Chapter 43:"Gates, Beams, and Gai's Brain?! The End Is Near"
(Teen Naruto's POV — featuring explosions, deep lore, and shocking plot twists like "Gai is actually brilliant")
So here's how the day went.
I nearly vaporized myself trying to shoot a tailed beast beam that was definitely not island-safe (RIP Clone Squad #17). Then I got dive-bombed by Lee and Gai, who landed like missiles made of pure optimism and eyebrows.
"YOUTHFUL TRAINING, NARUTO!" Gai shouted, his green jumpsuit sparkling in the sunlight like a radioactive avocado. "YOUR BEAM WAS AS GLORIOUS AS THE SUNRISE OVER A MOUNTAIN FILLED WITH FIREWORKS AND TEARS OF JOY!"
"…Thanks?" I wheezed. My ears were still ringing from the last explosion, and I'm 80% sure I'd flash-fried my sense of smell.
Lee clapped me on the back hard enough to knock me forward a few feet. "You were amazing, Naruto! Truly a paragon of burning perseverance!"
I nodded and smiled like I totally wasn't about to collapse. Then Gai did something completely unexpected.
He turned serious.
And I don't mean "gave-a-speech-about-youth" serious—I mean actually serious. Like, his voice dropped, his eyebrows un-floofed slightly, and he sat down quietly.
Which is… terrifying, honestly.
"May I speak with Kurama?" he asked, folding his hands like he was some kind of monk.
Kurama blinked inside me. "...Am I dying?"
"Dunno," I muttered, "but let's find out."
So, we let Gai talk.
And that's when he dropped a bomb on us—no tailed beast pun intended. He told us the Eight Gates—those insane internal switches that turn a person into a screaming red firestorm of death—weren't just some technique his dad invented.
No.
Apparently, Might Dai had fallen into an ancient ruin one day on a mission, found tablets or artifacts or something, and that's how he learned about the gates. According to Gai, the Eight Gates were natural chakra limiters, placed in the body by, wait for it—
THE SAGE OF SIX PATHS.
You know, the super-grandpa of all chakra users. The guy who literally invented the modern ninja world and handed out tailed beasts like birthday presents.
Yeah. Him.
The gates, according to Gai, were like a divine training regimen. Stages a mortal had to pass through before becoming worthy of the Sage's power. Conquer them all, and bam—you're no longer just a mortal.
"You become like his children," Gai said. "Beings of divine chakra. But only if you survive it."
I stared.
Kurama stared.
Even Lee stared like someone had just told him tofu was made of lies.
"You're… telling me," I said slowly, "that you—Guy-sensei, the man who yelled at a waterfall for four hours once because it wasn't energetic enough—have been sitting on THIS?!"
Gai rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish. "Well… I wanted to be sure first. I've been researching it for twenty years."
Kurama's ears twitched. "That… actually makes sense."
"Wait, WHAT?!" I practically screamed in my head.
"He's not wrong," Kurama admitted, tail swishing. "The chakra of the Sage of Six Paths was… too pure. Too strong. Humanity's bodies aren't built to handle it. That's why only people like his direct descendants—the Uchiha, the Senju, the Uzumaki—have fragments strong enough to manage."
He paused, growling thoughtfully. "The Eight Gates… I always thought they were weird. Chakra quality does increase with each gate. Not just quantity. By the Eighth, you're tapping into chakra so refined, it starts behaving like the Sage's own."
Kurama's eyes narrowed. "But the body—your mortal shell—it's too weak. That's why the final gate kills. It's like plugging a house lamp into a lightning storm."
"Unless…" I blinked. "You upgraded the house. Got a stronger body."
Gai nodded, eyes burning. "That's why I asked. I want to survive the Eighth Gate. I want to be worthy."
I had no words.
My entire understanding of the world was slowly turning to mush.
Also, I'm gonna be honest—Gai being a low-key genius is way more terrifying than Madara coming back.
Like, what else was he hiding? Ancient sealing jutsu? A master's degree in physics? A secret crush on Tsunade?!
Then Lee stood and saluted. "Sensei, I shall follow you through all the gates! I too shall train my body to divine levels!"
They struck poses, and fire erupted behind them, because of course it did.
Kurama sighed. "At this point I wouldn't be surprised if they just ascended mid-sentence."
Me neither, buddy. Me neither.
Still, something stirred in me.
If Gai could uncover that much on his own… what else was waiting to be discovered?
Maybe this world wasn't as simple as I thought.
And maybe—just maybe—there was a way to reach the Sage's level.
…After I stop nearly blowing myself up with chakra nukes, of course.
One crisis at a time.
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So here's a thing you probably don't want to hear your inner demon fox say over breakfast:
"You'd probably explode after the second gate, Naruto."
Yeah. That was super encouraging.
I'd just asked a perfectly reasonable question too—by shinobi standards.
"Okay, so let me get this straight," I said, pacing around the training field like a conspiracy theorist with chakra ADD. "If I survive the Eight Gates, I could maybe become like the Sage of Six Paths?"
Kurama grunted. "Maybe being the keyword, kit. You're not exactly built like Gai."
"Right," I nodded sagely. "But what if I… cheated a little?"
There was a long pause.
"…Cheated?" Kurama asked. His voice did that dangerously calm thing. The one that usually comes right before a very large tail smacks me upside the soul.
"Hypothetically," I said quickly—because hypotheticals are legal in most ninja villages, I think—"If someone were to, say, acquire a few Sharingan eyeballs from a certain eyeball-happy fossil named Danzo—"
"Naruto."
"—and hypothetically pop them into my skull—"
"NARUTO."
"—then technically, I'd have the Uchiha DNA, right? And since I'm already Uzumaki, which is close enough to Senju—Jiraiya told me!—I could unlock the Rinnegan! Boom! Sage of Six Paths, here I come!"
Kurama gave me a look that could only be described as disappointed parent meets deeply exhausted war veteran.
"I hate that this is your plan," he muttered.
"Why? It's efficient!" I said. "Besides, Danzo's not exactly using those eyes anymore."
"That is not the point!" Kurama thundered. "First of all, cramming multiple foreign dojutsu into your head like you're building a discount snack pack of Sharingan is a terrible idea. You are not a fridge, Naruto."
"But if I combine that with the Eight Gates—"
"You'd melt."
"Wait, what?"
"Melt," he repeated slowly. "Explode, implode, and then melt again. You are not built for that kind of pressure, kit. Gai has trained his body for decades. You eat ramen and nap like it's a sport."
"Hey, that's a trained diet!" I objected.
Kurama rolled his eyes—yes, tailed beasts can roll their eyes; I checked. "Look. You're not weak. But your strength is different. You're not a brute force guy, Naruto. You're creativity, unpredictability, and enough raw chakra to light up Konoha like a Christmas tree."
I crossed my arms, sulking. "But if I want to protect everyone, I need more power."
Kurama's voice softened, which was rare. "And you'll get it. But power you steal, or force into yourself without understanding it—that's not yours. That's a shortcut. And shortcuts don't make legends. They make corpses."
Yikes.
That one hit harder than any Rasengan.
He was right, though.
I mean, I could try and tape Sharingan to my face like some kind of cursed Halloween mask, but it wouldn't be me. It'd be… desperate. Hollow. And probably end with me as a pile of smoldering ash with really cool eyes.
"Fine," I muttered. "No eyeball heists."
"Good," Kurama grumbled. "Also, stop talking like a villain. Next thing you know, you'll be monologuing in front of a thunderstorm."
I grinned. "What if I just borrow a Rinnegan? For, like, a week."
"No."
"…Half a week?"
"I swear if you say 'just the cornea,' I will bite you."
Okay, okay. Message received.
No stealing eyes.
Probably for the best.
Still… I couldn't help but wonder. If the Eight Gates really were the path to the Sage's power, and if Gai had gotten that far just by training…
Then maybe the real shortcut… was to stop looking for one.
Huh.
Now that's terrifying.
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Look, I know what you're thinking:
"Wow, Naruto's such a goofball! Always joking, eating ramen, flirting with danger like it's his side hustle."
And yeah, that's true. But here's what people don't get:
I work harder than everyone else.
Like, really hard. I've got enough Shadow Clones out training at any given time that I'm pretty sure at least one of them qualifies as a full-time citizen of every nation on the continent. One's probably negotiating a treaty in the Land of Iron right now. Another might be farming rice. Who knows.
So yeah, I joke, I laugh, I prank.
But I earn every ounce of my strength.
Still, I'll admit—I've been holding back in one particular area.
Physical training.
Not because I'm lazy! I wear 20,000 freaking tonnes of weight sealed into my body at all times. Without chakra enhancement. That's basically like carrying Gai-sensei on each toe while doing backflips. And with chakra enhancement? Boom—200,000 tonnes. With Sage Mode? I could probably suplex a mountain.
But Gai and Lee?
Those maniacs live like every day is a "bone-breaker special."
They're out there turning their bodies into bone jelly on purpose. Like it's fun.
Sakura has to heal them so often I think she's developing trauma just from the sound of cartilage.
Sometimes I help too—healing practice, Kurama calls it.
"You wanna be a real jinchūriki, kid? Try surviving without a head sometime," he once said, completely serious.
…And I have never slept well since hearing that.
But today?
Today was different.
See, Gai had just benched 50,000 tonnes in his base form, and apparently that was before breakfast. And he did it while giving Lee a thumbs-up with his teeth.
Meanwhile, I was cruising at a nice 20,000 tonnes.
So of course, the natural response was:
"Let's crank it to 30,000 tonnes. I'm very comfortable with 20,000. What could go wrong?"
Spoiler: Everything.
The moment I tweaked the seal on my training weights, I heard something pop. Multiple somethings. Crack, crunch, squish, ow.
And then…
I collapsed like a wet noodle into the dirt.
"Okayokayokay," I wheezed, face smooshed into the ground. "No big deal, I'll just… use some chakra to pick myself up and then maybe scream into a pillow or four."
Then I heard the most terrifying sound known to man.
A sigh.
And not just any sigh.
Sakura's sigh.
"Oh my god, Naruto," she said from behind me. "Did you really just crush your own skeleton because Gai out-benched you?"
I tried to look up but my neck had apparently joined a strike against gravity.
"…Possibly," I muttered into the dirt.
She crouched beside me, lips twitching in that evil pink-haired medic way she does when she knows I've done something impressively stupid.
"You realize your femurs are shaped like ramen noodles right now, right?"
"Can you fix them?"
"Of course I can fix them," she said sweetly. "But I'm going to lecture you the entire time. And no anesthesia."
"…I deserve this."
She cracked her knuckles. "Yes, you do."
As her glowing green chakra lit up my ruined limbs, I could hear Kurama laughing in my head.
"Next time, just pick up a slightly heavier rock, idiot."
"Next time," I muttered, "I'm adding just 5,000 tonnes."
Sakura narrowed her eyes. "What was that?"
"Nothing. Please don't hit me again."
Lesson learned:
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
And never upgrade your weight seals right after watching Gai-sensei warm up with a battleship.