Experimenting with another writing style here.

AN: I've been sitting on this chapter for nearly six months now. Life has been pretty hectic, but as I promised, my stories haven't been abandoned. Hopefully the next chapter comes much faster.

Chapter 3

It was humbling to consider all the ways his life changed when he 'died' all those years ago.

Before that life-altering day, his life had been pretty dismal - not that he'd known at the time. He'd grown up thinking that he was not really like the other children; not necessarily because anyone explicitly told him so - though they did - but because of how everyone else interacted with him. It was firmly entrenched in his mind that there was a difference between himself and the other people around him. Now that he had the benefit of hindsight, it was painfully obvious just how he became the sort of person who had to learn that he was human - whatever that meant - from the shinigami. Even then, it still felt a bit surreal to him. In a way, being an orphan saved him. If he had belonged to a clan, or worse, a simple family, he would probably have been treated much worse. However, because he was a ward of the state, there were limits to what could be done to him. The power of the state ensured that only covert tactics and interactions could be used to hurt him. He could not be allowed to be malnourished, so once the orphanage caretakers noticed his above average vitality, he was fed with food that was a few steps away from completely rotten. Somehow, he never fell sick. He could not be punished without reason, so the other children were encouraged to report him for the slightest thing. He could not be ostracized, but if the children refused to play with him because of his 'horrid behaviour', surely there wasn't much the caretakers could do.

Another benefit of his orphan status was the highly regimented life lived by wards of the state with the potential to use chakra. The issues that might have been exacerbated by his circumstances were under tight control. Shinobi did not tolerate attitude too well - especially from the likes of him.

Nobody knew how messed up Uzumaki Naruto was better than Uzumaki Naruto himself, and perhaps the matriarchs of the Uzumaki family in Konoha - even if what was left of them barely met the legal definition of a shinobi family. Even now, it was a constant battle to correct behaviours and assumptions that he'd unknowingly absorbed.

His body moved through the warm-up stretches and drills for his morning training, ignoring the faint twinges he sometimes felt when remembering his freak accident. Around him, the rest of the family went through their warm-ups as well. He kept one eye on one of said matriarchs. Her sharp eyes watched his movement along with that of three others in their group even as she herself went through the same warm-up. Only a fool would think that her age somehow made her less dangerous, despite her retirement from an active shinobi lifestyle.

The family occupied a fairly large house in one of the few civilian sectors in Inner Konoha. Besides himself, they consisted of three elders who functioned as the matriarchs, a mother-daughter pair who came to Konoha in recent years, and three teenagers.

As they began to flow through kata, he allowed himself to resume his reminiscing - he pretty much had the first fifty five basic kata of the Uzumaki self defence martial art down to nearly instinctual level.

It's always strange to think that my death was the best thing to happen to me. He'd been visited first by an honest-to-kami, well, Kami. His conversations with Shinigami-sama were possibly the most defining moments of his life so far. Maybe ever. After all, very few people can say that they've ever been visited by a god, much less recruited and had their existence validated by one. All in all, the Shinigami wasn't all that bad for a death god, even if his agenda was still quite hidden.

His accident had drawn the attention of the Hokage to the orphanage, and more specifically to him. He'd been a recluse, even at that young age, and he'd have flown under the radar for years if only the orphanage matrons could have controlled themselves.

He'd woken up for the first time since the accident that led to his death a month after the accident - not that he knew how much time had passed at the time. It was also the first time his absurdly good health was observed to be so much more. It was just as well, in my humble opinion. Without his regeneration bloodline, the chances of surviving and recuperating from the injuries he acquired were the same - zero. However, instead of being condemned to a short life as an invalid, he was able to make a full recovery. It was a measure of how serious his injuries were that he needed close to three months to recover well enough to start rehabilitation.

The day he was to begin his rehabilitation, he was formally recognized by the Uzumaki family as a member. He could still remember the day like yesterday.

│Today was his last day as an in-patient - or so his nurse told him yesterday. He'd been here for three months as doctors, nurses, and scientists observed him and kept him as comfortable as possible. Three months that were some of the best of his life. The door slid open, and his nurse slipped in. There were five nurses who took care of him throughout the duration of his hospitalization, and all five of them were extremely nice to him - a first for any adult in his life. He still looked forward to the lunch his favourite, Hana-san, promised him once he was discharged.

"Good morning, Rei-obasan," he greeted the nurse who just entered his room.

"Good morning, Naruto," she replied. "How was your night?" she asked as she came to his bedside.

"It was fine, thank you," he replied.

"Great to hear. Now, hold still for a bit while I take your vitals and samples for this morning, okay?"

He nodded. It wasn't like he could go anywhere.

A few minutes later, she guided him to the toilet to relieve himself, and freshen up. Three months were not enough to get rid of the awkwardness he felt about that, and none of the nurses would leave, even if he protested that he was strong enough to take care of himself without their help.

Back in bed but propped up into a sitting position, he held out his arm for Rei to draw the samples she needed. Just as she was leaving, a device beeped.

"Hoh? Naruto, the Third and some very important people are outside to see you. Be on your best behaviour, okay?" she said after looking at it.

True to her words, about a minute after she stepped out, the Hokage entered the room accompanied by the legendary Tsunade, and one other person he did not know.

"Good morning Hokage-sama, Tsunade-sama, Obāsama," he greeted with a small, seated bow.

"Good morning, Naruto," replied the Third. Tsunade and the last lady simply nodded at him.

"Let's get straight to the point," began the Hokage. "This woman is a matriarch of the newly recognized Uzumaki family here in Konoha. One of the tests we ran on you when you were recently hospitalized revealed that you are an Uzumaki. As such, the family has been given custody of you, as is their right. I myself have no problem with the request, and as your de jure guardian, have approved the request. Meet Sugi Uzumaki."

For a few seconds, Naruto's chest became unbelievably tight. Someone, no, an entire family… An entire family wanted him. Him, the one every person outside of those he'd interacted with in the hospital treated like less than shit. He swallowed hard and tried to speak, but his mouth hadn't yet caught up with the rest of him. So he just nodded, tears running down his face. Tsunade had smiled at him and ruffled his hair even as the Third continued speaking.

"Tsunade here is also part Uzumaki from her mother's side," he said. "As the Senju clan head, she cannot bear the name, obviously, but there is no reason you can't know her as your half aunt."

"Thank you," Naruto finally managed to choke out. "Thank you very much, Hokage-sama, Tsunade-obasan, Sugi-sama."

He really did not know how much he really wanted a family up until the point where he got one.│

Sugi-sama hadn't said much that day, and a few minutes later, the three older people left his room, giving him the privacy he needed. The matriarch was there when it was time for him to be discharged, along with a much younger woman who looked like she was in her teens. The leaf insignia mounted on the band she used to hold back her hair identified her as shinobi, and the bulky, green jacket meant that she'd been one for a while. For a five year old, entering a family house - his family house - for the first time filled his heart nearly to bursting, even if he was wheeled in. The discovery that the entire Uzumaki clan fit into that relatively little house couldn't dampen his happiness.

The sharp pain from the matriarch's knuckles rapping on his head pulled him from his reminiscing. He'd continued his katas while he was lost in thought, and hadn't noticed when the others stopped. Quiet snickers from all around made him blush even as he quickly made his apologies to the matriarch. Nodding her acceptance, the woman dismissed them with a lift of her chin. She was a woman of few words, Sugi-sama.

"Watch and learn, Kurama."

Those were words the Shinigami left him with the last time they came visiting. Their friendship had always been a queer thing, even when it started all those years ago. It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke.

Whatever the Shinigami had done, it left him feeling more stable than he'd felt in a long time. More and more of his previously clouded memories were clearing up. He remembered the 'debates' the three of them used to have, and a statement the Shinigami made then that he'd ignored, but found himself meditating on more often.

"If you really are just hatred and that alone, Kurama," the Shinigami had begun in his calm voice, his eyes drilling into Kurama, "and if you really are just lust and nothing else, Matatabi," he'd continued, glancing at his two-tailed 'sibling' as he mentioned her name, "why then would you have the ability to think? To reason?"

The question hadn't made sense to Kurama then, but he'd never forgotten the answer Shinigami gave, not waiting for either bijuu to respond.

"Thinking is the means by which we decide what to put first," he'd said. "If you're all one thing, why would you need to prioritise? You'd be just that one thing regardless of the situation around you. But because you can think, you can shape your hatred, Kurama, and your lust, Matatabi. You can direct them in ways that are not self destructive, or that achieve a purpose. More importantly, you can be more."

"And if that purpose is the unlimited satiation of my hatred?" he'd asked the shinigami. "If your 'more' is simply less to me?"

"Even then, you'd have to satiate it in such a way that makes it possible to keep on satiating it, no?" replied the primordial. "It would be hardly useful to destroy everything in the world at the same time, leaving nothing to hate,"

But all that was lifetimes ago.

As he acclimatized to the eyes the Shinigami had given him, he got glimpses of things. A life tethered to a stupid, arrogant, loud, parody of his partner. One who always thought he was right, and weaponized his insane charisma and luck. One whose solution to things was throwing more chakra at them while screaming about 'never giving up'. One whose dependency on approval kept him chained to abusive people. A brat that screamed about 'his precious people', yet who eventually became the sort of man who neglected his family. It pained him to say that even his own doppelganger succumbed to the loud brat's influence eventually.

But it was not only his partner's parody that was wrong. The whole of that world was simply crazy, at least according to the rapid, short glimpses he'd been granted. Legends being defeated by children. Shinobi in flashy clothes actually forming correct hand signs and calling out jutsu names for their opponents to see and hear. Villains who actually explained themselves when asked. If there was a larger context, Kurama could not see it.

Some things were the same. His partner still didn't know what to do with attention of any kind - an unavoidable consequence of his upbringing. However, it made him all the more determined to ensure that his partner never ended up that way.

That he would also turn out an idiot should his partner go down that route was a given now that they had one body. If he wasn't viewing the results of the Shinigami's gift, he would have called it one of those ridiculous fiction productions his Uzumaki had loved to binge on. At least this way, his hatred was clear sighted and focused on one thing.

Speaking of the Uzumaki, he had, for the first time, experienced loss when he finally got to the part of his memory where information on their fate was stored. If his then keeper hadn't given room to her despair, it pained him to say that he would still be unaware of their destruction. The Uzumaki were the first people he'd ever viewed as his, and their destruction gave him a significant amount of understanding for humans and their particular drive for revenge.

Kumo, Kiri, and Iwa occupied the top of his shit list now, and he was grateful to the Shinigami for the lessons in directing his hatred towards achieving his goals.

There was a remnant, however - around a dozen who felt close to pure breed. The brief flares of anger his partner felt were enough to let him sense their environment with their body - even if only for a few seconds.

However, until he actually met with his partner, all he'd have was time. So, he turned that time towards studying their shared body.

He would have loved to tinker and 'upgrade' to his heart's content, but the human body was a phenomenal piece of carefully tuned bioengineering that could only bend certain ways. He could not just willy-nilly adjust things - the consequences would be too numerous for him to keep track of. That didn't mean he was completely useless though. His closeness to the Uzumaki, and the Uzumaki bloodline that the Shinigami ramped up to 13 gave him much wider room for augmentation whenever the body had to heal beyond what was necessary for growth and maintenance.

The healing and rehabilitation of their body after their brief encounter with death provided the first great opportunity. It helped that the body was no longer strictly human. He could rebuild the body, and he took the chance. He slowed down the regeneration as much as he dared, teasing the natural rehabilitation processes in the direction he wanted them to go, and shaping the changes with a combination of his youkai and the boy's chakra - their chakra.

Nervous pathways were rebuilt and coated with chakra as he 'encouraged' their coils to extend microscopic vessels around them. His expectation was that their ability to carry signals would be boosted tremendously, but he would have no way to test and compare until he met his partner. He left those pathways inactivated, for now.

He focused their yang chakra into the body's skeleton, forming membranes coating them, and linking said membranes to their chakra coils with filters at the joining points to split the chakra, ensuring that only yang chakra went through. As the boy grew, the membranes would grow with him until the density of yang chakra coating the bones peaked at 5% of the bone density.

Next, he extended chakra vessels to all the major muscle groups, each vessel branching and feeding into membranes such that every individual muscle fibre was constantly submerged in chakra. The pool of chakra surrounding the muscles, and the size of the vessels feeding said pool would slowly increase with demand placed on the muscle. The chakra would serve the dual purpose of providing energy for the cells, and quickly breaking down any lactic buildup - catalyzing its conversion into more energy.

As he guided the regeneration of the organs that had failed, he set up similar measures. The eyes, ears, and nose all got minor modifications - mostly to lay the groundwork for any intentional augmentation they'd be carrying out. Interconnections within the brain were augmented to fire faster, and heal much closer to the ideal. The boy would be intelligent, but would pay later when he started to learn much more complex things rapidly as the speed with which he learned now would result in a relatively short attention span. Hints of the shortened attention span were evident in his distaste for calligraphy

All in all, Kurama was very proud of his work.

As the boy was discharged and began his rehabilitation, Kurama began to slowly activate the changes he'd carried out, regulating them so that the boy would notice nothing. He was almost certain that he'd kept a lot from the medical staff in charge of the boy's rehabilitation, but he couldn't be sure how much exactly.

All that was left now was to wait and ponder, two things Kurama had gotten very, very, good at over the years.

Akimichi Choza was in a contemplative mood as he watched Shikaku with Inoichi, waiting for the silent genius to share what he could about what was bothering him. Like in the case of most of the highly ranked shinobi in the village, Yoshino Nara was her husband's Zandaka, functioning as his balance in all things except those classified by the Hokage. Yet sometimes, the Nara patriarch wanted the varying perspectives he got from his two friends.

Movement just out of sight drew his attention momentarily to Inoichi. Choza had always disapproved of how Inoichi blamed the loss of his first child on the adopted Uzumaki boy indirectly, as though he expected a newborn to somehow resist what he was used as a means of achieving. That was neither here nor there now, but Choza would be foolish to deny that their friendship was affected by the incident. Despite being the foremost expert with mind techniques, Inoichi could be extremely dense about what lay in his own head.

He looked back at Shikaku. The man had changed - Choza would be the first to admit that, despite the change being so little that only he and Inoichi could notice it. In the chaos of the aftermath of the Kyūbi disaster 7 years ago, Shikaku had been picked by the Hokage for greater responsibility. As time progressed, the man had been brought closer to the Hokage's circle, something he admitted to them provided a vastly different perspective of the village.

Although it was very likely because the village was changing dramatically in ways that were novel for any shinobi village.

To call Konohagakure a 'hidden village' was a bit of a misnomer. For one, it was hardly hidden any longer. Even as far back as the second Shinobi war, the Daimyo had been taking steps that saw a massive swell in population and industry within Hi no Kuni - which was in large part the cause of the tensions that eventually led to the third shinobi war. Secondly, Konoha had grown far beyond the traditional size of what normally amounted to a large shinobi garrison - which was simply a mercenary camp in practice. What was once the village was now called 'Inner Konoha' where nearly all the shinobi, and some 10,000 heavily vetted civilians lived. Surrounding Inner Konoha was an outer village with a radius twice the size of inner Konoha. About two hundred kilometres from Konohagakure was the rapidly growing city Konoha Machi - a town belonging to the Fire Daimyo that was home to more than 300,000 inhabitants.

Hi no Kuni was on the very cutting edge of development, a fact that contributed greatly to the changes experienced by Konoha. Even as the nation changed, more and more mystical creatures were drawn to the energy produced by the large settlements. Missions poured into Konoha, and barge loads of ryo followed them. The scare of a third world war made the Daimyo to focus on the military, ramping up the military budget, signing the ally treaty with Tetsu that allowed them to train Samurai for Hi no Kuni, establishing enclaves for chakra monks, and establishing shinobi military outposts all over the nation - especially at the borders. The changes ensured that the shinobi clans could become more highly valued and diversified. More and more shinobi were used for proxy wars, and the tensions between nations played out within shinobi more often than not. In the ten years since the end of the third shinobi war, and before the Kyūbi attack, shinobi numbers had swelled greater than 12,000 for the first time in Konoha's history. But it was the Kyūbi attack that provided the impetus to break traditions that kept the village from fully embracing the changes at large in most of Hi no Kuni.

"Jiraiya was telling me some interesting things yesterday," began Shikaku at last, breaking the silence that Choza had been reminiscing in. "What do you know about chakra?" he asked.

The question was strange to Choza, much more because they were shinobi. You might as well ask a wolf what it knew about hunting! Yet as soon as he thought that, the essence of the question became clear.

Inoichi was a bit slower on the uptake.

"What kind of question is that?" he asked, a mild frown on his face as he thought about it despite his statement. "Chakra is the result of the mix of physical energy, and spiritual energy,"

"The textbook answer, yes. Yet as I discussed with Jiraiya, I came to see how that just could not be true - at least in the way we think about it. In fact, I think the only thing right in that definition is that chakra is energy," replied Shikaku.

"Okay," replied Inoichi, drawing out the word to show his skepticism with the entire line of thought. "How does that change anything?"

"It does," replied Choza, interrupting whatever Shikaku would have said. The Nara patriarch seemed intrigued that someone else might be thinking the same way he was, and gestured for Choza to continue.

"A wolf hunts. Yet it cannot apply the principles of the hunt outside of the hunt. It cannot make abstractions. What Shikaku is trying to say is that Jiraiya pointed out the fact that we've been using chakra like animals, and not like men," said Choza.

Even as the light of comprehension dawned in Inoichi's eyes, Choza continued.

"Shinobi, samurai, and monks have been using chakra for at least two thousand years. Yet all they've ever used it for is war. The only chakra techniques that are even slightly beneficial to non shinobi directly might be medical chakra - and only for trauma or chakra damage. Can you think of any other human endeavour that's been that way?"

"No," whispered Inoichi.

"No," said Shikaku. "Jiraiya left the village last night to find someone. Someone he met years ago while wandering. He's starting a unit, and wants the man's ideas about chakra to shape the way the kids think - somewhat like an experiment to see the viability of the ideas."

"What would this mean for shinobi?" asked Inoichi. He still seemed a bit shell shocked as he tried to follow his new revelation to its many strange conclusions.

"The same thing change always means - we adapt, or we die," replied Shikaku with finality.

"It makes sense now why the Hokage didn't execute Orochimaru for those human experiments, despite what the citizens might infer," said Inoichi, his mind still obviously making connections between seemingly isolated but baffling decisions taken in recent times.

"Indeed. From what I gather, he has advanced the farthest in working with chakra in unconventional ways. The only ones more advanced than him would be the Uzumaki prior to their destruction," replied Shikaku. "Not to mention the reduced cost of maintaining all those prisoners. Thanks to Orochimaru, their execution can be couched in a manner that is research."

"Speaking of Uzumaki, I hear that the family will put Naruto forward for Jiraiya-sama's program," said Choza, pivoting to the new topic rather sharply. He noticed Inoichi's stiffness, but paid it no mind.

'He really needs to get rid of that silly grudge,' thought Choza, 'it will definitely get him in trouble should the Uzumaki matriarch notice it,'

No one wanted trouble with the people who calibrated their seals.

"Yes," replied Shikaku. "That's a bold statement of trust in the Hokage's faction from them,"

"Especially with Konoha's abysmal record with prodigies. One would expect that they would definitely be wary of any so-called new units targeting children," agreed Choza.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the matriarchs are recruited as part of the trainers for that unit though. The two Uzumaki chunin are leagues above any other chunin in Konoha, and might even be inching into jōnin territory - at least as far as their combat proficiency is concerned," mused Shikaku.

No one actually knew what the Uzumaki did with respect to training. Their official statement was 'distilled badassery'.

"They are a small family though. That's probably why," commented Inoichi.

"A small family that's well on the way to becoming disproportionately powerful - again," replied Shikaku.

The shadow user was correct in his thinking - at least to Choza. For a family with less than a dozen pure blood adults, they were extremely influential. All the pure blood Uzumaki were involved with the shinobi forces in one form or the other - mostly special forces, and consulted with at least three departments. Their vassal families were over-represented in the village's engineering and physical sciences departments. In short, for such a small family, they pulled well over their weight. Their alliance with the Senju, Sarutobi, and Shimura families made them a force to reckon with politically - much more now they were officially recognized. It showed in their family council vote of two - the only family besides the founding Senju family with such weight. The alliance with Sarutobi and Shimura made them essentially unstoppable in the shinobi family council. As a voting bloc with six votes between them, they were more often than not tie breakers.

He would admit that it tickled him how Kumo had inadvertently given up an Uzumaki - especially after all they went through to annihilate the clan. After the boy's accident 2 years ago, his bloodline finally activated, and the medics were able to confirm that he was Uzumaki. The Hokage jumped on it, immediately adding the boy to a new offer for a council seat for the Uzumaki family to tie them permanently to the village. Before the Kyūbi attack, a lot of orphans were given the name by Konoha in an attempt to pay tribute to the survivors of their ally's destruction. However, after the Kyūbi attack - especially since it was well known that the Kyūbi was supposedly a benevolent Uzumaki tailed demon/ancestor/patron, almost no one was willing to bear the name any longer. The bearers of the name were subtly ostracized - especially by non-clan civilians, despite the fact that nearly all of them were Uzumaki in name only. However, until the boy was found and 'gifted' to the Uzumaki, the clan doggedly turned down any offers to be on the council. With the boy, and the increase in weight of their proposed vote to 2, it seemed like the offer had become acceptable to the matriarchs who oversaw the clan affairs.

"To be fair, they aren't getting stronger in isolation. Wasn't the Shimura family offered a place in the Daimyo's court recently?" asked Chouza.

"Yep. The Hyūga and the Uchiha might be the wealthiest shinobi clans in the world right now," agreed Inoichi.

"And we've started gossiping like our wives again," commented Shikaku dryly.

"Could you say that a bit louder?"

The way Shikaku turned white at those words dragged a laugh from Chouza, and a wince from Inoichi.

Meanwhile, thousands of kilometres away, and a few degrees out of phase with what most shinobi would call 'reality', Jiraiya opened his eyes, the slightly red colouring around his eyes the only indication that he was using senjutsu. Beside him, the rest of his teammates sat cross legged, eyes shut as they harmonised nature chakra in the different ways taught by their senjutsu tutors. The blonde haired woman opened her eyes a few moments before the pale man, but the blue slime tear tracks on her face, and the slightest hint of scales on the face of the pale man indicated success for the both of them.

The toad elders were the only ones who knew how to find the landmark he had described. Getting them to allow Orochimaru through had taken some fast talking, but they managed it eventually.

"Are you sure about this, Jiraiya?" asked Tsunade.

"I am," replied Jiraiya at the same time Orochimaru said, "He is."

Without further ado, the two put a hand each on one of his shoulders, flaring their chakra into a shroud that melded into one and covered all three of them. While they did so, he placed his palms on the stone monument before him, drawing up the nature chakra he'd stored. He concentrated on the symbol that the wanderer had given him as his address, a serpent wrapped around a wheel, and eating its own tail. Holding the symbol firm in his mind, he moulded his chakra through the stone, shaping it as though for a reverse summoning. Reality lurched painfully, and the technique gulped nearly three-quarters of his chakra. The sudden loss made him dizzy even as he fought valiantly to keep his lunch down. The hot burn of vomit in his throat indicated his loss in the battle, and he barely twisted away in time to clear the stone monument as he fell to his knees, emptying his guts. From the retching around him, his teammates weren't any better. This was the first time he'd ever physically attempted to contact the wanderer.

'Gah! That's a trip I don't look forward to making again,' thought Jiraiya as he stumbled to his feet, grasping at his pouch for his water bottle and special alcohol.

"Well, so far, so good," he rasped, spitting and rinsing out his mouth first with water, then with the strange alcoholic drink he'd acquired a taste for. Tsunade reached for his flask once she was done, and Orochimaru looked like he wanted to, despite his sage restrictions.

"How do we find this wanderer of yours," asked Orochimaru, his voice raspier than normal.

Before Jiraiya could reply though, a thin, shimmering line about 8 feet long appeared before them. The line rotated 180 degrees before peeling back into a gap in reality through which a man stepped.

"Looks like he found us," replied Jiraiya sheepishly.

The wanderer looked just like Jiraiya remembered him from all those years ago. He was tall, possibly one of the tallest men Jiraiya had ever met, and broad shouldered. Dark red hair framed a hard face that held some mirth, despite being all hard angles and shadowed planes. The mirth reached his eyes, softening them with fondness that Jiraiya noted with reassurance. A sword hung from his waist, an oddly crafted thing that somehow went well with his equally strange clothes - a white shirt, a short, black coat hanging open, black trousers - almost leggings in fact, and boots worked with what looked like silver. His arms held behind him gave him a regal, almost imperial look.

"Lecher," he said by way of greeting. "You brought friends with you. Maybe they will stand between you and Aviendha, no?"

The mention of his companion almost made him flinch as he remembered how close the hard woman came to killing him, and how powerless he felt as his own chakra worked against him for the first time in his life.

"I would think she would be more annoyed by my female friend," began Jiraiya in reply, "what with how protective of you she is."

The man laughed - a good laugh that put him at ease. He could feel Orochimaru relax a little bit, and hoped that the two of them would follow his lead. It would be tantamount to suicide to antagonize the man anywhere within his range.

"So what brings you and your friends here? Have you come to follow up on our discussions in Tel'aran'rhiod?" asked the wanderer.

"Indeed," replied Jiraiya. "This is Tsunade," he gestured at his blonde teammate, "and this is Orochimaru," he gestured at the other man. "We've come to hopefully request your help with training our people in exchange for the chance for you to study chakra - as you wished."

"Training?" replied the man. "Aviendha would love something like that," he mused. "In any case, talking here is such poor manners. Please, come with me. I can tell your journey here was difficult."

He gestured for them to follow him as he stepped into the reality tear again.

No matter how easily the man carried himself, it was impossible not to take note of the air of command that hung about him. Even at ease, the man moved like a warrior - always balanced, and flowing from one step to the other.

The portal deposited them in a harsh, dry wilderness. The man took six steps and vanished from sight, even though her chakra senses told her he was right there in front of her. Jiraiya never even slowed down. He vanished exactly where the man did. With a mental shrug, she followed as well only to stop as she took in the sight in front of her.

The lush green paradise before her eyes was a violent contrast to the wilderness behind them. Over the tops of the trees and in the distance, she could see the remains of what must have been two massive statues, each holding an orb aloft. The man had kept on walking, forcing Tsunade to speed up in order to catch up with the rest of the party.

Glancing at Orochimaru, she could see the naked curiosity in his eyes as he tried to take in everything at once without stopping. She felt him shape his chakra for a shadow clone, but before he could complete the technique, Jiraiya grabbed his hand forcefully, disrupting him. The unspoken question was answered when Jiraiya signed 'No chakra. Very Dangerous'.

"Do not reach for your chakra here," said the man suddenly, drawing their attention back to him, "Your bodies will betray you, and you will die - at best."

The warning, although delivered in a casual tone, carried with it the seriousness of a heart attack.

"Why is it dangerous?" asked Tsunade, hazarding a question.

"Because what you call 'chakra' is simply a part of a greater whole - albeit a part that evolved locally. Here, it would seek to join the rest of the whole, and will destroy you at best in the process,"

"We have many questions," began Jiraiya, but the man held up a hand.

"It is not polite to have serious discussions without welcoming you. Aviendha would have my head - and I rather like it where it is," he said.

The rest of their journey was in silence.