(PU) A NEW ARC

Naruto leaned back in the uncomfortable chair shoved into the corner of his tiny office, legs propped lazily on the desk, and eyes half-shut. It was late, long after the last bell had rung, and all of his students were already home. His clones had finished tidying the mats, locking away the training gear, and even wiping down the chalk where he’d scrawled out the latest diagrams. 

For once, Winslow was quiet. Sure, he could hear the whirr of the janitor’s vacuum down the hall, but there was little else. He’d even prepared the lesson for his next class already, so for the first time in weeks, he allowed himself the small luxury of resting.

He should’ve known it wouldn’t last.

The knock on his door wasn't typical of Winslow, neither the impatient pounding of a student, nor the quick rap of an administrator looking for an excuse to scold him. It was done once, conveying a certain quiet authority he hadn't seen from anyone on Earth Bet yet. And with it came the familiar prickle at the back of his neck. 

Naruto’s eyes narrowed slightly, though his face stayed neutral. From the person behind the door, he felt that same strange tang of energy he’d learned to recognise around Sophia and every other parahuman he’d come across in this world. 

“Come in,” he called, his voice intentionally casual even as instincts whispered threat.

The door swung open.

The woman who entered didn’t belong here—not in this poor excuse for a school, and definitely not in his cramped office with its cracked blinds and shitty furniture—and every part of her presence made that fact clear. She wore a tailored black suit that seemed like it had never known a wrinkle, her dark hair was pinned back, and her expression was cool and collected in a way that made even Itachi Uchiha look warm by comparison.

Her gaze swept the room once, cataloguing every detail—from the half-clean chalkboard filled with random theories he was still researching, to the cliche taped-up posters about discipline, and finally, the faint scuff marks on the floor from practicing jutsus—until she settled on him.

“Mr. Uzumaki,” she said, and it wasn't a question.

Naruto didn’t need her to introduce herself either. He knew power when he saw it.

“Rebecca Costa-Brown.” He said, dropping his feet from the desk and sitting up straight. His grin came automatically, wide but not unfriendly. “Chief Director. Guess that makes me important, huh?”

She didn’t smile. Her eyes narrowed a fraction instead, stripping him bare with its intensity. “You knew I was here.”

“Only the step before the knock,” he admitted with a shrug. “But that energy—” He tapped his temple. “It is the same as parahumans. So unless I missed your footsteps in the hall, you teleported in.”

One eyebrow lifted, just slightly. “You’re perceptive.”

“Perceptive enough to know this isn’t a social visit.”

“Hardly.” She stepped further inside, closing the door behind her. Only the soft click of her sharp heels against the tile was heard, but the silence wasn’t awkward. If anything, it seemed almost calculated, as if to subtly disarm him. “You’ve drawn attention, so I decided it was best to speak to you before certain…less diplomatic forces became involved.”

Naruto leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and grin shifting into the kind that didn’t reach his eyes. “Because a few kids are picking up a little extra stamina? A bruise or two fading faster than it should? Sounds more like training benefits than a world-ending crisis to me.”

“This world has an established order, Mr. Uzumaki,” Rebecca said evenly. “Powers do not emerge outside of specific circumstances. Yet here we are, with half a dozen students suddenly displaying…abilities.”

“Abilities.” Naruto repeated, rolling the word in his mouth. “That’s a funny way to describe learning how to land without snapping your wrist.”

Her silence said she wasn’t fooled.

Naruto sighed, scratching at the back of his head. “I knew this was coming. You people don’t miss much, huh?”

“We can’t afford to.” Her tone softened by the smallest fraction. “I need to understand what you’re doing, what you’re teaching them, and more importantly, how far this can go.”

His grin faded into something calmer. “I’m teaching them how to find a little strength in themselves when the world’s been trying to beat it out of them. The rest? That’s on them, and I couldn't be more proud.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” she said quietly. “Even if your intentions are… genuine.”

Naruto leaned back again, hands folded behind his head, but his eyes stayed locked on hers. “So what’s the plan? You gonna shut me down? Slap on some cuffs and try to arrest me?”

“That would be the conventional choice,” she admitted. “But convention hasn’t been enough for a long time.”

That made him blink. He’d expected hostility and had been braced for a fight, or at least a demand to stop. But agreement? That was new.

Rebecca continued, her voice cool but edged with something indescribably weary. “Even with thousands of capes across the globe, even with agencies dedicated to managing them—some even pulling strings behind the scene—we have never truly been able to defeat our greatest threats. At best, we endure.”

Naruto thought of the Endbringers she didn’t name, of the terror that seemed baked into the bones of the people, and the slow decline into extinction he could sense about the world. 

At that moment, in a way, he understood her more than words could explain. 

“And now,” she went on, “I see a teacher in a failing school cultivating something wholly new. Something that doesn’t fit into the categories we know. It would be irresponsible of me not to…encourage it.”

Naruto chuckled, scratching at his whisker-marked cheek. “Encourage me, huh? You make it sound like you want me to open my own academy.”

She didn’t smile. “If you can train a handful of students, you can train more. If you can make them stronger, faster, harder to kill… then perhaps you can give us what parahuman powers haven't yet: an edge.”

Naruto leaned forward. “You want me to scale up and turn Winslow into a factory for chakra warriors.”

“If it works.”

He let that hang for a moment before shaking his head firmly. “Not yet.”

A frown tugged at her composure momentarily. “Why?”

“Because they’re kids,” Naruto said simply, his tone softening protectively at the thought of Sophia, Taylor, Greg, and the others. “They’ve been beaten down, written off, and treated like garbage. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna throw them straight into the fire. They still deserve to be kids for a little while longer.”

For the first time, something faint cracked through her facade—doubt, or perhaps recognition—like she’d expected pragmatism and instead found something softer. Then, it was gone, replaced by the same impassive calm.

Naruto leaned back again. “I’ll start small with a few students at a time. I don’t even know how this world’s gonna take to chakra yet, so it’s better to see if it sticks before we go big. Otherwise…” He rubbed his chin. “Otherwise, maybe it’s just a temporary boost.”

Rebecca studied him for a long moment, dissecting him with her eyes, before finally nodding once. “Small steps, then. But understand this, Mr. Uzumaki: we are watching. If what you’re cultivating proves viable…we will not stay small for long.”

Her words lingered like a kunai pressed against his throat, then the air shifted as a shimmering portal bloomed open behind her. She turned crisply, heels clicking once more, and stepped through it.

The portal vanished, leaving only the faint weight of her presence behind.

Naruto let out a long breath, running a hand through his hair. The grin that came next was crooked, smaller than usual, and tinged with something sadder.

“Guess step two’s here already.”