"Still looking a bit round," Yohei said with a wince, looking at himself sideways in his room's mirror, holding up the bottom of his shirt to expose his belly and giving it a slap.
"That'll teach you not to get stuffed with so much street food that you can't even eat the dinner your dear mother made with love for you," Nanami said with a sniff.
Yohei stared dryly at her until her indignant expression melted into an amused one and she started snickering.
"So?" she asked after she stopped laughing. "Did you get everything for your little trip?"
Yohei huffed with a smile, pulling his shirt back down. "Yup."
He patted the pouch at his right thigh. "Kunai and shuriken."
Then the one on the left. "Ninja wire."
The one at his back. "Smoke bombs and bomb tags."
And finally the two at his waist. "Poisons, paralytics, and antidotes."
"Hm… I'll have to teach you how to make them once we get to biochemistry," Nanami said musingly. "You can't depend on me for them forever."
"Sounds fun," Yohei said honestly. "Actually, speaking of that – are there any plants or animals whose venom you want me to get for you from the forest?"
Nanami gave him an amused stare. "Would you even know what to pick or how to extract them correctly?"
Yohei shrugged. "I can certainly try."
Nanami shook her head with a smile, walking closer and kissing him on the forehead. "Thanks, Yo-kun. But don't worry about it. Med-nin get priority and discounts for those things, and we get them from people actually trained in acquiring them."
"C-ranks?" he asked.
"Yup! And sometimes B-ranks as well, depending on the place they have to go to extract their product, how much work it is, and the danger they're exposed to. Try to learn how to do it in the future – it's a good source of money from relatively peaceful missions that also give you a good chance to travel around a bit and see the world."
"I'll keep it in mind," Yohei promised with a nod.
"You do that," Nanami said, ruffling his hair. "Now, what else did you prepare?"
Yohei moved toward his bed, upon which lay a relatively small and light black bag. He opened it and started taking things out. "One storage scroll with camping gear, another with a first-aid kit, a few empty storage ones as well, a bag with rations, extra clothes, a flashlight, my canteen, and a filter."
'And the summoning contracts as well as a scroll filled with rotting boar meat,' he thought secretly as he put the things back inside.
"Seems like everything's in order, then," she said happily. "Are you going to spend the night there?"
"Maybe?" Yohei said uncertainly. "I have to be here early tomorrow to meet my team, so maybe I'll just decide to come back today and avoid the trouble. But if I get too tired, I'll just make camp and try to wake up earlier than normal."
Then he looked at her with a smirk. "But who knows? Maybe I'll find a sane Chakra Beast as soon as I step into the training grounds."
"I'm sure you will," she said with amused sarcasm. Then she gave him a more serious look. "Promise me you'll be okay?"
Yohei blinked, then smiled and shook his head, walking up to her for a hug. "Mom, Hayama-sensei is only letting me go because the place is safe, with the weakest Chakra Beasts around. If that's dangerous for me, then I may as well give up being a ninja."
Nanami huffed. "I suppose that's true. But still, don't get cocky. Even in the weakest places you can still find a freak case or two. And sometimes some Beasts from more dangerous areas manage to cross into different zones without being caught."
"I promise I'll take care," he said, ending the hug and stepping back to look her in the eyes teasingly. "What about you? Are you going to be okay without me here?"
"No!" she said immediately with dramatic exaggeration, falling to her knees with big fat crocodile tears in her eyes and hugging his legs. "My baby's away from home all the time, he wakes up early so he can get out the door without looking at his mama, he eats trash food to avoid her cooking, and now he's even going camping on the one day we can be together. He haaaaaaates meeeeeeeeeee-!"
Yohei broke down laughing, pinching her cheeks as she continued her fake crying. "You're such a drama queen!"
"And now he's dismissing my feelings! Dear! Are you looking at this!? Our son became a delinquent! I'm so sorry, it's all my fault!"
"Look who's talking! I saw your pictures from when you were my age!"
"Gah-! How!? Where!?"
"Nee-san showed them to me," he said smugly.
Nanami punched her fists on the floor. "Sana, you bitch! How dare you show Yo-kun those scenes from my dark past!"
Yohei started laughing. "Why did you ever wear so many chains on your clothes?"
"NOOOOOOOO! DON'T ASK MEEEEEE!" she shouted, curling up in the fetal position and rolling on the floor.
Yohei rolled his eyes, smiling as he picked up his bag and put it on his back. "Speaking of her, why don't you take the chance and go out with Nee-chan today?"
Nanami stopped her act, lying flat on her back on the floor with an exaggerated pout and a huff.
"That was already the plan. After I'm done tutoring Souma-kun this afternoon, she'll come here and we'll go out drinking."
"Sounds like fun," Yohei lied, tying his hitai-ate around his head and adjusting the metal plate until it sat just right on his forehead. He really didn't care for clubs and bars. "Make sure to drink plenty of water between drinks, try not to get home too late, and don't do anything I would do."
"Hai, hai~" she agreed cheerfully. "See, darling? Even as a delinquent our son still worries about his mother. Is that what they call a tsundere?"
"I think I'm more of a deredere, actually," Yohei said with a chuckle. "Now, I better get going. Bye, Mom. I love you."
"Love you too!" she replied with a goofy grin, wriggling happily on the floor and waving as he stepped out the door.
-~=~-
"She had dumps like a truck. Truck. Truck. Tights like what? What? What? Baby move your butt. Butt. Butt. I think I'll sing it again~ She had dumps like a truck. Truck. Truck. Tights like what? What? What? Baby move your butt. Butt. Butt. All night lo~oong… Lemme see that tho~ooong~!" Yohei sang under his breath as he approached the East Gate, the village slowly giving way to the broader paths that led out into the external training grounds and beyond.
The gate itself was a massive wooden structure painted deep green, with the characters for East and Path painted in bold red on each of its doors. Above them, the Leaf symbol of Konoha was carved into the wood. It was only about half the size of the main South Gate, but still wide enough for half a dozen people to walk through side by side with room to spare.
Instead of passing straight through, Yohei slowed his steps and headed toward the two ninja stationed there, both wearing the bright green flak vests that marked them as Chūnin.
One of them – the taller of the two – was standing. He had broad shoulders, lightly tanned skin, and dark brown hair and eyes, along with a small cut on the upper edge of his left ear. At his waist hung something uncommon: two foldable Fūma shuriken.
The other was smaller and thinner, with droopy eyes and unruly black hair tied into a short knot at the back of his head. He was slouched in a wooden chair, balanced on its back legs, lazily reading from a small black book.
As Yohei approached, it was the sleepy-looking one who noticed him first, glancing up briefly before returning to his reading. The taller man, meanwhile, stepped forward.
"Hey, kid. Going out?" he asked casually.
Yohei nodded and bowed his head.
"Genin Kuroyama Yohei, member of Team Five under Shirakumo Hayama. I've got a pass," he said, pulling the small document from his pouch – the one his sensei had given him two days ago – and handing it over.
The man took it calmly, giving Yohei an easy nod as he opened the paper and skimmed it. Then he blinked, shook his head, and read it again, a small grin forming on his face. By the time he finished, he let out a soft snort.
"Is it a fake?" the other man asked lazily, not even looking up from his book.
"No, no, no," the taller one assured him through a laugh. "It's just-"
Instead of finishing the sentence, he started laughing again, which finally made the black-haired Chūnin sigh and stand up from his chair. He walked over, took the pass from his partner's hand, and read it himself. When he was done, he gave Yohei a look with one eyebrow raised.
"Really?"
Yohei rolled his eyes. "Really."
"It hasn't even been a week since graduation," the man said with a huff. "Usually you brats take at least a few months. You trying to break some kind of record or something?"
"Hey, hey, Morita, how long do you think it'll take?" the taller one asked with a grin, finally managing to stop laughing as he slung an arm around Morita's neck.
Morita shot him an annoyed glare.
"Please learn the meaning of personal space, Jinsuke-san," He said in a deadpan, pinching the offending arm and pulling it away from his neck. "And I wager he doesn't last more than two months."
"Whaaaaat? No way!" Jinsuke said with a wide grin, waving in Yohei's direction. "Don't you have any faith in the genin of the Leaf? Look at him! Look at the determination burning in his eyes! This is the look of a man who's going to waste a solid six months of his life on a fruitless endeavor!"
"Are you guys seriously betting on how long it'll take for me to give up, right in front of my face?" Yohei asked incredulously.
"Yeup!"
"Uh-huh."
Yohei snorted. "You don't have any faith I'm going to succeed?"
"Nope!"
"Absolutely not."
A grin spread across his face. "Well, then how about you put your money where your mouth is?"
"Hoh?" Jinsuke leaned forward, clearly amused. "Confident, aren't ya?"
"I already have a bet going saying I'll get a summon within one month, otherwise I'm going to work as a volunteer in the Inuzuka clinic," Yohei explained with a shrug. "And I figured – what's a fart for someone who's already shat themselves? I may as well go all in."
That made Jinsuke burst out laughing while Morita slapped a hand to his face.
"Well said! Spoken like a true gambling addict!" Jinsuke chuckled. "I'm sure this is going to go better for you than it usually does for them. But what does a fresh-faced genin even have to bet?"
Yohei tilted his head, pinching his chin in thought. Then he reached into one of the pouches at his waist and pulled out a small glass flask.
"Paralytic," he said, holding it up between his fingers. He shook it slightly, making the clear, faintly tinted liquid slosh inside. "I've got no idea what it's made of, but a few drops can stop even a jōnin. If I don't win, I'll give two of these to each of you."
"Where'd you even get those?" Morita asked, genuine interest creeping into his expression as he stared at the flask.
"Mom's a med-nin," Yohei said with a shrug.
"Oh, so you're a spoiled brat!" Jinsuke said in sudden realization, his grin widening. "Well, now I feel it's my civic duty to take those from you and teach you some lessons about the real world and the value of money."
"Only if I lose," Yohei reminded him with a challenging look, slipping the paralytic back into his pouch.
"Right. If," Jinsuke said sarcastically, chuckling.
"And if you win?" Morita asked, one eyebrow rising.
"He gives me one of those," Yohei said, pointing at the Fuuma Shuriken on Jinsuke's waist.
Jinsuke let out a horrified gasp and clutched them protectively. "Hey!"
"And you," Yohei continued, turning to Morita, "that book you were reading – that was a Bingo Book, right? I want it."
"Wha – how is that fair!?" Jinsuke protested. "You're really comparing a book to one of my babies!?"
"I can buy a Fuuma Shuriken with enough money," Yohei shrugged, "but I can't get a Bingo Book unless someone gives me one."
Morita studied him for a moment. "And why do you want a Bingo Book?"
Yohei blinked. 'Because it's probably worth another Reward.'
"Why wouldn't I want one?" he asked instead, putting on a confused tone.
Morita held his gaze for a few seconds, then shrugged and relaxed again. "Fair enough. I'm okay with those terms."
"I'm not!" Jinsuke protested.
"Oh, come on. You didn't think I was going to tame a Chakra Beast in six months, much less a single one. What are you afraid of? Are you chicken?" Yohei asked mockingly, wearing a shit-eating grin as he channeled as much of Ren's personality as he could.
"It's not about how likely you are to – " Jinsuke started to explain before Yohei cut him off.
"Bok," he said, mimicking a chicken.
"I'm not going to fall for – "
"Bok, bok bok, bok!" Yohei continued, flapping his arms.
"Fuck! Fine! Deal."
-~=~-
Yohei was still chuckling a few minutes later as he entered the Training Grounds.
'That should get me a couple new Rewards, he thought with satisfaction as he leapt from one tree to the next. I wonder what I'll get? If the Chaos Scroll really draws from fiction… I suppose something like a Devil Fruit wouldn't be impossible. What about a Lantern's ring? The Stand Arrow? A Lerasium bead? Sage, that would be the best thing ever. What would happen if I burned chakra metal?'
Possibilities filled his mind until he shook himself out of the daydream.
'Well, there's also the chance that it somehow won't be a big enough feat. I suppose in that case it still wouldn't be a total loss. I have no fucking idea how to use a Fuuma Shuriken, but just having a big fucking blade that's longer than an arm and about half as large as my torso is better than not having it. And having access to the information inside a Bingo Book is just outright useful.'
He wasn't sure why they weren't just handed out to every ninja. Maybe to keep genin and chūnin from trying to hunt down the people listed in them and getting themselves killed? That made a certain amount of sense, though some people would argue that was just natural selection taking its course.
'I shouldn't be thinking about this right now, though. I'm finally here, and there's way too much shit to do. First order of business should be-'
On his next step, he braced himself and bent his knees as his feet touched a tree branch, bleeding off the momentum and coming to a stop.
Rat → Tiger → Hare → Dog → Bird.
Thousand Sound Perception.
Yohei felt a subtle pop as his perception shifted, the forest suddenly unfolding around him in layers of sound. He closed his eyes, letting the noise guide him.
…
'There.'
Opening his eyes, Yohei looked down to see a hare on the ground, distracted as it nibbled on grass. He silently drew a kunai from his pouch.
'Would a hit to the neck or the brain kill it faster…?' he wondered, lips pursed. 'In case of doubt, better to go for the bigger target. It'd be just my luck to miss and make it die slowly instead.'
Decision made, he took aim and threw. It didn't quite strike between the eyes as he'd intended, but it still dropped the animal instantly.
Yohei waited a second, then let out a slow breath when nothing happened.
'Yeah, I suppose that was just way too easy to count as a feat. Maybe if I had done it with a trick shot, but at that point it probably wouldn't matter if the target was a living being or not, since it would be a Skill feat rather than a Battle one.'
Jumping down from the tree, he approached the hare and knelt beside it, retrieving the kunai from its body before lifting it up for inspection.
'No outward signs of parasites, sickness, or weird mutations – just a regular hare,' he noted as he checked it carefully. 'I guess I found my breakfast.'
It took him a bit more than a dozen minutes to bleed, gut, skin, and field-dress it. Yohei was no professional hunter, but the Academy made sure their students knew how to survive off the land, and that included feeding themselves.
'I should probably wait for it to cool, but I'm in a bit of a hurry, so-'
Opening his pack, he took one of the spare shirts he'd brought, tore off some fabric, soaked it with water from his canteen, wrung it out lightly, and wrapped it loosely around the quartered hare. He used some ninja wire to close it up, turning it into a makeshift bundle.
'Now I should go look for a place to set up camp.'
Checking his map, he saw that a river lay a few minutes ahead, and beyond it was a zone marked with several natural and man-made caves left behind by previous ninja training exercises. Storing it back in his pocket, Yohei held onto his wrapped breakfast and crouched before leaping back up into the tree branches, resuming his trek.
-~=~-
"Here should be fine," Yohei said, eyeing the cavern in front of him.
A few trees stood near its entrance, but the area was clear of thick undergrowth, and it was close enough to the river to make fetching water easy.
'Also…' he thought, looking from the perfectly round entrance to the equally round boulder sitting nearby, 'I can use that to block the entrance and keep critters out while I sleep. That was almost certainly made by a ninja.'
There was just one problem.
From inside the cave came the faint sound of slow, slightly uneven breathing. Souma's words about caverns and bears during their genin exam immediately came back to him, and Yohei couldn't help letting out a quiet snort of laughter.
Still, that left the question.
'Should I? Shouldn't I? Am I really about to kill an animal that's just minding its own business just for a chance at more power?' He considered it for a moment before blowing a raspberry. 'How hypocritical. The hare on my waist was minding its own business too – I'm just humanizing the bear because I don't normally see it as food. People kill animals to eat so they can survive. I'll kill an animal to get stronger so I can survive. That's all there is to it.'
Decision made, Yohei untied the ninja wire holding the bundled hare at his waist and hung it from a low branch in the shade.
'That said, just making a trap or throwing a kunai at it while I'm hidden would probably not be that impressive. So the question is… how do I turn this into a feat worthy of a reward?' he wondered, humming as he rubbed his chin. Then a grin slowly crept onto his face. 'No way. That's stupid.'
He looked down at himself, eyes narrowing in thought, before snorting.
'Ah, fuck it. Let's do it.'
Holding back laughter at the sheer absurdity of it all, Yohei quickly stripped, folding his clothes neatly and setting them on the ground beside his boots. The cool morning air washed over his skin, raising goosebumps as he bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, letting out a breath.
Grinning, he brought his hands together in the Ox hand seal and activated Extreme Muscle Assault. His muscles swelled and ballooned, growing three or four times their usual size in a grotesque, powerful distortion of his frame.
He grabbed a rock, tossed it up and down to judge its weight, then hurled it with everything he had. It slammed into the rocky face of the cavern and exploded in a sharp crack of stone and shrapnel.
Then he took a deep breath, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted:
"OOOOOOOOOOOI! BEEEEEAR-SAAAAN! COOOOME OOOOOOUT!"
Dropping into a low stance, Yohei waited with an eager grin.
…
Seconds passed.
His smile faltered. He tilted his head, staring at the cave.
"Maybe it died of fright from the soun-"
"RAAARGH!"
'Or maybe not!'
Yohei threw himself aside as a mass of fur and muscle burst out of the cavern in a blur, crashing down where he'd just been standing.
From his new vantage point, he finally got a good look at it.
It looked like… a bear.
…
What? Yohei wasn't a bear expert.
Its face was something like a grizzly's, but its fur was jet-black instead of brown – and it was huge, a detail that became painfully clear when it reared up onto its hind legs, towering almost as high as Yohei perched on the tree branch.
"Well, hello there," Yohei said conversationally to the snarling, furious monster. "I don't suppose you're willing to let yourself be tamed?"
The only response was a roar that threatened to rupture his eardrums as the beast swung its massive paws at him. Yohei leapt aside –
– but instead of retreating, he did the single dumbest possible thing when facing a three-and-a-half-meter-tall killing machine.
He lunged straight at it.
Putting so much strength into the movement that the branch snapped behind him, Yohei shot between the bear's arms and smashed into its throat with what he was pretty sure was called a lariat. The impact crushed into its trachea and sent the beast crashing backward.
Using his momentum, Yohei twisted in midair, landed on its back, and locked his arms around its neck as it hit the ground beneath him.
'This is going to hurt,' he thought calmly as he exhaled during the fall, bracing for impact and the weight of the monstrous bear crushing down on him.
'Hnf – yeah. I was right. It did hurt.'
While the animal was still stunned and before it could start thrashing, Yohei dug his fingers into the bear's hide and clenched his teeth as he tightened his grip around its neck.
'For what it's worth,' he thought as he put everything he had into crushing and twisting, 'I'm genuinely sorry about this. Being killed by a naked guy who rudely woke you up has to be one of the most humiliating deaths ever. Also, I watched Brother Bear, like, a hundred times as a kid. Unfortunately, I also watched a lot of animal curiosity videos on Reels and TikTok, so I'm about eighty percent sure that if you ever caught me in a vulnerable position, you'd pin me down and slowly eat me alive, so… you know.'
If he were relying on ordinary human strength, this would have been impossible. If he were using only basic chakra enhancement, it would have been brutally difficult. With Extreme Muscle Assault running, though…
It didn't take long before he felt two sharp cracks beneath his arms – one from the trachea, another from the spine. A few more horrible moments followed, filled with hot, furry, reeking hell, until the struggling stopped entirely and the massive body went limp beneath him.
And then Yohei felt a new weight settle in his chest.
'Oh, thank fuck,' he thought as he shoved the corpse away with a grunt. 'At least I got something from this.'
He staggered to his feet, breathing hard, then sniffed and immediately winced at the stench clinging to his skin. He spat on the ground, trying to get the taste of it out of his mouth, and looked down at the dead bear.
"…There's no way I'm processing you today, my dude. Into the scroll you go."
-~=~-
A little over a dozen minutes later, Yohei – now washed clean in the river and fully dressed – sat inside the cavern on a stone he had dragged in from outside. A small campfire crackled in front of him, his flashlight adding to the flickering light.
He finished seasoning the hare, skewered it, and set it over the flames, hoping the smell of roasting meat and smoke would help chase away the lingering animal stench.
As he had done countless times since activating it, he closed his eyes and let Thousand Sound Perception filter the forest around him, parsing through every distant rustle and breath. Nothing unusual. Combined with the occasional flicker of the Shishōgan, it made him fairly confident no one was watching him.
Maybe a bit paranoid – but this was the first time he was about to use the Chaos Scroll outside the safety of his room, so paranoia felt not just justified but healthy.
'Okay…' he thought as he exhaled slowly. 'Let's do this. Do I start with the summons… or see what else the Scroll gave me?'
Taking a moment to decide, he bit into his thumb and slapped his bloodied hand against the ground. With a puff of smoke, the Chaos Scroll appeared in all its glory.
He quickly spread it open and immediately noticed a new bronze fūinjutsu seal inscribed on its surface. Without wasting a second, he activated it. The Chaos Scroll vanished, and a smaller brown one materialized in his hand.
'E-Rank,' he thought. 'And probably a jutsu. The only E-Rank jutsu I have are the Milk Gland Activation Technique and the Sound Wave Amplification Technique, so… either situationally useful or outright bizarre?'
Coming to that conclusion, he undid the latch and opened the scroll.
[四腕の術 – Shiwan no Jutsu – Four Arms Technique]
|E-Rank Jutsu|
This technique allows you to manifest another set of arms in addition to your current ones. The second set of arms is as easy to control as the first pair.
The scroll almost slipped from his hands as he bit down on his knuckles to stop himself from laughing like a madman.
'Four arms. Four arms. I was literally planning on hunting down spider-boy when the Sound Four invaded after the Chūnin Exams, just to try to replicate his anatomy- and now I'm just… handed this!? he screamed inside his own head. Four! Arms! This- this is amazing! Does it-'
He hurriedly flipped the scroll further open, eyes skimming past the technical explanations, training instructions, and hand-seal sequences, searching instead for the diagrams.
'Yes!'
The chakra network extended into the new limbs.
'This means two extra arms that can manipulate chakra! Can't make a Rasengan by myself? No clone needed – one pair condenses and rotates chakra while the other keeps fighting! One pair of hands runs hand seals while the other throws taijutsu! One pair locks down a target's limbs while the other pummels them into paste! Cry your heart out, Kashimo – this is the perfect ninja body!'
It took all of his willpower to close the scroll and store it away instead of dropping everything to start learning it on the spot.
'Not today,' he reminded himself. 'Today's for the summons. I can learn this whenever, but I only get one shot at dealing with them.'
That didn't make it any easier.
Still, he managed. Leaving the Four Arms Technique scroll in his bag, he took out two others: a simple storage scroll containing the meat from the Monster Boar he'd let rot, and the Mugetsu Summoning Scroll.
'Better get the offering out first,' he decided. If she comes out swinging, I want something to shove in her face immediately.
He activated the storage scroll, and three large cauldrons of rotting meat appeared in front of him with a heavy thud.
Thankfully, they had been sealed – not with fūinjutsu, but with good old glue. Being made of clay, they would break easily enough if he needed to get to what was inside.
Now, to call on the giant wolf with chainsaw teeth and hope these summons come with some level of ingrained loyalty, he thought as he opened Mugetsu's scroll.
[無月 – Mugetsu – Moonless]
|E-Rank Summon Contract|
Mugetsu was once a common cave wolf who was expelled from her pack because of her unnatural strength and was then mutated by the overabundance of chakra in her surroundings. After decades of brutal survival, this wolf now towers over carriages and can swallow a fully grown man in one gulp. Those who seek to form a contract with her are advised to bring offerings of rotten meat, as those are her favorite meal.
Below that was an illustration of her, which did nothing to slow his suddenly racing heart as excitement and apprehension tangled together in his chest.
At the very end of the scroll, there was an empty boxed section.
'Where I'm supposed to write my name,' he realized.
Letting out a quiet sigh at having to do it again so soon, Yohei bit into the same finger he had used earlier to summon the Chaos Scroll. Blood welled up, and he used it to write his name on the paper. Then he pressed his thumb to each of his other four fingers, smearing them red before stamping all five onto the scroll in a row.
The change was immediate.
The scroll unfurled further, making Yohei blink in surprise. What was revealed made him freeze.
'A map? No… not just a map…'
He pulled the paper out of his pocket, unfolding it to compare. The illustration was almost identical to the one printed on the scroll now – a map of the training grounds.
It was, if anything, slightly more detailed than the one his sensei had given him, but otherwise the same. Except for two new elements: a blue star, and a stylized, chibi-like version of Mugetsu's face.
'I'm the star,' he realized. 'It's right where I'm supposed to be – near the middle of the training grounds, just past the river. And if that's me, then Mugetsu's symbol has to be her location as well…'
Which meant that the moment he had written his name on the scroll, she had been summoned into this world – not beside him, but into a location that had likely been retroactively altered to fit her supposed past.
He'd come to that conclusion because of Renamon – no, Kozuki's – own description in her scroll. It made it clear she was part of an Animal Clan, something that could only exist if the Chaos Scroll had rewritten reality to accommodate her. Before, he'd thought that had happened the moment he'd drawn her scroll from the seal.
Now, he realized he'd found the real trigger.
Writing his name.
Slowly, he looked back down at the map.
'Summoning is not a one-and-done jutsu. It's an active one that requires chakra not just to start it, but also to keep it running. When the summoner runs out of chakra – or when the jutsu is dismissed – the summoned being is sent back to their place of origin. For Renamon, that will probably be wherever the Fox Clan makes their home, and for Mugetsu, it's this forest.'
Which meant he could summon her right now through the scroll in his hand – but keeping her by his side would be a constant drain on his chakra.
For Renamon and others like her, that was an unavoidable drawback. Their points of origin were simply too far away. For Mugetsu, however…
'I can just go find her and bring her with me on foot rather than summoning her,' he thought with a grin.
Which, when he really thought about it, had been the plan all along. He'd just unconsciously assumed that when he used the scroll for the first time, the summon's "origin point" would be right beside him.
In a way, things being like this was inconvenient from a combat standpoint – it meant many of his future summons would share the same weakness all other summons in this world did. But on the other hand, it was also an advantage.
'This means I can "activate" Renamon and others like her without having to worry too much about figuring out an alibi for them. Unless I'm actively summoning them, they'll be far away doing their own thing.'
That was honestly a huge weight off his chest.
Sniffing, Yohei realized that while he'd been lost in thought, the hare had finished cooking and was well on its way to charring.
"Ah, dammit-" He hurried to pull it off the fire, blowing softly on it before taking a bite. He hissed at the heat, sucking in air to keep from burning his tongue, then gulped the piece down before going back to trying to cool the rest of it.
'Since that's the case, I think I should try to get another summoning done now. But which one?'
Renam- Kozuki – was… the more complicated of the two. Not because of anything about her specifically, but because of the context of her existence in this world. She was part of an Animal Clan, and Yohei… he really wanted to do a blind reverse summon one day and see where he ended up.
Even if it was silly, both sets of his memories agreed on this.
There was just something romantic about it. Even if the summons rejected him, even if the place was so dangerous that he had to turn right back around – just knowing which animal clan fit him best felt like an incredible insight into who he really was. He couldn't help but yearn for it.
So he wanted to avoid a situation where contracting with one clan made it impossible for him to contract with another – at least until he'd tried reverse summoning once.
Therefore, the one he was going to summon right now was-
The Yin Shadow.
Taking its scroll out of his bag after memorizing the map inside Mugetsu's and storing her scroll away, Yohei opened it to read the description once more.
[陰影 – In'ei – Yin Shadow]
|D-Rank Summon|
The Yin Shadow is a creature from an immaterial dimension. When summoned, it will appear as an incorporeal shadow filled with eyes. It lacks any direct combat ability, but it is able to possess targets to torment them or those surrounding them with genjutsu, or it can haunt the shadows of its summoner to provide them with a source of spiritual energy. It feeds and grows on the leftover spiritual energy left behind by the dead it haunts.
'Creepy,' Yohei thought with a grin. 'I love it.'
Just like with Mugetsu, opening the scroll all the way revealed an empty box for him to… write his… name…
'Oh, for fuck's sake,' Yohei thought angrily. He gulped down the food still in his mouth, licked his lips, and bit into his thumb once more, repeating the same process he'd gone through just a scant few minutes earlier.
This time, however, when the scroll expanded, instead of a map, what appeared was –
'What the fuck is this?' Yohei wondered, staring at a series of moving squiggles, sharp lines, and pseudo-geometric forms arranged in a rough circle. The blue sun that was supposed to represent him drifted along a strange, uneven orbit, while the eye that symbolized the Yin Shadow spun slowly on itself slightly to the right of center.
He stared at it in confusion before glancing back at the summon's description.
The Yin Shadow is a creature from an immaterial dimension.
"Ohhhhhhh… got it."
'So this is what, a map showing dimensional coordinates or something? Wicked. I'd probably need something like the Rinnesharingan to actually make sense of it,' Yohei thought with a huff and a grin.
Then he blinked as it really sank in – this was it. There was nothing else to do. The contract was sealed in blood, and all that remained was to perform the summoning for the first time.
He quickly finished his meal and tossed the wooden skewer into the fire, then took a deep breath and slowly released it, trying to calm himself. Even so, he couldn't keep the eager grin off his face.
"Alright, let's do it."
Boar → Dog → Bird → Monkey → Ram.
"Summoning Jutsu: Yin Shadow!"
He felt his chakra being pulled into the technique, which he'd expected – but not how little it actually cost. The drain was barely more than a trickle compared to what he'd been bracing for.
What he hadn't expected was for something else to be drained as well.
But he didn't have time to worry about it.
Before he could even form the thought, Yohei blacked out.
-~=~-
Consciousness returned to Yohei with a gasp.
Before he was even aware of his surroundings, ingrained Academy training kicked in and he jumped to his feet, kunai in hand, desperately trying to cycle chakra through his body. His vision was foggy, his body felt faint, his senses were muted, and it felt like someone had stuffed cotton inside his skull.
He snapped into a hand seal.
"Release!" he shouted, spiking and stuttering his chakra flow.
Nothing changed.
So… not a genjutsu.
Probably.
The front of the cavern was still lit by thin blades of sunlight slipping through the gaps between the entrance and the rock he'd rolled in front of it. The campfire had gone out, but the embers still glowed faintly, radiating a bit of heat. It couldn't have been that long.
…He was also extremely grateful he'd fallen sideways instead of forward. Becoming barbecue while unconscious was not on today's to-do list.
He grabbed his flashlight and swept it around the cavern, fighting off the nausea as he searched for anything – anyone.
There was nothing.
Or, if there was, it was hiding better than he could search, in which case there was fuck-all he could do about it.
'For some reason, that doesn't make me feel better,' he thought with a snort.
Taking a few slow breaths, Yohei staggered back to his rock and sat down with a groan, pinching the bridge of his nose.
'What the fuck just happened?'
The last thing he remembered was activating the Yin Shadow summoning. It had been going fine. Barely any chakra drain. Then, out of nowhere, something else had started getting pulled out of him.
Spiritual energy.
'So that's why I passed out… but why?' His jaw tightened. 'Why the hell did it do that? Are the summons really not loyal? Was it trying to kill me?'
His eyes dropped to the fallen scroll. He picked it up, brushing dirt off the paper.
It lacks any direct combat ability, but it is able to possess targets to torment them or those surrounding them with genjutsu, or it can haunt the shadows of its summoner to provide them with a source of spiritual energy. It feeds and grows on the leftover spiritual energy left behind by the dead it haunts.
"…None of that says anything about draining me," he muttered. "Hell, it explicitly says it gives me spiritual energy."
Frowning, he glanced down to the bottom of the scroll – and froze.
The eldritch squiggles were gone.
In their place was a normal map, just like Mugetsu's.
Except the eye symbol that represented the Yin Shadow was now directly overlaid on his own.
Slowly, Yohei turned his head.
There, inside his shadow, a single eye stared back at him.
'Ave Maria cheia de graça, o Senhor é convosco, bendita sois vós entre as mulheres, bendito é o fruto do vosso ventre, Jesus. Santa Maria, Mãe de Deus, rogai por nós pecadores-'
He stopped.
The eye stared at him.
He stared at the eye.
Neither of them blinked.
Yohei lifted a trembling hand and gave a small wave.
"Hello there."
The creature stirred.
It was like it drank in the darkness around it as it coalesced and rose from his shadow. The form it took was slightly serpentine – though that was probably less because it resembled a snake and more because it had simply chosen the easiest shape to exist in.
Its body was… calling it dark would be a euphemism. It was the deepest black Yohei had ever seen, like an opaque hole in his vision.
Its single eye sat vertically in the center of what would be its face – or its forehead – staring fixedly at Yohei.
Then it spoke.
"Sorry," it said, in a mortified voice.
His voice.
It was slightly warped, like the last echo of a sound bouncing through a tunnel, and pitched a little higher – but it was unmistakably his.
Now, Yohei had watched enough horror movies to recognize where this was going.
Dumbass teenager performs a blood ritual and summons a demon from a nightmare realm. The creature feeds on his soul and pretends to be his friend while slowly hollowing him out, copying his voice, his mannerisms, his memories – until eventually it replaces him.
The only reason he wasn't trying to unsummon or kill it on the spot was because, now that he was aware of its physical presence, he was also aware of its spiritual one.
The Yin Shadow was still connected to his own shadow – and through that connection, he could feel its mind.
It was… sincere. Embarrassed about what had happened. Regretful that it had happened at all. Scared of how he would react. Terrified of what he would think of it. Delighted to be in his presence. And impossibly curious about the world.
…It felt like a child.
'Could it be faking these emotions to manipulate me? Sure,' he admitted to himself. 'But assuming the worst every time is some Konrad Kurze bullshit, and Konrad Kurze is a bitch.'
Yohei snorted softly as he relaxed. The Yin Shadow still stared at him, its single eye filled with that swirl of emotions.
He tilted his head.
It tilted its head.
He shook his.
It shook its.
"Why did you drain my spiritual energy?" Yohei asked calmly.
The Shadow hesitated. Then it drifted closer, gesturing toward him.
"Yohei," it said, in the formal tone he used when introducing himself.
"Yes?"
"Dad," it finished, laughing in his – its – voice.
Yohei blinked.
Then realization hit.
"…Your eye," he murmured. "It isn't red like in the illustration. It's blue."
"Blue!" it repeated happily.
Yohei let out a quiet huff of laughter and stepped closer to look. The eye had no pupil – only a series of concentric black rings inside the iris, reminiscent of the Rinnegan.
But instead of purple…
They were blue.
Not just blue – turquoise.
The exact same color as his own.
"Let me guess," Yohei said, pinching his chin as he thought it through. "Wherever you were from, you existed… but you weren't really alive the way I understand it. When I summoned you, my chakra was used to give you form, and my spiritual energy was used to give you a sense of self."
The shadow bobbed eagerly, its serpentine body curling slightly as its single eye bent into something that could only be described as a smile.
'That sounds a lot like Kaguya creating Zetsu,' Yohei mused. 'Shadows given form, capable of possession. I wonder if they're actually connected somehow, or if this is just convergent weirdness.'
On impulse, he reached out and tried to pat the little creature.
His finger passed straight through it.
"…Right," he muttered. "Incorporeal."
The shadow, apparently offended by physics, tried to touch him back. Its own limb slid uselessly through his hand. They both paused, staring at each other in shared confusion.
Yohei rested his cheek on his palm and smiled.
"Well," he said softly, "since you were born from me, I guess it's my responsibility to give you a name. 'Yin Shadow' sounds more like a species or a title than… you."
The creature froze.
Through their link, excitement flooded him – bright, buzzing, overwhelming.
Yohei laughed. "You like that? Good. Let's see… Yin is the feminine aspect of things, and that's the part of me you seem to carry the most, so I think a feminine name fits you better."
'Shadow-themed names… witches, goddesses, Raven… Raven was my first thought when I saw her crawl out of my shadow. But that's not exactly local, and the direct translation to the name Karasu just makes it sound like a grumpy old man.'
Then it clicked.
Yohei knelt and dragged the tip of his kunai across the stone floor, carving a single kanji.
"Your name is going to be 'Kara.' You can write it like this."
空
"Which means 'Void.' For the place you came from."
Then he wrote again.
烏羅
"And these ones mean 'Shrouded Raven.' Or if you read it as Ura, it can mean 'the reverse side,' or 'that which is unseen.'"
He turned to her, grinning. "Do you like it?"
"Yes!" she shouted immediately – in his voice – her shadowy form vibrating as if dancing. "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Ye-"
"Okay! Okay!" Yohei laughed, sitting down across from her. "I get it!"
He smiled at her, warm and genuine.
"Happy birthday, Kara."
"Thank you!"
-~=~-
Finding out why he had lost consciousness was a relief, but it didn't change the fact that Yohei needed time to recover before heading back out.
So he ate some rations, drank water, fed fresh wood to the embers to bring the fire back to life, and sat down for breathing meditation. If before the process had felt unbearably uncomfortable and painful, now it was merely very uncomfortable and painful – and he managed to hold it for almost a full minute with his lungs completely extended.
The buzz that followed was still incredible.
He lost track of time, unsure how long he had spent just breathing, but when he finally stopped he felt refreshed, energized, and ready to get back to work. He sealed away everything he had used for camp – including the rotten meat – then packed his bag. Using Extreme Muscle Assault, he shifted the heavy stone blocking the cave's entrance out of the way so he could leave, then slid it back into place to keep the cavern sealed until his return.
The plan now was to use the cave as the center of a spiral search pattern through the Training Grounds.
Not only would that leave a trail of signs that could be followed if anyone ever tried to figure out what he had been doing out here – which was admittedly paranoid, but also justified – it would also let him systematically hunt for more chakra beasts.
Unfortunately, it seemed he had been out for longer than he'd realized. Either he had slept far more than he thought, or the meditation had eaten up more time than planned, because the afternoon was already well advanced despite him blacking out in the early morning.
That meant he couldn't make the spiral as tight as he'd wanted if he still wanted to reach Mugetsu before sunset.
At this rate, he would reach the cavern marked on the map somewhere around the fifth or sixth turn.
Thankfully, he hadn't even finished the first before he found what he was looking for.
Moving as quietly as he could, Yohei slowed his advance through the trees when he heard the wet, tearing sound of flesh being ripped apart.
From a high branch, peering through the dense foliage, he spotted it.
A chakra beast.
It was much smaller than the ones he had fought before. Standing next to it, he guessed it would barely reach his chest.
That did not make it any less terrifying.
If anything, Yohei felt far more dread at the idea of fighting this thing than he ever had with the boar.
It looked like a rat.
A massive, emaciated brown rat with blood-red eyes. Its body was vaguely humanoid – biped was probably the more accurate word – with jagged horns sprouting from its skull and erupting at random from its frame. Blood and worse coated its fur as it savagely tore into the exposed guts of a dead doe.
It reminded him instantly of a Skaven.
"Oh, hell no."
It seemed his thoughts had been picked up by Kara – a useful trait to make note of – because a moment later she slipped free from his shadow once more. Detaching from it, she slid down the trunk of the tree, flowed across the ground, and leapt into the shadow of the would-be Skaven.
The creature froze.
Then it began to choke.
Its body convulsed violently, foam bubbling at its mouth as its eyes rolled back into its skull.
Yohei didn't waste a second. He dropped from the tree and drove a kunai clean through the base of its skull, killing it instantly.
As the chakra beast died, Yohei watched Kara drink from its shadow. When she emerged again, her form was noticeably more solid than before – and on her head, a second eye opened, identical to the first.
"Did you like it?" she asked, using his own words from earlier.
Yohei chuckled. "Yep, I did. Thank you, Kara. You're amazing."
"Amazing!" she repeated happily, doing her little dance.
Yohei barely managed to restrain the urge to coo at his adorable eldritch… daughter? Mostly because the overwhelming stench of corpses nearby cut straight through the moment.
He sighed. "I'd better store those too. At least it's more meat for Mugetsu."
After sealing away the bodies, Yohei and Kara resumed their trek.
Now that he had confirmed he wouldn't get a new reward for every single chakra beast he killed – and having seen firsthand how Kara fed and grew stronger – he felt less need to keep hunting. Instead, he picked up the pace and widened the spiral of his path, reaching Mugetsu's territory far sooner than expected.
The first thing he noticed was the smell.
He hadn't even reached the cavern yet and he could already taste death in the air, the bitter, acrid stench of rotting meat.
The second thing he noticed was what wasn't there.
A place like this should have been crawling with scavengers. Rats. Crows. Ravens. Pigs. Foxes. Wolves – hell, even bears. But there were no tracks, no rustling, no signs of life at all. Not even insects. No flies. No wasps. No buzzing clouds of carrion eaters.
The forest here was unnaturally silent.
That only made it more unsettling as Yohei approached the cave entrance.
He tried to take a steadying breath – and immediately gagged as the stench hit him full force, doubling him over in a coughing fit.
Wincing, he pulled out the extra shirt he'd torn earlier, ripped off two more strips, and stuffed them into his nostrils. With what was left, he fashioned a crude mask over his mouth and nose.
"Let's Kakashi-style this bitch," he muttered through the muffled fabric.
Rat → Tiger → Hare → Dog → Bird.
Thousand Sound Perception.
"Warn me if you see something weird, alright, Kara?" Yohei said, getting a nod from the eyes lurking in his shadow.
Turning on his flashlight, he stepped into the cavern.
It surprised him that he didn't immediately find what he had expected – that is, the direct source of the horrible smell. There were no bodies strewn across the floor, no bones jutting out of the earth, no blood smeared across the walls. The place was… clean.
Well, relatively clean. It was still a cave, after all.
It took a few minutes before he finally saw them – and when he did, they weren't quite what he had been expecting.
Deer, boars, hares, and the occasional goat. Foxes, raccoons, bears, weasels, and wild cats. Crows, ravens, hawks, owls, and bats. Monkeys, squirrels, badgers, and rats. Serpents, lizards, toads, and frogs.
Animals of all kinds, grouped into neat piles, their bodies torn apart.
It was the creepiest thing he had ever seen in his life.
Had he truly been here looking for a chakra beast to tame, this would have been the moment to either pull out bombs and blades and go full Assault Mode – or get the hell out of dodge and warn the village about the anomaly.
Usually, chakra beasts were insane and completely irrational. They were just as likely to get themselves killed doing something stupid as they were to kill each other.
The better a creature's body handled the mutations brought on by chakra, the more of its mind it retained. The bear he had fought earlier was probably one of those – mostly just larger than normal, rather than sporting horns, wings, or gorilla arms or whatever else could have gone wrong.
But then there were those who not only stayed sane… they became smarter.
Those were the ones ninja – and others – tried to tame.
Of course, as humans had proven time and again, intelligence didn't mean goodness. Some chakra beasts became sadists, using their minds to inflict pain and suffering for their own pleasure. To the wider populace, those were known vulgarly as demons, and it was part of the job of ninja, samurai, and occasionally monks to put them down.
Killing animals in droves – not to eat, not to protect territory, but simply for the sake of killing – that was the sort of thing demons did.
And at first glance, that's exactly what Mugetsu's lair looked like.
Knowing what he knew, however…
'She's cooking,' Yohei thought with a crooked smirk despite the gruesome scene.
Carrion feeders have adaptations that let them eat and even enjoy rotting flesh – but given the choice between fresh and decayed, they'll always pick fresh.
Not Mugetsu.
She genuinely seemed to enjoy the taste of decomposition, killing animals and dragging them back here so they could reach the state she preferred.
'The smell draws in predators and other carrion feeders too,' he realized. 'That's part of the system – prey delivering itself right to her door. That must be why there are no animals outside. They've learned this place is death. But what about the insects?'
He got no answer to his question, but as he reached the end of the piles of food, he did find something new.
An entire section dedicated solely to the bodies of chakra beasts.
'Well now,' he thought, a growing smile tugging at his lips. 'Seems like the local beasties couldn't deal with my girl.'
It was quite the thing to feel pride for an animal you'd never even met.
Yohei continued past the "corridor" of bodies, only to find another long stretch of empty rock and sloping ground, descending deeper with nothing of interest until it opened into a wide chamber.
The air there was damp – humid and cooler than above – thanks to the current of water running through it. The subterranean river also provided ventilation, keeping the air from going stale and making the whole place smell far better than the path that led in.
The stench was still present, mind you, but manageable enough that Yohei finally pulled down his improvised mask.
"I definitely need a bath after that. You think the water here's nice, girl?" Yohei asked. Kara rose from his shadow, tilting her head in confusion and making him chuckle. "Not you, Kara. I'm talking to Mugetsu – but she seems to be a little shy."
He pointed his flashlight toward the water.
"Come on, girl. I can hear you. You're not going to spook me."
What had looked like a rock stirred.
Four gleaming, blood-red orbs opened, fixing on him as she lifted herself from the water.
The beam of the flashlight slid over a narrow, elongated skull, its surface slick and a pale shade of dark grey – if such a thing was possible – split by a mouth crowded with fearsome fangs that jutted out like those of a dinosaur. Water streamed from her muzzle in thin lines, dripping back into the river with barely a sound. Her ears lay low against her head, and the coarse fur around her neck bristled as she shifted forward.
As more of her emerged, the shape resolved into something close to a wolf, but unmistakably warped – too lean, the limbs drawn long and taut with muscle, the joints moving with an uncanny precision. Her back rose in a stiff curve, muscles rippling beneath wet fur as she placed one forepaw onto the riverbank. Claws scraped against stone.
Her tail came last, lifting from the water in a slow, deliberate motion.
She didn't growl, nor did she bare her teeth any further. She simply watched, unmoving, the light glinting in her many eyes, waiting to see whether he would freeze in fear or run.
…As if Yohei would ever do that.
"You are gorgeous," he said, eyes wide, his voice thick with awe.
The reaction seemed to catch Mugetsu off guard. She tilted her head, a motion that made him coo despite himself, her ears perking up.
Encouraged, Yohei took a step closer, hand lifting to reach for her.
Bad move.
Mugetsu moved almost faster than he could register, lunging forward and snapping her jaws beside his arm – deliberately missing, but making very clear what could have happened. She held there for a heartbeat, staring at him, before retreating, now more guarded than before.
Yohei swallowed the lump in his throat and checked to make sure he hadn't shit himself.
…
"Oh, I didn't. Thank the Sage," he said with relief, letting out a breath. Then he remembered the words on her summoning scroll and had to resist the urge to slap his own face. "Right. I'm an idiot."
Moving slowly and openly so she could see everything he was doing, Yohei took off his pack and pulled out three storage scrolls, unfurling and carefully activating them. Mugetsu flinched when things materialized with a pop and a puff of smoke, but aside from a low growl, she didn't react much.
"Hey, hey, relax. It's okay. It's just food," Yohei said in a calming tone. She looked at him, and he smiled back, careful not to show his teeth. With a bit of effort, he cracked open the lid of one of the clay pots, dumping its contents onto the stone floor. Rotten boar meat spilled out, filling the chamber with its rancid stench.
He resisted the urge to puke and was rewarded when Mugetsu immediately rushed forward, devouring it in a way that somehow reminded him of both a crocodile and a dog drinking water. When she finished, instead of going for the next pot, she sat back on her haunches and looked at him expectantly, her tail wagging.
Yohei blinked, then barked out a laugh, breaking open the second and third pots and spilling their contents as well.
She tore into them just as eagerly, her long dark tongue licking over her bloodied fangs when she was done. Then she turned away, padding to the river to drink and wash her muzzle before returning.
Her gaze shifted to what the other two scrolls had released: the massive body of the bear and the carcasses of the mutated rat and the doe. She sniffed them, nudging the bodies with her muzzle, then looked back at Yohei with something that felt suspiciously like curiosity in her four-eyed stare.
Yohei chuckled. "Yeah, sorry. Those are recent. Caught them for you on the way."
She snorted softly, then bit into the bear's neck and dragged it off toward the corridor, leaving Yohei standing there, watching with a mix of fascination and amusement. A few minutes later she returned, brushing her body against him as she passed to grab the rat and the doe and haul them away to the body piles as well.
He released the Thousand Sound Perception, unwilling to waste the chakra for it and tire himself when there didn't seem to be a need to keep it active.
When she finished, she came back again and leapt into the river, splashing down hard before scrambling back out. She shook herself violently, spraying water everywhere and soaking Yohei in the process.
"Oh, come on! I was already going to jump in later – you didn't have to do this!" he complained jokingly, wiping water from his face as he opened his eyes to find Mugetsu sitting right in front of him again. "Well then… what now?"
She sniffed him, the force of it making his hair flutter, then pressed her nose into his chest until he lost his balance-
"Woah!"
-toppled backward onto his butt.
Then, a moment later, she let herself fall as well, her head settling into his lap and pretty much covering his entire lower body as she closed her eyes in contentment. Yohei stared at her in disbelief before bursting into laughter.
"Really?" he asked between laughs.
She opened one eye to look at him, as if to say 'what more do you want?'
"I don't know!" he replied, still amused. "Wait – can you understand me? Not just vague feelings. Can you actually understand the words I'm saying?"
She made a deep, rolling sound in her chest that he took as a yes.
"Oh, you're just amazing," Yohei said warmly.
Even intelligent chakra beasts that could think and reason didn't simply have human language downloaded into their heads. They had to be taught how to talk – or at least how to listen. The fact that Mugetsu already could probably saved him an enormous amount of time.
Though he wasn't sure whether she truly understood the language itself or if the Chaos Scroll ensured she could understand him. He supposed he'd find out eventually.
"Good girl," he said, patting her head. She let out a pleased sound, and he chuckled, scratching behind her ears. That made her pant openly and thump a massive paw against the ground, shaking the chamber and sending dust drifting from the ceiling. Yohei laughed, shielding his face as he kept petting her.
"What about me?" asked his own voice, distorted in that familiar way Kara always had when she used it – repeating the same words he had once said to his sensei the day he first met Gōdō.
Yohei turned to her. The little shadow was looking at him with wide, hopeful blue eyes.
He grinned. "You too, Kara. You're both really good girls."
"Yes!" she replied, spinning happily in her little dance.
Mugetsu opened her eyes, confused by the sudden stop in his scratching. When she saw Kara hovering nearby, she tilted her head. She sniffed at her and, finding nothing, looked even more puzzled. She tried to nudge the little shadow with her nose, only for it to pass straight through.
Kara laughed in Yohei's voice, the sound closer to a giggle.
Mugetsu stood up and approached her, circling Kara and trying to make sense of her in some way. Then Kara suddenly jumped into Mugetsu's shadow.
Mugetsu yelped and leapt back, looking around wildly for the vanished shadow before turning to Yohei with a helpless, confused stare. Yohei was doing his best not to laugh.
Then Kara popped out of Mugetsu's shadow again, laughter trailing after her. Mugetsu startled, then immediately ran after her.
And the game was on.
They raced all around the cavern, Kara slipping into and out of shadows, climbing walls and crawling across the ceiling while laughing, while Mugetsu chased her, trying to catch the elusive little shadow.
Yohei just watched it all with a grin, rubbing feeling back into his legs.
'This is my life now,' he realized. 'This really, really is my life.'
He watched Kara fall from the ceiling like a drop of ink into the river, prompting Mugetsu to leap in after her – only for the little shadow to flow away a moment later, still laughing.
'I love it. I don't ever want to lose this.'
Such desires weren't simple things in this world. But he wagered that had more chances than most to achieve it.
His hand unconsciously went to his chest.
'Now what?' he asked himself.
He had been asking himself this all week. The easiest part of the Mugetsu Plan had actually been getting here and summoning her; the hard part was making her "discovery" believable. He had multiple bets going that he'd manage it in a month. He could lose them to make the "search" longer and more convincing…
…but he really, really didn't want to, even if it would help.
Having decided that, the next question was how long he should take before revealing her. Doing it on the last possible day might seem like the safest pick, but it was actually the second most suspicious, beaten only by doing it in the third week, right on the "nick of time."
Honestly, the best option was probably just coming back today with Mugetsu. Would it be absurd? Yes – but refuge in audacity was a thing. People might suspect it, but they'd probably dismiss it immediately because of how absurd it would be.
But while that was optimal for safety, it wasn't the best for gains – and now he also had to consider the whole situation with his little shadow.
Chatting with Kara on the way here, he'd discovered she could more or less sustain herself as long as she was possessing someone, feeding on the chakra they passively gave off. If she exerted herself, like by using illusions, she'd need to feed, though she could also generate her own spiritual energy – just at an atrociously slow rate for now.
He was… hesitant to unsummon her. She'd assured him it would be fine, that it would feel like sleeping, but the idea of sending the little being who had just been born from a part of him into a shapeless void didn't sit well with him.
The problem was that bringing her to the village right now was dangerous. If he let her hide in his shadow, he was ninety percent sure any Hyūga would be able to see her with the Byakugan, and he'd rather avoid that.
Besides, he'd gained a new jutsu today – an incredible one – from killing a chakra beast, and there was a chance that killing a certain number of them would net him even more. He couldn't do that if he couldn't keep coming to these Training Grounds, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to once Mugetsu was revealed. Most likely, his Sundays would be taken up training her.
So what could he do? How could he keep his cake and eat it too?
He was still lost in thought when he saw Kara sliding beneath him, crossing his shadow. He barely had time to process that before Mugetsu slammed into his back, sending him flying into the river.
I shouldn't have deactivated Thousand Sound Perception, he thought dryly as he hit the cold water with a huge splash.
Mugetsu and Kara watched the river in silence, both sharing a measure of chagrin.
Then Yohei burst out of the water, his muscles swelling to three times their size as Assault Mode kicked in.
"Alright," he said with a wide grin, "you two had your fun. Now it's my turn to catch you girls!"
"Yes!" Kara giggled as she darted away, while Mugetsu let out a snort and bolted as well.
'Ah, fuck it. That's a problem for future Yohei,' he decided as he laughed and charged after them.