Chapter 2

Kazuki woke up with a groan, his entire body was hurting and something seemed to be pounding on his head with a hammer.

His first instinct was to channel some chakra and try to alleviate the pain but his power seemed to have become sludge inside his body, extremely slow and unresponsive to anything he tried.

"Good morning my bright star" Said his mother from a chair beside his bed, with another groan he turned his head "Are you feeling alright?"

"No, i feel like I just got hit by a bus" and Kazuki wasn't even exaggerating since that's how he died the first time.

"A what?"

"Ugh" instead of answering he turned aside from the bed and threw up on the ground, his mother bent over his body and laid a green glowing hand over his chest causing his pain to lessen "What's happening?"

"You had an adverse reaction to a foreign chakra" she told him in her medical voice "it affected your own chakra network so much I had to temporarily seal it"

"That's why my chakra feels so weird?" he said and tried to channel it again only to get hit on the top of his head by his mother.

"Stop that" she chided "If I had to seal your chakra network it means you aren't supposed to be using it!"

"This isn't just so I won't continue practicing right?" He asked and narrowed his eyes at his mother, she narrowed her own eyes right back at him.

"So you were practicing behind my back then" busted, turning his face away he pretended to throw up again, it at least caused his mother to laugh even if it didn't convince her of his innocence.

"No need to pretend you little devil" she smiled and messed up his hair "you're still recovering its not like i'll punish you"

"Was it an attack?" he finally asked, he had no experience but it wasn't outside the realm of possibility for a rival noble to have hired a ninja against them.

"No little star" she shook her head "Or not on you, someone attacked konohagakure and caused a huge monster to be released, since you're so sensitive to chakra it affected you"

Fuck that must have been the nine tails attack then, Kazuki didn't think it would affect his life so far away from that damn vilage "Are we still in danger?"

"No, you're just gonna have to deal with the seal until your chakra network recovers"

"Fine!" he pouted, he was nearly three years old he was allowed to pout despite how much older his mind was.

"Oh noooo, I'm gonna have to obey my mother and not train my chakra without guidance what a sacrifice" She mocked him and messed with his hair again while using another medical jutsu to get rid of his headache, then she kissed him in the forehead "Come on kid you must still be exhausted, you can sleep some more"

For once in his nearly three years of life Kazuki obeyed without trouble.

His new seal was a pain to deal with, he both couldn't and didn't dare attempt to dispel it and it reset all his progress with his chakra control. No, it made it even worse than when he started even if it looked like a cool chest tattoo.

The most infuriating part was that his own chakra sensing seemed to have been enhanced to an enormous amount, he no longer needed to even try and he could feel his mother, the 12 guardians and the inner guards.

It was too much, he even had some trouble going to sleep for a few days after his recovery.

He had also become able to sense a new kind of chakra laying all around him but he didn't dare even think about touching it. Being three years old and having a wounded chakra system was not a good situation to mess with what he suspected was nature chakra.

He'd make a pretty stone but his family probably prefered the flesh and blood version.

His cousin Yugai decided he couldn't be left alone for a single second after his episode and proceeded to sleep in his own bed with him.

Despite being a medical apprentice his cousin was extremely fit with a full body so it was a great and noble sacrifice he did by allowing her well toned body to lay in his bed and hug him to sleep he even regularly went the extra mile and hugged her back.

It was good to be a child.

He still drew the line at actively molesting her or even squeezing her generous boobs but, nothing stopped him from enjoying it if she decided to press them on his back, or his front he wasn't pricky.

It took him nearly another six months to manage to get a piece of paper stuck to his hand and only when he gave up and drew a little dot in the middle of it to help him concentrate.

Both his mother and cousin noticed his actions even when he was trying to be sneaky but, for some reason, didn't say anything.

His mother would also take a look at his body at least once a month, going so far as to bring him into a room filled with seals to analyze his chakra and drawing a little bit of his blood every morning. He had thought about protesting but she had looked so worried the first time he decided to soldier on.

From time to time one of the twelve ninja guardians would stop by to talk with his mother and so he got to know the monk Chiriku who always appeared eager to discuss mother's tremendous dislike for the ninja profession, uncle Azuma who liked to look like a fool in front of him by blushing when his mother was around and then getting extremely embarrassed when he was caught, aunt Tou who became close friends with Yugai going so far as to teach her some moves when his mother wasn't looking and Kazuma who always looked spotless.

Of the four Kazuki disliked Tou the most since she would alway tease him, lift him up and squeeze him too hard or pinch his cheeks, she was the same age as Asuma, one of the youngest of the twelve she liked to call them all old man when they weren't around, complaining of how slow they all were.

The one he liked the most was Kazuma, at first he thought the man was a neat freak but later discovered he just liked to look good, he was also the only one who would treat him like a real person, never making silly voices or talking down to him even if Kazuki could see he though him naive.

He liked to talk with him about ninja life and even philosophy sometimes.

It was those talks more than anything else that made Kazuki glad he wasn't born in one of the five villages. It was haunting to see how little value a ninja saw in human life.

Kazuma put the Daimyo and his mission above anything else in his life and it was scary to see, Kazuki sometimes wondered if he would have turned out like this if he grew up being brainwashed by the will of fire or whatever nonsense the other villages feed their children

The older ninja also painted the five great villages in a very bad light, one not shown on the manga. Despite most ninja training being white washed in his stories Kazuki could still understand what happened to those ninja and Kunoichi who weren't lucky enough to be clan heirs or that talented.

Every village had a large amount of cannon fooder that they could throw into bandit extermination, assassination and seduction missions wich Kazuma thought beneath their station, he had a very idealized idea of a shinobi, loyal to a single lord and being used for the greater good… not as disposable troops to gather some funds for a village.

He also hated the villages for the way they hunted down stray ninja and eliminated them to destroy competition.

Worst of all he knew of several young ninja declared deserters or even refused to be acknowledged by their villages because they were sent into missions where they had almost no chance of success in the hopes that they would get extremely lucky.

Every time a new class graduated from the academy there were a lot of graduates who didn't qualify for Jonnin training, those gennin invariably got killed by their vastly superior targets or by their own ambu.

Kazuki once questioned him why that made him so angry, Kazuma himself would gladly accept death and even dishonor if his lord asked it of him, the answer was simple, the lack of importance.

For the villages it was all a business, they had to maintain a certain level of military power always but they also wanted to cultivate Jonin, unfortunately they didn't have an unlimited amount of missions to hand out.

In Kazuma's view that was what was most important for the villages, balancing the amount of missions available with how many ninja they had so that they were always completing missions and none were left undone for too long but there was never so many ninja that they completed them all.

That's why they killed rogue ninja, that's why they sent their less promising gennin to their deaths, that's why they waged wars, that's why the kages desperately held onto power and their wars always destroyed the lesser countries far more than they did any of the big five but never came to a satisfying conclusion.

"You see little guy" Kazuma said as he handed him a square piece of candy "Being a ninja was supposed to mean something, you give up your own happiness and even your own life for something greater"

"But aren't the villages spending their lives so that they can protect their homes?" Kazuki tried to play devil's advocate, they had enjoyed this kind of banter for almost three years now.

"No, because they don't achieve anything" The long haired ninja said shaking his head "Worse, they aren't trying to achieve anything, they aren't even trying to change, too drunk on their own power, even a power hungry man would have been better"

"But you already said you don't like how often the villages go to war and that's what is gonna happen" he said thinking of the fourth ninja war to come.

"I don't like their current wars which don't have any objectives and don't achieve anything" Kazuma sighed and ate his own candy "they declare war, cull each other off and then retreat back to their own villages with nothing gained, even when Uzushiogakure fell it was the same, they spread the business that went to the village amongst themselves and left the country of waves to root because they aren't interested in getting peace, lasting peace that is, they don't want progress only to keep this cycle of meaningless battle"

"Glad I'm not a ninja then"

"Ha, and yet you still ask me for jutsus every time we meet," the man laughed.

"Of course, just because I want to be able to throw fireballs and thunderbolts around doesn't mean I want to kill people" Kazuki bit into his hard candy and cracked it in half with chakra assisted strength "Fireballs are just cool"

"I don't know if you'd make a wonderful Noble or a terrible one" the man laughed "On one hand you've got the whole selfish and petty thing down but on the other Nobles are required at least some competency into leadership and I can't help but think you'd order Ninja to become street performers"

"Isn't that a better use for chakra though?" He argued "Isn't it better than having it serve only for killing, what if every farmer could tilt their own land or every merchant drag their cart with chakra enhanced strength and stamina?"

"And that's how you get assassinated kid" the man patted his back and sighed "I would hit the village's where it hurts, their bottom line, there'd be less missions, less money in their coffers and a larger bounty on your small little neck"

They stayed quiet for a long time before the sun started getting low in the sky, then Kazuma got up and made sure his clothes were impeccable again, paying special attention to his twelve guardian's sash.

"The truth of the matter is that there's no need for the villages, there's no need for so many ninjas to exist or for them to govern themselves. It only brings greed to their leaders" Kazuma explained one last time and sighed "Ninja should give their loyalty to a single man and act to preserve and enforce his will from the shadows, sacrificing their lives for the sake of others' happiness, there's no need for this will of fire idiocy Azuma keeps sprouting, Ninja should have no will so they don't become corrupt"

"Don't know if I agree with you there, I kind of like having my will" Kazuki complained but the man just smiled.

"And that's why you shouldn't become a ninja" he nodded as if that explained everything "This nonsense of teaching every one of their children to become ninjas is madness, becoming a ninja is to make a sacrifice, not something to be happy about, we are killers not heroes. That's why even the best jonin are insane in some ways and there are so many psychotic Jonin running around"

Well Kazuki couldn't disagree with that, trained child murderers were one of the main problems he had with the elemental nations.

"Come, your cousin is back already" grabbing his small body Kazuma jumped down from the roof and deposited him in front of a laughing Yugai and Tou.

"Thank you for watching over him Kazuma-sama," Yugai said while bowing at the waist.

"Nonsense, it's the least I could do to repay the healing I received" the man said and laughed out loud while scratching the back of his head, Tou herself just snorted and proceeded to pinch Kazuki's cheek.

"And what were you doing on the roof hmm little guy" she mocked "Spying on some ladies again?"

"I don't spy on people!" kazuki protested "I only practice my stealth skills"

"Uhu, sure" she almost tore his cheek away while swinging his head left to right "you can't fool me with your cute act you little demon"

"Well I'll be taking my leave them" Said the older man while looking at Yugai "I'll have to guard the daimyo later tonight so I better prepare, always a pleasure talking to you little Yugai"

Using some chakra he disappeared with the use of a shunshin leaving only some dust behind, looking at the blushing Yugai Tou widened her eyes and shouted.

"No way, don't tell me my little Yugai is attracted to that focil! It can't be!"

"No… no way he's too old" Yugai tried to say but she wasn't fooling anyone.

"I forbid it, my cousin must remain pure!" Kazuki protested "No stinking ninja is gotta get his hands on you!"

At that, both young women burst up in laughter and wouldn't stop for a good while, Tou herself squeezing the life out of him until he started tapping out to get some air.