Chapter 66: The Weight of a Legacy
Seeing Naruto strike that ridiculous, arms-crossed pose, Kakashi paused mid-page turn. "Um... is there something wrong with your... posture?"
"Tch! The one with the problem is your outdated hair sense!" Naruto yelled back, then charged headlong, a whirlwind of orange and unchecked fury.
Kakashi didn't even look up from his book, his visible eye still tracing the lines of Jiraiya's prose. His utter dismissal was more insulting than any taunt.
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[VIP Highlight: Sakumo Hatake - "My son... what has he become?"]
Tobirama Senju (VIP5): By the Sage, Sakumo! Your boy is addicted! Constantly reading that drivel—he'll ruin his kidneys and his constitution!
Uchiha Madara (VIP1): Disgusting. Nearly thirty years old, performing for children. Unbearable.
Sakumo Hatake (Regular Viewer): Had I known he'd descend to this... I should have taken him with me when I left this world.
Minato Namikaze (VIP1): Wait, it's not entirely Kakashi's fault. The years have been... unkind to him.
Sakumo Hatake: Explain.
Minato Namikaze: Sighs, the sound heavy across the void. My team had three students. During a mission, one—Obito—was crushed saving Kakashi's life. Kakashi carried that guilt like a stone. Then, not long after... he was forced to kill our other teammate, Rin, whom you've met in the stream. The trauma... broke something in him. His entire personality shifted.
Sakumo Hatake: I... didn't know.
Uchiha Madara: Tragedy does not excuse degeneracy.
Tobirama Senju: More to the point: who recommended a psychologically compromised individual for the Anbu? That organization is a meat grinder for the soul. Sending him there was tantamount to poisoning a wound.
Sakumo Hatake: Exactly. I served as Anbu Commander. I know its darkness intimately. Whoever pushed Kakashi into that pit harbored malicious intent.
Uchiha Shisui (VIP2): The culprit is likely Danzō. His methods are precisely this cruel.
Uchiha Fugaku (VIP1): It bears his signature brand of psychological manipulation.
A tense silence stretched in the stream.
Minato Namikaze: ...It was me.
Tobirama Senju: You? Were you intellectually deficient?
Minato Namikaze: I had just become Hokage! Kakashi was lost, drowning in guilt. I thought the structure, the purpose of the Anbu might... anchor him. Give him a new mission. I never imagined it would worsen the damage.
Uchiha Izuna (Regular Viewer): And then you gave him your sensei's erotic novels as palliative care?
Minato Namikaze: No! I didn't— Those he discovered on his own!
Sakumo Hatake: Another heavy sigh. It seems my son was fated to have you as his teacher.
Minato Namikaze: What does that mean?!
Below, Naruto's charge finally reached its climax. But instead of a wild punch, the boy skidded to a halt and formed a rapid, familiar hand seal.
Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!
Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof!
Not one or two, but seven perfect shadow clones materialized in puffs of white smoke, surrounding Kakashi in a loose circle. Each was solid, each radiating the same determined chakra signature.
From her hiding place in the bushes, Sakura Haruno gasped silently. Clones? Real ones? When did Naruto learn that? She vividly remembered the academy's clone test—Naruto's pathetic, wobbling illusion that earned him failure after failure.
In the branches above, Uchiha Sasuke's eyes narrowed, his fingers tightening around a kunai. The dead-last... mastering a high-level replication technique? First Ren, now him? The comfortable hierarchy of the academy was crumbling, and the pressure was a cold fist around his heart.
"Don't look down on me, Kakashi-sensei!" all eight Narutos shouted in unison. "ATTACK!"
They surged inward from all sides, a coordinated pincer move that was actually... tactically sound.
Kakashi finally closed his book with a soft snap. His single visible eye assessed the closing circle in a microsecond. Multiple physical clones. Chakra expenditure massive for a genin. Coordination improved. But still...
He didn't move to escape the encirclement. Instead, he moved through it.
His motions were a blur of economic violence. A finger tap to a temple here. A gentle sweep of the ankle there. A light palm strike to a sternum. Each contact was precise, painless, and utterly effective.
Poof. Poof. Poof.
Clone after clone dissolved into smoke. In less than five seconds, seven puffs of white mist drifted in the clearing, leaving only the original Naruto, panting and wide-eyed, his charge now a hesitant stagger.
"Improved," Kakashi acknowledged, his voice devoid of its earlier mockery. "The coordination shows thought. But you revealed your best technique immediately. In a real engagement, that's a death sentence."
He took a single step forward. Naruto flinched.
"Now," Kakashi said, his eye locking onto Naruto's. "Let's see if you can handle what comes after the initial plan fails."
Hashirama Senju (Regular Viewer): He's teaching. Harshly, but he's teaching.
Tobirama Senju: The lesson is "never reveal your full capability in the first exchange." A fundamental of protracted warfare.
Minato Namikaze: He's pushing him to think beyond the first move. Good.
But Ren, watching from the shadows with Yamato, saw something else. Kakashi's chakra, usually a calm, deep pool, had spiked minutely when Naruto formed those seals. There was recognition there. And something else... a flicker of pain, quickly suppressed.
He sees Obito in him, Ren realized. The reckless charge, the loud declarations, the hidden talent. It's a ghost he's fighting alongside the boy.
Yamato leaned close, his whisper barely audible. "The jinchūriki's resilience is notable. But his tactics are still primitive. He's not a direct flight risk yet."
"Yet," Ren echoed.
Below, the "lesson" continued. Kakashi began demonstrating the gap between a genin's enthusiasm and a jōnin's refined skill, a gap as wide and deep as the Valley of the End.
And in the Pure Land, Sakumo Hatake watched his son—a man shaped by loss, guilt, and poor choices, now trying to prevent another generation from breaking on the same wheels—and felt a sorrow deeper than any he'd known in life.
We leave our children such heavy worlds, he thought. And call it legacy.