A whole month had passed since Kiba agreed to teach me the Four Legs Technique.
But I wasn’t making any progress!
I simply didn’t understand what was required of me.
It wasn’t even a matter of chakra control; for this jutsu, all you really needed was the presence of chakra in the body and the ability to move it around freely.
The problem was that I couldn’t comprehend how chakra—without even leaving the body—could cause physical changes like that.
And without that fundamental understanding, I couldn’t figure out how to give the technique its initial spark.
There were also a bunch of other details I wanted to know.
Things like the minimum chakra requirement for activation, and so on.
And Kiba answered me.
Well, no, that’s not entirely accurate.
Whenever I asked him a question, he would hesitate, bulge his eyes, and fail to provide an answer.
I hadn’t expected anything different.
But the very next day, he would walk up to me and provide a perfectly detailed explanation.
Of course, that only generated more questions, which he could only answer the day after that.
The situation was clear: Kiba was a pure practitioner.
When it came to theory, he was interrogating someone in his clan…
someone significantly smarter.
If he wasn’t outright asking them to tell him what to say, he was heavily hinting at it; he wasn’t good at subtly fishing for information.
That “smart clan member” had undoubtedly been given the green light by Tsume, making Kiba little more than a messenger pigeon.
Tsume had almost certainly authorized my lessons in the first place.
And honestly, that made me nervous.
One relationship heart seemed like an awfully small amount of affection to justify this level of clan secrecy being casually handed over to me.
I didn’t have an answer for that, so all I could do was milk the opportunity while I had it.
Which is exactly what I was doing.
After loading Kiba down with a fresh batch of questions immediately after classes, I headed toward the Academy exit, where Hitomi was already waiting for me.
Hmm, what a strange look on her face.
Considering how rarely her expression deviated from absolute apathy, I was genuinely curious about what was bothering her.
I figured it out almost immediately when I traced her line of sight.
It was the way she was watching the parents who had come to pick up their kids from the Academy.
And the way she flinched, ever so slightly—if I didn’t know her as well as I did, I never would have noticed it—every time she heard another kid yell “Mom!” as they ran to their waiting relative.
It all made sense.
Honestly, out of all the psychological baggage she was hauling around, I considered this particular flavor of delusion to be one of the safest.
I knew exactly how massively her affection rating would spike right now, but I just couldn’t force myself to do it.
That word meant a lot to me, too.
It was a relic from my past life, but the word “Mom” still radiated…
as cliché as it sounds, it radiated warmth.
Given my knowledge of canon, and likely the merging of my soul with Naruto’s, I felt confident I could call Kushina my mother.
I wasn’t so sure about the Fourth, though.
Some of his actions honestly made me want to punch him in the face.
A bit of childish resentment still lingered in me, too.
But whenever I put myself in his shoes and asked, “What would I have done in that situation?”, a strange realization emerged.
Or rather, two realizations!
First—he genuinely was my father.
Second—I now needed to punch two people in the face, including myself!
I really wish I had inherited his genius instead of his thought process!
Right now, I had an incredible opportunity to farm a massive amount of percentage points with Hitomi.
Especially with such vivid examples of other children and their mothers right in front of her.
But I couldn’t force the word out.
Come on, you coward!
Pull yourself together and say one short word!
“Did something happen…” I started as I approached the flinching Hitomi.
Well, everyone has moments of weakness, even Anbu.
Now, finish the sentence!
Come on, say it!
Prove you have a pair of brass ones…
I mean nerves of steel, yeah, definitely.
“…Mom.” I finally forced it out.
My voice cracked suspiciously at the end.
This child’s body was a bad influence on me.
But…
it would be nice to truly trust Hitomi.
Or rather, to answer the trust she had shown me at the gates of the Uchiha compound that memorable night.
She pulled me into a fierce hug and instantly used the Body Flicker jutsu.
A moment later, we were several blocks away from the Academy, standing on the roof of some random building.
Spatial displacement felt weird…
good thing I hadn’t eaten anything yet.
Hitomi was still holding me tightly.
She was on her knees, her face buried in my shoulder, crying softly and silently.
[+50% Affection with Hitomi/Tsuru.] To hell with it all!
I practically swatted the notification away, hugging the kunoichi back.
She really had grown attached to me.
“Alright, Mom, that’s enough,” I said gently, noting that the word came a little easier this time, though still with a slight hitch.
“Let’s go home?” “Yes, let’s go, Naruto,” she replied, slowly calming down.
And then a completely unrelated, slightly annoying thought popped into my head.
Why has Kiba’s mom’s affection meter ticked up by one percent several times over the last month when we haven’t even seen each other?
I had been actively avoiding the Inuzuka compound, remembering the “Amaze Tsume” quest and the fact that she already had a full heart.
Yeah, I was terrified of accidentally triggering her second one prematurely.
Around the same time, Tsume Inuzuka.
The head of the Inuzuka Clan was in a rare state—she was deep in thought.
She was also eagerly waiting for her son to get home from the Academy so she could answer his newest batch of questions, ensuring he would pass those answers on to his friend in the morning.
Naruto had surprised her with his mind.
Significantly so.
His questions were unexpected and highly practical, and forcing herself to answer them had made her reevaluate a lot of things.
What else was there to say?
After implementing a solution to one of his questions into her own training, the chakra cost for two of the clan’s offensive jutsu had dropped by 10-15% without any loss in power!
A fresh perspective on clan techniques from a child who hadn’t been indoctrinated with the “everyone does it this way, so you do it this way too” mentality was proving incredibly useful.
But she had to give the Uzumaki credit: if he didn’t have such an active, analytical mind, he never would have come up with those ideas in the first place.
Tsume’s desire to drag him into her clan only grew stronger.
The chakra drain for the Four Legs Technique itself had dropped drastically as well, without losing any effectiveness, and drastically reducing the physical strain of prolonged use.
That pleased her even more.
She was already imagining the nasty surprise waiting for enemies who thought they had her fighting style figured out.
She owed her son’s friend a massive “thank you” for that alone…
It was at this exact moment that Naruto received another +1% to his relationship with Tsume Inuzuka, much to the boy’s confusion.
…And that was why she was waiting so eagerly for Kiba to get home.
Maybe today, she would find another way to optimize their techniques?
If only she understood why she had this overwhelming thirst to claim the boy, to see him firmly seated within her clan.
How could she possibly know about a concept as simple—yet entirely beyond her comprehension—as “one filled heart”?
The thing about the System’s hearts was that they manifested differently for everyone.
For some, it was mild sympathy.
For others, an obsessive or, conversely, a subtle interest.
However, given Tsume’s personality—and the slightly feral, animalistic nature of all Inuzuka—her natural instinct was to view anything she found “interesting” as hers.
And so, she was subconsciously pulling the boy who had caught her interest into her pack.
The fact that her interest was purely pragmatic and lacked any romantic subtext…
well, that was probably for the best.
At least her intentions were pure.
Much later, in the apartment of the “orphan.” I don’t even want to know how this happened!
I thought miserably, currently trapped in Hitomi’s embrace like an oversized plush toy.
And no, I hadn’t sneaked in here.
I wasn’t about to give in to hormones that hadn’t even woken up yet.
She had decided to sleep with her “child.” Well, at least there was no psychological pressure, and everything was perfectly decent.
Hitomi was wearing a thick, non-transparent nightgown that reached her knees, meaning any weird subtext was entirely excluded.
That realization allowed me to exhale in relief and suppress the urge to scream, “Help, I’m being attacked by a pervert!” I was in my pajamas, too, which I was currently treating as an extra layer of armor.
But I couldn’t fall asleep in this weird atmosphere.
Out of sheer boredom, I started scanning everything in the room with Observe.
I eventually settled on Hitomi.
There weren’t any major changes, but one specific detail absolutely killed me.
Her class had changed from Pseudo-Root Anbu to Single Mother.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry!