4 Year One

Clutching her child to her chest, she sat back down on the bed. Looking into his calm eyes caused her to calm down.

"Maybe the war will be short? But it's just you and me now, but we will be ok."

Rising to her feet, she headed towards the door.

"I need to talk to my girl."

Looking at his mother, he felt conflicted. He wanted to comfort her, but his vocal cords weren't developed enough to talk.

Leaving the room, she headed a little towards the left. Noticing the door, he figured this must be some sort of apartment complex. The walkway had a gentle curve to it, proving this building was cylinder-shaped as well.

Yura hesitated before knocking on the neighbor's door lightly. After a few seconds, the door opened slowly. A young blue-haired woman peeked through the cracks.

"Yura!" Seeing Yura, she opened the door completely. "You just had your baby?!?"

Looking at the blue-haired woman, he noticed that she too was holding a baby.

"Right, Nikko just left. He said there's going to be a war. Have you heard anything?"

Hearing Yura caused the blue-haired woman's mood to visibly worsen.

"Come inside. Okura just left as well." Moving back, she opened a path into the room.

As he entered the room, he noticed that it was decorated basically the same as the other one.

Yura walked over to a chair and sat down, and at the same time, the blue-haired woman sat on the bed.

"Arita, what did you hear? Nikko said he's going back to his clan. Did Okura leave as well?" Yura looked at Arita while hugging her son to her chest.

Arita slowly shook her head before slowly opening her mouth. "He said times are going to get tough. While it's not completely safe in Kiri, he thought it would be safer for me and Chojuro here, so he left."

Hearing her words caused his eyes to go wide. Looking at the child in Arita's arms, a smile formed on his face. Was this a gift from heaven? Chojuro? Rokudaime Mizukage? Guard to the fifth and one of the seven swordsmen of the mist? He was worried before, but as long as he stayed near this kid, he should survive. Looking over at the normally sleeping baby, plans started to form in his head.

"Nikko wasn't that nice about it." She took a slight breath as her eyes reddened a little. "I feel like he abandoned me, us."

Arita's face fell a little. Looking at the baby, she smiled again. "What's his name?"

"Name? He doesn't have a name yet." She gently shook her head.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Let's give him a name." Trying to liven up the atmosphere, she put on a bright smile, revealing her shark-like teeth.

Yura cheered up a bit. "Do you have any ideas?"

"Hmm." Arita put a finger on her lips. "How about Iori?"

Yura thought for a moment. "He was born during the beginning of a warring period, and Iori doesn't seem grand enough. The strongest members from the first war had long names." Thinking for a moment, she looked at her child, and he looked at her. "How about Zitsukani?"

Arita nodded her head. "A powerful name. That sounds nice."

"Then it's settled. Zitsukani, my little man," her eyes formed into slits as she smiled.

"Waaaa waaaa waaaa,"

Suddenly Chojuro woke up and began crying.

"It's ok honey, shh shh, it's ok." Arita began rocking her arms.

Seeing this, Yura rose to her feet. "Arita, we need to rely on each other now, I won't impose on you any longer but if you need anything come and find me."

"Same to you Yura, I've been a mom for a couple months longer than you so if you need any advice come find me."

Yura nodded her head slightly as she headed for the door.

Returning to their room, Yura laid Zitsukani on the bed while she sat at the desk.

"With Nikko gone, I need to figure out how to pay for our expenses without his mission money."

Looking at his mother writing something on the desk, he continued trying to control his chakra. Realizing that molding chakra without using hand seals was really difficult, he decided to give up. As his fingers were too stubby to do anything, all he could do was wait.

A week went by but nothing major happened. In the second week, Yura's mother started leaving him with Arita as she went to work at a food stall.

After a month went by, Yura heard news from customers that the war had escalated, and Hanzo the salamander and Amegakure had joined the war. In the land of water, the Kekkei Genkai clans had an overwhelming power advantage over the other clans. If memory served correctly, next year was when most of the clans would band together to wipe them out. During the third year, Haku and Kimimaro would be born.

Chojuro had gotten a lot bigger and could now roll over, but Yura was still completely immobile, and he was not even sure if rolling over counted as Taijutsu.

He had been trying to figure out what path he wanted to take. Little was known about Kiri throughout the series, and he wanted to discover as much as possible. He knew the hand signs for all the jutsu ever shown in the series, but most of those were secret techniques, forbidden jutsus, or jutsus from Konoha and trademark jutsu of a certain ninja. How fast would he die if he did a Rasengan in the middle of the bloody mist village? He did not even want to think about it. So the jutsu he could do in public was limited. Over the past month, he had looked over all the perks, and they were pretty good. For Taijutsu, after the damage increase perks, they all led into one thing.

[Lvl 30 Taijutsu required]

[Increase physical defense by 5%]

0/5

From there, it broke off into two possible choices.

[Lvl 50 Taijutsu required]

[Increase strength by 2%]

0/5

[Increase agility by 2%]

0/5

From there, it branched up to one choice each, both required Lvl 70 Taijutsu.

For the strength route, the choice was pretty nice.

[Chance to inflict internal damage]

0/1

And agility was not bad either.

[Increase reflexes and faster reaction time]

0/1

For the last perk, they combined into one again.

[Lvl 100 Taijutsu required]

[20% chance to inflict double damage]

0/1

Just looking at these perks made Taijutsu worth it. If rolling counted as practice, in a few months, he could try leveling up, but that was just him being optimistic.

He had been trying to figure out how Chojuro met Mei because getting into her good books occupied around 40% of his plan. She should be twelve years old now, and if she graduated when she was nine, she should be a chunin. According to what he knew, she did a lot of killing during this period of time. And there was still Ao; he had to go get his byakugan in the next three years, so there was nothing he could do to influence that.

Looking at Arita trying to get Chojuro to crawl was a weird sight. Was this really a future great ninja? Maybe it was a common name. This explained why Chojuro was so timid and shy. He was raised by a single mother.

During the second month, my body continued to grow. Being able to move my fingers into the shape of a fist really opened up a lot of doors for me. Forming the seal of Confrontation, the same one I made before executing the Flying Thunder God, I could actually feel my chakra move.

Moving chakra to different parts of the body was really an exhausting process, and after doing it for an entire week, I finally saw an improvement in my status screen.

[Chakra 100.5]

While it may not seem like much of an improvement, it proved I could get stronger even without the system. In a lot of fan-fics that I read, the system either became a crutch or a hindrance, but true to Skyrim, mine just enhanced my immersion. That was if you didn't count the inventory system.

Every time I ran out of chakra, I'd pass out, so I started to sleep a lot more. That made my mom happy because with 100 stamina, I had to force myself to sleep or I'd stay up all day. Even though I was molding chakra and my control was getting better by the day, this didn't count as Ninjutsu or Genjutsu by the system, so I remained at level 1 with zero perks.

Well, that's not true. The second level of the Ninjutsu perks unlocked nature transformations, and I already had water nature unlocked, so I assume I was born with it.

When the third month came around, I gained more control over my body as my muscles developed, and I faced the harsh reality that rolling over was not Taijutsu.

So far, my entire life had consisted of my room or Arita's room and the corridor in between. From what I had heard from my mom, Suna and Kumo had joined the war. I was not sure how far into the war it took for the Third Raikage to die, but this was the war where A and Killer B fought Minato.

Because four of the five great nations were at war, the civil strife in the Land of Water was intensifying. Entire clans were being destroyed, and the surviving ninja fled to join Kiri. Because Kiri had a caste system, all these new arrivals were put in the lowest levels, and their life was not very good.

Even though I could probably make hand signs, I was never alone to practice them. It was not a problem because as long as I improved my chakra control, it should be easy to practice in the future.

And just like that, the first year of my life passed.

[Chakra 131]

I managed to raise my Chakra by quite a bit, but the most important development? I could finally speak.