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AN
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Nothing to say here really.
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--Konohagakure, Nine Years Before Naruto's Birth, Academy, Morning--
Yuuki yawned into the back of his hand and waited. He had come early, as Kazu had told him to, and the classroom was still half empty: a few students by the windows, more drifting in by the minute. His limbs held the pleasant, aching weight of the weekend's training. He had run the course in his grove until the obstacles stopped feeling like separate problems and became one long route his body simply knew: branch, beam, rope, landing. He had also checked the treeline around the cabin more often than he needed to, half expecting a white mask to step out of it. Inu had not reappeared, which was somehow worse.
He could probably run the course with his eyes closed.
'Which would be a terrible idea in the Forest of Death. So naturally I'm going to want to try it eventually.'
The thought almost made him smile. Then his gaze drifted to the desk by the back window, and the feeling faded.
Kakashi's seat was empty again.
The door slid aside before Yuuki could decide whether that meant anything. Kazu came in with a narrow stack of books under one arm, wearing his usual measured expression and an unusual tightness around the eyes. He set the books on Yuuki's desk first.
"Morning, Yuuki. These are for you to study while the rest of the class works on chakra control. Don't try to learn all of it in one sitting." His gaze held Yuuki's a second longer than necessary, as though he had a reason to think the warning was needed.
Yuuki slid the books into his bag and gave his most innocent nod. "Of course, Kazu-sensei."
"That wasn't convincing."
A few of the students already seated snickered, and Yuuki looked away before anyone could see his ears warming. Kazu waited until the last stragglers found their seats, then moved to the front of the room and clapped once. The sound cut through the low chatter.
"Attention. Your classmate Hatake Kakashi will be joining us late for the foreseeable future. He's taking the examinations required to advance out of this class." The words landed heavily. Several heads turned toward the empty desk by the window. "Also, the war effort has intensified, and the Academy is speeding up your practical training. Starting this week, you'll spar twice a week: Monday and Thursday. That's how we'll measure your improvement under pressure."
The room went quiet in a different way after that. Outside, pale winter sunlight lay across the Academy yard, and birds called from the trees as if the village were not sending shinobi to die beyond its walls. Yuuki watched one of the smaller boys curl his fingers around the edge of his desk.
'So that's what the absences were.'
He had half guessed it on Friday. Hearing it said aloud was different. Kakashi was not just ahead of the class anymore. He was leaving it.
Kazu pulled a wooden board from beside his desk and propped it where everyone could see. Small nameplates filled its face in descending order, with Kakashi's still at the top. "Since Kakashi's on his way out, Yuuki is currently second in the sparring rankings. These aren't your full academic standings. They're there so you can challenge the person directly above you and learn where you actually stand." His gaze swept the room. "Nobody's expected to win every time. You're expected to learn from losing."
His attention settled on two names. "We'll start with the top two students who are here. Yuuki Mori. Kanari Hyūga. Step forward."
Yuuki rose, trying not to show his surprise, as a girl from the far side of the room stood at the same time.
Kanari was nearly a head shorter than he was, but nothing about the way she moved was small. She crossed the room without a wasted step, dark hair tied neatly behind her head, pale eyes already fixed on the field beyond the door. She did not look nervous. If anything, she looked annoyed that everyone had noticed her.
'A Hyūga. Branch family member she was probably drilled in Gentle Fist since before she could read.'
The Hyūga style was built on precision, control, and strikes he really did not want to take.
Kazu tucked the board under his arm and led the class out to the sparring field, where two circles had been drawn into the packed dirt. Aito stood at the far ring with his arms folded, long brown hair tied low against his back, cloth wrappings bound tight around both calves. His easy smile was in place as always, though it had thinned a little since Kazu's mention of the war. He would oversee the other matches while Kazu refereed the near ring.
Yuuki and Kanari stopped opposite each other. A cold breeze dragged dust across the field and stirred the cloth bands on the practice posts. They formed the Seal of Confrontation.
"Begin," Kazu said.
Both children sprang backward, opening a few paces between them.
Kanari settled into a stance with one hand forward and the other near her ribs. It was not quite the elegant, open palmed posture Yuuki remembered from the anime. She was too young, and her Byakugan had not awakened. But the shape of it was there. Her weight stayed light on the balls of her feet, ready to redirect force rather than meet it head on.
"I watched your match against Chofi Akimichi last week," she said as they began to circle. Her voice was calm and flat. "You don't look much stronger than you did then. You can save us both time by giving up."
Yuuki raised an eyebrow. "That might've been true last week. However that was last week, this week I'm a different person."
He moved before she could answer.
Chakra flowed into his legs. The world did not slow, exactly, but his body answered faster than it ever had before the weekend. His first step tore a short groove through the dirt, and Kanari's expression sharpened as he crossed the distance.
'The rabbit legs, the course, the reinforcement it worked. I'm definitly faster.'
His right fist went for her shoulder. Kanari turned with it instead of away, and her palm met his forearm, not hard enough to stop him but placed perfectly enough to turn the strike off line. She slipped inside his reach and jabbed two fingers into the muscle near his elbow. A bolt of numbness ran down his arm.
'What the, she redirected that like it was nothing.'
Yuuki pulled back, but Kanari had already shifted. Her fingertips tapped twice beneath his other shoulder, quick and precise. It did not hurt much at first. Then the chakra in that arm stuttered like a flame caught in a gust of wind.
"Byakugan or not," Kanari said, following without overcommitting, "my family taught me where the big points are. The shoulder, the chest, the ribs. They aren't hard to find."
'She can't see every point, but she knows enough to wreck my control if she gets close. Great.'
Yuuki hopped back twice, shaking out his tingling hands. She had the advantage at close range. That did not mean he had to let her choose the range. "So you've got the upper body covered," he said, forcing an easy tone. "What about the lower half?"
He dashed in again. This time he did not lead with his hands. His left foot planted, chakra compressed through his calf, and his right leg snapped toward her middle. Kanari blocked with her forearm, and the impact was sharp enough to make several students wince. Her feet slid backward through the dirt.
Her eyes widened despite herself. "How are you putting that much force behind a kick?"
Yuuki grinned, pleased to have finally surprised her. "Trade secret."
He followed with another kick, then a third, varying their height and rhythm the way the Academy manual described, though his body only half understood the motions. Kanari gave ground, turning her hips and catching the blows on her forearms. She was not trying to win the exchange. She was waiting for him to get greedy.
Then he saw an opening at her left side, and his danger sense prickled. The feeling was faint and strange, barely more than the urge to yank his hand off a hot stove, but he trusted it and jerked his reaching arm back. Kanari's hand closed on empty air where his wrist should have been.
For the first time, she frowned. "You noticed that?"
"Maybe I'm not as slow as I look."
"Maybe not." A hint of interest touched her voice. "But you still move like someone who's never had to fight properly."
She stepped in. Yuuki threw a punch, but his shoulders telegraphed it, and Kanari brushed his arm aside and drove two fingers into his ribs. Air left his lungs in a startled cough. Before he could recover, she touched the center of his chest, not hard, not even enough to bruise, but exactly where his breath was already failing. His chakra reinforcement collapsed, and the strength drained from his legs so abruptly that he stumbled.
Kanari did not chase him recklessly. She stayed just close enough, palms up, reading his balance while he fought to get air back into his lungs.
'Technique matters. It matters so much more than I wanted it to.'
He tried one last low sweep. Kanari hopped over it, landed behind him, and pressed a wooden kunai to the side of his throat before he could turn.
"Winner: Kanari Hyūga," Kazu announced.
The match had not lasted long. It still took Yuuki several breaths to make his legs listen. Kanari lowered the kunai and offered him a hand, her expression as cool as ever. She did not look like someone who had just won. "Your kick was strong. If you stop announcing every other attack with your shoulders, it might be dangerous."
Yuuki let her pull him upright. "That almost sounded nice."
"Don't get used to it."
They formed the Seal of Reconciliation. Back with the gathered students, Kazu slid Kanari's nameplate above Yuuki's. "Kanari's sparring rank is now first among the students here," he said. "Again, that doesn't decide who becomes the best shinobi. It tells you where you are today. Treat it as information, not an insult."
'Beaten again, and not even by Kakashi. By some girl who doesn't even show up in canon.'
The thought was petty, and he knew it. That did not stop the frustration from burning in his chest.
"Looks like you took a bit of a beating back there," someone said beside him. "Not that you're bad or anything! I just meant-"
Yuuki turned to find Rin, bangs framing her face, holding a small dark container in both hands. It was the first time she had ever spoken to him. Her cheeks went pink as she rushed to recover. "I've been reading about basic medicine at home, and I made a healing salve with my mom's help. I was wondering if you wanted to try it."
Yuuki's irritation loosened. Her concern felt too sincere to refuse. "You made it? Then sure. Those pokes hurt more than they look."
Rin brightened, then scooped out a little of the pale green paste. It smelled of crushed leaves and something bitter. She spread it over the tender spots on his arms with careful, deliberate strokes. "I believe it," she said. "The Hyūga have refined their techniques for generations. Kanari's especially good at noticing what people are about to do."
Yuuki watched Kanari in the next ring, quietly correcting her stance as though winning had only handed her another problem to solve. "Yeah. I noticed."
"Tell me how your arm feels later, okay? If it gets worse, you should-"
"Rin! Rin! Did you see? I almost won!"
Obito barreled toward them, flushed and dramatic. Behind him, his opponent stood entirely unharmed, looking more confused than tired.
Rin blinked. "Obito, your match lasted two seconds."
"Two very close seconds!" Obito's eyes landed on Yuuki's arm, then on the container in Rin's hands, and lit up with sudden inspiration. He collapsed onto the dirt with a theatrical groan. "Ooooh. That fight was really tough. I think I might be seriously hurt."
Yuuki stared at him. "You landed on your feet."
"The damage could be internal."
Rin put a hand over her mouth, not quite hiding a smile. "You're not hurt."
"Rin." Obito pressed a hand to his chest with the full weight of a child facing injustice. "How can you say that when I'm clearly suffering?"
She sighed, but her expression softened. "Fine. One tiny bit. And only because I need the practice."
Obito sprang upright so fast that Yuuki snorted. "See? I told you it was serious."
Rin dabbed a little salve onto his cheek anyway. Obito went perfectly still, trying and failing to look dignified.
'What weird little kids.'
The thought held more amusement than judgment.
--An Hour Later--
The field had been swept and the last matches finished. Yuuki's arms had stopped feeling as though someone had driven needles into them. Kazu approached him while the rest of the class lined up at the practice wall.
"We're starting the control exercise. You're dismissed until tomorrow, Yuuki. Read the next chapter in those books and be ready to discuss it."
Yuuki nodded. "Yes, Kazu-sensei."
"And Yuuki?"
He paused at the gate.
"Training isn't punishment for losing. If you only train when you're angry, you'll teach yourself to hate it."
For a moment, Yuuki had no quick answer. Kazu's tone was not harsh. That made it worse.
"I know," he said at last.
Kazu gave a quiet hum that clearly meant he did not fully believe him. "Good. Go home before dark."
Yuuki waited until he had turned the corner beyond the Academy before breaking into a run.
'No way. I'm not letting anyone beat me again. Not Kakashi. Not Kanari.'
The grove was cold and dim beneath its layered canopy by the time he reached it, his breath fogging in the still air. His cabin stood between thick trunks, still so rough, with its uneven boards and narrow shuttered window, that it looked more like a stubborn pile of lumber than a home. The web alarms trembled in the breeze, nearly invisible except where a shaft of light caught their silver lines.
Yuuki set Kazu's books on a flat stump and touched their covers one by one. Kazu's warning drifted through his head. He ignored it. Black smoke poured from his palm and curled over ink and paper, and the first book vanished. Then the second. Then the third.
The knowledge arrived too fast. Angles of balance. Foot placement. Diagrams of throws, pins, and breaks. The difference between force and leverage. A dozen ways an opponent could turn a rushing attack against him. Yuuki dropped to one knee, clutching his head as pain flared behind his eyes.
"Ow- damn it," he hissed. "One sitting was definitely too much."
The pressure did not ease just because he complained. He planted a palm on the mossy ground until his breathing steadied, then looked toward the obstacle course at the edge of the grove. "Fine. Knowing it isn't the same as doing it. I'll give my body something to practice."
He ran.
The first lap was ugly. He overreached for a branch, landed too hard on the next beam, and nearly tangled his own feet in a silk line. On the second, he slowed down enough to remember the diagrams. Keep his center beneath him. Do not let the shoulders announce the strike. Let the hips begin the turn.
By the fifth lap, the migraine had dulled from a spike to a heavy pressure. Sweat soaked his shirt, and his legs grew heavy, yet Kanari's fingers against his ribs stayed sharper in his memory than the ache.
'I was faster. I was stronger. So why did I lose so badly?'
He caught a hanging rope, swung through a gap, and landed on a narrow log with both feet lined up.
'Because strength is an answer, not the whole question. She made me give her the answer she wanted.'
That realization irritated him almost as much as the loss, but it also opened something in his mind. Traps. Terrain. Angles. He did not have to become a Hyūga to stop fighting like a boy who only knew how to rush forward.
When the light thinned to gold between the trunks, he left the grove and headed for the river with an idea he suspected he would regret.
The riverbed was a pale ribbon between darker trees, its water whispering over stones. He spent the last of the daylight rigging the bank: silk lines run to bent saplings and buried stakes, tripwires low across the mud, a few sprung branches he could release from where he would stand. Stakes were smeared with a purple paste ground from toxic roots the wildlife book had taught him to recognize and the poison from the spider-snake combonation. It went on thick and smelled like a sickroom.
None of it was foolproof. The forest had already taught him better. But Kanari had shown him what a false opening was for, and he could offer one of his own.
'Nothing that thinks like prey will walk up to me out here. But something that thinks like a hunter might.'
This was the part where the wiser half of him should have spoken up. Inu's voice did, faintly. There is always something stronger than you. Yuuki filed it beside Kazu's warning and left both there.
'I'm not fighting it. I'm testing the traps. If it goes badly, I climb.'
He stood openly near the bank and waited.
For a while, nothing came. Night gathered beneath the trees. Even in midwinter, the Forest of Death never went truly quiet: something chirped in the reeds, and a pale-bellied frog surfaced, watched him with bulbous eyes, and slid silently back under. Yuuki stayed still until his calves began to ache. The thread beneath his fingers gave him faint impressions of vibration: water, wind, a beetle crawling too close to a line.
Then every small sound along the opposite bank seemed to disappear.
Yuuki looked up.
The black panther stood between two trees. Moonlight caught the curve of its shoulders and the wet shine of its eyes. It was larger than he remembered, lean rather than bulky, with one old scar cutting through the fur near its flank. The wrongness in its stare was harder to explain. It did not watch him with the simple, hungry focus of an animal. It assessed him.
'There you are.'
Yuuki kept his face still and let one hand close around a silk trigger. It was not enough to kill a true monster. It only had to slow one.
'Perfect. Just stand there and-'
He pulled.
Three sharpened stakes snapped from the reeds with a dry twang. The panther moved before the first had crossed half the distance. It did not simply leap away. It flowed aside, shoulders dipping, and placed itself between the shots as though it had seen them coming through the mud itself. The stakes hissed into a tree trunk behind it.
Yuuki's stomach dropped.
'What the hell? The trigger didn't make a sound. How did it know?'
The panther's ears flattened. It sprang.
Yuuki thrust out his palm. Silk erupted in a broad fan, chakra pulling coldly at his reserves as the threads raced for the animal's forelegs. The panther twisted in midair, and two strands caught along its side. Yuuki yanked with everything he had, not toward himself but toward the second trap.
The animal struck the bank where he intended. A hidden branch whipped upward and drove two sharpened stakes into its flank. One sank shallowly. The other scored a line through its hide. The panther landed hard, snarling for the first time, and Yuuki almost cheered.
Then it tore free of the silk before the capture loop could tighten, and came at him anyway.
'Oh, shit.'
He threw himself sideways. Claws cut through the air where his chest had been, close enough that he felt the wind of them. He hit the base of a tree, shoved chakra into his hands and feet, and ran straight up the trunk. He caught a branch, hauled himself over it, and launched into the canopy.
The panther pursued below, a dark streak over roots and stone. Yuuki ran from branch to branch, forcing himself not to look back too often. His spider perception sharpened under the stress, pulling the tremor of silk lines and the position of every limb into a frantic picture. He crossed the first stretch of the route he had rigged. A line snapped under the panther's paws, and a deadfall crashed down behind it. The animal had already changed direction.
The second trap released a spray of sharpened reeds. The panther rolled through them and took only a shallow cut across one shoulder. The third was a loop meant to catch a hind leg. It sensed the tension in the line, bounded over it, and kept coming.
'It's reading the traps. Either it can sense the chakra in the trap, or it's smarter than any animal has a right to be.'
The poison should have been working. The panther's stride did look less steady now, and blood blackened the fur at its flank, but it had not slowed enough. Yuuki had planned for an animal, for fear and hunger and instinct. This creature adapted.
It sprang onto a fallen trunk directly beneath him, and the wood groaned under its weight. Yuuki sent silk toward the next branch, but the panther's paw raked across the line before it could go taut. The thread snapped. Yuuki dropped, caught a lower branch with both hands, and barely pulled his legs clear as claws tore splinters from the wood below.
His heart pounded so hard it hurt.
'Stay calm. The poison's in it. It won't last forever. I just have to not get shredded before then.'
He forced himself to think like a hunter instead of prey. Kanari's lesson came back with brutal clarity: do not give the opponent the attack they expect.
Yuuki stopped running in a straight line. He dropped from the branch, hit the ground running, and cut left across a slope of tangled roots, then doubled back beneath a low limb. The panther followed, expecting him to take to the trees again. Instead, Yuuki kicked a loose stone into one of his own silk lines, and a cluster of sharpened stakes swung down from the branch above.
The panther avoided the first two. The third drove into its shoulder.
It roared, not a cat's ordinary cry, but a raw, furious sound that seemed too large for the forest around it. Yuuki flinched, then ran again, leading it through the narrowing corridor between traps. The animal was slowing. Its breaths came rough and wet. It stumbled once, caught itself, and looked toward the darkness beyond the trees.
It was going to retreat.
Yuuki hesitated for half a heartbeat. Letting it go was the safe choice. It was wounded, poisoned, and angry, and chasing it deeper into the forest was exactly the kind of decision that turned Academy students into missing person notices. Then the panther limped into the dark, and the last of his caution went with it.
Yuuki followed.
'It knows where I live now. I can't let it come back while I'm asleep.'
The excuse sounded sensible enough to quiet the smaller, wiser part of him that was screaming to stop.
The chase took him farther from the river than he had ever gone alone. He used every thread and improvised trap he had left, not to kill the animal but to steer it into terrain it could not navigate cleanly. The panther dodged some and took others. By the time it reached a clearing choked with old roots, its paws were slipping in the damp earth. Yuuki saw his chance and sent two silk lines around a fallen trunk to close the path behind it.
The panther lunged sideways instead. Its paws struck the hollow shell of an unusually large tree stump, and rotten wood shattered inward. The animal vanished through the opening, tumbling down a dark, steep passage.
Yuuki skidded to the rim.
Below, a dim light glowed.
"What the hell is that?"
He should have left. He knew that immediately. But the passage was too straight to be natural, and a stale chemical smell drifted up from below, and curiosity hooked into him before caution could get a proper grip.
'If that panther came from somewhere, this could explain how it knew about my traps.'
Yuuki lowered himself down the passage, using chakra to keep his feet from slipping. At the bottom, a metal door was set into stone, its surface scratched and spotted with rust. A weak lamp hummed beside it, throwing a sick yellow circle across the floor.
The panther was there.
It crouched in the shadow beside the door, legs coiled beneath it, blood dripping from its flank. Its eyes met Yuuki's one last time.
The animal sprang.
Yuuki froze for an instant. No trap. No branch. No room to run. Then black smoke erupted from his outstretched palm and swallowed the panther in midair.
The smoke churned, dense and silent. The animal's weight vanished. A heartbeat later, the passage was empty except for the smell of blood and damp stone.
Yuuki staggered backward, one hand braced on the wall. Something new flooded into him, not muscle memory this time, but awareness. Small points of life pricked at the edges of his perception: insects in the cracks, worms under the soil, a nest of mice somewhere beyond the stone. There were too many.
"W-what the hell?"
The sensations clawed at his attention until instinct told him to pull them close. Yuuki did. The overwhelming map collapsed inward until it reached only a few feet beyond his skin. He breathed carefully. Within that short distance, every living thing still felt painfully clear.
"Chakra sensing?" he whispered. "Only a few shinobi can do that. Why would a panther have it? It can't just learn that from living in the Forest of Death."
He looked at the metal door. The answer sat on the other side of it like a stone in his stomach.
"Maybe this place has something to do with it."
He pushed. The door opened with a reluctant scrape.
The room beyond was not large, but it made Yuuki stop on the threshold. Metal tables stood beneath dusty lamps. Empty cages lined one wall. Glass tubes, some whole and some broken, rested in stained racks. There were monitors with dark screens, coiled wires, surgical tools, and shelves crowded with cloudy jars. It was not the sort of high technology from his old world. It was worse somehow: crude equipment shaped around things that should never have been done.
The air smelled of old disinfectant, rust, and something sweet that made the back of his throat tighten.
"What is this place?"
On the nearest table, a thick glass tube bore a faded label: 24-P. A clipboard lay beside it, its paper curled at the edges. Yuuki picked it up with careful fingers and read under his breath.
"Subject 24-P is a success. Transplanted sensory organ has accepted chakra pathways. Mortality rate remains unacceptable, but one viable result after twenty four attempts is sufficient proof of concept. Human trials will begin when an appropriate source is secured."
Yuuki stopped breathing.
'Human experimentation?'
A memory rose uninvited: dim laboratories from Naruto, a pale man with a smile that never reached his eyes, children used as materials in the pursuit of power. A sick taste filled his mouth.
'Orochimaru. Of course.'
And suddenly Inu's assignment made a horrible kind of sense. An ANBU posted in the Forest of Death for days, unable to say why.
Cold crawled over Yuuki's arms. If Inu, or anyone like him, found an Academy student inside this place, the story about secretly training to catch Kakashi would not cover it. They would ask how he had survived the forest, why there was blood by the door, and what had made him come here at all.
He should leave.
He took one step farther into the laboratory.
A grim resolve settled over his fear. The room was disgusting. It made his skin itch. But the panther's new sense still fluttered around him, proof that something useful had been created here.
'I hate this. But I can't pretend it isn't an opportunity.'
Yuuki looked over the broken tubes and sealed containers. Some held only murky fluid. Some held shapes he could not identify. Curiosity and revulsion pulled in opposite directions until they became the same awful knot.
'I don't know what I'll find. If it's anything like that panther, though, it could be useful.'
Keeping one ear on the tunnel, Yuuki began to inspect Orochimaru's abandoned experiments.
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AN
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Mwehehehe, my first cliffhanger... I think. As long as it leaves you wanting to read more, it works.
I think this marks the quarter-way point of the Academy arc, or maybe even more, depending on how fast the pace wants to move. But trust and believe, once we're out of this arc, everything is off the table and things will be going down...
4928 Words