RiaN Chapter 25 (Patreon)

Naruto’s Point of View

I couldn’t help but frown as I tried to use my father’s flying thunder god technique, but just couldn’t pull it off. It felt like a piece was missing. The rasengan I learned when I was twelve was trivially easy, for it being one of the most powerful jutsu on the planet, the thought behind it was extremely simplistic. The flying thunder god took an incredible amount of chakra and a high affinity with time/space ninjutsu. I had both, it should work, so why wasn’t it?

The rasengan wasn’t a very common jutsu, although it had an easy enough learning method, it still required a high amount of chakra. It was very similar to my other bread and butter technique, shadow clone jutsu. Most people could only do a single shadow clone until they were older, otherwise, they’d need to learn a special version that would heavily shorten the length the clones existed. I didn’t have those problems.

I could summon over a hundred clones, maxing out at four hundred and fifty-seven the last time I limit tested it. It was another large chakra cost technique that most people couldn’t use to even a remote amount, like me. I had taken a quality over quantity stance for learning new jutsu. I could use many, but I really only had the two signature moves, with me attempting to add a third to my repertoire, but I was having problems figuring it out.

I decided that learning my father's version was impossible for me. I just wish I could force it, for it to just work if I used more chakra, but that wasn’t the case. I couldn’t brute force a technique that will kill me if done incorrectly. That’s why I was struggling so hard to learn it. I had practiced fuinjutsu, even though I disliked it, because the technique dealt with learning behind a mark on the item you wanted to teleport to.

I looked at the old recipes, trying Tobirama’s didn’t work either. It wasn’t until I tried a completely separate jutsu made by Orochi did I finally reach a breakthrough. Orochimaru created a ninjutsu to swap places with his specialized puppet clones. Finally, after months of work, I created my own version of the flying thunder god that worked with my own clones. Now I just had to refine it, eventually I’d like to incorporate the kunai to teleport to. But I was just glad to add another one of my father’s famous jutsu to my repertoire. 

…

I just turned fifteen. The large families meant that most birthdays weren’t that big of a deal. Certain birthdays, like five, ten, and fifteen, or single-child families, were the exception, and most were large-scale with many people showing up for them, especially if the person was from an important family. As the future clan head of a newly formed clan, my birthday was far more extravagant than most, very similar to Naruto’s now that I thought about it.

This would be the last over-the-top birthday I had as families showed up and tried to create a betrothal contract with me. Although marriage couldn’t happen until sixteen, many families forgo that rule, starting their families as young as thirteen. I was in a different world than the one I came from, so it was hard for me to judge them for it, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around all this political talk.

I wanted to marry for love, and at this point, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Sure, my first wife, Kushina, might be for love, but the way the world worked, they’d expect me to take more wives until I couldn’t handle anymore. She had made it a goal to strive for, and a difficult one at that. She must not have thought I’d put in twelve-hour days going through the fuinjutsu books to the point I had already read and mastered them a year earlier than the deadline.

I… Wanted to make her happy. You could argue that Minato signed himself up for that difficult life, but Kushina was born into it. She was an outcast when she moved into the village, bullied for it, became the jinchuriki, which made people hate her more for no reason, all for her to die the same day her son is born. I was just happy she was alive for me to have the chance, because I wasn’t going to revive her from the dead just for a chance to sleep with her.

Naruto didn’t even realize his dream of having a big family led to me capturing his mom. I don’t think he’d mind that much, especially since he already knew I had a crush on her. I blew out my candles as the large crowd all cheered. We mingled as the gift portion was pushed to the end. This was equivalent to the bribery portion of my birthday.

There were still Talia, Karen, and Hinata. I could see myself falling in love with Talia; she had that wild side to her, but every time she acted shy, I couldn't help but feel something stir in my heart. I disliked that they did nothing with Karen in Boruto; a bunch of characters were taken in stupid directions, but it really felt like they moved her out of the village because healing blood, adamantine chains, and kagura mind’s eye were just too OP. That was why I would also take Hinata as my wife. I needed to guarantee that Boruto would never be born; having sex with a happier, more emotionally stable Hinata was just icing on the cake.

People would try to give me gifts so big that I either had to refuse them or sign a betrothal contract to get the present. Almost no one offered me something good enough to agree; it was up to my choice, and they thought money or ninja scrolls would be enough to sway me. Most people would be going home without giving me anything, mad at the situation, even though it was the fault of the rules they had in place for these betrothals.

I accepted the gifts from Talia, Karen, and Hinata to lock them in for the future. There were only three other families that offered me something that had me think of whether or not I should accept before finally accepting. The Might family offered me a set of training equipment, the seals were something I could create, but because I could create them, I knew how expensive they were.

The Uchiha offered a contract for a pair of their eyes if I ever lost mine, an insanely expensive chakra blade, and a scroll containing all their known jutsu, only exempting their signature family jutsu from the list. The deal was once again agreed to just because of the price of the items. I could sell each for enough money to not have to worry about it for the foreseeable future.

The final contract I accepted was from Shiho, who was an orphaned civilian ninja. I had many contracts where the person effectively offered their daughters as slaves for me. I outright refused those, even if they offered items that I needed. It was different for Shiho. She was the smartest person in our class, and it showed in what she offered. She offered a standard marriage contract, her knowledge and expertise, help raising all of the children I bore, not just hers, and her own personally created jutsu.