Chapter 9: On The Way To Land Of Demons

The beginning of the trip went on in dead silence for several hours, which was probably the best thing for them. However, it quickly got on Akane's nerves. The fact that she was grumpy about something and it was a rather warm day did little to make her feel better. She didn't want to complain and appear immature, but she felt she had to do something soon.

'Well, I can at least take care of the heat.' She quickly thought. Being careful in case anyone was watching, she faked a hand sign and used her transformation skill, only this time on just her clothes. Normally this was difficult for a ninja, but fortunately when Tsunade had her jumpsuit made it was specifically mended with this in mind. Therefore, Akane could change her outfit without having to apply the transformation technique to her whole body with it and waste chakra. So after a brief second Akane's clothes changed from a red-and-black jumpsuit to a casual outfit consisting of a red t-shirt with a black skirt, allowing her to cool off some.

Sakura and Lee saw this and were impressed. "Wow. How'd you do that?"

Akane just shrugged nonchalantly. "Just one of my talents."

"I see. Anyway, that looks so much better than what you were wearing before." Sakura commented. "Why do you wear that thing anyway?"

"Because Baa-chan gave it to me and I think it looks good."

"You are definitely your father's daughter." The pink-haired medic said to herself.

Akane turned to face said medic with a confused look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means what it sounds like kid. Now focus on the road ahead."

Akane sighed and faced forward again. 'I just don't get her.'

More time went by with little fuss. They didn't stop all day even to eat for lunch, which was mostly ration bars made to be eaten on the go anyway. Ichi pulled out an umbrella to give himself some shade, Dansue hummed softly to amuse herself, and Sakura and Lee made light conversation with each other, but mostly nothing else happened until it was time to camp for the night.

When the sun started to set, everyone decided to call it a day and relax. Sakura untied the horses from the wagon and tied them up to a nearby tree while Lee placed some blocks under the wagon wheels to keep it in place. Naruto and Hinata stepped outside with their son, anxious to stretch their legs a bit. Noburo practically collapsed on the ground while Akane just sat down slowly, wincing because of her tired muscles.

"Enjoying your first mission outside the village?" Hanabi asked playfully.

"Not bad so far." Ichi answered as he got down off the roof with the help of his sister.

"Can't complain." Noburo stated. 'It's boring, but better than what I used to do.'

"Technically it's not my first, but so far so good I guess." Akane told her aunt.

"What was your first?" Noburo and Ichi asked.

Akane looked at her parents for a moment before turning back to her teammates. "Sorry, I kinda promised not to talk about it."

"Hey Akane-chan, can you hold your brother for a bit while I get dinner started?" Hinata asked.

"Sure Okaa-san." The redhead answered as she got up and took Jiraiya from her arms. "Miss me Rai-chan?"

"Fox?"

"Sorry otouto, not now. Bad idea." She didn't really want to do that game in front of everyone. She'd be too embarrassed.

"Why?"

Akane sat down next to Naruto. "Can you entertain him?"

"What do you think I was doing inside the wagon all day? I'm beat."

"Wow, the hokage beaten by a three year old? Wait until I tell everyone." Sakura said cheerfully.

"Just wait until you have a kid then tell me how much energy you have." Naruto replied.

"Sorry Naruto, but I'm not in a hurry for that. Tsunade-sama showed me plenty of things about pregnancy and birth years ago. I'm in no hurry to experience that."

"It does have it's downsides, no question, but I believe the result is definitely worth it." Hinata stated while she pulled out some food from their storage scrolls.

"Want some help?" Dansue asked. "I'm a pretty decent cook."

"I suppose." Hinata answered kindly. "I'm going with some simple stew as the main course. Know how to prepare that?"

Dansue nodded. "Had it all the time years ago. I can make this stuff with my eyes closed." She got started peeling the potatoes while Hinata chopped some leeks.

"Want some help?" Naruto asked.

"Just keep an eye on the kids koiishi." Hinata answered.

"Fox?" Jiraiya asked again with a hint of a whine threatening to start.

Akane sighed in defeat. "Alright fine." But instead of transforming herself, she created a shadow clone and had it change into a red fox for Jiraiya to chase around. As long as they both stayed in view of the group that is. The young boy sure was enjoying being able to wander around finally after being cooped up all day. "Man I'm tired from walking all day."

"Oh it gets even better tomorrow. Because then I'm going to have you three work on chakra control exercises the entire time." Hanabi said, making all three of her students practically faint from exhaustion. She lightly laughed, remembering a similar experience when she was a genin.

"Well at least we're not doing D-ranks for a while. Noburo mumbled.

"Yeah I know they're not the most fun thing in the world to do, but you kids don't realize how important they are to do." Naruto commented.

"How important?" Ichi asked, curious what the hokage had to say. Like his surrogate sister, he had a lot of respect for Naruto.

"The most obvious reasons are they give you exercise and a chance to earn money. They free up your time to train more and try out your skills in new situations. And you may not have noticed yet, but sometimes D-ranks help you acquire civilian skills which greatly helps out."

Noburo looked confused. "Why would we need civilian skills? We're ninja."

"Think about it Noburo-kun." Akane interjected. "On some missions we may have to pretend to be civilians so our target or enemies don't suspect something. And what about when you're older? Don't you want something to do when you're not being a ninja? Look at the Yamanaka's, they're ninjas but they have something on the side too."

Naruto nodded. "She's right. If for some reason you end up deciding to retire from being a ninja, or don't get the call of duty often enough to live off it alone, it helps to have something else to do and D-rank missions expose you to such possibilities."

"Then it's a good thing you did become hokage instead of the taking one of the jobs we had to do back then. You probably would have gotten fired within a week." Sakura mentioned without any ill intent.

Naruto chuckled. "Yeah, you're right. Can you imagine if I'd chosen to work with dogs instead?"

Sakura laughed, remembering how a big dog dragged Naruto into a minefield and yet Naruto was the only one hurt. "You would have been much better off as a painter instead."

Naruto shrugged. "In the end, what we do have is probably what's best."

"That's true." Lee said. "I'm happy with my dojo and Sakura-chan's happy with her medic career. I can't think of a single one of our friends who isn't enjoying what they do now."

"I can. Kiba-ojisan." Akane said with a mean smirk.

"What makes you say that?" Sakura and Lee asked.

"Let me guess." Naruto said before Akane could. "You left a shadow clone to do a prank and Kiba happened to be the victim." Akane nodded.

"How did you know that?" Sakura asked.

Naruto grinned. "I did the same thing when we left for Wave, but Chouji happened to be the target that time. Figured it would be fun to let everyone know I could still prank them even if I wasn't there to do it."

"How could I resist?" Akane asked.

"You're my daughter. You couldn't" Naruto answered, and both laughed.

'Are those two really not related by blood?' Sakura asked herself, not for the first time.

"Dinner's done." Hinata told everyone.

"Finally. I'm starving." Noburo stated.

Dinner was nothing extravagant, but it filled them up. During the course they made small talk, with the genin sometimes trying to impress the adults with their skills and accomplishments. The presence of the hokage probably encouraged them to try and sound notable. Noburo felt a little uncomfortable since everyone had someone to sit with but him, but he didn't call attention to it.

After they finished eating it was time to set up the tents. The thing was that only two tents were needed and each only held two people. Since there needed to be guards during the night that wouldn't be much of a problem. Also, the seats inside of the wagon converted to make a bed big enough for four so some could sleep in there too. Naruto and Hinata volunteered for the first watch since they hopefully wouldn't need to be active tomorrow. Akane slept inside the wagon with Jiraiya so he wouldn't be fussy. She also used her transformation technique to turn her clothes into pajamas to make herself more comfortable.


The rest of the trip took a little less time than expected. Since no one knew the hokage was traveling, they attracted little attention. It also helped that the road they used usually attracted little attention from lowlifes.

Hanabi kept her students active by working on chakra control exercises while they walked, and occasionally some upper body exercises. She made Ichi walk just as much as his teammates, which made him worn out but everyone noted his stamina was increasing. When they came to stops for breaks or sleep she made sure they had some spars too. Nobody complained because they didn't want to look lazy or childish in front of the hokage.

On the day they finally reached their destination, they weren't really expecting much. Actually the genin didn't know what to expect at all. Even Akane, who had issues with this one, didn't know exactly what to expect once she was there. But nevertheless, what she and her teammates saw saw at first was definitely not something they were prepared for. And neither were the adults.

They had arrived at the most famous shrine in the Land of Demons, a place only Naruto, Sakura, and Lee had already been too. They weren't expecting it to look any different than the last time they were here; after all it was a historical building and those tended to remain the same throughout the years. But now, there was definitely something different about it, and not in a good way.

For one thing, there wasn't supposed to be a large amount of dead bodies lying on the ground, some dressed in armor and others in jounin attire. The walls guarding the state weren't supposed to have gigantic holes in them with rubble on the inside. There wasn't supposed to be a large number of crows, rats, and flying insects looking for rotting meat to snack on. And there weren't supposed to be any stray small fires burning in several places, threatening to eventually get larger and turn the whole place to ash. Nope, none of that was supposed to be here to greet the Konoha travelers, and yet that's exactly what they got.

'What the hell happened here?' was the collective thought of everyone looking at the remains of some obvious carnage.

Akane was bothered for two reasons. One, this had been downwind so there was no way she could have smelled the dead bodies or anything else, and she wondered if that had been planned or was just coincidence. And two, Naruto was going to be very unhappy if the worst case scenario proved true, and in all honesty, Akane admitted she would be unhappy too.

Naruto stepped out and gazed upon the ruins. Instantly he created about four hundred clones and had them check for any survivors or enemies. Then he, Hanabi, Sakura and Lee went to get a closer look at the wreckage. Hinata stayed by the wagon holding Jiraiya, trying to prevent him from looking at something she didn't want him to see. Akane soon followed her father, and then her teammates followed her, wanting to see for themselves what happened.

Sakura made the first important discovery. "Naruto, Iwa nin were involved here." She showed him several Iwa hitai-ates remaining on some corpses. "And judging by the amount of decay, this probably happened three days ago, give or take maybe one day."

"Why would Iwa do this?" Lee asked.

Naruto and Akane shared a look. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" She asked.

"Yes, and I hope we're wrong." He answered.

The main door to the shrine started to open, and everyone turned to anticipate an possible threat. Out came a young woman in her late twenties. She had brown hair held much like Ayame Ichiraku did, with a pink bandanna rather than white. She wore a white and teal nursemaid outfit showing she was a caretaker here. "Oh thank Kami, you've finally shown up. You are Naruto-sama, are you not?"

"Yeah that's me. What gives?" Naruto asked.

"Shion-sama needs you immediately. She's been moved away from here for her own safety. I was told to stay here and wait for your arrival. I can take you there right away."

"Then show us." Naruto told her.

Everyone went east of the shrine in a hurry led by the nursemaid, hoping to get some answers.