The Senju camp

The last thing Ryuto saw was Hashirama Senju's face, wearing a slightly helpless smile. Then the world went black.

Not the blackness of fainting, but the kind that came when the power cut out.

When he opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was a wooden ceiling.

Not an uneven stone ceiling like in a cave, but a flat ceiling with wood grain and a few tiny cracks.

He lay on a bed padded with dry grass and animal hides, covered by a somewhat rough cloth blanket.

Ryuto blinked.

I'm not dead?

He tried moving a finger.

It moved.

Then he moved his toes.

They moved too.

Then he sat up.

"What the hell?" Ryuto looked down at himself.

Bandages covered him from his chest to his arms to his legs, wrapping him up like a mummy. Strangely, though, nothing hurt.

Not only did nothing hurt, he felt... full of energy?

It felt like waking naturally after sleeping for three days and nights, his whole body brimming with inexhaustible strength.

Ryuto pulled away a section of bandage over his chest.

The skin beneath was smooth and unblemished, without so much as a scar.

He remembered perfectly clearly that Madara Uchiha's last few blows had broken at least two of his ribs and dislocated his left wrist, leaving more than a dozen injuries of varying severity all over his body.

His ki had run dry, and his body had been pushed past its limits. From his previous experience, he should have needed ten days to half a month in bed before he could even get up.

But now?

Ryuto clenched his fist.

Humm-

A wave of air rippled out from his palm, blowing away the dust beside the bed.

He had not released it deliberately. There was simply too much ki, so much that it spilled out on its own.

Ryuto froze.

He closed his eyes and sensed the ki inside him.

Before, his ki had been like a little stream, flowing slowly through his body.

Now, it was like a surging river, rushing through every meridian. There was at least three times as much as before-no, perhaps four times.

And it was more concentrated, more violent.

"This..." Ryuto opened his eyes as a thought flashed through his mind.

Saiyan.

After suffering near-fatal injuries, if they received treatment in time, their strength would increase dramatically once they recovered.

That was a trait of the Saiyan constitution.

Ever since crossing over, he had assumed he had only brought the method for cultivating "ki." Now it seemed the constitution had come bundled with it.

"Well, damn," Ryuto said, looking at his hands. "Turns out I really am a walking cheat."

The wooden cabin's door opened.

Hashirama Senju stood in the doorway, holding a bowl of something steaming.

He paused when he saw Ryuto sitting up in bed, then smiled.

"You're awake?" Hashirama walked in and set the bowl on the small wooden table beside the bed. "Perfect timing. Have some medicinal porridge. It's freshly cooked."

Ryuto looked at him.

Hashirama still wore that red armor, but without a helmet. His black hair hung loose, and his face bore such a natural smile that they seemed less like strangers meeting for the first time than friends who had known each other for years.

"You saved me?" Ryuto asked.

"You could say that." Hashirama found a wooden stump beside the bed and sat down. "Madara was going to kill you, so I stopped him. When I saw you'd passed out, I brought you back."

He pointed at the bandages on Ryuto's body.

"Our clan's medical ninja treated your wounds, but honestly, your recovery speed is a little frightening. You were covered in blood when we carried you back yesterday. When they unwrapped the bandages this morning to check, your wounds had almost completely healed."

Hashirama looked at Ryuto with some curiosity in his eyes.

"What kind of constitution do you have? Even the Uzumaki Clan's vitality isn't as outrageous as yours."

Ryuto did not answer directly.

He glanced at the bowl of medicinal porridge, then at Hashirama.

"Where is this?"

"The Senju Clan's temporary camp," Hashirama said. "About thirty li from the Uzumaki Clan Grounds. It's reasonably safe."

Ryuto fell silent for a few seconds.

"How did things go... with the Uzumaki?"

"The Uchiha withdrew," Hashirama said. "Madara took his men and left. The Uzumaki Clan suffered heavy casualties, but they held on to their grounds. Mito and Rena are fine. They're dealing with the aftermath."

Ryuto breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank goodness.

When he had passed out from exhaustion, his greatest worry had been that the Uzumaki would not hold out.

"Thanks," Ryuto said. "If you hadn't arrived, I might really have died there."

Hashirama waved a hand.

"No need to thank me. You were the one who stood up to protect the Uzumaki Clan first. I saw the battlefield. You blasted that huge crater, didn't you?"

He pointed outside the door.

"Over thirty meters across, too deep to see the bottom, and the bottom was burned into glass. You drove back all five tailed beasts controlled by the Uchiha in a single strike."

Hashirama looked at Ryuto, his gaze earnest.

"That kind of power, without hand seals or ninjutsu, just a pure burst of energy. In my twenty-four years, I've never seen anything like it."

Ryuto said nothing.

He was waiting for Hashirama to ask questions like "Who exactly are you?" or "Where did your power come from?"

But Hashirama did not ask.

He simply stood, walked to the window, and looked outside.

"The Warring States Era. Hundreds of years of fighting and killing," Hashirama said. "The Senju and the Uchiha, the Hyūga and Kaguya, clans large and small. You kill me today, I kill you tomorrow. It never ends."

He turned to look at Ryuto.

"I can tell you're not someone who enjoys slaughter. You fought at the Uzumaki Clan Grounds to protect people, not to kill them."

Ryuto nodded.

"That's right."

"Then have you ever considered," Hashirama asked, "joining a faction and using your strength to protect more people?"

Here it comes.

Something stirred in Ryuto's mind.

"You mean joining the Senju Clan?"

"Yes." Hashirama returned to the bedside and sat down. "I'm running the Senju Clan now. We're not as extreme as the Uchiha. We have people we want to protect, too, and peace we want to achieve."

He looked at Ryuto frankly.

"Your power is very special, very strong. If you're willing to join us, we can end this age of war together."

Ryuto did not answer immediately.

He was thinking.

Joining the Senju meant formally getting involved in the war between the Senju and the Uchiha. It meant standing against Madara Uchiha.

It also meant having someone to back him up, somewhere he could train in peace and grow stronger quickly.

But the price was freedom.

"Brother."

Another voice came from the doorway.

Ryuto looked up.

A white-haired young man stood in the doorway, dressed in the Senju Clan's dark blue clan uniform, his face expressionless and a clipboard in his hand.

His eyes were red, but not the scarlet of the Sharingan. They were a darker red, like coagulated blood.

"Tobirama." Hashirama looked back. "You're here."

Tobirama Senju walked in without looking at Hashirama, directing his gaze straight at Ryuto.

His eyes were cold, as though he were examining an object rather than a person.

"Good, you're awake," Tobirama said. "I have some questions for you."

Hashirama frowned.

"Tobirama, he just woke up..."

"Precisely. His mind isn't fully clear yet, so his answers will be more truthful." Tobirama cut him off and walked up to Ryuto's bed. "Ryuto, correct?"

Ryuto nodded.

"Age?"

"Twenty-two."

"Place of origin?"

"A small village. It's gone now."

"Source of your power?"

Ryuto paused.

"I trained for it myself."

"How?" Tobirama pressed. "Your energy system is completely different from chakra. Chakra is a mixture of spiritual and physical energy. Based on analysis of the residual data from the battlefield, your energy leans more toward a pure burst of physical energy, but its intensity far exceeds what a normal taijutsu ninja should possess."

He stared at Ryuto.

"Explain."

The atmosphere immediately grew tense.

Hashirama stood and patted Tobirama on the shoulder.

"Don't be like that, Tobirama. Everyone has their secrets."

"But brother," Tobirama said without moving, "his secrets could threaten the entire Senju Clan. Unknown origins, unknown power, unknown objectives. You're really comfortable recruiting him just like that?"

Hashirama smiled.

"I'm a very good judge of character. He protected the weak on the battlefield. That's enough."

"Plenty of people protect the weak on the battlefield," Tobirama said coldly. "That doesn't make them good people."

The brothers looked at each other.

One gentle, one icy.

Sitting on the bed and watching the two argue, Ryuto suddenly found it a little funny.

He cleared his throat.

"Um..."

Both turned to look at him at once.

"Can I have some porridge first?" Ryuto pointed at the bowl of medicinal porridge. "I'm a little hungry."

Hashirama paused, then burst out laughing.

"Go ahead, drink all you want! There's more if it's not enough!"

The corner of Tobirama's mouth twitched, but he said nothing.

Ryuto picked up the bowl and took a sip.

It did not taste great, a little bitter, but it was warm and felt soothing in his stomach.

As he drank, his mind raced.

Hashirama Senju was someone I could get along with. Open and straightforward, no beating around the bush.

Tobirama Senju was on maximum alert, suspicious of everything, a textbook rationalist.

These brothers played good cop and bad cop with pretty good coordination.

"You've had your porridge." Tobirama waited until Ryuto set down the bowl before speaking again. "Can you answer my question now? What exactly is going on with your power?"

Ryuto wiped his mouth.

"I told you. I trained for it myself."

"How?"

"Just... running every day, climbing mountains, punching rocks. I kept practicing, and eventually I got it," Ryuto said casually.

Tobirama's gaze grew colder.

"Do you take me for a three-year-old?"

"I'm telling the truth." Ryuto spread his hands. "If you don't believe me, there's nothing I can do."

"Then how do you explain your body automatically healing its wounds and your energy surging while you were unconscious?" Tobirama asked. "The medical ninja examined you. Your cellular activity is more than ten times that of an ordinary person, and your healing speed rivals a tailed beast's."

Ryuto's heart gave a jolt.

Damn, they even checked my cellular activity?

The Senju Clan's medical techniques are really something.

"A special constitution," Ryuto said. "I was born with it."

"Born with it?" Tobirama sneered. "In hundreds of years of the Warring States Era, I've never heard of a constitution like that. The Hyuga Clan's Byakugan can see through things, the Uchiha Clan's Sharingan can copy genjutsu, and the Uzumaki Clan has powerful vitality, but all of those have identifiable traits. Your constitution has none of the characteristics of a kekkei genkai, yet it's even more absurd than one."

He took a step forward.

"Who exactly are you?"

Ryuto looked into Tobirama's red eyes.

He knew that unless he gave an explanation today, this would not be over.

But what explanation could he give?

Say I came from another world, bringing the training system from Dragon Ball and a Saiyan physique with me?

Tobirama would probably take him for a madman-or worse, treat him as a heretic.

"Tobirama," Hashirama spoke, his voice deepening a little. "Enough."

"Brother!"

"I said, enough." Hashirama looked at Tobirama. "If he doesn't want to talk, don't force him. Who doesn't have a few secrets? When you were researching forbidden techniques, did I ask you for the details?"

Tobirama had no answer.

He stared at Hashirama for a few seconds, then turned and shot Ryuto a fierce glare.

"You'll regret this, Brother."

With that, he turned and left, slamming the door behind him.

The wooden hut fell quiet.

Hashirama sighed and sat back down on the stump.

"Sorry. That's just how my younger brother is. He's too cautious. Sometimes he takes it too far."

Ryuto shook his head.

"It's fine. I understand."

"Then..." Hashirama looked at him. "What do you think of my offer?"

Ryuto didn't answer right away.

He lowered his head and looked at his hands.

Ki surged through his body, far stronger than before.

A Saiyan physique. Growing stronger after a brush with death.

That meant that as long as he didn't die, he could keep breaking through, keep growing stronger.

But growing stronger required battle, pressure, and walking the line between life and death.

If he joined the Senju, he could gain protection, as well as more opportunities to fight.

But he would also lose his freedom and get drawn into clan disputes.

"I need time to think." Ryuto raised his head and looked at Hashirama. "Could you give me a few days?"

Hashirama smiled.

"Of course. Stay as long as you like. We can talk once your injuries have healed."

He stood and walked to the door.

"Get some rest. If you need anything, call the guards outside. If you want more porridge, there's some in the kitchen."

Hashirama opened the door and went out.

Ryuto was alone in the wooden hut again.

He lay back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

Join the Senju?

Or keep going it alone?

Ryuto closed his eyes.

Images flashed through his mind: Yamano Tarō as he died, the huge crater at the Uzumaki Clan Grounds, Madara Uchiha's scarlet Sharingan.

A world at war.

To put an end to it, one person wasn't enough.

But was joining a faction really the right choice?

He didn't know.

Sunlight streamed through the window, falling on the ground beside the bed and lighting it brightly.

Ryuto rolled over and buried his face in the animal hide.

I'll sleep first.

Think about it when I wake up.