24 Reality Check

Later that day when Yuta completed his training at the academy training grounds for the day, he starts leaving to go home and rest. Suddenly a shinobi appeared on his path, it's a man with black short hair, a white mask on his face and some animal drawing on the mask.

Seeing ANBU shinobi for the first time Yuta become a little worried.

'Is he from the regular ANBU or Root? I can't tell. Did I mess up somewhere, should I time travel preemptively? No, I don't know what the problem is yet. I should just go with it for now.'

"Are you Yuta from class A-2? Hokage is summoning you right now, come with me!"

"Sure." Yuta replied while trying to look calm outside.

Masked shinobi start running at high speed in the direction of Hokage Tower, but not too fast for Yuta to be able to follow. As Yuta follows masked shinobi, he relaxed a bit.

'Well, its regular ANBU so it's should be fine, but what exactly Hiruzen want's from me? I don't remember him summoning me this time around in my previous timeline, but in previous timeline I wasn't at the top of the class back then, so let's just go and find out.'

As Hokage Tower is located just beside the academy, it was a short trip. As masked shinobi and Yuta entered the Hokage Tower, Yuta saw a large hall with many counters and working shinobi at them, on the other side of the hall there is a lot of offices, there some shinobi come and go as they take missions or report completed ones.

Masked shinobi leads Yuta to the staircase in the opposite side of the hall and they walk straight to the third floor, where Hokage office is. Masked shinobi directly opens the door and signs for Yuta to come in.

As Yuta comes in to the office, he tries to look a little excited, as any other brainwashed academy student should be in this situation. As Yuta enters the office, he saw Hiruzen seating at the desk, looking at some papers. There is no one else in the office.

'Wow, the Hokage office looks nice, it's so spacious, with big windows covering a half of it. There some shelfs with scrolls on the right side, I wonder what they are. On the other side is frames with photos of the previous Hokage, There is Hashirama, Tobirama and Minato.'

'Is there cameras back in the Hashirama days is already existed, or is it a drawing, and Minato looks so young and full of energy on this picture…'

Masked shinobi follows Yuta inside the office, stands directly behind Yuta's back and reports to Hokage. "Lord Hokage, student Yuta is here!" As Yuta hears his name he stops wondering and looked directly at Hiruzen.

Hiruzen looks up at Yuta and slightly smiles, but something feels wrong for Yuta, as Hiruzen's eyes is not smiling at all.

'I have a bad feeling about this, I feel the pressure from him and it's like he is seeing through me, catching my every slight movement. Damned! I feel like if I move even a little, I will die in that same instant! Should I time travel right now? No, I need to wait a little longer to understand where I messed up!'

Hiruzen after staring in to Yuta's eyes for some time finally spoke in a calm tone with regret in his voice.

"Yuta, the top student of the last year despite being a civilian orphan, training hard all the time and making a good progress with that. I had a high hopes about you!

But suddenly you become close with Itachi Uchiha and you telling him things, what game are you playing? What do you want Itachi to do for you?"

With that Yuta's expression becomes more and more scared.

Hiruzen start to raise his voice, emanating more and more pressure, "How do you know about Orochimaru affairs? Whose spy are you?!" Hiruzen almost yelled the last part, the pressure his emanating is so great that Yuta felt like he would fall to the ground the next second.

'Damned, I can't hold on any longer! It's time to retreat before it's too late!'

With that thought in mind Yuta activated his time travel with the intent to go back for 40 days, this is his standard time range that he set for emergencies like that, so he will not have to think too long in times like that about it.

As soon as he activated the time travel, there is only less than a second needed before it works, with that in mind Yuta becomes visibly relaxed and a little smile appear on his face as he waits for time travel to work, believing that he already escaped.

But what he didn't know, Hiruzen is closely watching him the whole time, and as soon as he spotted this sudden change in him, he signaled for the masked shinobi behind Yuta's back, and right the next instant, Yuta felt something hit the back of his head with a huge force and he lost consciousness even faster than his time travel fully activated.

…

At the next moment, Yuta felt a little disorientation and when it's goes away he find himself in his tiny apartment that he lives in, lying on the bed late at night.

As Yuta starts recalling what happens right now, he starts sweating and his hearth starts pounding really hard as a lot of adrenalin is coursing through his veins.

'What the hell! Why is this happened?! Thank God time travel works in the end!'

After ten minutes Yuta managed to calm down and start analyzing the situation he was in.

'Well, Hiruzen thought I was a spy planted by someone, but why he even decided to interrogate me personally? Ah, I see, he mentioned something about Orochimaru, he was probably already on the Orochimaru's tail about human experiments at that time, so Hiruzen wanted to interrogate me personally to find out what I know.'

'So he spied on my last conversation with Itachi somehow. I always check the surroundings with my sensory technique when met with Itachi, but I was unable to sense anyone nearby that time.'

'Damned, that was not enough, I should always use my privacy seal, always! Why I didn't use it back then? I've become too relaxed and careless, I forgot in what world I'm living right now! The slightest mistake can get me killed here!'

'Hiruzen probably sent some ANBU that is skilled in hiding and concealing his chakra to spy on me or Itachi. Or he might have used his crystal ball or whatever to spy on us by himself, why I didn't think of that possibility before?'

'I've definitely become too careless, relying on my time travel to be able to fix any future problem that may arise. And it worked this time, but it was too close. Who knows what would happen if I was not fast enough to activate it, or if it failed when I was hit in the head?'

'I might have been send in to the Interrogation Department in the unconscious state for mind reading, and when they would have find out from my memories about my time travel ability they would never let me regain consciousness! That would have been the game over for my for real!'

'Damned, I was so close to death right now! I have to be more careful, I have to get to the Jonin level of strength at the very least to feel safe, at that level capturing me off guard and unable to react in time like that will be much harder.'

'And Hiruzen mentioned about me becoming close to Itachi suddenly, so he is already aware of that, probably he was spying on us because he already had some suspicions about it. Should I go back in time and cancel my 'prophet' thing that I told Itachi?'

'Without that it will be harder to convince Itachi to follow my plans for resolving the Uchiha clan problem though. And I need Itachi to learn new jutsu and help me with my training. And even without the 'prophet' plan in play the situation will not change much and Hiruzen still will have some suspicions towards me anyway.'

'So everything should be fine as long as I'm careful, I will continue the 'prophet' plan with Itachi the same way, I just need to use the privacy seal whenever I speak about it.'

'Hiruzen might become even more suspicious with privacy seals involved, well I already know how he would act if he will, I will have to activate time travel sooner and everything should be just fine.'

'Maybe I should demonstrate my Fuinjutsu abilities to Hiruzen, so he will not think that I'm a spy that is supplied with this seals but a great talent that is Fuinjutsu master himself. Yep, that should work. With that Hiruzen should put some more faith in me.'

With those thoughts Yuta finally relaxed and goes to sleep.

After that Yuta continues his normal day-to-day routine, repeating the last 40 days that he traveled back in time, pretty much the same way as he did it first time.

The only change was that this time when he met with Itachi for training and Itachi showed Yuta Shunshin jutsu, Yuta performed it instantly with his first try this time.

Itachi was surprised with Yuta performance, "You did it on your first try? No wonder you are mastered those three academy jutsu to such high level in such short time, you have good talent for ninjutsu after all!"

"Thanks" Yuta replied with a smile.

'Yea, sure I have talent for it, and my time travel cheat is have nothing to do with that, yea, definitely…'

---

[AN: Well, it doesn't seems like Yuta learned the lesson, he still have some overconfidence, maybe the whole incident was too sudden and ended too fast for Yuta to beat some more overconfidence and carelessness out of him…

5 extra chapters ahead of schedule release on my patreon /SycoreNovels 

Big thanks to Q and All for supporting me on patreon!]