Chapter Twenty

Pre-Chapter AN: Hey, thanks for reading this. It's literally my favourite thing to write these days. Enjoy the chapter, and let me know how it sticks if you enjoy it. After reading this, you can either wait until next week for the next chapter or read the next three on Pa Treon right now and keep reading as I write. Have fun with this. Also, if you haven't checked out my other story (Gamer of the Desert) yet, please do so. It's also set in the Naruto universe. It's an SI into Gaara with some gamer elements. I can guarantee you'll love it. It's also much farther along than this one, so gives you something to really sink your teeth into. Also, I have a prologue (and now the first chapter!) to a new story up here now. It's a crossover where a variant of Dr Doom from the MCU gets inserted into the Harry Potter Universe into Harry's body on the day he gets chosen by the Goblet of Fire.

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"Hey guys," I said, finally managing to catch up to the two of them. Uzume turned to me with a glare, and Shika did not look any more pleased to see me, but neither of them was surprised, so it was clear they'd at least been watchful of their surroundings. Of course, they still ran the risk of me being a transformed enemy shinobi, as remote as it was that anyone would ever be able to truly capture magnificence like mine in something as plebeian as a henge. I had aura. Pizzazz. Flair. Henge could not confer any of those, so they were probably right to not be so worried. 

"What the hell was that pretty boy?" Uzume was the first to ask, and I just shrugged at her—having no actual idea what she was talking about. 

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean the stunt back in Waves. Why'd you turn back?" 

"Should that not be obvious? I was the clear and obvious target. I had the best combination of skills for a quick assault upon their positions to delay them, confuse them, and then escape at the same time." 

"That's not what I meant. I meant, why didn't you keep running. We could have outrun them". 

"With that lump of bones? I doubt that. They were a quickly moving cell and had more than enough sensors to bypass everything we could have done as a group to deceive them, so I took it upon myself to isolate them in a fixed area with their target—force them to split up to try to trace me in the forest, and then pick off as many of them as possible. And then when I'd taken out what felt like enough of them. I replaced myself with a clone, suppressed my chakra signature and swam the distance between Waves and the Mainland" I said. 

"You swam?" Now it was Shika speaking, looking at me like I was insane. 

"They would have noticed the chakra expenditure if I tried to run across like you were. They also would have noticed a boat or whatever. My water release affinity means I have an easy enough time holding my breath for long periods, and I swim faster than I run, so it was a good enough way to get out of dodge. Good thing I did because the psychotic bastards burned down the whole fucking forest. I thought I'd seen the peak of pyromania with this one here" I had to lean back to dodge the shuriken that Uzume absently tossed at me. 

"Impressive" was all my cousin said as she began to stand from the makeshift camp I'd joined them at. My best guess was that they'd taken the time to rest now that they were safely within the Land of Fire and well within range of multiple chunin patrols that would not hesitate to meet Kiri aggression with force. 

"Don't do that again" Uzume growled at me as she stood. 

"What?" 

"You're not the one for sacrifice plays, Shori. You're too selfish for that, so stop trying to be something you're not". I'd opened my mouth to disagree with her words, but I was forced to shut it in favour of catching Toshiro's body and placing him securely over my shoulder. Shika and Uzume both took point, and I brought the rear in a reverse arrowhead formation we'd learned at the academy. It was supposed to signal to patrolling chunin that we were shinobi on the way back from a mission with an injured member that needed to get to the village as soon as possible. I contemplated taking another chakra pill as I felt my chakra drop to that dangerous 15% line, but when I weighed arriving at the village on the verge of chakra exhaustion against the lecture I'd receive from Tsunade about chakra poisoning, I decided the former was the more appealing option. Uzumaki genes or no, Tsunade was very strict about chakra injuries in whatever form when it came to me. 

Even these soldier pills I used so liberally had been bought from an outside source and not the clan armoury. Clan heir or no, the Quartermaster had been forbidden from allowing me get my hands on them, and so she did. The wizened old woman was too sharp and much too loyal to Tsunade for me to acquire then substances under her nose. 

XXXXXXXX

The Second Hokage, Granduncle Tobirama, stared at all four of us from beneath his hat with an expression that I struggled to place. It must have been the angle, I decided. Kneeling as we were, we could scarcely see much of his face. I crushed the temptation to activate my byakugan to get a clear look at his face. I hadn't the chakra in the first place for such wasteful expenditure, and Grandnephew or not, I doubted the Anbu would hesitate too much in striking me down if I even created the appearance of a threat on the Hokage's person, and the spontaneous activation of one's doujutsu was a universally recognised threat. 

"Well, that was a mission that went about as badly as it could have" He said with a deep sigh. 

"Mizu is moving quickly. Stealing children for their academy is as plain a sign as any that they are preparing for the wars to come. Their aggression within the Land of Waves must be matched by whatever means" We kept silent as he ran through his thoughts out loud. Shika was fidgeting already, and I could already tell that she was beginning to wonder why we were being made privy to all this. 

"… And then there comes you four. Shorirama-kun, the bounty on you is already proving to be problematic. Six different non-affiliated assassins have already been apprehended in attempting to enter the village." He said, making me lift my head to his in shock. 

"For only that much money?" I asked instinctively. I'd understand taking a shot at me if one ran into me outside the village's walls, but trying to sneak into the greatest of the five was reckless. 

"Oh you would not have seen the most recent edition of the bingo book" He said absently before picking one book from his desk and tossing it at me. 

I stared at a picture of myself. It had been taken recently. My hair was even longer here than it had been in the original one, and it even included my growth spurt in the coma in my height and weight assessments. I noted that it was as accurate a say last visit to the hospital. It still rated me as a B-ranked chunin, with not much changed in the individual statistics. What did change, though, was the number at the bottom. "Forty million Ryo?" I almost screamed out the number. By my sides, both Uzume and Shika looked like their heads were going to fall out of their eyeballs. 

"What the fuck?" I asked, turning to the old man. That was a lot of money. A shit ton of money. That was enough money, that I doubted there were up to five people in the bingo book with higher bounties than mine, and they were all probably S-ranked shinobi. Tobirama looked displeased with the bounty. Of course, he was. It was practically a death sentence. An S-ranked reward for killing a kid that most definitely wasn't S-ranked? I was fucked. I amended my assessment on my second read when I noted that the bounty required that I be turned in alive. Captured for some sick reason. 

"We believe that the bounty was placed by one of the other villages who might be under the impression that you inherited my brother's kekkei genkai" He said with thin lips. 

"Wood release? How? I've literally fought to the death in front of anyone. If I had the wood release, I would have used it then would I not?" I asked, straining to see the logic of it. 

My granduncle just pointed right at my shades, and I took the point with a bod, before returning to bowing my head. Of course, awakening the byakugan would have them thinking that any other thing could have been wakened as well. 

"I have sent letters to the other Kage tossing some blame around and demanding that the bounty be taken down immediately. Of course, I expect that they will send details in no time." He began. 

"However, this means that we are unlikely to discover the source of the bounty any time soon, and you will not be permitted to leave the village for any missions until the bounty has been resolved or until you are a dangerous enough shinobi to warrant such a bounty on your own merits" He said finally. 

The words hit right after another like a bullet from a gun. No more missions. No more missions for me because someone out there had decided that they wanted me for some sick and twisted purpose that I could barely even begin to guess at. 

XXXXXX SIX YEARS BEFORE THE GREAT SHINOBI WORLD WAR

It was my fourteenth birthday. Four months since Granduncle Tobirama had decided to take me off my ear, because of the bounty placed on my head. Four months since I'd seen the outside of the four walls of this village. It was my birthday and I barely had anyone to celebrate it with. Shika, Uzume, and Toshiro were on a mission. So was Izuku and his new team. Even Uraume was on a mission of her own, and I felt something I'd not felt in a long time—boredom. 

Boredom. The books that generations of Senju had left their knowledge in no longer captured my attention the way they used to. Whenever I picked one of Jinpachi's treatises on the nature of wind release, my mind flashed to what Uzume and the others were doing. What new danger had they found to test themselves again, how much stronger were they getting while I sat here reading, withering? I'd tried training even, but it brought me little to no joy. I worked on my jutsu over and over again until I could use them in a second's notice. I cut leaf after leaf until my wind release affinity was at the best it could possibly be. And then I moved on to water. 

Water was tied with earth for being my strongest affinity, and it took virtually no time to pass the first level of affinity training. And then I did it over and over again until it was second nature. Earth came and fell just as quickly. So did lightning. I struggled with fire. In a lot of ways, it was special among the elements that I knew because I'd never learned to place effort towards controlling it or constraining it. All I'd done for the longest was command my chakra to burn, and then unleashed it in whatever direction I needed. That was a far far way from control, and trying to do such now was a painful exercise in reconditioning. It was tedious, and annoying, and time-consuming, and just what he needed—for a time, at least. Eventually, his eyes won out, and even fire release bowed before him. 

The secondary affinity levels for the elements was not something that seemed to be available to the public. Even the scrolls in the senju library made barely a mention of them. He remembered something about cutting a waterfall being the next step of wind release in canon, but that made little sense. What could make a waterfall harder to cut than a leaf. It was just the volume of the material, and thus the power in the technique that would have to be adjusted. From what he'd learned in perfecting all the first stages for the five elements, elemental mastery did not come so easily, and would definitely take more than scaled up repetitions of the things he had already learned how to do. He decided to reach out to his Sensei to trade for the techniques, as he hadn't seen the man in forever and should probably be doing a better job of keeping up his relationship with one of Konoha's few S-ranked shinobi considering the bounty on his head. 

Of course, that was a matter for later. Now, he just wanted peace. Peace and quiet, he thought to himself as he took a deep breath and sank deep into the mattress of his bed frame. Peace and quiet that was disturbed by the sound of his door being blown open by a certain hyperactive child. 

"Shori-nii" She whined as she stepped in.

"You can't still be sleeping," She said the word sleeping with so much emphasis that it as like the activity was the most heinous of crimes set aside for the most despicable of criminals.

"Yes, I can, Kushina. Now go away" He said, and turned himself around to bury his head in the pillow. But he knew it was a lost cause as with a scream, the young girl jumped into the air and landed right on his back, knocking the air right out of him. 

"Okay, that's it" He proclaimed with fake anger and spun them around until the six-year-old was the one beneath him, and he began to ravage her with the greatest torture known to man—tickling. 

XXXXXX

She sat atop his shoulders and pulled his hair this way and that as they began the walk down to the Konoha Shinobi Academy. Kushina, one way or another, was a massive part of why he managed to deal with the loneliness that came with being without a team or even without friends for the most part. He'd returned home after that mission in Mist and found her sat beside his Grandmother, learning fuinjutsu. And then he had the situation explained to him, even if he did already have a good idea as to what was going on. 

She was to be the one to take over as the Kyubi no Kitsune's jailer, as Mito had begun to get up there in the years. The risk of her suffering a sudden death and leaving the village without a jinchuriki had gotten too high to ignore, so Kushina was the insurance. But the insurance was also going to be the cause of death, he knew. From the anime, he knew Mito had spent her last years bedridden. Considering that even know, she had the strength to walk immense distances without even needed a cane—then the only possibility was that her weakness and thus death would only come after she transferred the tailed beast. So when he had initially avoided Kushina, everyone had assumed this to be the reason, and not the fact that he wanted nothing to do with the main character's mother. 

Of course, that had not been able to continue for long. Mito herself had called him to task and told him to get over his bullshit, and Kushina was just too much of a ball of sunshine for him to remain distant for any period of time. So now he was 'Shori-nii', her big brother who carried her to the academy while ignoring the small army of anbu guards that their collective presence warranted. She was to be the next jinchuriki of the Kyubi, and he was the Hokage's grandnephew, with a massive bounty on his head. The Anbu as an organisation probably had more hours dedicated to guarding the both of them than they did to spying on the other village and doing actual anbu things. 

He resisted the urge to yelp as he felt Kushina drag at his hair. "Too hard" he whimpered at the pain. 

"You're not paying attention, Shori-nii" She said, doing her best impression of Mito's disappointed tone. 

"I'm sorry, what were you talking about again?" He asked. 

"Minato-baka. I was talking about how he keeps showing off at the academy and saying he's going to be Hokage". 

"Ahhh I see. And can we remind me as to why this is a bad thing?"

"Because I'm going to be Hokage, Shori-nii. Are you sure you aren't sick?" Now she was leaning forward from her position and trying to place her hand on his forehead to check his temperature.

He chuckled before saying, "I'm not sick. I just needed some time to make things make sense". 

"Oh okay" She didn't sound like she believed him. 

"Just teach me to kick Minato-baka's butt, Dattebanne" Now, she was back to her excited self. 

XXXXXXXXXXX

Being honest with himself, things had developed quite a bit beyond his control since the Chunin exams. According to his own plans and calculations, he should have been a Jounin now, or even on the way to being recruited into Anbu. Neither of those things were happening. Instead, he sat in seiza with his Grandmother and her latest protégé as she made them practice seals under her supervision. Of course, they were working on different things. Kushina was a prodigy beyond equal, manifesting the clan's unique adamantium sealing chains before ever even becoming a shinobi, but he had the advantage of being eight whole years older than her. That advantage meant he was working on his own seals, while his Grandmother had Kushina working on something a bit more mainstream.

"And what is this supposed to do?" Grandma Mito asked, pointing at the leftmost part of his sealing matrix. 

"It's supposed to convert neutral chakra into lightning release natured chakra." I replied absently as I worked on the other parts of this matrix. Training nonstop had seen me outgrow my present bow by quite a bit, so I was now working on a different one. The kind of bow that would strike terror into the hearts of Konoha's enemies, and maybe even convince Granduncle that I could take care of myself enough to end this bothersome house arrest. 

"And what part of the rest of this mess is going to stop continuous feedback?" She asked, I looked up at her pursed lips. 

"Erase everything. Start again. I didn't spend over 10,000 hours of my time teaching you so you could go and get yourself killed by electrocution the second you tried making something actually useful." I frowned and looked over the seal again before incinerating the scroll with a flex of fire natured chakra. At least my training had been useful for something. 

"I'll try again tomorrow. Please excuse me" I said, barely waiting for her nod before I body flickered out of the house and towards the library. Or at least I tried to. The second I took a step out of the house, I felt my momentum come to an abrupt stop. 

I looked behind me, and saw my smirking cousin with a hand on my shirt's collar. 

"What's up Tsunade?" I asked, resisting the urge to shiver at the look I was being subjected to. 

"I've had enough of your mopping around. Come on, you'll train with me today."

I swallowed. 

XXXXXXXXXX

I entered into a backwards barrel roll and only managed to stop myself at the last second before planting my hands on the ground to form a sealless mud wall. I laid down behind the wall, taking deep breaths. If I'd known what was coming when Tsunade made that offer last week, I would have said no and run for the hills. Okay, maybe I wouldn't, I forced myself to admit as I heard the sound of an explosion somewhere to the left. Training with the Sannin was fun. Okay, to be honest, I was more being trained by them than training with them. I knew I was jounin level in most of my skills, but that didn't matter when it came to fighting. As an example, in the chunin exam arc, Rock Lee had Jounin level taijutsu. But that didn't matter and most chunin in the village could have killed him in an all out fight. 

Having one, or even all, of one's skills at a certain level didn't mean you fought at that level. It was something I'd logically known, but it took my first session with the trio for the lesson to begin to truly sink in. Everything they did was so polished. On the other hand, with me things were choppy. It was almost like I had lag while they ran on the very best hardware. 

I saw something heading towards me from behind my wall and cursed before beginning to roll to the sides. The fireball hit the mud wall with an explosion that cloaked my body flicker as I followed a straight path that took me and my kunai wielding arm right into Orochimaru's space. Of course, that proved to be a foolish course of action. Our eyes met while I was mid-flight, and I never even got the chance to curse as I saw his smirk. 

I felt the kick that sent me into Training Ground Seven's pond, but only for a few seconds as I lost consciousness almost immediately I hit the water. Fuck.

A/N; Chappy?? Chappy Chappy Chappy. Yes, I was always going to have Shori training with the Sannin, but even I didn't think it would happen so early. As I said earlier, the next chapter comes up next week or skip the wait and read the next three along with daily uploads on pa-treon. For the pa-treon, you can remove the hyphen between pa and treon and google it then search for my username- Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting in your address bar.