Ashbreaker

Sasuke is remembering electricity from the point of view of someone who hasn't read a textbook or Wikipedia article on the subject in years, basing it on his own experiences. Hence it's "Why the fuck did they teach us in physics class that conventional current is opposite to real current in the wire...? Historical convention? Why the fuck...?" slant, from what I vividly remember wondering in school.

In the original draft I had a loooot bigger a rant there, mentioning how a lot of discoveries were concurrent and contested, and how it wasn't one field but at least three, with "physics", "chemistry", and "biology" as we know them today coming together in researching electricity. Wondering about anodes and cathodes, how they flip, how anions and canions are a thing and so on and so on, even mentioning moving holes as positive currents as you mentioned, most commonly in bioelectricity... but it just didn't add anything worthwhile to the scene, to the setting, or to chakra.

I knew Neji wouldn't care and doubt many of the readers would either, so instead I kept it short and—hopefully—pithy.

And AC is still movement, but it's just different and smaller. I was thinking about expanding on that later, with how the "invisible liquid" idea falls further apart when you bring in stuff like serial capacitors (or just capacitors in general) and stuff, when Sasuke looks at the local technology closer. Or with intent transmission.

But mostly, since this is a character trying to reason something out inside the universe, he doesn't have perfect recollection or understanding of a lot of things and he's stumbling his way forward. The reason he's so focused on electrons moving being electricity is because he can literally now see them flowing when he makes a Chidori, ie. he's being blinded by his own eyes despite trying to explain how he's trying to overcome that.

It's just so deliciously ironic, fitting with how the thing with Danzo went down and the thing budding in this chapter.

Anyhow, on with the story.

I woke up the next morning, long after the fire had died.

But I didn't open my eyes or bother getting up, simply lying on the sand and remaining still. Back before, I had sometimes had depressive episodes like this, where even getting out of bed was too much trouble. There was this sensation to your limbs when you lay still long enough, like they were just... gloves, that you could slip out of and lose control of. Though that was more often at the point of entering a lucid dream than while remaining awake.

Back then I would just find some way to get the juices flowing to reset my brain chemistry.

Go jogging, take a cold shower, go swimming in winter, hit the sauna, go fencing or wrestling or something to excite me, and get back into the mania out of the depressive phase.

It's just...

That was sort of what had gotten me into this current situation, wasn't it?

The habit of never allowing the calmness to come and stay, always chasing another big manic hit until finally, the drop came so hard I ended up homeless, naked, and alone as a wanted man on some beach.

So...

I decided to pay some minor form of penance before I moved on.

I had slept unmolested, so this beach was probably safe, both from any pursuers and natural hazards.

Sometimes people who had committed wrongs would take vows of silence, or sequester themselves away to meditate, without partaking in the earthly pleasures to purify themselves. Like when a samurai killed someone, they would consider to have accrued filth from the act. Kegare, literally defilement. So they were expected to remain in their homes, alongside paying remuneration to the victim's family.

Or a deposed ruler might be forced into a temple to become a monk, which sounded somewhat similar to what had happened in Europe, where someone might be sent to a faraway monastery, never to return.

Something like that...

Sounded about right to me right now.

I vowed to not open my eyes, not to speak, and to not eat for a few days.

It would not only serve as spiritual self-cleansing but something of a dopamine detox, too. If your brain chemistry got enough out of whack and lost sensitivity to the little things, sometimes it might be a good idea to simply abstain for a while.

I knew this but hadn't been considering it at all until now.

That, and the autophagy and increased clarity of fasting couldn't hurt either in getting my head sorted on right.

I had a blindness to overcome.

Eventually, I did sit up at least. settling to meditate, in hopes of distracting myself from my rumbling belly.

The first day was always the hardest in a fast, and while I had done those often enough back before, in this body I had not gotten into the practice, believing that my body was still growing and wanting as much nutrition in me as possible to fuel my growth.

At least a day passed like that, judging by the changing temperature, winds, and light filtering in through my closed eyelids, whenever I fell out of the mindlessness.

It was not as if I reached any great enlightenment, but it did put a lot of things into perspective.

A different frame of mind, reaching stillness and then returning to ponder upon decisions and thoughts without the press and pull of emotions and other distractions, realizing where I had been acting unlike myself, or too like myself.

As I grew thirsty, I was forced to consider ending my self-imposed penance, but as if the world was speaking to me—telling me I was on the right thing—it began to rain at some point during the night that followed. So I cupped my hands and drank of the heavens' offering, thanking it for its generosity between each gulp.

It was an amusing thought – what anyone might have thought if they saw me there.

A naked teen, drinking the rainwater and bowing to the ocean.

But I had not sensed a single presence since I had woken up, my sense for the life around me growing cleared each passing hour.

I wasn't sure if it was the meditation, the fasting, or perhaps the dopamine detox and abstaining from using the Sharingan or chakra, but it felt like my other senses grew much sharper, allowing me to vaguely sense the life around me, fish, birds, and crabs making their way along the sea, sky, and earth.

It wasn't chakra sensing, since I wasn't molding any, but something different altogether.

Between bouts of meditation, I considered some of the things I had observed, the usual jutsu and chakra theory, as even if I was cleansing myself and paying spiritual penance, there was limits to even what I could force myself to do. Or refrain from, as it were, beginning to recognize myself again.

At my core, I had was a maniac for self-improvement and becoming stronger.

A true wish, unlike the falsehoods I had worn in Konoha, I recognized; I loved the discovery and experimentation, the clever workarounds and paradigm-breakers I could develop.

Was it the Will to Power Nietzsche had made such a big deal about, or was it instead the Power Process Kaczynski had attributed modern social ails to? Or was that even an accurate take on the Unabomber's manifesto? I was hardly dealing with alienation borne of an increasingly industrialized society right now...

But it was similar to how Uncle Ted had disparaged scientists who poured their lives into making discoveries.

Or was it something else?

For all the philosophy I had read and argued, very little had stuck with me in the end, it seemed.

I thought I was simply a philosophical absurdist - a man who lived on the merits of living alone, for whom suicide was the only true philosophical problem, who would derive pleasure from rolling a stone uphill or not at all... but I guess pleasure came in all sorts of forms.

So I guess I want to develop myself to the fullest extent possible.

To push my limits and soar as high as possible.

For that, traveling around and seeing the world was probably a good idea.

Not just because it would keep me ahead of any hunter-nins, but also because it would continue giving me data points to ponder over. The same way Charles Darwin traveled the world for some minor project, collecting more and more evidence until he finally stumbled upon the idea of evolution, by continuing to observe everything and anything relating to chakra, I would be able to continue pushing myself.

Back before I had traveled a little bit, but I had never particularly felt a pull towards it, no matter how often my father would push the idea on me. Interrailing across Europe felt like a waste of money, and unless there was some purpose to the trip, it felt pointless.

The same way I had hated pointless jogging, unless something was accomplished by the trip, I had a hard time justifying it to myself. So road-tripping across Europe to buy a good car cheaply from Germany, or helping a relative move away from France had been fine without having to pay through the nose for furniture transportation, but when my mother wanted to go to Gotland on a cruise I had stuck to the cabin and played Halo on an Xbox, finding that experience much more novel and rewarding than some Swedish island.

I guess it was just a matter of efficiency.

I had access to the internet back then – access to all the information and experiences for free, at the tips of my fingers, without any of the toil, toll, or trouble of real travel.

But now I could fly.

My long-held dream—literally, as I had learned lucid dreaming simply to fly more often in my dreams—was real here.

And there was no internet, no obvious shortcut to exploring this world. It was like a video game in that sense, where my desire to explore had been immense in comparison to real life, as the value of self-exploration eclipsed that of second-hand accounts.

So a second true desire manifested: to travel the world and see what there was for myself. Maybe spy on the Hidden Villages for a hoot if I could get away with it.

I had watched all the pre-timeskip fillers and I kind of wanted to see how much of it was true, too.

Random heroics, if I stumbled into them were okay, too.

By nature, I liked helping people despite myself and my grouching about it. Hadn't I made a big deal about hating Naruto only to then almost immediately get attached to him?

Sure, I enjoyed violence and proving myself right, but that didn't mean I had to be a genocidal maniac about it. I could probably save a village or dozen along the way without having to get into too many bloodbaths. Even against Danzo, I had been avoiding pointless bloodshed, instead setting things up to impede and slow down everyone who wasn't directly working for the decrepit fuck.

Oh no, that sounds angry again...

I meditated another few hours on that thought.

On what I could have done differently, how to defuse the situation and walk away with everyone still alive. None of the thoughts were truly me, but they were things I still could have done to resolve everything, selves I could have been but wasn't.

As it was, my lies had allowed me to unsettle, confuse, disturb, and finally win against Danzo. Very little of what I had said about my genjutsu was true, beyond implanting some of my stolen taijutsu skills and general directives in people's minds, simply building off of the beliefs and fears people had, just as I had done against Orochimaru.

It wasn't like I had the heart to truly mindrape people the way Danzo had. It was an evil of the highest order for me, above killing them and why I had reacted so exponentially. Everyone I had taken hostage should come out mostly unharmed and amnesiac from the experience, almost like it had just been a bad dream.

Unless they managed to retain the short-term memory and train it in themselves, I doubted they would even retain any of the skills I had instilled in them.

But of course, they might have suffered injuries and died as a result of my actions too, so I was hardly innocent. Felony murder, I think was a legal term back before... I had crossed moral lines that could not be uncrossed, even if I had held back from the absolute extent of harm I could have caused.

That, more than killing Danzo, had been what I had known would force me to run away from the village.

Had it just been him dead at my hands, I could have weaseled my way out of any problems. Probably. But the measures I had taken to accomplish killing Danzo had been extreme. Setting massive fires and spreading them to sow chaos, kidnapping and taking hostage my fellow ninja, lying to everyone I had come to know in some way or another...

While meditating over these things, more than once I felt a tingling in my eyes. Not quite tears, but something thicker.

But I held it in, denying myself something as pathetic and cathartic as mourning the consequences of my own actions.

Because - I had chosen all this.

When confronting evil—as I defined it, as a short-hand for enemies I could not, or rather would not, compromise with—lies were extremely handy.

But as a basis for dealing with people in the long-term, it was a poison.

As much to myself as others.

I had to stop lying, unless I was planning on killing that person, because that poison would only seep back into me otherwise. It was a violence of the mind, a falsehood imposed and wrought to make them suffer the same way a blade would make them pay in blood and physical pain.

So, brutal and absurdist honesty outside of fights? I chuckled then, accepting that as my new standard.

It wasn't as if I needed to hide my true self or origin from anyone anymore.

So, third, long-term goal: improve or save the lives of a considerable amount of people to sort of make up for the whole Konoha debacle. I was under no illusion that I would ever be forgiven by the people involved in all that, or that anyone would bless me after I had helped some arbitrary equal amount, resetting some cosmic scale of karma...

But it did kind of matter to me.

I didn't particularly ascribe to the with great power comes great responsibility-school of thought, finding the logic there very questionable, but I did believe that I was—at least on some level—if not a good person, then at least a decent one. The same way a normal person might go a little out of their way to pick a can and drop it in the trash if it was right next to the bin, or take the shopping cart back before leaving a store, or do small good things to help others out, I wasn't averse to it either.

And I had pretty much phenomenal powers right now.

I was quite likely peaking on the scales of power among some very small top percentage now. The things that to me were casual acts of convenient good were probably immense for the average person. Like, re-routing floods and stopping tornadoes level, if I could find some clever solution.

I still wasn't going to burn myself out to help others or as some misguided masochistic punishment—beyond this very minor penance I had imposed on myself—but I could still do good.

And wasn't that what I had been trying to do already if I looked at my previous actions through as charitable a lens as I could right now? I had helped Haku and Zabuza because the Hidden Mist was a fucking mess. I hadn't gone out of my way to mess with Wave's liberation beyond keeping Gatou alive, either. I had even—if I really pushed it—tried to protect Konoha during the invasion, by trying to become as strong as I possibly could, to my own great discomfort.

Certainly, there were impure motives there, but I hadn't wished harm either.

Wasn't it the thing I was excited for with coming missions, once I would be promoted? Helping better the world, in-between some murkier sabotage and assassination missions, perhaps?

So that was who I wanted to be now.

Someone who would continue to grow, reaching as high as possible without sacrificing myself or making dumb bargains - becoming someone whose strength was so thorough and true that no matter what happened I would never be broken.

Strong enough to remain unchanged even as I changed.

To travel the world and do good.

To see everything and judge it for myself to become the greatest possible version of myself that I could be.

So Orochimaru, but with better public relations? Hmm...

So, time to end my reflection and open my eyes to a new self. It was still night, but dawn couldn't be that far away.

Sitting up, I hesitate as a thought occurs.

I should say something poignant to mark this occasion, shouldn't I? Like a pithy realization to coalesce this moment in time, or a poem like a haiku... No, not a haiku, a senryu—river willow, though it's the ocean next to me—more fitting with the theme of today.

So, umm... uh...

Shit, I'm terrible at poetry, even though I liked reading it.

A theme, a theme... The Will of Fire, the Village Hidden in the Leaves, burning madness, lies and delusions. Rebirth. Forest fires, the ashes of the self. Shedding the past and moving on.

Settling into seiza, I inhale and place my hands on my knees.

I open my mouth and begin reciting.

"Blind fool burned alone," I speak out, my voice quiet and soft, rasping a little and I hold back a cough, pausing for a second to wet my throat.

"Lies, falsehoods turn to ash," I continue, raising my hands and slowly bring them together, interlacing the fingers. My chakra pushes forward into the handseal, not quite familiar with what I want it to do, but obeying, the action guzzling through nearly all of my reserves and leaving me light-headed.

"A truer self sprouts..." I declare and open my eyes, beholding the world.

It's night and the stars are bright.

The ocean is softly rustling, whispering gently with each wave beside me.

And in my hands, from between my clasped palms, a tiny sapling is growing, hints of green leaves barely showing. The arboreal rebirth from a pointless life turned to ash, as the great forests regrow after a drought and fire.

God, Wood Release is intense. I know my Earth and Water affinities are still untrained and trash, but I nearly emptied all of my chakra into this one tiny attempt.

I would need to continue training my stamina for a hundred years at this rate— at least—before I could make use of this on the fly in a fight, and that was probably even after I did manage to improve those two affinities. What kind of chakra monster would you have to be to use this?

But if you could use it...

I shivered.

Turning around on my seated position, I look around for the hole I had dug earlier, where I had burned everything I had owned sans the kunai and shuriken.

Walking over on wobbly feet, I kneel down and plant the sapling there, bringing the sand around it to fill the hole a little. Trees don't really grow in sand, much less on a saltwater beach like this... But Wood Release is weird.

I realized it while watching that final self-destruction of Danzo's corpse, whatever the hell that had been.

Chakra pulls chakra.

And by mastering the method for controlling chakra through both solids and liquids—the way it was possible to keep it from violently pushing or weakly dispersing through them, respectively—and bringing them together as a single technique, it was possible to gain a grasp of how to pull chakra into itself.

It wasn't really a method for combining the two elemental chakra—chakra didn't really have affinities, after all—more like... it was a natural way for it to store itself, somehow.

Like chakra wanted to be stored as wood, if you just knew how to tickle it.

For some reason.

I mean, if chakra wanted to be a tree, who was I to argue with it? You go, chakra, become the tree of your dreams and reach for the moon and stars!

It was just that it took more chakra than god to do any of that.

Well, the First Hokage had that nickname for a reason, I supposed. This thing would gobble up all chakra you threw at it, regardless of element or affinity. Fire, Wind, Lightning, Water, Earth, or any combination you could think of... Didn't particularly matter.

It would just drink chakra up and use it to fuel its own growth, the same way it had begun to devour Danzo from the inside.

Hell, considering the sheer rapacity I had seen, the most efficient method for making it grow was probably to just feed the tree a person, all 'Feed me, Seymour—! Feed me all night long~!'-like.

A day back, I might have laughed again at what a rotten way to go it was. But now it was just sort of something I acknowledged having happened and nothing more, the heat drained from the memory of the past, the ashes cooled and turned into a bed for something new to grow.

...God, I already regret making that senryu. It sounded a lot better in my head – this whole rebirth metaphor I had. Good thing I'm alone out here and no one heard me.

No one must ever know how cringe I truly am.

I've spent too much time cultivating a cool image to fail now.

"Hn..."

You've still got it, Sasuke!

Anyhow, I suspected that all the dual affinity elements required both incredibly high affinities for the constituent elements as well as incredibly high degrees of chakra control. Haku had been using one-handed seals for his jutsu, speaking of just how skilled he was. I knew from Fire and chakra construct jutsu just how much work that took.

So if you just knew how to push and pull it properly, you could turn it into this weird wood-like thing. It wasn't really wood, not in the same sense as what grew in forests... It was something different. Not that I knew how exactly yet though.

I patted the sand around my new tree, planted over the ashes of my past. Maybe it would thrive and flourish, maybe I would die a pointless death tomorrow.

That was just life – it just went on.

I stood and looked up, exhaling slowly to keep from becoming light-headed, having used up a huge chunk of my chakra just now in an arguably pointless symbolic gesture after having fasted for two or three days, while naked on some beach out in the middle of nowhere.

And there, high in the sky, shines that inverted Big Dipper again, having turned 180 degrees around the polar star with the changing seasons since the first time I had beheld it.

I raise a hand.

"Cheers. Let's try this again, eh?"

The first thing I did was feast on crabs.

Delicious, delicious crabs.

I wish I had some butter, but with just an open fire and some rocks to work with, I couldn't really complain. Couldn't remember the whole Nugar quote about eating mirelurks and them learning fear, building temples and offerings in vain, as nothing but their flesh would slake the great devourer's hunger...

But they were delicious, just as he'd always insisted online.

There better not be shoggoths in this world. People Lie was such a weird Naruto fanfic.

The Kyuubi definitely wasn't some eldritch demon god as it was in that story, given that it could be controlled with the Sharingan here, so I was probably safe. I probably would have fit right in that insanely dangerous and teetering-on-the-edge-of-madness universe, better than I did in this rendition of Konoha, too.

Hmm... Well, whatever.

I did feel kind of bad for the poor crustaceans, but I was hungry and didn't want to jump into the ocean or try to fly around for a bird, while I was still a little weak and delirious. I had learned how to kill and gut fish back before, so I would learn to stick a kunai into a crab now.

Delicious, delicious crabs.

Still felt bad about killing them. They're somehow cute, scuttling about as they did. The meme about 'this kills the crab' hit a little bit harder when you're holding it in your hand, about to shove a kunai through it to end its life. But, better that then burning them alive.

Cooked them thoroughly over the fire, hoping they weren't toxic or ridden with parasites, but they looked safe enough to eat. Somewhat tentatively, I even used my Sharingan to look the white flesh over in very careful detail, and I couldn't see anything untoward.

Given how little of a rush activating the eyes was now, I resolved to meditate, fast and dopamine detox more often again.

After feasting myself full, I decided to get one more night of rest. Or rather, sleep until dawn. Both to restore my chakra and to see if the sapling would grow by itself. A few more hours of rest would probably help more than hurt, if someone was already on my trail anyway.

I didn't need much sleep, waking up by the time the sun's first rays were peeking up from over the horizon. I took one last bath in the ocean to wash myself somewhat clean, and then used the Transformation jutsu to form clothes and a waist pouch for my kunai and shuriken.

Taking one last look at the sapling—unchanged, still small, and only showing hints of budding green—I took flight off the beach in a Midnight Flicker southwards, along the coast I had ended up on after my previous flight.

I noted with satisfaction that I had become able to compress myself into the size of my original bird form now, small enough to look like a real raven again as my clones did, with the ability to tug at the fabric of space-time with chakra. It was actually pretty easy once you knew what to look for, like a sense you just didn't know to account for until it smacked you in the face.

Chakra was funny like that, grabbing ahold of and pushing away things with some practice and the right spin.

This also had other, interesting implications, once I could get to experimenting with it. If I could get the spatial warp to work outside of a chakra constructs strict boundaries...

Mwahahahaha...

With an unseen smile, I flew along and enjoyed the view.

A sparkling emerald ocean, cloudless sapphire skies, a shining topaz sun.

A nice day for a flight. Real Ghibli-material.

After a long while, I finally spotted habitation. A fishing village, simple huts made of wood and straw along with boats and hanging nets.

The only one up and about seemed to be an old man, gnarled and tanned of skin, hunched over a canoe-like boat of some kind. It was a catamaran-kind of thing, with a wooden float attached to the side for added stability for the canoe itself, meaning it was probably decent on the ocean.

Heading down, I dove towards the ground some ways back from the houses, pulling up at the last seconds and bleeding out my momentum with a backflip as I un-Transformed and landed on my feet.

I check that I'm still clothed, before I head towards the old man, before remembering that I'm supposed to be on the lam now.

"Disguise... a disguise..."

The spatial-pulling version of the Transformation jutsu had the added benefit of pulling in my natural chakra signature, allowing me to remain unnoticed that much better, but wearing a chakra construct constantly wasn't a good idea.

For one, it would still break too easily, causing a puff of smoke when it did, which would only draw that much more attention to me. For another, if I got used to wearing a fake self around myself, it would end up messing with my proportions and movements.

Besides, if the Transformation jutsu was taught to even the Academy students, no doubt the hunter-nin had effective counter-measures for it.

Which meant I would have to run or fight them if I ever run into any. But to allay notice while going about my normal business, I still needed some kind of disguise...

Should I cut my hair?

I had used to pretty periodically just get rid of it all with an electric razor back before, and going bald was pretty much unheard of for shounen characters. So did that logic transfer to this world? I couldn't remember seeing any bald ninja...

But I kind of liked my hair. It used to be pretty tame, but all the flying and seawater had turned it extremely spiky again, but it was still too cool to just cut.

So a dye job?

A dye job it is.

I had just the jutsu for it, too. Danzo's goons had all kinds of tricks, including a jutsu to turn invisible. I think Kabuto knew it in the anime, too. I wasn't sure what they called it, since they hadn't exactly shouted 'invisibility jutsu!' when they'd used it, but it used chakra to—once again—grab ahold of and repel something, this time light.

They had used it to allow light to pass around them, turning themselves almost invisible. But it could also be used to selectively alter the specularity, scatter, and absorption of electromagnetic radiation along the visible light's part of the spectrum.

In layman's terms, I could alter my own coloration.

I grinned and gave myself a radiant rainbow mane of hair.

"Foolish Gandalf, I am Sasuke of Many Colors...!"

I didn't actually remember any more of that scene in the books, though. Pretty sure he didn't call Gandalf a fool so simply, either.

Could I collect enough EM-radiation to become able to throw around lasers in a fight? I had no idea, but I was excited to experiment and find out!

Now, what should I look like...

If I wanted to make myself as unlike myself—pale and dark-haired as I was—as possible, I could invert my color scheme and go for the Lightning-Country-look I'd seen in the Academy books. Maybe turn my hair into a rasta and...

No way I'll stop washing my hair for that long.

For now, I guess I'd just give myself a slight tan and turn my hair... Eh, Ino-blonde. Didn't want to mess with my eyes though, that would give my vision a weird tint, effectively filtering out one color as if I was wearing perfectly polarizing sunglasses.

So, pale blonde hair, golden-tan skin, and black eyes.

Common enough, right?

No wait, I look like every faceless NTR beach dudebro from hentai manga...

Well, that's fine for now, I guess. Pretty sure I wasn't going to be stealing fisher-gramps' girl while in town.

"Need a hand, old man?"

The fisher jumped and whirled around, wide-eyed, blinking at me.

Even without really trying, we ninjas tended to spook civilians pretty easily.

"...Where did you come from?" he asked, suspicious and guarded.

"The wind blew me in. I'm actually completely lost and looking for some directions."

He blinked again, leaning left and right to look me over.

My spotless clothes were of a completely different make than his, of thinner fabric and seemingly dyed a much brighter color than his faded blue gi top and pants. I didn't have any headwear to protect from the glaring sun and my long hair was definitely too girly for his liking.

His face scrunched up and he inhaled once through his nose.

"...Well, what're you waiting for. Get the boat in the water."

I grinned and complied, pulling the canoe into the water with one hand where he had been slowly pushing it along, from where he must have pulled it up for the night.

The next hour was decorated with few words, as we went about pulling up the fishing nets he had left to float overnight and doing his usual round in the nearby waters. It was only once we started heading back for the fishing village that he finally used his mouth for anything other than barked orders.

"You fish before, boy?"

"A few times. Nets are efficient, but a fishing rod is nice for a nap when it's warm."

"Hmph! Leisurely waste of time. People who don't need to work to put food on the table," he groused in reply.

I shrugged. "Pretty much. Besides..." I leaned over the edge of the canoe, towards the attached float that kept us from flipping and capsizing. I raised a hand then flicked. It was that thing I had stolen from Kakashi early on, the something-or-other-fang technique his father had used with a tanto.

My hand, barely wet coming back up, was holding a fish that had been following us and feasting on some of the other fishes' entrails stuck onto the side. It wiggled and struggled before I slapped its head against the side of the boat and tossed it into the old man's bucket of not-yet-gutted fish.

He blinked, instantly wary and a little bit afraid as realization hit him.

Whoops.

Guess shinobi are like boogiemen to people out in the boonies.

So I just grinned at him, hopefully in a disarming way. "What's life like out here? Never been out among normal people for long, y'know?"

He blinked again and relaxed a little.

Mwahaha, my intentional Naruto-ism makes me look so stupid that no one would think me dangerous.

"...It's peaceful. No trouble, like. Sometimes traders come 'n go, but don't get much visitors."

"Got any electricity or running water?" I ask, thinking back to Wave where both had been present in Tazuna's home.

But he had been a fairly influential figure and it didn't seem to be the standard of living among others.

"No, we gather the rainwater as it comes. Batteries are too expensive, though there's always some fool trader who thinks we'll be impressed with his lightbulbs..."

He spat over the side, shaking his head and I chuckled, getting a wry look in return.

This was the weird dissonance in tech I had noticed before. People knew about technologies, but they weren't that widespread.

Why?

"Ever leave the village?" I asked.

He looked sullen. Guarded. No, annoyed. Pivot back, don't look too worldly, play on his desire to be important and wise.

"I haven't traveled much, so I'm kinda still getting the hang of it. Wondered if you knew which I should head, I mean."

Looking a little placated, he nodded with his chin up along the coast, the way I had come flying from.

"Row a half a day that-a-way and you'll find the city of Yuena. S'the biggest in Moon Country."

Moon Country, Moon Country, Moon Country?

Nope. Doesn't ring any bells.

Probably some filler territory, then. Or maybe the movies. There was what, hundreds of filler episodes and a dozen movies to go along with the manga world? The only location I really remembered from those was Tea Country, but even then I wasn't sure if that was the one with Morino Ibiki's relative or the one with the Fuuma clan.

No, the Fuuma got fucked by Orochimaru, so it should be closer to Sound. Probably in Sound Country, in fact.

It was pretty weird, trying to match vaguely-remembered events from as limited a format as an anime to real-world knowledge and maps. Because I could remember all kinds of wacky hijinks and mishaps, but then the when and why and where were all big question marks in my head.

Like the one filler mission with Anko, where they found that fish girl, Isabi. Isobu? Isanami? Isa...rabbi?

Sorry cute filler girl, can't remember your name. Could have gone and poached her for a new team if I remembered some more.

If I did run into someone who needed the classic Naruto saving by way of overwhelming force, that was pretty much the thing I was referring to by saving them. I didn't give a flying fuck about Inari, but I had—somewhat—helped Wave Country, right?

Or then that episode where Hinata allowed Naruto to peek at her bathing out in the woods. I think there was a giant bee and she had some new taijutsu move, but...

What the fuck even was that mission? Something to do with Shino, maybe? Speaking of, the one where laughed his head off. Was that the curry one? And what about the dumb-ass brothers' prison escape with Ultra-SSJ-ripped-as-fuark mode Mizuki, where he turned into a tiger furry?

Seriously, Orochimaru is 100% the cliche stereotypical suspiciously wealthy furry who funds all kinds of questionable shit, except that he's a scaley instead.

A lot of the fillers began through the Konoha mission desk, a resource and touchpoint no longer available to me. So as I had decided, there was no point in slavishly chasing those events anymore.

"Thanks, old man. Need any help getting the boat up?"

He frowned at me as I stood up as if to just step out from the boat. Which I kind of was planning to do, but he already suspected I was a ninja, so no point in getting back the slow way.

He gave me an annoyed shoo-shoo kind of motion, I grinned and nodded. "See ya."

And then hopped onto the ocean, feet remaining above the surface. I could sense his surprise behind me, but paid it no further heed, too busy trying to maintain my balance, one cresting wave getting my shins wet despite the expense of chakra I had made to remain dry.

Ever tried to stand on a floor that's doing the salsa beneath you?

No wonder ninja use ships over longer voyages!

On the boat, it was a gentle rocking, the length and weight of the canoe having smoothed out the waveform for us. But on two feet, it was like trying to stand on an oiled-up fitness ball or something.

I took off towards the island again, minding my step with every wave.

Because the surface of the water wasn't really offering any friction, it was like standing on malleable ice. Gravity pulled me down to the bottom between two waves, with my chakra output through the feet having to be much, much greater than it had to be on top of still waters, or even a river to maintain my floating.

The best way to move was to apply the principle of Water-affinity chakra to create a 'solid' against which I could repel myself. Not quite a Flicker, but more like a push forward so I could ski atop the water, jumping over the waves and staying in motion.

Fighting like this would be hell...

Another thing to add to my training, along with something like snow-walking. Something which would increase surface tension beneath me or spread wide my weight, so that I would be pulled down into deep snow, quicksand, mud or whatnot.

Because that seemed like an annoying thing I could just prepare for before it would lose me a fight.

Finally out of sight from the old fisherman, I Midnight Flickered into the air to make better time to the city he had mentioned.

Ninjas were uncommon.

Ninja that could fly as a raven were probably unique.

A problem I would need to address, sooner or later, given just how much my fighting style relied on mobility.

Danzo had thrown insane amounts of chakra around, using jutsu that I would have had no way of matching for more than a minute. But that hadn't mattered one whit, because he hadn't been able to hit me a single time. Not a single clone had been popped by his attacks, where a few had fallen to the first combined ANBU assault when they tried to counterattack.

In fact, Danzo's wind jutsu had just been turned against his own men whenever I applied a tiny amount of highly-concentrated Fire chakra and turned it into another conflagration point they had to contain. He might have even killed more of them than I had, if not directly then by distracting them enough for me to pick them off while they tried to contain all the raging fires.

So mobility was king.

It allowed me to reconnaissance and engage targets at will, allowed me to flee and re-engage unmolested despite my enemies' best attempts, and it allowed me to travel too fast for anyone to keep up with me when I needed to get a move on.

So it was and would have to remain as one of my biggest strengths. But I only had two jutsu for moving.

The Flicker and the raven form.

One was too common and well-known—I was good with the Flicker, but it was still too limiting to be my sole means of locomotion—and the other was too recognizable and eye-catching, despite how basic a jutsu it was based on.

I needed a third to mix it up.

So, I need to work on my new space-time ninjutsu and see if I can't get that thing working...

"I was due for a vacation... This place looks as nice as any for a few days off."

Climbing up into the air, I finally took a look at where I had washed up a few days ago.

It was a big island, shaped like a crescent moon with golden beaches and a warm, tropic climate. The kind of tourist paradise from back before where people would flood to. The sea around the island sparkled, gleaming, cool and inviting, rich with fish as I had seen half an hour ago.

Strangely enough though, the city ahead was situated on the outside edge of the island, rather than in the natural harbor formed by the crescent's tips.

You would think that out here, they would be more worried about tropical storms and whatnot. But the island was also very mountainous and positively overgrowing with trees, so maybe they had sufficient cover there.

This city also looked ridiculously opulent and massive in comparison to the tiny fishing village I had seen before. Straight and evenly paved roads for every street, two or three-story buildings made of white stone with bright orange brick roofing, big electronic billboards blasting advertisements, thousands of people bustling about...

How the hell did an island like this become so rich?

Did they have oil or something?

Did this world even have oil? I had seen an excavator and some cranes before but hadn't investigated them before now. I had no idea what the economies were actually built on, having been solidly in the service sector for all my adult working life, this time around.

Hadn't I been wondering what exactly the civilization was built around, before?

So yeah, I wouldn't mind spending a few days here—seeing the sights, sunbathing a little to make my tan more real, snooping around in the normies lives...—before I set out again.

The due date for my next rendezvous with Haku and Zabuza was coming up soon, but not for a few weeks yet. I had scheduled myself enough time to handle the Chuunin Exams and the aftermath before I wanted to meet with them again, so I was in no real hurry on that front.

Besides, they would not hide their faked deaths forever, either.

Which by itself, wouldn't be a problem. Just because they had escaped with their lives didn't necessarily suggest I had been working with them behind the scenes. But if I did join up with them long term, I needed a foolproof persona...

Otherwise Konoha would come knocking, sooner or later.

Because my fighting style was much too recognizable. Massive Fireblasts and Chidori were not that common, and the moment I threw in a Shadow Clone or my Sharingan, it would be obvious who I was, given how liberal I tended to be with them. Even the Strong Fist and Gentle Fist taijutsu would to an extent betray my true origin.

And it wasn't like I could stop being a ninja.

Not only did I not have any social security or means of supporting myself without being a ninja, but it was literally what gave my life any meaning. To give up chakra was no different from death to me right now.

So I needed to develop a new fighting style.

Heh, that'll hardly be a problem, given the rate at which I've been reinventing myself...

It didn't necessarily have to be as good as my current one, but something good enough that I could exert force when it became necessary. And then, if the time came, I could exclaim: "Master, forgive me, I must go all out, just this once..."

My feathers shook with my amusement as I swooped down along the sea breeze towards the city.

That didn't mean I had to discard the 'Uchiha Sasuke'-persona altogether since it was useful in its own way. A lot of missing-nin seemed to keep their old identities and headbands since those were a form of advertisement as well. So maybe I could act simultaneously as Uchiha and Sasuke, keeping the hunter-nins on false trails by accepting random jobs as myself around the world?

Maybe I should have kept my Konoha headband, after all...

The Sharingan probably worked better as a brand for me right now, though. There were a bunch of Konoha missing-nin, but only two Uchiha with Sharingan walking about. And we were both pretty much S-ranks right now. Couldn't get better credentials than that in this business.

No need for writing a curriculum vitae or anything.

Maybe I should get some custom Uchiha-logo apparel, too? Like a simple cloak, similar to the Akatsuki uniform, just all black and with the fan on the back as decoration? I could just throw that over my normal clothes whenever I was out on business as 'Uchiha Sasuke'. It would look pretty cool, too.

Yeah, yeah, I'm a weeb for seriously considering getting my own Akatsuki cloak, laugh it up...

But that all still required me to diversify my toolkit.

So, space-time ninjutsu to mix up my movement options. Train up my other elemental affinities so I don't need Fire or Lightning for offense, take up the sword to avoid relying on my taijutsu...

Which just left the Shadow Clones and Sharingan.

I cringed at that.

Those two had been the absolute cornerstones of my meteoric rise in power. I couldn't hollow them out without losing most of my fighting ability, not the way I could just casually discard my elemental jutsu...

So could I maybe combine the two and disguise them as something else?

Make myself too noticeable, so no one paid any attention to hidden clones coaching me along with their Sharingans?

That would also cut back on my immediate reliance on it, creating a barrier of sorts. Or a speedbump.

I was pretty sure most of my instability had stemmed from the sheer chaos caused by Danzo, my own Sharingan and the Shadow Clones' memories intersecting on the day of the invasion. But I didn't have any safety nets anymore, so taking a little bit more caution with all this stuff couldn't hurt.

Pulling down some ways still from the city, I landed with a backflip on the beach out of sight from any of the residences ahead.

Remembering the old fisherman's appearance, I changed my colors again. Looked like since I was holding the chakra very close to my body, it was like the Tree Walking in exercise that it didn't really consume any of my reserves while in use.

It also seemed like it was pulling in my chakra a little, keeping my natural 'aura' slightly contained, adding to its value as a stealth jutsu. Not as well as a space-time Transformation jutsu did, but to a slight degree nonetheless.

Lastly, checking that my chakra-constructed clothes still held, I nodded and headed for the city.

Time to make some money.

"How much is the fish?" I ask, stopping at an open-air market.

The fat fishmonger frowns at me, as if I'm the one who smells a bit fishy.

"Says right there. 20 dollars."

"So that is the dollar sign." I nod. "Do you buy them for what, 10 dollars from your supplier?"

"...You another fisher's brat looking to make it in the big city? Better off going back to whatever hut you crawled out of, boy."

"If I brought you a fish of that size... would you pay me 5 dollars?" I try again, pointing into the icebox.

Where do they get the ice from, anyway? No, wait we had refrigerators and freezers in Konoha. So the tech exists, so long as they have electricity to power it.

Which judging by how big and rich this city is, doesn't exactly look like a problem.

Even if I hadn't seen any power plants or transformer stations of any kind. Most of the ships in the harbor had sails, but a lot of them also had huge chimneys, too. They didn't look like old-timey steamboats, either.

"That's a deep-sea gold-fin tuna, boy. It's 40 dollars per pound. You couldn't even dream of catching one of these. If you're not buying, go bother someone else. Shoo, shoo..."

A lot of the other fishmongers around were laughing at our exchange, now.

Hmm, well that won't do.

One trip to the sea and Sharingan-guided dive into the ocean later, I returned with a gold-fin tuna twice as big as the one I had looked at earlier.

It was almost as big as I was.

And the fishmonger had been right - those suckers were fast and the swam pretty deep, too. No ordinary fished could catch one of these.

But, ninja.

"Anyone willing to buy this?" I asked loudly, having walking back in with hair and clothes still wet and the tuna struggling in my hands. A minor auction occurred after that, with even a few of the patrons walking about taking part.

In the end, I walked away with 12 550 dollars in my fake pockets.

And it was dollars. Not ryo, like back on the continent.

The exchange rate seemed to be about 10 ryo to the one dollar. I wasn't too familiar with the old Japanese gold ryo currency, and the ryo in Konoha had been in paper bills and common metal coins, but the modern yen had been about 100 yen to one dollar, so maybe that had carried over somehow?

Anyhow, I had some money now.

A pathetically tiny bit, considering what I had left behind. But it was a start, because I now knew what this place was built on.

Gambling.

I looked up at the massive casino, advertizing itself with flashing lights and scantily clad women pulling customers inside.

Didn't make much sense as a primary source of wealth, considering that gambling seemed legal enough in Fire Country... Or well, I'd seen gambling in the anime when Naruto had gone looking for Tsunade. Didn't actually know if it was legal or some underground thing run by gangs. And this place was pretty far away from the countries I was familiar with, so maybe the nearest maritime neighbors had a ban on the practice.

Or maybe it was just the climate and beaches that drew in people wealthy enough to gamble.

It was pretty much a racing scene away from being Monaco.

Regardless, I hadn't seen any prohibitions against ninja or cheating, so I wasn't going to hold back on getting some easy money. Three sins of ninja? Bah, I'm not dumb enough to actually lose money or get addicted to gambling like—

Hmm...?

I was being watched.

Meditation and fasting did wonderful things. By calming down and clearing the caches of all the junk, it became so much easier to sense other things, and I could already feel some of that newfound clarity slipping away, the same way you would get tired and drowsy after a really big meal.

But I still had made enough progress there to build on what all that ANBU stalking back in Konoha had allowed me to develop. I really should make a habit of meditation, even if I was still leery about fasting as a growing boy.

It had put into perspective some things about sensing chakra and especially intent.

For one, it propagated faster than sound.

A lot faster than sound.

I think it was how Itachi could sense my clones' ambushes and intentions right after the invasion.

And right now, I could sense someone's bored eyes on me. Or more specifically, the bored of eyes of someone with a higher-than-average chakra reserve, since that was a lot different from the featherlight intents of civilians.

Makes sense that they would have ninja on security if there's this much money involved.

I moved along, not wanting to enter now, uncertain whether I had been spotted and recognized as a ninja.

Getting out of sight around a corner a few blocks away, I inhaled and released the chakra holding my current clothes and coloration in place. And then instead, I turned the effect full blast, curving all the light hitting me around my body, turning me completely invisible.

The fact that I was naked made it a lot easier since I didn't have to account for the weird bends and shifting all the time.

And it also contained my chakra a lot more effectively.

Doubling back along the rooftops, I found the big casino and my mystery ninja again; it was some blonde pipsqueak who looked bored out of her mind on the roof across from the casino, giving her a clear view of everything. I almost debated just appearing naked in front of her to see how she would react.

Oh, snap! I know her.

Right, Moon Country. From the movies.

The third one, I think. Where Naruto, Sakura, and Rock Lee got summer uniforms for some weird reason, and there was some spoiled prince.

Right. This place has a king, not a daimyo.

Some of the townsfolk had alluded to that in passing. Well, this sure complicated things again. Because a lot of the movies involved things like deposing regimes and massive invasions, which was...

Well, actually this didn't really change anything – Wave Country, the invasion, my involvement in the Hidden Mist revolt had all been me imposing on national-level politics already, long before I went and killed one of the Leaf's elders and ran away.

It was just...

I wasn't sure until now if fillers and movies counted.

The first ones I remembered were the Morino footrace where the guy with the lightningsaber showed up, and then the first couple of movies, none of which had been up on the timetable yet.

I just spent two days telling myself I'm done chasing the ghosts of the past and here I'm already thinking about it..

Old habits die hard, huh.

Well, not that I gave a flying fuck about this country or who exactly was ruling it. The movie villains tended to be more cartoonishly evil than anything, keeping the political and social implications of their reigns or deaths at a minimum.

Really though, Naruto had been going around regime-toppling his whole life, hadn't he? I couldn't even imagine the international power bloc that would form once he became Hokage.

Whatever...

By now, just tracking down one of the wealthier casino patrons and pickpocketing him would be the easiest way to get some cash, since none of them seemed to be employing ninja for security details. But this wasn't just about getting some moolah.

It was about testing how well I could work around other ninja from now on.

Getting caught here would have minimal consequences, beyond just showing me where I had gone wrong and allowing me to improve my tactics going forward, whereas getting caught with half-assed stealth later on could be a massive problem.

Jumping back down to the street, I nodded to myself.

Looks like my next few days have been planned out,

Chill out on the beaches, visit the casino a few times and get away unnoticed with reasonable amounts of cash, buy some real clothes, and then get my new space-time jutsu idea worked out. And then go meet up with Haku and Zabuza again and see what they think.

Whistling, I walked down the sunny streets of Moon Country, already running through disguise ideas for visiting the casino later today...