Several hundred centuries ago, some drunk ninjas in a tavern solve a universal truth.
The tavern smelled of roasting boar, stale rice wine, and thick, sour sweat trapped in the weave of the tatami.
It was loud.
Smoke curled from oil lamps, creating a haze that made the lanterns glow like drunken moons.
Oily soot hung low, stinging the eyes and coating the rafters in a layer of black grime that swallowed the light.
In the corner, a shamisen player plucked a rhythm that no one was listening to.
Inosaisho slammed his cup onto the table.
"I'm telling you, it works! I have transcended the physical barrier of the self!"
Across from him, Shikazou—currently nursing his fifth jug of sake—snorted.
"You're drunk, Saisho. The only thing you've transcended is your tolerance."
Chōjū, a man who took up two sides of the square table by himself, wiped grease from his chin.
"Is this like the time you said you could talk to flowers, and it turned out you were just whispering to a very patient cabbage?"
"That cabbage had a lot to say!" Inosaisho protested, swaying slightly.
"But this is different! I call it... the Mind Transfer Jutsu!"
Shikazou and Chōjū exchanged a look, then burst out laughing. Sake sprayed across the table.
"Mind Transfer?" Shikazou wheezed. "What are you going to do? Transfer your stupidity into me?"
"Watch!" Inosaisho roared.
He stood up, swaying like a bamboo stalk in a gale.
He formed the seal—a crude, unrefined triangle made with his index fingers and thumbs.
Chakra ignited- a ghostly, distorted blue smear -tearing through the smoke with a sharp, electric pop.
He aimed it squarely at Chōjū's massive forehead.
"NINPO: MIND TRANSFER!"
The chakra flared—a ghostly, blue distorted line—and shot across the table.
It missed.
It sailed past Chōjū's ear by a foot.
The energy bit into a wooden pillar behind the Akimichi, the timber charring instantly with a pungent hiss of burnt sap.
"HE'S SO BIG!" Shikazou yelled, slamming his hand on the table. "HOW DID YOU MISS?!"
Chōjū blinked, checking his own chest.
"Perhaps I have grown so large my mass redirects chakra? Like a moon pulling the tide?"
"Bullshit," Shikazou deadpanned.
Inosaisho blinked.
He looked down at his hands. They were...delicate.
They were holding a pair of chopsticks with unnerving precision.
He looked at his sleeves. They were silk, embroidered with weapon patterns.
"WHAT THE FUCK!"
The voice came from Inosaisho's mouth, but it wasn't his voice.
It was high, sharp, and distinctly annoyed.
The high, sharp voice vibrated in a throat that felt too thin, drawing in air that tasted of cherry-wood tobacco instead of sake.
Shikazou and Chōjū stopped laughing.
They turned to look at Inosaisho's body, which was currently slumped over the table, drooling.
Then they turned to look at the person sitting at the table behind them.
Tenka, the village hoarder, stood up.
Iron scrolls and rusted gear-parts clattered as she moved, a symphony of scavenged scrap that anchored her to the floor.
Or rather, Inosaisho—currently inhabiting Tenka's body—stood up.
"WHAT DID YOU JUST DO TO ME?!" Tenka screamed, pointing a finger that was covered in ink stains.
Shikazou and Chōjū turned the other way.
"Oh," Shikazou muttered. "It was Tenka. I didn't even see her sitting there."
"Nobody sees her," Chōjū whispered loudly. "She surrounds herself with so much junk she becomes invisible."
"I CAN HEAR YOU!" Inosaisho (as Tenka) yelled.
Tenka (as Inosaisho) woke up.
She lifted a head that felt heavy as a boulder, the neck muscles straining under the unfamiliar mass of the Yamanaka frame.
She lifted Inosaisho's head off the table.
She looked at her hands: large, calloused Yamanaka hands. She looked at her friends across the table.
"Why do you all look so small?" Tenka asked in Inosaisho's deep voice.
Then she looked down at her own chest. "And why are my... assets... missing?"
"TENKA!" Inosaisho screamed from Tenka's body. "GIVE ME BACK!"
Tenka blinked. She looked at her own body, currently occupied by a hysterical blonde man.
"Uh uh uh uh—just—hang on—I'll fix it!" Tenka stammered. She (he) formed the seal with Inosaisho's hands. "MIND TRANSFER!"
She jumped forward.
And tripped over Inosaisho's long legs.
The blast of blue chakra fired wild. It didn't hit Tenka. It sailed right toward Shikazou.
"YOU—IDIOT!" Inosaisho yelled.
Shikazou saw the blue light coming. He didn't dodge. He just sighed, swirling his sake.
"...this is troublesome."
ZAP.
Five minutes later, the table was a disaster of identity politics.
Inosaisho was in Tenka's body.
Tenka was in Shikazou's body.
Shikazou was in Inumura's body (who had just walked by to say hello and got caught in the crossfire).
Inumura was in Inosaisho's body.
They sat around the table in grim silence.
"Okay," Tenka said (using Shikazou's voice, which was incredibly disorienting). "I think we got this."
She began furiously organizing the objects on the table. Sake cups, peanuts, a stray shuriken, and a dried lizard tail she had pulled from her pocket.
"Look," Tenka explained, sliding a sake cup to the left. "If the sake cup represents my soul, and this peanut represents your soul..."
She aligned them perfectly by size and color, her hoarder instincts kicking in even during a metaphysical crisis.
"...we are statistically screwed unless we introduce a variable."
"Just swap back!" Inumura barked (using Inosaisho's mouth). "Why can't we just shoot the jutsu again?"
"Because of the Rejection Principle!" Inosaisho shouted (waving Tenka's arms). "I realized it mid-transit! You can't swap directly back with the body you just came from! The chakra pathways are still polarized- a river refusing to flow uphill!"
"So we're stuck?" Chōjū asked, looking worriedly at his own body, which was currently unoccupied because he had wisely ducked under the table.
"No," Tenka muttered, moving the peanut around the lizard tail. "We just need a permutation cycle."
A pressure began to build in the room, a deep, resonant thrum that made the liquid in the sake cups shiver.
"If A is in B, and B is in C, and C is in A... we can rotate. But the math... the math requires two fresh bodies to act as buffers."
She looked up.
"We need two more people."
The tavern door opened.
Two figures walked in.
One was carrying a jar of fireflies.
Shinri smelled of damp earth and pheromones, his eyes tracking the moth with the cold, unblinking focus of an insect.
The other was holding a star chart and walking into a wall.
Hoshiki's gaze remained fixed on the ceiling, their pupils dilated and glassy, seeking constellations through the thick thatch of the roof.
"I have specimens to dissect," Shinri stated flatly, watching a moth circle the candle lamp on the table.
"I have meteorites to categorize," Hoshiki mumbled, craning their neck toward the window to look at the night sky.
Tenka (in Shikazou's body) smirked. It was a lazy smirk that looked weirdly intense coming from her.
"This won't take long."
"Okay," Tenka commanded, standing on the table. "Everyone form a line! Shinri, Hoshiki, you are Helper A and Helper B. Do not ask questions. Just stand here."
"I am scientifically intrigued," Shinri noted.
"I am astronomically confused," Hoshiki added.
"EXECUTE SWAP SEQUENCE ONE!" Tenka yelled.
The tavern erupted in a storm of jagged blue light, a chaotic grinding of souls that tasted like cold air and stale sake.
Bodies slumped.
Eyes glazed over.
People woke up screaming.
"Okay! Now rotate the variable!" Tenka shouted, moving the peanut into the sake cup's former position. "Inumura, jump into Shinri! Shinri, jump into Hoshiki! Hoshiki, jump into Chōjū's empty vessel!"
"My body is not empty!" Chōjū yelled from under the table. "Wait, am I in the loop?!"
"YOU ARE NOW!"
ZAP. ZAP. ZAP.
It was chaos.
It was math.
It was the most complex sealing formula ever performed by drunk people in the history of the elemental nations.
Finally, the blue light faded.
A heavy, pressurized silence settled over the table, broken only by the ragged, synchronized gasping of seven exhausted lungs.
Seven people sat around the table, panting, clutching their chests.
Tenka (in her own body) looked at her hands. She checked her pockets. She checked her hidden stash of senbon in her sleeve.
"Okay," she breathed. "Are we all back to normal now?"
Chōjū (in his own massive body) shoved a giant piece of meat into his mouth and swallowed it whole.
BURP.
"It's me," he confirmed contentedly.
Hoshiki was already at the window, scribbling on a piece of parchment, mumbling about how the soul transition felt like a planetary retrograde.
Shinri was inspecting the moth again.
Inosaisho looked at his hands.
His beautiful, masculine, Yamanaka hands. He felt his own chakra humming in his veins.
I need to refine this, he thought, shivering. I need to refine the Mind Transfer to remove this ridiculous flaw. Or at least write down the math so my descendants don't end up trapped in a cat.
"Okay good," Tenka smiled. It was a sweet smile.
Then her expression shifted.
She reached into her bag—the bag she had retrieved from the floor-
-and pulled out an oversized, wooden mallet that she had absolutely no business carrying.
The mallet hit the table with a bone-shaking THUD, sending peanuts and sake cups into a frantic, airborne retreat.
"YOU IDIOTS RUINED MY ORGANIZATION SYSTEM!" she screamed.
She swung the mallet.
"RUN!" Shikazou yelled.
Inosaisho didn't need to be told twice. He scrambled over the table, knocking over the sake, the peanuts, and the lizard tail, and bolted for the door.
Tenka chased him out into the night, screaming about variables and peanuts, leaving the tavern to settle back into its ancient, smoky silence.
Her footsteps shook the boardwalk, the rhythmic clatter of her scavenged armor fading into the damp November wind.
Shikazou sighed, pouring himself a fresh cup from a surviving jug.
"Troublesome," he muttered. "But at least the math checked out."