36 Meeting

(A/N: Pretty big chapter for you guys today as a sorry for missing out on yesterday)

I woke up in a white room smelling of sanitizer, with sunlight filtering in through the windows and landing on the ground, making the dust floating through the air visible.

I sat up straight in the bed and looked around at the sterile environment I found myself in before my thoughts started to slowly filter back to me. With a start, I jumped right out of my bed, running to the door to go and find someone to confirm that Miki was alright.

Before I got to the door, however, the nurse came walking in.

"Oh, you're up, that's great news! It's been almost a week; we were starting to wonder when you'd wake up." My eyes widened a tad in surprise at the fact that I had been out for a week, but right now, that was second priority in my mind.

"You sit right here, and I'll go grab the doctor for you." Before she could leave, I grabbed her arm. Jumping, she turned back with a slightly startled face before seeing how serious my eyes looked and leveled her gaze at me.

"How's Miki? She's alright, right? Nothing else happened to her?" The questions started flying out of my mouth before I even knew what to say. The nurse's gaze softened at the rapid-fire questions and the concern behind my tone; she nodded her head in the affirmative.

"Yes, she'll be alright. She just needs a little time to adjust and cope with what had recently happened, but she'll be alright. In fact, she's not even in the hospital right now; one of the Yuki Clan elders came to pick her up." I nodded my head and let go of her arm as she turned around and left.

"Miki is okay then, which means the ANBU didn't have any issues when getting us to the hospital." A relieved smile worked its way onto my face as I sat there feeling good. "I did my job then and saved her."

My mind went back to that moment, seeing Aunt Tomiko lying there motionless with blood pouring out of her throat and with no life force coming from her. My eyes got misty, my stomach started to twist, and my anger began rising again.

'I've only known her and Miki for like three years, but it still hurts so bad having someone you consider close family be taken away.' My eyes hardened as I began to think about what I need to do from here. 'I need to become stronger, and I need to push my friends to become even stronger as well. As talented as everyone is, none of them really takes their training seriously except Benimaru and maybe Shin. I need to fix that when I get back to the academy.'

Looking up towards the ceiling, I heard a knock, and then the door opened. Looking over revealed an older man looking over a chart while humming to himself.

"Shiran, it's good to see you up and kicking again." He looked at me like a kindly old grandpa, which lightened my mood a little. "You should be all good to go once we're done here; I just have to update you on a couple of things. First is why you were in here; the reason is simply because you had chakra exhaustion. Your body forcefully broke the lock on your Uzumaki genes and used up a lot of chakra in the process, but now that you have done it, it should consume less chakra when you use them next. The second is because we found an anomaly in your body when we were monitoring you."

My gaze became serious as I looked at the doctor. "What was it? It's not anything that'll affect my shinobi career or growth as a shinobi, will it?"

The doctor hummed while looking at the paper. "I think definitely not; it should have no effect on you at all. In fact, we've seen a few ninjas come through here before that showed the same thing. It's just that, by village mandate, we have to tell you what it is just in case it were to affect you later on in your career."

"So what was it then?"

"Well, when we were monitoring your chakra flow, it seemed to be syncing perfectly with your breathing. Every time you took a breath, your chakra would respond. It's nothing too crazy; like I said, we've had quite a few people come through before where they had it as well, just none to the degree that yours did. It was quite fascinating to monitor, in all honesty."

"Hmm, that is weird. As long as it doesn't affect my actions and physical condition, then I'll just push it off then, Doc." The doctor chuckled and shook his head.

"I figured you would say that; it's pretty much what every other person has said when I told them that as well." The doctor looked disappointed and that reflected in his voice.

I smiled awkwardly and scratched the back of my neck. "Well, maybe someday I'll come back for some tests to try and figure out what it's all about once I'm a shinobi."

The doctor's eyes flashed just a second with an emotion I couldn't quite tell what it was, just that it made me feel weird. "That could be fun to try and find out what it means."

Feeling uncomfortable, I just wanted to get out of the hospital. "Is that all, or do you got more for me?"

He shook his head in the negative. "I don't have anything else to talk with you about, Shiran; you're all free to go. Your parents have already been notified about everything that has happened over the last week, and they should be expecting you home anytime soon." The doctor gave me a kindly smile and wave as he left out the door.

Getting up out of bed, I grabbed the handle and twisted the knob. Stepping out of the room and into the hallway, I noticed a chakra signature that wasn't familiar close to me in the ceiling. As I looked up there, I felt them flicker to stand in front of me.

"Shiran Uzumaki, the Uzukage has requested your time." Nodding my head a little puzzled, the ANBU flickered again, and I could sense him moving away from me. As I got out of the hospital, I began to head towards the Uzukage's building in the center of the village.

'Why would Lord Third want to see me? He should've gotten at least most of the report from the ANBU agents that arrived there at the end.' Shrugging my shoulders, I just decided to go with it.

Arriving at the building and telling the secretary what I was here for, she told me to wait a few minutes, and I could go in. While I was to see the Uzukage, my dad walked in and immediately came over to me and patted me on the shoulder.

"I'm proud of you, son." Hearing that, I almost wanted to start tearing up, but with the stiffened resolve I had gotten out of this whole situation, I kept it down and just nodded, keeping my eyes straight forward, focusing on one point of the wall.

"You guys can go in now," the secretary announced, and I got up and followed behind my dad up the stairs.

 Knock knock knock

"Come in," a deep imposing voice sounded from behind the door as we stepped through and closed the door behind us.

"Ahh, Haru, it's good to see you guys here." Looking at the Third Uzukage, I mentally appraised him. I had seen him a few times, especially with Dad being the clan head, but I'd never talked to him directly, so this was going to be a new experience.

The man was a tall and imposing figure with straight brown hair, dim red eyes, and standing at 6'4 (1.93 meters), he was a giant of a man. Surprisingly, Aoi Mihara had risen to kage level as a clanless ninja and also had fire release as his main type of jutsu.

What made him kage level though was his mastery over the fire, earth, and water elements. He was also a man with very high intelligence, both in the political aspect, not letting villages walk all over us, and also his battle IQ and the ability to manipulate the battlefield and the people on it to his advantage. He was so well renowned for it that his bingo book entry lists his IQ as the top thing to watch out for during a fight with him.

"It's great to see you too, Lord Third. It feels like we haven't seen you since the last festival that was held in the village."

Aoi laughed and then sighed sadly. "Yeah, I've been busy with the village as well as the other nations, especially recently." A knowing look was being shot between my dad and Aoi.

"Well anyway, the reason I called you guys here is that I wanted to ask about your version of the events and what happened leading up to it." The Third looked at me with a penetrating stare that made me feel like he could kill me with the flick of his fingers; that was not a good feeling.

"Well, this is what happened…"

"When I got there, I saw Aunt Tomiko dead, and he was going for Miki. Seeing Miki so full of hate and seeing Aunt Tomiko lying on the ground with no life in her, something snapped inside of me. All I knew is that I wanted to protect Miki and get revenge for Aunt Tomiko. I just wanted him dead." Unconsciously, chakra was starting to be sent to my eyes, and I got confused when everything got clearer and slower.

In the moment of confusion, I looked at my dad, and his eyes widened. What I couldn't see was that my eyes had taken on a different pattern than the usual lavender color that was my eyes.

"Is that really what I think it is?" I looked at my dad as one piece of info dug its way out of the corners of my mind. 'That's right, I had gotten a dojutsu when I spun that wheel.'

"What is it, Haru? I've never seen a dojutsu that is an X and O. What does it mean?"

(A/N: There is a picture of what it looks like in the auxiliary chapter: Various Pictures)

"I've seen it once, but it was only in an article from 150 years ago during the warring states era. It was a dojutsu that had somehow mutated when a clan member had a kid with an Uchiha. During that time, it was super dangerous to let anyone know about it, both in the clan and out, so only the clan leader was told and it got written down on a scroll. Since none of the kids had inherited the dojutsu, they hypothesized that it was a one-off mutation, but I guess maybe they were wrong; otherwise, how would it have shown up again?"

"Hmm, that is interesting. Did they have anything written about it at all or no?"

"No, all they had was a name. They had named it the 'Kanjogan'."

As they were discussing that, I was silently going through the information that had flooded my head when I first unlocked it during the whole situation with Miki.

'This is super interesting, just like the Sharingan, it is unlocked and upgraded through huge influxes of emotions and unlike the Sharingan, it doesn't have to be just through trauma or hatred, it can be through any kind of emotion.' I nodded to myself while going over this information, thinking about the different abilities it has.

'So I only get dynamic vision of the Sharingan, but there seem to be 3 stages to the Kanjogan. The first step is unlocking the X which either gives you an augmentation of speed or strength, totally dependent on what the situation you are in calls for when you first unlock the dojutsu. But it seems like the second and third steps are hidden for now.' I frowned a little as that seems kind of inconvenient. 'Why not just give me all the information?'

I sighed in my mind as I watched the two of them wrap their conversation up. 'I just want to go home and make sure Miki is doing alright. I'll also have to tell my dad about what I know about the dojutsu when we get back home.'

"Alright Lord Third, we are glad to be able to clear some things up and make sure you have all of the details about the attack."

"I am too. And good job, Shiran, truly. To be able to protect someone of the village without any harm coming to either you or them is an amazing thing to do. Keep training hard because I know you'll make an outstanding shinobi one day."

I smiled a genuine smile at that. Everyone needs to be encouraged every once in a while, and I'm not different in that regard.

"Thank you for your time, Lord Third." We walked out of the Uzukage's office and started to head home.