Naruto: Starting by Reading Minds in Naruto

Morning light spilled across Training Ground 98 beneath a clear sky. Iruka, Mibu Shinobu, and Tessen Togekei stood waiting, bored, for their captain to appear.

”Is he going to be late?” Mibu Shinobu muttered. His stomach growled loudly enough to answer for him — he’d skipped breakfast entirely, saving room for whatever meal their captain had promised.

”Should be here soon. Wait — what’s that?”

A crash rolled out of the treeline before Tessen Togekei could finish the thought, and the trees themselves began to bend, as though something enormous were forcing its way through.

”That’s no small animal,” Mibu Shinobu said, cold sweat breaking across his forehead.

A dragonfly two stories tall burst from the woods, its four wings beating hard enough to carry its bulk toward them with unsettling grace. The great compound eyes on its head swiveled and found them.

Its forelimbs came down in a single sweeping strike.

The three scattered on reflex, Body Flicker carrying them clear just as the limbs tore a crater into the earth where they’d stood.

”How does Konoha have something like this?” Mibu Shinobu shouted.

”This has to be a summon the captain’s using to test us,” Iruka said, already reading the shape and size of the thing against their captain’s name. ”Coordinate. Bring it down, and don’t embarrass us.”

Tessen Togekei reached the same conclusion a beat behind him and unrolled a long scroll. A storm of shuriken and kunai burst from it, meteor-bright, streaking toward the beast. The dragonfly swept its six limbs in a blur and knocked the volley aside.

”Not done yet.” Tessen summoned a weighted chain next, and Mibu Shinobu followed with his own throw, wiring the beast’s limbs together as it batted his teammate’s attack away. A hard pull sent the giant creature tumbling backward across the ground.

Iruka didn’t wait. A Great Fireball roared out to finish it.

”Got it,” he said, and the three allowed themselves a breath of relief — until Iruka moved closer and found no beast at all. Only a broken figurine remained, half-charred, no larger than a palm, still smoking faintly.

”Something’s wrong—”

The ground erupted beneath him before he could finish. A pangolin, of all things, threw him rolling across the field with a single blow, and somewhere in the chaos it let out a sound closer to a wolf’s howl than anything a pangolin should make.

”What kind of technique is this?” Iruka pushed himself up, running through every possibility he knew. Not a summon — the marks from the dragonfly proved that much, and no Transformation Jutsu left behind a broken figurine once it was dispelled. He looked from the crater the dragonfly’s limbs had punched into the earth to the ragged hole the pangolin had torn straight up through the soil, and neither one fit what he understood of genjutsu. Illusions weren’t supposed to move earth. Not like this.

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High above them, riding a giant eagle with obvious enjoyment, Tonbo watched the whole exchange unfold.

Their coordination, he had to admit, already outstripped what Naruto and Sasuke had managed at the same age in the future he remembered. The Academy had clearly done right by these three, whatever their individual scores suggested.

The beasts below were his own work — disposable constructs shaped by his Secret Technique: Living Weave, each one built to hold together only as long as he kept feeding it chakra. So far he had four finished designs: the dragonfly, the pangolin, the giant eagle carrying him now, and a whale meant for work over open water. Each had cost him months of quiet, careful practice, refined far past the crude figures his father’s craft alone could have produced.

He watched every exchange with quiet satisfaction. Once the pangolin had finished leaving all three of them battered and dust-covered, he let the technique go and dropped from the sky after it.

The three below caught their breath, still shaken.

”Where did it go?” Tessen Togekei asked, scanning the field.

”Something’s falling,” Mibu Shinobu said, pointing at a shape growing larger against the sun.

”Move!”

They scattered again, only to find, once they’d regrouped, no second monster waiting for them. Just Tonbo, smiling.

”Well fought. You’ve got real strength in you,” he said, thumb raised in approval.

”Captain, you nearly gave us heart failure! We thought another one of those things had dropped out of the sky,” Mibu Shinobu said, hand pressed to his chest.

”Was that a summoning technique, Captain?” Iruka asked.

”Genjutsu.”

”Genjutsu?” All three stared at him, plainly unconvinced. Genjutsu wasn’t supposed to leave craters, and it certainly wasn’t supposed to knock grown shinobi off their feet.

Tonbo produced a small dragonfly figurine, unmistakably the same shape as the beast that had nearly crushed them, and held it up. ”First lesson: never trust what a thing looks like on the surface. This is a form of genjutsu that becomes real the instant a living mind perceives it — which is why it could gouge the ground the way it did. The moment you saw the dragonfly, it was, for every purpose that mattered, real.”

”But we didn’t see it — not until it was already attacking,” Iruka said.

”I saw it,” Tonbo said simply, tapping his own chest. ”The technique only needs one mind to believe in it. Once I do, it’s real for anyone standing in front of it, whether they ever laid eyes on the figurine or not.”

That answered it well enough, though it did nothing for the unfairness of paying the price for a genjutsu none of them had actually fallen under themselves. Whatever complaints they might have had faded quickly behind a more pressing question — the technique itself had been extraordinary, unlike anything the Academy had ever shown them, and all three were already looking at him with open, hungry interest.

”Something you three want to learn, maybe?” Tonbo asked, watching them.

They nodded in near-unison, like chicks pecking at scattered rice.

”It’s a difficult one. Work hard, and I’ll teach it properly.” He wasn’t about to promise results — even with talent and effort, it had taken him well over a year to bring the four beasts to where they stood now, refining the chakra control and the mental discipline behind them piece by piece, and there was no guarantee any of the three had the aptitude to follow that same road. Difficulty had never stopped a genin from wanting something, though, and he could hardly fault them for that.

”Yes!” None of them seemed troubled by the warning.

”Konoha tradition, then — introductions first, a photo after, and a proper meal to finish. Go ahead.”

”Tessen Togekei. My dream is to become Konoha’s finest tool master. I like ramen.”

”Iruka Umino. I want to teach — to raise up Konoha’s next generation. I like ramen too.”

”Mibu Shinobu. I’m aiming for the Torture and Interrogation Force — Ibiki Morino-senpai’s the one I look up to. I like barbecue.”

”Tobitake Tonbo. My dream’s an ordinary one — a wife, two children, a boy and a girl, watching them grow, and grandchildren after that.”

The shutter clicked. Tonbo stood behind the three of them, a hand resting on Tessen Togekei’s head and the other on Iruka’s, while Mibu Shinobu stood between them, arms crossed and grinning.