Yuji had expected the village's higher-ups to move toward controlling him eventually. He hadn't expected it to happen this soon.
"With only this much on display, they're already anxious for a response," he thought, packing his things with a faint smile.
"I assumed they'd at least wait until I was stronger before testing the water. They really haven't dealt with someone like this before."
Then again, someone like him had no business appearing in Sunagakure at all. He had arrived like an anomaly, producing results and surprises at a rate the higher-ups had never had to process before.
Like people who had never fought with real resources suddenly finding themselves flush, their management of the situation was getting sloppy precisely because they didn't have the reference points to handle it cleanly.
He had concealed a substantial portion of his actual ability from outside observation, and he had believed that concealment was thorough enough that the higher-ups wouldn't feel the need to test his loyalty yet. Apparently not.
The Kazekage and the senior officials were a particular kind of authority, the type that experienced genuine discomfort when a resource they valued existed beyond the full reach of their control.
If the child didn't submit willingly, they would reach for other levers. Not Danzo's methods exactly, but the same underlying instinct wearing different clothing.
He finished packing and considered what he had been planning to do with the time at home.
Hand seal practice. Hospital work. He had wanted to revisit the village's medical system, not to improve treatment capability this time, but to address the institutional structure, the regulations, the framework itself.
And beyond that, the economy. Sunagakure's reconstruction had no momentum. The village was still, financially gutted, waiting for something that wasn't coming on its own.
Part of what would eventually allow Rasa to consolidate power was his Kekkei Genkai, gold dust wasn't currency in any conventional sense, but as a hard resource it could be exchanged for supplies and brought real assets into the village's hands.
Without Rasa, the original story's version of Sunagakure would have been worse still. Finding ways to address the economic stagnation now served multiple purposes, it might attract the Daimyo's attention, and it would quietly reduce one of the foundations Rasa would otherwise rely on when his path to Kazekage opened up.
All of that would have to wait.
He finished packing, added a backpack full of borrowed materials, Hand Seal Training notes, records left by senior shinobi, reference texts he had pulled from the village institution, and headed for the Academy.
The materials weren't classified; they just required return. He intended to work through them during whatever free time the mission allowed. His Hand Seal execution was a weakness he had been aware of for some time.
Even without achieving single-handed seals, simplifying his sequences enough to compress the chakra response time would meaningfully reduce the gaps enemies could exploit.
The more his understanding of actual combat deepened, the clearer it became that breadth of capability mattered, fewer exploitable weaknesses meant fewer angles for a prepared enemy to target.
He also made a mental note about the Dragon Vein site somewhere in the Land of Wind. That was worth investigating when the opportunity came.
Dragon Veins were a form of energy, and if the system could help him interface with that source, it might address the one persistent limitation in his current toolkit, not that his chakra reserves were genuinely small.
His reserves were strong for his age and likely above many adults, given his physical conditioning and mental energy. The problem was consumption. His Blood Release was extraordinarily demanding, and that gap between reserve and expenditure was the ceiling he kept running into.
Becoming something along the lines of what Kisame represented, a near-endless well of output, was worth pursuing if the path existed.
He arrived at the Academy to find the principal and several others already coming out to meet him. The notice had reached them ahead of his arrival.
Among them was a thin man with spiky hair, and Yuji bowed before the man could say anything.
Takebe Murayo. His homeroom teacher from his Academy years. A Chunin, quiet and steady, someone Yuji remembered with genuine warmth.
"Yuji! Haha, it's been a while."
Murayo's greeting came with a laugh and something more complicated underneath it, the particular expression of a person watching time move faster than they expected. The student who had walked out of his classroom three years ago was now the village's most discussed young shinobi.
Three years was not a long time. Of the students who had graduated in Yuji's class, only a fraction were still alive.
"You're not a newcomer anymore," Murayo said, visibly pleased despite himself, the pride of it showing clearly in front of the principal and the others. "Don't call me sensei. Just use my name."
He said it warmly. He also knew, without needing to say it, that Yuji's development had not had much to do with anything he had taught him.
But at least some credit was his to claim, and he intended to keep it.
"I couldn't do that," Yuji said, and smiled. "You'll always be my sensei."
He meant it. Murayo's ability had its limits, but he had looked after Yuji genuinely during those years, and he had been a close friend of his father's. That was not nothing.
The other teachers glanced at Murayo with expressions that tried to hide their envy and mostly failed. The general sentiment was clear enough, this man had stumbled into the right classroom at the right time and was now reaping returns he had done nothing to deserve. Hmph.
Yuji followed the group back through the gates and toward the office building. Along the corridor, students around his age had gathered to watch, curiosity and admiration mixed together in their faces.
A cluster of younger ones were whispering and pointing at him, the noise of it carrying down the hall.
Murayo mentioned, with visible satisfaction, that Yuji and Sasori had become reference points for students across the current Academy, role models held up in instruction. Yuji's standing among them was considerably warmer than Sasori's. His following skewed heavily female. Sasori's admirers were predominantly boys with ambitions toward Puppetry.
Yuji waved to the gathered students as he passed, relaxed and without any performance of importance. He hadn't come to linger, there was official business to handle, so once inside the building with the principal and the teachers, he got directly to the academic files of the students he was being assigned.
He read through them.
"Hmm."
Something was off. A standard instructor assignment ran three students to a team, the same structure Arai had used with him and Sasori, a specific arrangement made by the Kazekage at the time.
Three files were in his hands, but the principal was telling him four.
He looked at the names again.
One of them he recognized immediately.
Pakura.
"These three were pulled from other instructors, weren't they," Yuji said.
"Yes. The assignments for this batch had already been finalized, and some teams had even begun missions. The village made specific adjustments because of you." The principal nodded.
Yuji looked at the other two names alongside Pakura. Neither came from ordinary backgrounds. Both were descendants of senior officials.
The village wasn't just testing his obedience. They were also having him personally develop people they had already decided to invest in.
"And the fourth?" he said.
Two knocks at the door.
It opened before anyone answered.
The person who walked in had a gentle face and a smile that carried a slight awkwardness around its edges, the expression of someone arriving at an appointment they had mentally rehearsed.
"Hello, Yuji Sensei." Yashamaru bowed ninety degrees the moment he cleared the doorway, formal and completely sincere. "From today, I am your student. Please take good care of me."
Yuji said nothing for a moment.
He understood immediately. This was Grandma Chiyo's hand in it. Yashamaru was a Medical Ninja with existing mission experience, older than Yuji, and senior to him by any conventional measure. Calling him a student was technically absurd.
The real purpose was something else, supervision, perhaps, or simply Chiyo wanting someone she trusted in proximity to Yuji on an assignment that carried real risk.
They had genuinely packed everyone they could find onto him.
Yashamaru straightened up from the bow and lifted the lunch box in his other hand. "My sister made this herself and asked me to bring it for you."
Yuji produced a laugh that was mostly genuine. "Thank you. I actually am a little hungry."
...
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