Chapter 4: Weak, Discreet, Useful
The supply depot was a shed of canvas and timber at the back of the camp, and it smelled of grain, lamp oil, and old leather.
Raiden arrived before the sun had warmed the ground and found a short, broad man with an unshaven jaw and a clipboard hanging from his neck by a string, shouting at two young men about a crate that had gone missing. His name was Gondo, a quartermaster sergeant, and he had the look of someone who counted everything and already knew it would fall short.
"What do you want?" he asked, without lifting his eyes from the clipboard.
"Work. I was discharged from the infirmary." Raiden held out Hanae's slip of paper. "I can carry, deliver, whatever you need."
Gondo read the paper and looked him up and down. Thin, small, the vest too big across the shoulders. His gaze rested for a moment on the fan emblem on his back.
"An Uchiha carrying crates? I thought you people had your own duties."
"I have free time," Raiden answered. "And I need to put on a few pounds."
The sergeant was silent for a second. Then he marked something on the clipboard.
"I need people who don't complain. Take that one."
He pointed at a wooden crate the size of a bench, on the floor.
Raiden crouched, slid his hands underneath, and lifted. It weighed more than it looked. His arms trembled, just a little, and he set his legs.
[Estimated load: 12 kg. Within the limit for day one.]
[Keep your spine straight. Breathe through your nose.]
Kira. Are you there?
[Since dawn. Do not act as if I just came back. There are people nearby.]
"Delivery to post three, on the east hill," Gondo said. "Round trip. If you're back before noon, there's another."
Raiden nodded and left.
* * *
The road to post three was a dirt trail, climbing in a curve over stony ground and dry grass. He walked slowly, the weight of the crate pulling his shoulders down, and every hundred steps he took a short pause, as anyone would.
[Time for the first exercise. A thread of chakra in your feet.]
[Imagine the sole of your boot is made of glue. Just a thin layer. Do not force it.]
He closed his eyes for a moment and searched for the chakra inside his body. At first, nothing. Then a warm sensation rising from his abdomen in loose wisps. He tried to guide it down his legs, slowly, toward his feet.
The chakra leaked away at the knee. He tried again.
[Too much chakra. You are pushing. Think of blowing on a candle without putting it out.]
That's ridiculous.
[It works.]
On the third try, the thread reached the sole, thin, almost invisible, and Raiden felt his feet settle on the ground with a strange firmness, as if the trail had become a little more of a friend.
[Chakra control: Level 1. Duration: 4 seconds.]
[Cost: 0.3 CP.]
[Current reserve: 43.7 CP.]
He repeated the exercise to the end of the trail, failing, starting again, losing the thread halfway and finding it once more. By the time he reached post three, his back was soaked and his arms were burning, but the thread had lasted almost thirty seconds on the final climb.
Weak, discreet, useful, he repeated inwardly.
* * *
The second delivery took him past the training ground.
It was the route Kira had chosen. The field lay in an open space between the depot and the hill, ringed with logs and sandbags, and at this hour at least twenty shinobi were training at once.
[When you reach the fallen log, slow down. Pretend to adjust the load.]
[Sharingan time: 3 minutes. I control the clock.]
Raiden stopped, set the crate on the ground, and pretended to tie his boot. With his head down and turned to the side, he activated the Sharingan.
The pain came, thin and quick, and passed. The world opened into layers.
[ANALYSIS ACTIVE. Time remaining: 3:00.]
The others' training drew itself in front of him in pale trails. Two genin traded punches and kicks at a tired rhythm. Beside them, a group of chunin repeated seals in a line, one after another, without pause.
[Target 1: pair of genin, ages 15 and 16.]
[Observation: the one on the left opens his shoulder a centimeter before every right-hand strike. The one on the right has not noticed.]
Raiden saw it. It was exactly that. One boy opened his shoulder before the punch, and the other took the hit again, and again.
[You noticed that before I told you. Good reading.]
Something warm rose in his chest, something that was neither pain nor fear. It was a nearly forgotten thing, older than the war and older than the Sharingan.
It was the desire to learn.
[Target 2: group of chunin. Chain seal exercise.]
[Seals: Tiger, Hare, Ox. Technique: Substitution Technique (Kawarimi no Jutsu). Rank D.]
[COPIED: Substitution Technique.]
[Status: recorded, not installed.]
Rank D. One day of installation.
[One day, once your channels are ready. But the technique is stored. You now have an escape option for the future.]
He closed his eyes slowly, let the world return to normal, and felt only a faint sting behind his eyeballs. He finished tying his boot, picked up the crate, and walked on as if nothing had happened.
* * *
It was on the third delivery that he noticed the man.
A middle-aged shinobi with gray hair cut close, sitting on a bench beside the training ground, eating a piece of bread and staring at nothing. He was not training. He was not supervising. He was just there, his jonin vest open at the chest, looking as tired as anyone in the war.
But when Raiden passed with the crate in his arms, the man's eyes followed him. Only for an instant, only until the end of the bend.
[Prolonged gaze detected. Source: seated jonin, ten meters to your left.]
[Recommendation: keep your pace. Do not look back.]
Raiden kept his pace and did not look. His heart was beating slightly faster than normal.
I know that face, he thought. The body's memories stirred, slowly, like photographs of another person, and an image fell into place: a man with folded arms at the edge of a courtyard, walking past the clan's children, exchanging a short nod with each and nothing more.
Soichi.
[The data matches the host's memories: Uchiha Soichi, age 44, jonin, in charge of the Uchiha sector of this camp.]
[No record of him in your knowledge of canon.]
[According to the memories, he never had a reason to look at you for more than a second. Today he did. That is new.]
Because of the eye?
[Probably. News of your awakening may have reached the sector. Stay alert.]
* * *
The afternoon passed in deliveries, one after another. Water for post two. Rolls of bandage for the infirmary. Two sacks of rice for the field kitchen. On each trip, Raiden repeated the foot exercise, a little better, a little steadier. In the breaks, sitting at the back of the depot with his hands hidden between his knees, he practiced seals without chakra.
Ox. Tiger. Dog. Boar. Tiger. Hare. Ox.
His fingers moved on their own, erring, returning, getting it right. They were seals he had never made in this life, and they were already beginning to feel like his.
When the sun went down, Raiden was so tired that his legs shook. He went to the genin quarters, ate a double ration of rice, thick soup, and hard bread, all at once, and slept without dreaming of anything.
It was the best sleep he had had in this world.
* * *
On the second day, his body ached in new places. But the ache was a good one, and Kira confirmed it: his muscles were responding.
He repeated the routine. Crates, trails, the thread of chakra in his feet, the burst of Sharingan near the training ground. The gray-haired jonin was not on the bench. Raiden almost convinced himself he had imagined it all.
It was late in the afternoon, as he unloaded the last crate at the depot, that Gondo called him.
"Raiden. There are people from your clan outside."
Raiden turned.
At the entrance of the shed, outlined against the orange sky, stood two shinobi. One was the gray-haired jonin from the bench. The other was a young woman, in her early twenties, with black hair tied in a high ponytail and a look that was a little too curious. Both wore the same symbol on the back of their vests: a red and white fan.
[Uchiha Soichi, jonin. Uchiha Chie, chunin, age 21.]
[Data confirmed by the host's memories: Chie is a distant cousin and was always friendly toward him. They chatted now and then.]
[Stay calm. They do not know about me.]
"Raiden," Soichi said, in a deep voice, unhurried. "You're alive."
"Yes, sir."
"Patrol Four notified the sector yesterday. They brought an Uchiha in from the border, with his Sharingan active, and the name was yours." He scratched his chin. "I knew your team had been sent out there. I didn't expect you to come back with the eye awake."
"Neither did I," Raiden said. "It happened in the middle of the fight."
"Awakened in the field, then."
"Yes."
Soichi looked at him for a long moment, the look of a man reassessing something he had never needed to assess.
"An Uchiha with an awakened Sharingan doesn't stay alone in the genin quarters," he said. "It's not a favor. It's the rule, and it's common sense. The eye demands training, and training demands someone who knows how to teach it."
"I nearly drove the whole sector crazy looking for you," Chie added, stepping forward. "I went by the infirmary twice, and they had already discharged you. Raiden, couldn't you have sent word?"
"I didn't think anyone would come looking," he replied, and it was true.
Chie blinked, surprised, and then laughed, a little awkwardly.
"We did. Now we did."
Now. The word hung in the air. Raiden understood what she meant, and there was no resentment in it. Before, he was just another orphan who hadn't awakened, in a clan large enough that nobody noticed. Now he had a red eye, and everybody noticed.
In the background, Gondo pretended to count sacks of grain with exaggerated attention.
[Attention. This changes the method, but not necessarily for the worse.]
[Returning to the Uchiha sector is natural: you have always been part of it. Refusing would draw more attention than anything else.]
"Your bed is still there," Chie said, more gently. "In the corner, by the canvas. Nobody touched it."
"I'll come back," Raiden said. "But I have one condition."
Soichi raised an eyebrow.
"Sergeant Gondo gave me work when nobody else did. I want to keep working at the depot in the mornings."
Chie let out a short, surprised laugh.
"An Uchiha carrying crates?"
"I need to put on weight," Raiden answered.
There was a brief silence. Soichi looked at Gondo, who did not lift his eyes from the clipboard, and then back at the boy. Something changed in his face, almost a smile, too quick to be sure of.
"Mornings at the depot," he said. "Afternoons in the Uchiha sector. Nights, you sleep with us. Agreed."
"Agreed."
"Get your things."
Raiden looked at Gondo, who finally raised his head.
"Go on, kid," the sergeant said, in a tone that tried to be gruff. "I want you here tomorrow morning, and if the crate arrives late, I'm sending you back to the infirmary."
"Yes, sir."
"And eat properly."
"Yes, sir."
Raiden picked up the little he owned, his forehead protector and Daigo's crumpled note, and followed the two Uchiha out of the shed, toward the other side of the camp.
* * *
The Uchiha sector lay at the northern edge, set apart from the rest, ringed with stakes hung with red lanterns. On each one, the same fan was painted in white. There were about thirty shinobi in all, genin, chunin, and a few jonin, and most of them stopped what they were doing as he passed.
Raiden felt the stares on his back, curious, but with no needles in them.
"It's Raiden," someone murmured. "The orphan from the south wing."
"I heard he awakened."
"At fifteen?"
"They say it was in the field, in the middle of a fight."
"So he can fight."
They did not speak like people discovering a stranger. They spoke like people remarking on an acquaintance who had suddenly gained a topic of conversation. Nobody there needed an introduction. It was only that, until two days ago, nobody had a reason to talk about him.
Soichi led him to a long tent with twelve bunks, nine of them occupied. The one in the corner, by the canvas, was indeed empty, with the blanket still folded the way he had left it the last night before being sent to the border. Beside it, a young man with spiky hair was tending a blade, and looked up only to stare at him for a second too long.
"You're back," he said.
"Takeru," Soichi replied. "If the boy needs anything, he asks you."
"Sure," said Takeru, and went back to the blade. Then, without lifting his eyes, he added, "I heard it was the eye. Show me later."
Raiden knew that manner. A cousin of the same age, who had never been hostile or friendly, and who now, for the first time, had something to ask.
"Rest," said the jonin, turning to leave. "Tomorrow, after the depot, we'll see what your eye has learned."
And he left.
* * *
Night came quickly. The Uchiha sector was quieter than the genin quarters, but in a different way: a full silence, of people who knew each other, who slept close, who breathed together. Someone was snoring. Someone was murmuring, still awake, a low song he did not recognize.
Raiden lay on his back, looking at the canvas roof, his hands folded on his chest.
Kira, he called, in thought only. You can talk.
[I am here.]
[Summary of the day: you returned to the Uchiha sector, but as someone different. To them, you went from "just another orphan" to "the boy who awakened the Sharingan."]
I noticed. Before, nobody looked at me. Today everybody does.
[The host's memories confirm it. There was no hostility. The clan is large, and an orphan without a Sharingan does not draw attention. You were treated normally, only nobody had a reason to take an interest.]
[The awakening changed that. Now there is interest. There is curiosity. Some people will want to help, others will want to measure you.]
That's a problem for the method.
[It is a challenge. For someone with a secret, attention is more dangerous than an enemy. But you also gained things today: food, shelter, and Fire Release training, all free.]
[Adjustments:]
[1. The Field Method continues, in the mornings, at the depot.]
[2. In the afternoons, you train with them. The "official" Sharingan, beside theirs, hides my work.]
[3. Seals without chakra: only under the blanket, and only when everyone is asleep.]
[4. Chakra in the feet: keep doing it on the trail, where no one sees.]
[5. Any improvement must look natural. You were a boy who ate whatever he was given, with no one to insist. Now that you eat properly, it is expected that you gain weight and strength.]
I can call you just by thinking, right?
[Yes. Pure thought, without moving your mouth. It is the only safe way. Never aloud, not even in a whisper. Inside your head, no one can hear us.]
Understood.
He lay still for a while, listening to the breathing of the others. Outside, the thunder rolled again, and someone shifted in the next bunk, the spiky-haired young man who had been sharpening his blade. He was still awake, eyes open in the dark, and for an instant the pale red of a Sharingan glinted in them, just a reflection, before it went out.
[Warning: Takeru activated his Sharingan. Probably just a habit of staying alert.]
Raiden closed his eyes, slowly, and took a deep breath.
Kira.
[Yes.]
Tomorrow there will be people waiting for me at training.
[Yes. For the first time, they will be waiting for you.]
[Sleep, Raiden.]
[FIELD METHOD: Day 2 of 42. Complete.]
[Resting place: Uchiha sector.]
[Good night.]
He slept.