Naruto: Veil of Frozen Bones

In the churning, controlled blizzard that filled Training Ground 5, a figure stood unaffected by the destruction they had caused. What had once been a training ground of dirt and trees was now a miniature, self-contained ice age.

A constant gale of freezing wind and razor-sharp ice particles swirled in a contained vortex, the roar deafening. This was Ryuu's new creation: Hyōton: Sōdō no Fubuki (Ice Release: Riotous Blizzard), a jutsu born from thousands of hours of accelerated experimentation. It was less a single technique and more of a managed catastrophe, a sustained area-of-denial battlefield.

The Ryuu standing at its calm epicenter held the jutsu steady, his chakra control and capacity clearly bigger than before.

Then, with a final surge of power, he willed the blizzard to cease. The gale died instantly, the swirling ice shards clattering to the ground. The abrupt silence was almost as jarring as the previous roar. The figure blinked, then with a soft poof, vanished into a plume of white smoke.

Miles away, in a secluded library nook within the Konoha Archive, the real Ryuu grunted, his eyes clenching shut. A torrent of information slammed into his consciousness – the tactile memory of shaping wind and ice, the sensation of commanding the blizzard, the precise chakra fluctuations required to maintain it, and eight hours of relentless, freezing concentration. The accompanying headache was immense, a familiar agony that felt like his brain was being squeezed in a vise. 

He breathed through it, his face pale but his expression practiced, accustomed to the brutal price of his training method.

He placed a hand against his temple, waiting for the wave of phantom exhaustion to pass. 

It had been eight months since his promotion, since Genma had given him the scroll for the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu. In that time, Ryuu had not rested. He'd lived several years' worth of training, packed into the unforgiving schedule of a Konoha shinobi.

The Riotous Blizzard was just one fruit of his labor. 

He'd meticulously used his shadow clones to break down and master the fundamentals of his Ice Release. Five clones would spend the day in a secure training ground, each assigned a specific task, one refining his ice release kekkei genkai, another focusing on chakra control and new jutsu creation, the third and fourth mastering water and wind nature transformation respectively. The fifth would practice taijutsu forms, relentlessly honing his physical movements. He, the original, would spend his time on missions with his team or here, in the archives, searching for useful training methods, Fuinjutsu, Jutsu and history – all while his clones put in the physical work.

He couldn't manage Naruto-level numbers sadly, he'd discovered his practical limit was around eight clones for sustained, high-intensity training. Any more, and the initial chakra division left the clones too weak to perform complex tasks, and the feedback upon dispelling threatened to cause genuine mental damage. But eight clones training for ten hours a day was eighty hours of experience gained every single day. 

The progress had been staggering. 

He looked up from the scroll he'd been studying – a dense text on the nature of yin and yang chakra. His accelerated learning had allowed him to blaze through the standard curriculum and delve into theories most Chunin would never touch.

He understood now that being powerful wasn't everything. He needed to have a technological acumen as well, especially one on Orochimaru's level. His memories came from a technologically advance world, at least more advance than the current shinobi world, but due to his severely lacking mental state it had taken him a while to reach this conclusion.

He also realized something important. Rather than being a transmigrator, it was more like he was a child who earned the memories of someone else. The memories were there, sure, but the mental fortitude and maturity of those experiences weren't there at all.

It was as if he had a movie playing on the back of his mind of another life, one that gave him information about the future, but it didn't change his core personality much.

He really was just a kid with the memories of someone else.

This realization had given him quite the fright, since especially at the start, he thought it was the other way around, making him act in a way that he could only consider reckless. 

His newfound understanding of himself was both liberating and sobering. It explained the dissonance he often felt. 

He wasn't an old soul in a young body. 

He was a young soul grappling with an old, alien soul's memories. This clarity didn't diminish the pressure, but it focused it. He wasn't just reacting to memories, he was using them as a unique, personal intelligence asset.

He carefully rolled up the scroll on yin-yang theory, his headache finally subsiding to a dull throb. It was late afternoon. 

Time to head home.

As he walked through the familiar streets of Konoha, Ryuu felt a subtle shift in his sensory perception, another side effect of his intensive training. It was more refined now. He didn't just feel chakra signatures, he could also feel emotions, as each signature's waves gave him a distinct feeling.

A boisterous laugh cut through the evening bustle, followed by a familiar shout of "Come on, Kenjiro! I almost had you that time!"

Ryuu's gaze shifted towards the sound. There, outside a popular barbecue restaurant, was Renji, looking broader and more confident than eight months ago. He had one arm slung around the shoulders of another boy with disheveled black hair and a relaxed expression.

Standing with them were Izumi and Asami chuckling at the duo's bickering.

All four of them wore the green flak jacket of a Chunin.

Renji's group had clearly just come from a training session, their energy high. Kenjiro, simply shrugged off Renji's friendly jostling with a smirk. "Almost isn't 'done', Renji. Your skills are still far too lacking!"

Asami, offered a serene, almost detached smile. "His form is improving, Kenjiro-san. The ferocity is there. It merely requires more... refinement." Her voice was soft but carried unique charm to it.

"Ryuu!" Renji spotted him, his grin widening as he broke away from the group. "Get over here! Quit hiding in those dusty archives and hang out with us!"

Ryuu acknowledged him with a quiet nod, a faint, barely-there smile touching his own lips. "Renji. Izumi. Kenjiro-san. Asami-san. Training looks to have been productive."

"Productive?" Renji scoffed, but there was no heat in it. "This oaf," he jabbed a thumb at Kenjiro, "still moves like a damn shadow. But I'm getting faster."

"His Taijutsu is a bad matchup for your direct style," Izumi noted, glancing at the duo.

Asami approached Ryuu at this moment, her face slightly flushed as she grabbed the edge of his clothes.

"Hello… Ryuu-kun…"

Renji and Kenjiro were both taken aback by this display, speechlessly staring at the shy Asami. Izumi on the other hand chuckled at this display, already having some prior knowledge.

Ryuu stared down at the hand clutching his sleeve, then up at Asami's flushed face. Her usual serene composure was gone, replaced by a nervous energy he didn't quite know how to process. His brain, so adept at dissecting jutsu formulas and battlefield tactics, short-circuited in the face of this direct, unexpected social interaction.

"Asami-san," he finally managed, his voice even and calm, giving no outward sign of his internal confusion. "Hello."

Kenjiro gawked, his jaw practically on the floor. "Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! Since when are you two so… friendly?" He looked from Asami's beet-red face to Ryuu's placid expression. "And why are you blushing like that, Asami? You never blush!"

Asami immediately let go of Ryuu's sleeve as if burned, turning her mortified gaze on Kenjiro. "I-It's nothing! It's just… been a while since we've all seen him, that's all!" Her defense was flustered and entirely unconvincing.

Izumi's chuckle turned into a low, knowing laugh. "Leave her be, Kenjiro. Some of us appreciate Ryuu more than others." Her comment was light, but her eyes held a spark of mischief as she looked at the flustered Asami.

Renji finally recovered, a slow, conspiratorial grin spreading across his face. "Ohhh, I get it. So that's how it is." He wagged a finger playfully at Asami, who looked as if she wanted the ground to swallow her whole.

"Stop it, you two!" Asami hissed, regaining a sliver of her composure, though the flush on her cheeks remained stubbornly in place. "I was just surprised to see him. That's it."

Ryuu, meanwhile, simply processed the scene with the detached curiosity of an observer watching a peculiar animal interaction. He understood the concept of a "crush" from his memories, the emotional and biological impulses that drove such behavior, but experiencing it directed at him felt… foreign.

"Hey, no fair ganging up on Asami," a new voice drawled, smooth and slightly languid. A figure emerged from the barbecue restaurant, seemingly looking for the rest of his team. He was handsome in a more refined way than Kenjiro's ruggedness, with intelligent, deep green eyes and dark hair styled with practiced ease. This was Kurama Hiroshi, Kenjiro's and Asami's teammate. He exuded an air of quiet confidence that bordered on arrogance.

"Though I will admit," Hiroshi's gaze swept over Ryuu, "Ryuu-kun is quite the looker, isn't he? Those bandages and goggles really do him an injustice. I totally understand your feelings Asami-tan."

Hiroshi's teasing comment was the final straw. Asami let out a small squeak of pure mortification, spun on her heel, and stalked towards the restaurant entrance. "I'm getting us a table," she declared, her voice muffled, not daring to look back at the laughing group.

"You really are a menace, Hiroshi," Kenjiro sighed, though the amusement in his eyes betrayed him.

"She makes it too easy," Hiroshi replied with a perfectly formed, unconcerned smile. His gaze returned to Ryuu, a flicker of something more serious, a quick assessment, passing through his green eyes before being masked again by casual charm. "It has been a while, Ryuu. Keeping busy?"

"The usual," Ryuu answered.

"We were just about to grab a celebratory meal for acing our latest mission," Renji explained, slinging an arm around Ryuu's shoulders again. "Come on, my treat."

Ryuu didn't object. He did need to interact with others more.

They piled into the barbecue restaurant, a cozy place filled with the rich aroma of grilling meat and the loud chatter of other shinobi teams unwinding after their own long days. Asami had already secured a large booth and was now pointedly studying the menu, though the high color still hadn't fully left her cheeks.

The meal was loud, mostly due to Renji and Kenjiro's competitive bickering over who could grill meat faster or eat more. Izumi and Hiroshi engaged in a quieter, more pointed conversation about shinobi tactics. Ryuu remained mostly silent, listening, observing, and eating.

Asami, sitting next to him, eventually regained her composure. She'd steal quick glances at him when she thought no one was looking, her earlier embarrassment morphing into a quiet curiosity. Ryuu's detached presence was strangely calming in its own way. He wasn't loud like Renji or aggressively sharp-witted like Hiroshi. He was just… there.

"Genma-sensei is assigning us a B-rank escort mission next week," Izumi mentioned, cutting a piece of grilled beef with precision. "To the Land of Tea. You'll be leading the tactical assessment, Ryuu-kun."

"About time," Renji said through a mouthful of food. "Should be more exciting than guarding that grumpy merchant who complained about my 'footsteps being too loud'."

"Everything is loud about you, Renji," Hiroshi commented dryly without looking up from his plate.

As the meal wound down and the various teams began to disperse, Ryuu walked with Izumi and Renji for a few blocks before their paths diverged.

"It's good seeing you, Ryuu," Izumi said with a small smile. "Don't be a stranger just because you're busy with your training."

"I won't," Ryuu replied.

After his teammates departed, Ryuu continued his walk home alone, the relative quiet a welcome change. The moon was high now, casting long shadows across Konoha's streets.

The air was cool.

He took a less-traveled route through a series of narrow alleyways between clan compounds, a shortcut he favored. He was halfway through one such alley when he stopped.

His senses hadn't screamed danger, but they had registered a subtle anomaly. A single point where the air felt… still. Unnaturally so. Like a soundproofed room in the middle of a concert. A chakra signature so perfectly suppressed it was a void, not a presence.

A figure dropped from the rooftop above, landing silently on the cobblestones ten meters in front of him, blocking his path.

The shinobi wore the standard grey ANBU uniform, complete with arm guards and a ninjato strapped to their back. Their face was concealed by a simple, unadorned porcelain mask resembling a dog, white as bone, with only narrow slits for eyes.

Ryuu's body didn't tense, his expression remained impassive. Panicking was useless.

"Yuki Ryuu," the ANBU's voice was completely flat, toneless, likely altered by a seal within the mask. "Your skills and progress have been noted by the highest authorities."

The ANBU operative made a single, fluid hand seal. "Lord Hokage has extended an invitation."

A small, intricate sealing tag appeared in the ANBU's hand. It was made of dark, durable material, with complex, circular patterns etched onto it in silver ink.

"This contains the time, location, and entry requirements for a special selection test," the toneless voice explained. "Only those who receive this invitation may attend. It will activate thirty minutes prior to the designated time, at which point the information within will become clear to you and you only. Failure to attend will be noted."

The ANBU stepped forward, extending the tag. Ryuu accepted it. It felt cool and smooth to the touch.

"What is the nature of this test?" Ryuu asked, his own voice level, betraying no emotion. He already knew, but he had to play his part.

"Those who pass become the fangs that protect the tree from the root," the ANBU replied enigmatically. "They are the shadows that guard the light." The operative took a step back, melting into the deeper shadows of the alley. "We will be watching."

'So I got invited into the ANBU…'

Ryuu already understood what the tag was. If he were to pass this test, he would successfully become a member of the ANBU.