Yuji had expected the village’s higher-ups to move toward controlling him eventually. He hadn’t expected it to happen this soon.
"With only this much on display, they’re already anxious for a response," he thought, packing his things with a faint smile.
"I assud they’d at least wait until I was stronger before testing the water. They really haven’t dealt with soone like this before."
Then again, soone like him had no business appearing in Sunagakure at all. He had arrived like an anomaly, producing results and surprises at a rate the higher-ups had never had to process before.
Like people who had never fought with real resources suddenly finding themselves flush, their managent of the situation was getting sloppy precisely because they didn’t have the reference points to handle it cleanly.
He had concealed a substantial portion of his actual ability from outside observation, and he had believed that concealnt was thorough enough that the higher-ups wouldn’t feel the need to test his loyalty yet. Apparently not.
The Kazekage and the senior officials were a particular kind of authority, the type that experienced genuine discomfort when a resource they valued existed beyond the full reach of their control.
If the child didn’t submit willingly, they would reach for other levers. Not Danzo’s thods exactly, but the sa underlying instinct wearing different clothing.
He finished packing and considered what he had been planning to do with the ti at ho.
Hand seal practice. Hospital work. He had wanted to revisit the village’s dical system, not to improve treatnt capability this ti, but to address the institutional structure, the regulations, the frawork itself.
And beyond that, the economy. Sunagakure’s reconstruction had no montum. The village was still, financially gutted, waiting for sothing that wasn’t coming on its own.
Part of what would eventually allow Rasa to consolidate power was his Kekkei Genkai, gold dust wasn’t currency in any conventional sense, but as a hard resource it could be exchanged for supplies and brought real assets into the village’s hands.
Without Rasa, the original story’s version of Sunagakure would have been worse still. Finding ways to address the economic stagnation now served multiple purposes, it might attract the Daimyo’s attention, and it would quietly reduce one of the foundations Rasa would otherwise rely on when his path to Kazekage opened up.
All of that would have to wait.
He finished packing, added a backpack full of borrowed materials, Hand Seal Training notes, records left by senior shinobi, reference texts he had pulled from the village institution, and headed for the Academy.
The materials weren’t classified; they just required return. He intended to work through them during whatever free ti the mission allowed. His Hand Seal execution was a weakness he had been aware of for so ti.
Even without achieving single-handed seals, simplifying his sequences enough to compress the chakra response ti would aningfully reduce the gaps enemies could exploit.
The more his understanding of actual combat deepened, the clearer it beca that breadth of capability mattered, fewer exploitable weaknesses ant fewer angles for a prepared enemy to target.
He also made a ntal note about the Dragon Vein site sowhere in the Land of Wind. That was worth investigating when the opportunity ca.
Dragon Veins were a form of energy, and if the system could help him interface with that source, it might address the one persistent limitation in his current toolkit, not that his chakra reserves were genuinely small.
His reserves were strong for his age and likely above many adults, given his physical conditioning and ntal energy. The problem was consumption. His Blood Release was extraordinarily demanding, and that gap between reserve and expenditure was the ceiling he kept running into.
Becoming sothing along the lines of what Kisa represented, a near-endless well of output, was worth pursuing if the path existed.
He arrived at the Academy to find the principal and several others already coming out to et him. The notice had reached them ahead of his arrival.
Among them was a thin man with spiky hair, and Yuji bowed before the man could say anything.
Takebe Murayo. His horoom teacher from his Academy years. A Chunin, quiet and steady, soone Yuji rembered with genuine warmth.
"Yuji! Haha, it’s been a while."
Murayo’s greeting ca with a laugh and sothing more complicated underneath it, the particular expression of a person watching ti move faster than they expected. The student who had walked out of his classroom three years ago was now the village’s most discussed young shinobi.
Three years was not a long ti. Of the students who had graduated in Yuji’s class, only a fraction were still alive.
"You’re not a newcor anymore," Murayo said, visibly pleased despite himself, the pride of it showing clearly in front of the principal and the others. "Don’t call sensei. Just use my na."
He said it warmly. He also knew, without needing to say it, that Yuji’s developnt had not had much to do with anything he had taught him.
But at least so credit was his to claim, and he intended to keep it.
"I couldn’t do that," Yuji said, and smiled. "You’ll always be my sensei."
He ant it. Murayo’s ability had its limits, but he had looked after Yuji genuinely during those years, and he had been a close friend of his father’s. That was not nothing.
The other teachers glanced at Murayo with expressions that tried to hide their envy and mostly failed. The general sentint was clear enough, this man had stumbled into the right classroom at the right ti and was now reaping returns he had done nothing to deserve. Hmph.
Yuji followed the group back through the gates and toward the office building. Along the corridor, students around his age had gathered to watch, curiosity and admiration mixed together in their faces.
A cluster of younger ones were whispering and pointing at him, the noise of it carrying down the hall.
Murayo ntioned, with visible satisfaction, that Yuji and Sasori had beco reference points for students across the current Academy, role models held up in instruction. Yuji’s standing among them was considerably warr than Sasori’s. His following skewed heavily female. Sasori’s admirers were predominantly boys with ambitions toward Puppetry.
Yuji waved to the gathered students as he passed, relaxed and without any performance of importance. He hadn’t co to linger, there was official business to handle, so once inside the building with the principal and the teachers, he got directly to the academic files of the students he was being assigned.
He read through them.
"Hmm."
Sothing was off. A standard instructor assignnt ran three students to a team, the sa structure Arai had used with him and Sasori, a specific arrangent made by the Kazekage at the ti.
Three files were in his hands, but the principal was telling him four.
He looked at the nas again.
One of them he recognized imdiately.
Pakura.
"These three were pulled from other instructors, weren’t they," Yuji said.
"Yes. The assignnts for this batch had already been finalized, and so teams had even begun missions. The village made specific adjustnts because of you." The principal nodded.
Yuji looked at the other two nas alongside Pakura. Neither ca from ordinary backgrounds. Both were descendants of senior officials.
The village wasn’t just testing his obedience. They were also having him personally develop people they had already decided to invest in.
"And the fourth?" he said.
Two knocks at the door.
It opened before anyone answered.
The person who walked in had a gentle face and a smile that carried a slight awkwardness around its edges, the expression of soone arriving at an appointnt they had ntally rehearsed.
"Hello, Yuji Sensei." Yashamaru bowed ninety degrees the mont he cleared the doorway, formal and completely sincere. "From today, I am your student. Please take good care of ."
Yuji said nothing for a mont.
He understood imdiately. This was Grandma Chiyo’s hand in it. Yashamaru was a dical Ninja with existing mission experience, older than Yuji, and senior to him by any conventional asure. Calling him a student was technically absurd.
The real purpose was sothing else, supervision, perhaps, or simply Chiyo wanting soone she trusted in proximity to Yuji on an assignnt that carried real risk.
They had genuinely packed everyone they could find onto him.
Yashamaru straightened up from the bow and lifted the lunch box in his other hand. "My sister made this herself and asked to bring it for you."
Yuji produced a laugh that was mostly genuine. "Thank you. I actually am a little hungry."
...
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