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Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve: CH_382
🕑 Added 2025-05-04 18:05:51 +0000 UTCInenpachi watched as Takuma was utterly taken in by the mindscape. From the moment they had come in, he had become absorbed in the surroundings and hadn't made a single comment or asked any question.
Everything that didn't make sense to Inenpachi seemed to make sense to him.
"Do you recognise these things?"
Takuma had stopped to stare at things sticking out of the walls. "Skyscraper, plane, car, train, smartphone," he said with a joyful smile. It was the first time he had smiled innocently and freely since they had met. At that moment, he seemed like a young teenager who hadn't become a hardened shinobi.
Inenpachi didn't recognise half of those words. What he recognised didn't resemble his image of those things. He wondered if those things were from his imagination and held significant emotional value to him because Takuma turned away to wipe tears that rolled down his cheeks.
"I'm sorry. Let's progress," he said, facing away from him.
Inenpachi didn't ask him to voice the reason behind the tears, but took note in case it became relevant.
The deeper they went into the mind, the quieter and dimmer it became. A cold chill lingered in the sterile air inside the tunnels of mindscape. He hadn't felt this way the last time he was here. At first, he thought it was just for him because he was an outsider, and his actions last time made the mind cautious about his presence, but Takuma also seemed to feel the same unwelcome feeling.
They finally reached the central hub, which was behind layers of swaying multi-coloured ethereal curtains.
"I can feel it," said Takuma nervously as he stared intently at the curtains.
Inenpachi asked him to step through. Takuma hesitated for a moment before pushing through the numerous layers to reach the central hub cavity with the floating brain. Once again, Takuma was awestruck with what he saw and stared at the network of yarn that weaved between corkboards and the floating brain. However, his attention was almost instantly grabbed by the black vault door.
"Is that it?"
"That is it."
"What do I... What do I need to do?" Takuma asked with pursed lips. The more he stared at the back door, the more uncomfortable he got. His body was half turned away from the central hub, ready to sprint out at a moment's notice. His eyes darted everywhere as though anticipating enemies in his own mind. It was by no means normal.
"You have to make contact with the door."
———
.
Every fibre of his being was screaming at Takuma to turn away and never return. He could tell from watching Inenpachi that his reaction wasn't normal, but the iryō-nin didn't know that this wasn't his mind.
Everything he had seen outside the central hub told him that the years of living as Takuma had influenced the mind as tunnels resembled the underground Ring tunnel system, their colour matched the paint in his old house, objects from his old world grew out of the walls, and even his trauma was present in the form of the abandoned factory equipment from Yu. The central hub itself had transformed to match its new owner. The corkboards, thumb tacks, and yarn were something he saw every day at home and the office.
However, that didn't change the fact that all of it belonged to the boy he had taken over. The black vault door with its ominous aura held more presence than everything else he had seen. It was as though it was declaring that no matter how much the mindscape changed, it would never change the truth that he was an usurper.
"You have to make contact with the door."
"What will happen if I do so?"
"You'll have to face your repressed memories, and then we'll talk about them."
He thought it would be some Yamanaka hiden jutsu bullshit, but this very much sounded like plain old therapy. He sighed and then looked at the daunting vault door, which couldn't be more inviting. He stepped into the cavity and carefully floated around the delicate yarn to reach the vault door, only to be hit by an oppressive pressure.
"What the—"
Takuma gritted his teeth as weight surpassing the heaviest weights he had ever worn bore down on him, but that wasn't the main problem. He felt emotions coming from the door. The emotions of hostility, disgust, and repulsion washed over him. His eyes widened because he couldn't believe what he was feeling from within his own mind.
Once again, he was reminded that this entity was separate from him, and if it could direct such intense emotion towards him when the memories would seal, he could easily imagine those memories tainting his mind when they were unlocked.
"Fuck you!" he hissed through gritted teeth as he grabbed the wheel on the door.
He didn't want to reintegrate the boy's memories with him.
He wished they would just... disappear.
The pressure bearing down on him vanished. Takuma blinked in surprise and suddenly felt optimistic, thinking that his presence had managed to influence even the mental block. He thought he could influence it to erase itself with the memories altogether.
You're not needed, he thought.
"Takuma!" Inenpachi suddenly yelled.
Takuma felt a pulse from the wheel thrum through his body before a monstrous force assaulted his body. It was more powerful than any attack he had endured and flung him through the central hub like he was nothing but a bug.
Inenpachi waved his hand, and the yarns curved out of Takuma's way and crashed into the wall.
———
.
In Inenpachi's office, Takuma grabbed his head as a world of pain assaulted him. It felt as though someone had lit a gasoline fire inside his skull. He tried to clench his teeth to endure the pain and not scream in pain, but he couldn't handle it and let out a painful cry as he curled up in the leather lounger.
The iryō-nin leapt out of his chair with the speed of a shinobi, rushed to his side, and held his hands over his head. A greenish-yellow glow burst from his hands, and within twenty seconds, Takuma went from yelling in pain to whimpering with body shakes to silence with deep breaths. He didn't stop and fetched a pitcher of water, held the glass to Takuma's mouth, and helped him drink it.
"W-What happened?" Takuma asked, his teeth chattering as he looked up weakly at Inenpachi,
"The mental block didn't like whatever you did," said Inenpachi as he handed a towel to Takuma, who was now drenched in sweat, dripping onto the leather he sat on. "What happened in there?"
Takuma recited what happened while his head throbbed in pain.
Inenpachi looked like he wanted to sigh, but being the professional he was, he sat down in his chair and spoke calmly. "You can't erase those memories, Takuma. They're firmly a part of you, whether you like it or not. You have to accept that... You have a nosebleed."
Takuma touched his philtrum and found blood on his fingers. He closed his eyes and put the hand towel to his nose while rubbing his temple. Those words meant something entirely else to him. Someone else's memories had firmly become a part of him; he couldn't get rid of them even if he wanted to. A part of him said that he should've seen this coming. If he didn't have any problem with taking over the body, then he shouldn't have a problem with taking over the memories. In fact, he cursed the gods when his life was miserable in the beginning because he hadn't received any memories; he prayed and begged for the memories so he could adjust to the new world.
"It's difficult," he half-whispered.
"I understand," Inenpachi said sympathetically. "We'll talk about that fear later. Let's find the reason behind that fear so we can understand it and leave it behind. We have done too much for today. You need to rest and recover. I suggest we meet twice a week."
Takuma nodded. He took out a wristwatch without the strap from his pocket and saw that he still had half an hour for an appointment.
"We still have time. Let's move on to the other thing," he said.
"What other thing?" Inenpachi, who was finishing his notes, said in confusion.
"The shadow clone research. What else?" said Takuma, placing the bloody hand towel on the side table beside him. "I have been good and haven't used shadow clones for training or work. I've been sleeping well—as well as I can with that thing in my head. I'm eating properly, drinking less coffee, and everything else you asked me to."
"You want to do that now?" asked Inenpachi, surprised.
"I'm not going to let this thing derail my life," said Takuma, almost offended. If he let every little problem stop him, he would still be running D-rank missions. "This is a small hiccup. We're going to solve this quickly, and I'm going to get back to my life."
"I'm not sure what to say." Inenpachi opened his journal and made another note. "But sure, let's do it. Go ahead and make a clone."
Takuma weaved hand seals, and a shadow clone from a plume of smoke appeared beside him.
Inenpachi asked the clone to go out and roam around for a minute before popping itself. The clone nodded and leapt out of a window.
"... You could've gone out the door," he said to Takuma.
Takuma shrugged. He knew the clone didn't want to show his face to Inenpachi's assistant outside the office because he had just screamed like he was being murdered and wanted to avoid embarrassment, so he went out the window.
"I'm going to observe your mind for a moment. You're going to feel something different when the clone pops itself," Inenpachi said. He weaved hand seals before placing his hand over Takuma's head, who suddenly felt as though someone had pumped mint into his head.
"What's this?" he asked because the clone's memories hadn't hit him yet.
"Focus," Inenpachi said sternly.
A minute later, the memories and chakra returned to his body. The clone had walked around the block feeling like shit. Normally, his clones were too busy to stop and think about his life, but a depressed clone's thoughts were hard to chew on. At the same time, he felt something akin to an electrical tingle that started from the top of his spine, travelled to his head, flowed around his head for several seconds before disappearing. His whole body involuntarily twitched before clenching up as it caught him by surprise.
"Was that it?" he asked, unsure and cautious. With the mental block in his head, he was sensitive with anything that came near his head.
Inenpachi stayed silent for a long half minute before removing his hand and returning to his chair.
"After you proposed the training, I went ahead and bought the Shadow Clone Jutsu for myself." Inenpachi saw Takuma's surprise and nodded. "It was really expensive. That's why people apply for a research grant for this kind of stuff. Anyway, I began my research on the jutsu and found out that the memories and experience of the clone are carried back to the user inside the spiritual energy that returns from the clone"
It made sense to him because spiritual energy was a product of the mind's consciousness.
"The feeling you experienced was the spiritual energy coming from the clone flowing through your body. After my research, I thought about approaching the problem and came up with a method that I think might work. You noticed how the spiritual energy flowed into your brain for a couple of seconds before it assimilated back in?"
Takuma nodded. It was an extraordinary feeling that he wouldn't have ever felt if not for Inenpachi. It was fascinating and terrifying that it happened every time he received a clone's memories.
"Imagine a clone releases itself after a full day. The brain is forced to receive all those memories over a few seconds, something that it usually does over the course of a day. It's no surprise your brain got overwhelmingly overstimulated." Inenpachi said.
"So what's the solution?"
"I think by manually altering how the memory-carrying spiritual energy flows through your brain, we can reach a point where your brain won't be overloaded while it processes these external memories!"
Inenpachi sounded very passionate as he explained the scientific intricacies of his method, most of which flew above Takuma's head.
"And that will solve the problem?" he asked.
"We can't know for sure right now," said Inenpachi, calming down. "It'll be many sessions of trial-and-error as we try different approaches. I must inform you that it might not work at first. You might even lose parts of your memories from the clone. We might be doing great one week, but our progress could shoot to hell the following week. This method might not even work, and we might need to start from the bottom.
"I'm saying this because we don't know how long it will take to find a solution, if there is any. So, you need to have patience."
"It's alright. I don't mind as long as we are working towards a solution—and well, I get to use the jutsu while we find a solution," said Takuma. He had done his fair share of experimentation with his chakra augmentation to make it usable and suffered numerous injuries while doing it.
As much as he wanted a solution yesterday, he was okay with waiting.
"We will start a clone who stays up for four hours," said Inenpachi.
Even if it was a fourth of what he wanted to achieve, he was itching to resume training, and he was going to make sure to squeeze everything out of those hours because he had a future to survive and live through.
"That's the best news I heard all week, doc."
Comments
Lazerate
There exists something like this in Naruto verse. I don't remember exactly where. Something like Heaven or Sky or whatever city...
Al
He learns the hard way
Xardas2995
Nice to see the work on the shadow clone start. That you are finally adressing Takuma's past is nice. But like I already said on discord I kinda want the plot to keep going. I guess I just need more chapters.
Mohammed Sheekh
Inenpachi skipping over the otherworldly infrastructure so easily, I'm sure he would've at least questioned their origins and link it to how no past civilizations of the elemental nations have anything like that, plus takuma is only like what? 14?
Navdeep Sugandhi
Why can't he make clone every 3-4 hours? Like the chakra that clone didn't consume comes back to him and with 3-4 hours of memory the load on his brain would be much less
