An afternoon of running left Chiba feeling thoroughly alive again.
More than that—he had a vague sense his energy reserves had actually grown stronger than before.
Definitely not just the aftereffect of running his chakra dry the day before.
The bodhi seed.
Excellent.
Chiba felt a quiet swell of satisfaction.
A little further down the road, though, he glanced up and stopped short.
Three heads were poking out over the Academy’s outer wall.
Chiba looked up just in time to meet their eyes.
Naruto, Shikamaru, and Chōji.
Shikamaru raised a finger to his lips, signaling for quiet.
Chiba nodded.
The three of them let out a breath and carefully climbed down over the wall.
“Skipping class?”
“Well, obviously.
Aren’t you skipping too?”
Naruto looked Chiba up and down.
“I thought everyone at the Academy had gotten serious about studying lately?”
Chiba asked, genuinely puzzled.
“Ah, yeah, about that—tried it for a while, way too exhausting.
And graduating early sounded like more trouble than it’s worth anyway.
Figured sticking around a bit longer wasn’t so bad after all.”
Shikamaru mumbled around a blade of grass in his mouth, sounding thoroughly unbothered.
Something about Chiba’s bearing and the way he talked had already tipped him off to who this was.
Chōji said nothing, too busy eating.
“Heh heh, come on, let’s go find something fun to do.”
Naruto grinned.
Chiba smiled brightly back.
“At your age, skipping schoolwork—how do you even enjoy yourself with that hanging over you?”
“Huh?
Who even are you?”
Naruto eyed him, baffled.
They were all playing hooky here—why did this guy act like he was above it, lecturing them the second he opened his mouth?
“Me?
Just a concerned citizen who can’t stand watching you kids go astray.”
As he spoke, several threads of chakra shot out.
Chiba caught all three of them at once, reeling them back up onto the wall.
Naruto spun around to glare at him, furious—but then—
Snap.
A finger click, and all three of them dropped straight off the wall.
Naruto tried to climb back over for revenge, but Shikamaru held him down.
Chōji had thought about joining in too, but seeing Shikamaru make no move to leave, he gave up on the idea as well.
He’d never once come out ahead sticking with Shikamaru, not since they were little.
“We’re outmatched.
Let’s just get back inside—the hall monitor definitely heard that.”
“Damn it!
Don’t let me run into that guy on Academy grounds!”
Naruto fumed.
“Even if you did, you couldn’t beat him.”
Shikamaru hunched his shoulders and headed back toward the classroom, grumbling as he went.
“His chakra threads are solid.
None of the three of us could break free just now.
Unless I’m wrong, that has to be Yanagyū Chiba—the one who graduated early.”
“Oh, him.”
Chōji thought about it briefly, then went back to eating.
Yeah.
No way they were beating that.
“What about Yanagyū Chiba?
I’m going to go teach him a lesson.”
Naruto leapt back over the wall, furious.
Shikamaru buried his face in his hand, exasperated.
Chōji blinked, glancing over as if asking whether they should stop him.
“Leave him.
Let’s move.”
Shikamaru said, picking up his pace.
Not long after, sneaking his way back toward the classroom, he caught sight of Naruto at the Academy gate, walking straight into the lion’s den.
Pathetic.
Told him not to bother.
Wouldn’t listen.
Chiba was sitting near the gate, chatting amiably with a few of the instructors.
“Well now, I hear you led an operation at the hospital?”
“That’s an exaggeration.
I was just helping out.
I couldn’t actually run a surgery.”
Chiba shook his head modestly.
“Ha, I bet you could.
From what I hear, even Sunagakure shinobi don’t handle chakra threads as well as you do.
Work out puppetry next and really give Sunagakure something to worry about!”
Puppetry?
The real difficulty lay in engineering the puppets themselves, not in the threads or the manipulation technique.
That kind of craft took decades of accumulated experience and experimentation—unless Konoha somehow got its hands on Sunagakure’s actual methods, there was nothing to “improve” on here.
Trying to build it from scratch would be all effort, no reward.
Of course, the instructor was just making conversation, mostly out of genuine admiration for Chiba’s ability and talent.
They didn’t have much to talk about day to day, so any topic would do.
Chiba chatted a while longer, then left the Academy grounds, leaving Naruto behind, stuck standing in punishment, looking thoroughly windswept and confused.
“Chiba, Lord Kanpō wants to see you when you have a moment.”
“Understood.”
Chiba nodded and turned toward Kanpō’s office.
He knocked lightly.
“Come in.”
He opened the door and froze for a beat.
Along with Kanpō sat an elderly woman with a kindly enough look about her—except something about her getup felt distinctly off.
Wait—
Old Lady Utatane!
His pulse jumped, though his face gave nothing away.
He bowed politely to both of them.
“Chiba, come sit.
This is the village’s senior advisor, and also a highly accomplished medical-nin in her own right.”
Kanpō made the introduction quickly.
Koharu Utatane smiled faintly.
“Hardly.
I haven’t practiced treatment in years—most of my skill’s long gone rusty by now.
I can offer a bit of blind guidance, nothing more worth taking seriously.”
Guarded when it comes to actual technical claims.
Makes sense—that kind of skill’s easy enough to catch out if you’re bluffing, Chiba noted privately.
“You’re being modest.”
“Now then, let’s get to business.
We called you here, boy, to ask whether you’d have any interest in becoming a specially appointed shinobi at the hospital.”
Koharu said with a smile.
“A specially appointed shinobi?”
Chiba blinked, caught off guard.
“That’s right.
You can’t perform medical ninjutsu, true, but I observed you yesterday—your chakra control is extraordinary.
With the right training, you’d be an exceptional hand with a blade, and plenty of operations could use exactly that kind of specialist alongside them.”
Kanpō explained.
He’d thought of Chiba as a mildly talented student before yesterday.
Now he understood he’d badly underestimated the boy’s insight and ability.
Given talent and comprehension like his, it wouldn’t take long before he could execute every surgical procedure involving the chakra scalpel and chakra needle with flawless precision—to the point where plenty of veterans might not measure up to him.
“I don’t think that’s necessary.
I’m still a student.
I’ve still got books from Sensei Kitayama I haven’t finished.”
Chiba said.
“It won’t interfere with that.
Besides, Kitayama’s, well—she’s had a lot on her plate lately, and might not have as much time to look after you as before.
A specially appointed post would let you get properly involved across the board.”
Kanpō phrased it delicately, alluding to how hard the whole affair had hit Kitayama Sho’s confidence, and how she intended to spend some time sharpening her own skills as a result.
Chiba wasn’t naive.
The chakra needle had already proven its worth in practice—which meant some number of medical-nin would need to actually learn it going forward.
He couldn’t keep getting pulled in for every operation that needed it.
He was still just a kid.
Even if Chiba was willing to keep showing up, it would be humiliating for the actual medical-nin involved.
He thought it over, then said, “If it’s about the chakra needle specifically—I worked on it a bit during my rest yesterday.
Adding fifteen more seals should make the technique more stable and easier to execute.
Better suited for medical use.”
“Truly?”
Kanpō’s breathing quickened.
Koharu wasn’t entirely composed either.
Everyone else who developed a new technique measured the process in years.
This kid had needed all of a few days to refine the chakra needle into something more usable.
“Mm, like this—”
Chiba began forming the seals slowly.
His original version had used five seals.
The “simplified” version he’d worked out the night before used twenty—the idea had come to him, of all places, from the Water Dragon Bullet Technique.
The same technique required only four seals from the Second Hokage, while Kisame and his peers needed forty-four to pull off the same effect—which meant the number of seals used could shift a technique’s difficulty on its own, independent of the underlying jutsu itself.
So he’d gone home and experimented with the variations himself.