A/N: Prepare yourselves folks, because this chapter has not just one, but two– That's right, two!– PoV shifts. Really going crazy with it in this one. All the skimmers amogus need to pay extra attention to the Emboldened and Underlined text at the top of each section this time! (I am contractually obligated to tell you that this is a joke, made at the expense of comments made early in the story expressing confusion at PoV changes, which live rent-free in my head.)

ᓚᘏᗢ

Koneko

(Thursday, April 19th - Kuoh Academy)

When Uzumaki had carefully walked into school on Monday with the help of an ornate ball-handled cane, his uniform jacket hanging precariously on his shoulders as had become customary for him in the mornings, it quickly became the talk of the halls in our grade's part of the building during break times.

It had taken all of two minutes before Mitsuri got sick of all the whispering in our homeroom, and just blatantly got up and walked over to ask him about it.

His response?

"Eh? Oh, I was hanging out with some friends over the weekend and my leg got hurt in an accident," he said with a grin. "The old man who runs my place insisted that I borrow his cane for a while, so that it doesn't turn into a stress fracture."

Of course, the rumor mill being what it was, some classmates took his relatively vague wording and lack of details and blew them out of proportion. Three days later, and opinions are currently split into two sides, not including the normal people who took his words at face value. One side would have you believe "friends," "accident," and "old man" are actually euphemisms for "Yakuza thugs," "Yakuza violence," and "Yakuza boss" respectively. It didn't help that the way he wore the uniform practically screamed 'delinquent boss' despite his shorter than average stature.

It was actually pretty funny.

What was also a bit funny– if equal parts annoying– was that the other side was made up of a small group still stuck on last week's rumors, with a theory so delusional it wrapped around to being almost close to partially true. They were still convinced that the blond was some sort of delinquent playboy who had sunken his claws into the class tomboy (Mitsuri) and the unofficial school mascot (me), and believed that he'd gotten into some sort of altercation with another guy while he and I were together over the weekend.

The fact that he was with me and did get into an altercation (spar) with another guy (Kiba) meant that their conclusion was in the ballpark of being reasonably accurate, despite the totally unreasonable logic they used to get there.

Mitsuri, as expected, completely ignored the rumor mill as long as it didn't affect her, and given her normal demeanor, none of the people who believed what they'd heard felt the need to approach her to confirm it given how little care she'd shown over the topic. They wrongly believed she "didn't mind people knowing," when the reality was that topics like that went in one ear and out the other with her.

I've watched her literally just zone out whenever other girls tried to gossip with her. She simply didn't care for it.

As for me, while not doing anything to proactively denying the rumors meant that my reputation had begun shifting slightly into a strange direction alongside Uzumaki's own, I decided it was funnier this way. I still denied Mitsuri and I being "involved" with him when asked directly, but in the first place, I didn't really care about my reputation. It really was just a tool for my amusement for the most part, and Uzumaki was the one who took the brunt of it anyway, which I saw as an absolute win.

He deserved it for messing with me the way he did on Saturday night.

A nudge from Mitsuri pulled my attention back to the present.

"Your turn." She said simply, to which I nodded.

The tall redhead was my chosen stretching partner for the start of P.E. class, which was our final period of the day today, and we were currently doing sitting toe-touches on the field. One person would sit on the ground with their legs straight ahead of them and reach forward, while their partner would gently put pressure on their back to help them hold position for a few seconds when they reached their limit.

I didn't exactly need a partner for this stretch, but it helped keep up appearances, and it being Mitsuri meant that talking to her wouldn't be a chore. She'd joined us on the rooftop for lunch a couple times this week, and I'd enjoyed the dynamic between the three of us, despite being unable to continue working on my training.

Uzumaki was sitting casually a few feet away with his borrowed cane across his lap, having managed on Monday to convince the teacher to let him sit out the class for the week. Normally that wouldn't be possible without a doctor's note, but a mixture of flashing the unpleasantly purple flesh and an explanation of how deep the bruising was went a long way to securing his tentative free period, so he basically just lazed around the edges and fidgeted with unburned energy during this class.

"So," Mitsuri spoke up as I began reaching for my feet. "What's actually going on between you two?" She asked in a bored tone.

It felt like she was referring to something specific she'd observed, rather than just a general question. I thought for a moment, trying to pinpoint what she actually meant among the couple of possibilities.

"Huh? Whaddya mean?" Uzumaki asked, seeming confused about the question. Despite his extreme observation and deduction skills, I had no trouble believing it was genuine. Over the past week and a half, I'd seen over and over again that his understanding of people had some noticeable blindspots in the field of social cues.

"Seriously?" She asked in slight confusion. "You don't see how the way you two have been acting this week is suspicious?"

I glanced to the side to see the blond staring blankly at her with a stupid look on his face.

"Toujou waits for you after classes are finished so you two can leave together even though you're not in her club, you eat lunch together on the roof, alone when I don't join you, and you literally made extra food for her in your bento." The redhead listed off dully.

Huh. When she put it that way, I could almost see how some of the rumors managed to keep on going.

Uzumaki's oblivious self just looked even more confused. "What's suspicious about hanging out with a friend and doing nice things for them?"

Finishing my set of stretches, I took pity on him and explained.

"She's asking if we're dating." I shifted to face his seated form as I spoke, rising to my feet.

"Eh?" He blinked at me. "Oh."

I could see the gears beginning to turn in his head.

"Wait, w-what?! K-koneko-chan and me?!" Uzumaki stuttered in shock. His mouth flapped as he short circuited while trying to find the words to deny the claim, a flustered blush blooming across his whisker-like markings.

I turned my head towards Mitsuri.

"We're not, by the way." I clarified. "I introduced him to Yuuto-senpai over the weekend and they sparred. I got interested after watching, and I have the week off from my club duties, so I asked Uzumaki to teach me the basics after school."

Uzumaki seemed to have mostly gotten over his stun-lock during my explanation, but now looked distracted and lost in thought, head tilted slightly down and a hand holding his chin.

"Huh." Mitsuri's head tilted slightly in understanding, eyeing the cane in his lap. "I guess that explains the injury." She turned back towards me. "Is he really good enough to teach though, if he got hurt that badly?"

I consciously suppressed a wince and sidestepped the issue entirely, by giving her truthful context that even a civilian could somewhat understand.

"He won three out of nine matches, unarmed against an older, taller, and faster opponent that had a blunt training sword. Yuuto-senpai is at least as good as any of the Kendo club members."

"Sooo…" I could see her running it through her head, trying to conceptualize what that would actually look like. "What you're saying is, he really is some sort of badass in a fight?"

"Mm." My ears twitched out of sight, hearing the coach's voice mutter something across the field as the sound of his stopwatch being clicked off reached me.

I looked back at the sitting teen. "Uzumaki."

The coach blew the whistle to gather everyone for the class's primary activity, which startled Uzumaki out of his trance.

He glanced around before seeing me watching and stiffened. "Huh? what?"

I tilted my head in the direction that Mitsuri had just turned and started walking in. "I have to get back to class. See you at the usual place afterwards?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah," he agreed distractedly, "Same as usual."

I nodded and made my way towards the group of other students, ignoring the weird look he was giving me as I went. He clearly had something on his mind at the moment.

Putting the interaction itself out of my own mind, I considered how my training was going.

Despite the fact that I'd only really been at it for five days now, manipulating my chakra and using it to strengthen my body and senses had already become second nature to me, almost as easy as breathing. It was what Uzumaki called the 'most basic use' of chakra and took a lot of effort to get to this point, with me working on it for many hours every day, both during our sessions and on my own, but even so, I'd never really internalized what it meant for the ability to manipulate life-energy to come naturally to my species until now. It felt like up until this point I'd been living my life underwater, and I'd only just stepped out onto dry land for the first time.

I didn't even struggle to regulate my strength or movement speed down to normal levels, either. It was just as simple for me to unconsciously twirl a pencil in between my fingers without snapping it, as it was to casually punch a tree in half.

A perfect example is the fact that today's activity is Capture the Flag, and despite actively practicing with my internal chakra flow even now, I'd been reflexively tagging members of the other team in defense of my own team's flag with the lightest of touches, not hurting anyone even a little.

Working on my skill with the Devil's style of healing magic, on the other hand…

Well, progress could at best be described as "normal," but at least I wasn't inept. I could maybe stop someone from bleeding out, I suppose. It was somewhat unique compared to what I knew about other forms of healing, requiring a more conceptual understanding of the species you were trying to heal, rather than actual biological knowledge.

The better you could conceptualize and imagine the "standard" of a species as a whole, the easier it was to heal them. It was described to me as "the absolute peak of the Power of Imagination" that Devils could achieve, with theoretical masters being "capable of tapping into the platonic ideal" of any non-holy lifeform, whatever that meant.

All in all, it was a good thing that Buchou gave me a week off from my peerage duties, because there was no way I'd have time to balance school, training with Uzumaki in the afternoons, and practicing healing magic with Rias at night on top of my contracts. I was barely satisfied with the amount of sleep I got right now, any more obligations would have left me in a permanently cranky mood. I didn't even have time to hang out with Gya-kun this week.

The final whistle was blown two games later, leaving enough time for everyone to shower and change before the final bell for the day rang.

I looked around the edges of the field as I walked with Mitsuri back to the girls locker room, but I didn't see Uzumaki anywhere.

'He must have left already.' I mentally shrugged. 'No point in waiting around since he doesn't need to change, I guess.'

I paused in my tracks, causing Mitsuri to look down at me over her shoulder, stopping as well.

"What's up?" She asked curiously.

I stepped back up beside her, and taking the cue, she continued with me towards the locker room

"I realized it was pointless to shower right now, since I'm going to be training immediately after." I answered. "I can just clean up in the old school building after I'm done." Part of the training Uzumaki had me doing was keeping up with my chakra exercises while learning the basics of his martial art, so it wasn't like I'd just be sitting around and messing with my energy the whole time.

Training in the forest was messy business.

Mitsuri shrugged. "Alright, see you two tomorrow at lunch then?"

I nodded once.

"I need to grab my things first, but sure," I confirmed, "See you tomorrow."

We separated shortly after we got to our chosen lockers, her heading to the showers, and me making my way to the forest behind the old school building.

~,,––,,^^-

Naruto

Clack.

Clack.

Clack.

My borrowed cane tapped on the floors in a steady rhythm as I wandered through the halls towards my locker, not really paying active attention to my surroundings. The halls weren't empty but the majority of classes weren't quite over yet, meaning it was relatively quiet out here. I needed to pick up a couple of diagrams I'd made for today's lesson, now that Koneko-chan seemed to have a good and steady grasp on her internal energy, but my mind was almost entirely focused on something else.

Namely, realizing where all the strange thoughts and moments of distraction kept coming from when I was with her. Specifically when I was with her.

"She's asking if we're dating."

The first moment in the sunset when she extended her friendship and invited me to meet with her again. The sight of her delicate features lit up by the night sky shining through the window, looking up at me from her place on the couch beside me, close enough that my heart started racing as I felt her breathing cause the cushion my arm rested on to shift; Those were the thoughts that flashed through my mind the moment I heard my white haired friend-slash-student say those words.

I might actually be an idiot for not realizing earlier. The fox would probably be laughing his ass off right now if he was around to witness this.

I have a crush on Koneko-chan.

'But why though?' I thought in slight confusion as I opened my locker, reaching in to grab my bag. 'I've known her for all of a week and a half at most, so why her and not Mitsuri? Hell, why not Shimoda-san or Arata-sensei?' Embarrassing as it was to admit, I'd definitely had enough, uh, 'spicy' dreams about either of them recently, given my second go of puberty and how well endowed they were.

Getting with the lonely MILF was a teenage dream as old as time, even Ero-sennin had written a book with the trope before, and I knew this because I (secretly) enjoyed reading it when I traveled with him!

Compared to the other two– Hell, even compared to Sakura-chan!– Koneko was flat as a board. She was attractive in a more cute way, sure, but that's not exactly my 'go-to' type.

"Oi, Uzumaki!"

I pulled my bag out and absentmindedly stuffed the rolled up diagrams inside it, before slinging it over my shoulder and picking back up the old man's cane from where I'd leaned it against the locker beside mine.

So if I didn't actually know her all that well, and I've ruled out hormonal teenage lust as the probable reason, I needed to look elsewhere for the root cause to address it. It would really suck if I started subconsciously acting differently around her because of my crush, and ended up pushing her away with my behavior.

"We've got a bone to pick with you, you damn playboy!"

She was basically my first actual friend in this world after a year of nothing but studying, so I didn't want to accidentally chase her off the same way I did with Sakura-chan when we were… kids…

"Oi, are you listening ya gaijin?!"

I slammed my locker closed.

I really am an idiot. The frequent mental comparisons I've made between her and Sakura-chan were a dead giveaway. Koneko-chan was the first girl in my age-group to have a meaningful interaction with me, after a long period of loneliness. Sakura-chan had been nice to me once as a kid, and I'd latched on to that kindness for as long as I'd known her.

'Am I really that easy? All it takes is being the first pretty girl to treat me like a person?' I thought half-jokingly, half-concerned about what it implied about my mental state. 'Or is there something else at play affecting me? I do technically only have something like half of my soul now, could that be affecting how I think?'

I turned from my locker and abruptly realized there were two boys standing next to each other, looking down at me with. One was tan and had a shaved head, while the other had the average 'nerd' look, complete with glasses. They both had somewhat nervous expressions for some reason.

'Wait a minute, haven't I seen these two before?'

They both seemed to gather their nerves.

"You finally decided to acknowledge your upperclassmen?" The second voice belonged to Glasses as he… sneered? I think that's what he was doing, but honestly, he just looked constipated.

"Sorry, I was a bit lost in thought just now," I apologized with a sheepish grin. "You two are… Mafuba and Motorola, right?"

Glasses looked outraged while Baldy just grit his teeth. Oops, I must have gotten it wrong.

"It's Motohama!" Glasses– Motohama yelled. "Motohama and Matsuda!"

"Eheheh…" I chuckled awkwardly at my mistake.

A thought occurred.

"Where's the other guy?" I asked, blanking on the brown haired guy's name. "Don't you guys usually hang around with a third dude?"

"Hmph!" Motohama huffed, "That bastard betrayed us, talking to that chick out front! As if he of all people could actually–" "Forget it! I don't care about any of that!"

He was interrupted by the other one, Matsuda, blowing his own top. He walked up to me and poked me in the chest for some reason, which was annoying as hell. "I got a problem with you, punk!" And who does this guy think he's calling a punk?! I work hard in all of my classes nowadays! "You need to stay away from our school's precious mascot! A guy like you doesn't deserve to have such a cute loli like Koneko-chan to corrupt!"

… The hell is a loli?

The other one, Moto– fuck it, Glasses– decided now was a good time to join in from my left, leaning down into my personal space. They were starting to piss me off. "Yeah! I'm not a lolicon like this creepy baldy, but that redhead's measurements are way out of the league of a shorty like you! You blondes need to go away and leave some for the rest of us!" He yelled in my face with twin streams of tears trailing down from behind his glasses.

One of my eyes twitched. I didn't really get all of what they were saying, but I didn't currently have the time or mental capacity to spare for these idiots and their bullshit, and understood enough to know they were telling me to stop hanging out with my friends.

Yeah, no way.

"Listen, I have no clue what you're talking about, and got a lot on my mind right now." I said with a forced deadpan. "I need to meet up with Koneko-chan soon, so why don't you two go bother someone who gives a shit? Get outta my way."

"No way!"

"Absolutely not!"

They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of me and crossed both arms over their chest in unison in the shape of an X.

I sighed.

'Plan B it is, then.'

Faster than they could react, I flicked my wrist towards Baldy, loosening my grip on the cane for a moment to let it slide up and forward in my grasp with the motion, while reaching with my other hand towards Glasses' still-leaning-forward face. I caught the walking stick by the middle of the shaft right as the rounded grip was directly next to Baldy's cheek, and gently pressed both it and my palm against the sides of either of their faces.

"Huh?"

"Wha-"

I gave them a split second to realize what position they were in, before forcibly pushing them to either side in a stumble full of surprised shouts, clearing a path for me to walk undisturbed.

Which I then proceed to do.

I straightened my jacket on my shoulders, then threw my free hand up in a wave without glancing back at them as I walked towards the stairs, my other hand casually twirling the cane like a baton.

"Nice chatting with you, Baldy, Glasses." I called back as I entered the stairwell.

I didn't really need the cane to walk anymore at this point– I didn't actually need it in the first place, even– but I had to admit, having a big stick on hand at all times to swing around was really growing on me. I might have to look into getting one of my own, after I return this one to the old man…

'I wonder if I can get one with a sword hidden inside it?' I thought to myself, letting out a chuckle as I descended to the ground floor. 'That'd be freaking awesome.'

Stepping out into the open field behind the club house and making my way towards the woods further back, I was reminded that I still hadn't found a club to join, even as I turned my thoughts inward again. I took in a couple slow, deep breaths, just tasting the air and settling into a sort of moving-meditation as I walked to my destination.

As open grass gave way to trees, I contemplated the fact that it's been quite a long time since I'd last slowed down and immersed myself in nature for a while. I'd spent the last year working non-stop on my education, with a single-mindedness that, while similar on the surface to my drive to become Hokage, was actually much more mentally unhealthy now that I stopped to reflect on it.

In the beginning, it was a struggle to follow through with my studies. The moment I recontextualized it in my head as "trying to heal my body" and thus necessary to go back home, however, it was like it became the only thing that mattered to me, with everything else in my life at the time just being a part of my routine and nothing more. Given the fact that I had promised to myself in the beginning, that if it wasn't actually possible to go back, I would accept my new life here, well, it hadn't even occurred to me until today how strange it was for me to all but push that promise to the side in my efforts.

Now that I'd reached a milestone, had a change in routine, and made some friends, it stood out to me that some part of my personality had become skewed after my stranding in this world; something to do with my self-control, or priority management, had probably been lost or separated from me when I split my soul.

Whether I was right about the root cause or not, there was no doubt in my mind that something was off about my thought processes as it stood. Nodding to myself, I worked to come up with a plan for managing my issue going forward.

ᓚᘏᗢ

Koneko

I have come to a conclusion

Walking up trees was hard.

It was only the second chakra exercise Naruto-sensei had taught me, being a direct and practical evolution of the "stick random things to your body" exercise, but it was the one I had the most difficulty performing with any kind of speed. Even after I'd moved on to the more intense lessons on internal manipulation in yesterday's lessons, I found myself unsatisfied with my inability to master this particular trick.

Sure, I could stick to a surface with my feet and even walk up it with relative ease, but trying to go any faster than a walk, on any surface that was less smooth than a normal wall, and my feet either wouldn't budge, or I would slip right off the moment I try to pull one of my feet away. I just couldn't manipulate my chakra any faster, while maintaining the sort of fine-tuned finesse that was needed to switch between sticking-to and releasing-from the rough bark's surface.

It was annoying that I struggled so hard with what he considered a basic exercise, despite him telling me yesterday that I was making great progress.

It wasn't really a big deal. I knew that the practical utility of this technique was actually pretty low for me, considering the fact that I could simply fly instead in most cases, but I needed to master my chakra as fast as possible.

As much as the thought of it made my hairs stand on end, the only way Naruto-sensei would teach me his style of Senjutsu was by proving that my chakra was powerful enough to withstand it.

And so I practiced, dropping my at this point near instinctual body-enhancement to focus my entire attention on quickly and efficiently guiding my life-force to bridge the gaps between my sneakers and the tree I was halfway up. Progress was extremely slow going past a certain vague speed threshold, being much more mentally taxing than I would have guessed to corral my power, but there was still progress. We'd also realized early on that it was easier to control my chakra when I was in my natural form, so my true ears were out in plain view as well. My gym class bloomers didn't have the necessary hole for my tail though, so that stayed hidden.

"Yo."

My ears twitched violently with surprise, but I'd mostly gotten used to the way he made a game of sneaking up on me, so the rest of my body and chakra didn't waver in the slightest. One of the physical "exercises" he had me practicing when not doing something that required physical motion, was "stillness training," meant to prepare a practitioner of his method to harness natural energy. Even if we were under the belief that our different biologies meant it was unnecessary in my case, he explained that the training would still be useful to me as a way to gain greater control over my body, even if I never got all that good at its primary function.

I still sucked at it from a technical standpoint, even if I did see some improvements in the area.

The core idea of it was to relax your body to prevent involuntary twitches, so that you only make motion when you explicitly intend to… but I'm a cat youkai. My body is literally built for reflexive, fast-twitch motion. It wasn't through the results of stillness training that I suppressed my reaction, it was from the fact that I had so little of my focus aimed at the world around me. I only really immediately processed the sound of his voice, which my mind understood as being a normal presence while training, rather than my brain immediately screaming at me that he'd snuck up right next to me.

I let my chakra recede from my feet and lightly pushed off from the tree, dropping to my feet on the forest floor before turning towards the center of the small clearing I'd made for us where Naruto-sensei stood.

As usual, he still wore the standard Kuoh uniform with his jacket hung over his shoulders. Unlike usual, he seemed uncharacteristically nervous about something; shifting on his feet, scratching his cheek, trying to maintain eye contact but reflexively looking somewhere else after only a moment.

For a guy who apparently mastered being so still that he became one with nature, he sure did fidget a lot.

"Naruto-sensei," I greeted him with a nod, "What's the matter?"

Even though it was clear he still had some hesitation left from the way his eyes kept avoiding me, when he heard me and was reminded of how he got one over me with his stupid "one rule," the obnoxiously smug grin that appeared on his face seemed to wipe away all the other signs of his nerves.

Instead of needing me to follow his instructions to the letter, or something else equally serious about using what I learned under him responsibly, he used my desperation to get me to refer to him as either 'Naruto-sama' or 'Naruto-sensei' whenever my training was involved.

Obviously, the 'choice' wasn't one at all.

I realized the moment he demanded it that he was mostly joking, but even so, I did my absolute best to adhere to Naruto-sensei's "rule" even in my internal thoughts, despite my exasperation. I had made my request to him while expecting any number of responses, from a flat 'no,' to a list of requests for potential payment. Instead, he took the time out of his own days to teach me free of charge. The absolute least I could do in return is play along with his silly requirement.

His grin smoothed out into a slightly awkward smile after a moment.

"I guess there's no use beating around the bush, eh?" He chuckled, turning his head to the side with his fox-like squint. "I never really was good at hiding it when something was wrong," he said with a slight sigh. "Anyway, I need to talk to you about something before we start. It involves something I've been noticing about my behavior recently."

He took a breath and steadied himself.

"I told you before that the last fight I was in almost killed me, and ended with me unable to use my chakra," he began, "But what I didn't mention was that just before the fight ended, I was forced into a situation where the only way to win was to use a dangerous technique I invented on the spot. I can't tell exactly how badly damaged it is without access to my chakra, but the technique split my soul roughly in half, leaving me with only one of those halves."

It took me a second to comprehend the absurdity of what he just said with how clinically he said it, like tearing his soul in half was just a side note to the main point.

Before I could really react though, that was exactly what he indirectly went on to say.

"I'm fine for the most part, but after getting accepted into Kuoh Academy and having my previous routine disrupted, I've noticed that I have a lot of trouble regulating my natural tendencies and habits. Recognizing when I'm subconsciously latching onto something in my life as an anchor has basically become almost impossible for me, unless it's thrown in my face," he explained, calm blue eyes opening to meet my own golden ones.

I forced myself to not walk over and smack him for being an idiot about the state of his literal soul, and instead closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, releasing it calmly a second later.

"Okay," I said with a slow nod. "If you're telling me this now, does that mean you believe it's important information to me in some way?"

I had to keep in mind, he'd been like this for just under a year now. If the only way his condition has affected him in all this time is a few difficult to manage personality quirks, then while not exactly smart, it was at least understandable that he wasn't making a big deal out of something that couldn't be undone.

He nodded, and the blond turned his head away again as an apologetic smile appeared on his lips.

"S-sorry, this is really embarrassing for me to admit like this," he said, rubbing the back of his neck with a slight redness in his visible cheek, "but after P.E. class, I kinda, sorta, realized that I have a c-crush on you…"

… Huh.

I… didn't really know how to react to this.

Naruto-sensei wasn't unattractive by any means, and I enjoyed the time we spent together, but I'd known him for less than a month. I hadn't ever really even considered the idea of being "with" someone myself, so this took me completely by surprise.

How do other girls react when their male friends confess to them? More confusingly, how did explaining the state of his spirit have anything to do with him having feelings for me?

"Before you try to find some way to respond," he continued more firmly, pulling me out of my mental floundering momentarily, to see that the whisker marked teen was looking me in the eyes again, "this isn't me confessing to you, or leading up to asking you out; This is me telling you up front that if I start behaving in a way that makes you uncomfortable, I want you to tell me, and I'll back off. I don't plan on pursuing this crush at all, and just want to stay as friends," he explained.

While that calmed my inner thoughts for the most part, leaving just the awkward knowledge itself, the confusion still remained.

"Alright," I agreed with a nod. "Why bring up your soul then? What's the connection?"

Naruto-sensei nodded like he expected that question.

"I assume you've picked up on the fact that we're both aware, neither of us has exactly had a perfect childhood, right?" He asked seriously.

I nodded, suddenly guiltily curious.

"Right. So, remember what I told you about the nine Bijuu? How they were seen as demons by my people?" He asked rhetorically. "Well, the Kyuubi attacked my village on the day I was born, and my village's leader sealed it within me at the cost of his life to end its rampage." He chuckled wistfully, closing his eyes. "Needless to say, I wasn't well liked by my village, being the equivalent of a walking time-bomb to the more superstitious people. Even though a law was passed preventing people from talking about it when I was a baby, for years after the fact, parents would tell their children to stay away from me. It got really lonely as an orphan without any friends, being able to see the fear in the adults eyes when they looked at me."

He smiled softly.

"Then one day when I was around five or six years old, I met a girl my age at a park. Her name was Sakura. I don't remember how it happened, or what the context was-" His eyes opened, staring off into the distance, "-but she was the first kid to be kind to me, and I clung to that. Being the little shit that I was, never having been taught how to act towards other people, I bugged her for years, hoping that she'd return my affection even when she'd made it clear that she wasn't interested and actively found me annoying."

He chuckled.

"That is why I told you. I eventually learned to back off and she became one of my best friends, almost like a sister to me, but I didn't want to ruin another potential friendship over something stupid like that again." His eyes focused on mine with that same gentle smile. "I'm still alive. Have been for the past year, but I haven't been living. I've just been going through the motions day in and day out, working towards a vague goal that I don't even know for certain is possible, while ignoring the people around me."

A breeze blew through the clearing, ruffling his blond hair and making his empty sleeves flap.

"Then I met you, and the world started to seem interesting again. I get attached to people easily, and struggle to let go of them." He scratched his cheek with his free hand and looked away bashfully. "Whether this crush is actually real, or a result of my messed up head, I don't know either way and neither matters to me right now. I just want to be able to keep hanging out with the person who pulled me out of that depressing state of existence, even if neither of us were aware of it at the time."

We stood in silence for the next few seconds, a heavy feeling I couldn't describe settling in my chest.

It wasn't necessarily a bad feeling though. It wasn't uncomfortable, just… heavy. To know that he earnestly valued our friendship that highly, fully aware that I didn't reciprocate his level of regard, and was still willing to teach me a highly restricted ability among his people…

It was a little overwhelming.

'Even so…'

I stepped closer, closing the distance until there was only a couple feet between us, the sound of my sneakers crunching on the forest floor drawing his attention.

"Uzumaki-kun."

His hand fell to his side and I could see him swallow nervously as we looked at each other.

"Forget training, let's just go to the arcade. As friends."

Just because I had only just met him, didn't mean it would always be like that. Maybe in a year or two, maybe sooner, I'd see him similar to the way I see Kiba or Gya-kun. That being the case, I didn't want to take his friendship for granted, and end up using him as a glorified NPC trainer.

He blinked once, then a second time, and his head lowered.

"... Heh." His lips twitched open. "Heheh…"

He clutched his face and threw his head back, laughing happily. If he happened to have a repeat of his Saturday night "allergies" and needed to wipe his eyes on his sleeves, I pretended not to notice.

"Man, I knew puberty was throwing my emotions out of whack, but get a hold of myself, me!" Uzumaki exclaimed with a chuckle as he indeed proceeded to get a hold of himself, wiping leftover tears from his eyes.

Finishing doing so, he shifted his shoulder, drawing my attention to his bag hanging from it. "And while I appreciate the offer, I really, really do, let's shelf that for now. We can go tomorrow. We're already out here, I have your next lesson prepped and ready…" He pointedly eyed my gym clothes with a teasing grin, "... and you clearly skipped showering after class in anticipation of your training. You can't lie and say you aren't eager for it, so we might as well just continue as planned," he finished with a bright smile.

I sighed in relief and nodded in assent.

As much as I was prepared to put it off in order to spend time hanging out, the anxious part of me that knew I was weaker than I needed to be really didn't like the idea of skipping out on my training. I was already having to play catch-up after all.

"I do have a question, though," I admitted. "You just told me he was sealed in you as a child after attacking your home. How did you become friends with him like you said when we met, if that's the case?" I asked curiously.

"The shortened-but-still-complicated answer is that I managed to gain his trust over the course of fighting against his influence for years, learning to be more understanding of his side of things, and then swaying him to the side of letting go of his justified hatred for the sake of his own peace of mind." He explained with nostalgia-tinged seriousness. "The short answer?" He suddenly grinned. "I opened the seal and allowed him the choice to escape me at any point, and he stayed with me until I shoved him out along with half of my soul, hahah!"

I deadpanned at the fool as he laughed about his own recklessness. The serious mood had completely evaporated.

"So! Now that all that's out of the way," Naruto-sensei plopped down onto the forest floor without a care, sitting cross-legged as he set his cane to the side, and began pulling rolled up poster sheets out of his bag.

I kneeled down across from him in a seiza as he unrolled them between us.

"Let's begin!"

(Two hours later)

Because Naruto-sensei didn't know much about Youkai, our lessons were usually more freeform, with him coming up with an exercise idea on the spot, working with me to figure out if it sounded doable in the first place, and then developing a small scale test to see if I could do anything with it. It was a lot of trial and error, but even so I'd sped through them at a pace that kept him trying to come up with more intense exercises each day.

Today was not like that.

"Your control's improved like crazy the past couple of days, so we're going to skip a couple of steps and try something new," is what he had said.

The posters turned out to be diagrams of the human body, with different sheets showing it at different angles and with different layers of flesh on display, alongside a central page that depicted a human hand and forearm's inner workings in greater detail than the whole-body pages. If that were all there was to them, I would have assumed that Naruto-sensei was leading into another physical exercise, or some sort of mental exercise meant to make me think about how my own body worked in comparison.

Instead, each and every one of the more than a dozen sheets had precise, highly-visible, hand-drawn golden lines looping and swirling and branching out through the depicted bodies flesh and bone, maintaining consistent proportions and placement across all the pictures. The similarities to the blue veins and red arteries were notable, but that just made the differences stand out more, such as the eight spots roughly down the center labeled "gates", and the mass in the direct center that the whole network connected back to.

Naruto-sensei had painstakingly mapped out his particular chakra circulatory system as he remembered it onto each of the posters he'd had made, and was currently teaching me as much as he reasonably could about the biology of his own human hand in preparation for an experiment, one involving the normal style of Senjutsu that most Youkai wielded, or as he'd explained in our first lesson, "Ninshu" as his people called it.

Based on what he understood of how both of our bodies handled the manipulation of chakra, Naruto-sensei believed that by using the most basic ability of Youkai Senjutsu– connecting your own chakra to external life-energy, usually nature's– directly on him instead of the environment around us, there would be no risk to me of accidentally messing up with natural energy and going berserk. He was basically setting up himself to be a practice tool for me, which sounded insane to me when I thought about it like that in hindsight, but he insisted that he believed it was safe enough, trusting in the nature of Ninshu to not cause harm itself if accidents are made..

The reason he had me memorizing his arm's biology was twofold. Primarily, the fact that he believed his chakra network was severely damaged meant that me flowing my chakra through his body carelessly had a reasonable risk of causing even more damage to his system, so it was best to teach me the areas to be most careful. This was also one of the reasons for why we were focusing on his off-hand first, staying away from more vital areas. If it ended up hurting him, it wouldn't be immediately lethal. If it didn't, then we lost nothing by being cautious.

The second reason was more so a shot in the dark; If I came to understand how whatever was left of pathways interacted with my chakra, maybe It would give me a better idea on what I needed to do to improve my fine control.

Youkai– and other species that weren't descended from Naruto-sensei's people– had advantages his people didn't with the way our chakra flowed freely through our bodies; such as it being immensely easier to learn for us, and easier to use for simple and straightforward tasks, as we'd learned with my rapid progress.

But his people had an advantage unique to them, which honestly made it seem like they got the better end of the stick the more that I thought about it. Because their chakra had to flow through specific channels, complex manipulation was much more manageable for them. The restriction they had to deal with became a benefit, because they could simply use those 'restrictive' pathways to automatically shape chakra in extremely specific ways through the use of body techniques, like the 'hand-seals' Naruto-sensei had told me about, bypassing a lot of the need for immense mental focus Youkai tended to require for more complicated techniques.

Though, one thing had been bugging me since I learned he'd hand-drawn the delicate golden lines.

"So, any questions before we start?" Naruto-sensei asked.

"Mm," I nodded. "How do you remember all of this enough to draw it accurately?" I swept my eyes across the various diagrams. While not quite as extensive as the entire vascular system, the chakra network as depicted was nothing to scoff at in complexity, especially with how he accounted for it weaving in and out of muscle groups in his drawings, being a bright gold when exposed on the 'surface' of the models and a more and more dull yellow when behind other parts of the body.

"Heheh. I'm not entirely certain, but I do have a theory." He admitted. "See, remember how I told you my people produce our chakra by combining our physical and spiritual energies into one?" He asked me with a small head tilt.

I nodded.

"Well," he continued, "the thing is, chakra networks don't show up on normal medical scans. One of us gets cut open? You won't be able to see our network. It's more like a spiritual organ than something that actually has a physical presence." He explained. "It's still connected to our physical bodies, it still moves with the flex of our muscles, and cutting off an arm will still sever the pathways in that arm, but it's more like a connective web that interfaces between the body and soul."

He shook his head. "I'm getting off track. Basically, at the height of my power I had pretty much reached the peak of what was possible for chakra control and understanding how it flowed through my body. If I had known any techniques that usually needed more than a single hand-sign, I could have done them easily without so much as a twitch."

"Without going on a long-winded explanation about brains and souls, and considering that the only memories of mine that are still crystal clear after all this time are the ones involving my chakra, I'm pretty sure it's safe enough to say that the feeling of my chakra flowing through me is basically branded on my soul." Naruto-sensei grinned in good humor. "Unless I mutilate my soul again, I won't ever forget the feeling. Even when I start going senile, forgetting places and names in old age."

He held out his left hand to me in offering. "We should get started though. Unless you have any other questions?"

I shook my head, shuffling forward on my knees a little and reaching out to grasp his hand with both of mine.

I closed my eyes and let my mind push all the sounds of the forest to the sides as background noise, focusing all of my senses on just me and Naruto-sensei. I listened to our heartbeats and our breathing, felt the warmth of his flesh in my hands and the slight creaking of my muscle fibers under tension, immersing myself in the sensation of our bodies working, living, as I reached for my chakra, my life energy.

I felt his heartbeat speed up sharply and immediately stopped.

"Your heart rate spiked, is something wrong?" I asked. 'I don't think I messed up already,' I thought in confusion, 'I haven't even started yet.'

"N-no, it's nothing," came his reply, "I just thought about something I shouldn't have.

Opening my eyes, I felt myself deadpan at the sight in front of me. "Really, Uzumaki-kun?"

My blond Senjutsu teacher had his head turned and eyes averted from me, his whisker markings sitting on top of the deep red tint of his blush.

"Eheheh, sorry…" He apologized while scratching his cheek with his other hand, still looking away. "Without anything to do while I wait, my mind decided to wander. I can't exactly stop myself from thinking you look even cuter than you usually do when your ears are out, you know." He pouted. "It's not like I want to make things awkward."

I ignored the slight heat in my own cheeks at his open bluntness with the topic and sighed. "It's fine."

I thought for less than a split second about teasing him for the way his eyes reflexively flicked down to my bloomers and bare thighs before snapping away, but I ruthlessly crushed the intrusive thought. The extremely minor amusement I would get from his reaction wouldn't even be worth the embarrassment itself, let alone every other reason I had to not want to lead on my friend.

His hand still in mine, I closed my eyes again. "I'm starting."

I felt him settle down again, his heartbeat gradually slowing back to normal.

I went through the process of carefully gathering my chakra again.

Slowly, gently, I guided it down my arms, through my palms, and extended it just barely past my skin. I focused on the deceptively soft skin in my hands, carefully letting my energy seep through its outer layers to explore the flesh underneath. I felt my chakra come into contact with itself within his hand, two opposite sides pressing against each other and being forced further up into his forearm, like water flowing through a pipe due to pressure.

I'd never done anything like this before, so I didn't have anything to compare it to, but something about the situation felt really off. So far, my chakra hadn't encountered anything that felt similar to itself. Other chakra, demonic power, holy energy, none of that. All I could feel was normal biology doing normal biological things, with no sign of his chakra network I could detect. On the one hand, that was a lot to feel on its own. On the other hand… he felt empty. Like an inflated balloon, except even with me looking around inside that 'balloon,' there wasn't any 'air.'

My friend was like a husk of a person, a building that only stayed standing because it didn't yet realize all its supports had been knocked down.

And then it happened.

Like a sudden shockwave from a bomb, a pulse of what I could only call vitality raced down his arm, the sheer potency of it blasting my chakra to the sides like insignificant gas, from his forearm down to his fingertips in an instant. Then it was gone, and my chakra came flooding back in.

The difference was immediately noticeable, but fading quickly. Where before, I could have described his body as being void of energy, like a pitch black room, now there was a faint 'glow' inside him, lingering remnants left in the wake of the potent life energy.

I tried to connect my chakra to these remnants, but they disappeared too fast, and I was left contemplating how unnaturally empty my friend felt internally, especially after being exposed to that much pure life.

It left me wondering about the energy as my chakra kept futilely probing around his arm for any remaining signs of it. Based on what he'd explained about his people and the diagrams I'd been memorizing, that wave wasn't in any way natural to him, and didn't feel anything like I'd expect a human's vitality to feel like. It was intense, potent in a way I couldn't identify as the amateur I am, even with my species natural talent doing the heavy lifting to guide me through this experiment.

I spent a few more moments just feeling around his muscle groups for any signs of his chakra network, but to no result. I was just about to give up learning anything new and pull back, when my chakra was once more blasted to the outer edges of his arm by another wave of that same energy from before. Given how unprepared for it I was, it faded away before I could investigate it more thoroughly again, but it was at least a good sign.

'It might happen in intervals.' I noted mentally. 'I just need to time it right in that case…'

I made sure to keep my chakra mostly near the surface skin layers of Naruto-sensei's arm, so that I wouldn't have to waste time re-gathering it after the next pulse.

'Maybe I should match my breathing to his?' I suddenly thought. He'd made it clear that it was easier to take in natural energy by becoming 'one with the world,' so I thought trying to match him as much as possible might help me connect to his life force. I decided to try it even if it might not actually do anything.

The moment came, and this time I was prepared for it when the pulse of vitality raced down his arm. As soon as it passed by, I allowed my chakra to flow into the remnants it left in its wake. My chakra gathered the leftover wisps before they could fade, mixing them into my own energy like food dye mixing into water, 'tinting' that portion of my chakra in a way I couldn't describe.

But I wasn't paying attention to my success. Something much more important had grabbed my attention, and completely smothered whatever thoughts I might have had in my head.

Without wholly understanding how I did it, I gently let the energy I'd connected to diffuse out of my chakra and return to Naruto-sensei's body to be absorbed, before letting my chakra itself disperse and pulling my hands away.

"So," he asked curiously as I let go of him, "How'd it go? Learn anything interesting?"

Connected to that energy, I could feel much more clearly how his body worked, how it lived.

It was "barely."

The muscles and tendons and bones, the actual biological structures and functions of his arm worked fine, and even seemed to be in pristine condition. No long-term wear and tear. Even with me not being intimately familiar with biology, I got the sense that his flesh couldn't be in better physical condition.

But it was still only barely hanging on to life, the burst of that energy barely enough to sate his cells thirst for life, even as the remaining wisps quickly healed the almost unnoticeable damage it's brief presence caused in the first place, being too intense for his body to handle all at once. I was reminded of the talk I had with Rias on the patio, how his aura was constantly fluctuating in her [King]'s Sight.

The state of his chakra network was almost a side note compared to how on the edge he was, only the periodical waves of life energy sustaining him.

Mixing my chakra with the energy felt like putting on 3D glasses in a movie theater, adding new depth to what I was able to sense. And what I sensed was what remained of his chakra network, little more than ragged fragments and pieces of burst tubes scattered throughout his arm chaotically, in only the vaguest approximations of their natural placements according to the diagrams.

I stared at my friend, not sure how to deliver the news.

"With the way you're looking at me like I might drop dead at any second," he started with a squint, "I'm going to go ahead and assume the answer is 'nothing good for me.'"

A breeze blew through the clearing.

Then he shrugged casually. "Oh well." He began pushing himself up to a stand, taking the rolled up posters with him. "Hey– let's do something more fun now. I can teach you some hand-to-hand while you try to keep heavy objects stuck to your limbs."

I caught his wrist before he could walk to the edge of the clearing where his bag was.

"How are you able to be so casual about this?" I asked, holding his gaze as I forced myself to a stand as well. "You're basically half-dead. This isn't something we should take lightly, not when we should be doing something about it."

"What part of 'miracle that I wake up each day' did you not understand last Saturday?" He deadpanned at me, gently trying to pry his wrist out of my fingers. I let him do so. "That's pretty much old news to me. I'm taking it lightly precisely because there's nothing we can actually do about it at the moment, unless you've got any ideas now?" He paused, shrugging when I reluctantly shook my head and turning to toss the diagrams in a pile near his other stuff. "Either way, no point in worrying so much about it while there are other things we can focus our efforts on."

He turned back and settled into a stance with a smirk, pointing to a pile of rocks at the side of the clearing. "Now come on, stick a couple of those on yourself and then follow my movements. I'll show you a move a couple times, then you do your best to copy it and I'll adjust your limbs when you make a mistake. We'll go until Himejima comes to retrieve you for whatever it is you've been doing after these sessions."

Buchou had tasked Akeno with retrieving me for our lessons, and she had done so using her familiar until yesterday, when she decided she wanted to meet my human friend.

I frowned at his nonchalance, but in the end, what he was saying was right. There wasn't much he or I could do to fix his condition.

'Not yet, that is.' I mentally corrected myself while doing as told. 'Devil healing only interacts with physical injuries, so getting a more experienced healer probably won't even work. But maybe I can figure out how to channel it through my chakra?' I resisted the urge to shake my head, making my way back to the center with more than double my weight in rocks attached to me.

Thoughts for later.

It was about half an hour later that I heard the sound of footsteps approaching, my ears twitching in the direction of the old school building. I was in the middle of learning a counter move that could apparently be adapted for multiple different follow ups, and Naruto-sensei had been standing close behind me while I went through the motions slowly, tapping my limbs back into place when I over or under-extended.

I continued the motions as Akeno walked into the clearing, her usual gentle smile on her face. Surprisingly, Sensei didn't adjust my movements at all this time. I must have gotten it right, finally.

"Hello, Koneko-chan," she greeted me.

I nodded at her. "Akeno-senpai."

"I see you're still training diligently," she pointed out with a twinkle in her eyes. "Did Uzumaki-kun head home early this time?"

'What?'

I blinked and looked over my shoulder as I finished the kata, not seeing the blond anywhere in the clearing. I deadpanned as I saw his bag and the posters still lying to the side where we'd moved them out of the way earlier.

No wonder he hadn't corrected me, he went to hide the moment he realized Akeno was on the way.

"... He probably left when he sensed the presence of a dangerous person approaching, one with bad intentions for him." I told her blandly, letting the rocks drop from my body. They hit the ground with a series of thumps and clacking as they landed on each other.

"Ara ara," Akeno affected a face of surprise, one hand brought up to cup her cheek. "I'll make sure to keep an eye out for such a person." She smiled. "For Uzumaki-kun's safety, of course."

I stared blankly at the sadist. "Yeah, sure." I turned in the general direction of where Naruto-sensei's bag sat in the dirt. "Uzumaki-kun," I called out. "We know you're still there."

"Nuh-uh!" His voice called back childishly from somewhere off to my left.

I rolled my eyes and turned that way. "You don't have to hide, you know. Akeno-senpai won't bite." 'Much.' I left the last part unsaid.

"That's a damn lie, that woman is evil!" He accused, poking his head out from behind a tree in the corner of my vision. "My godfather warned me about women like her, they're dangerous as hell!"

I deadpanned. "You mean the same godfather that you said constantly harassed women? That's the guy you're following the advice of?"

"Exactly!" He nodded his head energetically, still hiding the rest of his body behind the tree. "He was a serial harasser who constantly got in trouble with women for being a total creep, so he had plenty of experience identifying the signs. I could tell from the moment she first spoke to me, she's a complete 'S'!"

It was exasperating that he was spot on.

"Whatever." I rolled my eyes while turning towards Akeno, who was 'Ufufu'ing behind her hand in amusement, clearly enjoying Uzumaki's distress like the rotten deviant she was. "Let's go already." I waved over my shoulder to the whiskered boy. "See you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow Koneko-chan!" He called back.

ᓚᘏᗢ

A/N: Please let me know what you liked, what you didn't like, where I can improve, etc. I constantly kept coming back and combing through this chapter, feeling like I needed to cut out anything the didn't progress the story or characters, but simultaneously feeling like every part did either one or the other and leaving it mostly intact. The end result has me of two minds; 1) I am satisfied with all the contents of this chapter. 2) I am not satisfied with the chapter as it stands as a singular whole.

In other news; I've been crossposting this fic to some of the other common fanfic sites like Sufficient Velocity and Spacebattles under the username Foxxin, because I really like the forum format and the thread tools they have (FFN's document tools fucking suuuuck). I'm planning on posting canon omakes over there in the Sidestories tabs, wiki-style character sheets and other supplementary material/notes in the Informational tabs (already have Arc 1 Naruto's sheet posted), and reader posted omakes in the extras tabs if anyone ever decides to make one. If any of that sounds interesting, I'd recommend checking it either or both sites as a whole. SV is kind of slowly dying out compared to Spacebattles, but both of them have lots of good fanfiction across a bunch of fandoms, it's not all just Worm.