Dried plums under the moon

Night had fallen.

Moonlight streamed through the window lattice in narrow strips, carving neat squares of silver-white light across the floor of the Small Buddha Hall.

Setsuna sat down against the wall, taking small bites of the rice balls Kagami had secretly brought him.

They were still brown rice balls, and still mixed with sand. With every bite, he had to carefully pick out the grit with his tongue and spit it aside.

But Kagami's mother had also packed him two dried plums. They were so salty they tasted bitter, but they were the best accompaniment the clan had to offer.

He stretched his bare feet into the moonlight to inspect them. The purplish bruises on his soles had faded to a dull yellow, leaving only a few obvious red marks. They would probably be back to normal in a day or two.

He had to admit, Level Three Recovery really was good. An ordinary person's feet would have stayed swollen for five or six days, and might even have developed fluid pockets and infections.

Setsuna licked the grains of rice off his fingers and stared blankly at the moon outside.

The lights in the clan compound went out one by one. Darkness surged in from every direction, swallowing the last sliver of light.

The Small Buddha Hall became an island of silence.

Everything around him was too quiet.

Setsuna couldn't stand that silence.

"I'm so bored-"

He shouted toward the door, but his voice disappeared into the deeper night.

No one answered.

"Is anyone there-"

He called out again.

Still no answer.

The world fell silent again.

No, it was even quieter than before.

Only then did he begin to understand-being confined wasn't just about being forbidden to leave.

It meant being left alone until you began to wonder whether you were still alive.

He lay on the cold floor for a while.

He rolled over.

Then rolled over again.

In the end, he simply started rolling around on the floor.

On his fifth roll, the back of his head struck something with a clunk.

Setsuna sat up, clutching his head and grimacing. He looked back-it was a leg of the altar table.

His gaze fell on the corner between the table leg and the wall. A stone was wedged there.

What was a stone doing in a place like this?

Setsuna reached for it. His fingertips barely brushed its surface, and it took a couple of nudges to pry it out of the gap.

It was flat, its edges worn smooth by running water-the perfect kind of stone for skipping.

He turned it over. A pattern had been carved into the back, something shaped like a leaf.

He immediately realized that Madara Uchiha had probably left it here.

Madara Uchiha had been confined here too?

Right.

Setsuna recalled the story of the young Madara Uchiha, who had met Hashirama Senju while skipping stones on the Naka River, laying the groundwork for their pursuit of peace and the founding of Konoha.

But they had both been boys then, born into clans locked in a blood feud, and their elders had forced them apart.

It was hardly surprising that Madara Uchiha had been locked up here for befriending the son of a sworn enemy.

During wartime, that was a serious offense that could even invite suspicions of colluding with the enemy.

Setsuna curled his fingers around the stone, rolled over, and raised his feet.

Madara Uchiha had been confined here too. The man called "the strongest Uchiha" had once been locked inside this same little Buddha hall, punished, and pinned into a corner by this silence.

What had he been thinking back then?

Had he been thinking about the guy who skipped stones with him on the Naka River? About the person who said they should build a village together?

When he carved this leaf, had he still believed in that "someday"?

But... Setsuna was a game character who knew how their story ended.

He sat up.

If the Uchiha's path in Konoha ended in extermination...

Then how many steps would it take to move humanity from farming tribes at the mercy of the weather, constantly warring and plundering, to an industrial society with abundant goods?

Anyway, the first step seemed to be... unification?

Then divert the manpower and resources spent on war, replace private ownership with public ownership, and pool everyone's strength into development...

Fuck!

Wasn't that just founding Konoha all over again!

Wait, how had he circled back to this?

Then again, he knew the background lore of the Naruto game.

After the founding of Konoha, the Shinobi World had indeed enjoyed a period of relative peace. The village operated as a single entity, with unified systems for allocating missions and resources.

But so what?

Konoha developed as the center, while the surrounding areas remained impoverished.

War had never stopped. It had merely shifted from chaotic fighting between clans to full-scale wars between nations, with even more people dying.

Konoha maintained its stability only because it was powerful and had enough shinobi clans at its founding.

Even then, there still weren't enough resources to go around.

The upper ranks had become rigidly entrenched, confining shinobi within the village and leaving them no real room for development, forcing the clans to compete over a pitiful share of resources.

In the end, even the powerful shinobi clans had either faded away or been exterminated.

To adapt to their cramped living space, the small and medium-sized shinobi clans had also consciously kept shrinking their numbers, turning from large, many-child clans of the Warring States era into little families of three-a perfect illustration of every drawback of urbanization.

So Konoha wasn't the solution either.

He wiggled his toes and was rewarded with a stab of searing pain.

The Warring States era was a dead end.

Founding Konoha only turned that dead end into a bigger one.

Overthrow Konoha and rebuild the order? That would only put a different group of people atop the pile of bones, dividing up resources.

When all was said and done...

He, Uchiha Setsuna, was just a C-rank shinobi.

Politics, economics, the patterns of history-none of that was in his underlying code.

As for those strategic questions... let the adults worry about them. He just didn't want to join the Senju, especially a Konoha led by the younger Senju brother!

Setsuna wiped his hands on his clothes and curled up inside his robe. The night had grown colder, and the robe was his only source of warmth.

He should focus on getting stronger first. Once he was strong enough to beat the entire shinobi continent into submission in one go, he'd see who still dared yap in his face!

He raised his right hand, middle finger pointed skyward.

Five or six pitch-black hands with raised middle fingers silently sprouted from the shadows on the floor. They swayed slightly in the moonlight, looking utterly ridiculous.

After the battle involving the Bringer-of-Darkness Technique, Setsuna had barely managed to extract Yin Release from his chakra.

But the Shadow Technique produced from that nature was extremely unstable.

First came size. He couldn't adjust it to his liking at all, and its randomness was infuriating.

Second came offensive power. Was he supposed to use these hands to grab enemies and strangle them?

He had already tested that during the earlier fight in the forest.

These shadows were terribly fragile, dispersing the moment they were attacked. Even if they grabbed an enemy, a single swing of a ninja blade shattered them to pieces. They had no offensive power at all.

Maybe he could turn these hands into weapons.

Setsuna perked up.

He might not know much about little animals, but he could work wonders with every kind of ninja tool.

After all, in Super Kage matches, these things were all he had to fight Madara Uchiha and Hashirama Senju with.

Under Setsuna's control, the shadow hands gradually changed shape.

Some gripped kunai, others held shuriken, and one raised a wakizashi high.

Delighted, he tried directing the hand holding a kunai to stab the floor.

But the result disappointed him.

The shadow kunai touched the floor and passed soundlessly through the boards, leaving no trace.

He frowned. Was his chakra output wrong, or was his imagination lacking?

Sai's Super Beast Imitating Drawing used chakra to draw pictures and then brought those pictures to life.

His own approach should be to use chakra as energy to give shadows physical form.

But these shadows were too insubstantial, with no offensive power whatsoever. Never mind killing anyone-they couldn't even scratch the floor.

Setsuna sank into thought.

In the shinobi world, most ninjutsu required seals to guide chakra, further separating out chakra with a particular nature.

Once the chakra formed a circuit and established a habitual flow, seals were no longer necessary.

For instance, Madara needed only the final Tiger Seal to unleash Great Fire Annihilation, breathing out Fire Release on a terrifying scale.

But before chakra had formed that circuit, hand seals were still essential.

Especially with a body like his, only five and a half years old.

In the hand seal system:

The twelve seals corresponded to the Twelve Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, with odd numbers being yang and even numbers being yin.

Divided among the five natures: wind corresponded to Tiger and Rabbit; fire to Snake and Horse; earth to Ox, Dragon, Goat, and Dog; lightning to Monkey and Rooster; water to Rat and Pig.

First, he needed to select the combination that could extract chakra fastest from the yin-aligned seals-Ox, Rabbit, Snake, Goat, Rooster, and Pig.

If categorized solely by the five natures, wind was neutral; earth and water carried vitality and counted as yang, while fire and lightning carried destructive qualities and counted as yin.

According to hand seal theory, the opening seal drew on chakra of the corresponding nature.

Rooster was the fastest at drawing out Yin Release.

Wind seals were neutral and generally served to amplify power-Fire Release techniques always ended with Tiger or Rabbit.

Applied to the Shadow Technique, the finishing seal should therefore be the yin-aligned Rabbit.

To increase its offensive power, he needed a powerful seal-

And every damaging ninjutsu included the Monkey Seal.

But Monkey carried the lightning nature and also counted as yang, making it liable to weaken the overall sequence, so it needed to go in the middle for balance.

Then, to balance both sides, he needed to add the water-nature Pig Seal before Monkey to convert the incoming energy, and the Snake Seal to amplify the output.

Rooster, Pig, Monkey, Snake, Rabbit.

The instant he completed the seals-

The previously wavering shadow hands abruptly solidified.

The shuriken held by a shadow hand was no longer a hazy outline, but a tangible weapon with sharp edges.

Setsuna's eyes lit up. He couldn't wait to test how well they could throw.

The instant the kunai left the shadow's hand, he sensed something was wrong.

The shadow kunai's trajectory was completely out of control. It flew straight toward him.

Setsuna jerked his head aside.

Whoosh-

The kunai skimmed his cheekbone and embedded itself in the wall behind him. A thin stream of warm liquid trickled down his cheek and dripped onto his gray cloth robe.

He touched his face and held his fingers before his eyes. Dark red blood stained his fingertips.

It worked!

What did that mean?

It didn't just mean he had an infinite arsenal! It also meant he could create traps anytime, anywhere, in every shadow his chakra could reach.

He watched the shadow kunai dissipate beside his ear, his whole body trembling with excitement.

Fuck, once I master this, I'm piloting a shadow Gundam and smashing Madara Uchiha's fucking head in!