Comeback Kid (Naruto & Celestial Grimoire | OC-SI)

The rewards hung there in the air, temptingly, just…taunting him.

It was all Tobio could think about as he woke up, bruised, tired, wounded, and still in all sorts of mild aches and pains. Not bad enough to be hospitalized, but he definitely would be visiting a medic just to ensure that there weren't any lasting effects from the Shadowfire. However, waking up before all of his friends was important because of the fact that he finally had a private moment mostly to himself.

Not for long, he suspected, and not truly alone. But quiet enough so he could inspect the persistent text that had been in the back of his mind this entire time without being interrupted as he gave the options to come their due dilligence. While the rest of the shinobi portion of the barracks went about their day, still occupied in the aftermath of the Konoha Crush, Tobio stared up at his achieved quests.

And he wasn't disappointed with the results. Now it was just a matter of deciding what to do with them.

[QUEST COMPLETED: SURVIVE THE KONOHA CRUSH]

[REWARD: 1x MAJOR ERUDITION OR MIGHT ROLL]

[QUEST COMPLETED: DEMONSTRATE MARTIAL DOMINANCE BY DEFEATING SEVERAL POWERFUL OPPONENTS IN QUICK SUCCESSION (GAARA, GIANT SNAKE SUMMON, ETC…)]

[REWARD: 1x MODERATE MIGHT ROLL]

Welp. He might as well start with the Moderate perk. It was less likely to output something that would destroy his entire life or make him totally incognizant, like how he suspected the right Major perk would. Without further ado, he allowed the internal hollow within him to spin up and activate. He'd almost forgotten what it was like to have his spirit empty out and latch onto one of those great stars in the void outside of himself. Right up until they grasped three glimmering stars and reeled them back in for him to decide which to keep.

Only for the boy to frown as he stared at them all. "…Goddamnit…" Then again, suffering from success was a good problem to have, wasn't it?

High Elder	Honkai: Star Rail	You are now among the greatest of your chosen species; your strength, speed, durability, and intelligence all receive a moderate increase. You also receive another boost depending on your race in this jump. If you are a human, you gain preternatural skill with weaponry, enough to equal or even surpass the famed Sword Champions of the Xianzhou Alliance. If you are a Foxian, you gain the ability to shapeshift. If you are a Mechanical Lifeform, you receive built-in weaponry, such as missiles and lasers. Finally, if you are a Vidyadhara you grow a dragon-like tail and horns, and your ability to use cloudhymn magic rivals even that of the Imbibitor Lunae, not to mention gaining the healing abilities of Bailu.
A Talent for Slaughter	Drakengard and Nier	This goes beyond mere talent though. You're a genius at dealing death, the Mozart of murder, the Einstein of evisceration. You're now skilled beyond measure with any weapon you pick up, magical or not. Your body is similarly beyond peer, granting you the strength to cut through plate armor like butter, jump a man's height with ease and endure attacks that would fell mortal men with minor harm. Whether against five men or fifty, you'll be scything your way through normal people like a reaper with a grudge. But even a talent as great as yours can still be cultivated. The more you kill, the more powerful you'll become. You'll find new, more efficient ways to cut men in half, discover the proper way to behead someone at full speed without breaking a step and learn how to get the best out of a weapon the more you use it, perhaps even finding new abilities or tricks it may hide. All that exercise will help you get stronger physically as well. Your already prodigious strength will grow in time, until you're pulling truly ridiculous anime shit. This takes time though. At the beginning, you might be more than a match for any man, but monsters are another matter. But if you manage to survive while ensuring that others do not, who knows how deadly you'll get.
Crested	Fate/Grand Order	The Magic Crest, to the ordinary magus, is the crystallization of all their bloodline has worked for. A sigil formed of magic circuits that collects all their knowledge and spells into one person who acts as the bloodline heir. But the truth is a lot more sinister. Of all the magic crests in the world, 72 of them are in fact Demon Gods in sleep, placed there by a Beast named Goetia in preparation for a great plan. You know how to perform this same act, turning living beings into Magic Crests that can be passed down through family lines before activating at your whim, converting the holder back into the original being or releasing that being separate from the holder once more. During the time that they serve as Magic Crests, they can provide magical circuits equal in power to whatever magical power they had originally and prevent their holders from committing suicide, rendering them unable of consciously carrying out such acts.

Tobio could only stare at the perks that were selected, trying to think critically about them from all possible angles. Truly, none of them could even remotely be considered bad, just different enough that they'd make him pivot his life into different directions. The real question was what was worth taking from all of those new avenues.

High Elder would almost immediately begin to transform him, and this time he didn't know what the end result would be. Would the human half of his heritage prevail and ramp up his bladework to new levels? That'd be novel, though the flipside of the coin would be having his Mixed Blood oni heritage wake up even more. Some of those powers that TYPE-Moon Oni could produce were useful, to say the least. He'd probably be dead if it wasn't for Death Resistive Body, papering over the worst damage that he'd taken over these months and allowing him to operate when he really shouldn't have been able to move around. Another power in that same league could seriously change things for him.

A Talent For Slaughter wasn't nice, or kind, or clean. It was a perk that would make him a more effective killer, provided he put in the work to get there. He wasn't under any illusion that his body count would be rising as time went on, so it would be nice to benefit from it. In fact, he could take bounty hunting work exclusively and end up endlessly progressing from it. There were no small amount of people in the Elemental Nations that he could put into the ground to fuel his own progression.

Hell, that was before talking about the other benefits. He could progress learning Shikai and Bankai even faster. Improving his strength, speed, and other physical statistics wasn't something to sneeze at either. Between those advantages, he could see it benefiting him immensely, despite how focused it was on killing. Tobio was a ninja, though. It'd be a little hypocritical if he started to bark and whine about slaying people, considering the lives he'd already taken up to this point.

Out of the bunch, Crested provided no immediate advantages to him. What it did have, though, was something where he could effectively render down entities into what were functionally slaved magic crests to people. It was…morally horrific, especially if he used it on normal people, which he suspected he could. But the benefits, though, kept drawing him back to it.

Could he capture something crazy like certain evil summons and turn them into magic crests so that people could use their power? Modify them with World Arts to give them Balance Breakers that could be passed down from generation to generation? It was a power that really made him think, because avoiding it was avoiding power.

Still. Decisions, decisions…

All of the choices were incredible, no matter how you sliced it. Yet at the end of the day, sometimes the simplest choices were the best ones. High Elder was a direct boost not just to his baseline statistics but also, by the nature of how chakra functioned, would also expand his reserves. That was really tough to beat. All of the racial advantages were just the icing on the cake, as far as he was looking at the situation.

With his decision made, Tobio selected the choice.

And immediately remembered all the other times he made a pick that changed his body. How painful they all ended up being. Perhaps he'd made the wrong choice after all.

It started with something that could generously be called an itch, beginning at his temple, as two spots on his head began to furiously ache. Enough to make him scratch at them, as he picked himself up off of his cot and began to walk toward the nearest bathroom. All while his bones almost certainly audibly creaked under the weight of a sudden, burning transformation beginning to be applied to him.

Hopefully he was the only one who could hear that, as he slowly but surely began to feel his body modify itself bit by bit. Muscles streamlined as he became a deadlier organism with every passing step. Each movement was accompanied by not-so-subtle processes designed to create a better monster, something that the shinobi around him almost certainly recognize. Not because of what was springing from his forehead, but because of the pressure he was putting out. That of a predator, the wolf among the sheep, the fox in the henhouse. Something of a transition, as his body turned from that of fundamentally a human to…

To something more phantasmal.

When he entered the restroom, the transformation was in full swing, as that dull ache exploded. All he could do was grit his teeth in the mirror and watch his flesh writhe as muscle fibers grew denser with each second. His eyes turned a bright shade of red, almost like fireworks in the night sky. Even those slightly elongated canines of his were more pronounced, bearing more similarity to the fangs that he'd seen from Inuzuka than normal humans.

Yet that wasn't the most overt thing. The eyes faded back to his normal color, if a little lighter than they'd been before. As the transformation became slower, one element of his body was standing out more than anything else, as he stared in the mirror present inside.

Horns.

His forehead protector was a complete write-off, mostly because of the two horns that now jutted through it. Thicker around the base before becoming more slender to the tip, they were sensitive to the touch. Though that sensitivity was beginning to fade away as time passed.

Not quite the color of his flesh, each one was a more pure, black hue tinted with red at the tips, only a few inches long at the moment. Slightly curved and leaning forward just a tad. Who knew if that was going to last forever, though? He was almost enamored with the sight of them, but most importantly, how right it felt to have them.

As for the rest of him, there was a strength residing within him that felt as if it could be called to the surface. Maybe not forever, not without consequence or cost, but…he was probably even stronger than the boost of High Elder would have led him to believe. More important than anything else, though, were what happened to his reserves! His pool of chakra had perhaps doubled again in size, as he breathed in and out, getting a feel for it. That boost to his intelligence was making his mind race as he cataloged all of the differences in his features beyond the overt. It wasn't something he'd noticed immediately, yet he'd grown perhaps an inch from the entire process too.

Crazy enough that all of this was, this was just from a moderate reward.

He'd never had a Major perk roll before. Only those that were lesser than it. Which was…a daunting prospect. He'd almost wish that the choice was taken out of his hands so that he didn't have to make the choice in the first place. Unfortunately, though, life wasn't so kind to him.

Erudition, Might, Artifice, dominion—all of these categories were such that the option could drift toward, and any of them might have results that would utterly shake his life and that of those around him. If there was a promise to be made here, it was that he was going to hate himself no matter what he picked.

Much as he'd like to hit things really, really hard, he could see why it would be better to see what the peak of knowledge might resemble. What could he unlock in Erudition that'd upend the entire board? Could anything be enough to save the world by itself? It was enough to make a boy's mind spin at the enormity and potential of it, now that he'd finally arrived at this point. Months and months of work to survive and change things, leading up to this moment. Sucking in a breath, he allowed the power to spin out into those familiar, blind eternities.

Calling upon a Major Perk felt systematically different from anything else. It was as if he was ripping something that the world was not supposed to support inside of him. The perks were hefty, that much he could feel, just by have they felt being dragged inside of him. Nor did any of them disappoint his expectations.

Wisdom of the Guardians	Miraculous Ladybug	You become incredibly good at teaching people. This includes morals, fighting, magical arts, science, and general wisdoms. Within your 10 years in any given Jump, you can surely make a great impact on anyone you take under your wing, bringing them back to the light and bringing out their full potential. You can even pass along certain fiat-backed techniques such as certain magic or martial arts techniques you've bought over time. You can also tell just by looking at someone how virtuous they are, and, inversely, how evil they are. Useful if you start handing out infinite power.
Demiurge	Kill Six Billion Demons	There are currently 8 Demiurges in the entire multiverse: Allison, and the Seven. Well, it looks like there are now 9, with you getting in. This power manifests as a glowing white dot on your forehead. While it can be covered, it otherwise can't be hidden or gotten rid of. At will, you may also manifest a halo above your head, and beyond having to look kinda like a halo, you get to choose how it looks. This power, access to the Key of Kings, grants you many abilities. First, you are able to do stuff like summon phantasms of gods to fight for you, have clones made up of white energy split from your body and attack your enemies, teleport, and more. Additionally, you know one of the words of the Seven Part Name, YISUN's true name. By saying this word, you damage reality itself, and even killing those of weak will. Finally, you can also loan some of your power to your followers. How strong these powers you give them depends on how much power of your own you sacrifice, but these blessings can be pulled back to you at no cost, and making your power whole again. You can also make your Emissaries, the people who have been granted power by you, have their mind twisted to your goals, though those with strong will can fight against this, even defeat your corruption. The Key you get is equal to Allison's/Zoss's, though you have to learn how to use it. The downside to this power, is that anyone that sees your Key and knows what it is, they probably want to steal it for themselves. And if it is taken out of your head, you fall unconscious and take a ton of damage and pain, regardless of any power you have.
Master of Runes	Fate/Legends - Voyage to Valhalla	A particularly impressive magecraft the Norse Runes are. Though needing more preparation in general, the power they can bring to bear is reason enough to commit oneself to this art. And commit yourself you did. Your Mastery over runes is enough to impress even the likes of the Gods. And much like them you have knowledge over the greatest of them on the same level as the All Father. Primordial Runes. Odin himself has used these to great effect, rewriting Saint Graphs, making animals sapient or do great harm to divine Spirits, just to name a few uses. Of course you'd need the sheer supply of power Odin had to make use of these in full, but even now your versatility is nothing to scoff at.

Wisdom of the Guardians proved to at last be a teaching perk, but it did just a little more than that. A lot more, seeing as it opened up the option to share his more esoteric skills and abilities to a certain extent. Could he turn the rest of Team Eleven and his friends into Oni? Probably not, and that was genuinely a shame. Could he begin to teach them God of High School-esque martial arts? Yes, and that was a concept that would begin to open some goddamn doors. Could he teach them how to be a Barbarian? What about his other abilities?

It was a world of potential at his fingertips. The problem was that everything else was just as good too. Maybe even better, depending on how greedy someone might be.

Demiurge was not a perk that would by itself make him powerful immediately. It would merely grant him the road to being the strongest person on this planet, bar none. To have a Key of Kings was to wield the powers of YISUN, the mighty flames of the god that broke themselves into fractions in a holy suicide. He wouldn't be as strong as Solomon David, Zoss or Incubus, only standing somewhere around where Allison was at the start of the story…

…But considering she went from bog-standard normal college girl who'd never thrown a punch to being able to fight demigods in a couple of years, someone starting with a higher vantage point could probably progress even further. Farther than she could have hoped to, in a smaller amount of time. Additionally, loaning out power to his friends was a pretty objective way to just improve his friends. Compared to the other Demiurges, he wouldn't even abuse the metaphysical connection to mindfuck them! That was practically saintly behavior right there.

Master of Runes in comparison to the others was genuinely quite understated. Honestly, he almost wrote it off if it wasn't for what he remembered of Norse Runes in TYPE-Moon. And how absolutely silly they could get, being a thaumaturgical foundation that came from the Age of Gods and was created by a deity. Changing something's very nature, provided he had enough power, or using them to calamitous effect on the scale of the Aesir, was a very tempting opportunity at his disposal. It wasn't even an alternative to sealing; it was perhaps just objectively better. He would have the entire runic alphabet at his fingertips, and enough magical energy to properly make use of them.

However…

Out of the three perks, a singular one could change his fate. Which would he choose? There was a use case for every single option that had been presented to him. As far as Tobio was concerned, all of them would see him rise to a new echelon of power in due time. Yet only a singular option, however, would allow him to further a more ephemeral thing that was so much harder to define, at least to him.

Enlightenment, at least of the kind that existed within K6BD. If he had to walk a road, he'd choose the one that led to Royalty.

With no small amount of trepidation, he selected Demiurge. And then immediately felt the world fall away, as if the grand nature of the world were nothing but a massive genjutsu. The floor, the ceiling, and the dingy bunker bathroom around him, disconnecting like detachable toys as he fell through the void.

There was nothing but that sense of shocking, uncomfortable vertigo until he found himself falling straight onto a familiar beach. Right next to a bewildered and downright shocked sword spirit, who stared at him with the most flummoxed expression he'd ever seen on her face.

"…How are you here?" She breathed out, blinking, confusion writ large across her face as she took an unsteady step back, foot sinking into the sand.

It was enough to make Tobio blink in confusion. "What are you even talking about? I've been here before."

She clicked her tongue in irritation at him. "No, idiot, you're without communing with me. You're not the one with the hand on the wheel."

Wait, that's right. How did he manage to end up here without meditating?

He took the moment to probe Red King Syndrome as he stepped around in the sand, finding that the usual disconnect that informed him that this was a spiritual reality wasn't present. No, as far as Tobio understood, a version or a copy of his physical body was present in the world that his sword spirit created. Which…

Shouldn't be possible was an understatement. They could manifest in reality, for relative values of the word, but going inside of the sword should be impossible. Unless you had something that could make the impossible merely a formality. With a trembling hand, he reached up and felt at his forehead, only to find a smooth, hard surface placed there. A familiar stone, that he'd only ever glimpsed before in a webcomic.

"Do you have any idea what's going on?"

"Tobio, I'm just as lost as you are," the Oni girl admitted, completely bewildered.

They might have continued there, in their confusion and misunderstanding of the situation, if it weren't for the moon. The same cool, glowing moon that had been present ever since he'd fused Moonveil with his asauchi seemed to be transforming. Blue tones into something more molten red as it glowed brighter and brighter, with each passing second almost seeming as if to turn it into a second sun.

A flash of light as it overtook their vision, and then…hanging in a void was a vast shape that seemed male and female, gaunt and curvy, every single shifting trait of humanity and all of the things of the earth that crawled and walked and swam and flew and existed on the microbial level only. They saw it, the nonshape, and their minds tried to grasp what was there laid out before them, but a fish did not have the capacity to conceive of the fact that it was wet. It knew that it was either breathing or it was choking to death, and that was the only real distinction that it could make of its existence. That was the level of conceptualization they could reach when it came to this simple but deific truth.

No matter how they tried to make sense of the scene that was being played out before them, there were things that a mortal mind could not comprehend. Facts that a zanpakuto spirit could not conceive of, for it was flatly outside of their qualia. It was…like seeing the silhouette of a greater truth, without understanding that it too was also a falsehood. Because the viewer in and of itself was a flawed vessel, incapable of grasping the reality of their world without something breaking in the process.

Tobio felt something break inside, as a divine revelation was set before him.

A multiplicity being born and played out before their eyes. An entity that was both male and female at the same time, yet in and of itself was also the whole of all reality.

An act of divine suicide, two lovers that exploded to create a pantheon of gods. Each of them was a sliver of some enlightened bombshell that none could conceive of, for to understand the greater whole was beyond most creatures that drew breath.

And then it was over.

It was sudden, as if he were on the cusp of understanding it if he'd just chased it a little more. Wanted it more, desired it, and cut through every obstacle between himself and that enlightenment. Despite the fact that in that second, Tobio understood that it was also a trap.

For a brief moment, he glimpsed something even greater than himself. An understanding that underlaid all of creation, fundamentally, in ways that the boy was still struggling to comprehend. The holy Septagrammaton, in all of its splendor, the name of God and the true fact of all existence. When you turned the wheel on its side, it spelled I.

Spinning in that great abyss, that void, he saw all the syllables of Royalty.

YS ATUN VRAMA PRESH

​

The sanctioned action was to cut. It was such a simple idea, really, but one that felt as if it was vibrating inside of him the more it emanated throughout his body. It was the power to cut infinity with the blade of Want, yet ultimately, it wasn't a power that Tobio actually sought to acquire.

While the Key of Kings was a potent tool, he never sought to chase Royalty behind it. His life was…

It wasn't perfect. It was messy, and he didn't like the child soldier nature of things, despite the fact that it also allowed him to fill that violent pit inside of his soul. Yet even so, he had his friends and the power to help his friends now. To take everything onto himself wasn't his remit any longer.

As if to punctuate the fact that something had changed, when the light subsided and they were back at the beach once more, the moon was different. Still a wheel, hanging in the sky, but the hues had turned to a more blood red, rather than the deep blue it'd been emanating as light before. As if there was a holy, divine fire spurring forth within the moon now…

"This fire is a terrible fire," his spirit whispered. "And we must pass it on, so that others must make it their own. I saw…"

She looked confused. It was probably the first time he'd ever seen such a decidedly befuddled way her delicate features contorted, as if her understanding of the world had been warped in some respect. The true nature of her existence altered inexorably toward something that she'd never been designed for.

Though something terrible did strike him in that moment.

Much to his startlement, it occurred to Tobio that this hadn't been a singular experience that was relegated to him. To see infinity, all of creation, and to understand the true nature of existence. Or at least a kind of enlightenment, and the true name of God. After all, his sword was as much a part of his spirit and soul as anything else inside of him.

Why wouldn't she taste that same brand of enlightenment in that moment?

"Did you pick up a name? One of the names?" Tobio asked, not daring to speak it aloud, not even in the safety of her realm. To say it felt like it would invite a power that he couldn't understand, not entirely, not yet. Maybe never.

He might have had a vast System granting him perks beyond his understanding, but that didn't mean there weren't bigger powers out there in the universe. Concepts that his mind was, frankly, a little too small to handle.

Whatever his spirit might have picked up, though, she didn't respond, staring off blankly into the moon, with a more vacant expression than he'd ever seen from her. Waving a hand in front of her face, she didn't even react or blink, merely continuing to stare as whatever revelation she'd had seemed to be percolating inside.

"Okay…" he huffed, before trying to will himself back to reality…and failing. "Okay. How am I supposed to do this?"

Usually, when he was done communing with her, it was pretty easy to just slip out of her realm. That was before whatever the Key of Kings had done, and becoming a Demiurge in connection to it had anchored the entire dimension a little beyond what was typical of a sword spirit. Was he going to be trapped here or something…?

No. There was a way out. He just had to think of one.

If the sanctioned action was to CUT…then all he had to do was will it hard enough. With a frown he concentrated and allowed a halo of pale light to erupt from around his head like a crown. Hanging in the air, it burned there like a line of fire, as in the middle sat a soft, circular shape that was dark with the ugly, purple malice of Shadowfire.

Tobio wanted to leave now, so all he really had to do was-

C

U

T​

There were a couple of things that Tobio could take note of the moment that his eyes opened again. One among them was the fact that the nature of the chakra in his body had changed once again. First of which, his physical energy had spiked to a new level once again, a little disorienting given the fact that his chakra levels had risen to meet it. It was a swell of power roiling beneath his skin that felt almost unearned.

If he had to go off of the estimates that he possessed of chakra levels from the people around him, Tobio presumed that he might be edging into Jōnin territory. For a kid his age, that wasn't just exemplary but beyond fantastic. Not just in terms of his reserves, but also the raw physical might. Provided those had been the only things that had changed, Tobio would have considered it a good enough deal.

They weren't the only things, however, because Energy Sense was making his head ache whenever he considered the Key of Kings in his forehead. A tiny, pearlescent thing that blazed with power, capable of calling forth the terrible fires of God. It made him feel small in a way few things in the Elemental Nations had made him feel small in the past.

…Now, if he could figure out how to use it, that'd be nice.

What was more important, however, was the condition that he found himself waking up in. He hadn't given it too much thought what choosing spiritual enlightenment would do to him, but in hindsight it did seem a little obvious that the entire implantation process would be a little disorienting. Which was probably why he was looking up at an unfamiliar ceiling as someone desperately gave him CPR.

Ah. This was probably what they called an oopsie-daisy, wasn't it?

"I'm up," he croaked, as the medic-nin desperately trying to save his life stopped their ministrations in shock. "I'm good, I'm good!"

Apparently they'd moved him when he'd passed out or gone unconscious, as he recognized the sterile, chemical, hospital scent around him. And judging by the fact that all of Team Eleven, plus Karin and Fū, were there looking at him worriedly as well…

Ugh. He was going to hear an earful about this, wasn't he?

---

People told him what had happened after the fact, not that he'd been too concerned about it. Apparently, someone found him passed out and mumbling in the bathroom, hand gripped around his sword. Despite the fact that his pulse had stopped and that his lungs no longer had the air to actually produce words.

Atum was really some stone-cold bullshit, at least in terms of how it could make the nature of reality decidedly mutable. There was a reason why they called the various arts The Art of Lying in the Face of God. A condition that should have resulted in some kind of brain damage or other disrepair to his body had merely been a bit of an annoyance to him. Even when people had dragged him to medics, his sword held by the hilt in a vice grip, assuming some kind of hidden internal wound inside of him all of this time. Or perhaps something tied to his unknown transformation.

That was how he got to where he was now, sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, legs dangling off lazily as he kicked back and forth. His sword was in his lap, going the full length of the bed, as Tobio sat there, cool as a cucumber.

"What's the damage? I feel fine."

"Nakamura, we don't even know where what's supposed to be there begins and where what isn't ends," the medic-nin began, sounding positively scandalized at how relaxed the boy was as he hovered a glowing hand across his body. "There are structures inside of your body I couldn't even begin to understand that are actively resisting my best methods of investigation."

…Was that the mystery inside of him? The moment Tobio had taken High Elder, he'd basically brought himself to a new mode of existence. Or at least he'd risen from a mere Mixed Blood with the trace of Oni inside of him to something purer. Chakra was a system that was, while very versatile, one that was designed to ultimately contend with known factors and a few edge cases.

His body, meanwhile, was new and foreign to the world. If he died, would the nature of his phantasmal body fade with him or bleed into the local environment? On the off chance he lived long enough to have children, they'd almost certainly proliferate it as well. The worst-case scenario would be the entire affair resembling what happened when organisms started producing oxygen in an environment unprepared for it but with magical energy.

He hoped for the best-case scenario in this situation, which would be very little changing at all save for a new power system in the world. If it wasn't, well, that'll be that.

"Outside of that stuff, though, I should be good. That's what I'm hearing from you."

There was a very hesitant expression on the man's face as he looked between Tobio and the rest of his friends and allies around him. Something seemed to give in his features, though, as he sighed and gave him a slow nod.

"Yes, in the most technical sense of the word. Your BPM is exceptionally low in a resting state, your chakra reserves have recently engorged by the look of your pathway system, and you're likely bound to deal with a few growing aches and pains from this most recent…expansion."

Tapping the boy's chest, however, he continued. "Yet all of your wounds have also healed," the man admitted, inspecting him over. "It's actually quite impressive, but there's no real reason for you to be held for further observation. Besides the passing out."

He shrugged. "I'd rather the bed go to someone who actually needs it, so that's good."

"Tobio, they found you passed out in the bathroom and carried you out because they thought you had internal bleeding," Ami pointed out, looking rightfully concerned. "You were mumbling something like, uh, Ys…Presh…some nonsense!"

The fact that he'd passed out wasn't that surprising. Getting a glimpse of enlightenment and the true illusory nature of existence was…fraying at in the best possible way. He was trying to be jovial about it now, but the word burning in his mind made that even an impossibility.

"You've got a big rock in your head now too, besides the rack," Hibachi added, stating the obvious elephant in the room that people had been dancing around.

It wasn't hard to take note of people looking back and forth from his eyes to his forehead or his horns. They weren't very large, and he didn't have the faintest clue if they really deserved the appellation of 'rack'. Generally, though, it wouldn't stop anyone from realizing at a glance that he had an exceptionally overt bloodline.

Hmm. Could he get away with revealing his eyes now and play it off as part of the transformation…? Food for thought.

"I think the rock looks nice," said Fū, once again proving herself his greatest ally and enabler.

"Thank you, Fū," Tobio beamed. "I think it looks great too. It's not a rock, however."

Ami arched a very skeptical brow his way. "Looks like one. Like you stuck a weird-shaped pearl in your forehead."

He felt his left eye twitch as she discounted one of, if not the, most powerful artifacts in the entire world. "IT ISN'T A ROCK. Or a pearl!"

"Okay, okay, let's calm down," Tekuno-sensei interjected, breaking up the argument that was about to begin in the medical bay. "If the medic-nin says Tobio is good to go, we'll take their word at face value. Even if we're going to have to discuss what changes have happened later." He gave Tobio a meaningful look with that statement.

Which was fair. If one of his friends grew horns all of a sudden and passed out, he'd want to know what was up with them too. Especially with the other changes that had overtaken him too. While everyone connected to Tobio through Brotherhood seemed unaffected, the looks the other shinobi were giving him weren't that far off.

Back on Earth, the man he had been before read this book called Blindsight. It had some cool ideas about the nature of consciousness and presented vampires as an extinct hominid offshoot that had primarily hunted early humans for a variety of reasons. They got brought back to life at one point because humans were arrogant and thought they could control them, but there was still this instinctive and bone-deep response humans got when looking at them.

It was the knowledge that you were in the presence of a predator, or at least something decidedly other, or that preyed on you specifically. That was the best way he could describe the emotions and feelings of passive unease that certain people were radiating elsewhere in the medical bay, as they tried not to focus on him. Even the medic-nin that had been working on him wasn't immune to it, just professional enough not to let his discomfort show.

Not that they were incorrect to feel that way, even if he didn't entirely like admitting it.

They were right to be afraid or a little disoriented by his presence. Tobio had crossed the Rubicon and shed some vital part of his humanity in a very short amount of time. He still felt like himself, with all of the same cares, feelings, and emotions; those checked out. But the depths of his range of sensation felt deeper in a way that was harder to quantify.

Type-Moon Oni were not just humans with funny horns, teeth, or skin colors. They were a phantasmal race of monsters who, more often than not, probably deserved most of the bad rap that they got. However, malice and outright evil rarely came into the picture. Their race was just inhuman, and this was par for the course.

"I'll get checked out in a proper, full-length session later," Tobio conceded, at least throwing the people around him a bone. Despite the fact that he felt okay, that didn't mean they had no points at all.

The original Mixed Blood perk, as it stood, had been so far expanded, remodeled, and subject to surplus mechanics that he couldn't entirely expect that nothing had mutated beyond the original description.

"That's all I can ask for," the medic-nin sighed out, shrugging softly. "For now, just make sure to stay safe and please come in if there's anything else that you're struggling with."

He was discharged pretty briefly after that once they were sure that there was nothing wrong with him. That wasn't the hard part. No, that came from having to get used to the stares. Before he'd been a rather below-the-radar Genin, and while his fight with Gaara would and should have resulted in no small amount of renown, that would have been expected. But the rest of his transformation was a drastic one.

People stared, civilians most of all, just because they weren't trained to hide their observations. His own allies, though, weren't immune to it.

"Do they hurt?" Karin asked, genuinely sounding curious. "Actually, did it hurt growing them?"

"Kind of like a pressure around my temples, if I'm being honest. Like I was squeezing something out of my head."

"Gross," Karin commented, even if she said it with a smile. Then her attention turned more gauging. "...Can I poke one?"

Ami had the stricken look of a girl who wanted to ask that exact thing and was now regretting her tact in not asking it first. "Me too!"

"I mean, I'm a little curious; is it like a bone, or…?" Hibachi asked, his own clear curiosity rising to the surface.

"Most horns are made out of keratin, the same thing your nails are made of," Tekuno informed them, tone slipping into a more teacher-adjacent style. "Some animals have blood vessels running through them, but it depends on the species."

Fū didn't even hesitate. "That's cool, but can we touch your horns or not, Tobio?"

"..." He stared out at the expectant group before letting his shoulders drop in defeat. "...Yeah, you can touch them."

What happened next was perhaps the most mortifying experience of his life, as he realized that his horns did in fact have some sensitive parts. His shuddering reaction was noted, and everyone decided to then act like it had never happened. Truly, he was blessed with the best allies a ninja could hope for.

Whatever was bound to happen next, though, it was bound to be interesting.

"So what's on the docket today, sensei?" Tobio asked, happy to try and change the subject.

"Cleanup from the battle, mostly," Tekuno-sensei shrugged. "Everybody will be breaking off to go handle some assigned tasks, given how short-staffed we are with so many shinobi out to help chase stragglers. But the worst is over."

He really needed to remind his sensei to stop tempting fate like that. Though for now...Tobio was willing to at least give it the benefit of the doubt. For the first time in a long time, it didn't feel like there was a specter of future events hovering over him. With Orochimaru eaten by the Shinigami, Tobio didn't have the faintest clue if that'd be enough to put the lich away for a while. But if nothing else, it'd certainly put a dent in his plans.

Outside of that and the Akatsuki, things would probably be okay for a little bit. Tobio could accept okay, seeing as he'd been working at such a breakneck pace these last months. Maybe taking a proper breather was in order so he could get used to all of these changes. Only time would tell if he'd manage to get that break.