Konoha Year 53, the Festival of Cycles.
Time slipped by like a white colt leaping a gap. In a blink, half a year was gone and the shinobi world welcomed its midwinter festival. The Festival of Cycles was an ancient tradition handed down from the Warring States era. In a world without Lunar New Year, it was the grandest celebration of the year.
The market streets outside blazed with color and laughter. Naruto's little home was the opposite: quiet and bare.
Now two and a bit, Naruto stood a touch taller than other children his age thanks to Kinoshita Hisachi's careful care before she left. He looked three or four at a glance. Yet the room was littered with empty instant ramen cups. Give it a few years and he might grow thinner than his peers on a diet like that.
He sat cross legged on a stool, watched the joyful village through the window and fell silent.
"I wonder what Grandpa Third is busy with. He did not come by tonight."
"And Granny, what are you doing now…"
On a night like this the Hokage hosted the rites. Even if he were free, Hiruzen Sarutobi had his own family to be with. As for Kinoshita Hisachi, she had left Naruto and moved away from the village that broke her heart. The Third had already told Naruto so.
Naruto shook himself, forcing a smile to shoo away the gentle face that rose in his mind. He put his hands together around his chopsticks.
"Itadakimasu!"
The sadness came quickly and left just as fast. Steam curled up from the bowl. Naruto's cheeks lifted into a grin, raising the whisker like birthmarks on both sides. He really did look like a little fox. He snapped the chopsticks apart, ready to dig into his second favorite ramen.
A voice sounded in his mind. The chopsticks stopped mid air.
"Hey. Hello there, Uzumaki Naruto."
…
On the still water within the seal, Mo Ke opened his eyes.
He raised his right hand, palm up. Blue and red motes spun and fused above his skin.
A moment later a purple black sphere drifted in his palm. A Tailed Beast Bomb born of chakra mixed two parts yin to eight parts yang.
He studied it, nodded, and flicked it toward the gate of the seal.
A thunderclap shook the world. Light swallowed everything inside the seal space.
When the light fell away, the giant gate stood unmarked. The seal itself was unchanged. No surprise. If a Beast Bomb could break this from the inside, the original Nine Tails would have walked out a thousand times already.
With full familiarity of the Nine Tails' chakra, Mo Ke no longer needed the fox's body to cast a Beast Bomb. He did not even need to gather it in a mouth.
Style point achieved.
Beasts One through Six held their primary elements and carried yin and yang by birth. Seven through Nine bore chakra of no elemental nature, only yin and yang. That is why every tailed beast can fire a Tailed Beast Bomb.
Even Seven and Eight mostly did nothing more with yin and yang than knead a projectile and alter its nature a little.
It was hard to blame them. Yin and yang are forces of the Six Paths.
Pig Deer Butterfly's clan arts are simply changes of yin and yang. Chōmei's luminous powder and Gyūki's ink count as yin based alterations.
Nine Tails shared the "no element" body with Seven and Eight, yet unlike them the lazy fox had learned nothing. Endless reserves lead to bad study habits.
His yin body had been split away, but that did not mean Mo Ke's yin was stripped clean. To become a living entity at all, yin and yang and the five basic elements must all be present. The original Nine Tails held yin and yang in balance. After the split, this body was eight parts yang to two parts yin. The piece within Kushina was the reverse.
Measured only by Beast Bomb output, Mo Ke was well below the full Nine Tails.
He spent the half year watching Konoha's uglier faces through Naruto's eyes and grinding his power to a fine edge. He protected his core with shinigami force and let the flood of Nine Tails memories wash over him.
People say blackening makes you ten times stronger. There is truth in it.
He felt the fox's pain in full. He did not lose himself thanks to the death god's guard, yet his chakra became more violent than before. Once it surged out of control. He braced his true spirit with reiryoku and forced it down.
Even so, a rim of killing aura leaked into Naruto. The boy's odd state was excused as a special phase. Hiruzen rushed in, checked the Eight Trigrams Seal and left with no suspicion. The red chakra that flared in front of the villagers made their rejection worse. Under the Third's strict rules they did not dare lay a hand on Naruto, but their words grew sharper. Gains and losses arrived together.
By the end of six months Mo Ke's command of spiritual energy and pressure was smooth. He could now abandon incantations and fire kidō in an instant.
His greatest harvest came with full mastery of shinigami power. He summoned his true self and, despite the constant itch of an incomplete soul, he clearly saw the summoning array that bound his spirit.
His solution was simple. If it could not be erased, he would cut away that sliver of soul.
Ever since his body shifted toward death god form, the soul had turned to spiritons. What baffled even Orochimaru, the greatest scientist of the shinobi world, was a scratch to Mo Ke so long as it missed the vital place. Give it time and it healed.
The chakra steeped in destruction and malice bent its knee as well once the Nine Tails' memory fully fused.
The biggest practical gain, however, came from his Zanpakutō's space bending nature. Half a year ago he could only blink a few meters and sink the blade into a seam. After long exploration he still had not met the blade spirit. Every entry into its inner world brought him to the same silent modern cityscape.
Even so, he could now step anywhere covered by his spiritual pressure and he had shaped those space tricks into a way to kill.
His pressure could blanket all of Konoha without effort. That was nothing special. Some captains in the Soul Society can smother the entire realm and crack the soul veil besides.
Early on, those with strong mental arts would sense something when he exerted pressure, as if eyes were on them from somewhere else. Different systems confused the feel. No one guessed the truth. Konoha already had one old man peeking with a crystal ball.
Now, unless he allowed it, no one in Konoha could feel him at all.
He forged one attack from the blade.
A rift of emptiness.
It was not like the dark road of Yomi or Kamui's spiral twist. He could cut straight through the world's skin. He could not link two worlds like those other techniques.
Because of that, the gap opened onto naked, annihilating turbulence.
For now he could only tear about one meter wide.
It took nearly a second for the void to spill out, and another second was all it stayed before the world knitted itself shut.
Used well, if it kissed a fatal point, even a super Kage would die.
The ceiling for this art was high. With deeper control he could move like Yomi, perhaps even bridge worlds. Then the name Three Thousand Worlds would mean exactly what it said.
Even with only this, Mo Ke judged himself a firm B plus, peak Kage level, stronger than the complete Nine Tails.
The system agreed.
As he finished ordering his thoughts, the pleasant chime sounded.
Ding.
[Congratulations. Rank reached B plus. Reward tier B. Choose one.
Option One: Random S rank secret or forbidden art. — Source: Naruto
Option Two: Skill, Demon Form. Transform into a towering demon and gain ranged chaos strikes for one minute. Cooldown one day. — Source: Dota 2
Option Three: Three Colors of Haki. — Source: One Piece]
Hmm.
Strange.
He rubbed his smooth chin and stared at the third line. By his logic the three hakis belonged in A tier. Each carried growth to super Kage potential. Observation at the peak glimpses the future. Conqueror's, when learned as a coating, spikes raw destructive power. Armament needs no explanation.
Of the three worlds, One Piece looks weakest in "systemic" power on paper, yet in pure flesh it is supreme. Just stepping on air to fly, a trick so common in that sea that nobody blinks, is matched in Naruto only by Might Guy opening the Gates. The speeds differ dramatically, dandelion drift versus supersonic jet, but the point stands: their bodies are monsters.
And people rarely die in that story's long run. Make of that what you will.
Armament haki demands more from the body than even Rokushiki. That is saying something.
As usual he tossed the first option. S rank arts were fine, but he lived in the Naruto world. There were many ways to steal or learn them, and if the random pull spat out the Reaper's Four Symbols Sealing of Seals, that would be a cosmic joke.
The second and third options gave him pause.
Demon Form belonged to Terrorblade, the Soul of the Demon. It made you a demon and near untouchable for a minute. Each hit ignored all defense. Against ninja bodies, most would die to a single strike.
In the real world, a minute was short. Real attacks did not lock on like a game. If he could not kill with blade and Beast Bomb already, a one minute window would not guarantee trophies. Still, transforming was stylish. There was that.
For the three hakis: Conqueror's would do nothing for him unless he learned to coat it. His spiritual pressure already cleared the field. Armament at the level of Garp could shatter mountains with a punch, but mountains and legends did not automatically matter in the shinobi world. Even with Nine Tails size and the Eight Gates stacked on top, yes, perhaps the moon would fear his kick, but time and pain were the price. He was not a monk. He was a former shut in. Ten push ups came with breaks.
Observation was different. Most genjutsu in Naruto needed eye contact. A few used sound, like Jiraiya's in Sage Mode. With Observation, even at entry level, he could ignore almost all standard illusions save for special cases like Izanami or Infinite Tsukuyomi. At the top he might be immune to them outright. Strong Observation sees the real. Illusion is false by definition. If your eyes can part true and false, even a perfect trick shows its seam.
Decision made. He chose the third.
Maybe haki sat in B tier because mastering it was brutal. Devil Fruits were instant power, and some like the toy fruit bent rules. Shinigami powers rewrote your being. Haki relied on sweat and will.
Even so, among B tier prizes, this one had to be a crown.
And some benefits were immediate. Observation and Armament would show their use the moment he had them. Perhaps Danzo would get a surprise when a hardened defense turned his kunai aside and made him yelp, "Masaka."
Now that he thought of it, perhaps because he had socketed too many Sharingan, Danzo loved kunai more than anyone. He tried stabbing Susanoo with them every other day.
Power poured into Mo Ke as soon as he chose. Three hakis settled as if he had always known them. His body shifted. From a lean one meter eighty he filled out with sleek lines of muscle, hard and springy.
The world around him appeared at once from every direction, including behind his head, as if he were in a 3D space from his past life and could pick any camera to watch through.
He took in the feel of haki and nodded.
Good. The time was just about right. The Third would be very busy tonight. It was time to speak to Naruto.
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