The fruit tasted like rotten meat and melted plastic. Naruto spat it out immediately, but the damage was done—his tongue already numb, his throat burning as if he'd swallowed acid.
Years later, the villagers no longer recognized him. The loud-mouthed, orange-clad boy was gone, replaced by a figure draped in black and white, his scarf fluttering like a warning flag in the wind. His boots crunched over gravel as he walked, the sound deliberate, unhurried. "You're in my way," he said flatly, not even glancing at the genin who stumbled backward, wide-eyed.
The scarf shifted as he tilted his head, studying the trembling boy with detached interest. Cold air prickled against his bare chest under the open jacket, but he didn't shiver. "Run along," he murmured. "Before I decide you're not worth the effort."
Silence followed him like a shadow. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Iruka found him one evening beneath the training grounds' dying oak—its branches skeletal against the bruised sky. "You weren't at the Academy today or yesterday ," he said, voice cracking around the edges. Naruto didn't turn, but the shifting weight of his scarf whispered acknowledgment. "Not my scene," he replied. The words were soft, yet they left Iruka feeling flayed.
The Third watched from the Hokage's tower, pipe smoldering forgotten in his grip. He'd seen the reports—attacking villagers, chunin, genin hell even jonin Danzo had repetedly asked him to put naruto into root but he had refused he was starting to wonder if he had made a mistake , no wasted movement, no hesitation. But it was the boy's eyes that troubled him most. Where there'd once been wildfire, now only black ice remained. "What happened to you?" Hiruzen murmured to the empty room.
Naruto flexed his fingers, watching mochi stretch between them like taffy. The genin's terrified face flickered in his mind—so fragile. He could've turned the boy's bones to jelly without breaking stride. The thought should've disturbed him. Instead, he popped the mochi into his mouth, savoring its impossible sweetness.
A rustle in the bushes. Naruto didn't turn. "Observation: thirty-seven minutes." His voice carried the bored precision of a knife balancing on its edge. "Conclusion: ANBU are getting sloppy." The masked operative froze mid-step, one foot hovering above a tripwire Naruto had woven from his own hair hours ago.
The Hokage's pipe ashes scattered across the mission scrolls as the ANBU captain materialized before him. "Sir... his reflexes are..." The man's fingers twitched near his thigh pouch where three senbon still quivered from the deflection. Hiruzen noted how the agent's knuckles whitened around his tanto. Not anger. Adrenaline. The kind that lingers after staring into the abyss and seeing it stare back.
Meanwhile, Naruto licked powdered sugar from his thumb, gazing at the sun. It looked like an unblinking eye today. Appropriate—considering what was about to happen down below. The academy courtyard buzzed with pre-genin jittering like startled beetles, their nervous sweat mixing with the scent of fresh ink and cheap paper tags. He could hear Mizuki's saccharine encouragement from here, voice dripping with the kind of false warmth that made Naruto's mochi-heavy stomach turn.
Below, a pink-haired girl botched her transformation into the Hokage—her pigtails sprouting into caricatured wrinkles while her nose elongated grotesquely. The proctors hid smirks behind their clipboards. Naruto's scarf twitched as he exhaled through his nose. He remembered when such failures used to sting. Now? He watched a boy's clone jutsu produce a single wheezing duplicate that immediately face-planted into the dirt. Pathetic. His own fingers itched—not with performance anxiety, but with the visceral memory of how easily human ribs gave way under mochi-hardened knuckles.
A whisper slithered up the wall behind him: "You could show them what real power looks like." Naruto didn't need to turn to know Mizuki's shadowed grin hovered there, all sharp canines and predatory patience. The man smelled like cinnamon and something muskier underneath—the scent of someone who enjoyed watching children squirm. Naruto flicked a sugar crystal off his jacket sleeve. "Tempting," he lied. Truth was, watching their tremors made him feel nothing at all. Just hollow echoes where righteous fury used to roar.
Down in the courtyard, Iruka's head jerked upward as if startled by a scent. Their eyes met—Naruto's black as spoiled mochi, Iruka's widening in dawning horror. Too late, sensei. The realization hit the chuunin like a kunai to the gut: whatever stood on that roof wasn't the boy he'd failed. Just the thing that had eaten him whole. Naruto bared his teeth in what might've been a smile, if smiles could flay skin. "Well," he murmured to the empty air, "shall we begin?"
His descent was slow, deliberate—each step compressing gravel into glass beneath his sandals. The scarf unwound itself like a living thing, tendrils flicking dismissively at the panicked genin scrambling backward. The lead proctor opened his mouth to speak just as Naruto's fist blurred—no hand seals, no wasted motion—and the man's clipboard exploded into splinters between them. "Observation," Naruto mused, watching wood chips spiral downward, "your grading system lacks... rigor."
Iruka's hands were already forming seals when the second proctor's scream cut off abruptly—his entire torso now encased in translucent mochi, ribs visibly creaking under the pressure. The remaining children's whimpers smelled like urine and crushed dandelions. Naruto tilted his head, fascinated by how the trapped jonin's eyes darted—not to escape routes, but to the trembling students. How quaint. Sacrifice. He licked a smear of sugar from his knuckle. "Hypothesis," he said to no one in particular, "fear tastes better when it's fresh."
Mizuki's shadow detached from the wall with a wet, meaty sound. His laughter skittered across the courtyard like a dropped senbon. "Now that's what I call extra credit." Naruto didn't turn. Behind him, Sakura's knees hit the dirt with a soft thud, her whispered plea—"please please please"—drowning in the wet crunch of hardening mochi. Somewhere above them, a crow took flight, its wings beating in time with Hiruzen's rapidly aging heart.
The traitor never saw the spear. One moment Mizuki was stepping forward, fingers twitching toward kunai pouches slick with nervous sweat; the next, a glistening spire of mochi erupted from Naruto's shadow—so fast it left vapor trails—and punched clean through his sternum. The impact lifted Mizuki clean off his feet, his sandals scuffling uselessly against air as the spear retracted with a sickening slurp. He collapsed like a puppet with severed strings, revealing the ink-black mark pulsing on his nape.
Naruto caught Mizuki's dying breath—it smelled of iron and sour apples—as he knelt beside him. "Interesting," he murmured, thumb smearing the cursed seal's edges. The ink writhed under his touch like trapped maggots. Distantly, Iruka was screaming something about medics, but the sound seemed muffled, underwater.
The scarf coiled tight around Naruto's throat as he rose, tasting the panic thickening the air. Children's tears. Proctor's sweat. Mizuki's blood pooling sluggishly around Orochimaru's mark. His tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, savoring the phantom aftertaste of that long-ago devil fruit. Rotten meat. Melted plastic. Power. "Now," he said softly, watching ANBU masks bloom across the rooftops like poisonous flowers, "let's discuss extra credit."
Hands slipped into pockets—the motion lazy, unhurried. His fingers flexed, and suddenly twelve perfect spheres of mochi quivered between them, their surfaces shimmering like mercury. With a flick of his wrists, they hit the dirt and pulsed grotesquely before stretching upward into flawless replicas of the Third Hokage—pipe-smoke curling from their mouths, age spots meticulously rendered. The clones didn't speak. Didn't need to. Their collective stare alone sent academy students pissing themselves where they crouched.
Iruka's kunai was halfway drawn when cold breath ghosted over his nape. The chuunin whirled—only to freeze as Naruto's scarf brushed his jugular, the black fabric whispering promises in a language only pain could translate. Behind him, the Hokage clones liquefied and surged back into Naruto's body with a sound like wet cement being poured. "Sensei," Naruto murmured, watching Iruka's Adam's apple bob against his scarf's tightening embrace, "you never answered my question." His free hand rose, palm-up, and a tiny mochi Hiruzen formed there, its miniature pipe trailing smoke into Iruka's horrified face. "Do I... pass this time?"
Somewhere above them, the real Third Hokage's knees buckled against the tower railing. His pipe clattered to the floor as ANBU hands grabbed at his robes—too late. Hiruzen tasted copper, realized he'd bitten through his tongue. The boy beneath him wasn't smiling. Wasn't gloating. Just staring with those hollow, black-mochi eyes as Iruka's breath hitched against the scarf's tightening coil.
Naruto's fingers twitched. The miniature mochi-Hiruzen in his palm dissolved into syrup-thick strands that slithered up Iruka's nose before the chuunin could scream. Iruka's pupils blew wide—visions of Hiruzen's pipe smoke morphing into choking tendrils flooding his skull. His knees gave out, but Naruto's scarf held him upright like a marionette, its fibers vibrating with suppressed energy.
Down in the courtyard, Sakura vomited violently onto her sandals. The smell—stomach acid and half-digested rice—mingled with the iron tang of Mizuki's cooling blood. Naruto inhaled deeply through his nose, savoring the bouquet. The clones had been a test. This? This was the answer. One trembling genin suddenly bolted for the gates—his left leg turned to mochi mid-stride with a wet *schlorp*. The boy face-planted, his screams muffled by the dirt as his limb quivered gelatinously five feet away.
"Pass?" Iruka croaked, spitting black mochi strands between words. His fingers scrabbled uselessly at the scarf. Naruto leaned closer until their foreheads nearly touched, his breath smelling faintly of caramelized sugar and something deeper, darker—like meat left to rot in the sun. "Wrong question," he whispered. The scarf tightened. "Now ask the right one."
The pressure vanished so suddenly Iruka staggered. His knees hit gravel just as Naruto turned away, scarf rippling like ink dropped in water. "What—" Iruka's voice cracked—"what happened to you?" Around them, the mochi-trapped proctor's ribs emitted a sickening *pop*. Naruto paused mid-stride, head tilting as if considering the taste of the words.
He flexed his fingers; mochi strands dripped from his fingertips like melted wax. "They carved their fear into my bones for years," he said, voice flat. "So I swallowed it whole." The scarf lashed out—not at Iruka, but at the trembling Sakura, wrapping around her wrist hard enough to bleach her skin white. "Now watch," Naruto murmured, "as I prove them right."
Sakura's ulna snapped with a sound like green wood splitting. The scream died in her throat as mochi flooded her mouth, expanding until her jaw dislocated with a wet *crack*. Naruto watched, impassive, as her eyes rolled back—not from pain, but from the sheer impossibility of sugar turning to concrete in her esophagus. Iruka retched. Above them, Hiruzen's aged fingers slipped from the railing. The lesson, it seemed, had finally begun.
"You see," Naruto murmured, flexing his fingers—Sakura's body collapsing like a puppet with cut strings as the mochi dissolved into pink-tinged vapor, "fear is just air in the guts." Her ribs rose once, twice, stuttering like a dying insect's wings. The scarf flicked dismissively at her pooling saliva, its fibers humming with restrained violence.
ANBU dropped from the rooftops like autumn leaves—sixteen blades singing from their scabbards in perfect unison. Naruto didn't turn. His scarf lashed out in a whip-crack arc, catching the first three shinobi across their masked faces hard enough to pulverize cheekbones. Blood misted the air, sweet and coppery on his tongue. One agent's mask shattered entirely, revealing wide, stunned eyes—the same soft brown as Iruka's. How disappointing.
Naruto's knuckles popped as he formed a single-handed seal—not a shinobi technique, but something older, hungrier. The ground beneath the ANBU squad rippled suddenly, liquefying into a vast mochi pit that swallowed their screams whole. Only their thrashing hands remained visible, fingers scrabbling at nothing before being sucked under with a sound like wet concrete settling. "Extra credit," he mused, watching Iruka's tears carve tracks through the dust on his face, "should be... immersive." The Hokage's pipe shattered against the courtyard stones far below.
"You wanted a monster," Naruto said, voice soft as a razor being drawn across silk. He stepped over Sakura's twitching form, his sandals leaving perfect mochi footprints that hardened into black glass. The surviving children had backed themselves against the academy wall—their whimpers harmonizing with the wet squelch of ANBU being digested beneath their feet. "Well," Naruto tilted his head until his neck cracked, "here I am." His scarf lashed out like a striking serpent, embedding itself in the stone between Iruka's sprawled legs. "Are you happy yet?"
The Third's knees hit the tower floor. His teeth had gnawed through his lower lip without him noticing—the blood tasted like failure. Below, Naruto's shadow stretched unnaturally long despite the midday sun, its edges seething with half-formed mochi appendages. One elongated tendril caressed a sobbing genin's cheek, leaving behind a sticky sugar residue that immediately began hardening into a suffocating mask. Hiruzen's aged fingers twitched toward a summoning scroll. Too slow. Always too slow.
Naruto exhaled through his nose—the scent of urine, vomit, and shattered dreams blooming like some perverse garden. His tongue pressed against the scar tissue where that rancid fruit's juices had burned him years ago. "Out of all the people in this godforsaken village," he said, voice softer than the mochi still oozing between his fingers, "Iruka... you're the only one I still tolerate." The confession tasted bitter, like swallowing back poison that had already done its damage.
Iruka's breath hitched—not from the scarf's pressure, but the jagged truth wedged between those words. Naruto watched, detached, as the chuunin's fingers twitched toward his fallen forehead protector. How many times had this man wiped snot from his face, bandaged scraped knees, lied through his teeth about "potential"? The mochi strands around Iruka's throat pulsed once—not tightening, just remembering.
A wet gurgle drew Naruto's attention downward. Sakura's fingers clawed at her crystallizing throat, nails snapping against the hardening sugar. How fragile they all were—these children who'd laughed at his failures. His scarf flicked outward almost lazily; the mochi encasing her dissolved into pink-tinged mist just as her lungs hit their limit. She gasped like a fish tossed onto the riverbank, her wide green eyes reflecting not gratitude, but primal terror.
Naruto's teeth gleamed in the sunlight—not a smile, just bared bone. "Lesson one," he murmured, stepping over her shuddering form toward the cowering genin. The Third's shadow clones materialized in a puff of smoke behind him—too late, always too late—as Naruto's fingers plunged into his own abdomen and withdrew a fistful of swirling black mochi. It dripped between his fingers like tar, hissing where it struck the dirt. "Fear," he said, watching the children's pupils shrink to pinpricks, "is the only language this village ever taught me."