Before coming to this world, Isamu had never been much of an anime fan.
He had never followed any particular series seriously.
During his school days, however, he had occasionally heard classmates discussing Naruto.
As a result, he knew the names of a few famous characters—Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, and several others.
That was about the extent of his knowledge.
With such limited familiarity with Naruto and its cast, Isamu naturally had no idea who the woman standing before him was.
The other shinobi, however, immediately gave him the answer.
“Tsunade!”
“What happened here?”
Tsunade’s gaze fell upon the blood covering the table and the dead rabbit lying before Isamu.
“Has the Interrogation Department fallen so far that you have to kill a rabbit to intimidate people?”
The shinobi across from her tried to explain, but Tsunade paid him no attention.
She simply crushed the restraints holding Isamu in place.
“I’m taking him with me.
If the Third Hokage has a problem with it, tell him to come talk to me!”
Tsunade took Isamu by the hand and led him straight out of the Interrogation Department.
Before leaving, Isamu picked up all the rabbits on the table including the dead one.
Tsunade glanced at Isamu, who was covered in blood from head to toe.
Her brow furrowed slightly, but she said nothing.
The people from the Interrogation Department didn’t dare stop her.
A few days earlier, news had reached Konoha that Nawaki had been killed so completely during a mission that almost nothing of his body remained.
The news had sent Konoha’s leadership into a fury.
He was the grandson of the First Hokage!
If the others hadn’t stopped her, Tsunade would have charged straight to the front lines and slaughtered every enemy shinobi she could find.
Even so, Konoha had drawn up a series of retaliatory plans and was preparing to put them into action.
Then Orochimaru returned to Konoha with Nawaki, who was still unconscious.
And he wasn’t alone.
He had also brought Nawaki’s savior with him Isamu.
The first reaction of Konoha’s leadership had been to obtain information from Isamu, so they had sent him directly to the Interrogation Department.
Of course, they had specifically instructed the interrogators to question him gently.
No violent coercion.
No harming him.
And absolutely no use of secret techniques to search his memories.
If Isamu had any requests, they were to accommodate him as much as possible.
Isamu had been quite cooperative.
But Tsunade wasn’t happy about any of this.
Nawaki was her only close family member.
When she had first received news of her brother’s death, Tsunade had nearly collapsed.
Now her brother had returned.
He was still unconscious, but at least he was alive.
Yet the person who had saved his life had immediately been “invited” to the Interrogation Department.
If word of this got out, what would people in the village think of the Senju clan?
Would they say the Senju had forgotten their debt of gratitude?
That they had repaid kindness with hostility?
That they had disgraced the fine traditions of the Senju clan?
Therefore, Tsunade had immediately stormed into the Interrogation Department and taken Isamu away.
Partly, it was to protect him.
But there was another reason.
Nawaki.
As one of Konoha’s foremost medical-nin, Tsunade had been able to tell at a glance what kind of injuries Nawaki had suffered from the faint scars remaining on his body.
The explosion had nearly destroyed half of Nawaki’s body.
Apart from his head, there wasn’t a single part of him that had remained intact.
Even if her grandfather had still been alive, it would probably have taken him quite some time to restore a body in such a state.
As for Nawaki, who possessed only the strength of a genin at the time, Tsunade found it astonishing that he had survived even a minute.
More importantly
She had clearly noticed that some of her brother’s limbs were different from the rest of his body.
Beneath the scars, there was a faint, unusual fluctuation of chakra.
If Tsunade hadn’t been such an exceptionally skilled medical-nin, she would never have been able to detect such minute changes at the cellular level.
She had a strange feeling.
This wasn’t entirely her brother’s body anymore.
It looked more like a body that had been pieced together.
That was why she had to know what had happened to Nawaki.
A short while later, Isamu was brought to the Senju clan compound.
As they passed through the courtyard, Isamu put the rabbits he was carrying down on the grass, leaving only one in his arms.
Neither of them said much as they made their way to a room in the rear courtyard.
Nawaki was lying quietly on the bed, his chest rising and falling rhythmically.
Normally, Nawaki should have been recovering at Konoha Hospital.
But Tsunade was the best medical-nin in the village.
Faced with Nawaki’s completely normal vital signs despite his continued unconsciousness, she understood that perhaps only Isamu could explain what had happened.
“You saved Nawaki.
That makes you a benefactor of the Senju clan.
Whatever you want, as long as it is within my power, I can give it to you.”
“But I also want you to explain Nawaki’s injuries”
Tsunade undid Nawaki’s clothes, revealing the scars beneath them.
They had faded considerably, but it was still possible to tell just how severe his injuries had once been.
The damage stretching from his right arm to the right side of his waist, along with the obvious differences in the sizes of his left and right limbs, made Tsunade wonder whether the person lying before her was really her brother.
“This rabbit is the answer.”
Isamu held up the surviving rabbit he had brought from the Interrogation Department.
“Back there, I exchanged the rabbit’s internal organs.”
Tsunade reached out and took it without caring about the blood covering it.
She held it against her chest.
I’m so jealous.
That thought flashed through Isamu’s mind.
“You mean you pieced Nawaki’s body together using the bodies of other people?”
Tsunade had already suspected as much, but hearing Isamu confirm it personally still made the truth difficult to accept.
“When I arrived at the scene, Nawaki was the only one who still had a breath left in him.
If I wanted to keep him alive, this was the only method I had.”
Isamu didn’t hide anything.
“You don’t need to worry too much.
Your brother’s body is extraordinarily resilient.
It has already begun assimilating the transplanted tissue.
It won’t take long before his body completely assimilates the foreign tissue.
Once that happens, he’ll wake up.”
At the time, Isamu had simply wanted to save a person’s life.
He had never imagined that the person he was saving was Konoha’s “prince.”
Isamu had only performed such extensive transplant procedures a handful of times.
He had originally thought that even if this person survived, he wouldn’t be able to live for very long.
He had simply decided to give it a try.
Unexpectedly, he discovered that Nawaki’s cells possessed an astonishing vitality.
Isamu tentatively stimulated that vitality, only to discover that Nawaki’s body subsequently began assimilating the foreign tissue at an abnormal rate.
A few days ago, the injuries covering Nawaki’s body had still been horrific.
Now, only faint scars remained.
It wouldn’t be long before his body fully adapted to the changes and he regained consciousness.
Tsunade looked at her unconscious brother and sighed.
As long as Nawaki was alive, that was enough.
Isamu had saved Nawaki, but there was still considerable suspicion surrounding him within the village.
Shinobi had a habit of coming up with all kinds of conspiracy theories.
Tsunade didn’t like it, but there was nothing she could do to change that.
Still, she intended to repay the debt of gratitude in her own way.
“If you want to leave Konoha, I’ll personally vouch for you and arrange for you to be escorted to the capital of the Land of Fire.
I’ll also give you enough money to live a wealthy life there.”
“Also, I discovered traces of residual chakra inside Nawaki.
I believe they belong to you.”
“I hope that before you leave, you can completely remove that chakra.”
Isamu raised his head and looked at Tsunade, a trace of surprise appearing in his eyes.
She was the first person to notice even the slightest clue.
The shinobi world’s research into chakra had perhaps already reached an extraordinarily fine level.
The so-called “stitching” was merely the outward appearance.
The actual process was that Isamu used his Modification talent to alter the foreign cells, creating a cellular interface at the points of contact between the different tissues.
This interface greatly reduced the body’s rejection of the transplanted tissue.
Any flesh and blood that passed through this interface would undergo a certain degree of modification, minimizing the rejection response as much as possible.
Isamu’s unique power what this world recognized as chakra had been incorporated into all those cells.
With nothing more than a thought, he could cause that power to erupt and make Nawaki’s genes collapse completely.
Faced with a power that operated on a level even deeper than individual cells, not even Isamu himself would be able to save Nawaki once it was triggered.
Naturally, this was information he absolutely could not reveal.
If Tsunade or Konoha learned that he possessed control over Nawaki’s life and death, Isamu would cease to be “Nawaki’s benefactor” and become a dangerous individual attempting to hold Konoha’s heir hostage and use him to control the shinobi world.
Konoha had already interrogated its benefactor before doing anything else.
If his status changed like that
What awaited him certainly wouldn’t be pleasant.
Of course, thanks to his Reincarnation Coffin (Edo Tensei) talent , Isamu wasn’t actually afraid of Konoha.
But who would willingly die once for no reason?