Hey everyone, it's been a while.
During my long break, I came to a conclusion: the world-building in Naruto is practically nonexistent.
Naruto's story begins when he becomes a genin; before that, there's hardly anything in detail, aside from the wars and the backstories of a few characters; that's about it. And now, considering the other villages, it's almost worse, at least from my perspective. If we add up all the gaps and inconsistencies in the story, the chronology, and other details, you'll get a pretty good idea.
Perhaps that's why some fanfics change the story, adding nonsensical things like the civilian council—an excuse, in my opinion, to make Naruto suffer even more—among other things.
In conclusion, there isn't much interesting about the past before the series, beyond what's already been said, and what is interesting, like Sakumo Hatake's strength, was never shown. So, I basically have to improvise and risk making some plot holes just to keep this fic interesting and entertaining.
With nothing more to add, let's begin the chapter.
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When I entered the dark room, the old mummy was already waiting for me.
"I need you to do something," she said, tossing me a folder.
"Not even a hello? why are you so upset?" I said, taking the folder.
I saw that it contained some documents about the Iwa border; it even revealed the hidden location of these papers, presumably information from some office in Konoha or from Danzo himself.
"That has nothing to do with you," he declared, somewhat irritated.
"Heh," the monkey must have denied one of his stupid requests. "Fine, if all goes well, I'll give you the information; in return, I want you to do something for me."
"And what would that be?" he asked emotionlessly.
"I know Orochimaru must still be conducting his research in secret, so I want to obtain everything he does based on ninjutsu; his human experiments don't interest me," I stated my conditions.
"You're asking for a lot for such a simple mission," the mummy exclaimed.
"I'm going to jump into the lion's mouth, and you're asking me to pull out one of its teeth while I'm at it? Think again; it'd be better," I retorted.
He remained silent, sighing.
"With this mission and one other, I can do what you asked," he announced his new terms.
"Done, but if you ask me to do something stupid, I'll have to wait for you to give me another mission, since I don't intend to be a puppet who does things without thinking like your Root ninjas."
"I know, you can go," he said with a gesture.
I returned the gesture, taking the mission document within the mission itself.
I accepted this since I'm interested in what Pedomaru is doing; not everything, really, only one thing catches my attention: the Edo Tensei.
The rest is worthless to me. It's worth noting that I could also perfect the Edo Tensei, but if someone has already done half the work for me, why not take advantage of it?
...
"What do you have there?" Jiraiya asked when he saw me, examining the document Danzo had given me more closely. I simply handed him the paper to read.
"That's not something Sensei would do. Who gave it to you?" he asked, a little incredulous.
"Danzo," I replied simply, which made Jiraiya frown slightly.
Kosuke and Minato were listening to the conversation not far away.
"That old man is nothing but trouble. You shouldn't have accepted his request," Kosuke said, looking at the document behind Jiraiya.
"I don't think it's so bad; after all, he's doing this for the village, right, Jiraiya-sensei?" Minato said, trying to defuse the situation.
"I hope so. I understand what Kosuke is saying; Danzo doesn't hide his hatred for the Uchiha clan, but why did you accept this?" Jiraiya asked me.
"For convenience, I do something, he gives me something in return, and so on; it's a mutually agreed-upon arrangement," she said with great sincerity, since for me Danzo was nothing more than a being I could exploit until he was useless.
"You should stop interacting with Danzo; you're going to end up tainted," Jiraiya said, staring at me intently.
"Relax, Uncle Toad, I'm cleaner than you; all the bad stuff is done by my subordinates, so you can rest easy," I declared simply.
"I don't know if that information reassures me or not, but in that sense, how much power do you really have?" Kosuke asked, a little uncertain.
"More than you, clearly," I replied.
Before I could say anything, Jiraiya stood up, drawing the attention of all three of us.
"Let's leave the conversation for later; we still have a long way to go to reach the border with Taki," Jiraiya ordered.
...
"Wow, I feel like sneaking back to the village and stealing everything I can," including his bijū, since it's a free source of power; if no one knows you're a jinchūriki, everything should be fine.
"Control yourself if you want," Jiraiya challenged me, hitting me on the head with a piece of paper; in response, I collapsed to the ground unconscious, my eyes glazed over and my tongue sticking out as if I'd been defeated.
Jiraiya ignored this and walked a little deeper into the cave.
Kousuke was tapping me lightly with a stick to see if I was alive, while Minato held my arm to check my pulse.
Kousuke's tapping was getting on my nerves, so I jumped up and poked him in both eyes.
"AAAH, IT HURTS!" he screamed in pain, collapsing to the ground.
A bead of sweat trickled down Minato's forehead when he saw this; I just looked back at him with starry eyes. Minato immediately realized what was about to happen.
That's how I started chasing Minato all the way around the cave entrance where Jiraiya's spy was stationed, the one in charge of this area.
After about 20 minutes of trying to catch Minato, which I couldn't manage, Jiraiya appeared, looking at us strangely.
It's worth noting that Minato is already 18 and Kosuke is 17; my doing this makes sense, but it doesn't to them.
"Come here," Jiraiya ordered, holding up a map. The three of us approached and looked at the map, except for Kosuke, who was using eye drops, cleaning, and treating the pain I'd caused him.
"This line here marks the border between Taki and Iwa; as you can see, these circles show the watchtowers of each sector. We can deduce that they have barriers and seals to detect spies trying to enter the Land of Rock," the Sannin explained, pointing with one finger to illustrate everything he was saying.
"So how are we going to get in, then?" Minato asked.
"We have two options, the slow one or the fast one," Jiraiya indicated with two fingers. "The first is to take an alternate route that Taki has; this is information my spy here gave me. There's a cave you can pass through to reach the Land of Rock; the problem is, there might be enemy ninja there."
"What's the second option?" Koseuke asked.
"We have two options, the slow one or the fast one." "The plan is for one of us, minus Minato, to allow himself to be captured. This person will have the Flying Thunder God Seal, so when night falls, Minato will teleport us to where the imprisoned individual is. The problem with this is that we'd have one less person to do all this, since that person would remain in jail until the mission is complete."
"That means we only have option one left," I said, to which Jiraiya nodded in agreement.
"The second option is the fastest and most feasible, but neither Miyu nor I can be imprisoned, since we'd be discovered and they'd bring in more ninjas to watch over us, not to mention that it could cause problems if they knew we were Konoha ninjas, and it would be even worse for Kosuke, who might try to take his Sharingan," Jiraiya said, closing the map.
"It shouldn't be that complicated," Kosuke said, so I approached him and tried to grab his mouth.
"It shouldn't be that complicated." "Always keep quiet when they say things like that; the opposite always happens, so you'd better shut up or I'll sew your mouth shut, you hear me?" I threatened. Kosuke just nodded, a little scared.
Some might say, "Why would an Uchiha be afraid of my threats? Well, it turns out I'm in charge of extracting information from enemy ninjas when we find them, and he's seen my torture methods, so you can put two and two together."
"Alright, we'll go in standard formation: Miyu in front, Kosuke and Minato on the sides, and me at the back," the Sannin ordered.
"Understood," we all said in unison.
...
After taking down all the ninjas in the tunnel that served as a passage from Taki to Iwa, we reached the land of the rock.
I had to leave my tools behind since the fewer people, the better, so I left them in the tunnel, posing as Iwa ninjas. There's a personnel change every three hours, and the next one wasn't until about two hours later, so we had that much time and a bit more to do everything before they realized someone had entered their territory.
It would have been great to take on Danzo's mission directly, but the Hokage's was a higher priority, so I just had to wait until everything was in order before I could go there.
In the end, we split up, and each tried to gather as much information as possible. Luckily, they let me go to the area where the documents Danzo had requested were supposed to be.
"What a drag," I heard one of the guard ninjas complain about his job to another one standing next to him.
"There's no other way; we have to do this to move those beasts away from the village. Knowing what Tsuchikage wants to do, it'll help a lot," the other said.
"The further away from those two monsters, the better. I want them to run amok and destroy the village," the first one complained.
"Stop complaining; there's no other way. I heard they're having a card tournament tonight to pass the time. There'll be sake and food," his companion said.
"One advantage of taking the day shift," the other declared.
They started talking about other useful things, so I stopped listening.
Beasts, monsters—I imagine they're talking about humans, or at least I think so. I mentioned two. If they're talking about those two people, I'm thinking of it, and then I know what they're doing. It's just a theory, though. What worries me most is that old man Onoki is preparing for something. That's what we have to figure out in the time we have left.
Leaping slowly through the darkness without anyone seeing me, I reached the place where the documents Danzo had requested were located.
Thanks to the Yin Seal, I can slip away without anyone noticing my large chakra reserves.
This is because I use 85% of my current chakra to quickly form the seal on my chest; that way, I'm left with the remaining 15%, which I suppress as much as possible. This allows me to go unnoticed without anyone realizing I'm there.
Afterward, with the chakra accumulated in the Yin Seal, I do a few things to empty it so I can do this again when I want to infiltrate another location.
I arrived at a poorly guarded hut; there were two guards outside and one inside.
Jumping onto the roof, I took out two needles and, with another jump, threw them at the guards outside, striking them directly in the neck, damaging their vertebrae, and leaving them in a coma-like state, unable to move their bodies from the neck down. They couldn't speak or move. They were alive, but they could only open their mouths, without making a sound, and their eyes—nothing more.
This was temporary; when I removed the needles, they would be able to move as before.
Taking advantage of the fact that this hut was made of wood, I touched the roof to imbue it with my chakra to make a hand seal, and it would silently open, letting me in from the roof.
(Note: If it had been made of rock, there would have been no difference.)
The guy in the hut noticed that more light than usual was entering the place; when he looked up, I was already on top of him, hitting him, knocking him out; I was going to take advantage.
I could have killed all three of them, but not everything was violence; well, maybe it was, but measured and controlled.
I needed to get information from the three of them about what they were doing here and what they were going to do with those two guys on the border with Taki.
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I'll upload a chapter tomorrow, and then I'll upload every other day after that.