Pre-Chapter A/N:First of all, Happy Holidays to all who celebrate. Gift yourself some good cheer with 10% off all plans on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) page. If you haven't already, I recommend turning on notifications for my stuff so you can see when new stuff drops right as it drops. More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio
'Are you really going to lose to these brats?' Kurama's voice rang in my ear. There was only one good answer to that.
'Hell no,' I said, reaching into my seal for my stores of natural energy. Normally, I would start at a 90:10 split and then ramp up slowly, but the wounds I had sustained here were already more than enough. I was beginning to get the feeling that if I allowed this to go on for much longer, then it would be counterproductive. Building up my students' reputation at the expense of my own was not a trade I considered to be worth it, quite frankly.
So I allowed enough natural energy to flow into my body that I had just about as much of it as I did my own chakra. They clashed and merged to form nature chakra that suffused my very being. I grew a whole foot in height to become a true giant. Mikoto reached me first. I barged through her attempt to attack me, snapping a knee to her chest that had to have broken something as she went flying.
Kushina's chains attempted to stab into and through me this time. I turned, ignoring the pain in my left hand, and gathered them into my grip. Before she could do anything, I heaved and dragged her off the ground, using her chains to turn her into a bludgeon that smashed straight into Minato. That version of my student turned into smoke as the shadow clone popped.
The ground in front of me exploded, and he came out, bearing a Rasengan aimed to do unbelievable damage. I froze in place, leaning back slightly to allow him to miss me and I spun a kick into his chest that sent him flying in the same direction that Mikoto had gone. All three of my students had more than a passing familiarity with medical ninjutsu, so I was not particularly worried about them. Finally having more than a second to myself, I began to heal my wounds, starting with the burn on my palm before I felt a massive chakra output.
Kushina had gone straight to four tails.
"We'll be taking that bell, Shori-nii," she said, her voice deepened by the tailed beast chakra flowing through her veins. I sighed.
"Are you really going to whip out Gyuki-san for a spar?"
"You said we should come at you with intent to kill and Gyuki-chan says he's tired of Kurama-san being so smug about how strong his host is. We're going to knock you down a peg or two." I sighed, feeling that my hand still hadn't finished healing but knowing full well that these three were not going to give me a chance to even think about recovering at the very least.
Kushina pushed off the ground, springing straight at me. I formed a single seal and spiked my chakra to its max output. It seemed my cute little students needed a reminder. Earth Release was easy and fun to use, but it was not my only affinity. Not by a long shot.
"Water Release," I began.
"Stop him!" I heard Mikoto scream from her position. She could probably see how much chakra I'd gathered for the jutsu. Too late.
"Great Exploding Colliding Wave," I said, twisting into the second seal for the jutsu. Kushina managed to make it within inches of me. Sadly for her, that meant the first wave that marked the jutsu hit her head-on. I was pushed upwards as a spurt of water shot out from the ground like it was a geyser. The same thing happened all about the training ground.
"So what did we learn today?" I asked, looking at my line of soaked students.
"That you're going to escalate beyond all rhyme and reason the second you start losing," Kushina groused out. I smirked in reply. She was trapped from the neck down in a water prison—all three of them were.
"Well, that is true. But other than that," I pressed.
"That you're a sore loser," Mikoto pitched in next.
"Did I lose? You three are the ones bound here now," I said, tilting my head. For good measure, I flicked the bells and let them ring against each other.
"We lost sight of the goal," Minato said.
"Tell me more," I said, leaning in his direction.
"We were focused on beating you. We drew blood, and we wanted to finally win, so we focused all our energy on trying to beat you. Now that I think about it, there were openings where we should have gone straight for the bells instead of for you," he said.
"True. But to be completely honest, it wouldn't have mattered if you had. You weren't going to get the bells from me," I said with a shrug.
"So the lesson of today is the lesson of every other day? That you're stronger than us," Mikoto surmised.
"Hole in one. Well, a better way to put it would be to say that the lesson of today is that there is always a bigger fish. The three of you are Jounin of Konohagakure, yes. Combined, I can't imagine that there are very many people that will give you a challenge, but remember that you will no longer get as many opportunities to fight together. The teamwork you have built for years now will matter less and less as you will be expected to operate on your own or with other teams more and more. And while you do that, you will come across people that while not as strong as me—let's face it, no one is as strong as I am—will be stronger than the three of you. I'll say this once and only once. Never forget it. The three of you are my precious students. From a purely utilitarian point of view, you are the product of thousands of man-hours from the strongest shinobi our village has—me. You are an investment beyond compare. No mission is worth your lives. So the second you come across a bigger fish and realize victory is impossible, I want you to retreat," I said.
"Run away?"
"Yes. You're worth more to this village alive than any single mission. If there is a mission that is worth your lives, then chances are I'd have sent someone like Uzume on it either way," I said with a shrug.
"That's not very inspiring, Sensei," Minato said.
"Yeah, good thing my job isn't to inspire you lot. I'd be terrible at that," I said with a smirk.
"Are you going to release us now?" Kushina asked, clearly far from pleased with the present situation.
"Naaa. I don't quite think I will," I said.
"You're so annoying," she scowled.
"I am. Stay alive so I can keep annoying you, my precious students. And do be sure to get out of these sooner rather than later lest you catch a cold," I said before focusing on my tag at the hospital and heading there.
"You are late," Kagame said as I walked into the lab.
"Ended up spending more time with my students than I expected to," I said.
"Of course you did. Now are you ready to begin?" she asked.
"Born ready," I said, stepping towards the glass that separated this room from the next one.
"Begin the report," I ordered.
"As you know, the process began with 60 full inseminations that were carried to term," she said. I nodded. That was the initial sample size for the experiment. Enough to get results that would hopefully be statistically significant, but not so many as to cause an irreparable disaster if the babies started exploding in their mothers' stomachs or something—of course, we had taken measures to make that as unlikely as possible, but shit did happen.
"Of the 60 carried to term, 57 were born without meaningful complications."
"And the other three?" I asked. She shook her head. I nodded. Unfortunate, but not beyond expectations.
"And my orders as to the mothers?" I asked.
"Each one has been compensated accordingly. All sixty survived their births," she said. Even better. Finding a new batch of mothers every time this became necessary was going to be stressful enough without making enemies of the present batch and burning those bridges.
"Good. Now the 57. How many of them have shown potential to be shinobi of acceptable capability?" I asked, activating my Byakugan and taking a look at their chakra networks.
One thing I had never foreseen before coming to this world had been the fact that not everyone born in this universe had the potential to be a shinobi in the first place. It made sense to some extent. Why else would someone like the Daimyo not receive the bare minimum of shinobi training to ensure his security or at least to make sure that no one would be able to take control of him with the most basic genjutsu or whatever? The answer to that question was the simple fact that he couldn't.
Not everyone was born with the ability to combine their physical and spiritual energies to form chakra. Well, ability was a misstatement there. It was a natural process that happened without any input. It was like breathing, or being able to see. You didn't control how it happened. Most of the time, it wasn't even noticeable that it was in fact happening in that manner. For pure civilians with no shinobi potential, the process did not exist.
As far as the infants in the cribs were concerned, I could see that the most of them had the ability. That was good at least. We had made sure the majority of the mothers had the inborn trait to form chakra. Of course, we had included five without the ability as sort of a test to see if using the genes from a shinobi for the insemination would work to overcome that barrier.
"Forty-nine with the inborn potential to become shinobi at the very minimum. As for their individual potentials and whether their capabilities will be anything more than the bare minimum, it is far too early for me to tell with the tools available to us," she said. Fair enough. That was acceptable at least.
"So eight unable to form chakra. Were they the expected suspects?"
"Three of them are from mothers who themselves lacked the trait. While the other five had come from mothers who while able to form chakra had come from parents who had lacked the trait themselves, so it was all within expected models and predictions," she said.
"Alright then. So make sure to mark the two who came from mothers who lacked the traits. We will have to be careful with future matches with them just in case," I said. She nodded. This was not a project that was going to take years. Ideally, the results of this project would be realized over decades, and I had no misconceptions about where Kagame would be in a matter of years—neither did she. We were making sure that everything was as successor-ready as possible, keeping records and putting every decision and the rationale behind the decisions in writing to make sure that whoever we got to take over after she was gone could start off running and not need much of an adjustment period.
"Done," she said.
"And the Kekkei Genkai?" That was the reason we had done this whole thing in the first place. The goal was not producing bog-standard shinobi. I wanted game changers. Special ones.
"Only two of them so far show the required affinities. However, this is not a guarantee that either would prove capable of the Kekkei Genkai as you most certainly know. Several of them are yet to develop affinities as such so the number with the requisite combination might increase over time," she said.
"Good. Keep them for a few more months then hand all those without the right affinities over to Shiba," I said.
"So young?"
"Shiba complains about those assigned to him having 'inbuilt inefficiencies' his training has to overcome. Let's see him raise them from scratch," I said with a chuckle.
"And the other projects?" I asked.
"So far, no dice doing anything with the Raikage. I move to shelf it for the long term. The body has refused to decompose and until we can figure out why, I doubt we will be able to get anything useful out of it," she said.
I nodded. I'd kind of lost interest in figuring out the Raikage to be honest. Maybe if we could find a way to ensure that we had a whole generation of shinobi born with his crazy physical attributes then that would be nice, but even getting a blood sample was a problem and a half. The juice would be oh so valuable, but the squeeze itself seemed to be just short of impossible.
"Better to come back when we've made a lot more progress with the other projects I suspect," I said.
"And as for the others, we have had no luck getting their minds to any level of usefulness. Even Inoken has failed to breach the measures Chiyo used to suppress their consciousnesses in the short term and considering there has been no signs of even the barest amounts of progress in the months since, it might be best to terminate the ones who do not present viable opportunities for genetic material," she said.
"Approved. What else?" I couldn't see any reason to refuse the request. It was best not to waste resources where possible. Konoha might have been making more money than ever—the fall of Iwa and the retreat of Suna from the wider world stage meant we had comfortably been able to raise prices and thus make more even though we were still taking fewer missions these days than we had been in the glory days of my Granduncle's reign—but our spending was following our income's rise pretty steadily. Massive infrastructure projects that would pay for themselves in the matter of decades like the new Hospital, Academy, ANBU headquarters, Training complex, and stadium were either already in the works or well into the planning stage.
"The matter of the hospital training program. My reservations have been—" I sighed before cutting her off.
"I received your letter, trust me. And I've read it—all fifteen pages of it and the summary you attached, and the three follow-ups," I said.
"And yet the program has not been canceled," she said, arching her brow in my direction.
"Your reservations are noted. And in this case, ignored. The potential benefits are too much to ignore."
"The doctors are complaining, the quality of patient care has gone down, the hospital is overrun with those little brats."
"The new hospital will be complete by year's end. That should solve the space issue, trust me."
"And the others I mentioned?"
"Costs of doing business," I said with a shrug. She looked at me like I was insane.
"Toshiro's idea of having a medical ninja, even if a relatively inexperienced one, can make the difference between life and death for hundreds if not thousands of Konoha shinobi in the long term. Unless those children are actively presenting a danger to patients right now, they will remain. Can you honestly tell me that anything they have done, or that their presence has caused has or is likely to lead to any deaths?" I asked, pinning her with my stare. When we had first met, the dynamics of our relationship had been such that she had essentially been able to dictate the terms with which things had worked—I gave into her will more often than not partly out of a desire to avoid her sharp tongue and partly because we were both aligned on most things. Both of those had changed with time.
"No," she said after I kept the stare on for a few more seconds.
"Then they will remain," I said, shouldering her glare with ease.
"If any of your doctors has an issue with being shadowed by the academy students or having to dedicate the time to teaching them, then they can raise their concerns with me. Besides, I'm sure none of them have complained about the increases to their pay I have approved in my time since taking office," I said, pressing deeper.
"Noted."
"Good. Now if that will be all," I said, not waiting for any response before I honed in on one of my tags elsewhere in the village and teleported out.
"Hey Grandma," I said after pausing to knock at the door.
"Shorirama. Come in, come in," she said from her position on the bed.
"How are you feeling today?" I asked, walking deeper into the room and giving a cursory glance at the medicine bottles. Twenty-four pills left in each. She'd taken the morning dose but not yet the afternoon one.
"Same way I feel every time you ask. Everything hurts, but not enough to call it a real pain. The real pain is no one letting me get off this bed for weeks," she said.
"Well, that's what happens when you decide to act like you're sixty again and slip a disc. How's that feeling by the way? Any pain?" I said, already beginning to look at the readings next to the bed. The diagnostic seals were working as they should and said everything was good enough at least.
"The pests you assigned already checked it, everything's fine," she said.
"Yeah, I can see that," I said, checking the next set of seals.
"If you can see that, stop looking at the seals and look at me," she snapped. My neck snapped upwards as she began coughing. She accepted the water from the table, gulping down greedily before stopping.
"When you visit, you spend more time with that than with me."
"That's untrue," I refuted instantly.
"Feels like it," she replied, and what could I say to that?
"You have my full attention, Grandma. What do you want to talk about?" I asked.
"Good. Now when was the last time you visited the Yamanaka?" she asked, and I groaned.
"Fine, fine. Even I can take a hint. The Uchiha is the only one you want and even if it might make poor Tobi roll in his grave. So how are things going there? When are we going to have a wedding?"
"You know what? Let's talk about the Yamanaka instead," I said with a sigh.
A/N: A chapter complete on time? Who knew I had it in me? Definitely none of you for sure. Next five up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.