Gacha System in Naruto

This chapter deals with some heavy themes in a light way. Addiction and losing oneself are some of the themes. If you have problems with it, I suggest skipping it.

---Shinji's POV---

The blue crystals taste like winter mint and electricity and I can't stop. I've been sneaking extra licks all morning while Naruki and Miki mess around with dead people making them talk through chakra bullshit. They think I don't notice them watching me but I'm not stupid I just really like how the crystals make everything buzz and sparkle.

The thing is, I know I am taking too many. I'm not stupid. But the preservation work is getting to me, you know? Weeks of digging through dead people's memories, watching their last moments, feeling their fear and pain secondhand, it just messes with your head. The crystals make it all fade into this nice, soft blur where nothing hurts quite as much.

Plus, they really do taste like the mints my mom used to give me when I was sick. That has to mean something, right?

Everything's getting wiggly and bright and the tent walls are definitely breathing now slow and deep like they're sleeping or maybe dreaming about being trees, I don't know. The chemical smell isn't gross anymore it's like flowers made of lightning and my sandwich, the one I grabbed for lunch three hours ago, it's staring at me.

Actually staring with little sesame seed eyes that blink when I blink.

"Oh shit you can finally see me can't you kid?"

I nearly fall off my stool because my sandwich just talked and its voice is scratchy like someone who smokes too much and drinks cheap sake.

"You're talking..."

"Course I'm talking I've been trying to get your attention for fucking weeks." The sandwich hops closer on tiny bread crust legs that shouldn't exist but do. "Name's Sanada by the way. And before you ask no I'm not actually a sandwich."

"You look like one though."

"That's the goddamn point genius. I'm stuck under a transformation jutsu. Been like this for six months doing the worst undercover work of my career."

This makes perfect sense which probably should worry me but doesn't because he doesn't look like he is lying. I lean forward because this is obviously classified information.

"I used to be human," Sanada continues. "Real ninja from a real village until I got caught by some Iwa bastards who thought it would be hilarious to turn me into food as punishment. Only way to break the jutsu is to complete seven impossible missions while stuck as a fucking sandwich."

"That's really fucked up."

"Tell me about it. You know how hard it is to do stealth when you're made of bread and ham? I can't even walk in light rain without getting soggy. And don't get me started on what happens around birds."

I nod seriously because this is clearly a major operational security issue that needs immediate attention.

"But that's not why I'm talking to you," Sanada says. "Look around the tent real careful. Tell me what you see."

I look and holy shit there are enemy agents everywhere. That apple on Miki's desk is definitely surveillance equipment too shiny too perfectly positioned where it can monitor everything we do. The tea cup is worse because the steam keeps making patterns that look like coded messages being sent to handlers outside the tent.

"The apple," I whisper because operational security is important.

"Fucking finally someone notices. That thing's been recording everything for weeks. We need to take it out but quietly can't let your teammates know there's been a security breach or they'll panic and blow our cover."

My heart starts hammering because this is real spy stuff life and death black ops territory and I'm the only one who can see what's really happening.

"What do I do?"

Sanada splits apart and I can see his cheese slice is actually some kind of specialized weapon with edges that look like they're sharp enough to cut steel. "I'm gonna hit it with my cheese but I need a distraction first. Knock something over cough really loud I don't care just make noise."

"Got it."

I fake a massive coughing fit that sounds like I'm dying of lung rot while Sanada launches his cheese across the tent. It smacks the apple right off Miki's desk and the cheese boomerangs back to him who catches it like he's done this a thousand times.

"Beautiful work," he says reassembling himself. "One enemy surveillance unit neutralized."

"Holy shit that was incredible."

"Basic cheese-rang technique took me months to master when I was stuck as a club sandwich. Nearly starved to death learning how to weaponize dairy products. You should see what I can do with lettuce clones."

"Show me right now."

"Can't. Not enough chakra left after that cheese throw. But listen kid those crystals you've been licking? They're not just preservatives."

"What do you mean?"

"They're military grade chakra enhancers probably stolen from some black site laboratory. That's why you can see through transformation jutsus now. That's why everything looks different and sounds different and tastes different."

The world explodes into colors that don't have names and I can see energy patterns in everything chakra networks flowing through the tent walls through the dead bodies through Sanada himself who glows with residual human chakra trapped inside bread and meat.

"Fucking incredible," I breathe because it really is like seeing the universe naked for the first time.

"Kid you are higher than Iwa mountain right now but that's actually good because we need maximum perception for what's coming next. My intelligence network says your team is getting transferred to the Land of Hot Water within the hour and there's going to be serious trouble."

"Intelligence network?"

"Other transformed operatives. There's a ramen bowl two tents over that's actually an Iwa spy though he's terrible at the job keeps getting accidentally eaten by hungry chunin. And the rice balls in the mess tent are all undercover but from different villages and they hate each other so they spend most of their time fighting instead of gathering intel."

I grab another handful of crystals and crunch them between my teeth like candy. My brain feels like it's expanding beyond the boundaries of my skull.

"We're partners now. I'll protect you with my life."

"Damn right you will kid. This mission is bigger than both of us and if we fail the entire war effort could collapse."

---Third POV---

"What is wrong with Shinji now?" Naruki groaned watching his teammate writhing on the ground clutching a sandwich and mumbling about strange things.

Miki crouched down and waved her hand in front of Shinji's face. His pupils were so dilated they looked like black holes. "He's been like this for over an hour. I think he overdosed on preservation crystals again."

She'd been having her own issues since extracting Kushimaru's memories. The threading techniques kept whispering to her about artistic possibilities involving enemy organs. Very creative artistic possibilities.

"I'm not overdosed," Shinji protested though his words slurred together. "I'm conducting vital intelligence operations with my partner Sanada who is actually a transformed human operative working deep cover to prevent enemy infiltration."

"How many crystals did you eat this time?" Naruki asked. He was fighting his own demons, Jinpachi's explosive conditioning memories made him want to test his pain tolerance by setting small fires on his arms.

"Didn't eat them licked them totally different thing and anyway it's not about the crystals it's about opening chakra pathways to perceive hidden things that normal people can't see~"

"He ate the whole bag didn't he," Miki said flatly.

"The sandwich doesn't have chakra Shinji."

"Shows what you know. Sanada just neutralized an enemy while you two were too blind to see the obvious security breach happening right under your nose."

A runner appeared at the tent entrance. "Extraction Team Epsilon you're needed in Yu immediately. Pack up and move out in ten minutes."

"We can't travel with him like this," Miki said gesturing at Shinji.

"We don't have a choice. Command doesn't care if he's high as a kite they want those corpses in Yu tonight."

Naruki had dealt with plenty of drugged prisoners and teammates over the years but never one who thought his lunch was a secret agent. "Can you walk?"

"Course I can walk I'm a professional ninja conducting professional operations with my professional partner."

Shinji tried to stand up and immediately fell over sideways into a stack of preservation equipment.

"That's a no then," Miki sighed.

Getting Shinji mobile took twenty minutes and every ounce of patience they had left. He kept insisting they were abandoning critical intelligence assets and that enemies would overrun their position if they left without properly securing the area.

"The tea cup is still active," he slurred while they dragged him upright. "Sanada confirmed it. We need to neutralize the threat before... Damn, what did I want to say again?"

"There is no threat," Naruki said through gritted teeth. "It's just tea."

"Ah, that's exactly what they want you to think."

The journey to Yu should have taken two days. With Shinji in his current condition it took four because he kept stopping to analyze random objects for enemy activity and occasionally just collapsed when the crystal high peaked too hard.

"Those birds are flying in formation," he'd announce pointing at completely normal birds doing completely normal bird things. "Sanada says that's not natural behavior. Possible enemy scouts using transformation jutsu."

"That merchant caravan has the wrong number of wheels. Standard caravans have four wheels that one has six which means it's actually a mobile command center disguised as—"

"Oh my god please just shut up," Miki finally snapped after the fifteenth bizarre conspiracy theory. "Not everything is a secret enemy plot!"

"And what's that smell?" Shinji continued ignoring her completely. "The ground smells wrong here. Too much ammonia. Someone's been using chemical markers to—"

"That smell is your own piss you idiot!" Miki shouted. "You've been pissing yourself for the last hour because you're too high to notice!"

Shinji looked down at his wet pants with genuine surprise then wandered behind a tree to handle the situation. They could hear him fumbling with his clothes and muttering to himself.

"That's what they want you to think," came his voice from behind the tree. "Sanada's intelligence network runs deeper than either of you realize. The enemy has infiltrated every level of—"

Then his voice changed completely becoming high-pitched and confused.

"Wait what the fuck are you?"

A pause.

Then his normal voice: "You can talk too?"

Another pause.

"No way. This is incredible. How long have you been undercover?"

Naruki and Miki exchanged horrified looks.

"Oh no," Miki whispered. "He's not talking to the sandwich anymore."

"Agent Diku reporting for duty," came the high-pitched voice again. "I've been maintaining deep cover as your primary reproductive organ for over twenty years. The mission parameters were extremely challenging but I've gathered extensive intelligence on bathroom facilities."

"Twenty years of undercover work," Shinji's voice replied with genuine awe. "That's incredible dedication. What can you tell me about current security?"

"The situation is more dire than you realize. Enemies have infiltrated the entire hygiene supply chain. That soap you used yesterday? Compromised. The toilet paper? Double agent. Even the water has been turned against us."

"I knew it!! Sanada suspected as much but we needed confirmation."

Naruki had heard enough. He walked over to the tree grabbed Shinji by the shoulders and punched him in the jaw.

Shinji dropped like a sack of rocks and finally stopped talking.

"Thank you," Miki breathed. "I was about to do it myself but I thought you should have the honor."

They dragged Shinji's unconscious body to a nearby stream to clean him up before continuing the journey. He woke up several hours later with no memory of the conversation with his own dick and immediately started asking where Sanada was and whether the intelligence network had been compromised while he was unconscious.

By the third day Naruki was ready to leave Shinji tied to a tree and come back for him later. By the fourth day he was seriously considering just putting him out of his misery entirely.

---

They were crossing a wooden bridge over a steaming gorge when everything went to hell.

The attack came from three directions at once, kunai from the rocks above shuriken from concealment positions along the gorge walls and explosive tags attached to the bridge supports below.

Kumo ninjas at least eight of them all with the scarred muscled look of veterans who specialized in killing people quickly and efficiently.

Naruki and Miki reacted instantly dropping into defensive positions and launching counter attacks while scanning for escape routes. Standard ambush response drilled into them through years of field experience.

Shinji reacted by standing up swaying dangerously and yelling "I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!" at the top of his lungs.

Then he pulled out his sandwich and threw it at the nearest enemy.

The sandwich hit the man in the nose and he immediately started sneezing violently.

"Gluten allergy!" he gasped between sneezes. "Severe gluten intolerance! I can't—" He doubled over wheezing as his sinuses completely shut down.

"Sanada's intelligence was spot on!" Shinji announced producing a second sandwich from somewhere. "Deploying biological warfare!"

A Kumo ninja appeared behind him with a raised kunai but Shinji spun around except he was so fucked up on crystals that he spun too far and somehow accidentally clotheslined the guy with a baguette he'd pulled from his pack.

"Where do you even get a baguette on a mission?" Miki screamed while fending off her own attackers.

"Emergency bread reserves!" Shinji explained seriously. "Sanada insisted on proper supply management!"

"Shinji move!" Miki screamed while fending off two attackers of her own.

Shinji tried to move but his legs weren't working properly and he stumbled forward directly into Naruki's line of fire forcing Naruki to abort his attack and dive sideways to avoid hitting his own teammate.

"Get down you idiot!"

"I'm deploying sandwich clones!" Shinji announced hurling sandwiches in random directions while completely oblivious to the fact that a Kumo ninja was about to split his skull open.

Naruki tackled the enemy from behind but that left him exposed to another attacker and suddenly they were fighting a defensive battle while also trying to keep their insane teammate from getting himself killed.

Shinji meanwhile had found his emergency stash of crystals and was cramming them in his mouth like candy while providing running commentary on the situation based on whatever hallucinations his sandwich was feeding him.

"Sanada says they're vulnerable to acidic condiments!" he yelled pulling out a jar of mustard. This time his throw was surprisingly accurate, the jar smashed into a Kumo ninja's face and the man started screaming as the vinegar and spices got in his eyes.

"Chemical warfare!" the ninja shrieked stumbling blindly and accidentally falling off a cliff.

"Praise the Sandwich! Only through it can we be redeemed!" Shinji shouted then discovered he was standing too close to the edge and gravity decided to take over.

"Shinji!" Miki screamed.

That moment of distraction was almost fatal. A Kumo ninja's blade missed her throat by millimeters and suddenly she was fighting for her life while Naruki tried to cover both their positions and somehow retrieve their drowning teammate from the hot springs.

What happened next defied all logic and several laws of physics but somehow worked.

"Sanada says target the big one with the peanut trail mix!" Shinji yelled pulling out a bag of nuts and hurling it at a massive Kumo ninja who was bearing down on Miki.

The bag exploded on impact covering the man in peanuts and almonds. He immediately started wheezing and clawing at his throat as his face swelled up like a balloon.

"Anaphylactic shock," Miki observed while stabbing another attacker. "Seems like severe nut allergy."

"Sanada's intelligence network is never wrong!" Shinji announced proudly then immediately tripped over his own feet.

The allergic ninja collapsed gurgling and choking while Shinji somehow produced a bag of shrimp chips from his pack.

"Akimichi quality-certified shellfish flavor!" he shouted flinging the chips at another enemy who took one look at the crustacean-based snacks and backed away in terror.

"I'm allergic to shellfish!" the ninja yelled. "Keep that shit away from me!"

"Sanada predicted this exact scenario!" Shinji said diving behind a rock. "Strategic food allergies are the future of warfare!"

Meanwhile Naruki was fighting for his life against two knife-wielding maniacs while trying to process the fact that his drug-addled teammate was winning through biological warfare.

Miki had switched to using Kushimaru's threading techniques except instead of thread she was using the intestines from the bodies they'd been extracting memories from all week. The psychological effect on the Kumo ninjas was immediate and devastating.

"What the fuck is wrong with you people?!" one of them screamed as human entrails wrapped around his ankles.

"We've been extracting memories from serial killers for months," Miki replied cheerfully while hanging another enemy upside down with what might have been someone's liver. "You pick up techniques."

"That's not normal!"

"Normal is overrated," she said and started giggling while the ninja she'd strung up began crying.

Shinji meanwhile had found his emergency chocolate stash and was pelting enemies with candy bars.

"Sanada says the one on the left is diabetic!"

A chocolate bar bounced off a Kumo ninja's forehead and he immediately started panicking about his blood sugar levels despite the fact that external chocolate contact doesn't actually affect diabetes at all. That just shows how afraid he was of sugar... or just how fucking terrifying Shinji looked at that moment.

"My glucose levels!" he wailed fleeing in terror.

Naruki finally managed to take down his opponents using perfectly normal weapons and techniques like a sane person but when he turned around he saw his teammates had essentially won the entire battle through pure insanity.

Miki was sitting on a pile of bodies she'd tied up with organ-thread while humming a cheerful tune. Shinji was floating face down in the hot springs having apparently fallen off the bridge at some point but somehow there were dead Kumo ninjas around him who appeared to have choked on various foods.

"How?" Naruki asked the universe.

"Praise the almighty Sandwich," Shinji mumbled from the water. "Sanada was right about everything..."

"One of them literally died choking on a peanut," Miki observed. "Fascinating how psychological pressure can cause people to forget basic safety protocols like chewing properly or spitting it out."

They pulled Shinji out of the springs. He was unconscious but somehow still clutching an empty bag of trail mix like it was a sacred weapon.

"Is he breathing?" Miki asked while checking his pulse.

"Barely. We need to get him somewhere safe before he drowns in his own vomit."

They carried him to the nearest town found a cheap inn and dumped him on a bed where he spent the next eighteen hours making weird noises and occasionally sitting up to have intense conversations with imaginary sandwich operatives.

---Shinji's POV---

I wake up feeling like someone filled my skull with broken glass and hot sand. Everything hurts especially my tongue which tastes like I've been licking a forge. The room is spinning slowly and there's dried vomit on my shirt but at least the weird colors have mostly faded back to normal.

Where am I?

This isn't our tent. The walls are wood not canvas and there's actual sunlight coming through a real window instead of the weird artificial lighting we use in the field. The bed is soft which is suspicious because we don't get soft beds on extraction missions.

I sit up carefully because sudden movements make my brain slosh around like water in a bucket. There's a cup of water on the nightstand that tastes like heaven when I drink it and gradually the world stops tilting quite so much.

What happened?

Last thing I remember clearly was working on memory extractions back at the Kiri front. Then everything gets fuzzy like trying to remember a dream that's mostly faded. Something about talking to Sanada about enemy surveillance and intelligence networks and...

Oh god I had the weirdest fucking dream. I dreamed my sandwich was actually a transformed ninja and we were working together to stop some kind of conspiracy. My brain must have really fried itself on those preservation chemicals.

I stumble to the tent flap except it's not a tent flap it's an actual door and when I open it I'm expecting to see our familiar camp setup but instead there's a completely different landscape. Hot springs everywhere steam rising from natural pools, and the strange thing? That place near the mountain... The whole place looks like a bomb went off recently. Scorch marks on rocks debris scattered around.

"What the hell?" I mutter then immediately regret talking because it makes my head pound worse.

This definitely isn't where we were before. This looks like the Land of Hot Water battlefront which means we traveled here somehow while I was... whatever I was. And if there's battle damage everywhere that means...

Shit. More work. More dead people to extract memories from probably.

I turn around and go back inside because dealing with whatever clusterfuck happened out there can wait until my brain stops trying to escape through my ears. My pack is sitting by the bed and when I dig through it I find my emergency stash of preservation crystals.

Just a couple.

Just enough to make everything bearable again.

The crystals taste like mint and electricity and make everything a little brighter a little more interesting. Not enough to see sandwich spies obviously because that was just my brain misfiring from too much chemical intake. Just enough to function.

I lean back against the pillow and let the crystals work their magic. Whatever happened while I was out of it my teammates probably handled it fine. They're good at their jobs even when I'm not pulling my weight.

"At least with you guys work doesn't completely suck," I say to the empty room then immediately feel stupid for talking to myself.

But it's true. Naruki and Miki might think I'm a disaster but they don't abandon me when I fuck up and they don't treat me like I'm hopeless even when I probably am. That's got to count for something.

I close my eyes and let myself drift while the crystals take the pain away. Whatever mess we're dealing with in Yu can wait until I'm human again.

Outside I can hear voices, Naruki and Miki talking to someone local probably getting briefed on whatever extraction job brought us here. The voices are too far away to make out words but I can tell from the tone that it's serious business. It always is.

I should probably get up and help but right now just breathing without pain feels like a major accomplishment. Give me another hour or two and I'll be ready to extract memories from whoever needs extracting. Give me another few crystals and I might even be useful again.

The room is warm and quiet and for the first time in days I feel almost normal. Whatever weird shit my brain invented while I was high at least it wasn't real. At least I don't actually have to worry about conspiracy theories involving transformed ninjas.

That would be completely insane.

I drift off thinking about how weird dreams can feel so real when you're fucked up on chemicals and how grateful I am that my sandwich never actually talked to me because that would mean I'm losing my mind entirely.

"Kid you awake? We need to talk about the situation in Yu. My intelligence network says there's been some serious developments while you were out."

I keep my eyes closed and pretend I didn't hear anything because admitting I'm still hallucinating would mean admitting I have a serious problem with the crystals and I'm not ready for that conversation yet.

But part of me wants to look. Part of me wants to see if Sanada is really there or if my brain is just misfiring again.

Just a quick look to be sure.