Boss Snowball looked at me with annoyance. "Do I really have to reverse summon you?"
I nodded, pointing at the decimated feast that had just cost me a fortune. "That was our deal. Do not try to get out of it after you already ate."
The bear growled before disappearing in a heavy puff of smoke.
I was back to my Flying Thunder God research, as my storm drive augmentation project was nearly complete. By mixing my newly acquired medical knowledge with my recent fuinjutsu enlightenment, I had overhauled the entire array. However, I needed to show tangible results to the Hokage soon regarding the Flying Thunder God technique. Otherwise, he might withhold my funding, completely jeopardizing my puppet and storm drive research, as both projects required massive capital to keep them going.
I took a deep breath, preparing to be reverse-summoned by Boss Snowball. Yet, nothing happened. I looked around in confusion, but the room remained perfectly still. I facepalmed, hoping the giant bear had not simply forgotten me the moment he returned to his realm. Minutes dragged on, steadily increasing my frustration. Just as I finally gave up and was about to take a bite of a delicious-looking sandwich, I felt it.
A distinct connection sparked in my mind. The summoning jutsu established my coordinates, utilizing the technique itself to pinpoint my exact location across the spatial divide. Then, the link flared with a massive surge of power, firmly defining the anchor point I was meant to be pulled toward.
Suddenly, I was yanked out of reality. The physical world morphed into a swirling cylinder of muted sound and blinding light as I was thrown forward at ridiculous speed. I could actually feel the mechanics of the jutsu working. The jutsu folded space, and the tether acted as a bridge that physically dragged me between the two spatial points that were now very close to each other, using its own chakra pathway as the guiding route. In that brief, disorienting moment of travel, my mind flooded with pure understanding.
I appeared in a thick puff of smoke right in front of the bear.
"What took you so long?" I asked absentmindedly, my thoughts already running at light speed to lock down this newfound understanding before it faded.
Boss Snowball responded with a heavy huff. "Reverse summoning you takes a lot of chakra from me. I had to check the perimeter and make sure no enemies were nearby so I would not be attacked while my reserves were slightly low."
I grunted in acknowledgment and dropped directly to the ground. I was clearly in the bear's cave, which smelled absolutely horrible, like rotting animals and fish left to fester for an eternity. I couldn't care less. Spreading a blank scroll across the cave's floor, I started writing. Using the base formulas Minato had recorded, I frantically translated the physical process I had just experienced into a functional seal formula that mimicked the function of the jutsu, specifically the spatial folding and the tether line itself. After a while, I started chuckling uncontrollably, realizing I had actually created a working first draft of my own Flying Thunder God seal.
The logic was beautifully complex. Defining my own location and that of my target required specific seals to lock our coordinates within the physical world. Once anchored, I simply needed to spend chakra to ignite that invisible tether, which would then automatically pull me directly to my destination. The sheer, terrifying genius of it all left me almost euphoric as the concept finally clicked into place.
Boss Snowball looked at me suspiciously. "Why do some meaningless scribbles make you so happy? You humans are weird."
I shrugged, ignoring his remark as I waved goodbye. As the bear stopped supporting the summoning jutsu with his chakra, letting it destabilize, the chakra anchoring me to the summon realm finally ran out, and I was returned directly to my house in a heavy puff of smoke.
Immediately, I grabbed a marker and started writing complicated spatial equations on my whiteboard. Now that I could recreate the space-folding and tether functions, the next step was pinpointing my exact location within a specific space, which required incredibly dense mathematics to map accurately. Then, I had to feed those coordinates directly into the FTG array. This was the true bottleneck of the jutsu: to make it work, a seal master must perceive and construct the formulas in perfect 3D space. Placing an anchor across three physical dimensions is something almost all traditionally trained seal masters and grandmasters are incapable of, as they are heavily conditioned to work with flat, two-dimensional ink on paper.
For hours, I wrote and erased equations until I finally reached a highly promising formula. To test the concept, I decided to mark an apple sitting on my desk as the teleportation target. I carefully translated both the fruit's location and my own coordinates into the FTG seal language.
After drawing the formula onto my hand and the apple, I was ready. It would have been more efficient to permanently etch the seal onto my skin with chakra, but that step would only come after I perfected the jutsu. I certainly did not want to painfully alter a permanent physical mark on my own body if this first draft contained a fatal mistake.
Taking a deep breath, I channeled chakra into the ink. It flared, instantly linking to the apple across the room. Both points were firmly defined in space. As I poured more power into the equation, I felt the invisible tether strengthen and lock. Then, the seal activated.
Suddenly, it felt like death was staring me right in the eyes. Pure instinct took over, and I violently tilted my head. Something completely erased the space beside me, singeing my hair and cleanly tearing off a tiny piece of my ear. A horrifyingly loud crack of displaced air followed as a hole exploded through my wall, taking my house's defensive barrier with it. A second later, the deafening sound of a massive tree shattering echoed in the distance, followed by a panicked gasp and the heavy thud of a trunk shaking the ground.
I flickered outside and found an ANBU operative on the ground, struggling to stand. I approached to help, but he frantically recoiled and scrambled backward.
"I am good!" he practically shouted.
A second ANBU flickered next to him, urgently asking, "What happened?"
Then, he looked at me and completely froze, recoiling with the exact same fear. I frowned, wondering what was up with these people. I must have looked like an absolute maniac, standing there with a bleeding ear, smoking hair, and a crazed look in my eyes.
Bowing stiffly, they announced, "We need to return to duty." Before I could even apologize, they vanished.
I shrugged, still not entirely sure why the elite ANBU were so terrified of me, and walked back inside to analyze my mistake. The tether had consumed a massive amount of chakra, which was understandable. However, the space-time energy had perfectly coated the target. Because my mass was significantly larger than the apple's, the jutsu took the path of least resistance. Instead of pulling me to it, the apple was violently flung toward me. Protected by that dense layer of chakra, the fruit had reached critical speeds. This extreme velocity generated a terrifying amount of kinetic energy, and the chakra coating prevented it from disintegrating upon impact. Effectively, the failed teleportation had weaponized the mass, turning a simple piece of fruit into an armor-piercing projectile capable of sheer structural devastation.
I needed to adjust the tether to account for mass. Still, that terrifying failure didn't prevent me from grinning with absolute pride. Technically, I had successfully used the jutsu!
Riding that high, I started reworking the seal formation. I modified the equations over a couple of days, conducting numerous, increasingly complex tests until I finally reached a finished formula. It defined my space perfectly and accounted for all the chaotic variables from my subsequent explosive experiments.
Stepping out of my workspace, I realized it was already nighttime, a fact I had not even noticed due to my deep focus. I looked directly toward the line of thick trees where a new squad of ANBU, with different chakra signatures than the ones before, were hiding and spoke clearly. "Please summon the Hokage and tell him I have an urgent update regarding my project."
The branches shifted, and I sensed a chakra signature speed off toward the Hokage building. Sighing, I stretched lazily, popping my stiff joints after sitting for far too long. My stomach rumbled aggressively, reminding me I was starving, so I headed to the kitchen to cook.
After some focused labor, I looked down at the meal I had put together, my mouth watering instantly. It was a thick, square sandwich, but instead of bread, the exterior was made of warm, sticky rice wrapped in a crisp sheet of dark, roasted seaweed. Inside, a thick cut of freshly grilled salmon dripped with a sweet and savory brown glaze. I had layered the hot fish with cool, crunchy shredded cabbage and a generous spread of creamy, spicy mayonnaise. It was a perfect, tightly packed meal. The rich scent of roasted fish and warm rice was almost impossible to resist.
I brought it to my nose, savoring the aroma before opening my mouth, fully intending to destroy at least a third of the sandwich in one massive bite.
However, right before I clamped down, a sharp knock echoed from the front door. I extended my chakra senses and immediately sensed multiple overwhelmingly powerful chakra signatures waiting outside.
I looked down at my glorious meal with pure, unadulterated misery. Reluctantly holding the food in one hand, I walked over and pulled the door open.
Fugaku Uchiha, the Hokage himself, stood on my porch. Hirotaka Yamanaka and Shikaku Nara flanked him like stone statues. Right behind them stood Shisui and Itachi, backed by a full and heavily armed ANBU escort. The sheer weight of their collective presence was overwhelming. Every single one of these legendary, battle-hardened shinobi was staring in dead silence at me while I stood completely frozen, my mouth hanging wide open and a sandwich dangling limply from my hand.