A few hours later, Ichinose Chizuru sat on the edge of the bed, staring at her phone screen. The notification read: 300,000 yen received. She said nothing for a long time.
Her emotions were a mess she couldn't begin to untangle.
The master bedroom door swung open. Makoto strolled in, freshly showered, casual as anything. "Money come through?"
"Mm." A small sound, barely there.
She watched him, this man who had taken so many of her firsts, and had no idea what to say.
She could feel it clearly enough. There was nothing romantic in the way he looked at her. Not even a flicker. It had been a transaction, pure and simple.
But still. He was her first.
That wasn't something she could just wash away. Whether she liked it or not, Makoto Nishikado had carved himself into a part of her she'd never get back.
He seemed to remember something, and a curious grin crossed his face. "Hold on. You've already mastered the Transformation Jutsu. Why are you still doing the rental girlfriend gig? Don't tell me you actually enjoy it."
In the original story, Chizuru relied on makeup to change her appearance for her rental dates. With the Transformation Jutsu, disguises were even easier.
But that raised an obvious question: if you could literally become anyone, why were you still renting yourself out as a fake girlfriend? A quick flip through the criminal code would show you a dozen faster ways to make a buck.
"There's no way I enjoy it!" she shrieked, then dropped to a mumble. "That kind of thing... would be illegal."
She'd spent two years in the Naruto world, sure, but most of that time had been a straight line between the Ninja Academy and the orphanage.
Aside from the curriculum being wildly different, daily life hadn't been all that far from reality.
That was true for Yukinoshita Yukino as well. Neither of them had been fundamentally changed by the experience.
Their personalities and moral compasses were more or less intact, which was exactly why Makoto's trail of chaos had left them both so stunned.
Makoto blinked at her answer.
Well. Can't argue with that logic.
Squeezing money out of some simp, on the other hand? Perfectly legal.
She'd have been a spiritual guru to every toxic, entitled girl on the internet.
Shortly after, Chizuru limped out of the Yukinoshita residence.
At the front gate, she ran straight into Haruno Yukinoshita, who was just getting home. Haruno paused at the sight of the pretty girl hobbling along with that particular awkward gait, but said nothing.
Inside, Haruno popped open the trunk of her car. It was packed with water balloons and rubber balls, exactly what Makoto had asked her to buy.
"Got everything," she said.
Makoto grabbed a water balloon and began channeling Chakra into it.
The water inside immediately began to churn, swirling in erratic patterns.
Pop.
The balloon burst, splashing his hand. Chaotic, uncontrolled Chakra had ripped it apart from the inside.
"Yeah. Not that simple."
He muttered it to himself, but he hadn't expected otherwise. This was a technique Minato Namikaze had developed to rival the Tailed Beast Bomb. It was never going to come easy.
What he was practicing was the Rasengan.
The only A-rank jutsu in the original series that came with a detailed, step-by-step training method. Passing that up would've been criminal.
Haruno stood nearby, jaw slack. What kind of power is this?
Mrs. Yukinoshita appeared behind her. "Haruno, don't disturb Makoto while he's training."
Haruno's eye twitched. One single day, and her mother had already become Makoto Nishikado's number one fan.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Yukinoshita studied the boy with growing approval. In the parlance of Makoto's previous life, it was the classic "mother-in-law sizing up a son-in-law" look.
The only question was... Yukino or Haruno? Which daughter was the better match?
She was still weighing her options.
Across the city, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.
Just as Makoto had predicted, after the beating he'd dealt to Inspector Megure and the rest of Division One, the police had called an emergency meeting to figure out how to handle him.
It didn't take long.
The power he'd displayed at Shuchiin Academy the day before was alarming, certainly, but not quite enough to paralyze the entire department with fear. Megure's superior, the rough-faced Superintendent Matsumoto Kiyonaga, waved a dismissive hand.
"Why overcomplicate this? Find the kid, map out his routine, and put a sniper on him."
As for who'd pull the trigger...
"Give it to Kogoro Mouri."
In this crossover world, Mouri Kogoro had never quit the force to become a private detective. He was still on active duty, and happened to be the department's best marksman.
Nobody was better suited for the job.
Under normal circumstances, they might have hesitated to deploy a firearm against a minor. But after witnessing what Makoto could do, every person in that room had reached the same conclusion: guns were no longer optional.
"Problem is, we can't find him." Takagi scratched his head. "We've already pulled surveillance footage from across the entire city."
The room debated for a while longer. Nothing.
In the end, it was Megure who spoke up, leaning into his identity as an 'Old Brother' Devil Fruit user:
"Let's ask young Kudo what he thinks."
Kogoro's expression went flat. The last thing he wanted was to see that punk who kept sniffing around his daughter.
The next day, Shinichi Kudo was summoned to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.
Whether it was because Shinichi's plot armor was just that solid, or because the entire police force was genuinely useless, nobody batted an eye at law enforcement consulting a high schooler.
After hearing Megure's explanation, Shinichi found himself stuck.
Solving cases? That was his bread and butter. But finding someone who didn't want to be found? That was a different beast entirely.
In every case he'd ever worked, the suspects just... stayed put. They hung around the crime scene like polite guests, waiting to be unmasked.
Kogoro caught the constipated look on Shinichi's face from the front row, and couldn't help the smirk that spread across his own.
Not so clever now, are you, kid?
The door opened. Takagi walked in and reported to Megure. "Inspector, there's a girl here who says she has information on Makoto Nishikado."
Megure's eyes lit up. He told Takagi to bring her in.
Moments later, Takagi returned with a young woman in the same black Shuchiin Academy uniform Shinichi wore. Cool, composed, strikingly beautiful.
Shinichi froze.
He knew her. His own classmate: Yukinoshita Yukino.
The same girl Makoto had slapped at the opening ceremony.
"Yukinoshita, you know where he is?" Shinichi asked, frowning.
Her expression didn't thaw an inch. "That person has a disguise ability similar to Phantom Thief Kid's. Conventional methods won't find him."
She kept the Reincarnation Game out of it entirely. The system had been explicit: reveal that you're a player, and you die.
It hadn't specified whether that rule applied in the real world too, but she wasn't about to gamble on it. Phantom Thief Kid was the closest analogy she could offer.
The room went quiet. Division Two, led by Inspector Nakamori, took it the hardest.
They were the unit tasked with catching Kid, and they knew better than anyone how maddening that level of disguise mastery could be.
"This is bad." Megure's face crumpled. "If that's true, finding him is nearly impossible, let alone catching him."
"I'd like to join the investigation," Yukino said.
She'd spent the past few days wrestling with herself. In the end, she'd decided not to tell her family about her new abilities.
Because she believed that possessing supernatural power made it more important to hold fast to your principles, not less.
And Yukino's principles had always been ironclad, to the point where some people found them suffocating.
She couldn't stand by and watch someone like Makoto Nishikado run wild without consequence.
She wanted to bring him to justice herself. That was why she'd come to the police.
What she didn't know, of course, was that while she'd been busy hunting for him, Makoto was already backdooring her base, by winning over her family.