KRA-KOOM!
Thunder ripped the sky apart.
The hairs on top of Amamiya Kenichi's head slowly lifted, as if someone were rubbing a balloon over his skull. That alone was enough to make his expression turn ugly.
Yeah, that's bad.
When the electric field in a thundercloud gets too strong, it starts messing with the tiny charges on your skin and hair. Result: your hair stands on end.
In other words—
If your hair suddenly stands up under a thunderstorm, there's a decent chance you're standing directly under nature's crosshairs.
"What… what is that?!"
A Hidden Mist shinobi stared upward in horror. Even through the artificially thick fog of the Hidden Mist Technique, he could still make out a massive silhouette inside the clouds.
Farther away, villagers on the Wave Country coast froze where they stood.
They had no chakra, no ninja training, no "battle sense" to speak of. But every instinct in their bodies told them the same thing:
Run.
Over the churning sea, beneath a sky black with storm, an enormous head pushed out of the thunderclouds.
It had horns. Tendril-like whiskers. Scales like overlapping fish plates. And its entire body glowed a dark, ominous red, pulsing with a pressure that made people want to curl up and cry.
To a well-traveled shinobi, it might've been recognizable as a certain type of jutsu construct.
To the common folk of the Land of Waves, it was simply this:
A nightmare.
A monster.
A walking, roaring, sky-cracking unknown.
And down on the docks below, Kenichi did not look thrilled by his own handiwork.
"…Amen—"
He caught himself, teeth grinding.
"No, wait. I believe in science. So it's not 'Amen', it's… 'Sci-men' or something. Whatever. I've really, really screwed this up."
Right after entering Sage Mode, he'd gone all in—pulling in a massive amount of sage chakra and using his Sharingan to shape it into a lightning-based senjutsu.
The idea came straight from Sasuke's Kirin.
But senjutsu-boosted.
With his own tweaks.
Good news: it worked.
Bad news: it really worked.
Lightning was already one of the hardest natural forces to tame. Add a fat dose of sage chakra on top, and what you get is exactly what was glaring down at him from the heavens:
A monster.
The thunder dragon coiled inside the clouds only had its head and a bit of upper body visible, but Kenichi could already feel the problem—its hunger.
It was still drinking his sage chakra.
And his control over it was slipping.
If I let that thing drop now, I'll be inside the blast radius too…
Even if it didn't hit him dead center, the conduction through the fog and moisture would fry everything.
Rashōmon gates wouldn't be enough.
Even if he created a huge barrier of pure water with senjutsu chakra, the resistance wouldn't save him from getting cooked by that level of lightning.
"I've gotta throw it… far."
Kenichi clenched his teeth and wrestled with the dragon's trajectory, forcing the mass of senjutsu lightning to tilt, twist—
Then he hurled it away from the harbor.
The thunder dragon vanished into the distance in a blazing streak, so fast that even with his three-tomoe Sharingan he only caught the faintest afterimage before it disappeared beyond his visual range.
Kenichi let out a long breath.
"Note to self: no more field-testing apocalyptic jutsu over populated areas."
If that thing had come straight down, no amount of Orochimaru's house-brand snake defenses would've saved him.
"Wait… where did I just throw that?"
That delightful thought hit him a second too late.
Before he could retrace the direction, Kenichi realized something else: the Mist shinobi who had been attacking him earlier… were gone.
Hidden Mist didn't make you stupid.
Anyone who looked up and saw that was going to make the same smart decision: run.
They were hired muscle, not suicide bombers. Failing a mission meant penalties. Getting vaporized meant no tomorrow. Easy choice.
"Whatever. One less cleanup problem."
He formed a rapid series of seals.
"Wind Style—"
A sharp gust ripped through the harbor, blowing the artificial fog away. The mist thinned, tore, then cleared completely.
And there, wedged under a small boat—not even his own ship—Kenichi found the man he was looking for.
Gatō.
"You're really something, you know that?" Kenichi stared down at him, expression complicated.
Instead of hiding on his own, easily identifiable merchant ship, Gatō had quietly abandoned it, submerged himself beside some random little boat, and kept just his nose above water so he could breathe.
That was commitment.
And a very healthy fear of death.
No wonder this guy was able to build a future empire.
"Hehehe… H-hello, ninja-sama. May I, uh, ask what business you have with me?" Gatō scrambled out of the water, dripping and smiling nervously, hands practically rubbing together on their own.
"Let's not waste time," Kenichi said flatly. "Money, or life."
If he hadn't needed cash, he wouldn't have bothered talking.
Gatō, to his credit, didn't try to argue. He didn't rant about fairness or wail about his tragic past. He didn't even try to bargain.
He just obeyed.
He led Kenichi up onto his main cargo ship and unlocked a secured storage area.
Inside… was money.
A lot of money.
Kenichi's Sharingan swept over the stacks, doing quick estimates by volume and count.
"You're really loaded, huh," he muttered.
"E-everything from this entire trip is here," Gatō babbled. "You can take all of it, ninja-sama."
From a rough mental tally, Kenichi figured it was at least a hundred million ryō.
A number large enough to make even some daimyo blink.
No wonder Gatō's name would one day rank him among the world's richest. The man was already halfway there.
And Kenichi, frankly, was impressed.
In the shinobi world, most true "tycoons" had a country or a hidden village at their back. Otherwise, wealth alone just made you a walking ATM waiting to be robbed.
Gatō, by necessity, had to be tied to someone.
"Backer's probably the Land of Water, maybe even Kirigakure…" Kenichi thought, eyes narrowing for a moment.
Then he shrugged.
"Alright. I'll let you live."
Sustainable development, right?
Slaughtering a golden goose is easy. Milking it again later requires a bit more patience.
As for exposing his identity?
Please.
A random guy with a Sharingan and a Konoha hitai-ate… what did that have to do with Amamiya Kenichi, upstanding A-rank rogue-nin?
Just in case, though, he didn't intend to leave things to chance.
He grabbed Gatō by the collar and lifted his chin.
"Look at me," Kenichi said softly.
The three tomoe in his eyes began to spin.
Gatō's pupils dilated, then unfocused. His breathing slowed. His will crumpled like wet paper.
Kenichi rewrote his memories with practiced ease.
In Gatō's recollection, he had arrived in the Land of Waves… and been robbed by a passing ninja.
A Konoha ninja, wearing a leaf forehead protector.
That was the surface layer.
Underneath that, buried deeper, lay a second truth: he had been caught in a powerful genjutsu, his perceptions overwritten.
If Gatō later went crawling to another shinobi for help, that ninja would likely dispel the illusion and discover that much—that Gatō had been placed under a skilled Sharingan user's control.
Beyond that?
Even if someone dug deeper still, they'd hit another safeguard.
Because when Kenichi had walked up to Gatō on the docks, he hadn't been bare-faced.
He'd been wearing a mask.
No face. No name. No trail.
And a hundred million ryō richer.