Naruto: Starting by Reading Minds in Naruto

Two and a half days after leaving Konoha, the patrol reached the border.

They completed the handover with the shinobi already stationed along the Land of Fire's northern edge. There were no permanent bunkers. Dense forest covered the region, broken only by concealed rest points and supply caches placed along the patrol routes.

The departing unit showed them coded trail markers, emergency rendezvous points, and the sections where merchants most often crossed toward Iron. Recent rain had softened the ground enough to preserve tracks, but it also made every stream and game trail harder to distinguish from deliberate movement.

Remaining in one position would make them predictable. The unit would move continuously through the sector adjoining the Land of Iron, while other teams guarded neighboring stretches of the frontier.

After the briefing, Tonbo took the first opportunity to rest.

"Tonbo-senpai," Itachi said, approaching him. "May I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

Tonbo was curious what the young prodigy wanted from someone he had met only once before this mission.

"What is the Will of Fire?"

The question was both surprising and entirely predictable.

Itachi wanted to understand how other shinobi balanced clan, family, and village. Tonbo's file identified him as an exemplary practitioner of Hiruzen's philosophy, and his service since graduation supported that reputation.

Tonbo studied the boy.

Hiruzen had been right about his maturity. Rather than mention the Uchiha directly, Itachi approached the conflict through principle. Years of intelligence work—and Tonbo's memories of the future—made the intention easy to recognize.

"The Will of Fire means protecting Konoha and protecting your family," Tonbo said. "Nothing more complicated than that."

He had no grand theory about changing the world. The answer was ordinary because it was true.

Konoha was not an abstraction to him. It was Ayame waiting at home, Tōsei weaving by the window, former students building lives of their own, and colleagues whose irritating jokes made quiet shifts bearable. Protecting the village meant protecting those particular people.

"What if you must choose between them?"

Tonbo raised an eyebrow. He had praised Itachi's subtlety too soon.

"Why force yourself to solve that at your age? Turning the question over endlessly will only tear you apart. Use the time to become strong enough that fewer people can force such a choice on you."

He refused to choose for Itachi. The boy's future already contained too many adults willing to place unbearable decisions on his shoulders. Tonbo would not become another.

Itachi remained silent, his gaze fixed on him. Evidently, he intended to wait until Tonbo offered a more direct answer.

"Keep staring like that and I will make you regret it," Tonbo warned. "The Analysis Team fears my methods. Even Captain Meguri—the so-called Demon Sergeant—trembles before my torment."

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Itachi was not yet the shinobi he would become. If necessary, Tonbo could still discipline him like any other child.

"We are comrades," Itachi said calmly.

He did not believe Tonbo would truly harm him.

"I want to hear the answer too," Anko called from a branch above them.

She sat with her legs crossed, chewing gum while Tonbo scanned the distant forest through binoculars.

"Then both of you can experience my specialty first. Perhaps afterward you will stop asking questions unrelated to the mission."

He formed a one-handed seal.

Itachi and Anko tensed, but the world had already begun to turn.

An endless meal appeared before Itachi. Platters of heavily grilled meat crowded the table, and no matter how firmly he resisted, his illusory body continued eating.

Anko faced rows of brilliant red peppers. To her horror, the peppers sprouted tiny limbs, leaped from their trays, and forced themselves into her mouth.

In the physical world, both shinobi twitched.

Anko's face flushed crimson. Her breathing quickened, and her lips began to swell as her mind translated imagined heat into a physical response.

Itachi merely frowned.

"His least favorite food is only mildly unpleasant," Tonbo murmured. "A disciplined diet has deprived him of truly terrible experiences."

Anko, on the other hand, had clearly formed a powerful memory around extreme spice.

They had insisted on a sensitive and irrelevant discussion while on duty. Tonbo intended to discourage a repetition.

The technique was punishment without injury. Neither target would lose consciousness for long, and both could release it through proper chakra control. If they ever faced an enemy illusionist, remembering this humiliation might even make them faster.

He did not neglect the border while waiting for them to escape. His binoculars swept the visible approaches, and his sensory field expanded through the forest for many kilometers.

Years of training had transformed both his chakra reserves and perception. The boy who once struggled to sense a single kilometer could now monitor an enormous region. His reserves even exceeded Kakashi's current capacity.

He was nowhere near the scale Naruto would one day achieve, but few ordinary sensors could match him.

Birds and small ninja beasts moved through the outer edge of his awareness. Without the Living Weave, Tonbo might have captured and trained several as summons. His woven constructs made such contracts unnecessary.

He mapped each signature by movement and intensity. Anything too regular might be a transformed scout; anything that disappeared at the edge of his field deserved a second look. So far, the forest held only the ordinary life expected along the border.

Hayama entered the edge of his perception, already moving along the patrol route after completing the handover. The captain's dedication exceeded even Tonbo's careful image of himself as a dependable employee.

Hayama seemed built for duty.

Tonbo did not underestimate him. After Kakashi, Hayama had been among the fastest in their class to earn jōnin rank.

Inside the illusion, Itachi identified the genjutsu immediately. Recognition did not prevent the first mouthful of grilled meat from reaching him before he could attempt a release.

The flavor was unpleasant, but tolerable. His mind continued working while his illusory body ate.

Why would a man praised for the Will of Fire attack his comrades over a question?

Was Tonbo's loyalty false? Had he deceived Hiruzen?

No. A disloyal shinobi would not display such obvious attachments. Tonbo had a wife, a child on the way, a father, students, and years of recorded service. Those bonds made him vulnerable, but he embraced them rather than concealing them.

Itachi had expected a clean hierarchy in which one duty always outranked another. Tonbo's answer refused that simplicity. Village and family were not opposing pieces until someone made them so.

Perhaps that was the answer.

The Will of Fire was not a formula Tonbo could hand him. Itachi would have to decide what village and family meant for himself—and become strong enough to live with that decision.

Also, grilled meat really was unpleasant.

Anko's experience was less philosophical.

"What kind of genjutsu is this?"

The peppers kept coming. Heat spread across her tongue, throat, and skin until discipline alone could no longer contain the reaction.

She gathered chakra and forced it through the illusion.

The false world shattered. Anko returned to the forest with her whole body burning and found Tonbo calmly watching the border.

"I was only curious!" she shouted. "Why drag me into it?"

Tonbo lowered his binoculars. "I was demonstrating my specialty. Consider it useful team information."

"That was not an answer."

"It was also a warning. Ask another pointless question during a mission, and I will let you experience my ultimate version."

His quiet laugh made the threat worse.

Then he turned toward Itachi, who had also broken free.