Chapter 285: Kakashi's Visit
"Double Ninth Festival has apparently passed without the Chat Group marking it. Either the system doesn't consider it a group holiday, or — well, the Double Ninth is about honoring ancestors and respecting elders. That probably doesn't translate well to a group where the oldest members are in the tens of thousands of years old."
The Chat Group's age demographics were genuinely staggering on reflection. Yukari at minimum several thousand years old. Dragon Tohru at tens of thousands. The Shiba Inu Thor at similar scale. Wandering Earth at billions. Master Roshi at over three hundred. Kizaru approaching sixty. Sengoku and Whitebeard both past seventy.
Senior members made up roughly a third of the total roster.
The prospect of showing deference to a certain shameless gap youkai on the basis of her age was not something he was willing to entertain. Choosing not to press her face into a keyboard was already a mark of considerable self-restraint on his part.
Though if he was being honest, pressing Yukari's face into anything still wasn't quite within reach. He was aware of the gap. He also had a sense of how fast it was closing.
He put the thought aside and looked out the window.
"I wonder if Christmas will trigger a group event. If not, maybe New Year's? Or the Lunar New Year, Spring Festival?"
These were genuine knowledge gaps in his understanding of how the system operated. But group events came when they came, and the one resource nobody in the Chat Group was short on was time.
No point overthinking it.
It was around eight in the morning, several days since he'd acquired Kamehameha and Thunderclap Fist at the Beginner tier. He hadn't been spending those days in salted-fish mode — every morning he'd been out training, working on actual Ki cultivation, and today was the same.
The "container" that was his body was enormous by any standard, but the Ki inside it had been nearly empty a week ago. A few days of focused training had brought it to roughly half full.
A few more days at this rate and it would be at capacity. The reserves at full capacity could sustain continuous all-out combat for over a week — and that was on top of his already extreme physical endurance. Learning Dragon Ball Ki hadn't added two or three percent. It had been a significant jump.
His training method was straightforward: push the body's physical limits, the same approach used in the Dragon Ball world itself. Physical stress caused the body's Ki to stir and accumulate, while simultaneously expanding the container's capacity. The catch was location — training at this level inside Konoha would register as an earthquake. The Arena in the Chat Group was the right venue: opponents who could keep up, and an environment where casualties meant revival costs rather than actual consequences.
He'd been about to step into the Arena when Observation Haki caught something.
He looked through the window.
Kakashi, approaching along the street below, carrying a small box.
Kakashi's emotional state was, if the Haki read was accurate, complicated. Ryū had put Obito in the hospital — but Ryū had also been the one to return Obito to Kakashi's life. Without that encounter, Kakashi might never have known his teammate had survived.
Obito had apparently been thoroughly manipulated, but the situation seemed retrievable. Kakashi had apparently decided not to return the Sharingan until the brainwashing was fully undone.
Today's visit was a thank-you call. Kakashi had bought something, put real effort into selecting it, and was now standing in front of Ryū's door working up to knocking.
The door opened before he got there.
Kakashi stared at the figure in the doorway.
Ryū wasn't projecting any particular aura. He wasn't releasing any pressure. And yet Kakashi found, without fully understanding why, that cold sweat was forming at his hairline. Some biological instinct that bypassed conscious thought.
He caught himself. When did I become this easily rattled?
Or alternatively: Has his strength progressed again?
Surely not. He was already beyond anything that should be possible for a person his age.
And yet the cold sweat didn't go away.
He didn't know — couldn't know — that Ryū's full-power Kamehameha could reduce the planet they were standing on to fragments.
Kakashi steadied himself and kept his voice level.
"Ryū-kun. Thank you for bringing Obito back." He held out the box. "I've spent the past few days piecing together what happened to him. Without you, he might still be on the path to destroying the village. This is something Guy and I selected carefully — I hope you'll accept it. Guy is at the hospital watching Obito right now, so he couldn't come in person."
A gift. From Kakashi.
Ryū had a brief internal moment of wondering whether he was the first person Kakashi had ever voluntarily given a gift to. The whole thing had a slightly awkward quality that didn't entirely not suggest something.
He set the thought aside. The man had come to return a favor and had clearly made a genuine effort. Refusing would be strange.
He took the box and nodded.
"It wasn't much. He should count himself fortunate he didn't push things any further than he did. If he had, you wouldn't have found him in a hospital. You would have found something considerably more final."
Kakashi nodded back, without hesitation. He understood that Ryū was not being dramatic or hypothetical.
If Obito had done one more thing wrong that day, Kakashi wouldn't have had a teammate to bring home.
He would have had a body.
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