Iwao was a godsend. Not because I liked him particularly, but because I now had a child to measure my growth against. Turns out, I had left the kid in the dust, and given him an inferiority complex in the process. I regretted that a little bit, but at least I knew I could out think and out perform a child native to this world, whose daddy could afford the best tutors Iwagakure had to offer.

That might seem a little unfair, coming from a reincarnated thirty-something, but I had no idea what to expect of the children here. Yes, there were kids like Iwao, who had a moderate degree of talent, but there was also Uchiha Itachi, Hatake Kakashi and others who could probably outclass me in every way, advanced mental development or not.

So I was glad to have confirmation. And the kid wasn't the worst company, all things considered. Despite his status, he wasn't arrogant or spoiled, and he knew when to shut up.

He also knew how to read, with impressive proficiency for his age. Something that I knew I'd need to learn, which didn't stop me from procrastinating as much as I was humanly able.

Language in the Elemental Nations, or in Iwagakure at least, was weird. Everybody spoke both English and Japanese, and though English—called Common—was used most prevalently, there were times that it was expected for a person to speak in Japanese—called Traditional. I had no idea the origin for this system, and Hamamoto-obasan didn't either.

But while Common was the preferred language for speaking, Traditional was the preferred language for writing. In fact, I don't think I'd seen a single piece of literature written in Common; the closest I'd ever seen was in some signs in stores. The irony was not lost on me; it seemed neocolonialism and capitalism were extradimensional forces.

Writing in Japanese was completely foreign to me. There were essentially three different alphabets: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. From my old life, I knew that Hiragana was the written language most native to Japan, while Katakana was a phonetic alphabet that was basically a go-between for other languages and Japanese. Words from other languages that didn't possess Hiragana were written in Katakana. Meanwhile, Kanji were Chinese symbols that represented entire words, adapted to Japanese.

In the elemental nations, Hiragana was mainly used informally, like in menus at quick-service restaurants, fiction novels or in messages on bulletin boards. Katakana were interspersed with Hiragana, as they were the only way to write many words. However, they weren't yoinked from another language, supposedly. Instead, they were simply created to represent new developments, as if someone had the bright idea at one point to make an entirely new language instead of adding to one of the two existing ones. I won't complain because it was the easiest for me, a native English speaker, to learn by far.

Meanwhile, Kanji were more formal. Names and titles were typically written in Kanji, and I've never seen a scroll bearing Hiragana or Katakana. They were the hardest for me to get a hang of, as there were so many elements hidden within each Kanji.

Akane-obasan offered me lessons, but they weren't very helpful. She wasn't a skilled teacher, and she had forgotten completely what it was like to learn the language. Iwao-kun, who remembered like it was yesterday (since it basically was), knew exactly what was helpful, what was not, and shared shortcuts he had discovered himself or been taught by knowledgeable tutors.

All it took was some heavy-handed manipulation. He was so desperate to prove he was better than me at something—anything—he agreed to the proposition almost immediately. It helped that he was, at heart, a gentle boy, and wasn't emotionally cognizant enough to understand the jealousy that surged through his veins.

I felt bad for using the kid, so I made sure to pay him back for his services with interest. Not that he noticed. I taught him games that would improve his flexibility, which I knew had to be nurtured at an early age, and instilled habits that would improve his overall conditioning.

Still, even with his guidance, it took an embarrassingly long amount of time to learn how to read and write. Perhaps even longer than it took actual babies. I slowly and surely made progress, however, because I refused to be illiterate.

To test myself on Kanji one day, I pulled one of the dusty scrolls off Akane-obasan's shelves. None of them were labeled whatsoever, so I had no clue what their subjects would be. What I found was the last thing I could have possibly expected.

Step by step diagrams, each illustrating the creation process of a motherfucking seal.

"Akane-obasan," I croaked, the hoarseness in my voice having little to do with my injury. "What is this?"

"Oh, these are some old scrolls my Atsuchi-kun left here," she said breezily, waving her hand as if it was no concern. "I can't make heads or tales of them. Do you like the pretty pictures, Kasaiki-chan?"

My brain was still short-circuiting. "Yeah. Pretty pictures," I murmured.

Isn't sealing knowledge incredibly rare? And isn't Iwagakure kinda known for being especially shit at it? How was there a sealing library in this random woman's home? And who the fuck was Hamamoto Atsuchi?

At least this explained why she had so many goddamn calligraphy brushes lying around.

"Are there any with words, Obasan?" I asked.

"I haven't looked through them all myself," she admitted. "I don't really understand them in the least. I'm not supposed to show them to anyone, but I won't tell Atsuchi-kun if you don't. Just make sure to return the scroll to their exact same spot, alright? I'm pretty sure they're organized in a special way."

If Akane-obasan had looked through a couple, there likely weren't privacy or self destruction seals on them. Sloppy, but convenient for me so I set to work.

It took me hours just to find something that wasn't a diagram, and I was disappointed but not surprised to find that I couldn't understand a lick of it. The Kanji were unfamiliar to me, and many likely had no English translation. If I wanted to even begin to crack this mystery, I would need some kind of dictionary.

I activated puppy dog eyes no jutsu and turned to Akane-obasan.

- - - { ワナビー } - - -

Every time Kazuhiro returned home from a mission, he found a different child waiting for him. That's what it felt like, in any case. Kasaiki was growing at an unfathomable rate, and he had missed all of her landmarks.

When he returned from a two month-long bodyguard mission in the Land of Grass, and found his god-sister talking in complete sentences, he nearly had a heart attack.

She wasn't his real daughter, so he wasn't too disappointed at this, only feeling a distant sort of pride and happiness. At first. But then he remembered that Hisashi didn't even have the option to be present for his daughter's first steps or to finally hear her say the word "tou-chan."

That was when he got sad. He missed his parents when they passed, but Kasaiki had never even known her own.

Which was why, even though his heart ached every step of the way, he took Kasaiki by the hand even though she could easily walk on her own now, and led her through the streets of Iwagakure to the Monument of the Fallen.

On the Surmount, the tallest mountain which sat directly behind the Tsuchikage's Palace, a giant rendition of the Tsuchikage's signature conical hat was carved into its base. Underneath the kite shaped space that the embossed Kanji for earth resided, was a line of text.

"Upon the strongest base, the highest peak will rise," a soft voice spoke from his side, and Kazuhiro nearly flinched. She could read?

"That's right," he said awkwardly, before pausing. He really didn't want to do this. He really didn't want to be here with his god-sister. But it needed to be him; he owed it to Hisashi.

"The names," she said, reaching out towards the stone before hesitating, fingertips an inch away. "They're our fallen comrades, aren't they?"

This time, Kazuhiro did flinch. How did she guess that? And our fallen comrades? Hamamoto-san told him she hadn't taken her here (he had been privately hoping she had).

"Yes, they are," he said finally. Engraved into the space around the kite, though not as deeply as the Earth kanji itself, were countless names. So many, in fact, that they had run out of space in the hat itself, and many had spilled over onto the surrounding mountain side.

He decided to parrot what his academy sensei had told his class when they visited all those years ago.

"Do you notice anything about the names here?" He asked.

Kasaiki regarded the monument for a moment before answering. "They're all written in different handwriting."

He nodded in agreement. "That's because they were all written by different people. When an Iwa shinobi falls in combat, one of their comrades will inscribe their name into the monument with Doton manipulation. There are unseen sentries here who watch over day and night to make sure their legacy is not disturbed. And you see how there is a dash between each name? That's to represent our bond. Past, present and future, all of our shinobi are connected."

Then, he broke script. "I've written eleven names on this monument."

Kasaiki shot him a look that he couldn't begin to decipher. "I'm sorry for your losses," she said softly. "Were two of them my parents?"

He exhaled heavily. "Yes."

"Do you want to talk about them?"

Do you want, not can you. The word choice made his heart ache. Maybe he was overthinking it, though. Hisashi always said he was in his head too much.

"You don't have to, if it hurts too much," she said hastily.

Kazuhiro wasn't sure if the words made him relieved, disturbed or embarrassed. Some ninja he was, if child could see through him so easily.

"Your ka-san wasn't in my life for very long," he admitted. "But she was sweet, from what I saw. She was a jonin though, so she must have had an edge to her. Your father, on the other hand…he was serious. Compassionate to those he considered a part of his family, more reserved with comrades. Deadly to his enemies. He taught me how to be a man, how to fight, how to work as a team and how to live meaningfully. I loved my own father, but he didn't know how to do most of those things himself, so Hisashi stepped in when he felt like he had to. And I can never thank him enough for that."

"Do you have a picture?" She asked him.

Cameras were a relatively recent development, so he did not. However, "I think they began taking photos for Iwagakure's shinobi registrar. I can ask, to see if they ever got theirs' done. Also, Hisashi made his way into several bingo books. I can show you."

Kasaiki nodded in thanks, and wrapped her arms around his leg in an almost hug. Gestures of affection from the little girl were rare, and this was one of the most overt he had ever been granted. He wrapped his free hand around her shoulder and pulled her close.

"Ano…could you also teach me what my Tou-san taught you?" she asked hesitantly.

"When you're a bit older? Certainly."

He just had to make sure he was still around when the time came. Kazuhiro, for the longest time, had simply been going through the motions. After his parents' deaths and the disaster that precluded his promotion to chunin, his only goal on missions was to survive and do his best to make sure his enemies didn't. There was no one to protect aside from Iwa's ambiguous interests as a whole, and there was no one depending on him. Hisashi would have been sad at his passing, but he would have been alright without him.

Even when Kazuhiro adopted Kasaiki, it hadn't really sunk in. Not until this very moment.

He finally had a reason to grow stronger. So he would. By whatever means necessary, he would live until Hisashi's torch had been passed on to his daughter.

The girl backed up two paces from him, and bowed her head solemnly.

"Arigato…ni-san."

- - - { ワナビー } - - -

Well into my second year of new life, I had gained total (I think, though some of the smallest tributaries may have eluded me) awareness within my dominant arm. I imagined that the left was simply mirrored, though I've refrained from spoiling the surprise by checking.

To get there, I had to pass through my torso, which I was substantially more leery with messing with. Of course, that hadn't stopped me during the initial voyages I had taken before deciding to map out a small segment of my body at a time. I had—a bit stupidly—circumnavigated great stretches of my entire body without sending myself into cardiac arrest, and I could control my submarines a lot more skillfully now than I could have back then.

Each ripple of chakra conformed to the size and shape of its surroundings, which was both a good and bad thing. Good because I never had to worry about sharp edges puncturing my canals, and bad because, as I forced smaller spaces to accommodate them, the submarines tended to speed up. A lot.

It was similar to the effect of exit diameter on water pressure. Like how, if you change a setting on a hose that makes its opening smaller, the water will shoot out with more force. If I moved my submarine from a wider canal to a smaller tributary, it would go a lot faster. This was dangerous, because my internal awareness and reflexes weren't great, and if I let a fast submarine slip out of my control, its momentum would carry it forward no matter what. And my tributaries are rarely straight.

I've pierced my canals more times than I could count, and it was never that big a deal. The internal damage it caused was reminiscent of an extremely sharp jab of a needle, just, you know, inside me. However, those were all in my arm. There were a handful of extremely important things in my chest; if I pierced my stomach, intestines, appendix, liver or kidneys, the toxic sludge they housed could seep into places that they really shouldn't be. If I pierced my lungs, I could drown in my own blood. And if I pricked my heart, I might just straight up die.

My solution to the pressure problem was a technique I created, which I called splitting. When I decided to venture down a tributary, I split my submarine into two parts: one that was the perfect size to fit the tributary, and another that would continue down the original canal, fizzling out without my conscious will pushing it onwards.

The trick was judging what sizes to split my submarine into. As much as I liked the submarine metaphor, I didn't actually have a sonar or any means of navigation other than my sense of touch. So, I had no way of judging how wide a tributary would be before I entered it, which meant I had to rely solely on memory to decide how small to make each split. All the more reason to take things slow, I guess.

But patience was never my strong suit, so I talked myself out of my hesitancy. Though I did make sure to do it while Kazuhiro was home from a mission; he could get me to a hospital a lot faster than Akane-obasan.

Cautiously, I began exploring this new frontier. I inched forward, deciding to first delve into the main canals thoroughly before venturing down any tributaries. It was there that I ran into a massive, underground spring. It was similar in shape to one of my tenketsu, only a lot bigger and more powerful. It pulsed with chakra, and unlike the other tenketsu, I couldn't flex it like a muscle.

Ever since that trip to the Monument to the Fallen, I felt a lot closer to Kazuhiro. I made him uncomfortable, I could tell, but he did an admirable job at moving past that. Also, the only things he knew about kids and their development were what he had learned from those pamphlets; he'd had no exposure to kids my age since he was that age himself, which meant he had no preconceived notion of what typical kid behavior was. That meant he was less likely to bat an eye at unusual requests regarding personal interests, especially in regards to literature.

All that was to explain how I received a series of ninja biology texts for my second birthday—actual books rather than scrolls, thankfully. And I didn't have to look very far to discover the object of my search.

In the prefix of the introductory text was a map of the chakra circulatory system, depicting a human's channels (but not any of the tributaries) and all the tenketsu, eight of which were rather special.

I facepalmed as soon as I made the discovery. I already knew that the eight gates were a thing; I just forgot about them. Well, more accurately, I just thought they were a niche little piece of biology that didn't have much significance aside from the boosts they gave when they were opened.

Reading more about the gates, which wasn't touched on until the second volume, I discovered that my assumption was very, very wrong.

The Eight Gates are wells of chakra sequestered off from the rest of the circulatory system, I read. As chakra stimulates the organs surrounding them, each of the Gates' stores regulate vital functions. As such, the amount of chakra within each of them, which grows through continued use and conditioning just like one's general chakra reserves, reflects the performance of said organ. If these stores were compromised in some way, the body would experience a vital loss of function.

Well, that would explain the tearing muscles, broken bones and red skin. Might Guy should have never been put in charge of children.

Additionally, the chakra in each gate is associated with specific traits:

Kaimon, the Gate of Opening, is located in the Left Hemisphere, and stimulates the processes that traditionally take place within it, such as logical thinking, mathematics proficiency along with speed of calculation, and sequencing ability. Patients that experience a dysfunction in Kaimon might report headaches, decreased analytical prowess and concentrative ability, and the loosening of subconscious limitations that would have otherwise protected the body from itself.

Kyūmon, the Gate of Healing, is located in the right hemisphere and also stimulates the processes that traditionally take place within it, such as vivid imagination, proficiency in the arts and intuition. Patients that experience a dysfunction in Kyūmon might also report headaches, along with a reduced ability or even an inability to judge one's level of exhaustion, hyperactivity, an inability to tie effects to causes and unnatural irritability.

Seimon, the Gate of Life, is located in front of the spinal cord, between the esophagus and the T3 Thoracic vertebra. As has been observed even centuries ago, those with developed chakra enjoy an increased rate of natural regeneration, and this trait is exacerbated in those with greater chakra reserves. The Seimon receives information from pain receptors in the brain and distributes the chakra inside of it to facilitate healing. Patients that experience a dysfunction in Seimon might report extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, shooting pain through the upper back and non-localized hemorrhaging.

Shōmon, the Gate of Pain is located below the Seimon, between the lungs and the T8 Thoracic vertebra. This gate holds a person's chakra identity, and between any number of subjects, no two are the same. Evidence of both elemental affinities and most chakra bloodlines, if applicable, can be found in this gate, which nurtures each of them. Please note, this gate is not the root of bloodlines or elemental affinities, it simply regulates their effectiveness. Patients that experience a dysfunction in Shōmon might feel physiological pain, especially in their spine and hands, and bloodline wielders might suffer even more drastic side effects from their jutsu. Treat multi-affinity bloodline wielders with extreme caution if there is a suspected dysfunction with Shōmon, for your own safety as well as theirs.

Tomon, the Gate of Limit, is located in the abdomen, between the liver and the solar plexus, and acts as an intermodal chakra point in the upper chest, regulating passive chakra enhancement to both of a person's arms. It receives unconscious signals from the brain, and distributes chakra to each arm accordingly, enhancing both muscle and bone. Shinobi with a sufficient level of skill can augment these further, but a healthy and well-developed Tomon increases the capacity of which said shinobi is able to do so. Patients that experience a dysfunction in Tomon might report muscle soreness, a feeling of bloatedness, tightness, or artificial heat in their arms, and bone fatigue that may cause injury after training or combat.

Keimon, the Gate of View, rests just above the stomach. While all gates hold a great deal of chakra, Keimon contains the second greatest amount by far, only surpassed by Shimon. Just as the stomach signals to the brain when it's in need of sustenance, so too does the Keimon dictate when the body needs to produce more chakra. Due to their close proximity, chakra exhaustion often manifests as an extreme hunger, and gorging on food plays a role in overcoming chakra exhaustion as it is created into physical energy that in turn transforms into chakra. Patients that experience a dysfunction in Keimon may experience stomach aches, an overactive appetite, strange cravings, especially of meat, or chronic bouts of mild to intense chakra exhaustion

Kyōmon, the Gate of Wonder, is located amidst the intestines. It is similar in function to the Tomon, although regulates a person's passive chakra enhancement to their legs instead of arms. Thusly, patients that experience a dysfunction in Tomon might also experience muscle soreness, a feeling of bloatedness, tightness, or artificial heat in their legs, and bone fatigue that may cause injury after training or combat. They might also report a long-lasting sensation indistinguishable to the feeling of needing to urinate.

Shimon, the Gate of Death, is within the heart itself. It contains the greatest well of chakra within the human body, and this chakra is the most potent that a human body can produce. The Shimon's sole task is to maintain the heart's effectiveness, and the chakra inside will not be surrendered until the person's death, no matter the circumstances. Patients that experience a dysfunction in Shimon will die.

I stared at the words, reading and rereading them as I tried not to start giggling like a lunatic. Aside from the eight gate of Death—really scary that an issue with that gate immediately killed you, by the way—these were all mother fucking stats!

I grabbed a pencil—yeah, Iwagakure had those after all, kinda thought they hadn't been invented yet since Akane-obasan didn't have a single one—and wrote a word next to each entry.

Opening = Logic

Healing = Creativity

Life = Vitality

Pain = Chakra Affinity

Limit = Strength

View = Chakra Capacity

Wonder = Speed

Kinda. Not really. But there was something there that sent my little nerd brain buzzing, some compulsive need as a shonen enjoyer to devise a system of power scaling.

Let's pretend this stupid fantasy in my head had merit. If these were stats, then what was the metric? Chakra? If so, was there a standardization for measuring chakra, like some sort of calorie? Like, with a single unit being the exact amount of chakra to power the Kawarimi or something?

This required further thinking, and a lot more research. If only I could find a person smart enough to answer all of my questions.

For now though, I would explore the Gate of Limit, and hopefully not rupture anything important in the attempt.

- - - { ワナビー } - - -

AN: Freaking finally, I can get to the good stuff!

First, please forgive me if I bungle the explanation of Japanese writing. I think I did okay, but I'm not a speaker and can't be 100% sure. If I made a mistake, please let me know, both now and in the future. I want to be respectful of the language and the people who speak it.

The ワナビー I use as a page break is Katakana for the word "Wannabe," if anyone was curious. I hope.

This chapter was a lot, and I pray I don't lose anyone with it. Now, you can maybe see where I'm going with the "Wannabe Gamer" part of this. You'll rarely hear me say I'm proud of anything I write, but I am with my future plans for this fic, and with this power system. Though I will warn you—the more mystical aspects of the gamer (i.e boosting stats with stat points, inventory, quests/rewards, etc.) are a long way off. But we will get there; she just needs to learn fuinjutsu first. I haven't seen anything like it in the fandom before, and I hope you all enjoy it.

I will be attempting to move my update schedule to Sunday from here on out. So, see you in a week!