Naruto: Starting by Reading Minds in Naruto

A tremor rolled through the ground, faint enough that most people would have missed it entirely.

Tonbo didn’t. He set the memory he’d been reading aside and let his senses fan out, chakra sharpening every signal within three kilometers, narrowing in on wherever that shudder had come from.

Southeast of the village. Past his own range, technically, but months of cross-referencing geography, air density, and plain arithmetic against every tremor he’d ever felt let him place it close enough to matter.

Whatever had caused it carried the weight of jōnin-level ninjutsu behind it — enough, under ordinary circumstances, that he’d have guessed a Tailed Beast or some giant Summoning clashing with something equally large, the kind of collision that flattened whole clearings and left craters people still talked about years later. But the timing and direction suggested a different answer, recovered from foreknowledge that felt fragmented and never wholly his: Might Duy, burning through the Red Steam to buy his son and the others room to run.

Live on behind me, with passion, youth, and a smile.

The words came back to him in pieces, not whole, but close enough. He remembered crying the first time he’d first received that memory, somewhere he could no longer place exactly.

”Assemble.”

The order cut through his thoughts before he could follow them further. He fell in with the rest of the Analysis Team as they filed toward the hall.

”Emergency mission — proceed to the main gate and follow the ANBU the Hokage’s dispatching. Assist with reconnaissance. Tobitake Tonbo, Dokuraku Meguri—” Inoichi read the names off before the room had even finished filling.

”Move as soon as your name’s called.”

”Yes, sir.”

They vanished in a scatter of motion. Behind them, Inoichi let out a breath he probably hadn’t meant anyone to hear. ”Let’s hope this isn’t the war finding a second wind.”

Tonbo kept his face steady as he crossed the rooftops toward the gate, Body Flicker eating the distance between buildings, the village blurring past beneath him in a wash of tile and lantern light. He hoped for the same thing Inoichi did, though he could no longer promise anyone that hoping would be enough. His own presence had already altered events further from what he remembered than he liked to admit; from here on, memory was a reference at best, not a map, and he’d have to make his own way through the parts it no longer covered.

”Once we link up with the ANBU, they lead. Understood?” Meguri said to the rest, Captain in fact now as well as in name.

”Yes.”

They reached the gate soon after. Two ANBU squads were already waiting, animal masks blank in the dark, standing so still they might have been carved there rather than posted, and they read Meguri’s signal the instant he gave it. Their own captain — yellow-haired, unnamed behind his mask — answered with one of his own.

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”Move out.”

No hesitation between the signal and the order. Efficient, Tonbo thought, more than a little admiring. Signal work paid off exactly like this, which was why the Village bothered training whole classes in it, and why he’d made sure to keep current with every revision himself. That handful of gestures alone had confirmed headcounts and identities both, with the rest left for the run.

They cut through the trees at speed. ”What are the Hokage’s orders?” Meguri asked.

”A large-scale clash near the village. Possibly another village testing whether we’re weak enough yet to hit from behind,” the ANBU captain said. ”Sense for anything hostile. That’s your job here.”

”Understood.”

The Analysis Team spread their senses wide, hunting for whatever might be closing in on the village’s flank. A few minutes in, Tonbo caught three chakra signatures — genin-level by volume, though that alone proved nothing.

None of his colleagues had caught them yet. Not every sensor in the unit carried the same range he did.

”Eleven o’clock, roughly three kilometers. Three signatures, genin-level chakra — though disguise isn’t ruled out.” He said it plainly, without dressing it down. A sensor’s worth to Konoha was in being used, not hidden; no one in this Village would hold that gift against him.

The others looked over, faintly startled at the distance he’d pulled that reading from.

”Set a trap a ri out. Everyone else, positions for an ambush. Keep sensing.” The ANBU captain was already moving.

”Yes.”

Tonbo guessed, before anyone confirmed it, that the three signatures belonged to Might Guy, Ebisu, and Shiranui Genma. He readied himself for a fight regardless.

Moments later the rest of the group picked up the same three signals, and somewhere ahead of them, a boy’s voice broke through the dark.

”Dad.”

Three small shapes were running hard through the trees, clothes torn and mud-streaked, ragged and out of breath, one of them — a boy in a green jumpsuit — crying openly, snot and tears both. Ebisu and Genma looked barely steadier, the three of them having just walked away from seven opponents that should have killed them outright, and by the look of them still hadn’t quite convinced themselves they actually had. Only Might Duy’s arrival, and whatever he’d done to seven jōnin-caliber enemies alone, had bought them the room to run at all.

They slowed against a tree once their legs gave out.

”Dad,” Guy said again, wiping at his face, though the tears kept coming regardless.

”It’s okay, Guy. Your uncle’s strong — he’ll handle them.” Genma tried.

”Right, right, he’ll definitely handle them,” Ebisu added.

That only made Guy cry harder. ”You don’t get it. Dad said that technique’s only for when the people you care about most are in danger. And after he uses it—” His voice broke off there.

Ebisu and Genma traded a look. Whatever Duy had unleashed to hold off seven jōnin by himself, it wasn’t the kind of thing that came free, and they’d both understood that much without needing it spelled out.

”He also told you not to waste your youth crying,” Ebisu said, because it was the only thing he had. ”We get stronger instead. So nobody we care about gets hurt again.”

”...Right. I won’t cry. I’ll get stronger. I’ll carry Dad’s way forward and protect everyone.”

Something in Ebisu’s words seemed to land where nothing else had. Guy scrubbed his face one more time, and this time the tears actually stopped.

”Never waste my youth. Get stronger. Protect the people who matter.” He said it like a vow, and something in his eyes had already hardened into one.

”Yo — that Might Guy? What’s got you crying?”

They’d only just turned back toward the village, the report on the Seven Swordsmen still theirs to deliver, when the voice dropped down from above. A figure stood on the branch overhead, bandages wound over most of his face, ANBU shapes visible in the trees around him.

”Tobitake Tonbo?”