The kunai hit center mass.
Tatsuya lowered his arm and studied the target—a wooden post scarred by thousands of impacts, his blade buried two inches deep in the painted bullseye. Six weeks ago, he'd been lucky to hit the post at all. Now he could put steel where he wanted it, eight times out of ten.
Progress. Incremental, grinding progress.
"Your release point is still late," Shin said from his position three meters to the left. He'd already thrown his set—five kunai in a tight cluster, all within a hand's width of each other. "You're compensating with wrist rotation, but it's costing you power."
"I know." Tatsuya retrieved his weapons, feeling the familiar ache in his shoulder. The joint had healed, but it remembered the injury. Some mornings it was stiff enough to affect his accuracy. "Show me again?"
Shin demonstrated. The motion was economical—draw, sight, release—completed in less than a second. His kunai struck the target with a solid thunk, joining its brothers in the cluster.
Tatsuya watched, analyzing. The difference was subtle: Shin's fingers opened a fraction earlier, letting the blade's momentum carry it forward rather than forcing it. Less effort, more precision. The kind of refinement that came from years of practice or very good instruction.
He tried again. Better. Not perfect, but better.
Around them, Training Ground Three hummed with activity. The reserve pool had settled into its rhythm over the past weeks—the same faces appearing each morning, sorting themselves into informal hierarchies based on skill and temperament. Tatsuya had found his place somewhere in the upper-middle: not exceptional, but competent enough to avoid the extra "attention" Yamada gave to stragglers.
The stragglers were thinning out. Two genin had been quietly transferred to support roles in the first month—supply logistics, message running, the unglamorous work that kept the village functioning but didn't require combat capability. A third had simply stopped showing up. No one asked questions. In the reserve pool, absence was its own answer.
"You're overthinking."
Tatsuya turned. The speaker was a girl his apparent age—maybe a year older—with short brown hair and a face that seemed permanently set in mild irritation. Mira. She'd been in the pool longer than anyone except Shin, a fact she neither advertised nor hid.
"What?"
"Your throwing. You're calculating trajectories like it's a math problem." She demonstrated her own throw—loose, almost casual, the kunai leaving her hand without apparent aim. It struck dead center anyway. "Stop thinking. Start feeling."
"Feeling isn't exactly my strong suit."
"Then you'll always be just adequate." Mira retrieved her blade. "Adequate gets you killed."
She walked away before he could respond, joining a group practicing formation drills on the far side of the field. Tatsuya watched her go, filing the interaction away.
Mira was... difficult to read. Competent, certainly—her tracking skills were genuinely impressive, and her taijutsu was better than his despite her smaller frame. But there was something closed-off about her, a wall that went up whenever conversation strayed from the purely practical. He recognized it because he maintained a similar wall himself.
Survivors' architecture. The structures you built to keep functioning when everything else had collapsed.
"She's not wrong," Shin said quietly. "About the overthinking."
"I know." Tatsuya drew another kunai, felt its weight, tried to empty his mind of calculations. "But some of us have to work harder to get there."
He threw. The blade wobbled slightly in flight, struck the target two inches right of center.
Still adequate. Still not enough.
The mission was supposed to be simple.
C-rank escort: accompany a merchant convoy from Konoha to a mining settlement in the foothills, three days out. The cargo was refined iron—valuable, but not enough to attract serious attention. Bandits were possible; enemy shinobi were unlikely. Standard route, standard precautions, standard pay.
Tatsuya had been assigned as supplementary support again, filling a gap in a four-man squad whose regular member was recovering from a training injury. The jonin-sensei was a woman named Takara—competent, businesslike, utterly uninterested in getting to know her temporary addition. The other two genin, Kenji and Sora, treated him with the casual indifference of people who'd learned not to invest in transient teammates.
That was fine. He wasn't here to make friends.
The first two days passed without incident. They traveled through forested hills, the merchant wagons creaking along roads that were barely more than packed dirt. Tatsuya walked point rotation with the others, scanned treelines, checked sightlines, did all the things he'd been trained to do.
At night, he practiced. Tree-walking, mostly—the chakra control exercise he'd finally cracked in the fifth week of training. The principle was simple: emit a constant, precise flow of chakra through the feet to adhere to vertical surfaces. The execution was maddening. Too much chakra and you blasted yourself off; too little and you simply fell.
He'd approached it like a medical problem, something that's familiar. Chakra as a circulatory system, emission as controlled hemorrhage. Find the exact pressure, the exact volume, and maintain it through constant micro-adjustments. It had taken three weeks of bruises and failed attempts before something clicked.
Now he could run up trees without thinking about it. Water-walking was still inconsistent—the dynamic surface required constant recalibration—but he was making progress.
On the third morning, everything went wrong.
They were two hours from the mining settlement when the attack came. The lead wagon lurched to a halt, its driver slumping sideways with a crossbow bolt in his throat. Tatsuya was moving before the body hit the ground, muscle memory and training taking over.
"Ambush! Formation three!"
Takara's voice cut through the chaos. The genin responded automatically—Kenji toward the rear wagon, Sora covering the civilians, Tatsuya falling into the gap between. Weapons appeared in hands.
The bandits emerged from the treeline in a ragged wave. Eight, ten, twelve—hard to count while they were moving. Rough men with rough weapons, the kind of desperate scavengers that haunted trade routes and preyed on merchants too poor to afford proper protection.
But something was wrong. Their approach was too coordinated. Their positioning too professional. And at the back, barely visible through the trees—
A figure in dark clothing, watching. Not attacking. Directing.
Shinobi.
"Takara-sensei!" Tatsuya called. "There's a—"
"I see him." Her voice was flat. "Handle the fodder. I'll deal with the puppeteer."
She vanished in a blur of motion, heading for the treeline. The enemy shinobi moved to intercept. That left three genin against a dozen bandits.
Adequate odds. If you didn't mind dying.
Tatsuya's first opponent was a big man with a woodcutter's axe—more muscle than skill, swinging for his head with the kind of force that would split him crown to crotch if it connected. He ducked under the blow, felt the wind of it pass over his scalp, and stepped inside the man's guard.
The kunai went in under the ribs.
He knew exactly what he was cutting. The diaphragm first, then the liver—a major vessel, probably the hepatic artery, from the way the blood pulsed hot and immediate over his hand. The man's eyes went wide, shock registering before pain. His mouth opened but nothing came out except a wet gurgle.
Tatsuya twisted the blade and pulled it free. The man dropped.
No hesitation. No freeze. The surgeon's hands had cut living flesh before, had felt the wet resistance of muscle and the slick heat of blood. This was different—killing instead of healing—but the mechanics were the same. Blade goes in, blade comes out, the body does what bodies do when they're damaged beyond repair.
He stepped over the corpse and engaged the next target.
The fight became a blur of motion and violence. He wasn't the fastest or the strongest, but he was efficient—targeting vulnerabilities, conserving energy, using the terrain to limit the number of opponents who could reach him at once. A slash across one man's forearm made him drop his weapon; a kick to another's knee buckled him long enough for Kenji to finish the job. Teamwork without communication, the desperate coordination of people who wanted to survive.
One bandit got too close. Tatsuya felt steel bite into his side—a shallow cut, a knife that had slipped past his guard—and responded with an elbow to the throat. Crushed trachea. The man fell choking, drowning in his own collapsed airway.
Tatsuya knew how long it would take him to die. Knew the exact progression of hypoxia and panic as the brain starved for oxygen. He didn't watch. There were still enemies standing.
Then, suddenly, there weren't.
The clearing fell quiet except for the groans of the wounded and the harsh breathing of the survivors. Tatsuya counted bodies automatically: eight bandits down, two still moving but out of the fight. Kenji was bleeding from a gash on his forearm. Sora had a black eye swelling shut. The merchants huddled behind their wagons, alive but terrified.
And Takara was walking back from the treeline, cleaning her blade, with a body slung over her shoulder.
"Target neutralized," she said calmly. "Missing-nin, C-rank at best. Probably hired muscle for the bandit group." She dropped the corpse without ceremony. "Good work. Patch yourselves up. We're moving in ten."
That was it. No debrief, no acknowledgment of what they'd just survived. Just good work and a timeline.
Tatsuya found a quiet spot beside one of the wagons and examined his wound. The cut was superficial—maybe an inch deep, running along his lower ribs. Painful but not dangerous. He cleaned it with water from his canteen, applied pressure, and started wrapping it with bandages from his kit.
His hands weren't shaking. That surprised him, distantly. The adrenaline should have produced tremors, fight-or-flight chemistry expressing itself in fine motor disruption. But his hands were steady. Surgeon's hands. Killer's hands.
He looked at them—still stained with blood, drying brown in the creases of his palms—and waited to feel something.
Guilt. Horror. Revulsion. Something.
What he felt was tired.
He'd killed three men. Maybe four, if the one with the crushed throat hadn't survived. He knew their faces—had seen the exact moment when life became absence in their eyes. He could probably sketch them from memory if someone asked.
And all he felt was tired.
Is this what you were like? he asked the absent surgeon, the ghost of his old life. Is this why you could stand in operating rooms for sixteen hours straight while people died under your hands? Because you learned to feel it later, or not at all?
No answer. There was never an answer.
He finished bandaging his wound, washed his hands as best he could, and rejoined the convoy.
They reached the mining settlement without further incident. Delivered the cargo. Filed the mission report. Returned to Konoha three days later, richer by a C-rank's pay and a new entry in Tatsuya's mental ledger.
Three confirmed kills. First time on record.
He didn't celebrate. Didn't mourn. He added it to the weight he carried and kept moving.
The training ground was empty when he arrived at 0500 the next morning. Too early for the regular rotations, too late for the insomniacs who sometimes practiced through the night. He had maybe an hour before anyone else showed up.
He ran through taijutsu forms until his muscles burned. Then weapons drills until his arms ached. Then chakra control exercises—tree-walking, water-walking, basic emission patterns—until the sun was fully up and other genin started trickling in.
Shin found him sitting by the stream, catching his breath.
"You look terrible."
"Thanks." Tatsuya didn't open his eyes. "Mission ran long."
"I heard." A pause. "The C-rank that turned into a C-plus. Missing-nin involvement."
"Something like that."
Shin sat down beside him. They'd developed this rhythm over the past weeks—comfortable silence, occasional observations, no pressure to fill the quiet with unnecessary words. It was restful in a way that Tatsuya hadn't expected.
"First time?" Shin asked eventually.
Tatsuya knew what he meant. "Yes."
"Does it bother you?"
He considered the question seriously. Did it bother him? He'd taken lives. Ended futures. Made children into orphans, maybe, or left parents to grieve sons who'd chosen banditry over honest work. The moral weight was real, even if the targets had been trying to kill him first.
"It should," he said finally. "I keep waiting for it to hit. But mostly I just feel..."
"Tired," Shin finished. "I know." His voice carried something that might have been understanding. "It gets easier. That's the worst part."
They sat in silence after that, watching the stream flow past.
The library became his second home, if you could call the barracks a home.
After training, after missions, during the rare hours he wasn't actively working to make his body stronger—Tatsuya read. Jutsu theory. Elemental transformation. The history of the great clans and their techniques. Medical ninjutsu texts that were technically restricted but somehow found their way to shelves accessible to any shinobi with a valid ID.
He read about the chakra scalpel first.
The concept was elegant. Chakra emitted in a thin, concentrated blade, capable of severing tissue without physical contact. Medical applications were obvious: surgery without incisions, precise cutting in areas too delicate for conventional tools. The technique required exceptional control and a deep understanding of anatomy.
He had the anatomy knowledge. The control was coming along.
What the texts didn't emphasize—what he had to infer from careful reading between the lines—were the combat applications. A blade that couldn't be blocked. Cuts that appeared without visible cause. The ability to sever tendons, arteries, nerve clusters with a gesture.
Lethal. The word surfaced unbidden. In the right hands, absolutely lethal.
He practiced the emission pattern in his barracks room, late at night when no one was watching. Not the full technique—that required more control than he had—but the foundation. Concentrating chakra at his fingertips, shaping it into something thin and sharp. Most nights he managed nothing more than a faint glow. Occasionally, the edge was keen enough to leave marks on wood.
Progress. Slow, inadequate progress.
But it was something.
The elemental affinity test came in week eleven.
"Standard procedure," Yamada explained, passing out slips of paper to the assembled genin. "Channel chakra into the paper. It will react according to your nature."
Tatsuya had read about this. Fire crinkled and burned. Water dampened. Earth crumbled. Lightning wrinkled. Wind split. Most shinobi had one primary affinity; some had two. Complete elemental mastery was theoretically possible but practically insane—the effort required to master a non-affinity element was five to ten times greater than for your natural type.
He channeled chakra into his paper.
It crinkled. Then caught fire, burning from the center outward until nothing remained but ash in his palm.
"Fire," Yamada noted, making a mark on his roster. "Strong expression. You'll start with basic flame manipulation exercises."
Fire. The element of passion and destruction, if you believed the philosophical nonsense. The element of the Uchiha clan, if you paid attention to history.
Tatsuya brushed the ash from his hands and said nothing.
But that night, in his barracks room, he pulled out his coded journal and added a new entry:
Fire affinity. Strong. Uchiha connection?
Below it:
Dreams again. The woman with dark hair. She's saying something but I can't hear the words. Who was my father? Who am I?
He stared at the questions for a long time before closing the journal and hiding it away.
He met Might Duy on a Tuesday evening.
The man was practicing in a training ground that most shinobi avoided—a rocky area near the village's eastern edge, inconvenient to reach and lacking the amenities of the main facilities. Tatsuya had found it by accident, looking for somewhere private to work on water-walking without an audience for his failures.
What he found instead was a figure moving through taijutsu forms in the dying light.
At first glance, the man seemed unremarkable. Average height, bowl-cut hair gone grey at the temples, wearing a faded green jumpsuit that had seen better decades. His movements were basic—Academy-level kata, the kind of thing children learned in their first year of training.
Tatsuya almost dismissed him. Almost turned around to find somewhere else.
Then he looked closer.
The surgeon's eye caught details that casual observation missed. The way the man's muscles moved under his skin—not straining, not working, simply flowing through motions that should have required effort. The precision of his footwork, each step landing exactly where it needed to despite appearing almost careless. The economy of energy expenditure that suggested years—decades—of refinement.
This man moved like water. Like breath. Like something that had transcended the need for conscious thought.
Tatsuya approached cautiously.
The man noticed him immediately—of course he did—but continued his forms without interruption. Only when he reached a natural stopping point did he turn, and his face split into a smile so genuine it was almost startling.
"A visitor! Welcome, welcome! Don't see many young shinobi out this way." His voice was warm, enthusiastic, completely at odds with the discipline Tatsuya had just witnessed. "Training alone? Admirable dedication! The flames of youth burn brightly in you!"
Flames of youth. Tatsuya blinked. "I was looking for a quiet place to practice. I didn't mean to interrupt."
"No interruption! Training is always better with company." The man dropped into an exaggerated ready stance. "I am Might Duy, Eternal Genin of Konohagakure! What is your name, young shinobi?"
Eternal Genin. The phrase clicked into place. He'd heard it whispered in the reserve pool—mocking references to the failure who'd been stuck at the lowest rank for over two decades. A joke. A cautionary tale about what happened when you lacked talent.
But what Tatsuya had just witnessed wasn't talentless. It was something else entirely.
"Tatsuya Meguri," he said carefully. "Reserve pool."
"Ah! The survivors of the system!" Duy's smile didn't waver. "Many great shinobi have risen from the reserve pool. Never underestimate the value of adversity in forging strength!"
Platitudes. But delivered with such earnest conviction that they almost sounded sincere.
"Your taijutsu," Tatsuya said, deciding on directness. "What you were practicing. That wasn't Academy standard."
Something flickered in Duy's expression. The smile remained, but his eyes sharpened—a brief glimpse of the person beneath the performance.
"Oh? What makes you say that?"
"Efficiency. Your movements look basic, but there's no wasted energy. Every motion serves a purpose." Tatsuya chose his next words carefully. "I've seen enough combat to know the difference between someone practicing forms and someone who's internalized them completely."
The silence stretched. Duy's cheerful mask held steady, but Tatsuya could feel assessment in his gaze.
"You have good eyes, Tatsuya-kun," Duy said finally. His voice was quieter now, the enthusiasm dialed back. "Better than most. What are you really asking?"
"I want to learn." Simple. Direct. "My taijutsu is adequate. I need it to be more than adequate. You know something about how to get there."
"Many instructors could teach you—"
"Many instructors teach the standard curriculum. You're doing something different." Tatsuya met his eyes. "I don't need different explained. I just need to know it's possible."
Another silence. Then Duy laughed—a genuine sound, surprised and pleased.
"You're an interesting one, Tatsuya-kun. Most people look at me and see a failure. Twenty years at genin rank—hard to argue with that evidence, yes?" He settled into a cross-legged seat on a nearby rock, gesturing for Tatsuya to join him. "But let me ask you something. What do you think makes a shinobi strong?"
"Chakra. Techniques. Speed. Power." The obvious answers.
"The obvious answers." Duy nodded. "And all true, to a point. But let me tell you something, young shinobi. I have no talent for ninjutsu. None at all. My chakra control is adequate at best; my reserves are below average. By every standard metric, I am exactly what people say—a failure."
He held up one finger.
"But the body itself is capable of extraordinary things. Strength that has nothing to do with chakra. Speed that comes from physical refinement, not energy manipulation. The human form, pushed to its absolute limits and beyond—that is a power that cannot be copied by any dojutsu, cannot be sealed by any technique."
"The Eight Gates," Tatsuya said quietly.
Duy went still.
"Where did you hear that name?"
"The library. Fragmentary references in old tactical reports." Partial truth. The real source was memory—his nephew's enthusiastic descriptions of Lee and Guy's impossible feats. "A kinjutsu that releases the body's natural limiters. Theoretically capable of granting power beyond Kage level."
"Theoretically." Duy's voice was neutral. "And practically, it destroys the user. The Eighth Gate—the Gate of Death—grants power beyond imagination, but the price is exactly what the name suggests."
"But the earlier Gates..."
"Are survivable. With training. With preparation. With years of conditioning the body to handle forces it was never meant to withstand." Duy studied him with new intensity. "Why are you interested in this, Tatsuya-kun? Most shinobi, when they learn about the Eight Gates, are sensible enough to pursue other paths."
Because I'm going to need every advantage I can get. Because there are things coming that will require more than adequate. Because I woke up in a world where children fight monsters, and I refuse to be helpless.
What he said was: "Because I don't have special bloodlines or clan techniques. What I have is this body and the willingness to work. If there's a path to strength that doesn't require gifts I wasn't born with, I want to know about it."
Duy was silent for a long moment.
"The Eight Gates are not something to pursue lightly," he said finally. "The training is brutal. The risks are significant. And even if you master them, using them carries costs that accumulate over time."
"I understand."
"You don't. Not really. But..." Duy's smile returned, smaller than before but more genuine. "You have potential, Tatsuya-kun. Good instincts. The right kind of stubbornness." He stood, brushing off his jumpsuit. "I can't teach you the Gates. Not yet—you're not ready, and I'm not sure I'm ready to teach. But I can help you build the foundation. Physical conditioning. Body refinement. The prerequisites that would make such training possible, someday."
"I'll take whatever you're willing to offer."
"Then come back tomorrow evening. Same time, same place. And be prepared to work harder than you've ever worked before."
Duy extended his hand. After a moment, Tatsuya took it.
"One more thing," Duy added, his grip firm. "What we discuss here, what we train—keep it private. There are those in the village who would not understand, and others who might seek to exploit what they learned."
ROOT, Tatsuya thought. Danzo.
"Understood."
Duy released his hand, and the cheerful mask slid back into place. "Excellent! Then I will see you tomorrow, young Tatsuya! The flames of youth await!"
He bounded away with an energy that seemed almost absurd—but Tatsuya had seen what lay beneath the performance. A man who had spent two decades being mocked as a failure while quietly mastering something terrible and beautiful.
Interesting, the surgeon's voice observed. Very interesting indeed.
The orphanage visiting room was bright with afternoon sun.
Yuki looked different. Healthier. The hollows under her eyes had filled in, and her hair—clean now, properly cut—framed a face that had lost some of its haunted sharpness. She wore civilian clothes, simple but well-made, and when she smiled it reached her eyes.
"Tatsuya-san! You came!"
"Just Tatsuya. And I said I would."
She led him to a bench in the courtyard, chattering about her new life with the enthusiasm of someone who had rediscovered reasons to be enthusiastic. The Harada family—her adoptive parents—were merchants who dealt in textiles. They had a house in the market district, a small garden, a cat named Mochi who slept on her bed.
"They're nice," she said, the word carrying more weight than it should. "Mrs. Harada teaches me about fabrics. Mr. Harada lets me help with the accounts—he says I'm good with numbers."
"That's good." Tatsuya meant it. "You deserve good things."
"They don't try to replace them." Yuki's voice went quieter. "My real family. They said I could keep their picture in my room, and that it was okay to miss them." She looked down at her hands. "Is it bad that I'm happy sometimes? That I forget to be sad?"
The question hit somewhere deep.
"No," Tatsuya said. "Being happy isn't betrayal. It's survival. Your family would want you to survive."
"That's what Mrs. Harada says too." Yuki looked up at him, something knowing in her expression. "You're still sad, aren't you? I can tell. You hide it, but it's there."
He didn't answer immediately. The surgeon's compartmentalization had served him well, had let him function through the aftermath of killing and the grind of training and the weight of knowledge he couldn't share. But it wasn't invisibility. Some people saw through it anyway.
"Yes," he admitted. "But I'm learning to carry it better."
Yuki nodded, accepting this with the gravity of someone who understood carrying things.
"Will you keep visiting? Even though I'm not at the orphanage anymore?"
"If your new family allows it."
"I'll ask. I think they'll say yes. I told them about you—how you saved me in the forest." Her smile returned, bright and fierce. "They want to meet you someday. To say thank you."
Thank you. For dragging a child through a war zone. For killing men to protect her. For being in the wrong place at the wrong time and making it out alive.
"Maybe someday," he said.
The visit ended with another hug—tight, quick, full of emotion that Yuki couldn't quite articulate. Tatsuya walked back to the barracks through the late afternoon streets, surrounded by the ordinary business of a village that had no idea what was coming.
Good, he thought. Let her be happy. Let her have a normal life, far from shinobi and wars and the terrible things they do to survive.
At least he'd saved one person.
It wasn't enough. It would never be enough. But it was something.
The watcher was back.
He felt it during evening training with Duy—a presence at the edge of perception, familiar in its wrongness. The same signature he'd sensed during the escort mission, all those weeks ago. Observing. Evaluating. Making notes that would end up in files he'd never see.
Duy noticed his distraction. "Something wrong, Tatsuya-kun?"
"We're being watched."
The older man's expression didn't change. "Yes. We have been for some time." He continued the conditioning exercise without pause. "Does it concern you?"
"Should it?"
"That depends. Are you planning anything that would attract official disapproval?"
Tatsuya considered his answer carefully. He was planning a great many things that would attract disapproval if discovered—preventing massacres, averting disasters, interfering with timeline events that hadn't happened yet. But none of that was knowable from external observation.
"Not that they could prove."
Duy's laugh was quiet but genuine. "A good answer. For what it's worth, they've watched me for years. I've learned to treat it as motivation—every training session is a performance, yes? Give them something to report."
Give them something to report. The strategy made sense. Be visible. Be consistent. Be exactly what they expected to see, so the things they weren't expecting never rose to attention.
"Who are they?" Tatsuya asked.
Duy's eyes flicked toward him—a warning. "Not a question you want answered. Trust me on this. Some knowledge is safer as suspicion."
ROOT. It had to be ROOT. Danzo's private army, evaluating potential recruits among the reserve pool's orphans. Looking for talent to be harvested. For loyalty to be shaped.
Tatsuya had read between the lines of what the library contained. Had noticed the gaps where information should have been. The village's shadow organization wasn't supposed to exist—officially disbanded years ago—but the evidence of its continuing operation was everywhere if you knew how to look.
"Understood," he said.
They continued training as the shadows lengthened around them.
Mira found him at the stream the next morning.
"You've noticed them too," she said without preamble. Not a question.
"Hard not to."
"Most people don't. Or pretend not to." She sat down beside him, closer than she'd ever positioned herself before. "You're careful. You practice in visible places. You never discuss anything sensitive where you might be overheard."
"Survival habit."
"Same." She was quiet for a moment. "I was approached. Three months ago, just before you joined the pool. A man with bandages over one eye. He offered me opportunities. Special training. Resources most genin never access."
Tatsuya's blood went cold. "What did you say?"
"No." Her voice was flat. "I know what their opportunities cost. I'd rather stay adequate."
Danzo. It had to be. The description matched what he half-remembered—the war hawk of Konoha, willing to do anything for his vision of the village's strength. Including recruiting damaged children and breaking them into weapons.
"They haven't approached me," Tatsuya said carefully. "Not yet."
"They will. Your survival record, your improvement curve—you're exactly what they look for." Mira turned to face him, and there was something vulnerable beneath her usual armor. "When they do, be careful what you choose. Some doors, once opened, can't be closed."
"Speaking from experience?"
"From observation. Kids who accepted their offers—some of them are still around. You can see it in their eyes. Something... missing." She stood, brushing dirt from her clothes. "Just thought you should know. Consider it professional courtesy."
She walked away before he could respond.
Tatsuya sat by the stream for a long time after she left, watching the water flow past and thinking about doors.
The three-month evaluation came on a grey morning in late autumn.
Yamada assembled them at Training Ground Three—eleven genin now, down from the original twelve. One final assessment to determine who stayed in the active rotation and who got shuffled to support roles or discharged entirely.
The tests were comprehensive. Taijutsu sparring, weapons accuracy, obstacle courses, chakra control demonstrations. Tatsuya moved through them with the efficiency of someone who'd spent every available hour preparing.
He wasn't the best. Shin still outmatched him in close combat. Mira's tracking exercises were flawless where his were merely competent. Two other genin had better ninjutsu variety, stronger elemental expression, more polish on their techniques.
But he was better than he'd been. Measurably, demonstrably better. His kunai hit center mass nine times out of ten. His taijutsu forms were clean and practical. His water-walking was solid. His fire manipulation—basic, still in its infancy—had produced actual flames on command.
Adequate, Yamada had called him three months ago. Not hopeless.
When the evaluation finished, Yamada gathered them one final time.
"Results." His voice was the same flat monotone as always. "Seven of you meet standards for continued active rotation. Three are being reassigned to support roles. One..." He paused, something almost like approval crossing his scarred face. "One exceeded expectations."
He read the names. Active rotation: Tatsuya, Shin, Mira, and four others. Support reassignment: the remaining three, who received the news with expressions ranging from relief to devastation.
No one asked who had exceeded expectations. No one needed to. Shin's performance had been flawless across every category.
"New assignments will be posted tomorrow," Yamada continued. "For those in active rotation—there's a joint operation coming up. Multi-team, extended duration. The details are classified until briefing, but expect deployment within the week."
A joint operation. Multiple teams working together on something significant enough to require coordinated effort. The kind of mission where reserve pool supplements might actually interact with regular teams, with real genin squads, with people who mattered in the village hierarchy.
Tatsuya felt something shift in his chest. Not hope exactly—more like recognition. The door he'd been working toward was starting to open.
After the assembly, Shin found him.
"Joint operation," he said. "Could be interesting."
"Could be." Tatsuya collected his equipment, already running calculations. "Big enough to need supplements from the reserve pool. Important enough to warrant multi-team coordination."
"Border action, probably. Iwa's been testing our defenses again—the reports say there's been increased activity near the western territories."
Border action. Combat operations against enemy shinobi, not just bandits with delusions of grandeur. The kind of mission where people died regularly and promotions came fast for those who survived.
"Ready for that?" Tatsuya asked.
Shin's expression was unreadable. "Are you?"
Three months of grinding. Taijutsu forms and weapons drills and chakra exercises until his muscles screamed. Elemental training and medical research and private sessions with an Eternal Genin who was quietly mastering the impossible. First blood and the weight of lives taken. The watcher's constant presence, the shadow of ROOT hanging over everything.
Was he ready?
"I guess we'll find out."
They walked back toward the village together, two reserve pool nobodies preparing for whatever came next. The sky was grey overhead, promising rain.
Tatsuya thought about the future. The wars coming, the disasters he couldn't yet prevent, the people he might be able to save if he became strong enough. Minato was out there somewhere, growing into the legend he'd become. Kushina was learning to contain a monster. The Uchiha clan was beginning its slow slide toward catastrophe.
And he was here. Scraping for every advantage, trying to build something from nothing.
Foundation, he thought. Everything starts with foundation.
The rain began to fall as they reached the gates, cold and cleansing, washing away the dust of the training ground.
Tomorrow, the real work would begin.