A strange new life. [Naruto]

[okashihime]

Life and death? By her posture, tone of voice and full body shaking, she wasn't talking about her grandpa's life. Her eyes were haunted and despairing, like the fate of the entire world hanged on the line. It immediately set me on edge. Was this going to be like one of those batshit Naruto movies, like the one where the Byakugan evolved and some lunatic on the moon tried to blow up the planet? There was no Naruto here right now to talk-no-jutsu out of disaster.

"How?" Tsunade's voice cut off my inner spiral. My head snapped back. Tsunade had a don't fuck with me face.

"G-grandpa Kahiko he—" The girl stopped, wringing her hands again. "He knows where the mine is, and these people kept asking him where it was."

Kahiko? That name was familiar. The same as the one who requested the mission, but also, mine? What was she talking about? I glanced at Tsunade, who didn't seem like she was going to ask questions.

"What mine are you talking about?"

More hand-wringing followed my question. She looked already halfway to vanishing into the grassy floor. I decided it was time to change tactics.

"What is your name?"

"I'm Emina."

I rummaged through my pouch and took out another of my lesser good impression kits. These contained far fewer pastries than usual, but I was poor. Out popped a few cupcakes. I offered them to Emina.

She hesitated, then took one.

"I'm Hinata," I said. "That's Ino, Karin, and Tenten. The mean, pretty one is Tsunade."

Tsunade rolled her eyes. "Don't be a brat."

"I-I know her," Emina said, then took a tentative nibble. She shuddered, eyes closed, and a gasp escaped her mouth.

Girls and sweets! Success!

"Nerugui means anything to you?"

Emina was stuffing more of the cupcake in her mouth and seemed to forget we were there. She stopped and turned her wide eyes toward me.

"Finish eating," I coaxed gently.

She nodded, gobbled down the cupcake, but didn't manage to hide a stray tear from her eyes. Damn, that wasn't what I wanted.

"Yes," she said after a while. She seemed calmer. "He's our caravan pet, a ferret. He disappeared a while back."

I looked at my team, got confirmation nods from them. I handed her the bag of coins back. "You don't have to pay us," I said, noting the approving nods from Karin and Tenten, and Tsunade's impassive gaze. "Kahiko hired us to find Nerugui, and last time I saw him, Nerugui was running toward where Kahiko was taken to."

"R-really?" Emina asked, a bag of coins in one hand, a half-eaten cupcake in another, crumbles of sweets on her face.

"But tell me about this mine? Any information you can provide helps."

"I don't know much," Emina said. "I thought the stories were just that, stories."

While Emina was distracted, I rummaged through my seals, passing around the stored chairs. With practiced movements, chairs appeared, then a small table. Emina was so out of it that she didn't even notice when I sat her down and placed a cup with water in her now-empty hand, the cupcake already devoured.

Tsunade's gaze had a hint of incredulity. Yes! I managed to surprise the slug princess! I wanted to cheer, but knew it wasn't the time.

"He told us about our ancestors and the wars they fought and their destruction." She sipped the water, then blinked, looking at the cup like she couldn't understand how it had gotten in her hand.

She shook her head.

"He always speaks about a magic stone hidden inside a mine." She sipped more water. "I thought it was just that, a story, until these people came and demanded to know where the mine was. Grandpa didn't tell them, so they took him."

"And what does this stone do?" I asked, acutely aware of the one stone I had ripped out of the werewolf woman's throat, now stuffed inside my pouch.

Emina shrugged. "I dunno. But all the stories end in tragedy. The stone is cursed. If these people find the mine, something bad will happen."

Aside from Tsunade, the rest of the squad seemed to take the story seriously. Somehow, the sannin had a not-so-well-hidden exasperated look on her face.

I placed a few more sweets in front of Emina. "Can you wait a little while? I need to talk with my team."

Emina looked lost, then nodded.

I placed more sweets in front of her. "We'll be right back."

Then I moved away from the table and waved to my team to follow me. Tsunade also followed, even if I hadn't included her. That was fine; if the woman wanted to help, I wasn't about to refuse the help of one of the sannins.

It came to mind then that Tsunade wasn't as rough as I thought she would be. Aside from the grit from battle, she looked healthy: no dark bags under her eyes, no sunken cheeks, or sloped posture.

She was also the first one to speak once we were far enough. "You actually buy that story? I thought they stopped training shinobi to believe in fairy tales."

I didn't answer. Instead, I dug into my pouch and showed them the stone.

"What is that?" Tsunade asked, extending her hand toward the stone, then she recoiled like something had stung her.

"I took this one from the wolf woman," I said, still holding the thing. "I think this is why they can heal from almost any wound, and where their ninja-like attacks come from." My gaze dropped to the stone in my hands. "She died after I removed it."

---

It took longer to explain the details about these attackers to Tsunade. Some of that stuff she already knew. These people weren't ninjas. They didn't behave like shinobis and had a different attack methodology, relying primarily on their supernatural durability to overwhelm enemies.

I knew they didn't matter much in the grand scheme of things. These attackers were strong against regular people, maybe genin or weaker chunin. Once you learned about their regeneration, brute force was all that was needed to take them out.

As Tsunade proved, any jonin, or god forbid, S-rank shinobi could wipe the field with them. She was the one who killed most of the golems, splattering them into goo with those scary punches.

But what if this mine fell into the hands of a hidden village? I didn't even want to think about the consequences. We were fortunate, in some ways, that these people weren't warriors. Just opportunists that chanced into power and now wanted to find the source of that power.

"Do you have any way to track these people?" Tsunade asked.

I considered her question. If we had time, we could track their trails, or maybe even backtrack to where the fortress had been and follow its path. I don't think time was on our side.

"Your slugs can't do it?" I asked.

Tsunade looked at me like I was crazy. "They're slugs, not dogs."

Right, silly of me to think ninja slugs could do anything other than heal people and fight giant snakes.

I turned to the team. "Do you guys have any idea?"

Tenten shrugged. "Neji was our team's tracker."

Karin just shook her head. "I can't sense them anymore."

Ino also wasn't of any help. "My team always got support from the village when we needed help tracking."

That didn't leave me much choice, even if it gave me ideas.

I bit my thumb until blood seeped out, then placed my hand on the ground. Unlike Naruto, I didn't call out the jutsu name. I didn't know why he always did it. The summoning circle burned cold under my palm, lines of black chakra crawling out like cracks in glass. In a puff of smoke, Kumoko glared at me.

"Snake girl," she growled. Her tail lashed, but it was more of an excited lash than frustrated. Then she sniffed the air, growled louder, and tail lashed, agitated. "You reek even more of a snake," she accused.

Was it because of the sword? I had forgotten about the thing, not wanting to remember I had a snake lodged somewhere inside my body. A shudder ran through me.

"Don't you mind that," I said. I rummaged through the seals and took one of the honey-themed cupcakes. "Here, a gift." I offered.

She gobbled the pastries in two swift bites. Kumoko glared at Ino and Tenten, gave a reluctant nod to Karin, and pretended Tsunade wasn't there. Once she had finished eating, she looked around again, observing everything around.

"Where are we, and what do you want?"

"You always go about how I smell," I said, and Kumoko nodded, the little devil. "Can you track by scent?"

Her tail lashed, offended. "Of course I can."

I turned to Karin. "Can you lend me your bag, just a little?"

Karin walked closer and pushed the bag into my hands. I placed it in front of Kumoko.

The she-devil walked closer. She was small enough to enter the bag, which she did. Not long after, she walked out. "Stinks like a skunk."

"Not a skunk," I chided, "A ferret."

"You want me to track it," Kumoko said. It wasn't a question.

"Can you do it?" I asked nonetheless.

Kumoko raised her nose, sniffed the air. "This way," she said, bounding toward where I'd last seen the ferret.

"Kumoko, wait!" I shouted out after the she-devil. She didn't listen.

For all my bluster, I wasn't keen on dealing with this. I was no Naruto, able to overcome insurmountable odds through the power of bullshit. A glance told me that at least Tsunade was following us.

Well. At least there was that.

 

[okashihime]

Stopping Kumoko from rushing ahead took some effort. Even if we were in a time crunch, we couldn't just pack up and go. We updated Emina on our plans. I collected my table and chairs. Back at the caravan, I left a few more sweets for the kids. We checked for injuries, and only then did we set out to hunt.

With Kumoko sniffing for a trail, we couldn't rush ahead. That might cause her to lose the ferret's scent. The trail she found was a meandering thing. It went generally toward Wind, away from River: messy, erratic, like you'd expect from a ferret. Then there was Kumoko's speed.

I knew from the previous time I summoned her that Kumoko had training as a ninja, but she wasn't fast. Her max speed was barely more than a normal person running, and she couldn't keep that speed for long.

Yes, I knew why now that was the case, but it didn't help much when we were in a hurry.

Offering to carry her almost ended in disaster. The only reason she didn't leave, I think, was because she was under orders to obey me. She was offended, however. So much that I was sure if I pushed the issue, all the progress I had made in the past months would go down the drain.

In the end, saner minds prevailed, or more experienced minds.

"Rushing ahead will only cause problems," Tsunade said after a few moments of intense staring between me and Kumoko. "If the destination is that fortress you mentioned, better we pace ourselves and avoid getting tired."

I understood her very well. I don't even know why I was so anxious about this. Was it because I know how bombastic Naruto's movies could be?

The meandering path continued to lead ever closer to Wind. We pushed forward until the sky darkened, then finally stopped to rest. We slept in shifts. No nightly shenanigans with Ino. Not even a peck. Tragic, really.

Night turned to day, and we started running again.

Bit by bit, the grassy areas and trees gave way to dried earth and cracked soil. It wasn't the desert proper, just the beginning of a barren, broken land. The situation only got worse the more we advanced.

There was something very wrong here, even if I couldn't place my finger on what.

"The chakra," Karin said after we had stopped to rest. "There's no chakra anywhere."

"What do you mean?" Tenten asked.

Karin waved her hands around. "It's like this whole place is dead, no chakra. It's suffocating."

I finished cooking and served the meal.

Tsunade and the others were already seated at the table, waiting. "Take out the map," she ordered, then took a mouthful of food.

I did as requested. Immediately, I saw what she probably already knew. We shouldn't be that far from Wind's border based on our direction, but the area we were in was considered a death zone. Nothing lived here. No animals, not even vegetation. The notes on the map, with small tidbits of information added, provided a few contextual details. Some locals considered the place cursed and avoided it as much as possible.

"A death zone?"

Tenten froze, food halfway into her mouth. "What? Is it dangerous?"

I shook my head. "Not that kind of death zone, just barren land. Nothing lives there, no animals, plants, or anything."

Karin turned to Kumoko. "And that's where the trail leads."

Kumoko kept slurping her meal. Her tail's lashes were halfway between excited and annoyed. Only after the silence grew too uncomfortable even for her, that the she-devil answered. "The skunk went this way."

"Ferret," I corrected, but an annoyed tail lash was my only response.

"You think it has anything to do with this mine?" Ino asked. She had opted out of the broth, gobbling down from her private supplies of cupcakes.

"It would make sense," Tsunade said before I could. "It would also explain why no one else ever found it, if everyone avoids this place."

I couldn't deny the logic made a twisted sort of sense. We weren't even fully into the death zone, and I wanted to leave it already. It was hard to explain, but it was like having sand rubbing against my skin, or that my lips were splitting because I hadn't drunk water in a while. Nothing I could point a finger at exactly, just a general uncomfortable feeling.

It was near the end of the day when something changed.

"Chakra," Karin said, stopping abruptly.

We grouped around her, waiting for the information.

"Why have we stopped?" Kumoko asked, looking from me to the direction we were following.

"Did you find anything?" Tsunade pressed.

Karin didn't seem to be paying attention to us. Her eyes were wide, scanning the same direction we were going. I walked to her, placed my hands on her cheeks, and turned her face until she looked at me.

"What did you sense?"

Karin opened her mouth, shut it, then opened it again. "Chakra, a lot of it."

"Explain, please?" I asked, but I still didn't release Karin's face. She kept trying to look back toward whatever she was sensing.

In the background, I heard Tsunade asking questions, maybe to Tenten. "What is happening?"

Then Tenten's answer, explaining Karin's ability. I paid no mind to that. My attention was on Karin.

"Like Nerugui and your stone, only…" she shuddered. "It's so much more."

The mine, then. "Anything else?" I pressed.

"Lots of shinobi as well."

"Those people with the stone?" I coaxed, turning Karin's face until she was facing me again.

"No, I can only feel four like those, but about a dozen other shinobi, and there's another one," Karin looked behind me, at Tsunade. "He's like Naruto."

I nodded. Most likely she was sensing Gaara of the Desert. What was he doing here? I asked a few more questions, trying to understand everything I could. Then, before I could explain to the team, I had to hold Karin, because she kept moving toward the chakra, almost like she was in a trance.

"We found the enemy," I said, arms wrapped around Karin.

"What's wrong with her?" Tsunade asked, walking closer and placing a hand on Karin's forehead. The redhead didn't even seem to notice it.

"The mine, she found it."

"Then let's move." Tsunade turned without hesitation.

The others followed, but Karin lagged behind, drifting forward like a sleepwalker.

"Wait!" I called, rushing back to her side. "Karin, are you alright?"

She didn't answer. Just kept walking.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop. Moments later, the team circled back.

"What's happening?" Tsunade demanded.

"This chakra always hits her harder than us. I think it's overwhelming her."

"What do we do?" Ino asked, walking closer and checking on Karin.

"Maybe she should stay behind?" I offered.

Tsunade arched an eyebrow. "Alone?"

Yeesh, Grandma. You don't have to test me like that.

"No," I turned to Ino, but she cut me off.

"I'm not staying behind." There was no room for negotiation in her voice.

Tenten stepped forward and took Karin from me. "I'll stay with her."

It felt wrong to leave Karin, but she was in no shape to fight, and we were in a time crunch. We said our goodbyes, then moved.

Now that we had a clear direction to follow, I scooped Kumoko up and settled her on my shoulders. She grumbled, but didn't resist. Progress.

As before, we heard it before we saw it: the grinding of machinery, the roar of chakra-based techniques.

A jagged valley opened before us, scarred and hollow. Embedded in the far rock wall was something that once looked like a palace entrance, now fractured, blasted open. The mobile fortress had crashed against the stone. From the top, what looked like a giant drill broke the stone, giving access to the interior.

Outside, a legion of golems clashed with Suna shinobi. Explosions, sand lances, lightning strikes, and cyclones tore through the battlefield, yet the golems didn't fall, and more and more golem poured out of the fortress.

Off to the side, a wave of sand rose and crashed into a massive, armored figure crackling with lightning. She retaliated with thunderbolts from both hands. Above, the screech of the batwoman.