"The Eight Gates have no shortcut. You grind yourself and push the body again and again."
Might Guy was still lecturing Konome on how to train them. He had extra motivation. Ten billion in debt sat on his shoulders. Konome had promised that if she mastered the Eight Gates and let him spar with her every day, she would cut that debt at least in half.
Kakashi, on the other hand, had lost interest in watching. The Eight Gates were never a one-morning affair. Every gate was a wall. Worse, once the Gates stirred up that raging life force, crude taijutsu might still work, but any ninjutsu that needed finesse went right out the window.
For Konoha's technician, the Eight Gates were pure chicken ribs. Hard to chew, too much bone.
The worst part was the day he and Guy used the bathhouse at the same time and Kakashi accidentally saw Guy's little peanut. The price of squeezing life dry was… vivid. Guy insisted that was not the Gates' fault. It did not matter. Kakashi's progress had frozen at the First Gate forever.
"You two keep at it. I'm going to grab breakfast."
He waved over his shoulder and started for the door.
He made it two steps before a shout cracked the air behind him.
He spun and gaped.
Wind roared. Silver-gray hair lifted as if in a gale.
Green radiance poured off Konome.
Hum. Hummm.
The light flashed, then gathered, the spill of life energy cinched tight like a spotlight iris, pulling back into a thin, dark-green film over her skin. A heartbeat later even that film vanished, the glow swallowed whole, nothing wasted.
"Instant Life Gate?"
"And she's controlling the spill of life force?"
Kakashi and Guy blurted together.
A moment ago they had said there was only the dumb way forward, no angles to cut. Konome stood still and opened three gates in place.
Her Life Gate was not like Guy's either. Do not mistake a green aura for a good sign. That glow was wild life force leaking through the pores. Life was finite. That leak was waste.
Guy was past words.
Among Eight Gates users, the most gifted had been Kakashi, and even he had needed a full month to open the First Gate at will. Guy himself had needed a full year. Konome's time?
A single morning. Leaf Strong Fist forms learned. Three gates thrown open. Her control over the Gates already steadier than his.
The gulf flattened Guy's pride. The genius he had chased, Kakashi, turned out to be… only talented. In front of a real prodigy, even a genius was ordinary.
Kakashi's shock was no smaller. He shoved up his hitai-ate and bled chakra into the Sharingan. The three tomoe spun like storm eyes.
In the red field of that eye, he watched three bright points blaze inside Konome, life-green surging from the gates and pouring toward the heart. The chakra core flared, deep blue flooding out in torrents.
It really was three gates, all at once, and every drop of life converted to chakra under perfect control.
Normally the Gates ripped life energy loose so violently that trying to weave hand-seals felt like cutting threads in a hurricane. Even easy substitution jutsu turned clumsy.
For her to leash that flood the first time she opened them was beyond human chakra control.
How.
The same question rose in both of their minds. Neither would get an answer, because Konome was already reaching for the Fourth Gate.
Byakugan inverted inward.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Her heartbeat shortened to drum-strokes. Adrenaline spiked. Life force woke everywhere and rushed toward the three bright portals, then poured non-stop into the heart.
Chakra swelled along her channels, painful with pressure, intoxicating with power.
This was the truth of the first three gates, Opening, Rest, Life. You took reflex control away from instinct and handed it to will. That was why most people had to manufacture crisis and trick the subconscious into thinking death stood at the door so it would lift the lock.
Konome did not have to trick anything.
With the power of Body Dominion, her flesh already had a sovereign.
Emperors do not need to run cons.
She gave a single order. Rampage.
Her body flipped into a life-and-death mode and the shackles of the Eight came into sharp relief under her touch. If she could feel the lock, she could open it.
Body Dominion did not ask permission.
Blood boiled. Her frame shuddered. The forced rampage burned energy at a savage rate. When physical and mental fuel scraped bottom, the desperate shell clawed for anything it could use to fulfill the order.
Her heart hammered harder, then harder again, climbing toward three hundred beats a minute.
In her chest, the fourth door brightened, quivered, cracked the tiniest line.
The Fourth Gate, the Gate of Pain, open.
A thunderclap.
The little stream of life force swelled to a river. The fourth door swung wide.
Outside, Kakashi's Sharingan saw a new light kindle and line up with the other three. Chakra ballooned and spilled from Konome's body like steam from a boiler.
"The Fourth Gate."
Even with the mask, his jaw had dropped.
"What?"
Guy peered closer. Konome was trembling now. White skin flushed with rose.
She really had opened Pain.
Ancestors of the Guy line had passed it down for generations and needed lifetimes to get this far. Konome had opened it as easily as breathing.
And what a body.
Guy's thick brows nearly climbed into his hairline. The Fourth Gate tripled chakra and then some. When he opened it, his skin went blood red. The Fifth stained him dark, almost wine-purple.
Tripled, and all she got was a healthy glow.
Which meant even Five would not strain her much. She could treat it like a form she used mid-fight.
That kind of physique.
She is six?
Guy shook his head. The girl had left his common sense behind and was kicking it in the dust. His worldview tilted. The next beat, her talent lit his competitive fire again. He had beaten his will into steel long ago. The more outrageous her gifts, the hotter his blood burned.
Starting tomorrow, double the training.
"It's over."
Kakashi let the forehead protector fall and clapped a hand on Guy's shoulder. Maybe he was consoling Guy. Maybe himself.
Out on the grounds, Konome stood where she had been. Her chakra storm settled. She opened her eyes. The looks on their faces said they were watching an alien. She had no intention of explaining, and no way to make it make sense.
A Sharingan and Wood Style fused had turned Obito, a mediocrity, into a Kage-level nightmare. Her Byakugan and Shikotsumyaku were not yet that obscene.
Cracking the door is not the same as throwing it open.
Still, the Eight Gates had yielded. She finally let herself exhale. Since arriving in Konoha, the Hyuga had been a shadow over her. Now she had an answer. With this power, she had a card to play even against elite jonin, maybe against a Kage if she had to stake everything.
"Guy, I'm hungry. I'm going to wash up. Let's get breakfast."
Guy swallowed his awe and felt a headache coming on. Konome was small. Her appetite was ten grown men.
Morning spar, four gates in one sitting, breakfast would be a catastrophe. Worse, his pockets were emptier than his stomach after last night's fire.
He turned slowly toward Kakashi. "Kakashi, breakfast together?"
"Sure."
Kakashi was still puzzling over how she had found the Fourth. He did not notice that his best friend had already set sights on his wallet.
"Could you lend me a little money?"
"Mm, what?"
He had been about to say yes. The word money snapped his head up.
Guy flashed a full set of sparkling teeth and rubbed his palms down his pants like a guilty schoolboy. Beside him, the blindfolded taijutsu monster waited, mouth metaphorically open.
Kakashi remembered that Guy's house had burned last night. The man was flat broke.
He sighed from somewhere deep.
In Konoha, Guy was his one true friend.
He pulled out his wallet, counted, and then just tossed the whole thing. "Pay me back."
"Woo, Kakashi, you are the best."
Guy hugged him and would not let go.
Watching her breakfast funds secure themselves, Konome nodded in approval and headed for the bath.
She had had three goals this morning. Leaf Strong Fist forms. The Eight Gates. And wake the late sleeper, then borrow money for breakfast. If Kakashi picked up the check, so much the better.
"Enough tears, Guy. Your snot is getting on me. Fine, breakfast is on me today, all right?"
Kakashi's expression was the very picture of regret. Konome draped a towel over her shoulders, glanced back at the scene, and gave him a discreet thumbs-up.
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