Chapter 257 - 261: Six Paths-Level Kushina and Nonou

April arrived, and with it a new term at the Ninja Academy.

Ordinarily the term would have been preceded by graduation season. Not this year. This year there was no graduation season at all.

The sixth-year students who should have been walking out the gates instead moved up into the seventh year — the first year of middle school.

Drawing on his previous life, Natsuki had restructured the Academy into elementary, middle, high school, and university divisions. Since this was the first year of the transition, only the elementary and middle divisions actually existed so far.

Shinobi who had already graduated weren’t being called back to repeat anything. To keep the Alliance’s work running, Natsuki had directed it to set up dedicated adult programs for them instead.

"Feels empty."

Natsuki studied the middle school building in front of him.

The elementary division’s six years were full. The middle school had exactly one cohort. Two thirds of the classrooms in the building sat unused.

"Konan." Natsuki smiled. "What do you think about bringing in children from the other villages to study here?"

"Whatever you think is best is best, Natsuki-sensei," Konan said, perfectly level.

In public she was the head of the Anbu — cool, professional, and unreadable. The other version of her only appeared behind closed doors.

"Let’s go to the Alliance."

Natsuki opened a doorway, and the two of them stepped through into the Alliance building.

"Call in the village representatives for a meeting," Natsuki told the first staff member he saw.

"Yes, Lord Hokage." The man hurried off.

Natsuki walked into the conference room and took the head of the table. Konan stood behind him.

Once he’d confirmed the room was empty, he reached back.

Konan went stiff as his hand landed, and immediately fixed her eyes on the door in case anyone came through it.

"Pity," Natsuki said after a moment, withdrawing.

They were out in public today, so she hadn’t worn stockings, and trousers dulled the effect considerably.

Konan let out a quiet breath of relief — and then, hearing that, bit her lip.

She thought about it briefly, stepped forward, and pressed herself against the back of his head.

Natsuki was suddenly and comfortably cushioned. He tried to look up and found his view entirely obstructed.

A month of instruction, he reflected, and Konan had turned into an outstanding student.

A moment later she stepped back with an expression of complete professional blankness, as if nothing whatsoever had occurred.

Ao, Kitsuchi, Rasa, and the other representatives began filing in.

"I have an announcement," Natsuki said. "Your villages’ Academies will be merged into the Hidden Leaf’s."

Kitsuchi’s expression changed on the spot, and he wasn’t alone.

Send every village’s children to be educated in Konoha?

Nobody in that room needed the importance of education explained to them. Raise a generation in the Hidden Leaf and, given enough years, you’d raise a generation of Will of Fire inheritors.

"Relax. They can return to their own villages after graduating." Natsuki’s tone was firm. "My reasoning is simple. Talent develops faster when you put it in one place."

He wasn’t even lying about that.

He did want every village’s prodigies gathered together. It appealed to him — there was a certain completionist satisfaction to it, like filling out a roster of named characters.

Kitsuchi and the others relaxed slightly, though the hesitation stayed on their faces. They were worried Natsuki would renege. They were also worried about what Konoha would do to their children’s loyalties.

"Draft whatever regulations you feel are necessary." Natsuki paused. "That’s all for this item. If any village objects, send your Kage to discuss it with me."

The helplessness settled over the room instantly.

It sounded like an opening. It wasn’t one. Would any Kage alive walk into Natsuki’s office to argue about school districts?

Obviously not.

Natsuki paid their expressions no attention, stood, and left.

He returned to the Hokage’s building and briefed Nara Shikaku.

The main obstacle to importing students from other villages was capacity — the Academy simply wasn’t large enough, and the elementary division in particular would need expansion.

Shikaku would handle it. It wasn’t something Natsuki needed to think about further.

He and Konan went back to the office.

"I’m going to teach you something new today," Natsuki said, once he’d sat down.

Konan colored, but nodded and obeyed.

He explained the essentials, then closed his eyes.

Not to rest. He activated Observation Haki.

The surrounding area resolved in full detail — including Konan.

Then he pushed his perception outward. Past the village. Across the Land of Fire. Eventually across the entire shinobi world.

He picked out Minato and Nagato, working through the Land of Water.

He steadied himself and pushed up instead.

Higher, and higher, until — on the strength of sheer raw power — his perception reached the moon.

The first thing he found there were two masses of extraordinarily pure ocular power.

Two Giant Tenseigan.

The Tenseigan, from the movie continuity, was the Byakugan’s evolution — the counterpart to the Sharingan’s evolution into the Rinnegan.

There were two paths to it.

The first was mass: an enormous number of Byakugan gathered together formed a Giant Tenseigan. A Giant Tenseigan couldn’t be implanted into a body. It functioned instead as an extraordinarily powerful tool.

The moon held two of them.

One was golden, kept in Hamura’s shrine. In the original story, Hinata and Naruto destroyed it. The text never confirmed whose it had been, but anyone without Otsutsuki Hamura’s blood who touched it had their chakra drained — so barring surprises, it had been Hamura’s own.

The second came later, after Hamura’s death, when his descendants split into a Main Family and a Branch Family. Unlike the Hyuga, the Branch Family bore no caged bird seal and stood as equals to the Main.

Then the two branches went to war over ideology. The Branch Family had concluded that a shinobi world locked in permanent warfare had no right to exist and ought to be erased. The Main Family held to Hamura’s teachings and argued for peace.

To win, the Branch Family built a Giant Tenseigan of their own, and eventually wiped the Main Family out.

They paid catastrophically for it. Otsutsuki Toneri ended up the only one left.

Grown, he set out to destroy the shinobi world — and once it had been reborn, to marry Hyuga Hinata and stand as the progenitor of the world that followed.

Naruto and the others stopped him, of course.

The second path to the Tenseigan was bloodline: the chakra of one of Hamura’s descendants combined with a Hyuga Byakugan. That was how Toneri awakened his — by transplanting Hanabi’s eyes. When he lost those eyes, the Tenseigan went with them.

Natsuki’s eyes narrowed.

Besides the two Giant Tenseigan, he’d found two people up there.

Barring surprises, Toneri’s parents.

He thought it over for a while, and then decided.

He was taking the Giant Tenseigan regardless. Whether Toneri ever existed had stopped being relevant.

His plan was to extract the ocular powers and techniques from both Giant Tenseigan, exactly as he had with Isshiki’s eyes. Combined with his own chakra, producing two Six Paths-level shinobi wouldn’t be difficult at all.

The Tenseigan was best suited to the Hyuga, admittedly. Natsuki intended to give them to Uzumaki Kushina and Yakushi Nonou instead.

Good things stay in the family.

Besides, eyes in the original story had never been especially picky about bloodlines. They transplanted freely — Madara’s Rinnegan had gone into Nagato without complications. The Giant Tenseigan would be no different.

Natsuki came back to himself, released the Haki, and opened his eyes.

Konan was in front of him — flushed, a faint sheen of sweat on her forehead, her focus visibly somewhere else entirely.

Natsuki picked up a document from the desk.

Time passed.

Konan coughed twice, and his attention came back to her.

"You’ve earned your rest today. Go clean up and take the afternoon," Natsuki said, setting the document down with a smile.

Konan nodded, turned, and left.

Watching her go, Natsuki found himself thinking of Uchiha Mikoto, whose work in this area was, frankly, even better.

Practice, though. Konan was working hard enough that she’d close the gap soon.

An image of the two of them together surfaced unbidden.

Natsuki shook it off. He’d only just gotten his focus back; he wasn’t losing the rest of the afternoon to it.

He exhaled and stood.

Then he raised a hand and opened a black portal.

Not the Door-Door Fruit this time. Yomotsu Hirasaka.

He stepped through, and came out on the moon.

This moon had been built by the Sage of Six Paths and Otsutsuki Hamura using Six Paths: Chibaku Tensei, with Otsutsuki Kaguya and the Gedo Statue sealed inside it.

The Statue was long gone, summoned out by Madara and his Rinnegan, and had since ended up in Natsuki’s hands.

He hadn’t gone two steps before two figures appeared in front of him.

Both pale-skinned, both long-haired — textbook Otsutsuki traits.

But they were Hamura’s descendants, mixed blood rather than the genuine article. True Otsutsuki carried one more marker: horns. Kaguya had them. Momoshiki had them.

"Natsuki." The young man spoke first. "Do you have business on the moon?"

That they knew him didn’t surprise him at all. In the original story, Toneri had used the Giant Tenseigan to watch the shinobi world and keep abreast of events there. His parents could obviously do the same.

"Leaving the Giant Tenseigan sitting on the moon is a waste." Natsuki smiled. "I’d like the two of you to hand them over."

"Out of the question." The man’s voice went cold. "The Giant Tenseigan are our clan’s greatest treasures. Why in the world would we give them to you?"

About what he’d expected.

Natsuki simply raised his hand.

Both of them were Branch Family. And the Branch Family’s founding conviction was that the shinobi world should be destroyed.

Which meant there was no reason to be gentle.

Heilig Pfeil!

An arrow tore out of his palm.

Both of them felt it at the same instant — a sense of danger unlike anything in their lives.

They couldn’t block it.

Their hands flew through seals at the last possible moment, and an enormous purple Tenseigan materialized in front of them. They pressed their palms against it.

Rosary Bead Shuriken!

The purple Tenseigan shuddered violently and disgorged a dense string of beads — near-cousins to Truth-Seeking Balls — which assembled themselves into a colossal shuriken and met the arrow head-on.

Boom.

A storm erupted across the lunar surface.

The two of them let out a breath.

And then went straight past relief into shock, because Natsuki had held the Rosary Bead Shuriken to a draw.

To them, that shouldn’t have been possible.

Looked at from the other side, it meant Natsuki’s strength might be approaching their ancestor’s. Approaching Otsutsuki Hamura.

Natsuki’s fingers twitched.

The Heaven’s Punishment Sword and the Void Sword launched together, wrapped in a torrent of demonic aura, and closed on the pair at appalling speed.

The two hurriedly drove the Giant Tenseigan again.

Silver Wheel Reincarnation Explosion!

The rosary of Truth-Seeking Balls reappeared, spinning at furious speed, building into a terrifying vortex in front of them.

The storm slammed into the Heaven’s Punishment Sword and—