Bab 71: Chapter 86
Haru dismissed his black, tainted rasengan. Surrounded by the writhing pieces of Kaguya and still shrouded in dark, demonic chakra, Haru adjusted the tattered remains of his coat, tugging them straight before pointing at Tsunade Senju and shouting, "By order of the Third Hokage of Konoha, Senju Tsunade is hereby decreed to become the Fifth Hokage of Konoha!"
"See what I mean? Always surprising," offered Kakashi to the slackjawed Senju woman.
After a moment to regain her wits, Tsunade scoffed at the idea. "What? Why me? Why should I have to take a thankless job like that?"
The energy coating Haru's body began to shrink and dissipate rapidly. He fell to a knee but kept his mismatched eyes locked onto Tsunade's eyes. "Because Sarutobi is probably already dead and you can't let Orochimaru or Danzo steal the village for themselves. You can't… Please…"
Exhausted, Haru keeled over and lost consciousness. The music genjutsu faded away.
Tsunade sighed before barking at Shizune, "Bring him to me."
"What the hell have you been doing to this kid? His chakra core is dangerously unstable. It's a wonder he's alive, much less tossing around S-rank ninjutsu," Tsunade berated as she examined the young teen with her glowing palms. The group had relocated to Tsunade's lodgings for the sake of privacy, realizing that several blocks of the city had been razed to the ground and Team Seven wasn't in any shape to run from the authorities.
Kakashi shoved his hands into his pockets and glanced at the boy on the bed. "It's not my fault. He did it to himself. He started experimenting with chakra years before anyone thought he'd be anything more than another orphan." With a long face, he added, "By the time we got him a tutor, the damage had been done. And since then, I recently discovered he's had a constant genjutsu on himself 24/7 and he's been wearing weighted seals for years."
Tsunade commented, "That explains why he's so short, I suppose." Stunted skeletal growth was the main reason why worn training weights weren't used until adolescent ninja were at least genin rank. Even then, constant exertion of chakra had to be balanced by periods of rest in order to not overstress the tenketsu.
The negligent godfather guiltily considered that the hands-off approach perhaps wasn't among his best decisions regarding Haru. "Is he going to be okay?"
The legendary medic responded, "Ordinarily it'd be fine. But considering that he went ahead and crammed a bijuu in the mix, I'd say he's probably going to die."
"Probably?"
"I say 'probably' because I don't know how he managed to seal a demon into himself and survive in the first place. You tell me whether you can make heads or tails of this nonsense seal," Tsunade said as she pointed to the markings on the boy's stomach. Instead of the eight trigrams inked in Japanese characters that Naruto sported, Haru's seal was instead written in English. "I can't even see the sublayers of the seal because it's been burned into the scar tissue on his torso. This method of sealing is actually rather interesting. Using one's own living tissue for the seal would make it extremely resistant to foreign chakra…"
While Tsunade mused over the benefits and drawbacks of charring a seal onto one's body, Kakashi peered at the boy's stomach while rubbing his chin. "I've seen this writing before. It's his personal code language." Disquiet filled Kakashi's mind as he began to wonder whether this was the reason why Haru had befriended Naruto as a child, so as to steal the Uzumakis' sealing techniques.
"Excuse me, Hatake-san, would you mind explaining your role in all of this?" asked Shizune. "If you're his squad leader, why didn't you just deliver the message yourself?"
Kakashi tapped his chin and looked upward. "Ah, well, I just happened to be in town and was thinking I would stop by the pet store when I saw the kiddo and said 'Hi.' but it turned into an argument about whether cats or dogs were better. Being older, I decided to let my student get the last word in," he explained with a shrug.
The red-headed examinee grinned and spoke, "You mean we kicked your butt." The trio of older ninja simultaneously turned their heads to the source of the voice, which sound gravelly and awkward, as if the speaker hadn't much practice speaking aloud in a long time.
Kakashi's eye narrowed. "What do you mean by 'we'?"
A single brown eye cracked open to meet Kakashi's gaze. "Oh, yeah. We haven't met yet. Name's Isobu. Nice to meet ya. I'm Haru-chan's partner."
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone