Chapter 90: Tree-Walking and Taunting Ancestors
The fallout from the Mizukage's domestic revelations continued to simmer in the Pure Land, a low-grade psychic hum of outrage, schadenfreude, and morbid fascination. Yagura's pleas for dignity were met with the casual brutality of those who had lived and died by older, harsher metrics.
[Yagura Karatachi: Have some respect! I am—was—a Kage!]
[Uchiha Madara: Your title is a pebble beneath my sandal. In my time, 'Kage' was what we called the barely competent managers who handled logistics so the real warriors could fight.]
[Uchiha Izuna: Exactly. If you couldn't solo a small army, you were support staff. No offense to the support staff.]
[Tobirama Senju: It pains me to agree with them, but it's true. The standard was… different. The janitors in the Senju compound were retired Jōnin. 'Kage-level' was the entry requirement for a seat at the strategy table.]
[Yagura Karatachi: …I retract my statement. Please proceed.]
[Hyūga Hizashi: The Warring States Era sounds horrifying. I thank fate daily for my peaceful birth century.]
[Yūhi Shinku: I would have been polishing floors for a living. If I was lucky.]
Back in the damp, misty reality of the Land of Waves, the night's practicalities took precedence. After the sparse meal, Kakashi herded his genin—minus the anomaly that was Ren—into a small, mossy grove behind Tazuna's house. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and salt.
"Alright," Kakashi said, his voice cutting through the gloom. "Zabuza is wounded, but he's not gone. His apprentice is out there. We need to maximize your effectiveness, and that starts with fundamentals. Chakra control."
Naruto's eyes lit up like twin lanterns. "Chakra control! Like Ren! So I can run on the water with Sakura-chan too?"
Kakashi's visible eye twitched. "It's chakra, Naruto. And no, this is the beginner version. Tree-walking. Water-walking comes later." He demonstrated, walking vertically up the trunk of a sturdy pine as if it were a gentle slope, his feet adhering to the bark with subtle chakra adhesion.
"Whoa! With this, I can get a way better view when I'm peeping on Sakura-chan's bath—"
THWACK!
Sakura's fist, fueled by righteous fury and profound embarrassment, connected with the back of Naruto's head with a sound like a mallet hitting a watermelon. He face-planted into the soft forest floor with a muffled oomph.
"Idiot! Pervert! Moron!" Sakura hissed, her face crimson.
Ren, leaning against a tree at the edge of the clearing, watched the familiar farce with a detached amusement. The butterfly effect is subtle, he mused. Naruto's idiocy seems to have been refined to a purer, more concentrated form.
[Tobirama Senju: Fourth, I must ask: did your son suffer any cranial trauma during birth? Or perhaps exposure to volatile sealing inks? To vocalize such a… reconnaissance fantasy in front of the subject… it suggests a profound disconnect from social survival instincts.]
[Minato Namikaze: I… I wasn't there! I died! I don't know! Maybe… maybe it's a phase!]
[Kushina Uzumaki: It's not a phase, Minato! It's a catastrophe!]
Kakashi, sighing, produced three kunai. "Use these to mark your progress. Focus chakra on the soles of your feet. Too little, you slip. Too much, you repel. Find the balance."
Naruto, rubbing the new lump on his head, snatched a kunai with determination. "Alright! This is nothing for the future Hokage! I'll master it in one try! Believe it!"
He charged the tree.
He kicked off.
He managed two stumbling, chakra-spastic steps up the trunk before his feet blazed with erratic energy and shot him backwards, landing flat on his back with a grunt.
[Minato Namikaze: That's… a spirited attempt! He's… enthusiastic!]
Sasuke, watching with disdain, didn't rush. He observed Naruto's failure, analyzed the chakra flare, then approached his own tree. His movements were controlled, precise. He placed a foot on the bark, chakra flowing in a steady, measured pulse. Step. Step. Step. He ascended six steps, his Sharingan active, analyzing the feedback from his own chakra. On the seventh step, he overcorrected, pushing too much chakra out. His foot cracked the bark and he was ejected, flipping in the air to land in a crouch.
It was a failure, but a competent, analytical one.
[Uchiha Fugaku: Smug psychic noise Hm. Controlled. Analytical. A true Uchiha approaches a problem with intellect, not brute force.]
[Minato Namikaze: Naruto just needs to find his rhythm!]
[Uchiha Fugaku: His rhythm seems to be 'face, meet floor.' Care to make it interesting, Fourth? A little wager?]
The gauntlet was thrown into the digital arena.
[Minato Namikaze: A bet? On our sons? You're on! If Naruto reaches the top first, you… you apologize for doubting him!]
[Uchiha Fugaku: An apology? How mundane. Let's raise the stakes. If your boy wins, I'll call you 'father.' If mine wins, you call me 'father.' A proper familial acknowledgment of superiority. Do you dare?]
The chat held its breath. This was the kind of petty, ancestral drama it lived for.
Minato's text hesitated, flickering. The image of Naruto, currently trying to climb the tree by hugging it and willing himself upward, was not inspiring confidence.
[Tobirama Senju: Do it, Fourth! Show some spine! Believe in your progeny! Miracles happen!]
[Minato Namikaze: You… you really think so, Lord Second?]
[Tobirama Senju: Of course! Now bet!]
Emboldened by the (feigned) confidence of a legendary Hokage, Minato took the plunge.
[Minato Namikaze: Fine! It's a bet, Fugaku! May the best son win!]
[Tobirama Senju: Oh, for the love of— I was being sarcastic, you gullible fool!]
[Minato Namikaze: …WHAT?]
[Uchiha Fugaku: Triumphant cackling The bet is sealed! Witnessed by all! No take-backs!]
[Hashirama Senju: Ooh! A wager! Can I get in? I love gambling!]
[Uchiha Fugaku: With all due respect, First Hokage, this is a paternal wager. Do you have a living son to wager on?]
[Hashirama Senju: …My son died. A long time ago.]
A moment of awkward digital silence.
[Uchiha Fugaku: My condolences. Then, I'm afraid you cannot participate.]
[Hashirama Senju: Dejected psychic noise …It's not fair.]
Back in the grove, the "competition" was less than dramatic. Naruto's attempts grew increasingly frantic and less effective. He tried running at the tree. He tried yelling at it. He tried promising it ramen. Sasuke, meanwhile, was making steady, incremental progress. His Sharingan copied Kakashi's chakra flow patterns from memory, and while his control wasn't perfect, it was methodical. He was on his fifth attempt, already halfway up the tree, while Naruto was debating whether to use shadow clones as a ladder.
Ren watched it all, a small, unreadable smile on his face. His senses, however, were not on the comedy in the clearing. They were extended outwards, through Minato's Meditation technique, feeling the texture of the night. The mist was a living thing here, a blanket that muffled sound and hid movement. But it couldn't hide everything.
There, at the very edge of his sensory range—a presence. Cold. Still. Observing. Not Zabuza. The chakra signature was different—younger, sharper, carrying a latent frost that made the surrounding moisture tremble.
Haku.
Ren didn't move, didn't alert Kakashi. He simply kept his smile in place, his eyes half-lidded, watching Naruto face-plant for the eleventh time. The apprentice was watching them train. Assessing their weaknesses. Their patterns.
Good, Ren thought. Watch. See the chaos. The incompetence. Let it make you confident. Let it make you careless.
He slowly, imperceptibly, formed a single hand seal under his crossed arms. Not an attack. A marker. A tiny, nearly undetectable pulse of Hiraishin chakra, woven into the ambient moisture and pressed onto a fallen leaf fifteen meters into the mist, directly between their position and the cold, watching presence.
A bookmark. For later.
The real training wasn't happening on the trees. It was happening in the shadows. And Ren was already several steps ahead, leaving a trail of invisible markers in the dark for a confrontation he knew was inevitable. The bet between the dead fathers was amusing.
But the game between the living? That was just beginning.