The path to the Ninja Academy was bustling with nervous children and their equally anxious parents. Ryu, now a full year older at five, walked calmly between Mebuki and Kizashi, his small hand dwarfed in his father's larger one. To any onlooker, he was just another hopeful child, perhaps a bit more composed than the rest, his bright pink hair a cheerful banner in the morning sun. But beneath his calm exterior, a storm of power brewed, the culmination of a year spent in grueling, secret dedication.
This past year had been a crucible. His taijutsu had sharpened to a razor's edge, finally allowing him to spar on even terms with Hana's feral unpredictability and Itachi's fluid genius. He had mastered his wind chakra, his final test culminating in him cleanly severing the flow of the small canal with a single, sharp sweep of his hand. His lightning release, however, had taken him down a much more complex and dangerous path.
After successfully making a bulb glow with a steady, controlled light, his ambition had soared. He'd attempted to learn the Chidori, the legendary assassination jutsu. But after just a few days of practice, the flaw became terrifyingly apparent. The technique required a straight-line charge, and the incredible speed it granted created a severe tunnel vision. Without the Sharingan's enhanced perception to compensate, he was a blind missile, utterly vulnerable to a simple sidestep and counter.
Abandoning the plan, he'd set his sights on a grander, more foundational technique: the Lightning Release Armour. He knew his body was too underdeveloped to handle the raw, punishing power of the Raikage's legendary jutsu. So, he devised a workaround, a theory born from the ghost of Blake, the final-year medical student.
He knew from his parents' scrolls that jutsu were performed by releasing chakra through specific tenketsu, or chakra points. The Lightning Armour, he reasoned, wasn't just a cloak of chakra; it was an internal activation, a supercharging of the entire nervous system. To achieve it, he would need to open all 361 of his tenketsu and flood the entire network with lightning chakra.
Blake's knowledge of anatomy and acupuncture was his key. He recognized the chakra pathway system as a far more complex version of the meridian lines he had studied. The tenketsu were the nexus points. So, he began to meditate. For hours each day, he would sit in absolute silence, turning his senses inward. At first, he saw only darkness. But slowly, painstakingly, he began to map his own interior. He visualized his chakra network as a constellation of faint, glowing stars connected by shimmering rivers of blue energy.
Then came the dangerous part. He would isolate a single, dormant tenketsu and guide a minuscule, volatile thread of lightning chakra towards it. The process was agonizingly delicate. Too much force, and he risked rupturing his own chakra coils; too little, and the point would remain sealed. The first one took a week of focused, excruciating effort before he felt a faint pop inside him, a new, warm channel opening to his flow. He then moved to the next, and the next. It was a monumental undertaking that consumed the majority of his training time for an entire year.
One night, deep in his meditation, he opened the final point. He felt his entire internal network click into place, a complete, vibrant circuit. He took a deep breath and drew upon his lightning chakra, but this time, he didn't focus it. He let it flood his system, guiding it through every freshly opened pathway.
A low, humming buzz filled his room. The air crackled with the scent of ozone. His pink hair, charged with static, stood on end. When he opened his eyes, they widened in awe. His entire body was sheathed in a thin, crackling aura of blue-white lightning. He smiled. He had done it.
He pushed himself to his feet, feeling an incredible lightness, a thrumming power in every limb. He tested it with a single step, and the world blurred. The speed was intoxicating, a physical manifestation of his will. The next evening, under the cloak of darkness, he found a small, man-sized boulder in the training field. He activated his armour, the buzzing of a thousand angry hornets enveloping him. He dashed forward, a streak of pink and blue, and punched. There was no resistance, just a sharp CRACK as the boulder split cleanly in two.
He was ecstatic, but he knew this was just the beginning. His armour was a pale imitation of the Raikage's. He needed more. Rummaging through the dusty basement where his parents stored their old genin equipment, he found a worn scroll detailing the Body Flicker Technique. With his lightning-enhanced synapses and reflexes, he mastered the jutsu with shocking speed.
The true test came a week later. He stood on a rooftop as the village bustled below. Combining the raw speed of his Lightning Armour with the instantaneous movement of the Body Flicker, he shot across the gap to the next building. To his senses, the world moved in slow motion. To the people below, if they even noticed, he was nothing more than a momentary distortion in the air, a whisper of displaced wind. It was a resounding success.
Now, standing before the Academy gates, his true motivation burned within him. He felt the weight of the coming year. This incredible speed, this secret power, it wasn't for glory or recognition. It was for a single, desperate purpose. He knew he couldn't defeat Obito. But he didn't have to.
His plan was a surgical strike. While Minato was locked in a life-or-death battle, Obito would hold a newborn Naruto hostage. In that critical moment, Ryu would be a ghost, an unforeseen variable. He would use his armour and Body Flicker to become a blur of lightning, to snatch the baby from the masked man's grasp before he could even react, and spirit him to safety. With his son secure, Minato would be unshackled, free to unleash his full power as the Yellow Flash.
It was a dangerous, borderline suicidal plan. But it was a plan.
"Are you ready, Ryu?" Mebuki asked, her voice pulling him from his thoughts.
He looked up at his mother, then at his father's proud, beaming face. He gave them a reassuring smile. "I'm ready."
He had one year. One year to refine his armour. One year to perhaps even master the Chidori, now that its greatest weakness was mitigated by his enhanced perception. One year to prepare for the night he would defy fate. He took a deep breath and walked through the gates, a five-year-old child carrying the weight of the future on his small, lightning-wreathed shoulders.