Chapter 29

Okay then, so, not deleting those two chapters it seems.

I've heard what you all said, and that's why Akari got that present from the Entity, insurance. Just because she has it doesn't mean he'll actually show up again, it really depends on whether I think I could actually make something interesting come from it.

Anyways, glad to hear people kinda enjoyed those two chapters! It really means the world to me to hear that you guys think the stuff I write is...good...ish?

The AN at the bottom is kinda bulky, I just...really wanted to say what I do.

And please, leave a nice cheeky review! I love reading what you all have to say, you all always seem to have such awesome points that I stupidly miss, like the fact that ITACHI FUCKING EXISTS! (I genuinely forgot that Itachi was the Clan Heir, I said Sasuke was the Heir...I'm so fucking dumb.)

When Hiruzen and Kurama arrived back on top of Konoha's hospital, the entire thing was just... pure and utter pandemonium.

For good reason, of course, considering the Hokage, the military leader of the whole village, had just disappeared beside a being who could quite confidently be called the strongest being in the Elemental Nations, only matched by the Sage of Six Paths in power. There were probably Shinobi who would rather claim that title like Uchiha Madara or the First Hokage, but they were dead, so they couldn't really complain.

So, when all of a sudden they reappeared, at the same time as Akari waking up in the midst of several Iryo-nin, the entire situation nearly ended up devolving into a Jutsu shootout between twitchy Konoha-nin and an already-livid giant fox. Fortunately, the Hokage, the excellent statesman he was, managed to calm the entire situation down somehow. How exactly, Akari didn't know, but the point was that nobody tried to send a Katon Jutsu at Kurama, and the village was still standing, meaning Kurama hadn't decided to just throw a Tailed Beast Bomb out.

Stretching her arms out, Akari looked around her hospital room. It was...not a sight she was used to seeing. Off the top of her head, she could think of maybe two, possibly three times she was forced to spend a night in a hospital, counting her old life as well. Then again, in her old life, if she got wounded, she'd probably just end up dead, considering how there weren't any hospitals she could go to if she got shot.

She shook her head, instead turning her attention out towards the window, seeing the colossal form of Kurama practically knocking the hospital over as he, in his own words, 'made sure she didn't do anything stupid'. How she could achieve that when she was confined to her bed courtesy of the four ANBU members hiding within the room was anyone's guess, but then again, she could always pull something out of her inventory to do.

On the subject of Kurama, she was torn. On one hand, she wanted him to be free, to roam the world as he once did. He definitely earned it after saving her bacon like he did, twice in fact. She hadn't forgotten how he saved her from Danzo, and then again against 273's illusion. But on the other hand, she knew that if he'd been sealed once, he would be sealed again.

If he was sealed within her again, he would be safe, or...safer than being out in the world. Plus, since this time she would be able to actually work on or add things onto the seal, she'd be able to perhaps add a few unsanctioned features, just for him, as a minor way to just say thank you to the giant regal fox for being her companion for the past few years. She'd have to convince Jiraiya that they were safe additions, but giving him a platter of karaage-fried chicken would probably be enough to tip him in favour of allowing it.

She turned her focus onto her left hand, or rather, left stump, frowning as an errant muscle twitched, her mind trying to move a hand which wasn't there any more. The Entity said he would give her that hand back whenever they managed to lock down 273, but that could be years in the making, time Akari really didn't want to spend uselessly. She slipped her right hand under her covers, manipulating her inventory without sight, then bringing out a sketch-pad and a pencil.

It was always hilarious to see the reactions of the ANBU as she pulled stuff from nowhere. They all knew she didn't have a single seal on her, nor on the bedding, or anywhere in the room for that matter, and yet, she was still able to sudden poof things into existence through means that they couldn't identify. She knew they probably begged the Hokage to let them interrogate her and find out how she was doing it, but since he knew, as well as knowing it couldn't be reproduced, he would be convenient for blocking those inquiries.

Sticking her tongue out at an angle, Akari began to scribble.

"FREEDOM!"

Akari loudly cheered, all but lunging out of her bed in her haste to escape. Three days. Three whole days of what had to have been some kind of torture. She'd never spent three days like that before, and if it were up to her, she never would again. Spending that long literally in bed, with only notepads and humourless ANBU for company was hellish. "Hold on there Akari-san!"

Stopping in place, one foot on the already-opened windowsill, Akari looked over her shoulder at her doctor. "Yes, Yakushi-san?"

The brunette medic just sighed in exasperation, one hand on her hip. "Honestly Akari-san, you should know how the hospital works now, you've been in here more that enough times. You have to actually be officially discharged. Just because I told you that you've been good to go today doesn't mean right now." Akari frowned, looking forlornly over her shoulder then back at the doctor.

"Well, I know I'm fine, this is my only problem." She waved her left arm around. "So, can I just leave?" Nono looked at her, then at the chart in her hand, before just tossing it onto Akari's bed and pushing her glasses up, pointing at the window.

"Fine, go. Just-" Akari didn't wait for whatever Nono was saying, she was already sailing through the air to land on a building, then zipping across Konoha at a breakneck speed. She hadn't had a chance to really cut loose with her speed and see just how fast she could go, but just thinking about her top speed was...terrifying. Once, she'd asked Might Guy just how fast he could run, and when he casually remarked that he could currently run at a top speed of maybe mach 100, on a completely normal, average day.

Mach 100. As in, 34,300 meters per second, or FUCKING 123480 KILOMETERS PER HOUR! Her mind spun for the rest of the day as she tried to figure out how the fuck someone could casually run at Mach 100 without literally tearing themselves apart, eventually coming to the conclusion of Chakra bullshit. Then again, she should have been ripped to shreds multiple times by how hard she sometimes landed whilst tree-hopping. At a certain point, fall-damage just seemed to stop occurring. At first, she thought it was because her Game had done something, but if people could run at speeds to which air resistance would literally flay every inch of skin from their body, then maybe there was something fun to experiment with.

Right now, after buffing her agility so extremely, Akari was running across rooftops at a very swift pace. She was nowhere near what she felt her top speed was, but still respectably fast. She did realize though that running at that kind of speed came with significant energy cost. It was why Guy ate so damn much food, he was burning so much sheer energy, both physically and by using Chakra to augment his own body, that he basically had to be a glutton, eating enough food to feed a small country for every meal.

It made her realize what had been niggling her for ages, the fact that she had been enhancing her body with Chakra naturally, sure, but she hadn't been actively training to improve herself, her speed, strength, and everything else. Currently, she was relying entirely on her stats. On one hand, that was good. It meant that no matter how little Chakra she had, she would always be just as strong and fast physically. But it also meant she had one less card to play in fights. That was one of the things she had noted down in her to-do list, right after two other, far more important events.

She'd already seen Naruto, Anko and Akana were both spoiling him rotten, so she wasn't worried about him. Anko was also looking after Monty still, as well as presumably training the snake, since the last time she'd actually spent some time with the albino snake, she had gotten up to level 7 somehow. Nowhere near strong enough to hold her own in even a genin-level fight, but still noteworthy.

But no, what she was heading towards was actually just outside of the village. She slipped through the gates with a jaunty wave to the guards, who realized what she was going and merely waved back, zipping into the trees and quickly arriving at her destination. She halted on a random tree branch, drew a long breath into her lungs, and bellowed out. "HEY KURAMA!" Her voice echoed through the dense forest of the Fourty-fourth training grounds, the Forest of Death.

As she yelled, she heard loud footsteps approaching her, turning around with a grin only to frown. "You're not Kurama." Indeed, the footsteps came from a pretty large tiger-like creature, except he had four eyes instead of two. She drew a sword out of her inventory, cracking her neck. She hadn't had an actual fight in a little while, so she was pretty excited to get back into battle.

Quick to oblige her, the tiger pounced forwards, reaching out with both paws in an attempt to slice Akari into numerous pieces. She dipped low, anchoring her forward foot to the ground with chakra then sliding forwards, pivoting around and entirely beneath the tiger, then raising her sword and slicing at the underside of the beast. As her blade scored a deep red line across the tiger's fur, she grinned...

Then yelped in surprise when one of the back-paws of the tiger lashed out as it passed, scoring three bloody grooves down her right bicep, causing her to drop her blade. She cursed, shaking her left arm a few times in anger. Normally, her blade would have entirely ripped apart the internals of that tiger. But because she didn't have a secondhand to add strength to her push, the blade found itself merely slicing along, rather than upwards and into the vital organs, meaning while it wounded the tiger, it wasn't dying just yet.

Deciding risking anything stupid was pointless, she formed several one-handed seals, spitting out a fireball without even bothering to incant the name of the technique. Her flame engulfed the tiger entirely, burning fur and flesh to ash in an instant, such was the heat of the Jutsu. She awkwardly rubbed the fingers on her right hand over her bicep, nudging the wound around a little with a grimace. She couldn't actually reach it properly, which meant she couldn't use her Mystical Palm Jutsu on it. Well, it only did a few hundred damage, so it would be healed in a minute at most thanks to her own natural healing.

Shaking her right hand off, she poked a finger at her sword, sending it straight into her inventory. She still hadn't decided on a blade she liked. The pile of random crap that the Entity gave her had a bunch of different items, most of them trash-tier like the sword she'd just pulled out. It was a sword, it did its job, but it had nothing special going for it. She had the Kusanagi, that seemed interesting.

Pulling the aforementioned sword out of her inventory, she twirled it around, feeling Kurama's Chakra signature start approaching her, having felt it for such a long time she when he got close enough, she could sense him. She was most definitely not a natural sensor, not from what people had told her, but she could definitely become an un-natural sensor through learning what peoples signatures felt like.

She pressed a thousand points of Chakra into the Kusanagi, grinning when the tip of the blade shot out to a distance of roughly twenty meters, then retracted after the three-second timer passed, coming to a stop the same distance as it began. It was a pretty expensive ability, that 1000 Chakra could be used for a lot of different things, like a 60+ meter Shunshin, or a 40-second usage of her Mangekyo Sharingan. Perhaps even five Shadow Clones with 6-hour durations.

Speaking of Shadow Clones, she poofed one into existence in front of herself, grinning at the picture-perfect clone of herself, who grinned back just as enthusiastically. "You know what to do, right?" 'Akari' nodded, pulling a book out of Inventory then walking up a tree, nestling in for a good read, whilst Akari watched on with a smile. Her clones could access her inventory, that was the first test. The second was if her clones could actually properly use her Chakra. They could, considering how 'Akari' just walked straight up the side of that tree, with seemingly no issues. "Hey, real quick, try and use the Gokakyu no Jutsu, I want to see how..."

Her clone had already stood up, one-handedly crossing through the signs for the Jutsu, then raising it to her mouth to blow out a colossal ball of flames, nearly falling out of her perch as she did it. "That...sucked." Her clone admitted, her hand pressing against the side of the tree for support, breathing deeply. Akari rubbed her chin, watching the fireball disappear into faint glowing embers which vanished into the forest.

"So, you can use Jutsu, but it drained you of Chakra." And it did. Looking at her clone with her Sharingan, she could see that roughly half of her clones Chakra had vanished. That meant that her clone would probably only be around for three hours now, instead of six. Then her clone poofed out, forcing Akari to move swiftly to stop her book from slamming into the muddy ground.

Catching it carefully, Akari threw it into her inventory. So that meant...it wasn't the quantity they had total, but a subdivision of quantity. They had to use a certain amount of Chakra to stay corporeal. Dipping below that meant they burst, being unable to keep themselves surrounded in a 'sheath' of Chakra. But with that shell being maintained, it meant that for only ten extra points of Chakra, they could maintain it for another full hour, which was why it was way more expensive to form them. 140 Chakra for the shell, 10 to maintain it, then another ten for each extra hour. "Having fun?"

Akari jumped slightly at Kurama's voice speaking over her shoulder. She'd gotten so wrapped up in her impromptu experiment that she's not noticed his Chakra signature steadily approaching her. She looked back over her shoulder to see the giant fox smirking at her, one paw crossed over the other as he sat down. "Well, less fun than you seem to be having." The giant fox chuffed at her, his crimson eyes glinting in amusement.

Smiling, Akari wandered over to where he was sat, hopping up quickly onto his paw and sitting down. Considering how absolutely massive the giant fox was, her presence on his hand didn't bother him slightly. She pulled out some Fuinjutsu supplies from her inventory and began scribbling away under her closest companion and friends watchful eye. She trusted a few people, sure, but Kurama was probably the only one in the whole world who she felt she could actually be open with, now that her secret was out of the bag.

It might have been because of the fact that they'd spent four years together, and certainly, there was the stigma from him all but levelling half of Konoha, killing Minato and Kushina, orphaning Naruto, but she looked past all of that. Considering how he acted, she honestly believed him when he told her that he never had control, he never wanted to do those things.

Frowning, her brush stopped mid-stroke. Raising the brush from her scroll, she looked up at Kurama, really looked at him, as he glanced around before putting his head down on his other paw again. He looked...not tired, he couldn't actually get physically exhausted, but...weary. He'd been living for, according to him, almost a thousand years. Compared to a human lifespan, that was ridiculous. Just imagining what his life must have been like, always being feared or jealously hunted for his power.

Akari bit her lip, harshly enough to draw blood, the smell of which drew Kurama's attention, leading him to look at her questioningly. "It's nothing." She wiped her lip, instead worrying at her nail as she considered whether in the end there even was anything Akari could do to save him from such a life. Even the Game probably wouldn't help in that regard. Her Fuinjutsu proficiency was at level 90 already, and while she couldn't see Proficiency levels, she was fairly certain hers was above Jiraiya, Minato and even Kushina's level, to the point where she believed the only person better than she was at Fuinjutsu was probably the Sage of Six Paths.

And even for her level, she couldn't think of a single seal which would help her best friend. It tore at her to set aside a project like that, something which would help him so much for all he'd done to save her bacon...twice. But, she had to capitulate on that issue. First things first, she had to regain the functionality of her left hand. Operating at half-strength for at best several years was not an option. She wiped her lip again, burned her now-ruined scroll with a quick Hi Yubi no Jutsu, then pulled a new scroll out, her mind pulling out information on everything she knew about how the Shadow Clone Jutsu worked, as that would be the basis for her newest creation, something to rival the Golan seal in utility, even if it would be far less widespread.

She already had a name for it...the Kage no Te seal, Shadow Hand.

"That's not fair."

Putting her head in her hand, Akari blocked her eyes, exhaling forcefully and regretting ever mentioning anything to the kid. "Naruto, just because the son of my Clan Head is going to the Academy next year does not make it so that everyone enters at that age." Naruto, unfortunately, seemed to be doing his best to ignore her, stropping to himself. "Look, Naruto." She gently gripped his chin, turning him to face her. "If you really, really want to, you can go when he goes. But not a single second earlier, and there's no way in hell you're graduating early. Heaven forbid you turn out like me."

Naruto giggled, jumping forwards to wrap his arms around Akari. "Thank you Kaa-san!" He yelled, making her wince. She put her hand on top of his head, her other arm wrapping around his back.

"No problem Kit." She then smirked, ruffling his hair up and ignoring his whine of protest. "But that doesn't mean you're escaping these get-togethers." Naruto whined, now trying to get out of her grasp to run away. "Hey! I've put...some effort into getting all those next-generation kids together, the least you could do is be happy that you know who you're likely to spend time with."

Even if it didn't look likely at the time, Naruto would...probably thank her in future for doing this, since it was quite a useful thing to have happen to him. She knew which Clan Kids would be in Naruto's year, the Nara, Yamanaka and Akimichi Clan Heirs all being Naruto's age. The Hyuuga Heiress was also his age, and getting Hiashi to actually agree was like trying to convince a caterpillar to do a backflip, practically impossible.

He eventually capitulated, but on the condition that Akari herself was to be guarding these little meet-ups. It wasn't really inconvenient since Akari planned to be there anyway, but the smug look he had definitely made it seem like he'd won somehow. Akari merely settled for the amusement of knowing that it really hadn't inconvenienced her at all, despite him thinking he'd gotten one over her.

Of course, she had to get the Uchiha Clan Head's son in on the whole thing, Uchiha Sasuke, alongside his older brother, who was the current Heir, Uchiha Itachi. When she spoke to him, he was surprisingly pleasant to speak to when asking his parents about the idea of Sasuke meeting those he would be inevitably spending time with at the academy. Alongside those more prominent clan kids were a few other kids she knew were going to be in Naruto's year, a few other Shinobi families that weren't large enough to be clans, as well as some civilian kids who were going to be sent to the Academy by their parents.

What almost caused the whole thing to topple down though was the location. Akari's apartment was nice, but nowhere near well-equipped to deal with over a dozen four-year-old brats. As such, she had to find somewhere else. Clan compounds were out of the question, the only one she might have been able to secure was a location inside the Uchiha thanks to her being a member of the Clan, but the Hyuuga would never let their precious Heiress into there.

Fortunately, the Akimichi came through for her, leading her to almost topple Choza over with her grateful hug when he told her that she could use one of the halls that the Akimichi Clan owned. It was practically neutral ground, unaffiliated with Hyuuga or Uchiha, so both clans would go with it, plus it would make the Nara, Yamanaka and Akimichi feel more confident thanks to the fact that Choza recommended it.

She'd maybe gone a little overboard hiring three genin teams to stuff the place full of toys, books, mats, generally everything her overactive mind could conceive that four-year-olds would like, even making a little game up in her head where she would use seals to form fake guns, making a rudimentary version of her Old Worlds laser tag. It was an absolute bitch to make it actually safe, but since the concept was super simple, it only took a day or so.

The idea was to fire a stream of entirely neutral Chakra, at such a low level that it would do literally nothing, but when detected by the seals on the armour the kids would be wearing, it would alert them that they'd been hit. That was, if the line of Chakra actually hit them. It was actually really fucking fun to get a dozen clones together, equip them all with the laser-tag armour and weaponry, then jumping, ducking, diving and generally having an absolute blast playing a way better version of laser tag.

She spent a while longer refining the seals, making them less prone to failure, then called it quits and threw all the stuff into a pile in the corner of the room, right alongside a pile of other weird ideas she'd come up with. The fact was that for the moment she'd gotten a bit stuck with her Shadow Hand seal, so she put it aside and focused on something else.

Shoving the doors to the hall open, Akari flipped the lights on, wincing momentarily at the brightness, then breaking down laughing at Naruto's surprised squeak as he laid eyes on the absolute playground Akari had set up inside of the Hall. She'd spent a long time working on it, as had those genin, but...just that noise made the whole thing worth it. She pre-empted his dash forwards by grabbing his collar, so when he tried to run int the room to start playing on something, he instead clotheslined himself, looking at her with disbelieving eyes.

"I didn't bring you here early so you got a headstart on playing with everything. We've got time to kill before the others arrive, and I want to see if you can figure something out." Though he had a frown on his face, his eyes lit up a little when she mentioned figuring something out, since he adored untangling something Akari made and getting praised for it. "If you can figure out what this does, then you might, MIGHT, be ready for the next level of Fuinjutsu." She suppressed her urge to grin when his face completely lost his previously-unhappy look, becoming more excited than a cat in a warehouse of Catnip. Pulling one of the laser-tag seals out of her inventory, she waved it in front of his face, having the paper quickly snatched from her grasp by an enthusiastic Naruto, surreptitiously activating her Sharingan.

When his face dropped slack in surprise, she couldn't help the laughter that slipped from her lips as he looked at her in incomprehension.

...Yes, Akari is bullshit.

She lost her hand, and she's already working on a way to get around it. But fuck it, it's what I think I'd do. I do think the rationalization of her basing the concept of her new hand on the same way that Shadow Clones form their external shell is a cool way to do it. Plus, I liked the idea of her making the world's best playground. Let's not forget, all those Clan Heirs are four years old. Sure, they are all in a very mature world very unlike us in that they do not protect children from the harsher realities of the world, but they should still get a chance to play. Or at least, that's Akari's mentality, so next chapter is going to be all the Clan kids meeting for the first time in Akari's new Funhouse...oh boy.

Now, for some...well, apologizing. Sorry about bloating this chapter, but some of this I feel needs to be said. I'm sorry about how...off-putting Chapters 27 and 28 were. I did honestly and truly believe that they were good chapters when I wrote them. I understand that Chapter 27 is...an awkwardly cut-off chapter, but it was already 5k words. I don't want to go over 6k for this story, it feels too long compared to the average. Chapter 10 and 11 were both 6k+ and were noticeably longer in my opinion. I'd rather have shorter chapters which come out more often, but that might just be me being silly.

I'm also apologizing for bringing back 273. People really didn't like that he was a villain who could fuck with Akari, whereas she had no actual way to fend him off, making the whole thing feel cheap. It honestly was pretty bad. Now that Akari has insurance against him, even if I do think bringing him back would be good to tie him off, it'll probably be a 1k word segment where he comes back like 'Aha! I've got you now!' then Akari uses the item and destroys him, getting some nice revenge against him as well as ridding NoxCorp of a malicious Entity.

I do honestly hope that, for all this story has it's ups and downs, people can abide it, stick it through till the end, and maybe even beyond that! Akari's Game will be running a bit on autopilot, so no Entity coming in to chat for a while, and the quests will all be pretty generic, so I'll probably only mention them, she won't actually bring them up, aside from a fun one I have in mind~!

But please stay safe boos! If I suddenly vanish for more than a month with no uploads at all across all my stories, assume I've gotten sick, since I do actually still have to go out to work as an essential worker.

Name: Akari Uchiha

Level: 77

Age: 16

Experience: 65,945/77,000

To Next Level: 11,055

Title: Sannin-slayer - Defeating one of the three legendary sannin is no easy feat, but you managed it. Future opportunities unlocked.

Secondary Title: Tokubetsu Jonin - +25% experience gained during solo missions.

Health Points: 18,500 - (100 Base + (Vit x End)) x 5

Regeneration Rate - 3600/m - 60/s - Vit x End - Halted when afflicted with bleed status.

Chakra Points: 36,620 - (100 Base + (Int x Wis)) x 5

Regeneration Rate - 7200/m - 120/s - Int x Wis - Halted when continuous chakra drain Jutsu in use.

Strength - 70

Vitality - 60

Endurance - 60

Intelligence - 80

Agility - 161

Wisdom - 90

Luck - 60