The rain in Amegakure wasn't just weather; it was a permanent, soggy state of being. It wasn't falling so much as it was just… existing, everywhere, all the time, like a clingy ex who wouldn't take a hint.
"Another day, another deluge," Kaito murmured to a puddle that was looking particularly judgmental.
"Gotta be used to it," he said, though he wasn't sure he believed it. You don't get used to a world that feels like it's being perpetually cried on by a depressed sky god.
It had been a solid, miserable half-a-month since his unceremonious booting into this mess. And what a mess it was!
The most mind-bending part wasn't the chakra or the ninjas—it was the moral compass of the place.
Apart from one famously creepy ocular enthusiast who really needed to learn the meaning of personal space, most of the so-called villains here were, ironically, genuinely, and passionately pro–world peace.
Their methodology, however, was a bit extreme. The leading plan seemed to be:
Step 1: Trap all of humanity in a super-powered, shared hallucination.
Step 2: There is no step 2. Enjoy your permanent vacation from suffering!
It was, Kaito decided, the equivalent of solving a mouse problem by burning the whole house down. Efficient, sure—but also totally unhinged, wasn't it?
His first week had been a blur of pure, unadulterated panic. In a world where murder was less a felony and more a solid résumé builder for the "Genius" category, a ten-year-old civilian orphan with a name, an empty stomach, and exactly zero super-powered relatives was basically a free appetizer.
Fear and confusion had been his constant companions, until he realized those two were about as useful as a chocolate teapot. They wouldn't feed him; they'd just make him a scared, hungry free appetizer.
So, here he was. Kaito. Ten years old. Resident of the multiverse's wettest and most war-torn tourist trap: Amegakure.
No clan, no parents, no hidden techniques, and currently participating in the Second Great Ninja War's all-you-can-eat buffet of tragedy.
And his lovely village had the distinct honor of being simultaneously punched in the face by three of the five strongest ninja villages on the map—something that only Konoha had ever enjoyed. The situation wasn't just tragic; it was tragically impressive.
His biggest personal achievement since arriving was mastering the art of the one-meal-a-day while still feeding others.
He hadn't had two meals in a single 24-hour period since his transmigration. His stomach had filed a formal letter of protest, which he had promptly ignored.
The grim irony was that his single, sad meal still put him leagues ahead of most in this rain-soaked hellscape. He was pondering this—wondering if he could maybe stop playing the hero—when a voice cut through the drumming rain.
"Morning, Raito-sama!"
The greeting was dripping with a level of respect so thick it could stop a kunai. It was the kind of tone usually reserved for high-ranking officials and beloved killer shinobi, and it made Kaito's modern, egalitarian soul do a full-body cringe.
He managed a friendly nod, a gesture that felt wildly insufficient for the worship being thrown his way.
As he sloshed through the muddy streets, it happened again and again.
"Raito-sama!"
"Good day to you, Raito-sama!"
Each greeting was delivered with enthusiastic, almost desperate warmth.
This overwhelming friendliness didn't spring from nothing. It was a cocktail of genuine respect mixed with a powerful, life-saving dose of dependency. And they were all dependent on him for one simple, glorious reason: food.
And for that, he had only one thing to thank: the bizarre, blue-screen blessing that had popped into his head on day one.
...
[Responsibility System] (Because someone's gotta do it.)
Host: Kaito (aka "The Lunch Lord")
Age: 10 (Going on 50, thanks to the stress)
Evaluation: Notch stronger than a normal human kid!
Talents:
Will of Rain: You are the rain and the rain is you.
Strongest Yin Affinity in the World: Due to your soul taking a multi-universe tour before check-in, it's got more stamps on its passport than most. This makes you unnaturally good with spiritual and form-creating energy.
Innate Water Affinity: You're from the Village Hidden in the Rain. Duh.
Hunger Resistance LVL 5: You are a virtuoso of ignoring your own stomach's complaints. You won't feel the hunger as long as you consciously tell it to shut up. WARNING: This talent does not mean you don't need food. It just means you'll pass out from malnutrition quietly.
Inventory:
One (1) Lighter
50 Food Pills.
50 Full ODM Gear Sets...
Primary Responsibility: "I Will Take Care of Your Food Until the End of the Second Ninja War."
Current Dependents: 27
Status: 27 people depend on you to fill their stomachs—gotta work hard.
...
Kaito's system was called the Responsibility System, no missions, no points, no loot boxes.
Just simple accountability. The premise was, you choose a burden to bear, and the system pays you a daily stipend for your trouble.
The heavier the responsibility, the better the rewards. But the moment the responsibility starts feeling easy, the reward quality drops. It's like your boss noticing you're actually good at your job and deciding you no longer deserve a coffee budget.
Finally, if you actually solve the problem you signed up for, you get a performance bonus based on how much it sucked.
His talent, 'Strongest Yin Affinity,' sounded awesome on the tin.
In practice, it was like winning a Lamborghini but discovering the previous owner glued all the doors shut and hid the keys in a different dimension.
He couldn't cast a single genjutsu or ninjutsu because he didn't know any to save his life (a very real concern here). Instead, it just made him… internally optimized.
He needed less sleep, which was great for productivity, terrible for his desire to just nap through the apocalypse. It allowed him to do things like decide his perception of pain, smell, and other pesky human sensations.
Handy for walking on a sprained ankle, less handy for realizing the milk had gone horribly, horribly bad. So, okay, technically useful, but not exactly 'rule the world' material.
Thankfully, the 'Novice Gift Pack' contained the one thing that actually worked in this dripping-wet hellscape: the Will of Rain.
If the Yin Affinity was the locked Lambo, the Will of Rain was a beat-up, slightly rusty, but utterly reliable bicycle that you could actually ride. And in Amegakure, a bicycle was a superpower.
This wasn't some chakra-based nonsense. This was a conceptual ability, running on pure will and vibes.
The rain was his skin, his ears, his thousand unseen, watery eyes.
As long as water fell from the sky—which was, and he checked, always—he could feel the world it touched.
The gentle plink-plink-plink on a rusted tin roof, the specific sploosh of a foot plunging into a murky puddle three streets away, the stealthy drip-drip-drip running down the back of a shinobi trying way too hard to be edgy in the shadows—it all fed into his brain, painting a shimmering, liquid Google Maps in his mind.
Lately, he'd leveled up from simply seeing the map to understanding the traffic reports. He was learning to interpret the data.
A raindrop hitting a civilian splashed with a soft, unguarded pat. A drop hitting a trained shinobi did this weird, almost imperceptible slide-and-bead thing off their oiled cloak.
He could sense tension in a person's shoulders by how the water rivuleted off them, and guess their weight by the craters they left in the mud.
He was, quite literally, starting to feel people's strength through the rain.
A powerful chakra signature made the rain sizzle and steam away a micrometer from their skin, like they were personally offended by precipitation. A depleted one just stood there and got soggy, radiating the same energy as a wet cat left out in a storm.
Now, about the responsibility of the 27 half-starved, deeply traumatized people currently looking at him with the kind of hopeful desperation usually reserved for the second coming of ramen—it was a long, short story.
Kaito was a modern guy. He had friends back home, and he cried at those 24-minute anime episodes. He felt a profound sense of injustice when his internet buffered during the climax of an anime.
So, you can imagine what the sight of a young mother, hollow-eyed and trembling, crying because her milk had dried up and she had nothing—nothing—to feed her baby, did to him.
Or the time he saw a father silently give his entire portion of mystery meat to his son, pretending he'd already eaten while his own stomach growled a symphony of betrayal.
Kaito was no saint. If someone insulted him, he'd probably fantasize about a suitably witty comeback for three days straight—also one of the reasons his friends were very few. But this sight was a direct, brutal assault on his moral compass.
Especially when he knew, with his weird rain-hacks, that doing something wasn't a Herculean task. It was a logistical one. It was doable. It was, in the cold calculus of the System, a valid Responsibility to undertake.
So he signed the metaphorical dotted line. He chose to be responsible for the food and survival of this small, ragged group—the last sad dregs of a refugee community that had once been over 300 strong and had taken care of the original Kaito.
And that cheat-like perception was the only reason his new subscription wasn't immediately canceled due to user error.
He was a ghost in the rain. He'd sense a patrol 60 minutes before they arrived and herd his group into a crumbling basement.
He'd feel the vibration of a lone rat in an alley and manage to turn it into a questionable stew. He'd find a single, forgotten crate of moldy rice others had missed and treat it like a golden treasure.