Hey, what's up?

HUMONGOUS shout out to champblaze, WOLF-GOST, SPark681, LeviDragon, and Addllax. You guys are fantastic :D

Fun fact: After uploading a chapter, I'm always terrified I posted the wrong chapter of any story I'm currently working on.

That said, enjoy…

CHAPTER 3

One Year Later

7:57AM

Iwagakure

"Oi, watch it!" a woman drawing a melon cart yelled as a child barrelled over her cart, who tucked into a roll and stumbled aside before he could run into an elderly couple. All they saw was a blurry child in a grey shirt, black shorts and blue shinobi sandals.

The boy didn't hear her, tugging his baseball cap down to obscure his face, tearing down the street full tilt. He zigzagged, snagging a sandwich from the already outstretched hand of a street vendor, leaving a few coins as he passed by and biting down on his breakfast.

He threw a flippant wave over his shoulder at the vendor as he stored the coins in a cash register, but the boy was already gone, ducking into a back alley. The boy squinted up, chewing on the sandwich and spotting two Iwa ninjas curiously watching him run down the alley. He decided against wall running, bounding over a trashcan and just barely dodging a crouched man who was snoring close to the bin. He burst out of the alley.

The boy screeched to a halt and rapidly looked around, grunting with frustration before he looked up to the rooftops. One of the Iwa ninjas pointed onwards, to a dusty path with a few vacant dome-shaped buildings on the side of the road, and the boy sent him an appreciative thumb up.

Everything looked the same when all of the buildings were varying shades of brown and hewn from rocks and stone. The boy would have easily missed the short brown-black wall that curved around the brown-storey building that was Iwa's Ninja Academy. No trees or grass were in sight; everything in Iwa was rocky, dusty, and hot.

Rocketing down the street and hurdling over the wall, he hissed when he heard the school bell ring. His pace increased, pushing hard against the wind and winding past several storey buildings, skidding down gravel roads and concrete streets. He munched on his sandwich and flickered his eyes from building to building until he found the one his class was in.

The boy bounced on the balls of his feet and threw a glance behind him, confirming that the Iwa ninjas were too far to properly see him and that no teachers were yet swarming him. A few students were peering out of the windows though, and that was fine; the boy tugged at his ball cap again, leaning back a little on his heel before he raced onward, scaling the vertical wall of the building in three large bounds before he caught the window sill of a first-floor classroom, heaving himself into the window and tucking into another neat roll behind a startled student's chair, catching his cap before it flew off his head and noisily clambering into an empty seat two desks from the back of the large classroom.

There were roughly a hundred children in that class, and everyone jolted their eyes back to find the formerly empty seat was now occupied by a sweating seven-year-old boy doing his best to not look like he was panting, just as the class teacher called his name.

"Shinjiro—"

"Yup, yeah," the boy said in a loud voice, interrupting the teacher. He blushingly coughed the sandwich out of his mouth at the wide-eyed looks he was getting, casually leaning back with one arm over the back of his chair and nonchalantly sending a cheeky grin to the annoyed teacher. "That's me."

"Mhm." The man hummed, too disinterested to even reprimand the boy. "Put that away."

"Yes, sir," Shinjiro mumbled, tossing open his desk and stashing the sandwich inside. He then took out a notebook and a pen, closed the desk and sat forward on his elbows as the teacher continued rattling down the students' names. Most of the other students had already taken their minds off the boy who had jumped in through the class window, but a girl at the very front of the class didn't turn away yet, her eyebrow twitched with clear irritation. Shinjiro scratched his cheek and flickered a look at her, realizing from her frown that she wasn't impressed at his stunt.

For the five times he had woken up late and four times he had daringly snuck into class through various means, Kurotsuchi was getting closer and closer to blabbing on him; she was studious and by-the-books, and Shinjiro had observed so from only being classmates with her for five days.

Yes, that also meant that Shinjiro had been late to class every single weekday of their First week as Academy First Years, but that wasn't the point.

Shinjiro and Kurotsuchi had only exchanged a total of three words all week, and her disapproval of his tardiness was always obvious. She was a year older than him, was already the teacher's favourite student, and had appointed herself to be the Class Prefect. Though, as much as she hated him interrupting class by diving in through the window, Shinjiro knew she wasn't going to tell on him; this stare-down was their little game.

She gave him a silent glare, drumming her fingers on her desk and refusing to tear her eyes away from Shinjiro's electric blue stare.

So, he smiled at her and sent her a finger-wiggling wave.

Kurotsuchi scoffed and turned back to listen to the lesson.

The smile slowly lowered and Shinjiro's face became neutral, thoughtlessly dropping his hand to open his notebook and lean on his desk, cool eyes still staring at the back of Kurotsuchi's head.

A quiet smile tickled the corners of his lips. "Whatever."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Historically in Iwa, the village had been able to produce hundreds of new shinobi from their Academy every year, though this was only so because Iwa experienced regular explosions in population and the Tsuchikage at the time capitalized on the abundance of people to pour funds into ninja training. However, the village's economy reached a breaking point in the Third War when Iwa realized that it didn't have enough civilian professionals to build wartime infrastructure and had focused entirely on bulking up the ninja population.

Iwa's economy burst almost audibly after the Kannabi bridge was destroyed in the war, and the Fourth Hokage decimated a thousand able-bodied men and women in battle. The number of war orphans and refuges skyrocketed, the mouths to feed increased and the number of people that could produce food reduced, and all of these woes compounded with the fact that Iwa wasn't a place where plants could easily grow.

The landscape was rocky and tough.

The village had never been the same and was only able to keep its ninja and civilian programs afloat because of the heavy investment into it in the past before the economy crashed.

Iwa's Ninja Academy was a cluster of twenty-seven four-storey buildings, with an administrative block being the only building with a single storey. There was a massive Mess Hall for students with guardians that paid for school lunches, and a bustling district where food vendors and food stalls sold packed lunches and snacks to kids who couldn't afford school lunches and hadn't packed anything from home.

That place was called the school's Market District.

Each other building contained several classes that could easily occupy a hundred children, restrooms, multiple outdoor training grounds, and connecting roads that made the schooling complex resemble a bustling city.

The Civilian Academy was about half the size of the Ninja Academy. It was located a short road away from the ninja school, and far less funded.

Education in Iwa was heavily subsidized, so much so that even someone at the bottom rungs of society could afford to send their child to school. Past and present Tsuchikage made it a point that being poor wasn't an excuse for their child to not get a basic education, but that didn't mean that there was quality education. At its best, it was bare minimum education, with teachers being underpaid and unmotivated to do anything other than spell out the curriculum.

It was a place with thousands of faces.

Poor, wealthy, sickly, or healthy, they were all there.

There were even children who didn't cut it as ninjas and had repeated the First Year up to four times. Iwa's standards for becoming a ninja were criminally low; bare basic, even. As long as someone could run reasonably fast and close their hands into a fist, then they could be a ninja.

But older students in junior classes don't meet these standards and are simply taking up precious breathing room in the school, Shinjiro thought with an annoyed side eye at an older boy cackling to his right. The boy looked to be about the same age as his brother.

He grunted and scribbled into his note, squinting his eyes at the board and trying his best to hear the teacher describe a special cactus that grew out of some rocks in Iwa's northern region that could be used for water.

The teacher wasn't doing anything about the loud drone of conversation in the class, as the children further to the back were more focused on talking to themselves. Only those at the front could hear the teacher.

The dull man raised his voice and turned, drawing a rough sketch of a flower that identified the cactus, and Shinjiro grunted again, grating his teeth and clenching his pencil when somebody jostled into his side. The girl that bumped into him gave Shinjiro a sloppy apology, waving the textbook she had just caught, but the younger boy didn't deem her with a look.

Shinjiro had heard that third-year and fourth-year classes were more civilized than this and that the teachers were stricter.

He truly couldn't wait.

These students, for whatever reason they wished to become ninjas, were all competing against themselves and vying for the limited best positions in the village. They were told so on their first day.

Shinjiro's brother had told him so.

His body jerked when the older boy on his side exploded with laughter, and Shinjiro stabbed his pencil into his desk. It snapped noisily and barely scuffed the wooden desk.

This effectively silenced their section of the classroom.

The boy ground his teeth and flexed his fingers, refusing to look at the baffled faces turned on him.

"Woah…" the older boy muttered with a confused smirk. "Take it easy."

More children hushed and faced them, and Shinjiro fought to maintain his neutral expression. The fingers of his left hand gripped the edge of his desk, digging his fingernails into the wood so hard that splinters jabbed his fingertips. He used that hand to jerk his desk open and retrieve another pencil, shutting the desk with as much control as he could muster.

It was pre-sharpened.

A small round of giggling rippled around Shinjiro, and the boy wrenched his fingers out of his wooden desk and caught the older boy's wrist before he could snag Shinjiro's cap.

The older boy chuckled, raising an eyebrow at the cool and vacant look he got from the younger boy. "What do you think you're—"

Shinjiro twisted, snapping the older boy's wrist and releasing the broken bone as the older boy released an excruciating wail. He dragged his arm to his chest and his wrist flopped bonelessly.

His eyes bugged wide and his mouth opened, releasing a blood-curdling scream that sent the class into a frenzy, with the class teacher and the children at the front spinning around to see the source of the noise. Those around Shinjiro were shocked still, gaping at what had just happened and not sure what to do.

Shinjiro released a weary breath and set down his pencil, giving the teacher a winning smile and shaking his head incredulously. "His hand slipped."

A sharp look to the people at his sides, and the iciness of his glance sealed their lips shut.

He got up from his seat and gently pushed his right hand under the older boy's armpit, kindly lifting him to his feet even as the boy shook fearfully while gripping his broken wrist to his chest. The older boy was also taller than Shinjiro, so it took some deft adjustments before the Shinjiro was in a good position.

"I'll take him to the medic." The casual cheerfulness of his words placated the students at the front, but those who had seen the act swore they heard the hollowness of his behaviour, shrinking away as Shinjiro helped the boy to the front. "Sorry for bothering."

"Well…hurry up then," the teacher said with a stern look, and Shinjiro apologetically chuckled, passing the man and getting to the door. "And get back when he's with the medic."

Before he left the class, Shinjiro spared a look at Kurotsuchi, and he saw that her face was a light shade of green and marred with revulsion. She flickered her eyes up from the abnormally bent wrist of the older student to Shinjiro's, and the boy gave her a sorry smile. She clasped her hands over her mouth and threw her face away.

Shinjiro helpfully pushed the injured boy out of class, hiding his frown.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The older boy swore not to tell on Shinjiro, basically leaping away from the smaller boy the moment the school medic caught sight of them.

The Academy's Medic Bay was a poor but painstakingly clean building behind the school's administrative building. The rickety, old hospital beds had bleached white bedsheets and pillows dressed on them. Some of the beds had children in them, mostly dodging class and murmuring in discussion.

Shinjiro didn't linger in there.

As he exited the building, the bell for break sounded from the loudspeakers strategically located on sections of the streets and roads, and almost immediately students flooded out of the buildings in chattering masses, heading to the Mess Hall or to get food from the Market District.

Shinjiro kept to the left side of the road as students poured onto the street, following the flow of the crowd and marching to the Market District. He kept his hands in his pockets, wary of pickpockets and walking with clipped steps. He kept his head up and his eyes forward, breathing calmly when he saw that all of the good food stalls and vendors had long queues winding in front of them.

Shinjiro sighed and peered up at the sky.

If he waited in any of these lines, all forty minutes of the break would run out by the time he got to the front.

He wondered again why he couldn't just ask his brother's house service to make him a school lunch, then he remembered with a start that the maids did make school lunches. Every day for that matter, but Shinjiro always woke up too late and was too panicked to pick it up from the kitchen.

The boy sighed again. "Perfect."

His stomach grumbled and he spared a hand to touch his gut.

It would have been so convenient if Junior had made it so that Naruto didn't need to eat food. It wasn't out of Junior's capabilities, after all the puppet master had now essentially rebuilt his younger brother to be a walking weapon of mass destruction.

Naruto had insisted on living a normal life, thus the need for Naruto Uzumaki to become Shinjiro while Junior threw off Naruto's scent by misdirecting trackers.

Shinjiro wasn't going to grumble about his luck, since his brother had given him a new life and made the sacrifice to always be on the run; by far, Shinjiro was more privileged than a vast majority of the students, and he wouldn't dare complain about anything.

With that resolve, the boy groaned and turned his head, slowly walking past the lines of students and searching for any other food alternative.

The line for fruit salad lunchboxes was more or less empty. The bored vendor saw him looking and perked up, widely grinning and gesturing for Shinjiro to come over. She absentmindedly picked out a disposable lunchbox from under the counter as the boy approached, his shoulders slouched with resignation.

"What can I get ya?" she chirped, waving a hand over her head to the menu handwritten close to the sign.

Shinjiro squinted his eyes, and then he shrugged. "Give me anything."

She rapidly began flitting around the small shack, chopping up pineapples, apples, half a watermelon, bananas, mangoes and grapes. There weren't any fruits that Iwa could grow from its rocky landscape, so these were likely imported from Grass Country or Hidden Waterfall. Thus, they weren't going to be cheap. She drizzled honey over the mixture of fruits, sprinkled some chopped walnuts, and added a touch of yoghurt. She then used a spatula to gently toss the mix, sometimes tossing the fruits as they were in the bowl before she artfully moved the salad into the disposable lunchbox. The fruits weren't mushy or overmixed, and Shinjiro gave her credit with a slight smile. She covered the lunchbox with its lid, placed a plastic fork on top of the lid, and tied the box up with a white handkerchief.

"How much?"

"For you, kid," her bright expression lit up all the more, "seven-fifty."

Shinjiro faltered, confused at how cheap it was. "Really?"

Seven hundred and fifty ryu for a fruit salad was far cheaper than the nine hundred ryu it would have cost in Iwa's market.

"It's cuz you're a regular." She added a bottle of water, saying, "This is on the house."

The boy didn't exactly end up buying a fruit salad willingly, and this vendor was the same one he had been patronizing since he became a student. It was always seven hundred and fifty ryu from this store when Shinjiro bought a fruit salad, and yet he always still asked.

He slipped a few notes onto the counter and stood on his toes, collecting his lunch and bidding the vendor farewell with an appreciative smile.

When he returned to his class, a lot of the students were still out on their lunch break. Those who had packed lunch from home remained, and there weren't that many.

Kurotsuchi and four of her friends were at their table, surrounding the girl on both sides and speaking loudly. Shinjiro didn't bother to listen in on their conversation, rather he slid up to Kurotsuchi's desk, carefully setting his lunchbox on the ground and slouching onto her desk, propping his hands up under his chin and his elbows on the table. He wasn't tall enough for his knees to reach the ground, and his lazy posture got the attention of the group of girls.

"You weren't looking ok. How are you feeling?" Shinjiro asked, a kind smile barely lifting the corners of his lips and his electric blue eyes crinkling familiarly as Kurotsuchi looked back at him with her pink eyes, blinking at how cosily he was addressing her when before they hadn't even talked before. His tone was easy and cool, albeit a bit high-pitched. His pale expression was soft and he raised his eyebrows for her answer.

It wasn't intimidating per se, and Shinjiro acknowledged as much.

It was just…surprising.

"Uh…" Kurotsuchi stammered, eyebrows knitted and trying to form a proper reply. Her baffled friends watched the exchange, switching from the faltering girl to the concerned boy. "Uhm…I'm…I'm fine." Her cheeks tinted green a bit at the memory of the older student's broken wrist, and Shinjiro's face tilted to the side, smiling a bit nicer. This seemed to relax the girl. "It just…reminded me of when my dad broke his arm." She touched her right upper arm with her left pointer finger. The boy watched, giving her his entire attention. "And the bone healed wrong, and the medics had to break the arm again." She waved her hands to cast away the memory. "It was a whole thing."

Shinjiro winced. "That sounds rough."

The group were still trying to process the situation; how a younger boy could speak so fluently and how he was brave enough to be so casual around them, especially when looking directly at Kurotsuchi.

Kurotsuchi tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, suddenly shy at the consideration she was getting from this boy. "It's fine."

"Great." Shinjiro nodded, pushing off the girl's desk and picking up his lunchbox. He pursed his lips and smiled sunnily. "I won't cause trouble again."

"Yeah…okay," the girl said, the tips of her ears reddening. "Thanks, Shinjiro."

With a parting bob of his head and a friendly smile, he passed her and went to his seat, but his ears caught the hurried whisper of blushing giggling.

"What was that?!" a friend squealed in a low voice.

Kurotsuchi stammered, flustered. "I…I don't know."

"Ooooooooh. I think he likes you~" another friend sang.

The Tsuchikage's granddaughter lashed out with a harmless punch, grumbling with a red face. "Sh-Shut up!"

He sat down and dug into his lunch.

This was Naruto's new life; he wasn't going to squander it by having second thoughts.

Besides, his exhilarated heartbeats were fun.

A slow smile crawled up his face when he saw Kurotsuchi slyly flick her eyes back to him.

This is fun, he thought stabbing his plastic fork into a mango and biting down on it.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

12:35 PM

The classes after the break period resumed, and the students of the hall were deathly quiet.

The older boy with the broken wrist hadn't yet returned from the medic, but the children around Naruto did their best to keep their eyes forward. This tense atmosphere trickled outwards, affecting the class and keeping their mouths shut.

A pleased smile lifted Shinjiro's expression.

"From next week, all of our classes will be practical. Some days, we'd be indoors, some other days we'd be outdoors." The teacher announced, jabbing her thumb to the underlined subject on the blackboard; Basic Genjutsu. It was similar to what the other teachers had told them, except for the teachers that taught History and Tradition, Basic Maths, and Basic Codebreaking. The reason they had different teachers for different subjects rotated per different class buildings was to reduce the grading load on teachers. The class was particularly excited about the outdoors class on Basic Ninjutsu and Basic Taijutsu. Shinjiro wasn't going to pretend that he wasn't excited either. The lady clapped her textbook shut and it silenced the muted bustle of eagerness among the young children. "Before you can learn any genjutsu, chakra control is very important." She placed a hand on her hip and sternly frowned. "There's no point learning any genjutsu if your chakra control is garbage. I'm sure your sensei on Basic Medical Knowledge told you that already. Chakra control is everything, am I understood?"

"Hai, Kouno-sensei!" the class chorused.

"Make sure you practice Chakra Flow Visualisation and Chakra Meditation on your own. There'll be a test on it on Monday." She ignored the reflexive groan of the students.

Chakra Flow Visualisation was a basic chakra control exercise that didn't require any tool whatsoever; the student was expected to visualise their chakra as a steady and colourful flow of light within their body, guiding this flow of chakra through specific pathways to different points in their body, like their fingertips or feet. It wasn't risky for children to try this on their own without adult supervision. Imagery and breathing exercises were crucial for this chakra control exercise to work.

Chakra Meditation, on the other hand, was an exercise meant to teach students how to passively sense chakra; the student would sit down, or stand, in one place, close their eyes and focus on the world around them, searching for the subtle heartbeat of chakra from people in their environment. It didn't make people automatic active sensors, as it took a long while for passive sensors to prepare to use this technique to sense incoming threats, but it was also a safe chakra control exercise.

There were many other advanced chakra control exercises, but those like Surface Balancing, Chakra Pulse Regulation, and Chakra Synchronization, were too advanced for First Years.

The first year of school was for students to learn the basics, and whether or not there were repeating students didn't matter.

Kouno-sensei turned to the blackboard and began freehand drawing the human chakra system, highlighting all three-hundred-and-sixty-one pressure points from memory. As she did so, she called over her shoulder, "For those of you that have textbooks, open them to page twelve: Genjutsu and Hand Seals."

It was a heading that many three other subjects had in common, like Basic Taijutsu, Ninjutsu, and Medical Knowledge.

The sound of paper riffling in the quiet classroom was music to her ears.

Shinjiro saw the way she hastened up her drawing, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth and just continue with her teaching without questioning why or how a class of a hundred children could remain so noiseless. She didn't even care that about half of the students were nodding off in their seats.

Shinjiro wondered why he hadn't broken a classmate's wrist sooner.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

At the same time

Kazahana Tundra

The eastern region of Snow Country

A steam-powered train roared down the frozen tracks, blasting thick smoke from its smokestack that poured backwards in the direction the train was coming from.

The engine pushed hard against the cold air.

Inside the train was nice and toasty, with smartly dressed men and women comfortably perched on their seats in the first-class train cars, peering out at the vast snowscape they were powering over, not in the least feeling the chilling effects of Snow Country's cold. It was the most sophisticated way to travel to Lightning Country.

A train conductor, dressed in his smart uniform and cap, exited the first-class section and purposefully moved into the second-class cars. Here, the walls of the train were sturdy but less insulated from the cold, and much duller in shade compared to the first-class. The wood wasn't so thoroughly and meticulously smoothed down, the edges of the seat could catch pieces of the cloth if the passenger sat carelessly, and the cushions of the seat were simply thin pillows sewn onto the wood.

Less care was taken for the décor of second-class, and many corners had been cut.

The third class couldn't have been any better.

Rubbing his gloved hands to ward off the cold of the second class, the conductor carefully went seat by seat, checking the train tickets of the passengers. He punched holes in each ticket, as things were moving smoothly until he got to the last seat of the last car of second class.

The couple seated there didn't look "second-class".

The lady's face was covered with a silk handkerchief, leaning the side of her temple against the cool window and hugging her arms to her body, tentatively rubbing her white, wool cardigan with her mittened hands. She wore a long black skirt that reached her ankles, and black stockings with a pair of dull blue shinobi heels. The handkerchief obscured most of her face, but her soft chin subtly lifted and fell with each quiet breath, and her short black hair was tied back into a loose pigtail that barely reached her upper neck.

Her sleeping form was picturesque.

The train conductor realized he was staring and coughed into his fist, trying to will away his flushed expression when he saw that the other person seated close to the sleeping lady was staring intently at him, retrieving a pair of tickets from his unbuttoned, dark brown overcoat and holding it holding out to the conductor. Everything under the overcoat was black and silk, even the top hat that sat neatly on the person's head.

This person had spikey blonde hair and striking, vastly intelligent blue eyes that pierced the conductor's spirit, forcing him to stand upright and apologetically collect the tickets. The blue-eyed person watched, vague amusement on his expressionless face as the conductor checked the validity of the ticket.

He didn't look old, but he also didn't feel young.

"Would you like some refreshments, sir?" the conductor blurted out, asking a question he hadn't once asked the other second-class passengers. "We have a fine assortment of wines and velvet cakes."

"No, thank you," the boy shook his head, gently taking the sleeping woman's hand and lacing his left fingers through her right. A muted smile shortly vibrated the handkerchief on her face. "My…partner has been feeling ill. The smell of any kind of food could trigger a reaction."

The conductor frowned thoughtfully. "Should I call for a physician?"

"She just needs some rest," the blonde boy answered.

The conductor punched the train tickets and passed them back to the boy, again transfixed by the boy's hyper-intelligent blue eyes, before he dragged his hand back when he realized he was gripping the tickets too hard for them to be collected.

The conductor bowed, then proceeded to the third-class cars.

Almost immediately, the blonde boy discarded the lady's hand and sat back, crossing his right leg over his left knee. The lady's eyes blinked open, but she didn't sit up or remove the handkerchief.

Minato Junior found a newspaper and opened it, passively reading as he spoke to his primary maid-puppet.

"How long until we get to Lightning Country?"

"Three hours, sir," the puppet answered after a brief click of her eyes. She shuffled on her seat, still not taking her brow off the cool window, and Junior raised a bewildered eyebrow at his oldest automated puppet. He wasn't surprised by her hesitation to speak, rather he was surprised by the sentience he was seeing. The brain and heart she possessed were imitations; inventions Junior had made to closely mirror the function of a typical human brain and heart, but he didn't wire this amount of sentience into the puppet's system. "Master."

"Kira," he acknowledged with a dismissive mutter, "if it's bothering you so much, spit it out," Junior grunted evenly, returning his eyes to his newspaper.

"Shizune," she said, clicking her eyes closed and open. "I'm worried about your closeness to her."

Junior was almost tempted to think his puppet was jealous.

Almost.

Junior chuckled under his breath at that errant thought, his shoulders trembling and shooting a look at his impassive puppet. "She's an entertaining fling. Keeps me from running mad with boredom."

It sounded cruel, but Junior was past caring. After all, sightseeing and touring could only be so entertaining.

"She's too lovesick to stab me in the back."

A full year on the run and Konoha's dogs were sniffing closer.

Even now, Junior was almost tempted to engage the Konoha ninjas hiding in third class, calling for stationed reinforcements in Lightning Country.

Almost.

He held back though.

The more, the merrier.

The merrier, the louder.

The louder, the further away Konoha's dogs got from Naruto.

Junior turned to the next page and hummed when he saw that Kumo had, once again, increased his bounty.

"Oh, joy."

The things he did for his brother.

Authors note

Next time on Things Get Dark…

The world seeped into the background as godfather and godson glared hatred at each other.

Until Jiraiya opened his mouth and said, "You look just like your father—"

Junior's chakra flared, he flickered on the spot and vanished, leaving behind a bewildered puppet and his suitcase, only to reappear a quarter of a second later with his fist implanted into Jiraiya's face, shattering the air with a hellish right hook.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The puppet, a cloud of black veils and twin swords, raced and met Jiraiya's fist with a solid cross of its blades. This bugged out Ma's eyes but Jiraiya snarled, pushing harder only for the puppet to divert the blow to its right and race a hard kick into Jiraiya's chest with a foot that hadn't been there before, slicing down the back of the Sannin's neck, only for the sword to shatter on Jiraiya's neck.

Junior scoffed.

He twitched his left pinkie and the puppet retracted its leg back into the folds of its veils, dipping down when Jiraiya whirled around and exhaled a column of oil-fuelled flames, nearly burning the puppet to a crisp.

"Forget the puppet!" Pa roared, cutting off the jutsu. The toad elder wound its head to Junior and threw out his tongue. Junior leapt aside, dragging his scroll with him and cursing, wiggling his ring finger and pinkie as he scaled the side of the building, running from the doggedly chasing toad tongue.

The puppet tossed up the veil covering its face, exposing a skull with sunken yellow eyes and a tongue of exploding seal tags rolling out from its open jaw. This forced Pa to retract his tongue and for Ma to lace her fingers into a different set of seals, a nanosecond before Jiraiya cancelled his fireball.

Its toneless, hollow voice boomed. "Katsu!"

Done

The next update will be on Friday :D

Tell me what you think of this chapter, stay safe, drink plenty of water, and tell that thing outside of your window to get a life.

I'll see you when I see you.

Foy.