Nature Transformation

"This grand courtyard, this dry landscape garden, this little pond, these corridors, courtyard after courtyard... Hey, which way are we going? Are we there yet?"

Wu Yu followed Sasuke Uchiha through the gates of his family's antiquated Japanese-style estate. At first, he could barely take it all in, but the observational skills honed at the Ninja Academy soon made him notice what was strange about the place.

It was far too old.

The flowers and grass in the courtyard grew wildly and chaotically, clearly untended for a long time. Dust had accumulated along the walls and corridor edges, and spiderwebs hung wherever he looked up... Most of the rooms carried the faint scent of rotting wood. This was a relic of a past that had died years ago.

Sasuke Uchiha silently led the way ahead, arriving at a separate two-story apartment building on the western side of the estate, one with a more modern style. So this was where Sasuke lived now.

Wu Yu looked back. That dilapidated main house was probably where Sasuke's family of four had once lived.

"You know, living alone is pretty boring. If you're feeling lonely, all you have to do is invite them. I'm sure plenty of classmates and friends from your class would be willing to visit your home."

Wu Yu followed Sasuke into the apartment.

"I don't need friends." Sasuke Uchiha walked into the kitchen without looking back. "The weak will only hold me back."

Wu Yu casually threw himself onto the sofa and crossed one leg over the other. "You're weaker than me. Should I be disgusted that you're holding me back too?"

Whoosh!

A dark blur shot toward Wu Yu at high speed!

Wu Yu reached out, but failed to catch it.

Smack! The rice ball splattered across the calligraphy hanging on the wall, the one bearing the character "Fire."

"What are you doing?" Wu Yu looked blankly toward Sasuke in the kitchen. Sasuke was holding another rice ball and chewing on it, frowning as he did so, before turning back into the kitchen to grab yet another one.

You think I'm easy to bully just because I only have Speed 2?

"I said, stop!" Before Wu Yu had even finished speaking, another rice ball came flying over. He hurriedly caught it. "Sure enough, young master—what a waste of food."

As for dinner being something perfunctory like rice balls or sushi, cold food that could be eaten without preparation, that didn't surprise him at all. What else could anyone expect from a young boy living by himself? It was impressive enough if he could keep himself alive. Take Naruto Uzumaki next door—he'd leave milk in the fridge until it expired and grew green mold without even noticing.

Dinner passed in silence between the two...

After Sasuke finished eating, he finally couldn't help asking again, "Why should I call her Grandma?"

Since Mysterious Kaguya had quickly vanished into thin air again, it was entirely possible that it had just been a pointless joke Nakamori Wu Yu had made while acting crazy. Yet Sasuke still couldn't let it go.

Wu Yu wiped his hands and smiled. "Actually, calling her Great-grandmother would work too. But if you want me to answer you, you'll have to do me a small favor."

"What favor?"

"Your family should have chakra nature-testing paper, right? Give me a sheet. I want to see what my affinity is."

"Testing? Paper?"

Sasuke Uchiha looked as though he had never heard of such a thing, leaving Wu Yu puzzled. "Don't you know Fire Style Jutsu? You should have undergone Fire Release Nature Transformation training, right? If you trained in nature transformation, then you must have tested yourself."

Sasuke frowned. "I've never tested myself, and I've never done any nature transformation training."

After thinking for a moment, he stood up. "But the testing paper you mentioned... Father— I think I remember something."

Never tested? Then how did you practice Fire Style Jutsu?

Wu Yu frowned as well. When he had activated Jade Rabbit Mode to tease Sasuke earlier today, he had clearly seen him use the Great Fireball. It couldn't have been a hallucination, could it?

Before long, Sasuke Uchiha returned carrying a wooden box. He blew off the dust, sat cross-legged, and opened it. Sure enough, amid a pile of odds and ends that might have been left behind by Sasuke's father, he found a stack of palm-sized square white sheets.

"Chakra has five attributes: water, fire, wind, lightning, and earth. When this special paper comes into contact with chakra, water affinity makes it wet, fire affinity burns it, wind affinity cuts it, lightning affinity wrinkles it, and earth affinity makes it crumble." Wu Yu still remembered this bit of knowledge.

Sasuke Uchiha formed hand seals with both hands, gathering chakra in his left hand. He pulled out a sheet of testing paper with his right hand, and the instant it touched the chakra gathered in his left, the entire sheet's left half burst into flames while its right half wrinkled.

"Fire and lightning..." Sasuke muttered.

Wu Yu did the same, pinching a sheet of testing paper and channeling chakra into it—whoosh. Half the paper ignited, while the other half fell damply onto the table.

"Fire and water." Wu Yu curled his lip. "Why isn't there wind? What rotten luck!"

Wind Style: Rasenshuriken could be called the only top-tier ninjutsu in the original manga whose training process had been explicitly described!

Forget it. With his Stamina and Chakra Reserves 2, he shouldn't even be thinking about the Rasenshuriken, let alone the Rasengan...

When other people transmigrated, their chakra reserves were measured in Kakashis. His... well, that worked too. Theirs were "5 Kakashis" or "10 Kakashis," while his were "0.5 Kakashis" or "0.1 Kakashis"...

Just as Wu Yu was at a loss for words, Sasuke suddenly said, "When I was little, before my father taught me the Great Fireball Technique, I heard something..." He looked at his palm. "Only after learning the Great Fireball Technique can one be considered a true Uchiha."

Wu Yu had already walked out through the door of the small apartment building.

From the scroll Mysterious Tsunade had left behind, Wu Yu picked one technique from each of the Five Elements Release and committed them to memory.

"The seals for the Great Fireball Technique should be..."

After thinking for a moment, Wu Yu slowly formed hand seals, trying to gather chakra in his chest. He opened his mouth and exhaled—spitting out a puff of blue smoke that seemed to contain sparks.

Then again, perhaps it was only because he had exhaled so forcefully that he had nearly seen stars.

"My father only taught me the hand seals for the Great Fireball Technique. The first time I tried it, I was able to spit out a fireball, though it was a little small." Sasuke's voice came from behind him.

"I think I understand,"

Wu Yu sighed. "The Uchiha Clan can naturally use Fire Release Nature Transformation... If being born able to use two nature transformations is called a Kekkei Genkai, then what do you call being born with one? A hereditary one-trick?"

"Kekkei Genkai?"

Sasuke Uchiha looked surprised. "If we're talking about the Uchiha's Kekkei Genkai, it should be..."

"Sharingan?"

Wu Yu turned back and patted Sasuke on the shoulder. "You don't need to train Fire Release Nature Transformation, so train Lightning Nature Transformation instead. Aren't you in a hurry to grow stronger? Start with this."

"You still haven't told me why you want me to call her Great-grandmother!" Sasuke shouted at his retreating back.

"Doesn't your Uchiha Clan claim to be descendants of the Sage of Six Paths? She's the Sage of Six Paths' biological mother!" Wu Yu called back.

Sasuke stood rooted to the spot, eyes wide.

Before dawn, inside the Uchiha's old ancestral residence, thick with cobwebs, Wu Yu formed hand seals with both hands. With a poof, white smoke dispersed around his body, and he transformed into what he had looked like in his previous life.

He took out a mirror, glanced at the person reflected within, then casually tossed it away.

"If forming a cross seal with a single finger can create a Mysterious Clone, and when it's released, the Mysterious Clone's memories can go to one of two places... then if I do this..."

Wu Yu looked at his hands. His left hand extended only its index finger, while his right hand extended both the index and middle fingers.

When he formed the cross seal, sure enough!

That instinctive feeling of "it works" was no different from when he had used the Mysterious Clone before!

The same held true when Wu Yu reversed it—using two fingers on his left hand and only one on his right to form the cross seal—the feeling that "the Mysterious Clone can be used" was still there.

Poof

With a single finger on his left hand, Wu Yu created a Mysterious Clone—a girl appeared, wearing a Kusagakure Headband on her forehead, with long red hair and glasses.