Chapter 108: A Jinchūriki Goes Into Labor
Looks like I'm flying solo on this one. The good news is, those Reincarnators don't seem all that strong.
Ryū glanced out his window. Konoha looked peaceful at the moment.
But he could feel it, faintly—a current churning beneath the surface.
Those three Rogue Reincarnators had absolutely pulled something major. Otherwise Minato wouldn't have looked that shaken. And there was clearly some connection to the Nine-Tails jinchūriki…
The problem was that Ryū had no idea where the three of them currently were. He'd have to wait for the crisis to surface and then find an opening to track them down. Hunting them blind right now was pointless—Konoha was a sizeable village, and trying to find them with no leads would just be wasted effort.
The population was the main issue. Who knew whether these Reincarnators had bothered with disguises? A change of clothes alone would basically render them unrecognizable.
Unless their faces look distinctly inhuman… Then maybe they'd be a bit easier to spot.
* * *
As Ryū mulled it over, a familiar chime sounded in his head once more—though this time, no popup appeared.
Instead, the message came as a private chat from Edward Newgate. Whitebeard.
[PM] Edward Newgate: Admin, Admin. That legitimate transmigrator drawing the manga—the Oda Eiichirou guy doing ONE PIEE? Found him.
[PM] Edward Newgate: And successfully adopted him as my son. Shame he's a guy.
[PM] Edward Newgate: By the way, his real name actually IS Oda Eiichirou!
[PM] RawrSoFierce: …You found him? And adopted him? That fast?
[PM] RawrSoFierce: Honestly, if you hadn't brought him up I'd have forgotten he existed.
[PM] Edward Newgate: Gurararara! This old man asked him about the plot trajectory of ONE PIEE. He said he's only thought up to the Straw Hat Boy setting sail through the Enies Lobby arc. Hasn't worked out the rest yet.
[PM] Edward Newgate: I asked if he knew about Haki. He said: 'What's Haki?'
[PM] Edward Newgate: By all rights, a text-copy duke should absolutely know about Haki!
[PM] RawrSoFierce: …Is that so. I think I might have figured out what's going on.
* * *
Ryū's expression turned a little odd.
Whitebeard finding the transmigrator and adopting him on the spot was a flex, but well within Ryū's expectations.
What surprised him was Whitebeard's report that this transmigrator didn't know what Haki was—and that his knowledge of the One Piece plot only ran from Luffy setting sail through Enies Lobby. Which meant the world this legitimate transmigrator hailed from… wasn't Ryū's previous-life world.
It's a parallel world. A similar one, but parallel. And in his version of Earth, the One Piece manga that's been serialized so far… might not have introduced the Haki system yet. The Marineford War probably hadn't even started serialization.
A transmigrator with no cheat ability was already pitiful enough.
And just when this guy had finally figured out he could grift his way through life as a text-copy duke… he turned out to only know a fraction of the plot.
Pfft. God only knows whether this transmigrator, after he runs out of Enies Lobby material, will start headcanoning the rest of the story from his own imagination.
Honestly? Pretty likely.
[PM] RawrSoFierce: If I'm not mistaken, that's probably all the plot he knows. Anything past that point—the lore, the systems—he likely has no clue.
[PM] RawrSoFierce: Forget Haki. He probably doesn't even know the New World exists.
[PM] Edward Newgate: Ahh, I see… So he only knows part of the story.
[PM] Edward Newgate: Gurararara! Doesn't matter. He's already this old man's son. Whether it's the World Government or anyone else—if they want to lay a hand on this little one, they'll have to step over my corpse first!
[PM] Edward Newgate: Sorry for bothering you, Admin.
[PM] RawrSoFierce: No worries. I've got something on my plate, going offline.
* * *
Withdrawing his consciousness from the Dimensional Chat Group, Ryū found he didn't actually care all that much about the legitimate transmigrator. The guy wasn't worth anything in Points.
The three Rogue Reincarnators, on the other hand—
Ryū had already mentally reclassified them as three balls of Points wandering around Konoha.
Plus, he lived in the Naruto world. Specifically, in Konoha. And these guys were planning to pull some kind of destructive scheme right here in his village. Whatever their reasons, Ryū was getting involved.
Otherwise some collateral shockwave might wreck my house. That's real estate I inherited from this life's parents.
Of course, the main reason was that the three of them were extremely valuable.
Eliminate or expel them, recover their Reincarnation Watches: 3,000 Points + 1,000 Points + 1,500 Points.
That's 5,500 total… Less than Melzargard, but on the whole more lucrative than a Blackbeard. Probably because there are three of them, and a big chunk comes from the Watches.
Ryū was starting to get genuinely itchy for action. His Intermediate Observation Haki should be able to pick up presences with off-kilter signatures.
It'd need to be a pretty fine-grained detection, though. If only my Observation Haki was on Enel's level—that'd let me blanket the whole village and skim surface thoughts on top of it. Finding three guys would be trivial.
With Intermediate Observation Haki, picking out signatures with unusual readings would be challenging. But not impossible. And he wouldn't know unless he tried.
* * *
Meanwhile, in a tucked-away little loft house elsewhere in Konoha—
Standing in the courtyard outside, Minato paced back and forth.
His brow was knotted tight as he listened to the muffled sounds drifting from inside.
He couldn't make sense of any of this.
Why now? She's only five or six months along… How can this be happening already? By all logic we should still have months.
Minato didn't know much about labor and delivery. But he knew the phrase "nine months in the womb."
And it had only been six.
Kushina's actually going into labor… Wait, this couldn't mean something's gone wrong, could it? This is preterm—ptoo, ptoo, ptoo! Why am I cursing my own wife?! Something's definitely off, though… Please. Please let Kushina come through this safely.
Minato shook his head sharply. His thoughts were a tangled mess. There wasn't a trace of the famed Fourth Hokage composure left in him.
He looked exactly like a man with stomach cramps frantically searching for a bathroom.
Whatever steady, collected demeanor he normally projected—he'd completely thrown it out the window.
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