Chapter 38: A meeting with the Hokage!
{Hokage's Office, Administrative building, Konohagakure}
{12:07 PM, 29th Jan 13 Yrs ANB}
{3rd Person POV}
Hiruzen was working on reducing the stack of paperwork on his desk, one by one he had to stamp no to a lot of useless proposals that were stacked on his deck.
'...what's the point of investing in this new handheld screen anyway, what the fuck are those idiots in the R&D department thinking.'
He held in his hand a proposal for creating a simulation device that the academy students could use to do mock combat with each other using jutsus without coming in harm's way.
'... ever since Minato and Kushina died the upper limit of fuinjutsu in the village is decreasing, maybe I need to enforce the class more heavily in the upcoming years...'
As Hiruzen stamped no to another ridiculous proposal he was interrupted by a knock on the door, "Come in."
His secretary Osada peaked into the room and bowed slightly before she explained, "Hokage-sama, Hayate-san is here to meet you."
'Hayate?' Hiruzen was confused a little but he nodded to Osada. The door closed for another couple of seconds before Team 21 walked into the room.
"Hayate-kun what can I do for you," seeing that Ren was also with him Hiruzen relaxed in his chair and pushed the stack of documents aside.
"Hokage-sama," Hayate bowed and Hiruzen noticed that Ren followed Hayate's movements, although his bow wasn't as deep as Hayate's.
'Hmm, tough child...'
"Ren here noticed a peculiar ability he has and I decided that it was best to report it as soon as possible," Hayate replied and stepped aside allowing Ren to step up.
'A bloodline, no that doesn't make sense, while Ren's parentage isn't known his looks don't fit into any peculiar stereotype.' Hiruzen pressed a seal in his desk and the 4 ANBU that were in the room flickered away and a level 1 privacy seal appeared on the walls, he then nodded to Ren to continue the explanation that Hayate left off.
"I can feel a pocket... it's a bit weird, I feel like I have access to a pocket of space like a storage scroll that I can access without any seals and signs..." Ren hesitated and replied, Hiruzen looked through Ren's body language and easily concluded that the boy wasn't lying, at least not everything was entirely bullshit.
"Can you show it to me, Ren-kun?" Hiruzen smiled at the young genin who nodded and pulled out a kunai from his pouch. He extended his hand to show the solid kunai and then pulled his sleeves back before holding the kunai up in front of him. His hand followed the standard movement of putting the kunai on a table and the kunai vanished into thin air.
'There was no fluctuation of chakra, no ripples in space either, the kunai existed one second and it didn't the next.'
"Don't explain, give me a moment..." Hiruzen spoke as he placed his hand on the seal once again and deactivated the privacy seal. His protection squad appeared back into the ceiling but Hiruzen waved them away and spoke, "Tora get Shikaku here now, tell him it's an emergency, and the rest of you are dismissed until further notice."
The four ANBU flickered away as Hiruzen activated the privacy seal once again, he then stood up and walked toward Ren and Hayate and asked, "When did you first learn about this ability?"
'Why now, he didn't show any special signs ever before.' Hiruzen thought as his mind began wondering about possible scenarios that could have caused something like this to happen.
"Last year the day after the graduation exams, I felt like something was very wrong at first and I was hallucinating but after a couple of days I got the hang of it," Ren replied, he was a little nervous now that he was seeing Hokage-sama up close, the wrinkles on his face were more prominent now and along with his frown and the pressure he excluded it was a little terrifying.
Hiruzen noticed that his presence was putting pressure on the kid so he decided to take advantage of the situation and asked a couple of questions, "Why didn't you tell anyone about it, your teachers at the academy?"
Ren froze for a second and he stiffly replied, "Because I'm an orphan... I'm used to being alone with my thoughts. I thought it was just a power I could use to somehow surprise my opponents and gain easy victories so the best way to use it would be by hiding it so that no one else knows about it." Ren replied honestly, till about a couple of weeks ago this was his plan, this way was more sophisticated than summoning weapons through a storage seal because that requires chakra to do so and can be sensed and avoided.
"But why did you decide to reveal it today?" Hiruzen asked as he thought, '...although the fact that he revealed it by himself this early is a positive sign, it means Ren is beginning to trust Hayate with his secrets. This is one of the most difficult things that a sensei had to deal with when the student is an orphan who is not used to trusting anyone, especially not the adults who normally discriminate against them.'
"Well because Hayate sensei is helping me get stronger, from my taijutsu to kenjutsu he is helping revamp everything so I thought that he would better be able to-" Ren was interrupted as there were two swift knocks on the door, Hiruzen moved around back to his seat and released the privacy seal.
The door opened and Tora once again entered the room with Nara Shikaku in tow. Hiruzen indicated to them to close the door and then he went through 12 hand seals before activating a level 3 privacy seal on his office.
Ren's head snapped as he saw kanji flowing from the Hokage's desk to the walls and after they linked together they glowed one time before seeping deep into the walls. Shikaku looked at the seal activating and his slouch and lazy expression vanished as he asked, "What happened Hokage sama?"
"Ren-kun here awaked an interesting ability, I want both of you to know about it just in case," Hiruzen replied as he threw a scroll towards Ren who caught it. Understanding Hokage-sama's request Ren placed the scroll into his inventory getting several more wide eyes, then he pulled the scroll out and then threw it back to Hokage-sama.
As Hiruzen opened the scroll to read Shikaku's attention was focused on Ren, he had several questions in mind but his being here only meant one thing so he started asking questions.
"How many things have you stored in that storage of yours," Shikaku asked, his brain trying to grasp at the limits of Ren's ability.
"9 things," Ren replied, his inventory can store up to 100 individual items that can be stacked on each other, and each stack had a variable number limit that mostly depends on the size of the object.
"How did you accurately pull the scroll out, were you focusing on it when you placed it, is it some form of mark that you place with your chakra?" Shikaku asked, he hadn't noticed any chakra fluctuation and while it was the most important question he wanted to ask, straight away applying a seal that would lock the boy's chakra would just make him lose credibility.
"No, it's like I have access to a shelf that I can't see but feel. I can feel each individual block on the shelf, which one is occupied and which one isn't," Ren tried his best to explain the inventory without actually saying that he could see the floating grid anytime anywhere he wants.
"How many of these spaces can you feel?" Shikaku asked curiously, this ability was interesting, and if Ren really didn't need any chakra to access his storage space then this ability has so many uses that many of the delivery missions would become a cakewalk.
"50 individual spaces like a storage scroll, I can stack up on similar stuff in one space like a lot of kunai but I don't know the limit." Ren shrugged as he relied, now that Hokage sama was not putting pressure on him by just existing, he was getting a little more relaxed.
"Tora, how many kunai do you have?" Hiruzen asked, the ANBU immediately pulled out a storage scroll and sealed a heap of kunai onto the floor.
"Ren-kun why don't you give it a try, try to store all these kunai in only a single space," Shikaku replied, he sighed as he looked at Ren who one by one started chucking kunai into thin air where they seemingly vanished without any hint or explanation.
'Remarkable, I can't sense any hint of chakra, even if Ren uses chakra to use his ability even then no one would be able to detect anything. What if he could carry a squad of 50 Jonin deep into enemy territory and then let them out one by one... no no no, that's too risky if Ren dies we would probably also lose 50 Jonin.'
Plans and strategies regarding Ren's ability were formed and discarded by Shikaku one by one, just the fact that he could carry almost a garrison's worth of food supply marked Ren as a strategic resource on par with a mobile deployable troop of 50 Jonins.
'If during a war Ren could act as a supply carrier then a lot of our units will be free from maintaining the supply routes, and there will be at least 13% more shinobi that could support each other in the frontlines meaning at least the rate of casualty will decrease by at least 15-20%, maybe more...'
"100," Tora spoke, even though everyone was counting the number of kunai. Ren stopped and nodded toward Tora, "Do you have to summon them one by one?" Shikaku asked, Ren shook his hand and then put his hands on an imaginary shelf and 100 kunai appeared out of thin air and dropped to the ground.
'He could carry 5,000 kunai at a time, but what about if we store these kunai in storage scrolls and he would then try to store them in his inventory.'
"Tora-san, how many scrolls full of kunai do you have," Shikaku asked, Hiruzen paused for a brief moment before he understood what Shikaku wanted to test.
"I have 3 more," Tora replied as he pulled out 3 of the similar-looking scrolls, "Each scroll has 250 kunai" Tora replied, Shikaku took those scrolls from his hands and then presented 2 of them to Ren.
"Ren-san, try and store them in the same space," Shikaku instructed, Ren nodded and he put both of the storage scrolls into the same space. Shikaku on the other hand unsealed the other storage scroll and after taking one kunai away he resealed all the kunai into the storage scroll.
'So he was able to stack storage scrolls full of kunai, that's convenient at the very least we could stack 25,000 kunai in one space, and then Ren could potentially transport 1.25 million kunai at a time...' Shikaku thought, the number boggled him but he still needed to do these calculations now that there was time.
"Here try to stack this one into the same space as well," Shikaku spoke before he stepped forward and took the scroll that Tora had unsealed during the first playtest. He took a bunch of kunai and then took a couple of his own shuriken before sealing them into the same scroll.
"It works, it went into the same slot," Ren replied.
'Space.. slot, why did he change the way he addresses his ability.' Shikaku thought before he threw the scroll that he prepared to Ren, "Try this one."
Ren pushed the scroll into thin air and it vanished but this time a frown appeared on his face, he pulled the scroll out and tried one more time but the same thing happened again.
"That doesn't work," he spoke and Shikaku extended his hand to take the scroll, he removed the shurikens from the scroll and then made Ren try again.
"This time it worked..."
'So his ability can differentiate between things inside the storage scrolls too, only scrolls with kunai stored in them could be stacked...'
Shikaku turned to Hiruzen and asked, "Hokage-sama, permission to draw from the armory."
Hiruzen nodded and he turned to Tora and asked, "Go to the ANBU HQ and fetch all the storage scrolls with kunai and shuriken in them... also tell Dragon to get here immediately..."
Ren watched as the ANBU with a tiger mask vanished with a flicker, the seals in the room flashed for a moment before the room got enveloped in an eerie calmness. Ren gulped as he looked towards Hayate sensei who nodded at him.
Ren didn't understand what that nod meant, but at this moment he realized that maybe all of this wasn't as simple as he thought...
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AN - I took a short break it was fun, now back to writing!...
P.S- 11 extra chapters on Pàtreon at - P.atreon.com/Version_401
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