Naruto - Azure Awakening

It had been a week since Team Shin and Mei returned from their mission.

Kaoru had earned 250,000 ryo from the mission itself, plus an additional four million after dividing the sixteen million he had collected from the corpses. With that, he could finally afford a new house. One he had been eyeing for a while in the Takime Clan's compound.

The house sat on the far end of the district, separated from the other homes by a river. It had a spacious yard, which was perfect for training. That was what mattered most to Kaoru. The house itself was two stories tall, built from wood like the rest of Takimura's structures. Wood handled the ever-present moisture in the air better than stone. Kaoru didn't particularly care about the house itself, but he liked its isolation and the space it provided.

He walked through the streets of Takimura alongside Maki, they were heading toward his new home. He had just bought it for five million ryo. The place was brand new, no one had ever lived in it. Takimura was growing fast, and many freshly built houses were still waiting to be claimed. His old home, which was located in the village center, would be repurposed into a shop and Kaoru would be paid a rent. The Takime clan had moved their compound to a more secluded area when Takimura was first established, leaving the central district open for business.

"Ru, have you invited everyone already?" Maki asked.

Tomorrow was Kaoru's birthday. He was turning eleven and he had always liked numbers with repeating digits. It felt fitting to make this birthday special. That was part of the reason he had bought the house, he wanted to celebrate with his friends in his new home. Only his closest friends and a few important figures were invited. As the next head of the Takime Clan, there were people he had to invite.

"Yeah, I did," Kaoru replied. "Mizuki and Akane are coming later today to help with preparations. Sugeru, Akito, and Yuji should already be there." He shot Maki a mischievous grin. "Have you decided what you're getting me?"

Maki sighed. "Ru, you're not a kid anymore. Your status lets you study pretty much anything in the library, so don't expect a jutsu."

"That's lame," Kaoru grumbled. "If we were in Konoha, Guy and Itachi would've gotten me some awesome jutsus." He was practically drooling at the thought.

Maki raised an eyebrow. "Sometimes I wonder how you got so obsessed with ninja stuff overnight. You were like any other kid one day, then the next, you wouldn't stop pestering me to teach you new jutsus."

She wasn't trying to be deep. She was just making conversation, but Kaoru nearly choked. His enthusiasm instantly vanished.

For a moment, he just stared at her and searched her face.

"What?" Maki asked, surprised by his reaction.

"Nothing. You're just trying to avoid getting me the present I actually want, aren't you?" he teased, forcing himself to brush it off like he normally would.

At this point, he was Kaoru Takime. This life was his and he honestly believed that. 

Maki simply chuckled and waved his question off, then darted toward the bakery to pick up a cake.

Kaoru exhaled slowly.

'Why did I react like that? No one would ever assume that someone else magically woke up in a seven-year-old's body. Besides… I don't even know if that's true. For all I know, I'm just a reincarnation who happened to awaken my past life's memories at seven.'

He had thought about that a lot. Eventually, he reached the conclusion that it didn't matter.

He was happy with his life. And even if he had to keep fighting to protect that happiness, it was worth it.

That was all that mattered.

<<<>>>

The party was a total success, at least for the kids.

The adults, on the other hand, weren't exactly comfortable. Meruem, Orihime, Tereno, and the others kept to the sidelines, watching the chaos unfold with stiff expressions. But since the next generation of Takimura was having fun, they didn't complain. Their job was simple - give Kaoru his gift, stick around for about an hour, and then leave.

Kaoru didn't want them lingering any longer than that. And they knew it.

The only exception was Gumi.

Unlike the others, he was having a blast. He played with the kids, cracked jokes and acted like he belonged there more than any adult in the room. His enthusiasm only made the other adults even more uncomfortable, but Gumi couldn't have cared less.

Every kid at the party got along with Takimura's resident joker, the shinobi who was just a hair's breadth away from becoming a jonin. Gumi loved kids and they loved him back just as much.

But the one enjoying himself the most was Kaoru.

He had received tons of presents. None of them were the jutsus he had been secretly hoping for, but he was still having fun. The attention, the excitement… he was loving it all.

Maki gifted him weight seals to help with his training. Since Yko sold them for 50,000 ryo each, she had spent quite a bit on him.

Akane gave him a copy of the first picture Team Shin had ever taken together.

Shin handed him a stack of books about science. No one knew where he had gotten them, but Kaoru was overjoyed.

Sugeru smirked and passed him a book written by Jiraiya, following it up with a thumbs-up.

And finally, Mizuki stepped forward and handed him a wineskin covered in tons of fuinjutsu seals.

"I thought you might like to carry high-density water with you. This wineskin will reduce the weight so much you won't even feel it."

Kaoru blinked as he stared at the gift in surprise.

He had actually been considering doing exactly that. It would save him so much chakra. He had even planned to commission Yko to make something similar and now Mizuki had beaten him to it.

But more than anything, what made him happiest was the fact that Mizuki had put that much thought into his present.

"Thank you, Mizuki," Kaoru said and smiled brightly as he awkwardly accepted the wineskin. He wanted to say more, maybe tease her, maybe just express his appreciation, but for some reason, the words wouldn't come out.

Mizuki simply nodded, then turned around and walked off before he could say anything else.

'Strange…' Kaoru thought.

But even he wasn't sure what he meant by that.

<<<>>>

Three months had passed since Kaoru's birthday. Three months of constant error, frustration, and borderline obsession.

He had spent every free moment trying to create a technique that wasn't even his idea to begin with. Kaoru was trying to recreate Gaara's Third Eye, an ability he only vaguely remembered from the anime.

'How did it work?'

He wasn't sure. Gaara shaped an eye out of the sand and somehow saw through it. That was all Kaoru knew.

'Did he use his chakra to form an optic connection? Was it some kind of sensory link?'

Kaoru didn't have answers. He only had his own instincts, the fragments of knowledge he did remember, and his own ability - his Suijingan. If Gaara could do it with sand, then logically, Kaoru should be able to do it with water.

But theory and execution were two very different things.

The very first thing he did was try to form a water eye. For someone who could manipulate water particles at will, it was as easy as moving his finger. He easily formed a floating sphere with a pupil-like indentation and even adjusted its density, made it spin, and gave it a glassy, reflective surface by transforming the outer shell into ice. While Kaoru's ability to use ice was still lacking as it required too much chakra and concentration, he could easily create such thin layers.

But when he tried to see through the eye, he got nothing. There was no feedback, not even a brief sensation. It was like staring at a dead object. A pretty, floating drop of water that did absolutely nothing.

'If the problem isn't the shape, maybe it's the chakra flow.'

Kaoru infused more chakra into the water, trying to establish a link. But there was Still nothing.

'Why? What else can I do…'

The Suijingan allowed him to sense water. When he activated it, he could feel every movement in a body of water, every ripple, every shift in pressure. He could even tell the density of liquid around him.

'As it turns out sensing the water and seeing through it are completely different things.'

Kaoru kept analyzing his every step, theory and failure.

'Maybe I'm thinking about this wrong.'

Gaara's Third Eye wasn't an actual eye. It was sand infused with his chakra. That meant the vision had to come from the chakra itself, not the physical construct.

'But if the shape doesn't matter, then why would he waste extra chakra forming it into an eye?'

Kaoru frowned, he had read plenty of books by now. Some on human anatomy, some on the mechanics of sight. He knew how vision worked.

Light entered the eye and then it was transformed into electrical signals. Those signals traveled through the optic nerve straight to the brain, where they were processed into the images people saw.

It was a complex system, but things became even more difficult when the nervous system was not the one transferring the signals.

'Gaara's Third Eye did not have all the parts the eye has. And most importantly it did not have optic nerves. And yet, somehow, it still functioned. Which means…'

Kaoru's gaze dropped to the floating sphere of water in front of him.

'The shape does matter.'

Not in a biological sense, but in a chakra sense. If the eye was just a medium, then shaping it like a real one might help direct the chakra in a way that mimicked actual sight.

'Gaara wasn't wasting chakra, he was using the form to guide his technique.'

Kaoru was now closer to recreating Gaara's Third Eye, but he was still missing a step.

He formed a water droplet, changed its form and tried to establish visual connection. For a second, just for a fraction, he sensed something different. But then the droplet lost shape and fell to the ground.

'Dammit!'

Kaoru sat in his yard as he stared at the damp patch of dirt where his latest attempt had failed. He was getting increasingly frustrated.

'Why did it almost work?'

Kaoru ran through every attempt he had made, comparing his technique to Gaara's Third Eye. No matter how many times he tried to break it down, he couldn't pinpoint the missing piece.

'It's not explained, but when Gaara forms his Third Eye, he somehow establishes a connection and just… sees through it. What am I missing?'

He thought a lot before realizing the crucial detail - seeing. There were two things he overlooked.

He had been so focused on how Gaara created the eye that he overlooked two crucial details - what Gaara was perceiving and how his brain processed it.

Even if Gaara truly "saw" through his Third Eye, the way he perceived things could have been entirely different from normal sight. It was possible he wasn't seeing in a traditional sense at all. Instead, he could have been sensing his surroundings and his brain was simply translating that information into visuals - just like how a real eye translated electrical signals into images.

Which led Kaoru to his second realization.

Gaara's method of sensing or seeing might not even be useful to him.

'I have the Suijingan.'

It wasn't just a dojutsu, it was a tool that allowed him to perceive things others couldn't. If he applied the Suijingan's ability to this technique, he wouldn't just create a copy of the Third Eye. He could turn it into something better.

Instead of a single eye that provided vision from one angle, he could make a radar - one that detected everything in a circular range.

The potential was enormous, but if he went down that path, he'd have to change the technique's foundation entirely. The eye shape, which helped direct Gaara's chakra, wouldn't be useful for Kaoru's version.

'Should I stop trying to recreate the Third Eye and work on my own version instead?'

Or should he finish copying the Third Eye first to gain an immediate combat advantage, and then gradually evolve it into something new?

Kaoru made his decision.

He would recreate the Third Eye first. That way, he could refine the concept and make it useful in battle while slowly developing his own variation over time.

Kaoru stood up and straightened. He wasn't feeling frustrated anymore and he was about to resume his training when suddenly Remi landed in his yard.

"Good afternoon, Kaoru-san."

Kaoru turned to face him. Remi was an elite chunin of the Takime Clan. He was often tasked with delivering messages. He had earned that role because of one valuable skill - he knew how to keep his mouth shut.

"The Takime Clan is holding an emergency meeting in thirty minutes. Attendance is mandatory."

Kaoru gave a small nod, and without another word, Remi disappeared.

'An emergency meeting…'

Ever since his speech at his first council gathering, he had been included in every major and minor decision within the clan. Not because he had any real power, but because they saw his potential.

He was still learning. Anime knowledge alone wasn't enough to grasp the depth of clan affairs or the complexity of real-world politics.

'For grandma to call an emergency meeting, something serious must have happened.'

Kaoru exhaled, he was visibly nervous.

'Is Takimura in trouble?'

**

A/N -

I think the concept of Kaoru's "Third Eye" is pretty interesting, but if you have any technique suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comments - just nothing too OP like Susanoo xD

Small Request – If you're enjoying the story, consider gifting Power Stones to help it reach more people, it would help me a lot!

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