The training started the next morning.
Tsunade made Dale sit on the living room floor.
*”Close your eyes,”*
She told him through the new phone.
*”Look deep inside yourself.
Find the warm spark in your stomach.”*
In her world, it could take a young ninja months to just feel their chakra for the first time.
Dale found it in a single hour.
“I feel it,”
He whispered, keeping his eyes closed.
“It feels like a tiny, warm candle.”
Tsunade was deeply surprised.
This ordinary university student was incredibly talented.
At first, his chakra pool was very small.
It was just a tiny drop of power.
But as the days went by, it began to increase.
It grew very quickly.
One evening, Tsunade watched him meditate from across the room.
She focused her own senses to see his energy network.
She suddenly gasped.
She could see faint, glowing dots of light floating in the air around him.
It was natural energy.
The pure energy of the earth and the air.
Dale’s body was acting like a sponge.
He was breathing it in, slowly absorbing the energy from his surroundings to feed his own growing chakra.
*”Stop!”*
She yelled, quickly rushing over and grabbing his shoulder.
Dale snapped his eyes open.
He looked scared and confused.
“What? What happened? Did I do something wrong?”
Tsunade stared at him closely.
She checked his skin, his eyes, and his breathing.
He was perfectly normal.
He was completely fine.
*”You are pulling energy from the air around you,”*
She explained through the app.
She looked at him in pure disbelief.
*”In my world, we call that Sage jutsu.
It is an extremely difficult and dangerous art.”*
Dale frowned, looking worried.
“Dangerous how?”
*”If a ninja takes in natural energy wrong, the heavy backlash turns their body into solid stone forever,”*
She said seriously.
*”It is a fatal risk.
But you… you have no backlash at all.”*
Dale touched his chest, right where the bright light had hit him in the alleyway.
“I don’t feel any pain,”
He told her honestly.
“I just feel full.”
Tsunade slowly sat back on her heels.
She realized the truth.
The strange seal hadn’t just given him a tiny spark of chakra.
It had changed his body completely.
He could drink the powerful energy of the world safely, without any risk of turning to stone.
His potential was terrifying, and it was just beginning to wake up.
Months passed, and life in the tiny apartment found a new, quiet rhythm.
Tsunade was a genius.
She learned English very fast.
Soon, she didn’t even need the new phone to talk.
She could speak to him clearly.
Dale learned quickly, too.
Between going to his university classes and training his new chakra, he studied Japanese.
They sat together every night at the kitchen table, helping each other learn their languages.
One rainy evening, they were sitting on the sofa, drinking hot tea.
The room was quiet.
Only the sound of the rain hitting the window could be heard.
Tsunade was staring into her cup.
She looked far away and very sad.
“You look like him sometimes,”
She said quietly in English, her voice barely a whisper.
Dale looked up from his book.
“Like who?”
Tsunade blinked, snapping out of her thoughts.
She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
She looked away, her face tightening with old pain.
“Nawaki,”
She whispered.
“My little brother.”
Dale put his book down.
He didn’t push her, but he gave her his full attention.
Slowly, the words started to pour out of her.
She told him about Nawaki’s bright smile.
She told him about his big dream to become the leader of their village, the Hokage.
Then, her voice cracked.
She told him how he died in the war.
He was so young.
A single tear fell down her cheek, splashing into her tea.
Dale didn’t try to fix it.
He knew some pains could never be fixed.
He just shifted closer on the sofa and gently placed his hand on her shoulder.
“I am so sorry, Tsunade,”
Dale said softly, speaking in careful, gentle Japanese.
“He sounds like a wonderful kid. He must have loved you very much.”
He didn’t say anything else.
He just sat there with her, sharing the heavy silence, letting her know she was safe.
Tsunade looked at his hand on her shoulder.
She had felt so completely alone since she arrived in this strange world.
But sitting here now, she realized she wasn’t.
She looked at Dale.
He was a good man.
He was kind, he worked hard, and he truly cared about her feelings.
The thick, icy walls around her heart melted just a little bit.
She wiped her eyes and gave him a small, warm smile.
She placed her hand over his.
From that rainy night on, something between them shifted.
She stopped seeing him as just a strange, lucky boy who saved her from the alleyway.
She started to care for him.
She began to treat him like her own little brother.
More time passed.
Dale worked very hard every single day.
His tiny spark of energy grew into a strong, steady fire.
Tsunade measured his power one afternoon.
She nodded with pride.
His chakra pool had finally reached the level of a Chunin.
He was now as strong as a standard ninja in her village.
“It is time,”
Tsunade told him.
“Your chakra is strong enough. We can try to use a simple space-time ninjutsu. It is the next step to opening the door to my home.”
There was a problem, though.
Tsunade was a master healer and a very strong fighter.
But she did not know much about space-time magic.
In her world, only a few rare geniuses could use it.
But Tsunade was smart.
And now, she had a powerful new tool: **the internet.**
She spent days and nights looking at the bright screen of her phone and a new laptop Dale bought her.
She read modern articles about science, physics, space, and time.
She learned about how humans in this world understood the universe.
Then, she used her brilliant mind to combine that advanced modern knowledge with her deep understanding of chakra and seals.
She designed a brand new jutsu.
She tried to test it herself first.
She made the hand signs and focused her vast chakra.
But nothing happened.
She sighed in frustration.
Her body and her natural energy simply did not match space-time jutsu.
Her compatibility was just too low.
“I cannot do it,”
She told Dale, looking at her hands.
“My chakra rejects the space-time formulas. But you can do it. The seal inside you is made of space-time energy. You are already connected to it.”
She taught him the new science and the new hand signs.
Dale listened very carefully.
He stood in the middle of the living room.
He took a deep breath.
He gathered his natural energy, formed the hand signs, and focused on a spot across the room.
*Pop.*
Dale vanished from the center of the rug.
A split second later, he appeared right next to the kitchen counter.
He did it.
He teleported.
“I did it!”
Dale yelled, his eyes wide with excitement.
He tried it again.
*Pop.*
He appeared by the sofa.
*Pop.*
He appeared by the front door.
But after the third jump, he suddenly fell to his knees.
He was breathing heavily, his clothes soaked in sweat.
His chakra pool was completely empty.
Tsunade quickly walked over and helped him stand up.
“Short distances only,”
She noted, her voice full of pride.
“And you can only jump a few times before your energy runs out. But it is a true success, Dale. You are doing amazing.”
Tsunade had another idea.
If Dale could use space-time ninjutsu, maybe he could help her bridge the gap between worlds.
She wanted to use the Summoning Jutsu.
She wanted to call her animal partner, Katsuyu the slug.
She needed to know what was happening back home.
She had been in this world for months.
She was terrified that the war had already started.
She was scared her village was in danger and her friends were dying without her.
They went to an empty park late at night.
Tsunade bit her thumb.
She drew a line of red blood on her hand.
“Give me your hand, Dale,”
She told him.
“I need your space-time energy to unlock the door across dimensions. I will provide the chakra.”
Dale nodded.
He placed his hand over hers.
He focused his natural energy, just like she had taught him.
Tsunade slammed her hand down onto the wet grass.
*Poof.*
A thick cloud of white smoke exploded in the dark park.
When the smoke cleared, a small, blue and white slug was sitting quietly on the grass.
It was a piece of Katsuyu.
“Tsunade-sama?”
Katsuyu’s soft, polite voice spoke.
She looked around the strange park with her eye-stalks.
“Where are we?”
Tsunade dropped to her knees.
She was so incredibly happy to see her old friend.
“Katsuyu!”
Tsunade said, her voice shaking with emotion.
“I am trapped in another world. I have been stuck here for months. Please, tell me! What is the current situation? Has the war started? Is the Leaf Village safe?”
Katsuyu tilted her small head.
She looked very confused.
“Months?”
Katsuyu asked slowly.
“Tsunade-sama, I do not understand.”
Tsunade felt a sharp, icy fear in her chest.
Did her village fall?
Was everyone gone?
“What do you mean, Katsuyu?”
Tsunade asked, bracing herself for terrible news.
“I mean… my main body is still with your teammates in the underground ruins,”
Katsuyu explained in her gentle voice.
“You just touched the ancient stone pedestal a few seconds ago. The strange seal is still glowing. You have not been gone for months, Tsunade-sama. The mission just started.”
Tsunade stared at the small slug.
Her mouth fell open in pure shock.
Dale looked at Tsunade, putting the pieces together in his head.
“Time moves differently,”
He whispered, his eyes wide.
Tsunade sat back on the grass.
Her mind was spinning.
She had been living in Dale’s tiny apartment, learning English, and training him for nearly half a year.
But in her home world, time was barely moving at all.
It had only been seconds.
Suddenly, a massive, heavy weight lifted completely off her shoulders.
She wasn’t too late.
She hadn’t abandoned her village.
She hadn’t let her friends down.
She let out a long, shaky breath, and for the first time in months, she truly felt at peace.
Tsunade was a true ninja.
Her mind moved fast.
The shock of the time difference quickly faded.
It was replaced by a sharp, tactical focus.
She saw a great chance.
They had just done the impossible.
By combining her chakra and Dale’s space-time energy, they had built a bridge between two different universes.
“I can go back,”
Tsunade whispered, staring at the small slug.
“If Katsuyu is here, I can use the reverse summoning jutsu. The main body of Katsuyu in my world can pull me back home.”
Dale smiled brightly.
“That’s amazing! You found a way!”
But Tsunade’s smile did not reach her eyes.
She looked down at her shaking hands.
“There is a huge problem,”
She told him, her voice heavy.
“Chakra.”
She was one of the strongest ninjas in the world.
Her chakra pool was at the Kage level.
It was massive.
But opening the door to this world had a terrible cost.
Just pulling a tiny piece of Katsuyu across the dimensions had drained almost every drop of energy in her body.
She felt completely empty and weak.
To push her entire body back across the bridge, she would need much, much more power.
“Can’t you just train to get more?”
Dale asked.
Tsunade shook her head slowly.
“The human body has a limit. Even mine,”
She explained to him.
“I am at my peak. To increase my total chakra pool further than this is almost impossible.”
She sat quietly on the wet grass.
The night air was cold.
She needed an ocean of chakra, but she only had a lake.
How could she get more power?
Then, an idea flashed in her mind.
She reached up and touched the smooth skin of her forehead.
Before the mission to the underground ruin, she had been secretly working on a very difficult project.
It was a special jutsu.
A complex mark called the Strength of a Hundred Seal.
The idea was to take a little bit of her chakra every single day and store it in a single spot on her forehead.
Over many years, it would build up an incredible, almost endless amount of power.
“Dale,”
Tsunade said, her eyes suddenly shining with a fierce, determined light.
“Time moves very fast here. One second in my world is months in yours.”
Dale nodded.
“Right. So?”
“So, I have all the time I need,”
She said, standing up.
“I will complete my new seal. I will store my chakra every single day. Even if it takes me three, five, or ten years in this world, I will save enough energy to finally open the door and go home.”