The tea house was quiet at this hour—too early for the lunch crowd, too late for breakfast stragglers. Tatsuya found Jiraiya in a corner booth, sake already poured despite the morning sun streaming through paper screens.
"You look like someone beat you with a sack of rocks," Jiraiya observed as Tatsuya lowered himself carefully onto the cushion. His ribs protested the movement. Everything protested, really.
"Close enough."
Jiraiya's laugh was genuine, if brief. He pushed the sake bottle across the table. "Drink?"
"I'm twelve."
"So? I was drinking at ten. Builds character."
"Is that what we're calling liver damage now?"
The Sannin's eyebrows rose. "You're funny when you're not trying to be. That's rare." He pulled the bottle back, poured himself another cup. "Most people try too hard. You just... say things."
"I am to please."
"See? Like that." Jiraiya drank, watching Tatsuya over the rim. The jovial mask was still there, but thinner than usual. Transparent, almost. "Let's talk about your future."
Tatsuya had expected this conversation since the mission debrief. Jiraiya didn't attach reserve pool nobodies to his operational team without reason. The question was what that reason actually was.
"I'm listening."
"Minato needs support. Not combat support—he handles that fine. What he needs is someone who can keep people alive while he handles the killing." Jiraiya set down his cup. "You've got the instincts for it. The medical skills. The tactical thinking. General combat abilities are good enough for a support .And you don't freeze when things go sideways."
"You're offering me a permanent position."
"Semi-permanent. Bureaucratically, you stay reserve pool—less paperwork, fewer questions. Practically, you deploy with us. Train with us. Become part of the team in everything that matters." He paused. "It's not a promotion. It's more like... adoption."
The word landed strangely. Tatsuya filed it away.
"What do you get out of this arrangement?"
"Entertainment, mostly." Jiraiya's smile was sharp. "Watching you figure things out is more interesting than most of what passes for ninja these days. You think differently. I want to see where that goes. Plus having a medic nearby is handy"
"And if it goes somewhere you don't like?"
"Then we'll have a very educational conversation." The smile didn't waver. "But I don't think that's going to be a problem. You want to protect things. I can work with that."
Tatsuya considered the offer. The calculation was simple: proximity to Jiraiya and Minato meant better training, better missions, better survival odds. The scrutiny was a price worth paying.
"There's something else," he said. "The shadows that have been following me."
Jiraiya's expression didn't change, but something in his posture shifted. "What about them?"
"Are they going to be a problem?"
"They've been reassigned." The words came easily, casually—as if he were discussing weather rather than ROOT surveillance. "I had a conversation with someone. Made it clear that you're under my umbrella now."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that." Jiraiya's eyes were sharp despite his relaxed posture. "The protection has limits. Don't give them reasons to push. And don't think this means you're safe—just that you're a more expensive target."
Tatsuya absorbed this. He'd traded one form of scrutiny for another. But Jiraiya's attention was survivable. Danzo's wasn't.
"When do we start?"
"Tomorrow. Minato's been asking when you'd be functional again." Jiraiya stood, dropping coins on the table. "Something about wanting to see how much you've improved. He's eager like that."
"We've never actually sparred."
"Exactly. He's very eager."
The weapons district smelled of oil and steel and the particular sharpness of grinding wheels. Tatsuya walked past shops displaying kunai in neat rows, tanto hanging from ceiling hooks, katana arranged on silk-lined stands.
His old sword had shattered against the jonin's stone armor. The memory of steel fragmenting in his grip was still fresh—the sudden absence of weight, the realization that his primary weapon had just become useless scrap.
He found what he was looking for in a smaller shop, set back from the main street. The proprietor was what seemed to be a retired shinobi with iron-gray hair and two missing fingers on his left hand. His eyes tracked Tatsuya's movements with professional interest.
"Looking for something specific?"
"Replacement blade. My last one disagreed with an Iwa jonin."
"The sword or the jonin?"
"Both, in the end."
The shopkeeper's laugh was a rough bark. "Good lad, Show me your grip."
Tatsuya drew an imaginary blade, held the stance. The shopkeeper circled him, studying angles and tension.
"You thrust more than you cut. Waste of a curved blade." He disappeared into the back, returned with a straight sword in a simple scabbard. "Chokuto. Single edge, optimized for piercing. Matches your style."
Tatsuya drew the blade. The weight was different—less curve meant different balance, different momentum. But the point tracked true, and the edge caught the light with surgical precision.
"Standard issue quality," the shopkeeper said. "Nothing special about the steel. But it'll serve you until you can afford better."
Tatsuya tested the draw, the return, the way it moved from guard to strike. The motion was clean. Patient. Like something waiting to be used correctly.
"This one."
"Thirty thousand ryo. I'll throw in maintenance lessons—you look like someone who takes care of his tools."
Tatsuya paid. Walked out with the chokuto across his back, feeling the unfamiliar weight settle against his shoulder blades.
His first real weapon in this world, broken and gone. This was his second.
He'd try to keep it longer.
Training Ground Seven was empty except for Minato, who stood in the center of the clearing looking like he'd been waiting for hours rather than minutes. The afternoon sun painted everything in gold and green.
"New sword?" He eyed the chokuto as Tatsuya approached.
"The old one had a disagreement with a jonin's face."
"I saw." Minato's smile was warm but his eyes were assessing. Always assessing. "How are the ribs?"
"Functional. Mostly."
"Good enough." He pulled out a kunai, spinning it on his finger, nothing special about the steel but perfect in his hand. "Show me what you've got."
They started slow. Minato testing Tatsuya's recovery, Tatsuya learning the weight of his new weapon. The chokuto handled differently than his old sword—less slashing power, more precision. It wanted to pierce, not sweep.
Then Minato stopped holding back.
The first exchange lasted maybe three seconds. Tatsuya's blade met air where Minato had been; Minato's blade touched his throat before he'd finished the parry.
"Again."
The second exchange was worse. Minato moved like thought itself—present, then absent, then behind you. Tatsuya's eyes couldn't track him. His blade couldn't find him. Every defense arrived after the attack had already landed, pulled and controlled but landed nonetheless.
"You're thinking too much," Minato observed as Tatsuya picked himself up for the fourth time. "Your body knows what to do. Let it."
"My body knows how to lose. That's not useful."
"Losing is useful if you learn from it." Minato reset his stance, waited. "You're trying to match my speed. That's impossible. Try something else."
Something else. Tatsuya closed his eyes, breathed, opened them.
Minato moved.
This time, Tatsuya didn't try to react to the motion. He watched the setup instead—the slight shift in weight, the angle of the shoulders, the trajectory implied by body mechanics. He moved to where Minato would be rather than where he was.
His blade touched cloth.
Not a hit—Minato twisted away easily, surprised but untouched. But for one fraction of a second, Tatsuya had been in the right place.
"Better." Minato's smile was genuine now. "Much better. You're predicting instead of reacting."
"Reacting isn't possible. Prediction is just math."
"Everything's math to you, isn't it?"
"Everything is math. People just don't like admitting it."
They went again. And again. Tatsuya lost every exchange—he wasn't going to beat Minato, probably ever—but each round lasted slightly longer. Each prediction came slightly faster.
Learning. The long, grinding work of becoming better.
Footsteps from the treeline. Jiraiya emerged, moving with that deceptive casualness that concealed absolute lethality.
"Beautiful," he announced, settling against a tree to watch. "Like a rabbit trying to outrun lightning. Very educational."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence."
"Confidence is earned, kid." He tossed a water flask to Tatsuya, who caught it without thinking. "Mission tomorrow. Border patrol, nothing exciting. Consider it orientation."
"Orientation for what?"
"For everything that comes after." Jiraiya's smile was sharp. "Welcome to the team."
The ramen stand was small—barely room for eight stools along a wooden counter, steam rising from pots behind the serving window, the smell of pork broth and noodles saturating everything within twenty feet.
"Ichiraku," Minato said as they approached. "Best ramen in the village. Don't let anyone tell you different."
"You brought me here to argue about noodles?"
"I brought you here because Kushina's already inside and she doesn't like waiting."
The name sent a pulse of something through Tatsuya's chest. He'd known this meeting was coming—Minato's circle would inevitably include the woman who'd become his wife, the mother of the protagonist, the jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tails.
But knowing and experiencing were different things.
He felt her before he saw her. Chakra pressed against his senses like standing next to a bonfire—vast, contained, barely suppressed. The Kyuubi's container, holding back an ocean with nothing but will and sealing work.
She was already working on her fourth bowl when they ducked under the entrance curtain. Red hair like a wound, eyes sharp and green, features arranged in an expression of fierce concentration on the noodles in front of her.
"You're late," she said without looking up. "The pork's getting cold."
"We were training."
"Training doesn't excuse cold pork." She finally raised her eyes, and Tatsuya found himself being evaluated with uncomfortable intensity. "So. You're the new one."
"Tatsuya Meguri."
"I know who you are." She pointed her chopsticks at him accusingly. "Minato talks about you constantly. 'Kushina, you should see his tactical thinking. Kushina, his medical chakra is really precise. Kushina—'"
"I don't sound like that," Minato protested.
"You absolutely sound like that." She mimicked his voice, pitched higher and more earnest than reality. "'Kushina, he survived that mission. Kushina, he didn't freeze under pressure—'"
"That's definitely not—"
"Sit down. Eat. The arguing can wait until you've had noodles."
Tatsuya sat. Ordered one bowl, conservative. Kushina watched him do it with narrow eyes.
"One bowl? You're skin and bones already."
"One bowl is sufficient."
"Sufficient." She said the word like it had personally offended her. "Minato, your friend talks like a mission report."
"I've noticed."
"Make him eat more."
"I don't think anyone makes him do anything."
Kushina's grin was sudden and fierce. "I like challenges."
The ramen arrived—pork, noodles, broth that smelled like comfort and childhood memories that weren't his. Tatsuya ate mechanically, aware of Kushina's attention on him like sunlight through a magnifying glass.
"You're watching me eat."
"I'm deciding whether I like you." She slurped her own noodles without breaking eye contact. "The jury's still out."
"What criteria are you using?"
"Vibes."
"That's a feeling."
"Feelings are criteria, Mr. Mission Report." She pointed her chopsticks at him again. "You're very logical. Very controlled. Very 'I have everything figured out.' But you've got sad eyes."
The observation landed like a kunai. Tatsuya kept his face neutral.
"Most people have sad eyes. It's a sad world."
"See, that's what I mean." She leaned closer, studying him with uncomfortable intensity. "You say things like that—true things, dark things—but you say them like you're reading a report. Like the sadness is data instead of something you feel."
"Maybe it is."
"No." Her voice softened, just slightly. "It's not. You just don't want to admit that yet."
Before Tatsuya could formulate a response, Jiraiya arrived—appearing at the counter with the particular inevitability of someone who always knew where food was being served.
"Started without me? Rude."
"You're late," Kushina said.
"I'm never late. Everyone else is just early." He squeezed onto a stool, ordered without looking at the menu. "I see you've met our newest team member."
"I'm interrogating him."
"How's that going?"
"He's annoyingly hard to read." Kushina glared at Tatsuya. "Stop being hard to read."
"I'll work on it."
"See? Annoying."
The conversation shifted after that—easier topics, lighter subjects. Jiraiya told a mission story that was probably seventy percent fabrication. Minato corrected the inaccuracies with quiet precision. Kushina argued with both of them while ordering her fifth bowl.
Tatsuya watched. Listened. Absorbed the rhythm of people who'd known each other for years, the comfortable patterns of established friendship.
It felt foreign. Like standing outside a window, looking at warmth he couldn't quite touch.
Kushina caught his expression. Her eyes softened, just for a moment.
"Stop doing that," she said quietly.
"Doing what?"
"The watching-from-outside thing." She bumped his shoulder with hers. "You're here. That means you're part of it. Even if you haven't figured that out yet."
"I don't—"
"You will." The fierce grin returned. "I'm very persistent."
The missions came in a steady rhythm after that. Border patrol, escort duty, reconnaissance—the unglamorous work that kept villages functioning between the flashier operations.
Tatsuya settled into his role. Medical support, tactical observation, combat when necessary. Not front-line—that was Minato's domain. Not leadership—that was Jiraiya's. He was the backbone, the reliable presence that kept the structure intact.
The first patrol was three days of walking boundary markers between Fire and Earth country. No combat, just presence. Showing the flag.
"If Iwa hit us here," Jiraiya asked during a rest break, "what's our retreat line?"
Tatsuya studied the terrain. "Northeast, through the ravine. Natural chokepoint limits pursuit. Secondary position on the ridge—elevation advantage if they follow."
"And if they flank through the forest?"
"Then we're dead anyway. The forest is too dense for effective retreat. Better to hold the chokepoint and make them pay for passage."
Jiraiya nodded. "Good. You're thinking."
"He's always thinking," Minato added. "It's actually a little unsettling."
"Better than dead."
"See? Even his reassurances are morbid."
The escort mission was low threat, high tedium—a merchant caravan through disputed territory. Tatsuya's primary contribution was healing a merchant's daughter who fell and scraped her knee.
"You're a wizard!" The girl's eyes went wide as the wound closed under green-tinged chakra.
"Just a medic."
"Do it again!"
"You'd have to hurt yourself first. I don't recommend it."
The message relay turned complicated when they encountered an Iwa patrol—two chunin, probably lost, definitely hostile. Minato handled one before Tatsuya could draw his sword. The second charged directly at him.
Chokuto through the throat. Clean. The body dropped.
"Efficient," Jiraiya whistled.
"That's the goal."
He cleaned his blade in silence, feeling the particular weight of another life ended. The number was getting higher. The weight wasn't getting heavier.
He wasn't sure what that meant about him.
The reconnaissance mission was pure observation—scouting enemy positions, counting personnel, mapping infrastructure. No engagement expected.
"You're memorizing the guard rotations," Jiraiya noted as they watched an Iwa forward base from concealment.
"It's becoming a habit at this point."
"Probably the first genin to develop a habit like that."
"Most genin didn't wake up on a battlefield after being sent as fodder."
Jiraiya was quiet for a moment. "Fair point."
Between missions, Tatsuya maintained his other connections.
Shin met him for morning sparring sessions when schedules aligned. They'd traded training tips for months now—Tatsuya's precision for Shin's fluidity, analytical approach meeting intuitive flow. The friendship had become real, though neither of them talked about it directly.
"You're faster," Shin observed one morning, after a particularly close exchange.
"Someone's been pushing me hard."
"Minato?"
"Among others."
Shin's nod was knowing. "That would do it."
Yuki was thriving with the Harada family. Each visit showed new growth—more confidence, more color in her cheeks, less of the haunted look he remembered from the battlefield. She told him about her arithmetic lessons and Mochi, the family cat. They talked about the future like it was something that might actually happen.
"Are you going to keep being a ninja forever?" she asked during one visit.
"Probably not forever. Just until I'm done." or dead
"Done with what?"
He didn't have a good answer. Couldn't explain that he was trying to prevent disasters she'd never know about, save people from fates they'd never imagine. The weight of foreknowledge pressed against his chest like something physical.
"I'll figure that out eventually."
Mira had made it out of the reserve pool—assigned to a permanent team now, her tracking skills apparently impressive enough to catch attention. They crossed paths occasionally in the administrative district, exchanging intelligence like professionals.
"You look different," she said once. "More solid."
"Is that good?"
"Ask me in a year."
The barracks room was quiet at midnight. Tatsuya sat on his bed, journal open, reviewing the past weeks with surgical precision.
He'd been counting. Analyzing. Building a picture of where he stood and where he needed to be.
The chakra scalpel was devastating against unarmored targets. Seven confirmed kills since joining Team Jiraiya, all clean, all clean. The technique that made him dangerous was reliable now—muscle memory and chakra control working together without conscious thought.
But.
That jonin's stone armor still haunted his dreams. The moment when his signature technique had proven useless, when the edge that made him special had simply... stopped. Against defensive specialists, against shinobi with barrier techniques or earth-reinforced combat styles, his primary weapon was worthless.
He wrote in his coded journal:
Scalpel limitations:- Cannot penetrate stone/earth armor- Cannot breach chakra barriers- Requires physical contact- Relies on surprise—once known, opponents guard against it
Solutions?
He stared at the question for a long moment. The obvious answer was elemental enhancement—adding nature transformation to the base technique, increasing its cutting power beyond what pure medical chakra could achieve.
Wind was the natural choice for cutting. The sharpening element, the edge that could slice through what force couldn't break. Though lightning would probably be better for penetrating, especially since it's a natural counter to Earth Release, winds secondary applications swayed him for the time being. Fire and wind weren't opposed—they were complementary. Wind fed fire, accelerated it, made it burn hotter and faster. If he could master wind nature transformation, his fire jutsu would improve as well. Two advantages from one training investment.
Wind nature transformation, he wrote. Primary goal: scalpel enhancement. Secondary goal: fire technique augmentation. Timeline: months to years. Fire affinity will make this difficult but not impossible. After that... lightning
He paused, considering another avenue.
Medical chakra emission was traditionally channeled through the hands—tenketsu points in the palms allowing precise control and direction. But tenketsu existed throughout the body. What if medical chakra could be directed through other points?
The implications cascaded. Healing through forearm contact while hands held weapons. Recovery during grapples, when hands were occupied. Emergency treatment when restrained.
Tenketsu emission experiment, he added. Test non-hand chakra points. Expected efficiency loss acceptable if technique proves viable.
He closed the journal as dawn light began creeping through the window. The list of things he needed to learn was longer than his projected lifespan.
But that had always been true. The only response was to work faster.
Kushina's idea of a "proper gathering" apparently involved commandeering a private room at one of the village's better restaurants, inviting everyone she considered worth knowing, and refusing to accept any declinations.
"You can't just order people to socialize," Minato had protested.
"Watch me."
The restaurant was in the merchant district—nice enough to be respectable, casual enough for shinobi who might need to leave through the window. The private room could seat twelve comfortably; tonight, it held eight.
Tatsuya arrived to find Shikaku Nara already slouched in a corner, looking like consciousness itself was an imposition. The Nara heir's eyes tracked him with lazy precision—cataloguing, assessing, filing away.
"You're the reserve pool addition." Not a question.
"That obvious?"
"You're the only one I don't recognize. And you've got that look."
"What look?"
"The 'why am I here' look. Most of us had it the first time Kushina dragged us somewhere." Shikaku's mouth curved slightly. "It fades eventually. The resistance, not the confusion."
Inoichi Yamanaka was warmer but careful—mind-walker's caution visible in the way he maintained conversational distance. His chakra sense was obviously sharp; Tatsuya could feel the careful probing, the surface-level assessment that any competent sensor conducted automatically.
He kept his thoughts still. Surface-level only. Nothing worth finding.
"Medical specialist, right?" Inoichi asked. "Kushina and Minato mentioned you've been training at the hospital."
"Among other things."
"Versatility is valuable. Most shinobi specialize too early." A slight smile. "Though some of us don't have much choice."
Choza Akimichi was the easiest to like—genuine warmth radiating from a frame that was already filling out toward the characteristic Akimichi build. He offered food before introductions were complete, seemed confused when Tatsuya took only a modest portion.
"You need to eat more. You're all angles."
"I'll work on it."
"That's what Minato says. He never does either."
Mikoto Uchiha arrived late, offering quiet apologies that Kushina waved away. Tatsuya watched her from the corner of his eye—dark hair, sharp features, the particular way Uchiha moved like they were always ready for combat.
She was younger than he'd expected. Sixteen, maybe seventeen—not yet the matriarch of a doomed clan, not yet Sasuke's mother. Just a kunoichi navigating the complicated politics of a village that didn't quite trust her family.
Her eyes met his briefly. Something flickered there—recognition, maybe. Or curiosity. Uchiha noticing someone who might be worth noticing.
She looked away before he could read more.
"We tried to invite Tsunade-sama," Kushina mentioned as she oversaw the seating arrangements. "But she's... busy."
The hesitation said everything. Tsunade was retreating, pulling back from the social connections that might anchor her. Dan's death was too recent, the wound too raw. Some people needed space to heal.
Others needed the opposite.
"Her loss," Jiraiya said, settling into his seat with sake already in hand. "More for the rest of us."
"Tried to drag Fugaku with me as well, but..." Mikoto sighed.
No more needed to be said, all of them knew that their stoic friend disliked these kinds of gatherings. Not even Kushina was able to break him down.
The meal unfolded in organized chaos. The readhead commanded the table like a general, directing conversations and interrupting arguments with equal authority. Jiraiya traded barbs with Inoichi—something about the intelligence division's latest interdepartmental conflicts. Minato and Choza discussed food preparation with alarming enthusiasm until Kushina threatened physical violence.
Shikaku watched everything with half-lidded eyes that missed nothing.
"You're quiet," he observed during a lull.
"Learning."
"Learning what?"
Tatsuya considered the question. "How people who aren't trying to kill each other interact. It's surprisingly complicated."
Shikaku's laugh was surprised, genuine. "I like him," he announced to the table. "He's appropriately morbid."
"Everyone you like is morbid," Inoichi pointed out.
"That says more about Konoha than about me."
Mikoto leaned forward, dark eyes curious. "You're the one from the border operation. The reserve pool genin who volunteered for Team Jiraiya's rotation."
"That's one way to describe it."
"How would you describe it?"
"Being in the right place at the wrong time. Or the wrong place at the right time." He shrugged. "The universe rarely clarifies which is which."
Her slight smile suggested she appreciated the ambiguity. "My cousin mentioned you. Said you held a checkpoint alone during the counterattack while the wounded were evacuated."
"I had help."
"According to him, you had approximately zero help for the first seventeen seconds."
The number again. It kept following him.
"He was toying with me and either way seventeen seconds isn't impressive. It's just not dying immediately."
"In our world, those are often the same thing."
The conversation shifted after that, but Tatsuya caught Mikoto watching him occasionally—the particular Uchiha attention that suggested he'd been added to some mental catalogue.
He wasn't sure how to feel about that. Uchiha connections were dangerous, complicated, loaded with a future neither of them could see. But connections were also resources. Anchors. The things that kept you human in a world determined to make you otherwise.
Kushina cornered him later, while others were distracted by an argument about proper kunai maintenance.
"Stop doing the thing."
"What thing?"
"The watching-from-outside thing. Like you're not sure you're allowed to be here." Her voice was softer now, private. "You are. Allowed."
"You said that before."
"And I'll keep saying it until it sinks in." She bumped his shoulder with hers—the same gesture from the ramen stand, already becoming familiar. "You're pack now. That's how it works."
"I don't know what that means."
"You will." Her grin returned, bright and fierce. "I'm very patient."
"That's not what Minato says."
"Minato lies."
Walking back to the barracks afterward, the village settling into night around him. Three months since Jiraiya had made his offer. Three months of missions, of training, of slowly becoming something other than a reserve pool nobody.
He had a team now. People who expected him to show up tomorrow. A place at tables where decisions happened.
It felt fragile. Temporary. Like something that could be taken away.
But for tonight, he let himself have it.
The barracks door closed behind him. He lay on his bed, stared at the ceiling, and thought about all the things he still needed to become.
The list was long.
He'd better get started.