Mokuton Root Agent #2

Disclaimer - I don't own anything. Please support the official release.

Mokuton Root Agent (SI)

Chapter 2

–Hagoromo Otsutsuki–

Yamato was the only one of the kids who had a significant enough Senju ancestry, that too directly from Hashirama.

That was the reason he was able to get a significantly weakened version of the famed Mokuton.

It was also the reason he was dying.

His soul is not able to handle the power of the Mokuton without his soul having been touched with the chakra of six paths.

Sadly, that chakra was only available to the reincarnations of his sons.

Danzo hiding him from Hiruzen and training him in secret only made the matters worse.

In Root, he was trained that weakness means death.

Showing pain means weakness which leads to death.

Complaining about pain is weakness.

Exhibiting weakness is a surefire way to die in the field.

Due to this upbringing, young Tenzo never told anyone of the random fainting sessions when he used Wood Release or the excruciating pain he must feel in his mind every time he tried to bring about even more of the prowess of the Wood Release, straining his soul even more in the process.

The sad truth was that he had very little time left.

Soon, his soul would be crushed under the weight of the growing power of Mokuton and his body would be overrun by its power and turn into a tree.

Hagoroma was keeping a watch on the poor boy as his soul kept fracturing more and more each passing day that he trained his power, desperately hoping that somebody would find out about his situation and grant him some measure of reprieve before his unfortunate death.

He was just another innocent soul caught up in this cycle of hate and violence.

And after a few days of watching over him, what he feared came to pass.

Watching his soul just dissipate after being crushed under the Mokuton's weight was very depressing.

Even then he held on to the hope that he might feel his soul enter the Pure Land, even in a partially broken state. But after a few scans, he could see that his soul had truly just withered away, unable to hold onto its form long enough for it to enter the Pure Land.

He mourned his passing in silence.

He cursed himself for his inability to interfere in the workings of the world before it was time.

Hmm?

Just then, as if some higher entity had decided to send some reprieve for him in this situation, a tear in space appeared right at the edge of his senses.

From that tear, came an extremely battered soul.

It had traces of void energy on it that continued to burn it to nothing but the soul somehow valiantly tried to fight it off for its survival.

Interested in the soul and the peculiar timing of its arrival, Hagoromo summoned it near him.

Upon closer inspection, to his astonishment, he could see the soul slowly winning against the void energy.

Not only that, it seemed to adapt and assimilate the void energy as if it were his very own.

The only individual that he knew of who could do that was Shibai Otsutsuki, the head of the Otsutsuki clan.

But he was an aberration in the natural order of the universe.

Someone who became extremely strong because of his mutation.

He was the reason the Otsutsuki clan wandered around planet to planet freely, digesting genetic information and killing off local inhabitants en masse, and committing genocide frequently.

If this soul could somehow reach Shibai's level, he could help the universe get rid of the scourge of the Otsutsuki clan, rather than just hoping for them to leave Earth alone.

His eyes lit up as he thought of the perfect way to introduce this soul into the shinobi world.

That would help him accomplish both his plans: Driving off the Otsutsuki and stopping the cycle of hate and violence using Chakra.

Coating it completely in a layer of his spare chakra that he had gathered in the millenia of being a husk of his previous self, burning off any remaining void energy in the process, he cocooned it and sent the soul towards the dead body of young Tenzo.

With the hope that with the six paths energy present around the soul and its own special properties of assimilation, it would be able to use the Mokuton to its fullest and stop the shinobi wars.

Watching the soul float through dimensions and land into the body of Tenzo, he fought the urge to pace around in the dimension where space was meaningless, worrying about the consequences of his decision.

At this point, all he could do was hope that he had made the right decision.

________________________________________________________________

Near ANBU headquarters

–Inabi Uchiha–

Watching the ANBU hop around on rooftops, heading towards the nearby ANBU headquarters was extremely frustrating.

Ever since the Kyuubi attack, they have been increasingly sidelined from thier very jobs.

They were literally sidelined to the edges of the village as well.

On top of that, the entire Uchiha clan district was on round-the-clock surveillance.

The nerve of the ANBU, thinking the Sharingan wouldn't be able to detect them snooping on us with their pesky seals.

Did they forget that the Uchiha clan has records of hundreds of years of dealings with the Uzumaki clan?

After so long, people tend to pick up on skills.

Especially the Uchiha clan members with the advanced Sharingan.

It was the ultimate tool for accelerated learning.

Reading the reports of yet another case being solved by the ANBU that should have actually been in our jurisdiction was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Fugaku was being extremely pathetic in the way he had been dealing with the Uchiha clan's situation.

All of this arose from his decision to follow Danzo's orders despite the Hokage ordering otherwise.

The civilians never saw us fighting the Kyuubi, just running away from it.

Never mind that we were the ones who carried the most civilians away from the battle sites, thereby saving them.

But no. They only remember the martyrs.

Just as he was about to head to HQ to give Fugaku a piece of his mind, he sensed a fluctuating chakra signature.

Being one of the few natural sensors of the Uchiha clan, he was trained extremely hard since his birth to be able to detect any chakra signatures to the most minute levels.

The higher-level chakra signatures were easy. He had the Sharingan for that.

For the highest level of chakra, like the tailed beasts' chakra, you wouldn't even need sensory abilities of any kind. Your own body warns you to run as far as you can from those monsters.

What his abilities were honed for were the smaller ones. The chakra signatures that were hard to find or were being actively hidden.

Through the mastery of those abilities, he was able to hone in on one of the smaller ANBUs jumping wobbly from one rooftop to the other.

Their chakra signature was extremely weird.

It was strong, above average even, for a moment and then it became as weak as a newborn baby.

It was like nothing he had ever seen before.

But seeing that it was the ANBU and considering the already rocky relationship between the Uchiha clan and the higher-ups of Konoha, he wisely decided to not stick his nose where it didn't belong and prepared to head to HQ.

Just as he turned around and jumped onto the next rooftop, he felt the ANBU's signature turn weak, even weaker than before, and then simply disappear.

Shocked, he looked back only to see the ANBU falling down from the rooftop.

Activating the Sharingan on instinct, he was shocked as he saw that the body had no active chakra flow anymore.

Which could only mean one thing.

Death due to chakra exhaustion.

But how could it be? Their chakra appeared strong before.

Deciding to get to the bottom of the situation, he turned back and went slowly towards the gathering crowd that had surrounded the ANBU that were checking on the small ANBU.

He recognized Kakashi Hatake between them, giving out orders swiftly to the gathering ANBU.

Last he heard, he was being promoted to the position of ANBU Captain.

How he gets any shinobi work done is beyond him. What with his silver hair being out in the open and it being an extremely recognisable trait.

Trying to find any clue regarding this incident, he activated my Sharingan to see if he could see anything that he might have missed before.

Focusing on the body and the rooftop where he fell down, he couldn't find anything.

Before he could look further though, he felt a pin pricking feeling on my neck.

Searching around for its source, he looked only to see Kakashi Hatake looking straight into my eyes.

I turned off his Sharingan and looked away immediately, breathing heavily.

Damn, that bastard was terrifying.

I guess he wasn't called an S-rank ninja for nothing then.

Wiping his sweat, he turned around when he heard his name being whispered but he had already sensed him coming from far away.

It was hard not to sense him. It burned even brighter than Kakashi's chakra signature. Then again, the clan leader was known to be in the race for the Hokage seat.

"What happened here?" asked Fugaku Uchiha in an authoritative tone.

________________________________________________________________

Word Count - 1591

For extra chapters - Patreon