught up with him. The adrenaline that had kept him moving all night had long since burned out, leaving only the raw protest of abused muscle. His mother sat beside him in a wooden chair, both palms pressed gently over his chest. Soft white light glowed from her hands. Her worried frown was almost as uncomfortable as the pressure of her jutsu.
"Trapezius and deltoids severely overstressed… biceps and triceps full of minor tears… flexor group in the forearms cramped so tightly I'm surprised you can even move your fingers-"
By reflex, Yohei tried to close his hand. Pain shot up his arm like fire, and he hissed. Nanami's glare landed on him instantly; her hands pressed more firmly, silently commanding him to stop.
"Your pectorals are strained from repeated over-contraction," she continued, voice tightening as her concern edged toward anger. "And your ribs – your intercostals are overstretching just from breathing. You pushed yourself so hard that breathing started injuring you."
She exhaled sharply through her nose. "Abdominals swollen and inflamed, on the brink of fatigue failure; lumbar muscles spasming; quadriceps overworked to partial fiber tearing; hamstrings overstretched; calves cramped so badly the tissue is still knotted."
The healing light dimmed as she released the jutsu. When she looked into his eyes, the swirl of emotions in hers – fear, frustration, confusion – hit harder than the pain in his body.
"Yohei… what were you doing?" she asked. She was aiming for stern, but the question came out closer to pleading.
Looking at her like this, knowing he'd scared her so deeply, Yohei's first instinct was to tell her everything.
About the Chaos Scroll.
About the gifts.
About the memories of another world – one without chakra, without ninjas, a world where Konoha existed only in fiction.
But he didn't.
He couldn't.
He tried to justify it – talking himself in circles about possible butterfly effects, about Root listening through the walls, about how she might panic and assume he was under a genjutsu. But he knew they were excuses.
The truth was simpler, and far more terrifying.
He was afraid.
Afraid that if she knew the truth, she wouldn't see him as her son anymore.
Because there was a difference – a frightening, visceral difference – between the Yohei she raised and the Yohei lying on the bed now. Ever since graduation, ever since the memories resurfaced, he had struggled to understand exactly who he was.
For most of the previous day he hadn't known whether he was Yohei with another life's memories… or a stranger wearing Yohei's body and mind like an ill-fitting coat.
He didn't know if he would ever find an answer.
And he wasn't sure, deep down, that he even wanted one.
So he reined the impulse in and instead blurted out the most believable lie he could come up with.
"I-" he started, only to cough as the pain spiked, "I, uh… made a jutsu?"
"What."
Not a very good lie. But he was building it as he went.
"It's just– A few months ago, we got the clan kids from class to show off their jutsu," he said quickly – because the best lies needed at least some kernel of truth in them, "and there's this boy, Chōji – he's an Akimichi – and when he showed his, he puffed up like a balloon. It was kinda funny but we didn't laugh because Shikamaru said Chōji would get super mad if we did, and Shikamaru's really smart, so-"
"Yohei."
"Right! But then he said the grown-ups in his clan can make just an arm or a leg huge. Like, room-sized huge. And that his dad can become an actual giant-"
"I know how the Akimichi's Hiden works, Yohei." She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "But that technique is something their clan has refined and bred for, for much longer than Konoha has even existed. It's not something you can just copy-"
"But I did!" he insisted, a little too loudly.
She gave him a dry, unimpressed stare… then looked at his bruised, swollen body. His face flushed hot with embarrassment.
"I'm serious, I did it!" he repeated, even as shame burned at his ears. "Well… not exactly the same, I guess. It doesn't make me a giant. But it makes my muscles really big. Stronger. Tougher. I'm only like this because I… uh… wanted to make a good first impression on my jōnin-sensei tomorrow, so I may have pushed too far and messed up – but it works!"
Her skepticism wavered as he rambled – not because he was being particularly persuasive, but because he wasn't actually trying to persuade her at all. He sounded… earnest. Honest.
"And it doesn't look like what I walked in on?" she asked carefully. "No deformations? No spasms? No sudden pain spikes?"
"No-" he began shaking his head before wincing at the stab in his neck. He paused, thinking. "Well, kind of? All of my muscles get equally bigger. No spasms or deformation. But it does hurt if I use it for a long time."
"How long?" she asked, brow furrowing.
"A couple minutes?" he guessed. He almost shrugged before remembering that would hurt, too. "I didn't think to time it."
"You should have," she muttered – though her voice had gone faint, drifting into thought as she turned slightly away. She bit at a nail, eyes narrowing as she mumbled something under her breath.
"Mom?"
She looked back at him – and there was a new, unmistakable glint in her eyes.
"Can you close your eyes for me, sweetie?"
"Sure…?" he answered, uncertain, but obeying.
She took his hand. Even that small motion made him grunt in discomfort until she adjusted her grip to spare the worst of his bruising. Once he relaxed again, something thrummed against his skin – subtle at first, them pulsing like a cold flame.
Chakra.
But then it deepened. Thickened. It grew denser and heavier, and warm in a way that has noting to do with heat, with an intensity that tingled pleasantly on his skin. It made his arm feel more alive.
"Can you feel the difference?" she asked softly.
He nodded.
A tiny muffled noise – half a squeal, and half a squeak – escaped her. She wriggled in place in barely-contained excitement.
"Can you mimic it?"
Rather than answer, Yohei let his chakra rise. He coaxed it, nudged its proportions, shifting the balance between physical and spiritual energies just as the scroll had explained. The texture changed – warmer, heavier, fuller.
"Mom…?"
He opened his eyes.
Nanami had both hands clasped over her mouth, shoulders scrunched, her whole upper body bouncing in place like she was trying to keep from exploding into noise. When she saw his eyes open, she did squeal – an unrestrained, joyous little sound – and then laughed, brimming with pride.
"Yohei! Do you know what that is?"
"Yang Chakra?" he said, more statement than question.
"Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Where did you learn to do it!?"
"Shikamaru explained it when I asked about Chōji's jutsu," he lied as easily as he breathed. "He said that instead of mixing mental and physical energy evenly, the Akimichi use way more physical energy – like the Inuzuka, while the Nara and the Yamanaka do the opposite. So I just… kept trying until I did it."
"You just did it," she repeated, staring at him as if he'd pulled the moon out of the sky. Then she broke into bubbly laughter, practically glowing. "Baby, that is not how it works for most people. Do you know what that means?"
"I-"
"It means you have a Yang affinity! Oh, this is great!" she crowed, cutting him off in her eagerness. "When your chakra paper got wet I felt awful, because I thought I wouldn't be able to teach you any jutsu – but if you have Yang Nature, then you can learn iryōjutsu!"
"…does that mean I won't need to read those brick-sized biology books you have?" he asked hopefully.
Nanami burst into a full-bodied laugh, bending forward as she hugged her stomach. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes before she wiped them away and gave him a couple of fond pats on the shoulder.
"That – that was a good one," she managed between fading giggles. "Of course you will, silly. How else would you know what you're treating? And we'll need to get your control up to snuff, too – but that's something you can talk to your Jōnin-sensei about."
Yohei blinked, confused. "What's so great about having a Yang affinity, then?"
His mother tapped her mouth with her finger, thinking.
"It's not a perfect comparison," she began, "but it's like the difference between a regular shinobi making a person-sized fireball and someone with a Fire Nature making one big enough to fill a room – while spending the same amount of chakra."
She raised a finger.
"Medical ninjutsu, at least the kind actually used to heal and not just diagnose, is primarily Yang Release. And that's rare outside of clans. Because most of us medic-nin have to learn it the hard way, we run into all sorts of problems: not producing enough Yang chakra to treat severe injuries, or molding it too slowly for emergencies, or wasting too much regular chakra in the conversion process. That's why many medic-nin exhaust themselves even when their chakra reserves should last a lot longer."
Then her face lit up – soft, beaming, and hopeful.
"If you have a Yang affinity, we might even be able to land you an internship at the hospital as a Genin! Isn't that great? You could work with your mama!"
"…right." Yohei cleared his throat. "I, uh… I think I should probably check with my Jōnin-sensei first. You know – see if I'll even have the time for it."
Nanami puffed out a small, disappointed huff.
"I suppose," she said, sounding distinctly morose before fixing him with the stinky eye. "You're not just saying that because you want to avoid studying medicine, are you?"
"…no?"
Yohei discovered that lying was a lot harder when she asked a question directly. Especially while holding diagnostic chakra only a few centimeters from his jugular.
She squinted at him, utterly unconvinced.
"You know I'll make you study it even if you don't want to become a medic-nin, right?"
"…yes."
"Good!" she declared, clapping her hands.
In one smooth motion she formed a set of seals-
Rat → Ram → Dog
-just as Yohei's memories supplied their names.
A bluish-white orb of chakra bloomed into existence between her palms, warm and steady. She pressed it to his neck, and Yohei melted with a groan he really hoped sounded like relief rather than despair. The warmth seeped through his battered muscles, soothing the throbbing pain.
"Then I think we can start with what time we have while I get you fixed up for your registration," she said brightly. "No time like the present!"
He let out another groan – carefully matching the tone of the previous one – as he resigned himself to the incoming lecture.
"Yes, ma'am."