Askuna and his mental clones were in an emergency meeting.

They have been thinking about the hand issue during the time Askuna's physical body was sleeping.

The first thing they have concluded is that maintaining a shadow clone hand all the time is simply a waste of chakra that can be used for fifteen other mind clones running otherwise

In fact, as it was till now, 8 of his clones were sorely responsible for managing his security, by having 2 of them run and diagnose things by an active chakra sensing technique he was running, two were taking information from his physical senses and assessing threats, two were responsible for chakra disturbance and genjutsu and two were always ready for fast response countermeasures.

In the current setup with shadow hand, he could maintain only 5 mind clones simultaneously, so that would mean no clones for training, movement, etc. This doesn't count always present management of clones turned mother cores, responsible for always running his mindscape clone jutsu, which worked like an OS system responsible for maintaining security, virtualization, concurrency, and persistence of everything.

Even blocking access from his brain to his chakra coils wouldn't block his OS and mind clones from running and being able to operate chakra in his coils. One would have to put a seal on all the coils and heart chakra gate to stop him, which would effectively kill him.

Now, as he is now, the death of his body would result, first of all, most likely his soul leaving his body which would make him dead, second of all, if he somehow survived as his chakra is in use, he would lose a replenishable source of it.

As he is still a biological system, the loss of his hand seemed to impact the total chakra capacity and regeneration he had by around 10%. Which is slightly above what he had gained by training around 700 hours of water and fire chakra affinities, including their blending trails in boil release, though they were marginal for his improvement, both in control and in chakra gain.

When thinking about restoring the hand, the easiest option would be to learn enough medical ninjutsu to take someone else's hand who has a compatible blood type and try to forcibly stabilize it. Another option would be to reconstruct the hand from scratch.

On Earth to become a surgeon one have to learn and practice medicine for around 15 years. Now, based on Sakura he could probably shorten it to three years, considering he has no practical boundary in chakra control and memorization, just like her.

However, that is with the assumption of him having all the necessary knowledge accessible to him. If he, went into it blind and tried to replicate all the medicine by himself, then he would have to recreate hundreds of years of knowledge of both medicine and chemistry and simulate physics sensors for data and statistics. And probably thrice as much because he was not particularly knowledgeable or talented in those things.

In other words, it would take around 200 clones working for ten years non-stop. It is because experiments take time, chakra is the perfect shortcut tool, and he would have all the knowledge in all the disciplines being researched and available for cross-reference.

Typically, such an overload of information could result in reaching the brain's physical capacity, but even now Askuna possesses only a fraction of all the knowledge he has stored in his mindscape. As per his security policy, clones usually have different levels of access to knowledge and abilities, in case they are compromised.

Naturally, he being the outer shell most vulnerable to attacks had the least access of all.

Back to the matter at hand.

Given his limitations at restoring his hand on his own by brute-forcing medicine learning now seems unreachable unless he is seriously overestimating the complexity of this world. Which is totally possible, based on his lighting investigation.

It seems the answer to every one of his problems is to acquire more chakra. As a reference, the potential threats that can kill him now, in order of likelihood are poisoning, experimentation accidents, assassination, disease, large-scale jutsu or catastrophe, Otsutsuki, time travelers, reincarnation, and the multiverse.

So what he can do now to get more chakra? There are several pathways with potential. First, as noticed with nature release training, they increase his chakra and more precisely his chakra potency. Askuna had made a whole prediction that achieving kekkei genkai would allow his chakra a significant quality boost.

Otherwise, he could first learn all remaining three releases to an intermediate level as he is now in two, or he could even attempt a very good level which will probably take on average around 3000 hours of work per affinity. He bases it solely on his experiences of getting good at one online game in his previous life, the difficulty of learning computer science, and his current progress.

How long would it take it with the aid of mind clones? Well, they can work tirelessly, and the increase in chakra would compound, so he could probably do it in a month for intermediate and 5 months for very good in all affinities.

Another avenue he could explore is training his water and fire affinities to a very good level for the next month and a half while attempting every now and then a similar experiment to the one where he lost a hand.

Forcing the fusion in his reinforced shadow hand should mitigate the further mutilations to his body.

Otherwise, there is always an option to attempt attuning his chakra to that of others and install systems in them to harness chakra. But it wouldn't be worthwhile for a short-term solution unless he scaled it up at infecting all civilians with it, for which he would definitely get caught, so no.

Alternatively, when he gets better at it, he could attempt stealing chakra from some Jinchuuriki, most likely one-tail or seven-tail due to them being relatively less guarded than others.

The rest of the options, include learning sealing and medicine combination, trying to create a chakra generator or borrowing one from Edo Tensei, harnessing natural energies, or experimenting with yin and yang on his body and mind. He dismissed them as too uncertain or dangerous.

He was inclined to attempt achieving boil release while bringing his other affinities to a decent level. he will only have five months till he is six years old, so he would like to graduate before that deadline. Why? For personal bragging rights in the future as he didn't want to be beaten by Kakashi in the future.

Was it petty of him? Sure, but he felt quite confident in his chances should he be attacked by someone, yet not so much to graduate immediately, as he was relatively safer in the Academy.

Now, to the matter at hand. Where will he utilize the pieces of flesh that are under his bed?

...

Askuna woke up with a stifled groan. Trying and failing to clench his hand. He had a giant headache from aftereffects of chakra exhaustion. His chakra was close to half, as predicted but the consequences still lingered.

His clones had thought very hard what to do with the flesh pieces and frankly, they still had no idea. Which is pretty bad, as his only conceivable options are leaving it there, trying to burn it somewhere, dumping it somewhere or he doesn't know.

An earth-release jutsu would be nice to have right now, or at least be able to manipulate the ground. It was still early and his parents were sleeping, so he reluctantly grabbed two shopping bags from the kitchen, threw all the material inside them, then stuffed them into his two kunai pouches.

Going out for a walk, he transformed himself into a generic teen and went outside to one of the trees nearby, jumped on it, and started traveling through it to the more obscure location with more trees.

As he recalled, it was one of the training grounds. He chose a random colossal tree and went to its roots.

After concentrating his mind clones on sensing and confirming that no one was around, he reinforced with structural pathways his fingers to his utmost abilities and started digging like a dog just near the tree roots, helping himself with his chakra sticking that could dig roots into the structures and yank them out easily.

One of his hands was a reinforced shadow clone's one.

His fingers, ripped through the earth better than a shovel would and after two minutes he dug a small pit around a meter deep. He then decided to burrow sideways for a little at an angle even deeper.

There, he threw the contents of the pouches and quickly gathered the dirt to bury it all. Then he stepped back and looked at it.

Judging his work and finding it lacking, he clicked his tongue, as it was clearly visible that someone had disturbed this patch of dirt.

He needed to cover it with something. He scurried around looking for a bigger rock lying around somewhere, but he had no such luck.

So he just dumped some water on the trees and ground around and scuttled back home

...

In the Academy.

Today, for the first few hours Askuna meditated to recover his chakra. When the break came he felt not too horrible, aside from the pain in his stump, yet the last thing he wanted was to interact with anybody.

To his dismay, Minato came to him and asked, if he could stay and talk to him after classes.

He reluctantly agreed.

After giving a bare minimum performance during today's physical conditioning, Minato waited for him at the edge of the field.

Askuna greeted him, saying "Minato, what's up?"

Minato hummed, looking at the still blue sky a little, then smirked asking, "How about we race to the top of the Hokage heads?"

Askuna didn't know what was it about, but sure, he could entertain him, so he accepted shrugging, "Fine."

Minato smiled wider and showed the small pebble in his hand, "When this hits the ground, we start, okay?"

Askuna accepted, so they both readied as Minato threw the pebble, which followed a small arch in the air.

As it hit, they both exploded forward to the branches of the closest respective trees. Him on the left, Minato on the right.

Askuna's eyes widened in surprise when Minato landed first, on one foot and immediately propelled himself using it, as he launched himself to the roof of the first building.

Frankly, Askuna wasn't using his top speed at launch, but then after touching the branch, he utilized all clones into maximum body flicker movement, moving to the top of the building.

He caught the sight of Minato grinning from the side, as he at that moment also exploded at the speed befitting Askuna's while producing a lot of smoke.

'He is using body flicker, imperfect one.' mused Askuna while performing absolute monster-level flicks from edge to surface, gaining on Minato.

However, what was surprising, was that Minato was still ahead, nimbly lunging from edge to edge, with no wasted movement.

It was as if he was flying with each step, barely even touching the ground every tens of meters with each foot.

It reminded Askuna of some wacky cultivation movement techniques, where each step propelled someone forward dozens of meters.

Yet, he was producing lots of smoke in his trail. Also, it was very dangerous moving at such speeds and Askuna never dared to do it on his own without mind clones assitance and his sticking assurances that would nivelate any bad moves.

He was good at moving, he had trained it for years with clones, but there was something weird in Minato's movement, some qualitative difference in their techniques that made him as fast as him, even through his inexperience and disadvantages.

They weren't shinobi running, they were instead flickering with each step. Minato's execution had to be perfect, from spot to spot, one mistake and he would knock himself out of his environment.

They arrived at the rock, he was on the left of the mountain, and Minato was on the right. He was behind but he noted that he was a lot faster than Minato in vertical climbing, his chakra roots propelling him in 5 quick steps, though he lost some time searching for the optimal path between jumps.

Minato didn't, it was as if he memorized all the steps he needed to take beforehand and just flickered from place to place as he flashed straight from the side onto the Hiruzen's head. Any higher and he would have overshot, and lower and he would have needed another step to compensate.

Askuna didn't take the risk, he took another step, by flicking not to the top but to the side of the wall before moving to the top of the Hashirama's head. It was because he wasn't as precise, he never trained on longer distances than his house room extensively, and even if several of his clones could plan in advance and judge the distance, they weren't perfect at it.

Sure, his senses were perfect, execution also, but the decision-making of where to jump next and how much force and trajectory to use were almost perfect.

And he lost, by that one step.

Minato looked at Askuna arriving second and collapsed on the rocky head, laughing "Hahahaha!"

Askuna didn't spend as much chakra as Minato, the guy must have been bottomed out judging by how inefficient were his flicks.

Askuna hummed, jumping on Tobirama's rocky head, and congratulated him, "You won again, good job."

Minato calmed himself, and sat on the rocky nose for a while looking at the village, saying "I have been observing you.", he began.

Then, looking at Askuna he elaborated, "Since the first day, when you started moving so fast that my eyes couldn't keep track of you, I was fascinated." he started shouting passionately, " I thought, is this what ninja can do? How fascinating, I wish I could do so as well."

His blue orbs were filled with joy when he recounted the last three weeks.

Askuna deadpanned and interrupted, "It was three weeks ago. Why are you making retrospection?"

Minato waved his hand in a mocking gesture, "Nevermind," before continuing, "so as you were showing it all the time, I was forcing my eyes every time to try and adapt to your movement," he chuckled condescendingly, then answered looking aside " In the end, I couldn't."

But then he snapped back to Askuna again excited, "So then I had a sudden inspiration, hey, I'm quite good at feeling the world through chakra, how about I try and concentrate on your movement with closed eyes?"

"Surprisingly, it was going better, in around three days I started to recognize your chakra, getting a better and better picture of what it was doing."

Minato then shuddered, saying "Don't be offended, but your level of control over your chakra is terrifying."

Askuna smiled and answered back, " Says the guy who grasped chakra sensing in three days."

Minato chuckled, ignoring the jab, "Anyways, I have observed the hooks, ripping through the ground each time you land, the explosive force instantly building up and exploding seconds before you are launching, the way the chakra reinforced your body and cut through the air for faster passage."

He smiled looking over the horizon, complimenting "I have deconstructed and reconstructed steps of how your technique works. That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen anyone do with their chakra."

Askuna listened intently, also relaxing. Minato continued.

"So I started to replicate the technique. It was very hard and I quickly realized I needed to first master each step, so it took me around a week to stop falling everywhere, but I quickly gathered that by doing even a fifth of your roots, explosions, etc., I still couldn't stabilize my body internally as you did!" he exclaimed excitedly."

"But then, watching your performance when you ran blindfold with me, made me realize, that your technique stops completely in place, fastening the roots to any surface you find." he then grinned looking at Askuna, "So then I thought, what if I don't stop in place and instead propel with each step I take, wouldn't I be faster? Almost flying."

Askuna thought it through for a second, before replying, "That is true, but if you did step on a brittle surface, you would lose footing, while internal roots stabilize it, preventing collapse. Additionally, when making turns it is way easier to rely on roots to bleed off the rotating momentum."

Minato thought for a second, "I didn't think about the first one, as for the second one, I had a theory that I could propel myself in such a direction, that the vectors would add up and I would end up going where I wanted in the first place."

Askuna thought it through for a second, and then asked in wonder "If you didn't rely on chakra to rotate or stabilize yourself, then how come that you didn't break your ankle?"

Minato looked sheepish for a moment, and said " I almost did, but I did start slowly... yet you raised a valid question." he nodded, then explained, "I have solved it by angling myself in the air to land in the direction of the next jump and immediately bounce off when the foot landed, always starting with feet and body into the direction I wished to go."

"The turning was also induced by your propelling yourself, that is why you looked like you were a dancing fairy in the air," Askuna noted.

Minato spluttered " Fairy?!", then mumbled, "I prefer to see it as a Sky God."

Askuna snorted and then they both snickered.

But one question was in Askuna's mind, "And how did you solve your eyes not keeping with the movement? You seemed to run without any problem of tunnel vision."

Minato then waved his hand, "I still haven't solved it." then he grinned looking at Askuna" For the last week, I have perfected the path I will take and practiced my movements there. I have gone through it around dozens of times, and the last ones were with a blindfold."

Askuna praised him, "Still impressive."

"Thanks, but I wouldn't be able to do it if you didn't create the technique in the first place." he then asked for clarification, "It is yours, isn't it?"

"Yes." Askuna confirmed.

"How long did it take you to create it?

"Several inspirations over the years, with several years of practicing it with chakra control," Askuna answered.

Minato squinted at Askuna, then asked "Aren't you like five?"

Askuna sighed, "Fine, around two and a half years."

Silence covered them.

Minato broke it by asking in an oddly innocuous tone, "Hey what do you think about Hokage?"

Askuna raised an eyebrow and asked for clarification, "Hiruzen Sarutobi, or a position of a village leader?"

Minato instead started to say, "After your introduction to the class, when I and Kushina declared we wanted to become Hokage, you called yourself the next coming of the strongest.", he then gave Askuna his full attention as if desperately wanting to know, "Why did you say instead, that you will decide who is worthy of this title? It sounded as if it was something beneath you?"

Askuna looked into Minato's eyes which were now judging him, so he doubled down. "Because it is the truth. If I ever wanted to become a leader I would aim to become the one ruling all the Kage, like an ultimate Sun, which leaves all the Kages in its shadow."

Minato scrunched his eyebrows confused, so Askuna added. "If we look at other villages, their people are the same as us. They both have some people dear to them that they want to protect, so they can't extend it to those far away."

Askuna continued, "Demonizing them is wrong, but undeniably useful, as we can't protect everything. We have to prioritize, as resources are finite and want conflict.", he then pointed at Minato, " You want to be respected by villagers and to do that you will have to pave this way in the blood of your enemies.", he then hesitated and added, "And you will also have to turn a blind eye to many flaws of this village."

Askuna then pointed at himself, " On the other hand, I don't know if I want to be respected, maybe prestigious. If for the latter, then I would want to be so powerful, that in my influence there would be everyone, not only this village. If I wanted peace I would like to be at least as strong as Hashirama to stop all the wars. Then either by leading them or by the virtue of my existence being so terrifying that no one would dare to stop me, I would achieve it."

Minato mulled Askuna's words over, before answering, "That seems like a very selfish reason," he pointed out with his finger, "also you talk about your wants in the hypothetical ifs all the time, as if it was all irrelevant to you, which makes me... disgusted by your views." he glanced at Askuna, a little repulsed by his attitude.

Askuna shrugged, so Minato turned away, observing the village, and continued after a while.

"But the idea isn't bad in itself." Minato began slowly, "Assuming I had that position of this Sun, being respected not tyrannical leader, unlike some, then caring for Konoha villagers more than those of other nations could be a source of conflict, right?", he bit his lip, "Then treating everyone equally, if I became a leader of all nations, would that mean that I should sacrifice Konoha, my friends, and eventual family for the greater good of every nation?"

"Correct." Askuna nodded.

"Then I would be screwed." Minato replied bluntly, "Those that I came from and supported me would turn back on me, and those who were against me previously would gladly sacrifice me for their own benefit."

Askuna nodded, "That is correct, which is also why I don't necessarily want to be such a leader because it would mean that I have to deal with the hardest choices that no one would thank me for. In fact, Hokage also needs to deal with it on a smaller scale, as he constantly weighs the good of the village with the benefits of clans and elders, who keep him in power."

They had a quiet moment after that, and then Minato looked nervously at Askuna's hand and asked, "Should I ask about what happened to your hand?"

Askuna shook his head, before answering, "No, and don't tell anyone I'll fix it in around a year. Though, word of advice: incorrectly mixing two elements to create Kekkei Genkai can result in an explosion."

"What?...", Minato shortcircuted, but Askuna cut him off by getting up and saying.

"Nevermind, nevermind.", Askuna dusted himself, as he turned to Minato, "So you want to be like Sky God, huh? Then..." Before checking for the answer, Askuna ordered,

"Focus on sensing," he said as he landed his foot in the air next to Tobirama's head.

He smiled looking at Minato and saying, "One of the domains of the Sky God is flying." He said as he took off his second foot and put it above the first as if he were climbing the invisible stairs.

Minato stood up shocked. But then heeded the advice and started concentrating fully on seeing how Askuna was performing that. What he was seeing was astonishing, as if a rapidly growing maze of wires, Askuna's chakra started growing through the air several meters in all directions, catching the air itself.

It was a beautiful sight as if a flower opening, pulling its petals back, Askuna's wires were pulling on the air above him and dragging it down below him, before slowly retracting.

He was pushing air down as if flapping hundreds of wings made out of chakra.

However, there were also solid protrusions still connected to the Hokage mountain, whose number started to decrease with each step Askuna took as he ascended the invisible stairs.

Unbestowned to Minato, Askuna was still supporting 70% of his weight with those solid chakra structural strings connected to the Tobirama's face. The rest of the weight he was controlling by performing Chakra sticking exercises through the root network extending from him in all directions.

Air was slowly being dragged down, as he stayed up.

The sticking and moving itself didn't cost much chakra, but he still was maintaining over 100 clones with the third step, and, the higher he got, the further away from him in the air he had to extend his strings or the faster he needed to drag them down.

In return, the complexity grew and the worse control over the area of space his chakra sticking roots had. In fact, he had to remake his initial plan soon to scale better.

Askuna continued ascending and started saying, " I don't particularly care how you achieve it. Whether through chakra manipulation, space bending, or a combo of gravity inversion and weight manipulation like Tsuchikage, or-' he manifested the arm made of water under his clone disguise, " or through elemental manipulation."

He put most of his weight into lifting himself on his arm, similar to how Gaara can fly on sand. However, suddenly one of his clones had an even more brilliant idea.

He had concentrated chakra strings above him to create a film of blocked air in the shape of a balloon head, simultaneously below him, he made the shape of the tube, which acted as a vent for incoming air, before extending it into pipes going up and around him. He left the sides open.

Then, he started to use miniature fire jutsu along the length of the vent, which in turn started to heat the air and give it upward momentum, carrying it to the sheet of the upper umbrella, which in turn made him rise in the air.

He slowly continued ascending, this time lifting himself straight up and looking at Minato. It was a far cheaper solution than before, as instead of a whole volume of air, he was constraining himself only to sheets of air. Counting it all around, it yielded him maintaining close to 250 clones worth of chakra, 13 times more than his normal upkeep, instead of the previously assumed 1000 he would use.

Moreover, his clones were continuously improving at it, increasing efficiency by getting used to maintaining the shape with fewer clones and improving the design.

The last of the strings connecting him to the Rock Statue came out and he was suspended in the air. Above the whole village, above and before the Hokage's head protrusions.

"You are welcome to use any technique you can think of, and I advise you to develop similar substeps as with body flicker you have learned, or as with learning chakra control exercises, one goes through leaf sticking, to tree and water walking." he continued "So too you are encouraged to create training plans, try to think of concepts that can help you succeed."

Askuna then finished, "But if you learn how to walk and fly in the air with me in three months, even if you can suspend yourself in place for only 5 seconds! Then, if you also do it by the time I graduate, I will acknowledge your title as a Sky God!"

Minato on the other hand was speechless, his mouth was wide open because what he was perceiving wasn't human, it was a monster level. In the classes he had seen how Askuna performed Academy Three without hand seals, he had seen his movements and also drawing Kanji in the air with fire and water.

Those, although looking insanely complicated, were always in the realm of possibility in Minato's mind. However, this time, he had trouble perceiving it all, at first, just looking at the edges, in every direction he had seen hundreds of very weak branches of miniature chakra strings sticking and pulling the the air, suspending Askuna in the air like a God.

But then, he modified his technique, his scattered chakra roots, formed nets, and then filled those gaps to create tubes. Then, he started using fire chakra to lift himself in the air.

He was truly there, none of his Chakra was connected to the rocks. He could see his chakra slowly burning and the subtle shifts of the roots, seemingly becoming more coherent, adapting, and improving.

He was scared at the rate of changes, but then he started to analyze Askuna's words.

What did he say? To find a way to suspend himself in the air like that? Impossible, definitely not the same way, well, maybe creating this shape with hand seals is somehow possible, but he didn't know anything about jutsu creation.

Bending space, gravity control, weight control? And how would he do that?

But then... could he afford to lose? To not take the challenge? To back down and do nothing?

No.

So Minato smiled and answered sincerely, "Thank you Askuna for showing me this, I accept your challenge."

Askuna smirked, before giving one last advice " When something is too hard, divide it into easier problems and conquer them. Cya!" he shouted and flung himself from sticking to the air, like with a slingshot shooting himself at immense speeds.

Askuna was happy, why wouldn't he? Double jump unlocked.

Meanwhile, Minato's legs grew weaker and he sat back down to calm himself. He had a lot of work before him, yet reminding himself of the previous games, he chuckled, "You win that one Askuna, you win that one..."

Yet Minato had his doubts, wasn't Askuna's body flicker over-engineered?