Dusk pooled in the academy windows, turning the chalkboards the color of ash. Desks sat in neat rows, nicked by years of practice. The room was empty—except for me.
I formed the seals. "Shadow Clone Technique."
Smoke coughed across the room and thinned to nothing. No clone.
"Failed again." I let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. Chakra gathered the way it always did—warm in my wrists, a push behind my knuckles—then slipped when I tried to shape it. The form wouldn't hold.
Power lived in me. I just couldn't mold it right.
Shadow clones would be nice. I flexed my fingers. Any ninjutsu would be nice.
Even with as much chakra as kids my age, I got the same result. Sand through fingers. Months of trying. Years. No change.
If I can't manage ninjutsu, there's still taijutsu. The Eight Gates… I grimaced. But I don't want power that burns out in a minute. I want power that lasts.
Two years until the Second Shinobi War. With my current strength, I'd be lucky to survive the first week.
Eight years old, and the clock was already ticking.
If I didn't find a way to protect myself in time, I wouldn't be a hero of the Hidden Leaf. I'd be a name on a stone. Cannon fodder.
No. I refused to be that name.
"Enough," I muttered, pushing to my feet. "Mountain. Practice. Giving up isn't on the list."
The corridor creaked under my sandals. Outside, the last groups of students drifted home. A tall boy with a fresh ceremony forehead protector whispered behind his hand.
"I heard he can't use ninjutsu at all."
"He won't pass graduation."
"He's an outsider. Not born in the village."
I kept walking, chin level, shoulders square. Let them talk. Two years from now, they'll find out what crying sounds like.
I hadn't been born in Konoha. A small village had been my home once—until a Hidden Sand strike force came at dawn. Smoke lay flat over the ground. Red cloth snapped on spears. A gloved hand lifted me through a doorway that wouldn't stop burning.
A Leaf shinobi brought the only survivor here. The village fed me, clothed me, taught me.
It didn't warm to me. I learned to live with cold looks.
Behind the academy, the ground rose into a low, wooded ridge. I followed the dirt path to a clearing dotted with training posts—scarred poles driven deep into the earth. My usual post waited, dented where my heels had met it a hundred times. Splinters bit through old bandage lines.
I checked the wraps on my fists and shins, set my stance, and drove a kick into the post.
"One… two… three… thirty-five… thirty-six…"
Sweat came fast, soaking cloth and stinging my eyes. Breath in through the nose, out through the mouth. Ankles numbed, then burned.
I didn't stop, even when my knees started to quiver.
If I couldn't master ninjutsu, I would master the body. Taijutsu asked for pain and patience—more than most eight-year-olds had to give.
"Huff… huff."
My breath turned rough. A bandage slipped at my right wrist. I reset my guard and kept counting until my legs trembled too hard to hold me.
I fell onto the grass and stared west, where a thread of sunlight still clung to the horizon.
For a moment, the tightness in my chest eased. A raven called from the ridge. The air smelled like dust and sap.
If I could sit here every day… that'd be enough.
But war didn't care about wishes. Teachers whispered in doorways. Supply officers took notes by the hour. Conscription lists would come.
When my breathing settled, I pushed up, ready to start five hundred straight punches and two hundred side kicks.
I froze.
A glow drifted above the treeline, dropping like a slow star. It made no sound. Moths swung close, then tilted away as if a heat I couldn't feel pushed them back.
I squinted and followed it. The light bobbed between branches toward a rocky dip beyond the posts.
It wasn't a lantern. It wasn't a firefly.
It was… a fruit.
Heart‑shaped, about the size of both my fists, its skin veined with pale light that traced curling swirls.
I jogged into the hollow. The sky gave up its last color. In the shallow bowl of earth, the glowing thing lay half-buried in leaves. I reached for it—and my tired fingers slipped. It thumped to the dirt.
The light went out. Night fell hard.
"This…" I crouched and felt around, palms brushing cold soil, until my fingers found the ridges again. I lifted it, careful this time.
Strange didn't begin to cover it. The fruit was heavy for its size, the swirls raised like lacquer work. My thumb fit a groove as if the skin had been carved for it.
Memories that didn't belong to this world stirred—of seas I'd never sailed and impossible fruits with prices they demanded.
A Devil Fruit.
"How is this here?" I whispered.
For a heartbeat I considered the simple answer. A fake. A toxic berry that only looked right.
I turned it in my hands. Moonlight caught on the patterned skin. The weight felt honest.
"No," I said softly. "It's too perfect."
I stood in the dark, the forest quiet around me, the fruit solid in my hands—and a new kind of possibility stirred.
I didn't know yet whether to fear it or bite it.