If Only Tsunade Were Still Here

A ten-year Naruto fan, arriving uninvited.

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Maybe Wu Yu had used that crappy meme too often while surfing the internet in his previous life, so fate decided to play an unfunny joke on him.

For no apparent reason, he had transmigrated into the world of Naruto—and become one of Konoha's orphans whose parents had both died.

At first, simply managing to refine Chakra, that wondrous supernatural power, had been enough to excite Wu Yu for ages.

But as the day of graduating and becoming a Genin drew closer, Wu Yu found himself speechless every time he thought about his pitifully small amount of Chakra.

Other transmigrators had Chakra by the ton, while he was practically working with milligrams of Chakra. How the hell was he supposed to make it in this world?

Compared to younger students like Neji Hyuga, Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha, Kiba Inuzuka, and the other "familiar faces," he was basically a disposable extra whose sole purpose was to highlight how extraordinary they were.

With graduation for his class approaching, Wu Yu had tossed and turned in bed at home yesterday, unable to sleep.

The story era was about to begin, which meant that Orochimaru and Sunagakure's Konoha Crush Plan would happen within the next half year at most.

With his level of strength, if he really became an official Genin the day after tomorrow, wouldn't he end up dying to some unexplained AoE attack half a year later, or having his throat casually slit by some passing, nameless Sunagakure Ninja or Otogakure ninja...?

But if he didn't become a Genin and earn money, there soon wouldn't even be rice left to cook at home...

Recalling the manga's plot, where gods fought gods, Wu Yu thought of Naruto Uzumaki's signature jutsu, the Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu, and suddenly wanted to give it a try himself.

With his tiny amount of Chakra, making multiple clones was out of the question. He would just try a Shadow Clone.

Wu Yu hadn't actually expected to succeed. Yet when he imitated Naruto from memory and formed the Cross Hand Seal, a strange feeling suddenly came over him.

It was an incredibly peculiar sensation.

"It'll definitely work."

"Something will come out."

Following that intuition, Wu Yu grunted and exerted force...

Bang!

A puff of smoke, like the special effect from a Shadow Clone, appeared before him.

When the smoke cleared, what stood before him was not another version of himself, but a stunning blonde beauty with twin ponytails. The purple diamond mark on her forehead and her stirringly magnificent chest both pointed to a possible identity.

"Am I really that much of a pervert?"

Wu Yu's first thought was that his Shadow Clone had used the Transformation Jutsu in an instant.

"Shadow Clone?" The twin-tailed beauty looked him over thoughtfully. The authority and pressure in her gaze were so overwhelming that Wu Yu fell backward onto the edge of his bed.

Tsunade crossed her arms and looked down at him. "You're my original body?"

Wu Yu looked up at her. "You're my Tsunade?"

And so, Wu Yu spent the entire night studying this strange "Shadow Clone" of his, Tsunade.

The most terrifying result of his investigation was this:

After using this "Shadow Clone," the Chakra in his body had not decreased by even the slightest bit! On the contrary, this "Shadow Clone" Tsunade he had summoned possessed a genuine half of the real Tsunade's Chakra!

Zero cost, and he got half a Tsunade for free!

Physics no longer existed...

No, it wasn't conservation of total Chakra that had failed. Ninjutsu itself no longer existed...

Besides that—

This "Shadow Clone" Tsunade truly believed herself to be Tsunade, one of Konoha's legendary Sannin.

She also clearly remembered everything her original self, Tsunade, had experienced before being "cloned." She could even tell him which casino she and her disciple Shizune had been losing badly at in every direction just a second ago.

Yet at the same time, this Tsunade firmly believed that Nakamori Wu Yu, the fourteen-year-old Konoha Ninja Academy student who had repeated two and a half years of schooling, was her "original body."

Her original self was Tsunade, but her original body was Wu Yu.

It was clearly contradictory logic, yet this cloned Tsunade accepted it as naturally as if it had been factory-installed...

Ninjutsu no longer existed... It had turned into a cheat ability.

Wu Yu looked at Tsunade, then at the sky outside, which was already bright. Sigh, it was time for school!

So he instructed Tsunade that she absolutely could not let anyone discover her existence—what would it look like for a big shot who had not returned to Konoha in years to appear in the home of some ordinary Ninja Academy student?

What if that attracted the real Tsunade? What then?

In any case, since things had come to this, he would squeeze every last drop of value from this strange clone first.

Thus, Wu Yu ordered Tsunade to write down every Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, and Genjutsu she could remember while he was at school. He would inspect it after returning home in the afternoon.

For the entire day, Wu Yu remained absent-minded at the Ninja Academy, constantly thinking about that fifty-year-old beauty at home.

This strange clone had not consumed even the slightest bit of his own Chakra. He had no idea whether it would disappear, or when it would disappear...

Even if it was going to disappear, it had to at least finish writing down the Ninjutsu first. It had to spill everything it could before it went.

Then school let out, Wu Yu went home, and Naruto and Sasuke were being followed...

And so on...

And so on—so why had he cloned a Kaguya Otsutsuki this time???

Wu Yu stood there dumbfounded.

As the smoke dispersed, Kaguya Otsutsuki floated before him like a Female Ghost, two bony horns on her head and a waterfall of gray hair trailing to the ground. She slowly raised her pure white eyes, along with the one on her forehead...

"Byakugan?" Tsunade looked stunned beside him. Kaguya clearly did not resemble anyone from Konoha's Hyuga Clan, who possessed the Byakugan.

Soon, she noticed the bizarre third eye on Kaguya's forehead as well—a pale red vertical pupil with concentric ripple-like patterns inside it, without tomoe. "That eye is..."

"Let's put the matter of her eyes aside for now."

Wu Yu gulped. The woman before him was a heavyweight, nothing like Tsunade, who belonged to a friendly faction.

He quickly sensed the state of his body. Sure enough, even after cloning a Kaguya, his Chakra had not decreased in the slightest—damn, was he cheating, or silently courting death?

Sage of Six Paths, your mother is right here! Why aren't you showing yourself already?!

Wu Yu cautiously asked Kaguya, "What's your current condition? How much Chakra do you have?"

The original body knew this person? Tsunade was astonished.

Kaguya Otsutsuki looked at Wu Yu with indifferent eyes and replied just as indifferently, "Chakra... none... Sharingan ocular power, none either..."

Though she remained expressionless, Wu Yu could tell that the goddess was deeply displeased with her empty Chakra reserves.

You have a Sharingan too? Tsunade frowned as she examined Kaguya. Where was it? On her forehead? That didn't look right. Those concentric ripples, on the other hand, resembled the Rinnegan said to belong to the Sage of Six Paths—but this... how was that possible?

Wu Yu did not relax just because Kaguya was out of Chakra. In the original story, she had never used any clone-type ninjutsu at all—she herself was immortal, so who knew whether her clone was immortal too?

The progenitor of Chakra had appeared only briefly before Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi, and Sakura sealed her away. No one knew just how far she could truly go...

Wu Yu steadied himself and asked again, "Kaguya Otsutsuki, tell me—what am I to you?"

"..."

The Rabbit Goddess remained silent even longer this time. At last, she stared at Wu Yu with Byakugan that revealed no emotion and calmly said, "You are my... original body..."

Phew!

Good, you had a Thought Brand too...

Wu Yu let out a long breath, collapsed onto the sofa, and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

Since Kaguya had no Chakra at all, Konoha's Sensor Squad presumably would not detect her...

Once the fright had passed, Wu Yu stared at the long-haired, wide-sleeved Kaguya Otsutsuki, and his mind suddenly began racing. Just because Tsunade's skill set could not produce anything suitable for his cheat did not mean Kaguya Otsutsuki's could not.

Even an empty Kaguya Otsutsuki was still an existence worthy of being called the God of Immortality. There had to be something she could do...

Wu Yu's brain spun at high speed, while Tsunade beside him grew impatient. "Aren't you going to introduce her? Who is this Kaguya Otsutsuki? The Otsutsuki surname... I feel like I've seen it in some book somewhere..."

"Quiet, I'm thinking."

Wu Yu ignored Tsunade. Was he supposed to tell her something like Kaguya being the grandmother of her Senju Clan's ancestor?

He locked eyes with the ghostlike Kaguya Otsutsuki opposite him, racking his brain for something in her known skill set that could help him.

Truth-Seeking Orbs? Rinnegan? Byakugan? Taijutsu? All-Killing Ash Bones?

Those all seemed like techniques that burned through Chakra...

Just as Wu Yu's CPU was about to start smoking, he suddenly heard a soft pop.

He turned around. Where was Tsunade?

"The clone was dispelled?" Wu Yu was startled and hurriedly turned to ask Kaguya Otsutsuki, "Or did she get upset and use Body Flicker to leave?"

Even if Tsunade was fast enough that he could not see her, could Kaguya Otsutsuki not see her either?

Kaguya Otsutsuki said indifferently, "The maximum duration for maintaining a clone technique differs from person to person..."

Though she was still expressionless, Wu Yu felt that she was extremely unwilling to answer his question. Making the lofty progenitor goddess lower herself to answer such trivial questions had probably depressed her terribly. Hehehehe.

Wu Yu secretly enjoyed himself for a moment, then suddenly froze. "Maintaining? Who's maintaining it?"

It couldn't be me, right?

Whether it was Tsunade or Kaguya Otsutsuki, he had not consumed even a trace of Chakra, nor did he feel mentally fatigued... After Tsunade's clone vanished just now, he had not received any of the clone's memories from the time it had existed either...

After thinking about it, Wu Yu decided to call this sort of thing a "mystery clone," to distinguish it from other clones.

Kaguya's Shadow Clone said indifferently, "..." Yes, an indifferent silence. It seemed that even she could not figure out how the mystery clone worked for the moment.

"Found it!"

Wu Yu had already opened the half-human-height scroll Tsunade left behind. The scroll recording everything Tsunade had learned and known unfurled across the floor, and Wu Yu quickly found what he was looking for: the Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu.

"Let's see what this maintaining business is about—how does it work... Shadow Clone Jutsu: the key difference between a Shadow Clone, a tangible clone, and ordinary intangible clones is that when refining Chakra, spiritual energy and physical energy must be kept in a perfect fifty-fifty balance. Then form the hand seals as shown... Huh? It's that simple?"

Wu Yu had actually remembered it by then. In the manga, when Naruto first learned the Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu and created a huge number of clones against his Jonin instructor Kakashi during the team assignment test, Kakashi seemed to have said something like, "With your level, this technique can only last one minute, right?"

Clearly, the length of time one could maintain a Shadow Clone truly required grinding proficiency... Hm?

Wu Yu looked at the cross hand seal recorded on the scroll and suddenly realized: the Shadow Clone's cross seal used the index and middle fingers of both hands!

He smacked his forehead. Before, he had always formed seals with the index fingers of both hands... Could that be why, instead of producing a Shadow Clone, he had created a strange Mysterious Clone??

"..."

Wu Yu looked at his hands. Speaking of the Shadow Clone Technique naturally made him think of Naruto Uzumaki, and speaking of Naruto Uzumaki naturally made him think of the Nine-Tailed Fox sealed inside him. The Nine-Tailed Fox was a treasure—it had given Naruto an immense amount of Chakra, practically like a perpetual-motion machine...

And the Nine-Tailed Fox was actually just one of the nine tailed beasts created when the Sage of Six Paths used the Yin-Yang Release Technique of Creation of All Things to split apart the Ten-Tails, the incarnation of the God Tree...

Tailed beasts... Yin-Yang Release Technique...

Wu Yu looked up at Mysterious Kaguya and asked, "Your three sons—Hagoromo Otsutsuki, Hamura Otsutsuki, and Black Zetsu—were all created and given life by you using the Yin-Yang Release Technique, weren't they?"

"..."

Mysterious Kaguya fell silent for a moment before saying flatly, "So what if they were?"

Wu Yu spread his arms as though embracing all the air in the room, his eyes shining. "Then could you also use the Yin-Yang Release Technique to turn Nature Energy into a 'Sage Art Tailed Beast' and seal it inside my body?"

In a town neither too near nor too far from Konoha...

Inside a tavern near a brightly lit casino, Shizune, with her short black hair and capable bearing, held a pet piglet in her arms and fed it peanuts for fun.

Sitting across from her was Tsunade, the master who had taken her wandering across the land.

Tsunade reminisced about the past as she poured herself drink after drink.

Suddenly, her entire body trembled. Her pupils contracted sharply, and she instinctively gave the tabletop a light slap. Cracks immediately spread beneath her palm.

Shizune jumped. "Lady Tsunade, what's wrong?"

There was no trace of drunkenness left on Tsunade's face. She furrowed her brow and stared solemnly out the tavern window, toward Konoha.

Was it genjutsu? But it didn't feel like it... Nakamori Wu Yu, Kaguya Otsutsuki... What exactly were they...?

"Shizune." Under Shizune's concerned gaze, Tsunade suddenly asked, "How long has it been since we returned to the Konoha ninja village?"

Mysterious Kaguya was silent for a while before saying blandly, "That wouldn't be difficult... But I have no Chakra, and your own Chakra is negligible—useless..."

A personal attack, huh?

I'll remember that!

Wu Yu said in confusion, "I'm asking you to make a 'sage art version tailed beast.' Why would you need my Chakra... Oh, I get it. Damn! Doesn't this bring us right back to the same old problem of not having enough Chakra?"

He scratched his head. "If only Tsunade's Mysterious Clone had been dismissed later. She should have quite a lot of Chakra..."