Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 151 (Patreon)

The matching hairpins had done more damage than Shinji expected.

Mikoto and Kushina had liked them just fine until they realized the matching part was with each other, not with him. Having two old men nearby notice the exact same thing and start openly pitying them did nothing to help. By the time Shinji got them away from the stall, both girls’ moods had dropped to their ankles.

Fortunately, there was too much happening around the festival for either of them to sulk for long. Kushina soon discovered someone was selling ramen-flavored candy again and decided Mikoto needed to understand its appeal properly. Mikoto disagreed with nearly everything she said, mostly on the grounds that ramen should stay in a bowl.

While the two of them kept arguing, Shinji started noticing something else.

Girls kept looking at him.

That wasn’t especially new. What caught him off guard was that they weren’t stopping at looking anymore.

“Shinji-kun!”

A few girls around their age were standing beside a nearby stall. Shinji turned toward the voice, and the girl in front immediately lit up.

“He looked over here!”

“Kyaa! Shinji-kun looked at me!”

“At you? He was looking at me!”

“Shinji-kun! We heard all about what you did during the war. You were amazing!”

“And really cool!”

“Ah… thanks.” Shinji smiled awkwardly as they immediately started talking over each other again.

Their excitement was starting to spread. A girl passing nearby noticed Shinji and came over, then another followed her. Farther down the street, several more girls began whispering among themselves, and before long they were heading his way too.

“Shinji-kun, is it really true you fought the Mizukage?”

“You were at Uzushio too, right? What was it like?”

“My brother was in River! He said you saved his whole unit!”

“Shinji-kun, can I shake your hand? Please?”

Nobody seemed interested in leaving after getting their answer. The girls already there hung around, a few more squeezed in beside them, and somewhere between one question about River and another about Uzushio, the little group turned into an actual crowd.

Then people started trying to get closer.

One girl caught his hand before he could pull it back. Another was already asking how he had learned to fight. Someone behind them shoved forward to see him better, knocking the girl ahead of her into Kushina, who stumbled sideways into Mikoto.

“Hey!”

“Watch it!”

Shinji turned toward them, but both girls had already vanished into the crowd. He caught Kushina’s red hair bobbing between shoulders, then Mikoto’s dark head beside her, both of them getting pushed farther back while the girls around him kept calling his name.

“Shinji-kun, are you doing anything later?”

Shinji looked at the girls surrounding him.

One was still holding his hand. Another had somehow gotten close enough that her shoulder was pressed against his arm. Two more were trying to talk over each other directly in front of him.

This was an infestation.

“Sorry, something came up.”

“Huh?”

Shinji swapped places with a clone farther down the street.

A chorus of surprised voices broke out around him.

Then one girl screamed, “He’s over there!”

Uh-oh.

The whole crowd turned.

Shinji grabbed Kushina and Mikoto by the hands.

“Run.”

He pulled both of them into the nearest side street just as the girls came rushing after them.

They kept moving through the festival, squeezing past stalls and turning down side streets whenever the crowd thinned out. After enough turns, Shinji stopped hearing anyone behind them and finally slowed down.

Mikoto immediately turned on him. “What was that?”

“Uh… I have no idea.”

She rolled her eyes. “Does that still happen even after graduating?”

“What do you mean, still? It was never that bad at the Academy. Right, Kushina?”

“Not even close,” Kushina said. “That was insane. There were so many girls around you I got pushed all the way out!”

“Mmm.” Mikoto glanced at Shinji, then gave him a thoughtful look. “Maybe being a war hero really did make you that much more popular.”

“Please stop calling me a war hero.”

“Then maybe it’s how you look today.”

“How I look?” He tilted his head. “What’s wrong with how I look?”

“Yes, exactly like that. Very slovenly.”

“S-Slovenly? I look normal!”

“I don’t think you do. You have a very approachable slovenly look today.”

“That doesn’t even mean anything!”

Although... maybe she had a point.

Being young again came with certain privileges. His body could survive an amount of fried food, sugar, salt, and grilled meat that would have made his old self start worrying about his blood pressure.

Maybe he had gotten a little carried away.

“Think about it. Back at the Academy, girls liked you too, but you always looked like you were on your way somewhere. Training, studying, whatever. And whenever they tried talking to you, you usually found some excuse to escape.”

“…I wouldn’t say usually.”

“But today you’ve been wandering around with food in both hands, letting people talk to you, smiling back at them, and looking like you’ve forgotten how to flee.” She slipped her arm through his. “Then they saw me doing this.”

Kushina saw that and immediately claimed his other arm. “And me doing this.”

Mikoto nodded as if this proved something important. “So naturally they thought, ‘Oh. He’s climbable now.’”

Climbable? What was he, a tree?

Kushina frowned. “I don’t think that’s why.”

Thank you.

“I think they saw you letting us drag you around and decided you were a pushover.” Her frown deepened. “Like they could just shove their way in and you’d let them do whatever they wanted.”

“And they kept pushing us around too!” she added, getting more worked up the longer she thought about it. “I should’ve grabbed the loudest one by the hips and spun her into the others like a bowling ball.”

She clenched her fist, looking genuinely disappointed with herself. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I could’ve gotten at least five.”

Forget it. Kushina was somehow even worse.

After that, going back into the festival had lost most of its appeal, so the three of them started toward Shinji’s apartment instead.

They were only a few streets away when Shinji spotted Sakumo coming toward them with a small boy beside him.

His attention immediately dropped to the kid.

Wait. Was that Kakashi?

He was tiny, barely reaching Sakumo’s hip, with a round little face that looked nothing like the Kakashi Shinji remembered growing into.

And those cheeks. He wanted to squeeze them. Badly.

Sakumo noticed them first. “Shinji.”

“Sakumo-senpai.” Shinji walked over with Kushina and Mikoto. “You two going to the festival?”

“That’s the plan.” Sakumo glanced down at the boy beside him. “We were supposed to be training, but somebody kept getting distracted whenever people walked past with food.”

“I wasn’t distracted,” Kakashi protested, lifting his chin. “I was observing my surroundings. You said a shinobi should always stay alert, Father.”

Sakumo gave his hair a gentle pat. “Of course. And you were especially alert whenever someone walked past with a skewer.” He looked back at Shinji. “This is my son, Kakashi.”

Kakashi gave Shinji a neat little nod. “Hello.”

For someone who barely came up to Sakumo’s hip, he spoke surprisingly well. Shinji was still getting over that when he noticed Mikoto and Kushina crouching down on either side of him.

Kakashi noticed too. He looked at Mikoto, then Kushina, and some of that serious little confidence finally slipped. “Um…”

“Uwaa, he’s so cute!”

“Look at those cheeks!”

Both girls immediately started squishing his cheeks, much to Kakashi’s annoyance, while Sakumo watched from above.

Kakashi looked up at his dad for help.

Sakumo met his eyes, then calmly turned to Shinji. “How have you been?”

“Busy, mostly. Tsunade-sensei keeps finding things for me to do.”

Sakumo gave a small nod. “And now she can officially give you even more.”

Shinji sighed. “Yeah. I’ve been trying not to think about that.”

They talked for a bit about the inauguration and how things had been around the village since the war ended. By the time Shinji looked down again, Kakashi was still standing between Mikoto and Kushina with his cheeks stretched in opposite directions.

Shinji started feeling a little bad for him. “All right, you two. Let him go before you stretch his cheeks off.”

They reluctantly pulled their hands back.

Kakashi rubbed both cheeks, gave Shinji a grateful look, then shuffled closer to Sakumo until he was nearly pressed against his leg.

Shinji glanced at Sakumo again. “I’m surprised you’re even here, Senpai. Usually by the time I hear you’re back in Konoha, you’re already leaving again.”

Sakumo gave a small shrug. “I only got back yesterday.”

“And Tsunade-sensei actually let you stay?” Shinji raised an eyebrow. “That’s generous. Maybe she really is going to be kinder than the Third. Does this mean Kakashi gets to see his dad more than once in a blue moon now?”

That earned a faint smile from Sakumo. “I wouldn’t go that far. The inauguration happened to fall between assignments.” His eyes dropped to Kakashi, who was still hovering close to his leg. “I had the day, so I thought I’d spend it with him.”

“Then I won’t keep you. Go enjoy the festival with your son while you’ve still got the day off, Senpai.”

They went their separate ways after that. Kushina waved at Kakashi, Mikoto wished him a good time, and Kakashi responded by sticking even closer to Sakumo as his father led him toward the festival.

Shinji and the girls headed back toward the apartment, only to run into Tsume and her family along the way.

The greeting lasted a lot longer than Shinji expected once Tsume’s family realized he had still never visited the Inuzuka compound. One relative started teasing him about it, another immediately joined in, and before long he was surrounded by people telling him it was weird to know Tsume this long and still never come by her home. By the time they finally let him escape, Shinji had been invited over so many times that pretending he forgot was probably no longer an option.

Mikoto waited until they were safely out of earshot before looking back. “I think I understand why you haven’t visited yet. They’re kind of intense.”

Kushina laughed. “Oh, please. You grew up in the Uchiha compound. If we left you with the Inuzuka for an hour, you’d fit right in. Actually, forget that. The Inuzuka are nothing compared to your clan. I’d take a dozen of them over one angry Uchiha auntie.”

Mikoto gave her a look like she wanted to object, then seemed to realize she didn’t have much of a case.

They were one block from Shinji’s apartment when he stopped walking.

The girls looked at him in confusion, but before either could ask what was wrong, eight ANBU dropped into place around them. Four landed across the street ahead, two took the rooftops behind, and one appeared at each alley beside them.

Shinji looked around at the ANBU surrounding them and felt an immediate sense of deja vu.

Mikoto immediately dropped into a defensive stance. “Why is ANBU here?”

Kushina looked around at the masked shinobi surrounding them, then quickly followed her lead. “Wait, what’s going on?”

Mikoto glanced at her. “Kushina, please tell me this isn’t because of something you did.”

“Why would you assume it’s me? I haven’t even done anything today!”

One of the ANBU in front stepped forward.

“Jonin Shinji, you’re required at ANBU Headquarters immediately. You’ll be coming with us.”

Again? Seriously, what was it this time?

Kushina immediately looked smug. “See? It wasn’t me.” Then it finally sank in that they were here for Shinji. She turned to him. “Wait, why do they want you? Shinji, did you beat somebody to a pulp?”

Oi, why was beating someone up the first thing that came to her mind? Did she think he went around punching people for fun?

Mikoto turned to the ANBU, polite but clearly expecting an answer. “May I ask whether Shinji is under arrest, and if so, on what grounds?”

The ANBU looked at her, then back to Shinji. “No. There has been an S-rank security breach, and he is required for questioning while we establish what happened. He will be briefed further at Headquarters.”

Oh? An S-rank security breach? That sounded ominous. It narrowed things down enough for Shinji to start having some very unpleasant guesses.

Mikoto tried to get something more useful out of the ANBU, but all she got was the same answer about classified information. In the end, Shinji had to settle for reassuring both girls as best he could before leaving with the ANBU.

By the time he reached ANBU Headquarters, he was starting to think his guesses might not have been paranoid enough.

Tsunade was waiting inside with several of the village elders, and one look at her face made Shinji slow down.

She looked pissed, which was already a bad sign. The last time ANBU had brought him in, most of her irritation had been reserved for the people responsible for dragging him there. This time, Shinji had the distinct impression that some of it belonged to him.

So…

Was he actually in trouble?

“Sit.”

Shinji took the chair across from her.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“Not really. I know there was an S-rank security breach, but that’s all they told me.”

One of the elders let out a sharp scoff. “He knows. He’s obviously lying.”

She ignored him. “Where were you before they came to get you?”

“Still with Kushina and Mikoto. We’d spent most of the day at the festival, then we started heading back to my place.”

Tsunade nodded, apparently having expected that answer.

“While you were supposedly at the festival, you were also seen inside Konoha Hospital. You stole the specimen from the S-rank project and injured three staff members on the way out.”

He what?

For a moment, he genuinely at a loss for what to say. Then his brain caught up.

“That’s obviously not me. Somebody used Henge and walked in wearing my face. Half the Academy could pull that off.”

He almost relaxed after saying it.

Seriously, was that all?

So someone had used his face to walk into the hospital, steal the Zetsu corpse, rough up a few people, and dump the whole mess on him.

Honestly, Shinji was less bothered by the framing than the theft. That part was easy to disprove, but getting the corpse had been a pain in the ass. The damn Zetsu had nearly slipped away from him more than once, and now somebody had just walked off with his prize.

One of the elders let out a little chuckle. “You’re rather quick to dismiss this as nothing more than a Henge.”

Shinji looked over.

“The hospital sensor didn’t identify someone who merely looked like you. He identified your chakra signature.” The elder smiled. “Yours, specifically. Henge cannot imitate another person’s chakra, and neither a clone nor a Shadow Clone changes the source of the chakra sustaining it. So perhaps we can dispense with the suggestion that some Academy student wandered in wearing your face.”

His smile widened. “The more reasonable conclusion is that either you entered that hospital yourself, or one of your own clones did it for you. Until you can explain otherwise, I see very little reason to distinguish between the two.”

Shinji wanted to punch that smug look right off the old man’s face. He glanced at Tsunade, expecting her to cut in and put the elder in his place.

But she wasn’t correcting him.

That was when the unease really started to settle in.

His mind went straight for the obvious weak point, the sensor. Maybe he’d been bribed, threatened, pressured by one of the elders, maybe someone had tampered with him before any of this happened. There had to be something.

Tsunade killed that possibility almost immediately. The man had worked at the hospital for years. She knew him personally, trusted him, and believed he had reported exactly what he sensed.

Shinji lowered his eyes to the table.

So someone had walked into the hospital carrying Shinji’s chakra signature.

How?

What, had he suddenly developed some kind of corpse-stealing sleepwalking problem?

And if someone was going to suggest an evil Shadow Clone running around behind his back, that wasn't possible either. Shinji kept careful track of every clone he made and dismissed them regularly, precisely because he didn't want Moryo getting her hands on one. There was no forgotten clone wandering around Konoha without him knowing about it.

The accusation was impossible. The evidence apparently wasn’t.

The elders seemed much happier now that Shinji had stopped looking relaxed.

One of the elders seized on the moment. “This is precisely what we warned would happen if he were given this much freedom. He possesses dangerous abilities, disregards procedure whenever it becomes inconvenient, and now an S-rank asset has disappeared under circumstances that point directly to him.”

His eyes shifted to Tsunade.

“Hokage-sama, your personal attachment to your student cannot be allowed to blind you to the risk he poses to this village.”

Shinji slowly looked up, properly pissed now. He would have thought Homura’s death might have taught the rest of them something, but apparently not. If anything, they seemed determined to prove they were just as stupid.

Well, that simplified things. He’d just have to off them later.

Tsunade’s eyes hardened on the elder. “That’s enough. Yes, the evidence points at him, but it also makes very little sense.”

She folded her arms. “Shinji already had access to that specimen. He was involved in the research and nobody was keeping the project hidden from him. If he wanted to examine the corpse, all he had to do was walk into the lab.”

Her gaze swept over the elders. “So explain to me what he gains by stealing something he was already allowed to use and turning an S-rank investigation on himself.”

Nobody answered.

“Exactly. Until we understand that, this is not an open-and-shut case.”

Shinji looked toward the elder who’d been so pleased with himself earlier.

Well? Nothing to say now, old man?

He leaned back in his chair and gave the elder a big, stupid grin, even sticking his tongue out a little when Tsunade wasn’t looking.

The elder looked about ready to get up and smack him.

Tsunade noticed what Shinji was doing and shot him a warning look. “And you, knock it off. They’re already angry enough without you deliberately making it worse. Show some respect to your elders, you little brat.”

Shinji immediately switched to serious face. “Sensei, I’m being accused of stealing an S-rank specimen here. You really think I’m in the mood to make fun of anyone?”

She didn’t buy his innocent act for a second, and Shinji ended up getting another lecture about his attitude and showing some damn respect to his elders.

Honestly, how had this happened? He was supposed to be getting interrogated over an S-rank security breach, yet somehow she had turned the whole thing into a lecture about his manners.

Was she his sensei or his mother? Because at this rate, getting her to see him as a potential boyfriend was starting to look pretty hopeless. He was trying to become her lover, not her adopted son.

Fortunately, Tsunade eventually seemed satisfied that she’d scolded him enough.

“All right, you can go. But until we figure out what happened, no more Shadow Clones inside the village. If someone’s in danger or you need to defend yourself, use whatever you need to. I’m not going to stop you from protecting yourself or anyone else. But outside of that, I don’t want you making a single clone. Got it?”

Seriously? No Shadow Clones?

He was about to argue when he noticed the elders. A moment ago, they’d looked ready to protest his release, but now they seemed perfectly happy to keep their mouths shut.

And they had good reason to be.

Truthfully, some of them weren’t even convinced Shinji had stolen the corpse. Tsunade had raised a fair point about his lack of motive, and they weren’t foolish enough to dismiss it entirely.

But whether he’d actually done it was another matter.

They’d been trying to put a leash on the boy for weeks, and every proposal had met resistance. Homura had been the one pushing hardest, picking up where Danzo had left off. Now that Homura was dead too, the others were carrying on with what he’d started, though none of them seemed quite as eager to challenge Tsunade without him around.

So this S-rank breach had come at a rather convenient time. The evidence gave them something Tsunade couldn’t simply dismiss, and better yet, she’d imposed a restriction on Shinji herself.

Granted, a temporary ban on Shadow Clones was far from what they’d wanted, but it was a start. They could always push for more later. For now, there was no sense arguing with the Hokage when she’d already given them something.

So they kept their mouths shut and let the matter rest.

Shinji could see what the elders were getting out of this, and he understood why Tsunade had decided to give them something. He didn’t like it, but arguing now would only make things harder for her.

He sighed and gave her a reluctant nod. “All right, Sensei. I’ll behave. No Shadow Clones unless it’s an emergency.”

She seemed satisfied with that and dismissed him.

He got up and headed for the door, making sure to look like he’d taken the scolding to heart.

Of course, that was complete bullshit.

He’d use Shadow Clones whenever he damn well pleased. It wasn’t like ANBU could follow him around all day just to make sure he behaved. And as for the elders, what were they going to do? Complain about him again?

Heh, they could get in line.

By the time Shinji left ANBU Headquarters, night had fallen, but the festival was still going strong. The streets were packed with people, food stalls were doing plenty of business, and he walked past all of it without giving the food so much as a glance.

He was too busy trying to figure out who the hell had walked into the hospital wearing his face.

Well, the face wasn’t the problem. Any halfway decent shinobi could manage that with Henge. It was the signature that made no damn sense.

Maybe the sensor had been caught in a genjutsu. That was possible, at least in theory, but doing it inside Konoha Hospital without another shinobi catching on? And then managing to steal an S-rank specimen and get away after injuring three people?

Shinji wasn’t buying it.

Of course, using his identity probably helped. He was part of the research team, and being Tsunade’s student meant the hospital staff weren’t going to give him much trouble. But that only explained how they’d gotten close to the corpse, not how they’d fooled the sensor.

Shinji went over every ninjutsu he could remember, trying to think of something that would let a person copy someone else’s chakra perfectly.

He came up with nothing. As far as he knew, nobody in the Elemental Nations could pull off something like that. If they could, then what the hell was the point of having sensors guarding anything?

Yet here he was, being accused of stealing his own research specimen because someone had apparently done exactly that.

And it wasn’t just his own ass on the line, either. Tsunade had barely settled into the Hokage’s chair, and now those old geezers had something they could use against her whenever she defended him. Shinji already felt bad about putting her in that position, even if he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. He needed to find out what the hell had happened before they made even more trouble for her.

He sighed and scratched his head. There had to be something he was overlooking. He’d been trying to explain everything with ninjutsu, but maybe that was the problem. What if the answer was fuinjutsu?

Kushina’s mom might be worth asking. The Uzumaki had spent generations coming up with all kinds of ridiculous ways to manipulate chakra, and she knew a hell of a lot more about their seals than he did. Maybe there was some trick to fooling a sensor that didn’t involve copying someone’s chakra at all.

And even if she couldn’t give him an answer, she might at least point him in the right direction.

That was better than going home and getting nowhere, so he changed direction and headed for her house.

…

Elsewhere in Konoha, Shinji was walking down an alley.

At least, he looked like Shinji.

There was something off about him, though. His expression was wrong, and the way he walked didn’t quite match the man he was supposed to be.

Then his face began to change.

His features softened and shifted, his hair grew longer, and his body gradually became smaller. By the time he emerged from the alley, he had turned into a teenage girl.

Not just any girl, either. She was one of the girls who had been all over Shinji at the festival earlier that afternoon.

She glanced down to check her appearance, gave a satisfied little chuckle, and slipped into a nearby house.

Inside, a man dressed as a merchant was sitting at a table, casually helping himself to some snacks. He perked up when he saw her and grinned.

“You’re back! So? Did you get it?”

The girl nodded and pointed at the bundle she’d left near the door.

The merchant hurried over and pulled back the cloth. Sure enough, there was their missing companion, looking just as dead as the last time they’d seen him.

Well, at least they’d gotten him back.

He covered the body again and turned to her with a huge grin. “Hahaha! I told you it’d work! Nobody even noticed you weren’t him. Humans are so stupid!”

The girl chuckled along with him before scratching her cheek, looking a little less sure of herself.

“Hey, now that I think about it, were we even allowed to do that?”

The merchant blinked. “Do what?”

“Steal our dead friend back, obviously!” She pointed at the bundle. “Blacky and Madara told us to watch Shinji, remember? See if he could handle the Rinnegan, see if he’d make a good successor, all that stuff. I don’t remember either of them telling us to break into a hospital and make enemies with the entire village.”

The merchant waved her off. “Bah, you’re thinking too much! Look, the kid’s already using the Rinnegan, right?”

“Yeah?”

“And he’s not dead, right?”

“...No?”

“Then there you go!” He spread his arms triumphantly. “He’s a perfect vessel! We’ve already figured that part out without doing anything. Now all we need to do is see if he’d make a good successor for Madara.”

He reached for another snack, then pointed it at her as he continued.

“And think about it. You know how Madara and Blacky are always going on about their plans? Make the kid miserable, turn everyone against him, wait until he hates the world, and then make him our guy.”

The girl groaned. “Ugh, we’re doing that again? Remember the last kid? He killed himself before we even got to recruit him!”

“That was because you went too far!”

“How was I supposed to know? Madara told us to make him miserable!”

“He said make him hate the world, not leave it, you idiot!” The merchant shook his head. “Anyway, we’ve already gotten started with this one! The kid’s probably getting yelled at by his own people right now, and we didn’t even have to do anything except steal a corpse.” He grinned. “Madara ought to give us a reward!”

The girl thought about it for a bit. Well, when he put it that way, maybe they really had done something useful.

After all, Shinji seemed pretty happy in Konoha. People admired him, the Hokage was his teacher, and he’d spent the afternoon at the festival with girls practically fighting over his attention.

Why would someone like that ever want to turn against his own village?

But if the villagers started treating him like a traitor, that might change. Of course, one little incident probably wasn’t going to make him hate everyone overnight, but they had to start somewhere, right?

And if it worked, they could always do it again.

The girl broke into a grin. Yeah, maybe Blacky would actually praise them for this.