Chapter 51: The Weight of White Fang
Kakashi's initial test had been simple: verify if the swirling, spiral-shaped injuries on Mizuki's body were indeed from the Rasengan. The possibility seemed absurd—a ten-year-old mastering an A-rank, seal-less ninjutsu that had taken the Fourth Hokage years to perfect? Preposterous.
Yet the proof now lingered in the air—the ozone scent of spatial displacement, the faint chakra resonance of the Flying Thunder God formula on the scattered kunai, and the memory of that blue, screaming sphere that had shattered his clone.
But the true vertigo came a second later.
The Ren who had just defeated his shadow clone dissolved into white smoke.
Another clone.
Kakashi's visible eye widened. The Ren he'd been fighting, who'd displayed the Fourth's signature techniques with chilling proficiency, was just a shadow clone. The real one had been watching from a safe distance the entire time.
"Using a shadow clone against a shadow clone seemed fair," a voice called from the second-floor window across the courtyard. "Wouldn't you agree, Kakashi-sensei?"
Kakashi looked up. Ren Arakawa leaned against the window frame of the opposite hospital wing, looking utterly relaxed, as if he'd just watched an interesting play rather than participated in a spar that revealed forbidden techniques.
[System Notification: Live Stream Active]
[Viewers: 109 Pure Land Residents]
[Current Donation Pool: 328 viewer points]
[VIP Highlight: Sakumo Hatake - "My son... what has he become?"]
Uchiha Madara (VIP1): The boy's actual combat power is average, but his flair for the dramatic is unparalleled. Showmanship is a weapon too, I suppose.
Minato Namikaze (VIP1): The victory was largely psychological! Kakashi was so shocked by the Flying Thunder God that his combat judgment faltered! Otherwise, Ren wouldn't have won so easily!
Tobirama Senju (VIP5): "Your" Flying Thunder God? Need I remind you who developed the underlying spatial formulae, Fourth?
Minato Namikaze: But I was the one who perfected its combat application! And I'm the one who passed it to Ren!
Tobirama Senju: Passing around property that isn't yours seems to be a habit of yours.
Minato Namikaze: Sputters indignantly.
Sakumo Hatake (Regular Viewer): Strange. Kakashi's combat reflexes seem... diminished. Slower than I remember from his early jonin days.
Minato Namikaze: You're right, Sakumo-san. His current level seems stalled at elite jonin. I'd expected him to reach kage-level by now. Such wasted potential...
Tobirama Senju: You hold the Hatake boy in high regard, Fourth. Explain.
Uchiha Madara: Snorts. Of course he exaggerates his own student's prowess. Nearly thirty and still merely a jonin? Mediocre.
The chat briefly filled with indignant sputtering from various deceased jonin—Yuhi Kurenai, the Third Raikage, Yagura—all tacitly insulted by Madara's blanket dismissal. But none dared voice their protest too loudly. To the Ghost of the Uchiha, they were mediocre.
Minato Namikaze: I'm not exaggerating! Kakashi graduated the academy at five, made chunin at six, was leading his own squad by twelve! He created the Chidori—a lightning-nature assassination technique of incredible single-target penetration! His genius was undeniable!
Sakumo Hatake: A ghostly pride colored his voice. As befits the son of Konoha's White Fang.
A pause in the stream.
Uchiha Madara: Konoha's White Fang? What is that? A dental competition winner?
Uchiha Izuna (Regular Viewer): Probably the ninja with the whitest teeth in the village. A truly fearsome title.
Sakumo Hatake: The spectral equivalent of a deeply offended silence.
Tobirama Senju: Fourth, if this Kakashi was such a prodigy, why has his progress stagnated? A genius at twelve, yet still a jonin at nearly thirty? What happened?
Minato Namikaze: I... don't know. I died before I could find out. Something broke in him after... well. After.
Another heavy pause. The "after" hung unspoken: After Rin's death. After Obito's fall. After the Fourth's own demise.
Uchiha Izuna: It's obvious, isn't it? Look at what he was holding when he appeared! That... book. Reading that trash in daylight, probably stays up all night with it too. No wonder his skills have atrophied. The body can't sustain that kind of... dedication.
Tobirama Senju: I dislike agreeing with an Uchiha on principle, but the observation has merit. Degenerate habits corrupt discipline.
Hashirama Senju (Regular Viewer): It seems Jiraiya's... literary contributions have had wider consequences than we imagined.
Sakumo Hatake: A pained whisper. My son...
Minato Namikaze: Equally pained. My student...
Down in the courtyard, Kakashi finally retrieved his fallen copy of Icha Icha Paradise, brushing cherry blossoms from its cover. His movements were slow, deliberate. When he looked back up at Ren's window, his expression was unreadable behind the mask, but his single visible eye held a storm of emotions: shock, grief, suspicion, and a deep, weary confusion.
"You learned from scrolls," Kakashi repeated, his voice barely carrying across the distance. "Scrolls that shouldn't exist. Techniques that were never fully recorded."
Ren shrugged from the window. "The world's full of lost things, Hatake. Sometimes they find their way to people who can use them."
"And what will you use them for?" Kakashi's voice sharpened. "The Fourth's techniques weren't just power. They were tools of protection. Of saving people."
Ren met his gaze steadily. "I know what they are. And I know what I'm protecting."
He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. The unspoken name hung between them: Naruto.
Kakashi's shoulders slumped slightly, the tension bleeding out into something like resigned acceptance. He glanced toward the koi pond, where Naruto was now attempting to bribe the hospital's landscaping turtles with stolen bread rolls.
"His father would have liked you," Kakashi said quietly, almost to himself. "And been terrified of you."
Then he turned and walked away, not toward the hospital entrance, but toward the village gates, his posture that of a man carrying weights only he could see.
In the Pure Land, Sakumo Hatake watched his son's retreating back.
Sakumo Hatake: He walks like he's still carrying all of them. Obito. Rin. Sensei. Me.
Minato Namikaze: The Hatake burden is a heavy one. You carried the shame of a mission failed over comrades saved. He carries the ghosts of comrades lost.
Tobirama Senju: "Konoha's White Fang." I remember the reports. A man so skilled his very presence on a battlefield could cause enemy forces to retreat. They said his chakra-coated blade could cut through anything.
Sakumo Hatake: Bitter laugh. And they said choosing to save comrades over completing a mission made me a disgrace. That my "weakness" cost the village more than any enemy ever did. So I... left. And left my son with that legacy.
Uchiha Madara: Foolish. Village loyalty over comrade loyalty is a sickness. The Senju's "Will of Fire" is a disease that burns its own.
Hashirama Senju: Madara, that's not—
Uchiha Madara: Spare me, Hashirama! Your village consumed this White Fang, and now it consumes his son! Your dream is a parasite!
The argument began again, ancient and cyclical. But Sakumo Hatake wasn't listening. He watched his son disappear into the Konoha streets, a lonely figure sandwiched between the towering legacy of the Fourth Hokage and the heavy shame of the White Fang.
In the hospital window, Ren watched Kakashi go. The live stream continued its debates in his mind, but he tuned them out, focusing instead on the sensory input from his Meditation technique—Sakura's stabilizing chakra, Sasuke's simmering anger, Naruto's bright, chaotic energy as he tried to befriend amphibious wildlife.
Ren Arakawa (subvocalizing): Konoha's White Fang. Another hero chewed up and spat out by the village. And his son carries the teeth marks.
He turned from the window. He had an Anbu internship to begin, a Jinchuriki to protect, and a village full of shadows to navigate. And now, apparently, a emotionally compromised jonin sensei who'd just seen the ghost of his teacher in a ten-year-old's hands.
Somewhere in the Hokage Tower, Hiruzen Sarutobi looked up from his paperwork, feeling the peculiar chakra signatures from the hospital district—the unmistakable aftertaste of Flying Thunder God, the ozone crackle of a Rasengan's collapse.
He sighed, aging another year in a single breath.
"And so it begins," he murmured to the empty office. "The next generation arrives, carrying all our old ghosts with them."
Outside, the sun dipped toward the Hokage monuments, casting the stone faces of Hashirama, Tobirama, Hiruzen, and Minato into long, watching shadows that stretched across the entire village.
In the Pure Land, the stone face of the Fourth Hokage watched too, through the eyes of a streaming system, as the legacy he'd died to protect began to move in ways he could never have predicted.