39: The Hidden Rule

Extra large author note!

I'm back! I had a great holiday, though I didn't get to write as many new chapters as I wanted to. I hope you all had a great December too. Guess it's 2024 now, huh?

It's been a full month since my last chapter, so I recommend maybe going back and re-reading some of the previous ones, just to remind yourself of characters or events. If you ever forget a character's name or place in the story, you can also leave a comment and I'll try to give an answer if I see it. Although, I don't keep notifications on so I might miss your comment for several days.

One minor change to the grammar of the story: all uses of the word 'Reincarnator' from this chapter onwards will now be capitalised, just to make the word stand out a little more. I wanted to go back and do this for all my previous chapters, but when I saw just how many times that word is used I decided to just leave it as it is.

In case you didn't know, updating a paragraph deletes any comments readers have made on that paragraph, and I really don't want to delete anyone's work, even if it's just a comment.

Also it'd take a while and I'm kinda lazy... heh.

Anyways, we should be back on the regular three-day schedule until I either run out of chapters, or I burn out!

Or I die. (It could happen, you never know :p)

Have a great new year, and... actually before I say 'enjoy the chapter', this chapter introduces a new concept to the story that I'm still feeling a little iffy about in its execution. I think it improves the overall quality of the story though, simply because it gives me more efficient ways to wrangle the ninety-nine different Reincarnators that exist, or will exist in the future.

Let me know what you think of it - (I won't remove it of course, I've already written it into the entire story plan, and have even made vague hints towards it in previous chapters. This is just to see if it needs any immediate, small changes.) - in the chapter comments.

Alright! That's all from me!

Have a great new year, and enjoy the chapter!

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The villagers, while a little annoyed that they would have to deal with the remaining captured bandits themselves, thanked Seija profusely for bringing back their supplies.

"I can't believe you really took 'em down and brought back all our stuff in just a couple hours! You ninja folk really are somethin', huh?" The young guard she'd first spoken to said as she was preparing to return to Amegakure.

She tried to smile at him, before remembering she was still wearing her mask and quickly taking it off. She'd have to remember that for future client interactions.

"Yep, regular bandits like these guys are no issue for us. Would you believe me if I said that I had a harder time keeping them alive than beating them up in the first place?"

He laughed. "Heh, yeah I can believe that! If you don't mind, could we count on you and your group in the future if we have a similar issue? We really got our money's worth by hirin' you today so we'd all be reassured if we could do this again."

Seija grinned. This was perfect.

'Excellent. If we can spread our name around like this in every mission then the Akatsuki will become a household name in no time.'

"Certainly, we'd be happy to help. Of course, it'd be better for everyone if you weren't attacked at all but it doesn't hurt for you to get insurance just in case."

"Heheh, true that! Alright now, I've held you up for long enough, miss..."

"Ah, my name's Seija."

"Miss Seija. Have a safe trip back!" He shook her hand and waved her off as she mounted up on Rathalos for the flight back to the outskirts of Amegakure.

- - -

Being the first to arrive back at Amegakure's gate, Seija tested her strength control against a shadow clone while she waited for the others to arrive. The gate guards gave her an odd look, but she informed them that she was just training while waiting for her team to show up, so they didn't bother her about it.

*poof*

'Another one dead in one hit. I could've sworn my shadow clones were more durable than this. Firewall, my shadow clones were more durable than this, right?'

"[You informed me back when you first learned the technique that your shadow clones are more durable because of your unique chakra. It has been almost six years since then.]"

'...Wow time sure flies, huh?' Seija thought, 'But it feels like they should've grown stronger alongside me, shouldn't they?'

"[They should have. But your strength has grown at an even greater rate than your durability has, simply because of how the human body grows as it ages. Given that you haven't noticed until now, it is no surprise that you're having trouble controlling that strength against weaker foes.]"

As Seija pondered about training to reduce the power of her attacks, she felt a familiar pair of signatures at the edge of her passive sensory range.

"Yo! Seija!" Yahiko called out to her as he and Konan approached, "How'd your side of the mission go?"

She sighed.

"The mission itself went off without a hitch. I beat the bandits, got the villager's stuff back, and I even found evidence of who was responsible for ordering the bandit attacks in the first place."

Konan folded her arms and responded. "But?"

"But I couldn't hold back my strength enough. Although I captured them all, half of the bandits are dead because I overestimated how much they could handle without chakra-reinforced bodies."

Konan raised her eyebrows at that answer. 

"That's not a huge problem at all, Seija. You still recovered the supplies and discovered evidence of the true culprits of the incident . Whether the bandits lived or died was always secondary to those two goals."

Yahiko nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I don't see the problem. I mean sure, we were able to spare our group of bandits, but we just made them surrender by surrounding them with Konan's Paper Clones and communicating with them. We didn't fight them straight-up so maybe try that if it concerns you so much."

Seija stood there absorbing their words of encouragement.

'Oh, that would've been so much easier...'

She felt like an idiot. What kind of shinobi didn't use clever tactics and trickery to win their fights? She'd just made a sudden show of force using Rathalos and threatened them into surrendering, which failed because they were more scared of their boss than they were of her.

Just as she was feeling sorry for herself, Nagato arrived at the gate looking like a sad, wet puppy.

"...Hey."

"Nagato? What's up with you? You look terrible." Yahiko noted.

"...I killed the bandits."

Konan once again found herself raising her eyebrows. "That doesn't sound like something you'd do at all, Nagato. What happened?"

"I overestimated how much their bodies could take. I tried to knock them out with a Great Breakthrough... and almost all of them died from the attack."

Nagato looked down at the floor in shame, but raised his head again when he heard a snickering sound from behind Konan.

"Yahiko... what's so funny?"

Yahiko was struggling to hold in his laughter.

"Pffft! Nah, don't worry about it Nagato, Seija just did almost the exact same thing! Hah! You see, Konan? I knew we could do it better than those two overachievers!"

"Oi, don't spill my failures to the world, Yahiko!" Seija smacked him on the back of the head.

Nagato relaxed somewhat at their antics. It was nice to know he wasn't the only one who was too strong for their own good. 

Nagato and Seija both agreed to practice more delicate combat tactics for future training sessions.

Now, with the whole group gathered they signed in at the gate and headed through the town to the mission office.

"You're back already? It hasn't even been a full day since you were seen leaving Amegakure." The receptionist was surprised to see them so soon. These types of mission usually took at least a couple of days for beginner teams.

"Yep, that's because we did it! We got rid of the bandits and Seija even found evidence of who was funding the attacks!" Yahiko puffed out his chest proudly as he gave his report.

The receptionist blinked at him.

"Really? All that in just a day? We haven't even received word from the clients of the job's completion yet."

Seija stepped forwards and handed over the sealed scroll she'd picked up, still tied to the dead lizard.

"This is what I found at the camp I attacked. I presumed it was there to deliver instructions to the bandit leader. If I'm not mistaken, this is a Kumogakure summon, right?"

The receptionist looked a bit put-off at being handed a dead animal and stowed it in an empty drawer under her desk. "I wouldn't know, personally. I'll hand this... 'evidence'... off to our analysis department. For now, if you are telling the truth about having completed the mission then you have the rest of today free. Come back here either tomorrow or the day after, we should have received confirmation from the clients by then. Then, you'll receive your pay and maybe even get a bonus for the scroll you found, depending on what it reveals."

She tapped her desk and shooed them out. "We'll have more work ready for you after that. You are dismissed."

With nothing else to do for the rest of the day, the team headed home to work on Seija and Nagato's power problems.

- - - - -

Days later, in an alleyway in Iwagakure...

A ten-year-old shinobi is holding a small book in his shaking hands, the latest copy suddenly released by the Tsuchikage following the acquisition of intel from an unknown prisoner.

'Shit shit shit... this doesn't make any sense, how the hell did the information get leaked?! None of us have mentioned being captured and interrogated in the Chat! Sure, we can't use the Chat during stressful situations because our minds need to be clear in order for our thoughts to be translated into text… But surely they aren't torturing this guy twenty-four hours a day, he must have had at least a minute to communicate with the rest of us, right?''

Taichi, also known as Reincarnator Number #5 - the creator of 'Global Chat 2.0' - continued staring at the pages in front of him. He'd just returned from a week-long mission down south and he and all of the other shinobi with him were handed these books immediately at the front gate of the Village when they returned. Apparently, they'd been printed just after he'd left.

This was a Bingo Book, a list of wanted shinobi written and printed by various nations in order to keep their respective shinobi forces aware of dangerous or valuable targets to capture, kill, or retreat from should they encounter them during their missions. This, naturally, was a version printed here in Iwagakure and was typically full of target shinobi, from powerful missing-nin from their own nation, to other dangerous and well-known shinobi from their rival nations like Jiraiya the Sannin, or the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. Kage were typically excluded from the list for diplomatic reasons.

However, it was none of these individuals that had Taichi on edge. This was a brand-new version of the Book that didn't contain any of the usual targets, this particular book was solely dedicated to a specific type of people.

Chills ran down the back of Taichi's neck when he read title on the front page.

'Reincarnators...'

It was a list of descriptions and names of Reincarnators. Somehow, someway, the Tsuchikage had captured a Reincarnator and tortured the names, physical appearances, and known abilities of roughly two-dozen Reincarnators out of them.

He turned the page to look at the first entry expecting the worst... But his worry, though not fully erased, mostly turned to confusion.

'What? Why does it start at Number #51?'

Taichi's brow furrowed. It started at Number #51, and continued from there. There were sketches of each Reincarnator listed, some of them detailed, some of them rough, likely just estimates of their appearances. Many of them were already crossed out, indicating that they had been dealt with and their bounties had been claimed.

Also listed were a bunch of features that could be used to identify a potential Reincarnator in disguise, such as them being unusually knowledgeable and intelligent as children, possessing multiple rare Kekkei Genkai, displaying unusual techniques and abilities that required zero chakra to cast, or randomly staring off into space to read their system messages.

Of the detailed ones, one in particular stood out. 

Number #53, Noriaki.

It was not a sketch, but rather a photograph. A mugshot, to be specific, like the kind you would see taken of captured criminals in his previous life. 

Clearly, this kid was the one that they captured and got the info from. His bounty was also set to 'N/A', which probably meant that he had already been taken into custody.

'But this doesn't make any sense... only twenty five Reincarnators have been born so far! There can't be any Reincarnators in the fifties, that just doesn't add up. Did he feed them false information? But if he did, how come they wouldn't have detected it with an interrogation Jutsu? No, it must be true then...'

He grappled with the implications. This information meant that there were other Reincarnators besides the twenty four he knew of besides himself.

He paused.

Now that he thought about it...

'Only twenty four? Come to think of it, when was the last time a Reincarnator was born? It was like...' He paused as his eyes widened as he checked his system messages, 'Three years ago?! What?! How did I miss that? How did the others miss that too? Surely someone would've noticed that Reincarnators had stopped being born, right? But nobody said anything!'

Reincarnators were supposed to be born every three or four months. And yet, as Taichi just discovered, they had stopped being born three years prior. Somehow, none of them had realised.

Suddenly Taichi heard a familiar sound that resonated through his mind. His eyes snapped to his system screen as a sudden wave of profound clarity washed over him. One that - unknown to him at the time - every other Reincarnator also felt at that exact same moment.

[-True World Message-]

[-A Reincarnator from Group A has discovered a Hidden Rule. As at least one Reincarnator from both Groups has now discovered this rule, the mental blocks have been lifted and this True World Message is being displayed.-]

[-Hidden Rule: "Due to the sheer number of Reincarnators being born, and their wishes causing them to be born at specific times, this rule has been put into place. Reincarnators shall be born into two Groups of fifty, then split again into two different time periods. These two Groups are named Group A and Group B. They are split into two Sub-Groups each: A1, A2, B1, and B2. The Reincarnators to be put into each Sub-Group have been decided by taking several people with similar personalities and putting them all together, with only a handful of outliers in each Sub-Group."-]

'We were deliberately grouped together by our personalities? There are Groups and Sub-Groups? What the hell is going on?!' Taichi's mind spun.

If he hadn't been so confused he would've almost been offended to be grouped in with someone like Reincarnator Number #15.

[-"Sub-Groups A1 and B1 shall be born first, at exactly the same time. Sub-Group A1 consists of Reincarnators #1 to #25. Sub-Group B1 consists of Reincarnators #51 to #75. The remaining two Sub-Groups, A2 and B2, will not be born until significantly later in the timeline. Group A and Group B cannot communicate with each other via the Global Chat."-]

[-"Only messages designated as 'True World Messages' can be read by both Groups."-]

[-Do your best to discover other Hidden Rules. Your survival may depend on it.-]

...

'Fucking hell... better see what the others have to say about this.'

Taichi opened his Group Chat, and waded into the bombardment of text. People were already discussing the situation, making theories about the mental blocks and how the rule was discovered. He sent a message.

[-Global Chat 2.0-]

[-Reincarnator #5: "I'm the one who found the Hidden Rule. A guy from Sub-Group B1 got caught by the Tsuchikage and spilled everything he knew about the other people in his Sub-Group. Their info has been compiled into a Bingo Book, and every shinobi in Iwagakure now has one. It won't be as bad for us since they only got the info from B1, not A1... But still, be on your guard from now on, especially around Village leaders, Jonin, and ANBU agents. The secret is out. In just a few days, the whole world will know that we exist."-]

He felt like it needed saying, for all of their sakes. Now that he'd had some time to think about it, his mind had started making prediction after prediction. 

'If Iwagakure knows about this, then any spies from other nations will know about it too. Hell, it's already been one week at least, I bet the higher-ups of other nations found out about this days before I did. And if the leaders of other nations know that Reincarnators exist, then they'll obviously try to find them themselves.'

He closed the book and hurried home to his apartment, careful not to make himself look too nervous.

'Since Noriaki is still in jail, he'll have seen that True World Message too. And that means he's gonna tell the Tsuchikage that there's another Group to track down, and then that information will eventually leak to the other nations too. I need to be seriously fucking cautious about when and where I use my powers and knowledge from now on; if anybody figures out that I'm a Reincarnator, I'll be royally fucked.'

Glancing back down at his system, he could see that the other Reincarnators had got his message.

[-Reincarnator #6: "Thank you for posting this information, Taichi. That was good of you to say."-]

[-Reincarnator #4: "Jesus Christ, no kidding. If you hadn't said anything I don't think I'd have even realised that this world message means that the secret would get out. I need to blend into my Village a little more than I have been."-]

[-Reincarnator #7: "Same here."-]

There was even a surprise message in there from someone he didn't expect.

[-Reincarnator #1: "Got it. Thanks."-]

'Huh. I guess I did good, then? That feels nice.'

As he approached the doors of his home he froze and quickly looked around. Thankfully he lived in a remote neighborhood, and it didn't seem like anyone was around to observe him staring at his system screen.

'Close call. Definitely don't want to do that in public again now that people will be on watch for kids randomly staring off into empty space for minutes on end.'

He could only hope that the others would exercise that kind of restraint as well.