Sometimes, it didn't feel real. The notion that he'd come this far over the st few months felt as if he were in a deep, profound hallucination, or a dream. Anytime those thoughts cropped up, however, Tobio could only remember the moments of exacting pain, hardship, and strife that felt realer than anything in his shattered memories of his life before could muster up.

  With each passing day, he was becoming someone new. Formed by the mutited experiences of some soul from another world, and the man he was growing into. It was frightening, to be sure, and Tobio was still quietly scared of the future sometimes…

  …But for now, he wasn't going to turn his head away from the chaos that was coming. The only thing that was left to do was face it head-on and see himself through the tumult to come.

  Walking out to the same training field that Team Eleven always used, he was surprised to find himself being the st one present for once. Tekuno was talking quietly with Ami and Hibachi, but the conversation drifted off as the three of them noticed his approach.

  "Mornin'," Tekuno greeted. "There's our semi-finalist."

  "Don't I still have to beat another person before I qualify for that title?"

  "It's close enough," his sensei shrugged, and Tobio would admit, it was close enough.

  Gncing between the group, he saw a flicker of something frustrated brush across Ami's face, before her features smoothed out. Hibachi, however, seemed about as casual as ever, hands shoved into his pockets. "What was going on before I showed up?" Tobio asked, gncing between his teammates.

  "We were talking because…" Ami trailed off, lips pursing as she obviously searched for the words, jaw working back and forth.

  "Because Tekuno-sensei is focusing on training you for this month," Hibachi bluntly stated, ripping off the bandaid, and getting a mean gre from Ami for it. "What? It ain't a huge deal, Tobio had to have seen this coming from miles away."

  Not particurly, no. Tobio could see how it made sense, however, as he blinked and thought it over. "I guess…since I'm progressing in the exams, and fighting Gaara, you think I'll need the extra training?" He asked, gncing over at Tekuno gaugingly.

  "That's an understatement," the older man grimly stated. "You're going up against Gaara of the Sand, and they've got…a reputation. One that means I want you in your tip-top shape."

  "It's fine," Ami said, smiling at him in a way that didn't entirely reach her eyes. "We…lost, fair and square. So you have to go ahead of us and beat that raccoon-eyed Sand-eater, and get to Chūnin."

  "I'm not going to compin about being able to coast at Genin for a while longer," Hibachi sighed, looking not that miffed about it.

  Ami turned to face him, expression thunderous. "You're also a zy bastard that doesn't like responsibility!"

  "...And?"

  She gave a final scoff before Tekuno came back into the conversation. "It isn't as if I'm leaving them on their own when it comes to training regimens. I've organized appropriate teachers, called in some favors, and written them up some training pns. They'll both be fine for a month."

  "I mean, if you're sure…" Tobio murmured, gncing back over at his friends.

  "I am," his sensei confirmed.

  "Then…we're square," the boy nodded, looking a little unsure. He had a month, though, to prepare for fighting Gaara. Frankly, he wasn't sure if he could totally contend with Gaara by the end…but by god, Tobio was going to do his best to prepare for the Sunagakure maniac himself.

  "Let's get started." Or so Tobio wanted to do, before a new text popped up in his vision.

  [HIDDEN QUEST COMPLETED: RECEIVE A B-RANKED BOUNTY.]

  [REWARD: 1x MODERATE DOMINION OR ARTIFICE PERK ROLL.]?

  Tobio didn't know whether to be offended, afraid, or excited. On one hand, he was a little fttered to receive a bounty at all. It might be dangerous to be sure, especially if someone like Kakuzu took an interest in him at this moment. Yet on the other hand…they only put him at B-ranked? That was a little offensive. Tobio felt like whoever gave him a bounty should have erred on the side of caution and given him an A-ranked bounty.

  "...Let's get started, after I take a leak," Tobio quickly amended, getting a gag from Ami and snorts from Hibachi and Tekuno.

  "Fine, fine, go on and take your break. I'll see these two off, and we can get started after," Tekuno agreed, smiling faintly at Tobio's words.

  Giving his friends a nod, he ambled off into the woods, a far enough distance away in case he got any squirrelly results from the System. And then, it was a matter of deciding which he needed to take.

  Out of the two, he had the least amount of Artifice perks, though he'd also gotten his sword out of those rolls. So…there was every option for something just as good to appear from them. But on the flipside, the same could be said for Dominion as well, seeing as he'd gotten a lot of extremely useful capabilities out of it.

  Choosing between the two perks was never easy, but at the end of the day, Tobio figured that he might as well just dive right in. The move to go for would just have to be something like Dominion. As a category, it had always come through for him before. There was no reason to try not to gamble again for something good.

  "Here we go…"

  Thus, his soul cast out into the blind eternities, and dragged out three different options as normal.

  Variation PhantasmFate/ExtelThe mana in the air here is mutable, far more easily changed than the reality on Earth. Things impossible to achieve in Gaia's bounds become much more probable within the lunar shell. One of those such things is an alteration of sorts, one you can apply to your own abilities. Your Noble Phantasms, as well as other abilities or magic you may have, can be rapidly and easily expanded or defined in their target number or area of effect. An Anti-Unit Phantasm that strikes a single person in the heart could be expanded to an Anti-Army effect able to attack many targets at once. The trade-off is a lowered level of power, matching the expansion in targets. That heart-striking Phantasm would have to lose the attached fate-bending effect to work on such a rge scale. Exchanging power for scal,e but the reverse also applies, letting you narrow the effective range of your Phantasms and abilities to greatly increase their power or even generate entirely new effects. It takes only a few moments to adjust these things, enough to be effective in battle, and their costs otherwise remain the same. While there is no theoretical limit to the expansion or narrowing limit, both do reach a point where the power thins out enough, or the focus is so small that they are impractical against most targets.Fairy HandmaidsLegend of Zelda: Four SwordsNo Fairy of rank is ever without a lesser Fae to command and lord over, and while your rank is still up in the air, you now hold command over a small number of other Fairies. You may choose between eight lesser Fairies, the kind that the heroic sort would typically seek out for healing, and three Servant Spirits that would assist said hero on his journey. These lesser Fae are a step above their brethren, able to heal their contractor many times over what the normal limit would be, saving their life twice, perhaps even three times before returning to your side. The Servant Spirits, on the other hand, are incredibly wise and both capable and willing to offer advice, something any prospective hero would benefit from immensely. While their healing magic is minimal, they are instead capable of inducing a state of hyper focus in their contractor to assist them in a fight.Red King SyndromeMiraclemanYour subconscious mind recognizes the false realities around you, and it will do everything it can to free you. Your mind adapts to see through all but the most convincing dreams, illusions, and virtual worlds. Escaping is as simple as opening your eyes once you realize where you are, unless there's something specifically blocking you from waking up or leaving the dream. Not even being a figment of a dream of a dying man's fantasies could contain you forever, although you still need time to adapt and realize the reality of the situation. If the fictional universe colpses with you still inside, it'll be as lethal as it ever was.Okay.

  These were a little weirder than he usually expected, but they were all still useful. Just less fshy than he'd been expecting?

  Variation Phantasm was the fshiest of course, and the most directly useful for his purposes when it came to combat. While initially Tobio had been turned off by presuming it only worked on Noble Phantasms, the reality was that it worked on any of his supernatural abilities. It was the type of perk that would allow him to theoretically do some silly things with his existing moveset.

  For example, adjusting his jutsu so they had narrower ranges at the benefit of more power in those ranges. Maybe tinkering with making buffs that would otherwise be useful for himself applicable at range, though weaker for doing so. Being able to modify them on the fly would probably be useful well into the future, let alone if he activated Shikai, Bankai, and his Bance Breaker.

  Fairy Handmaids proved different in that it'd provide underlings for him to direct for the first time, a true sapient pull from the System. That was a first, but he could easily see the value in doing so as well. Theoretically, he could hand them out as aids for his allies, and just call them 'summons', as much as that would be bending the truth in every sense of the word. But the benefits of doing so were invaluable.

  Eight different fairies that could heal their contractors multiple times, before there would presumably be some kind of cooldown. Tobio felt like he could theoretically hoard them all himself, but if he did that, he'd feel singurly awful. Especially if there was a situation where he could have saved someone's life, or healed a friend, if he hadn't hoarded them all. And there was some odd sense to the perk that there were…limitations, perhaps, to the ability, that would keep him from just reusing it over and over again personally.

  Whereas the three Servant Spirits might be good to teach and advise Ami and Hibachi, so they could keep up with him. Or, even better yet, give them heightened combat capabilities. It'd be dependent on what they did in the practical sense, outside of the text of his perk.

  Red King Syndrome served as the st perk for him to consider, and honestly, one of the easiest to gauge. It was a massive boost to Genjutsu resistance, it seemed, or at the very least, breaking out of them. Whether that was something he wanted to take right now, or train himself, was up in the air.

  Considering the most powerful genjutsu boiled down to "Dare you enter my magical realm", he could see the immense value in being able to break out instantly.

  Having given all of the abilities their due notice, it wasn't as if he didn't think any of them could be useful in their own right. But at the end of the day, Tobio felt as if the only option he was leaning toward wholly was Red King Syndrome. The ability to no-sell genjutsu, and most magic pink eye specializations, just couldn't be overstated. It was one of his major weaknesses, and with it taken, it felt as if there was a weight off his shoulders. In a very literal sense, too, looking out into the world with it resting inside of him…Tobio knew without a shadow of a doubt that he wasn't in some sort of genjutsu at that moment. The world he was living in, had been living in for months, was real.

  This wasn't a hyper-advanced simution, so realistic that it beggared belief. Everyone that he'd met so far was real, and this world with all of its glorious food, incredible friends, and bloodshed, was also a fact. It was…a relief, more than he would have thought it would be.

  For now, however, Tobio had some training to get back to. He had a month to prepare to survive Gaara's bloodlust. Oh, and the invasion of the vilge by two different factions of ninja.

  By whatever means necessary.

  Once Ami and Hibachi were gone, it left only Tobio and Tekuno-sensei alone at their typical training grounds. His teammates had their assignments, and teachers from owed favors Tekuno had called in. So now it was just the two of them to set his training regimen for the month in order.

  "First things first," Tekuno started, as he settled his hands on his hips. "If we're being incredibly blunt about it, you don't have many weak points. Maybe genjutsu, but your mind is remarkably strong to begin with."

  "Thank you," Tobio smiled, pleased his sensei had noticed.

  "Beyond that, you have an enormous amount of jutsu for a Genin that had six months of experience and no Cn backing; you're stupidly strong, fast, and durable."

  Tobio chuckled softly, raising a hand. "Sensei, please. If you keep complimenting me, I'm going to blush."

  Rolling his eyes at Tobio's words, he shook his head softly. "Gaara's fighting style is, unfortunately, not entirely easy to contend with for a melee fighter. On the flip side, you are very durable, and if you can pull out that Chakra Mode of yours, that…might bance the pying field."

  With a huff, his sensei tapped his foot on the ground lightly, lips pursed in pensive thought. "So this means you've got the choice of what you'd like to focus on this month."

  Tobio frowned, giving it some thought, and pondering over his vulnerabilities. "For starters, I'd like to continue with swordpy."

  "Expected. I'll be able to handle that, or Shirokumo, depending on what you want to learn. What else?"

  "Fuinjutsu would be cool. Do you think I could try to spring for reverse summoning? Maybe try for a summoning contract?"

  That had his sensei more reticent, before giving a slow nod to the boy. "It isn't…impossible, I guess. I'm leery of sending you off like that, though. But you're tough enough to survive…just about anything they might throw at you, long enough to get away if it's a bad situation. Moving forward…"

  "Bloodline techniques, honing what I've got, stuff like that, maybe?" Tobio suggested.

  To which Tekuno-sensei could only nod. "I don't think it's a bad idea, if you think there's still room to grow there. Did you have some ideas on what specifically?"

  "Maybe that blood control ability, or…some other stuff, I'll figure it out when the time comes."

  "Mm. That's it?"

  "No. I was actually thinking of starting a little meditation," he sheepishly admitted.

  Tekuno blinked in surprise. "Really?"

  "Really," Tobio nodded, thinking of his sword. He felt as if he might genuinely be at a breakthrough point with it.

  What he hadn't been expecting was the wide smile from Tekuno. "I'm genuinely pleased you picked that. It's not the most common way of growing the spiritual energy reserves, but useful. A banced, healthy mind will always help produce more chakra than an unbanced one." Tobio didn't know if that was true, considering the number of powerhouse lunatics that existed in the world, but he'd take it as a given for the average practitioner of chakra.

  "Lastly…I'd like to try and spring for finishing that cooperation jutsu we've been working on with the others."

  "That's…" Tekuno frowned, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "Are you sure that's what you want to continue?"

  "It might be tricky, but I think it's genuinely worthwhile to continue modifying and tinkering with."

  With a pause, he shrugged. "I'm sure they'll be eager for the distraction, so sure."

  "Let's start with meditation, before you get to beating the hell out of me."

  Chuckling, Tekuno nodded. "Fine by me. Let's find a nice pce to settle down and practice."

  It turned out there was actually quite a bit that Tekuno understood about the practice of meditation. He was no Fire Monk, but the general mindfulness and resting position was something that Tekuno had picked up just as a matter of increasing his chakra reserves at first. When he found that it was more useful for steadying his mind, he continued with it to now.

  Being run through steady patterns of clearing his mind of distractions, while his bde rested in his p, was useful. Energy Sense was wholly turned toward it while he tried to listen. Slowly but surely, over the coming sessions of meditation during the month, sinking into an inky bck abyss.

  Or so it felt like, as the meditation sessions went on at the beginning of their days. Slowly but surely, with the rising sound of waves crashing against a beach, and a cool feeling radiating from his sword. Right up until he opened his eyes, and was somewhere new. It was a beach, the same one at night, with a massive moon in the sky, and cool waves crashing against the shore. Peaceful, in a manner of words, even if he felt a little naked underneath the light of the celestial body in the sky.

  "I suppose thou must have mustered up some manner of skulduggery to cmber inside of my space like this…"

  The feminine, unfamiliar voice startled him, as he turned around to look at the source…

  Seated before him was a slight, petite figure, still a little taller than him, but not by much. With skin of a pale, long, bck hair, and piercing purple eyes, she stared at him with lurid eyes. With an almost imperious and haughty expression on her face, two horns jutting forth from her forehead, and her circlet resting on her head. Nearby, a little sake dish and a rge bottle rested in the sand next to her.

  Tobio could only stare, mouth open, before the first thing that came to mind spilled forth.

  "Why is there a sassy brat in my soul?"

  For a few pregnant seconds, nothing happened save for the gradual darkening of her cheeks. That, and her trembling, as she grit her teeth at him. "…The audacity!"

  "Listen, it's not my fault, I wasn't expecting a petite girl in my soul, okay? I was expecting someone more…" He trailed off, raising his hand up and down. "Someone more manly, y'know? Like Dante, from Devil May Cry. Or Vergil, from Devil May Cry."

  "Neither of them is a notorious masculine icon, you fool."

  "That's a lie! They're peak masculinity!" He barked, properly incensed. "How would you know?"

  "I'm you!" She paused, lips quirking to the side. "Well, a fraction of you. An expression of you."

  "But what about me is a scantily cd Oni brat resting on a beach that looks suspiciously like Rukia from Bleach?"

  She shrugged. "That's something you're going to need to discover for yourself."

  Fuck. This was the first conversation he'd ever had with his sword spirit, and Tobio was already getting a headache.

  "…And why do you get to have booze?!"

  "I'm a reflection of you, like the light of the moon to sunlight," she smugly replied, taking a sip from her dish. "It goes without saying that I'd have what you ck. Intelligence, grace, cunning…"

  Tobio could smell the sake from there. It smelled real, even if his brain logically knew it was fake mind booze. Yet even so, he wanted it.

  "Wait," he blinked. "Cunning is just like evil smarts."

  The Oni paused before giving a soft noise. "Huh?"

  "No, no, it's like how Slytherins are cunning, while Ravencws are smart."

  She scoffed. "That can't possibly be true. You're lying. Cunning has some positive virtues, surely."

  Tobio shrugged. "You're the one sitting in my soul, just watch my memories of Harry Potter or something."

  She looked as if she didn't want to concede the point, gncing away briefly. "Thou may have a point."

  "...Don't go back to the old-timey talk. I know you can speak normally!" If his sword spirit was doing this exclusively to sound Chuuni, Tobio was going to lose it.

  "Whatever dost thou meaneth? This is the way I speaketh." The smug levels on this Oni brat were off the chain. What did he do to deserve this? Besides, kill all those people in Takigakure, but that was self-defense.

  Closing his eyes, Tobio pinched the bridge of his nose to alleviate the growing headache in his skull. Could you get a headache in your soul? It felt as if he was on the verge of one, the more he talked with her.

  "You're being awfully chatty. Does this mean you're willing to hand out your name for me?"

  When the conversation started to drift toward what her name was, her smirk disappeared instantly. In its wake was a much more stern and imperious expression. "Dost thou believe you've earned such a boon?"

  Damn. Tobio knew it was too good to be true that he'd achieved jinzen to some degree, but hadn't wholly communed positively with his spirit. Or at the very least, come to an accord right off the bat. "No. What if I ask pretty please?"

  Fluttering his shes at her, the corner of her mouth twitched, but her frown stayed in pce. "Thou hast not gone through the prerequisite emotional and spiritual development to call upon mine name."

  That got Tobio to frown right back at her. "I mean, I'd always thought of myself as someone retively stable, emotionally. The part about my soul not being developed makes sense, but I'm calling cap on the other shit."

  She looked as if she were physically in pain. "Cease thy cancerous zoomer-speak."

  "But where else will I find someone who knows what the fuck I'm talking about!" He excimed, throwing his arms up, as he stomped in the sand. "You know how brutal it is to not be able to use modern sng or references? I'd be sying out there if I could pull stuff from the before."

  A slow exhale came out of her, as she crossed her arms before her slight chest. "That is part of what you need to accept."

  "...An inability to reference cssic movies?" Because he'd live if he could never reference Shrek again, even if it'd hurt him a little spiritually.

  "No. That your old life, in its totality, is beyond your reach now and forevermore." There was a graveness to her tones that made him flinch, even as he had to acknowledge that she had something of a point.

  It didn't matter how much he seemed like he'd been fine on the surface, or had accepted his new lot in life. The reality was that Tobio…still had doubts, from time to time. Still wondered if he'd left someone behind in that morass of spotty memories. A wife, a child, parents, siblings.

  Deep down, there was still a longing to find out the truth of why he'd been fused with the original young Tobio. Was it just a quirk of fate, a cosmic chance, or was there some deeper meaning to it? Maybe he'd find out one day.

  Or maybe it didn't matter. But if that was the case…his heart wasn't ready to accept that as an answer. Not yet.

  "Okay. Maybe I've got some growing to do there," He admitted, even if admitting such had him a little glum. "...How malleable is the space inside of here, anyway?"

  "Technically, nothing thou sees is real," she responded, gesturing around to the moon hanging with an eerie stillness in the sky, to the waves crashing against the shore. "It's a function of thou's mind, body, and soul, creating something thou can interpret through your qualia."

  He hummed softly at her words, lips pursing together. "Does that mean we can watch movies in here?"

  Arching a slender eyebrow his way, Tobio's sword spirit waved her hands, and shimmering into sight was…an extremely anachronous television. Seeing as Tobio had not seen a ftscreen the entire time he'd been present in Konoha, it was a little jarring to look at a monitor with no junk in the trunk. "What do thine thinketh I do when not witnessing your idiocy?"

  "What do you get on that thing?"

  The arrogance was off the charts as she smirked at him. "Everything you remember from your old life."

  With Depths of the Mind, that was quite a bit of media. That said, there was a difference between remembering something, and having the enjoyment of sitting down and watching it. They weren't the same thing at all, no matter how much someone might have argued they were.

  Huffing softly, he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Well, if we can't exchange names, let's just rex for now. Have you seen the Witch from Mercury Gundam yet?"

  With the most heinously self-satisfied expression he'd ever seen, she smirked at him. "I prefer Reconguista in G. Like a real intellectual."

  Ah. So they could never be friends. It was a shame to discover that so early, as the two of them immediately devolved into bickering over the merits of the Aerial Gundam vs the G-Self.

  As far as the meditation training for the month went? Tobio was tentatively willing to call it a win, at least as he'd progressed to actually talking with the spirit inside of his bde. Now, if he could correct her erroneous opinions on which Gundam was the best one, maybe they'd be actually getting somewhere.

  Oh well. Nobody was perfect.