If you read the first version of Chapter 25 then you'll notice I retconned a conversation between Menma and Suigetsu from the last chapter. I did this cause while writing a convo I forgot I already wrote it but decided it would be more impactful here.
For Menma it felt like the first time ever seeing Nozomi. Instead of resembling his mother Kushina he could tell she had a more individual aura now. Her eyes had a more sapphire-like glow to them and they had rounded slits(in the middle of sharp Kurama eyes and normal circular eyes), and her lower back length hair had 2 braids resting over her chest. Her white cat ears and tail twitched slightly when she saw him. Her eyes also became round.
Once Menma finished his analysis he started approaching her with a smile. As he got closer to her he noticed she looked a little upset. Once they were a meter apart he asked her, "Is something wrong?"
Nozomi's eyes moved from him down to the ground and she answered with another question, "I was really worried after you left last night. I thought you were going to your own room but you went back outside. I remember waking up halfway back home and you told me nothing was wrong, but that was a lie wasn't it? Where did you go?"
Menma remained silent for a few moments as he thought, 'She's already acting a lot different than I remember. Was she holding back this side of herself? She isn't nearly as childish as I remember.' "You're right, right after you fell asleep I went back outside and fought the 3 shadow brothers. They were the ones that kidnapped you. Menma wondered how he should censor his words. "They're taken care of now and you won't have to worry about them anymore. They weren't much trouble."
Menma decided to leave out the part of his injuries, but Nozomi looked at him suspiciously again. 'Did she catch on to my lie?' Nozomi looked down at the ground sadly and replied, "If they were easy it must have not taken that long to beat them, but that still doesn't explain why it took you so long to come back to m-... to us. I don't want you to lie to me Menma, I want you to tell me the truth. I trust you, so you should trust me too."
Menma stayed silent for what felt like a minute. Her words made him feel a bit guilty and surprised at the same time, 'Where did this side of her come from? Did she inherit Minako's wits somehow?' Menma opened his mouth but before words could come out Nero interrupted and stated, "It seems like you guys are going to talk for awhile, so you guys should go inside first."
They both complied and walked back inside the Uzumaki estate. They were silent on their walk to their sleeping quarters and once presented with the choice between Menma's room and Nozomi's room they chose her room.
They walked inside and they both sat on opposite ends of a furniture set up. Nozomi started tapping her fingers as if she was expressing her nervousness on what she thought he would say. Eventually Menma opened his mouth and said, "The battle wasn't easy at all. It was the most difficult fight I've ever been in. With the help of some illusion like techniques I drew the battle out until sunrise where I managed to beat the last of the 3 brothers. I lost an arm during the fight too, but it came back."
"Was Suigetsu and Mina with you when you fought them?" Menma shook his head and corrected her, "No, I was by myself." Nozomi seemed mostly calm the whole time but now anyone could see something was clearly bothering her. She asked, "Why did you fight them by yourself?"
"Because they were too powerful, I wasn't sure if I could beat them even by myself." Nozomi knew he would say that, but it was still frustrating to hear. She asked him, "Menma, why are you so selfish?"
The question caught Menma completely off guard. He stuttered, "Se-Selfish?!? I fought them by myself because I didn't want them to get hurt! I couldn't stand the thought of them getting hurt or dying because of me!" Nozomi cut him off before he could say anything else, "And you don't think they feel the same way?! They knew what they were getting into when they came with you to this village. If they didn't care about you they wouldn't have come. They're here because they want to make sure you survive and achieve your goal! They couldn't stand the thought of you dying either! So have more faith in your friends and let them help you!
Menma was left speechless and couldn't think of anything to say. 'It's like she's a completely different person than the girl I saved from the Eastern Hideout.' Menma didn't say anything but from his expression Nozomi could tell he accepted his defeat in the argument.
"I'm going to start helping out soon too." Nozomi stated. Menma almost instinctively protested but before he could get any words out she told him, "This may sound silly, but I think I want to help you more than anyone, and my own powerlessness is extremely frustrating. You nearly died earlier because of my own weakness." Menma replied, "But you're still so young"-"I'm 14 Menma, I'm sure you were much stronger when you were 14. But right now I don't think I could beat even a single Hagetaka member in a fight."
Once again Menma remained silent after getting beaten. Nozomi stated, "I'm going with you on your next trip and you can't stop me, so hopefully you'll help me become a lot stronger before that happens."
Menma couldn't help but chuckle at himself. Nozomi was a polite put off by the chuckle and Menma thought, 'This girl...' He looked up at her with a smile and told her, "Alright, you've won. I'll help you become stronger."
Nozomi was surprised by his answer and thought, 'Huh? I actually won?' She started jumping up and down in excitement.
A few minutes later they went outside and Menma seemed more content. Suigetsu was with Mina and Menma walked towards them. He looked back at Nozomi with a "Do I really have too?" look and she nodded. "Hey guys, I just wanted to apologize for the way I've been acting lately. I've been leaving you guys out on a lot of things and I've been going solo. I'll try to keep you guys in the loop of things I'm doing from now on."
Suigetsu and Mina looked at each other and smiled before looking back at him too. Mina responded, "We're sorry too, we should have brought up the fact that it concerned us sooner, but what's done is done, so let's try to stick together from now on." Suigetsu followed up on what she said, "Hopefully these Choetsu techniques will close the gap in our strength."
Nero walked up to Menma and asked him, "So how are things with Nozomi? You were gone for longer than I thought you would be," Menma nodded and stated, "She convinced me to let her train."
"Good, so we can get started then?" Menma answered his question with a nod and everyone formed a semi circle facing Nero's direction while waiting for what he would say. "Alright everyone, I want each of you to tell me what kind of power you're looking for, then I'll give you what you need to develop that."
The question was unexpected, but they all quickly complied and started thinking. Menma was probably thinking the deepest, 'Those 3 brothers were the strongest opponents I've ever fought. And I'm guessing Orochimaru will probably be stronger. The thing that made those 3 so hard to fight was the fact that I needed to come up with multi step plans to land effective attacks on them. Once I could do that they died quickly, but the thing with Orochimaru is that he might as well be immortal. You decapitate him he'll just shed his skin, you burn him alive he'll melt the shell away, you try to crush him his body will stretch and slither around whatever is crushing him. Even If I managed to vaporize his body and suck out his soul he would just emerge anew from a curse mark he placed on someone. I don't know how but he somehow figured out how to split his soul into pieces and place the pieces in curse marks. I'm gonna need something that can somehow counter this.'
Menma felt eyes on the back of his head and looked in the direction he felt the stares from. He noticed Nozomi was staring at him but once they made eye contact she quickly looked away and raised her hands as if to avoid potential questioning. Nero looked at her with a curious look as he awaited for her answer and she told him, "I want to learn about the brain," Nero nodded and asked, "Why do you want to learn that?" Nozomi remained silent for a moment as she decided whether or not to say and decided against it. "I'd rather not say."
Menma was curious about why she wanted to learn about that, but decided not to question her. The next one to raise their hand was Suigestu who stated, "I want to learn more about cells and metals. I'm only really interested in the 7 swordsmen swords so I mainly want to learn about sword related things, but I can learn some things about cells too if it will help me with my liquid form."
After Suigetsu Mina raised her hand and said, "I want to learn about the human body. I'm more of a taijutsu kind of girl rather than one that's interested in ninjutsu, so I want to learn about things I can touch up close."
Nero was pleased with the request and now he was only waiting for Menma's answer. Menma finally came up with what he wanted and stated, "I need something that will let me rewind someone or something to its original state. I need it to be so powerful that even if the pieces were scattered across the world they will all be brought back to one original point."
Nero was impressed by how specific he was, it sounded like he needed an ability meant for one person. Nero turned around and told them, "Follow me."
After following him for a few minutes he walked into a room with a bunch of cabinets and drawers. He opened one of the drawers and started scrolling through folders while taking out one every few documents. Once he pulled out 4 he closed the drawer and turned back towards his students. He handed each one a folder. The front of each of their folders had a different title. Mina's had Anatomy, Suigetsu's had Cytology, Nozomi had Neurobiology, and Menma had Time Dilation.
Besides Anatomy all of these terms were foreign to the group. Suigetsu was the first one to ask, "What is this supposed to be?"
"Why this is your training," Nero replied in a slightly mocking tone as if it was obvious. Nero noticed that the expressions on the 3 of them didn't change and he looked towards Nozomi expectantly after noticing she already caught on. "I talked about this with Nero earlier. I'm sure he told you this already but we need to have an understanding of what we're trying to accomplish before we can develop it."
They all understood now and clear reluctance showed up on their faces. "Going back to the Academy days huh? Well if this is what I have to do to get stronger then I'll do it," Menma accepted.
Memna opened his folder right there and started reading. After about 30 seconds he closed it and looked towards Nero and asked, "What's spacetime?" Nero sighed and said, "Ninjas," under his breath. "Would you guys rather have me give you more folders so you learn the basics or would you guys rather just ask me questions directly?"
In unison they all chose the latter. He nodded but a thought popped into his mind and he said, "Menma, everyone else can ask me questions but I'll just give you more folders."
"Huuuh? Why am I the only one that doesn't get to ask questions?" Nero replied, "You have the sharingan don't you?" Menma nodded and Nero continued, "Well the sharingan let's you memorize anything you see. I'm sure that Time Dilation can apply as anything."
His words silenced Menma. Menma slapped himself on the forehead and thought, 'Why didn't I think of that?' He felt the urge to ask, "Who came up with this anyway?"
"Look at your folder, there should be a name on it." Menma did as he was told and searched the folder until he saw the words "Ainshutain Uzumaki."
He ended up saying it out loud without realizing it and Nero stated, "That's right. While people like Itachi are known for their battle intellect, Ainshutain was known for his intellect in science. A lot of people consider him the smartest man who ever lived!"
Menma didn't say anything but Nero could that something about what he said bothered Menma. Menma asked, "Was he alive when the village was destroyed?" Nero nodded and said, "He was working on his biggest theory but never finished it because of the destruction of our homes."
Menma's thoughts were conflicted at the moment, 'I never gave it much thought, but after hearing all this the Uzumaki clan's destruction gets more and more unbelievable by the moment.' Menma had one last question, "While swimming through some of these pages I noticed that one of them was ripped out. Do you know what happened to it?"
Nero started thinking about it but came up with no answer, "I don't. But just 1 missing page shouldn't be a big deal, If there's a hole in your knowledge once you're finished learning then you can come to me and I'll fill the hole."
Menma nodded and accepted his response but Nozomi looked more suspicious. Nero turned around and started walking away back towards the estate. "You guys can start your training now, I'll be in my room if you need me."
Nozomi jogged after him and shouted, "Wait Nero sensei!" Nero quickly responded, "Do you already have a question about the brain?"
Nozomi shook her head and said, "No, could I talk to you in private?" "Oh, sure."
They both went inside and were out of everyone's line of sight. Menma looked on curiously and thought, 'Wonder where they're going. Should I... no, it's probably nothing.'
"So what did you need, Nozomi?" Nero questioned as they both stopped walking. "That missing paper in Menma's folder, I can tell you're lying about it."
At first Nero was taken aback since he thought he did good at lying, but he quickly replaced his surprise with a smile and told her, "I have a good reason for taking out that page. I didn't take out the page because of Menma, I took it out because of what some people would do if they found out about a certain technique in there. I believe Menma would be one of those people."
Nozomi showed clear confusion and Nero sighed. "Nozomi, do you know how old Menma is?" "17" was her answer. Nero nodded and continued, "Soon he'll be 18. He's only just becoming an adult, but he already has a full head of white hair. Did you ever think about that?"
Nozomi shook her head and Nero stated, "White hair can be gained through 2 ways, either you grow old, or you go through extreme stress. The most famous example of this syndrome comes from a queen that was due for execution, the day before her execution she had blonde hair but when everyone saw her walking towards her death the next day her hair was snow white like Menma's is now. I don't know what happened to Menma, but I can tell based on his mission and the look in his eyes that he'll never forget about what happened. And if he found out about this technique he might try to prevent it from having ever happened. Nozomi still wasn't sure what he was talking about and asked, "Just what is this technique?"
"One of Ainshutains theories was that the faster you go the slower time flows for you. Once you reach the speed of light your speed stops time for you entirely. He also thought that if you went faster than light then time would go backwards, in other words"-"Time travel." Nozomi finished.
Nero smiled again. "Even people with normal backgrounds love the idea of time travel, but when it comes to someone that's had it that bad, it's almost a certainty they'd want to change that... Nozomi, you're really good at catching on to things! If it weren't for Menma's sharingan I think you would be the first to finish their training." Nozomi blushed slightly because of the praise and asked, "What would happen if he went back in time anyway?"
Nero scratched his chin while he thought of an answer. He asked her, "Do you know anything about what Menma experienced?" Nozomi answered, "I asked Mina about it once, she said I was too young to know what happened but she told me it happened a little over 2 years ago."
Nero seemed more sure of himself now and announced, "There are consequences that we're not aware of when It comes to time travel. Let's say I wanted to go back in time and kill my grandfather. Now at this point there are lots of different possibilities you can think of. One of them is that it would be impossible to kill your grandfather. Two is that after you kill him you cease to exist because you were never born if your grandfather died, but if you were never born then you couldn't have ever went back in time to kill your grandfather, so he would live his life like normal, but once you're reborn you'll most likely go down the same road and end up killing him again which would result in a time loop, although that's only an assumption based on logic we don't know what would happen."
"Another situation is if you wanted to go in time and prevent a tragedy. Let's say your parents are dead and you decide to go back in time to prevent their death and you succeed. This is where new possibilities can occur. If the past is changed so that they never die then what motivation would your new self with parents have to go back in time? Would time restore itself and cancel out all of these changes so that your parents still died? Or would it just stay that way resulting in their being a plot hole in time and reality?"
There's one last thing I thought of. This can result in different ways right off the bat. Let's say you want to save yourself from the past from doing something stupid that results in losing an arm. This already seems strange because the future self wouldn't ever have memories of them being saved in the past, so that means the future self never actually time travelled. Now let's say he time travels anyway and meets his past self and saves him from losing an arm, would his future self now become two armed right on the spot? Would he also suddenly have memories of being saved in the past? Would all of his memories of struggling to be one armed disappear? And that's not all, now that the past self has two arms his future self would have never traveled back in time to save his past self. So what happened then? Has the timeline changed? Or maybe a whole new timeline is created? Maybe even"-"Ok ok Nero I get it! You've been going on forever now."
"Oh, sorry. I get carried away when I start sharing my thoughts with people." Nozomi concluded, "So basically you believe time travel to be too dangerous to try out because of the unpredictable consequences. It seems like the worst possible thing is a time loop."
Nero corrected her, "Well there is one more thing that I didn't mention. Another possible outcome is that you would be erased from existence to prevent a paradox like that from happening at all."
The thought of that happening to Menma silenced Nozomi and Nero said, "This is why I don't want the time traveling technique to be revealed. Although I might have to give this paper to him eventually, I'm pretty sure I already know what he wants his technique to be." Nozomi's ears perked up after hearing this and she quickly asked, "What is it." Nero debated with himself whether or not he should tell her and eventually decided against it. "I'm gonna let that be a surprise, but I'm convinced that I'm gonna have to give him this paper eventually... y'know, I actually went back in time myself before."
Hearing this surprised Nozomi and she looked hard at him to see if he was joking or not. He continued, "I traveled back in time, but only by a few minutes where I did nothing, so nothing bad happened. Although I didn't do this particularly to test out time travel, but to test out the functionality of Choetsu techniques and the physics it's teaching. I tried going faster than light with and without the Choetsu technique application"-"You're that fast?!" Nozomi exclaimed.
Nero shook his head and stated, "I'm not that naturally fast. I used the Choetsu technique to go faster than light and ended up going back in time. And to test it without the Choetsu technique application I visited the Raikage and asked him to assist me with it. It took a little convincing but once he was on board I asked him to go as fast as he could, and even though he was going faster than light nothing happened and he stayed within this timeline. That was when I had an epiphany. The reason these techniques are referred to as Choetsu(Transcendent) is because they transcend our realities physics and come from another realities physics. I honestly don't know how our Uzumaki ancestors did it, but they somehow found out how to use another dimensions laws of physics by turning it into ninja techniques!!"
"Physics is surprisingly interesting." Nero nodded and agreed, "Yeah it is... y'know, I was wondering. How old are you?" "I'm 14 right now."
"14 huh? How do you catch on to this stuff so easily? I thought I would have to explain it in further detail but you got on to everything I said without pause." Nozomi looked down as she thought of an answer. She eventually gave him one, "I've always been shy and quiet. I'm used to listening and always letting someone else speak first. It seems nosy but I'm interested in what people say so sometimes I tune out other voices in a crowd and focus on the one I think is talking about the most interesting stuff. Ever since I went through this cat like mutation it's only been easier for me to do these things, and I feel more confident in general." Nozomi blushed at a thought that popped into her head. "At first when I found out about this transformation I went through I thought I was hideous and Menma wouldn't want to look at me, but the first time he saw me after going through the transformation he didn't even acknowledge the cat ears, eyes, and tail. His only expression was one of relief and unconditional love. The feeling of unconditional love felt somewhat familiar, but I didn't know why. Even though he didn't acknowledge it much I felt like he was hiding how he felt about it, so I asked him about it. Do you know what he told me?" Nero shook his head and Nozomi continued, "He said it was cute! That really taught me to look on the bright side of things no matter what!"
Nero smiled after hearing the story and thought out loud, "You two will be inseparable in the future." Nozomi looked at him stunned for a moment. Nero realized what happened and thought, 'Did I say that out loud?' Nozomi's face grew red and she turned away from him shouting, "Wh-what are you talking about?! I admire him deeply! It's not like I love him like that or anything!"
"Oh right, my bad." Was Nero's only response. Nozomi started walking away but stopped and turned around for one last question while the blush on her face was still present, "Hey, I noticed earlier that you said Menma will be 18 soon, just how soon?" Nero answered quickly, "He should be 18 at the end of the month. Right now it's October 16th, so in about 15 days."
Nozomi's cat like eyes dilated and she said to herself, "So we have the same birthday." Nero caught on to what she was trying to say and smiled. "Oh, I see now. Do you want us to prepare a joint birthday for you both?"
Nozomi turned around and blurted out, "J-joint birthday?! You don't have to do anything like that!" Nero nodded and replied, "Got it, joint birthday it is then." Nozomi comically pleaded with him as he started walking away, "Noooo, that's embarrassing!"
While Nozomi and Nero kept on talking Menma was in his room studying Time Dilation. 'Ok, laws of relativity don't seem that bad. I can understand the gravity part. Gravity is distortions in spacetime taking shape because of mass. The heavier the gravity, the slower time passes by. So if lived on a planet right next to a blackhole time would pass by extremely slow for me while it passes by faster everywhere else. In this case an hour on the planet right next to the blackhole would be 7 years on Earth. In a way that's like traveling to the future if you went back to earth after 1 hour.'
Menma reread the last part one more time. 'This part about speed seems strange though. Maybe I'm just thinking about it too much, but apparently speed also affects time. The faster you go, the slower time goes by for you. You also gain mass the faster you go. I don't really get how speed affects time though. I get places faster when I move faster, but that's because I'm traveling faster so it takes a shorter amount of time to cross the distance... I must be overthinking it. So similar to the blackhole example if something went at 99% the speed of light for 5 years straight 36 years would pass for everyone else, and if you went right at the speed of light time would for you would reach 0, in other words it would stop. It seems like gravity has a much bigger effect on time than speed right up until you reach light speed.'
Menma stood up and decided he learned everything he needed to. He was still bothered by the missing page but he dismissed it. 'Ok, so now I know a little bit, but I'm gonna have to learn more. This isn't nearly enough to create the jujitsu I want. I need something that will somehow connect to every part of his soul, but I can't come up with any tangible way to do that.'
Menma started his trek towards Nero's room while thoughts behind physics clouded his mind the whole time.
Nozomi And Nero
"Nozomi, can you do something for me?" Nero asked. Nozomi nodded and Nero continued, "Pretty soon I'm going to give Menma this last piece of paper. A good way to make sure he doesn't try anything is to make sure he values the here and now." Nozomi tilted her head cause she still wasn't sure what he meant. "What are you getting at?"
"I need you to spend more time with Menma for his sake. He'd already think about the risk of time travel, but then he'd also have to think about the people he's leaving behind." Nozomi answered quickly, "Ok, I'll do it."
Nero was a little surprised. "Oh really? You accepted spending time with Menma fast." Nozomi blurted out, "Don't get the wrong idea!!"
Before their conversation could proceed any further Menma walked in on them. "Were you two talking about something?" Nozomi quickly shook her head and walked past him. "It's ok, we already finished... also Menma, can you come by my room when you're finished?"
Menma replied, "Yeah of course," Nozomi closed the door and Menma walked towards Nero with his folder in his hand. "Nero, I finished everything, but it wasn't enough. I need to learn more."
Nero nodded and handed him some folders. Menma counted them and there were three. They were named General Relativity, Light particles, and Quantum Entanglement. Just like earlier all of the terms were unfamiliar to him and Nero stated, "Read these and you'll learn more about light and Ainshutains most popular theory of e=mc."
Menma nodded and quickly left the room. Once Menma left Nero was left by himself, or at least he thought. He walked towards his bed and sat down, but before he could do anything else he sensed eyes staring at him from his window.
His eyes quickly came into contact with another pair of eyes belonging to an old man. The old man seemed to belong to a higher class judging by his outfit, but judging by his aura he had a lot more physical power than any man of the upper class.
Nero opened his mouth to ask a question but before he could the man cut him off, ""Who are you and how did you get all the way up here? Not even an elite ninja could get past all the sensors undetected." Is that what you were going to say?"
Nero remained silent and the man continued, "You have nothing to fear, if I meant harm everyone here would be long dead. My name is Adonai, I just wanted to give you some reassurance."
