I wandered.

The desert was viciously cold, myriad daggers of breeze slipping through the fabric of my sweats like my practice kunai through Fugaku's guard. My scarf was icy against my mouth and nose, but I didn't dare take it off for fear of the wind. My hair felt stiff and brittle against my forehead, soaked with sweat by Wind Country's merciless sun and then frozen by its moon. It was almost unbearable, even as I ran, even as my heart pounded scalding blood through my veins.

It would have been easier to stay at camp. We had tents to conserve heat and sleeping bags to seal it in, and- well. My team. Alone in this desert, I could almost believe I was the only one left in the world. Myself, the dunes, and the moon. The chill of the place went deeper than flesh.

The alternatives hadn't been any better, unfortunately. Staying in camp, inserting myself into my teammates' passions and drawing their attention away from what was really important to them? 'Ah, Kushina, I know I don't actually know anything about your clan's culture, but could you teach me their most precious sealing techniques?' Who would do something like that? 'Sensei, good evening. Could you teach me how to summon toads? I know I haven't actually done anything to earn your respect yet, let alone your trust, but I'd really like to know.' My cheeks burned just thinking about it. 'Mikoto...'

No. I wouldn't intrude on Mikoto's inspiration.

I could have been more tactful, sure. I could have edged around the point, dressed it up with offers of assistance or simple curiosity, tried to lead them towards teaching me their hard won skills of their own volition. But that wouldn't change what I was doing, and I had a feeling that Jiraiya would spot my intentions before they'd finished forming in my head anyway. Even Kushina would probably see through the ruse. She had this eerie sort of bead on me when it came to these things. As for Mikoto...

Well, I was wandering.

I'd decided to work on my speed after all. First by solidifying my grasp on sand walking, and then by following Jiraiya-sensei's advice. That had started with a cautious walk away from camp, pulling the roots of my chakra up about me as if they were the hem of a dress and the desert was a flood. Then, when an hour had passed with no sign of another titan beneath the sands, I'd relaxed my control and simultaneously focused it. That's when I'd really started working on perfecting my technique.

There was a hidden depth to this exercise that I was only just starting to breach, something I hadn't noticed until the titan brushed my chakra's roots. The shock of it, the pressure of the massive creature asserting its presence in my mind's eye, impressions that could only have one source- my own chakra. The roots of this deceptively simple technique had done what naught but the most advanced reconnaissance jutsu could do. It had opened my shinobi sense. My chakra's eye.

The sand walk was a sensor technique.

There were countless applications of chakra in this world, infinite classifications and sub-classifications and sub-sub-elemental-shape-nature classifications for techniques that involved the energy of humanity's body and mind. They all had their uses, their times and their places, but for a shinobi there was only one classification that was worth its weight in gold no matter the situation or the cost. A shinobi that knew their opponent trumped a shinobi that didn't ten times out of ten. A sensor always knew their opponent.

Kushina had gotten so upset that Jiraiya-sensei wouldn't just tell us how to walk the sands, accused him of wasting our time and not doing his job, and I'd agreed with her. To an extent, at least. I'd viewed it as a challenge, from sensei to student, to figure it out on our own with only the barest guidance. I'd thought it an invitation to do it ourselves, because one day we wouldn't have a sensei to show us the ropes. Perhaps a little cruel, considering we were in the desert and needed that knowledge now, but ultimately a lesson we needed to learn. If it freed him up from actually teaching us in the process, then that was just a happy coincidence, wasn't it?

I'd been right, too. But that hadn't been the only reason. It hadn't even been the reason. The real reason had been these roots, this awareness. Parroting Jiraiya-sensei step for step and learning how to walk in his shadow would have accelerated the process, but it would have obscured the true value of the exercise. My chakra's eye would have been clouded had I not felt the dunes for myself. Useless.

So many lessons wrapped up in one neat sentence. Jiraiya-sensei was at once nothing and everything like he seemed. All his bravado, all his eccentricities- fronts to intimidate enemies and put allies at ease. But at the same time, not untrue. So many lessons.

"You'd be surprised how much you can do with a little mixing and matching," I murmured, drawing the folds of my tracksuit tighter around myself.

It took me a second to realize I wasn't shivering from the cold anymore. I was excited. All these years I've been so wrapped up in my own hype, my own prodigal skill, that I never thought to do anything with the Academy's teachings outside of mastering them. I looked to my peers, saw they were behind me, and was content with my own pitiful understanding of- of-

Everything.

Jiraiya-sensei had shattered that complacency in a single day. He'd showed us the subtlest applications of chakra, the slightest shifts and contortions to keep dust out of his eyes and moisture in his throat, and when we'd asked for the solution to one petty problem he'd given us it all. It was so obvious now that I knew, because of course all it took was a mixing and mashing of chakra. That's all any shinobi art was, when you broke it down to its basest level. Chakra taking shape. Now that I knew, now that I understood, everything was different. From our first meeting to this arctic night, everything was more. If you'd asked me before today how long I'd known my sensei I'd have said not long. If you'd asked me how much he'd taught me I'd have said not much. But now?

He'd told us so much with the briefest sentence. Just one sentence, less than ten seconds of breath. He's been teaching us for days.

How much had I missed? How much had I passed off as the simple eccentricities of a man that could afford to have them? It was staggering to think about, and I'd been thinking about it for a while.

So I wandered. I crept, walked, ran. I broke the desert in like it was a new pair of sandals, not so much learning as remembering. I knew I would walk the dunes, just like I knew I'd be the fastest man who ever lived.

To be faster than light itself. It wasn't a dream, insomuch as Kushina's desire to make her village proud was a dream. It wasn't like Mikoto's wish to right her clan's wrongs. It most certainly wasn't Jiraiya-sensei's yearning for a world without war. To be fast and to walk the dunes. I didn't desire these things. I didn't wish for them. I certainly didn't yearn for them.

I've dreamed of the future, but never for it.

Dust surged into the air behind me as I broke into a dead sprint, taking the sensor exercise a step further and propelling myself forward more swiftly with every step. I swept across the desert in a blur, my only companion the shadow matching me step for step. I ran without abandon, ran until the the dry, faintly sweet smells of the desert faded into sap and the thick forest smells of Konoha. I closed my eyes, watching my footing with my shinobi's sense, and drifted away from the desert. My pace redoubled, and then redoubled again.

I waited until I'd found my proper rhythm and squeezed every ounce of speed from myself, and then I disappeared into the shunshin.

The body flicker technique was a mystery that had plagued me since I was old enough to augment my muscles with chakra. A D-rank ninjutsu, low on chakra cost and not particularly complex. Any chunin worth their salt could perform the advanced speed technique in a pinch, and a jounin being incapable of it was unheard of. It was the logical next step once the basic chakra exercises had been mastered.

Yet there wasn't a single scroll to be found on it. I would know. I'd scoured the Academy's library top to bottom, as useless as it was - as any shinobi institution in the business of giving away free techniques would be - and come up empty every time. I'd asked my instructors after class, asked my classmates' parents when they came to escort their children home, even queried shinobi on the street. The most I'd gotten from any of them was that there was no set way to learn it. It was one of those nebulous techniques that didn't require any handseals, and as a result there was no general way to teach it. To my frustration, all anyone could ever tell me was that I'd have a feeling for it when the time came.

As it turns out, I've had the pieces I needed to put together to get that feeling for years. I just needed the initiative to put them together.

The chakra I'd infused my muscles with, strengthening them to furthest edge of my limits, shrunk in upon itself. In the blink of an eye my chakra folded in upon itself and burst, carrying me into the kawarimi without any handseals to catalyze the transition.

The body replacement. An E-rank ninjutsu that used advanced chakra augmentation and sleight-of-hand to speed forward, grab an object, and race back to the starting position to plant that object as a dummy before escaping to safety. Masked with chakra smoke, it appeared to the untrained eye as if the user had switched instantaneously with their object of choice. True masters of the kawarimi could even obscure the replacement object with a brief illusion, masking it as themselves to lure the enemy into a false sense of security upon 'killing' them.

That was all it was, though. Sleight-of-hand. Illusion. It was not truly instantaneous. It was just a shunshin, dressed up with smoke and mirrors and handicapped by handseals. That last flaw, more than anything else, was why it was part of the Academy Three instead of the more adaptable shunshin. Because seals were easy. Anyone could shape their chakra to their fingers. Anyone could be slow.

Mixing and mashing, feeling my chakra as an extension of my own desires, that's all I needed to strip the body replacement of its fat. I felt it take hold in my muscles, no handseals necessary, and spur my own natural chakra augmentation along. The wind rose to a sudden howl and my shinobi's sense blurred as I ran faster than I'd ever run before.

I appeared on the other side of a high dune some hundred feet away, stumbled once, and collapsed in a pile of tingling limbs.

I opened my eyes a crack and realized my shinobi's sense wasn't the only one swimming. I raised a bleary hand to two moons, saw my fingers flicker and multiply, and promptly closed my eyes again.

"Yatta," I muttered, leaning back and waiting for the dizziness to pass.

When it did, and when I was steady enough on my feet to mount the sands, I tried again. The results were the same. I worked myself up to a sprint, triggered the kawarimi, and merged it with my own chakra augmentation to form the shunshin. Then I collapsed. I didn't make it noticeably further, and didn't feel any steadier coming out of it, so I tried again. And again. And when I was too tired to stand, I drank from my canteen and watched the moon race at its own pace across the sky. Then I tried again.

I lost track of time, partly due to the rush of finally striking new ground, but mostly because my the constant dizzy spells were addling my senses. I also lost track of my distance from camp, which had been the one thing Jiraiya-sensei warned me about before letting me go. I was so focused on my task that I didn't even notice it when the roots of my chakra brushed against a titan beneath the sands.

I definitely noticed its response, though.

It surged upwards immediately, far closer to the surface than the one Jiraiya-sensei had scared off. I registered it rushing up the length of my chakra roots just in time, throwing myself forward into a dead sprint and triggering the shunshin seconds before it broke through the dune beneath my feet. I came out of the body flicker with about as much grace as every other time, twirling once and falling into the dust. I looked up, squinting through the dizziness, and-

For a moment, I thought I was seeing double again.

It arched up into the sky, taller than Hokage Tower, taller than the Forest of Death's tallest tree, taller than any living thing had any right to be. Hundreds of meters long, with more buried under the dunes, and dozens wide. It blotted out the stars, hovering beside the moon in my vision. Its maw unfurled in three separate segments like the petals of a flower, and inside of it I saw the light of the moon reflected off a thousand wickedly curved teeth.

"Worm," I breathed.

The impossibly large creature swayed back and forth, undulating queerly in the moonlight. Its head turned this way and that, as if it was listening for something, and I saw with a start that it was wondering where I'd gone. I held myself very, very still.

The petals of its maw eventually closed, reverse-blooming into a sharp, armored point. It dipped, breaching the surface of the desert without submerging the entirety of its bulk, and it began to move. I felt the desert as a whole shift beneath me as the sandworm propelled itself forward, cutting through the dunes as a shark's fin. I watched it go with more than a little relief, sagging back into the dust and relishing my survival.

Then I realized the direction it was moving. Away from me, back along the path I'd been walking. Back to camp.

I'll never be able to explain what happened next, no matter how many years I have to think about it.

I came to my feet and whipped a kunai across the desert in one viciously fast motion. My right arm shrieked in sudden agony as muscles and sinew tore, forced to accommodate more chakra than ever before. My kunai soared over the length of the worm, and behind it trailed a length of ninja wire that whipped in and out of visibility as the moon caught its surface. I felt more than saw it catch hold of a chink in the ring segments of armor that coiled along the worm's body. The other end of the wire, which had found itself inexplicably looped into the ring of another kunai, went taut in my hand. That's when I did something incredibly stupid.

I froze a block of sand beneath my feet with chakra, drove my second kunai into it, and in the split second before the worm's momentum yanked it out I leapt up onto the wire and shunshined along its length.

I appeared on the sandworm's head, balanced on the ring of my kunai for a single poised second, and then I slipped off and slammed my head against the crest of its segmented armor. I slumped to my knees, the world tilting oddly on its axis as an obnoxious keening filled my ears. Did worms keen? Did worms make noise at all? What was I doing on top of one?

I bit down savagely on my bottom lip and felt the flesh of it give. The taste of my own blood more than the pain shocked me to my senses, and I scrabbled for purchase on its ringed surface. I felt the desert titan shift and roll as I did, spinning the world around me and doing nothing good for my dizziness. Eyes narrowing, I tensed and forced chakra into my legs until they screamed, leaping to the very top of the worm's head.

I landed on the final ring segment in a crouch, where its head met its mouth, and threw my entire body forward in the most vicious shuriken throw I've ever attempted. A trio of shuriken tore through the air in an impossibly sharp curve, ninja wire trailing behind each one. They curved around the worm's maw just as it began to bloom, wires wedging themselves in the gaps between each petal of its mouth. I tensed, every muscle in my body going taut as I watched the trio of shuriken whistle through the air, arcing towards me with deadly intent.

I waited until the very last moment, until they were within arm's reach, and then I whipped a senbon from my weapons pouch and jerked it up into their path, through all three center rings. Then I pulled three more senbon from my pouch and slid them into the rings alongside the first, forming a bar of shinobi-grade steel as thick around as my thumb.

The harness jerked once as the worm tried to bite down on the ninja wire only to force it into the sensitive flesh between the segments of its mouth. I exhaled, marshaling every ounce of nerve in my fragile human frame.

"From the east." I yanked with all my might. "To the west!" I felt one of the three wires snap, but the other two held strong, digging deeper into the sandworm's unarmored flesh. Then, somehow, impossibly, the worm moved its head west to match my pull.

A wild sort of emotion came over me then, something I'd never felt before that day. It fell over me like a blanket, sweeping the after-effects of the shunshin aside and sharpening my senses to a razor edge. It burrowed into me, down to the veins, and my pulse pounded in response. My lips parted from blood-stained teeth, and words came to me all at once, bubbling up from my core. Sharp and loud, begging to be heard.

"I am Namikaze Minato," I told it, my voice growing in volume and intensity. Never mind its lack of ear drums. Never mind its probable lack of sentience. I had something to say, and by the Shinigami, it was going to hear me. "I am Namikaze Minato, student of the gallant Jiraiya, shinobi of Konoha. I'm the fastest man who will ever live, a legend in the making. But more than all that, I am a member of Team 7." The emotion shifted inside of me, and my grin shifted with it.

"And you will not take that from me, worm!" I draw back on the wire, shouting my effort to the heavens, and the worm threw its head to the west. Shifting, sliding, moving away from camp. Elation and lingering fury warred for dominance in that wild cloud of emotion, and I found myself not caring which won.

That's when the croak hit.

It slammed into me from the side, a wall of thunderous sound and chakra that knocked me clear off my feet. I bounced off the worm's armored hide, the wild emotion rushing out of me along with my senses. I clutched the senbon reins with white knuckles, felt the desert titan jerk and arch up beneath me. I had a second's view of the desert from the worm's vantage up above the stars, a sea of shifting dust and glittering dunes, before it dove headfirst into its depths.

I lurched to my feet as it fell, knowing I had to get away now. I sprinted back along the worm, knowing I was too slow even as I blurred past dozens of armored ring segments. Its speared through the surface like a an explosive tag, and I chanced a glance back to see the desert collapse around the the worm, falling inward for dozens of meters around. A whirlpool of dunes. I knew then, instinctively, that if I couldn't clear that sink in its entirety, I wouldn't be escaping.

So I closed my eyes and threw myself into the shunshin.

I came out of it halfway down the length of the worm, staggering desperately for balance. I bit clean through my bottom lip, teeth clicking sharply together, but it wasn't enough to clear my mind this time. The moon fell out of my sight, tilting up and away from me along with the rest of the sky. I experienced a single, horrific moment of free fall, and then I lost my footing and the worm both. I fell. I fell, and as the worm disappeared into the whirlpool, I disappeared with it.

A flash of desperate light caught my attention as I plummeted into the dune, reaching out to me, screaming for me to grab on. I did, felt ninja wire bite into the palm of my hand, and held on for dear life. The wire jerked and I followed it, slamming back down onto the worm's head. Then the whirlpool swallowed us up, waves of sand washing over me, pressing me to the sandworm with crushing force. I clenched my eyes shut, held my breath, and waited for it all to end.

I felt the moment the last segment of it disappeared into the sands, felt it as vividly as I felt the excruciating pressure of the sand on my body and the lack of air on my lungs. I scrabbled for consciousness, lost my grip on it, and began to fall away from that, too. I allowed myself one last thought before the darkness claimed me.

Damn it, sensei.

---

We broke through.

My eyes flew open, and I latched onto the tail of my fleeting consciousness and jerked back for all I was worth. A deep, shuddering gasp filled my lungs with air, and yet more of the breeze kissed my hair as we rose, worm and shinobi, yet higher into the air.

Except that wasn't right. We'd been burrowing straight down. I'd felt us go down. How could we be back to the surface?

I scrambled with legs made weak by my near-death, searching for footing and finding none. Finally I just stuck my feet to the creature with chakra, pulling myself up the crest of its head one unsteady step at a time. I kept a firm hold on the ninja wire reins, half to keep me stable, half because the wire had been embedded in my palm sometime during the dive. The worm stopped rising when all but a quarter of its mass had been lifted up out of the desert, and then it began to sway. The petals of its mouth bloomed above me in three massive segments, and framed between them I saw the moon.

"Oh," I whispered. "Oh no."

There came a sudden wriggling in my backup weapons pouch, a distressed little warble signalling the presence of a creature that should not have been in the pouch where I kept my killing tools. I flipped the pouch open absently, staring up through the gaps in the sandworm's mouth in a trance. I felt something cold and trembling work its way up my arm, onto my shoulder, and then atop my head. The little toad croaked, a horribly worried sound.

Above us hung a different moon, sporting a hand of craters in place of a rabbit. Below us, reaching from horizon to horizon, a different desert. A different world.

Just like that, huh? I began to laugh, a soft, hopeless sound. My little passenger croaked despairingly.

"Well, there it is," I told it. "The end of my legend."