A/N:

Peruna

Thank you. World building is one of my favorite things (I usually spent so much time on it that I never actually write a story though).

I like Kit too, but his character gives me headaches. When I started writing him he was just this cute little kitsune child, but that didn't last long and now he's suddenly got a bratty baby sister, is a lot older and enjoys making a bloody mess from time to time.

Diehard gamer

Thank you.

. . .

X - Best Laid Vacation Plans

Frost, as the name suggested, was a harsh land. It consisted mostly of snow, rocks buried under snow and conifer forests that somehow managed to survive in the freezing environment, also buried under snow. Of course if Chikako were honest with herself she'd admit that Frost was actually warmer than most of the journey there had been. Then, however, she'd had the luxury of being inside and wrapped in pilfered blankets. Now all that protected her from the elements was the stolen Iwa uniform and her chakra. The former had just about no effect on the cold which meant she had to expend quite a bit of the latter to keep herself from freezing. It wouldn't drain her anytime soon, but still felt like a waste and made hiding her chakra signature harder.

And then there was Jiro, the smug little ass. The tanuki had simply puffed up his fur and declared that he was perfectly fine. Now that Chikako could call on him like a regular summon he didn't need to conserve any chakra at all and could spend all day running around like the raccoon dog he wasn't. He certainly enjoyed this new freedom if the amount of energy he wasted on jumping, transforming and creating elaborate tunnels in the snow was any indication. If he ever ran out of chakra he'd just pop back into the Void and once recharged he'd pull on her Summoning Tattoo - she wasn't entirely certain how that worked - and she'd summon him again.

Chikako fully planned to get to Hot Water as soon as humanly possible. She deserved to spend some time in a hotspring. Especially one of those whose water had acquired medicinal properties due to the minerals it contained. She had healed herself, but she still felt like shit. Human bodies weren't meant to repair themselves as fast as she had forced it to. It wasn't like the things necessary to repair broken bone, torn muscle or cut skin just appeared out of nowhere. The energy to do the work came from her chakra, but the nutrients and minerals needed to grow the different cells did not. Those she mostly had to consume directly and her rather lackluster diet while hidden on a ship certainly hadn't done her any favors in that regard. So the first thing Chikako had done once she and Jiro had set foot on land was to declare they were on holiday.

Naturally life didn't agree.

"Twelve incoming from our ten," Chikako said with so much annoyance in her tone that Jiro started to giggle like the little idiot he was.

"Well you were out of training anyway." He happily clapped his paws together three times and then buried into the snow. She could sense him moving and while the rate at which he dug a tunnel was impressive it didn't lighten her mood any. They could have tried to outrun the group. In fact it wouldn't even have been hard, but Chikako was so sick of running. Better to get it over with now.

Their chakra levels suggested that they weren't just simple bandits, but there was no one she'd class higher than mid-chunin in the group. Twelve seemed a little excessive to go after a single person though. She hadn't tried to be especially stealthy after leaving the ship, but it wasn't like anyone knew who she was. Everyone who wanted Chikako dead thought she had died months ago, so these assholes were likely just after her because she was alone and seemed like an easy target.

"Well, they can go fuck themselves," she muttered and sat down where she stood. Usually she preferred sitting cross-legged to sitting in seiza, but for situations like this, when one had to get up fast, the latter was far superior. Especially if, instead of placing the tops of her feet flat on the ground like one was supposed to, she kept her feet angled so that the balls of her feet held most of her weight. That way the position wasn't particularly comfortable, but she'd be able to spring up fast. A lot faster than someone who saw her would expect because from the front the difference in posture was barely noticeable and she really doubted that her soon to be assailants were that observant.

At least in that life hadn't fucked her over. In fact it seemed like she'd gotten lucky. The group that approached her seemed like a bunch of ninja rejects, which they probably were. All in ridiculous, colorful outfits, weapons on display for all the world to see and menacing expressions on their faces, but not a single hitai-ate in sight. Very scary. Especially that one guy with the light blue pigtails and pink, color coordinated hairband, top and arm warmers. He looked like a cheerleader. The only thing missing were the pom-poms.

"Ha! Seems Monju was right," the one in the front declared. There was a broad stripe of paint on his face that went from ear to ear and a smaller square on his chin. The color was almost, but not quite, the hue of purple Kankuro used. The puppeteer had told her that that only happened when one used inferior products or fucked up the ratios when mixing the face paint. Of course it was possible that the guy had meant to create that exact tone, but that didn't really fit with the group's overall air of incompetency. And in any case Chikako didn't care as long as she could use it to her advantage.

"I hope you're a better fighter than you are an artist," she told him with a deliberate yawn. "Your skills as a paint maker are certainly atrocious."

He spluttered for a moment, rambling something about how she wouldn't know anything about that, but then caught himself. The guy pulled an umbrella from his back and pointed the thing at her, because every good villain had an umbrella that could shoot senbon. Chikako yawned again to rile him up some more. She wasn't afraid of the group, but twelve against one weren't favorable odds, no matter who the opponent was. She wasn't above using petty tricks and manipulation to improve her chances. Pride would not be her downfall.

"I am Shura of the Shinobazu-" he started, but had to stop as Chikako started to laugh so hard she had to support herself with an arm on the ground to keep from falling over. Who the hell was so proud of failing at being a shinobi that they named their group after it? Not that it made much of a difference. If these guys attacked her they were dead, funny name or not.

She never stopped paying attention to their positions and movements, but they actually waited for her to calm down before the leader tried again. How oddly considerate of them or maybe the guy just liked to hear himself talk that much.

"I said," he told her with a glare, " I am Shura of the Shinobazu and you are our pray. Usually I'd offer for you to give up all your valuables and run, but I'm afraid I'll need your head to get the reward."

Chikako blinked at him, a little stumped.

"My head?" She asked and he nodded at her Summoning Tattoo.

"You're not very stealthy for someone they call Wraith," he said smugly. "Monju saw the owl tattoo as well. Those are pretty distinctive marks. Not very smart to flaunt them when there's a price on your head."

"Who's paying? And how much?"

Could it be Iwa? Traveling by ship had been slow, but surely not that slow? She couldn't think of anyone else who'd want Wraith dead though.

He didn't answer. Instead his umbrella opened and a barrage of senbon flew at her. The chakra barrier was in place before Chikako had even really thought about forming it and a quick Body Flicker had her in the middle of the group with her wakizashi in hand. The first two guys were dead before they even realized where she had gone and a third followed soon after. When that one's corpse hit the ground though they finally sprang apart, surrounding her.

Some looked frightened, heaving realized they were in over their heads. Not the leader though. He thought they had her. Still nine. She'd hoped to get a few more with the first attack, but three weren't bad. No reason to let them get cocky though.

"I slaughtered every single guard in one of their high security prisons," she told them with a friendly smile. It took them a second to parse the words because the tone was so contradictory. Chikako used that pause to open the throat of another one.

"No manners those Iwa nin. Gave me a tiny room with the shittiest view," she slashed a fifth's hand off and then silenced his screams with a kunai, "so naturally I filed a complaint," she sliced a woman that that tried to attack her form behind open from hip to shoulder, "but those people aren't particularly hospitable."

And then there were six.

By now even Shura had realized that he wouldn't be getting any reward.

"Toki!" He shouted, while opening his umbrella to fire another barrage of senbon her way. They were just as useless as last time, but the others caught on quick and began throwing whatever they had at her. The cheerleader, Toki she presumed, did something complicated with a string. The pattern he'd formed between his fingers started to glow and then shot towards her. There was a lot of chakra in that single attack, but it wouldn't get past her barrier.

"Watch out!" Jiro suddenly shouted with a mad laugh, springing from the snow and launching himself at the cheerleader. She'd known he was still there of course, but she hadn't kept track of his exact position. Only enough to make sure the fight wasn't right on top of him.

Shura pulled the handle of his umbrella out, revealing that it was actually a sword and struck at the tanuki. Blood spattered the snow and because Chikako had to blow the projectiles flying at her away with a wave of chakra first all she could do was watch in horror. Jiro hit the ground like a stone, rolling twice before he stopped. Chikako was by his side a moment later, but the pool of crimson was already spreading. She vaguely noted that the group of shinobi used their chance to run away, but right then she literally couldn't have cared less about them.

"What were you thinking you little idiot," she whispered. Jiro was alive, but there was a lot of blood. His fur was so soaked with it that she couldn't even tell where the wound was.

"I wanted to help," he wheezed, "It looked like fun."

The admission was so purely Jiro that it startled a laugh out of her, but the sound was more desperate than happy. The last time one of her friends had jumped into a fight like that they hadn't made it out alive and she wasn't about to let that happen again.

"Are you going to heal if you go back to the Void?"

He nodded with a grimace. It could have been because of the pain, but the look in his eyes said otherwise.

"Don't lie to me twerp!" She chided, more harshly than she'd meant to.

"I, well ...," he coughed, not looking at her, "we have healers I just can't ..."

"Pay the price?" She guessed when he trailed off. His silence was all the admission she needed. "Give me a name Jiro."

"You can't-"

"I can and I fucking will. Give me a name."

Jiro pressed his teeth together, jaw muscles flexing, but gave up when a series of bloody coughs forced him to open his mouth.

"Anwei," he grumbled weakly. "He isn't nice though, be careful."

Chikako didn't even wait for him to finish the sentence. As soon as the name was out she bit her thumb, smeared the blood on the Summoning Tattoo and flooded the thing with chakra. Blood wasn't actually necessary she'd learned, but Jiro had told her using it was polite because otherwise the yokai wouldn't know who had called it.

The draw on her reserves when she though the name 'Anwei' was greater than what summoning her tanuki required, but not nearly as bad as calling on Kit. It took only a few seconds before the creature appeared. It's skin was darkened, with a greyish tint to it. Hair hung from it's head in clumps, the belly was bloated and the stench of rot clung to it. It looked like a dead man risen from the grave, but Jiro didn't seem surprised so she figured she'd called the right yokai.

"Heal him," Chikako commanded. The demon glanced between her and the wounded tanuki with it's shriveled up eyes and let out a raspy bark of laughter.

"I'll need a new pair of eyes," it said. Chikako didn't even try to bargain, there was no time.

"Fine," she snapped before Jiro could interject. "Now heal him."

"No, wait-" the tanuki started, but Anwei cut him off.

"The deal has been made, no going back," he singsonged and went to work. The whole process took mere minutes. Chikako couldn't even see what he was doing, but Jiro's chakra evened out quickly and no new blood stained the snow red.

"It is done," Anwei proclaimed after a last check. Chikako nodded to him as soon as she had made sure that Jiro was indeed okay and the instant she acknowledged the deal completed he vanished. Pain shot through her skull as if someone had driven nails into her eye sockets and she fell forward with a gasp. Jiro whined something, but she couldn't make out the words.

Chikako frantically grabbed at her face only for her fingers to come away bloody. There was nothing behind her lids. She immediately knew what had happened, but it took several more minutes before she actually believed it. Anwei had taken her eyes. There were fresh corpses in the snow all around her and Anwei had taken her eyes.

"Asshole," she forced out, even though she knew the fault lay with her for not specifying whose eyes he got. Cursing didn't really help with the pain, but it didn't hurt either and was a nice distraction, so she kept it up while she flooded her eye sockets with chakra to numb the feeling and heal what could be healed. "And to think I was worried Babyblue might scoop my eyes out with a spoon."

Jiro whined next to her.

"Are you okay?" She asked him. She'd checked, but she wasn't a medic and if he had internal injuries she wouldn't necessarily have been able to tell.

"I'm so sorry," he sobbed and then a wet, furry face pressed into her arm. Jiro clung to her as if she was a lifeline while he cried his little heart out.

"Are you okay?" Chikako asked again, more insistent. "Because if you aren't I'm going to call that fucker back and make him heal you properly."

All that did was make the tanuki cry harder though. At some point he forced out a 'fine' between hiccups, but mostly it was just incoherent rambling and apologies.

Chikako would have liked to pick him up and go somewhere less out in the open, but she'd need his help to navigate and he clearly wasn't up to that. So instead she cradled Jiro in her arms and created a chakra barrier around both of them, to help isolate them from the cold. He cried and apologized until his tears ran dry and his throat was too sore to keep talking, and then he fell asleep. Chikako took a deep breath and then released it again in a heavy sigh. Now she most definitely deserved a holiday.

. . .

Getting to Hot Water had taken approximately three times as long as it should have. Even without her eyes Chikako wasn't completely blind. She had the senses of a tracker after all and her sense of chakra came in especially handy. There was no danger she'd run into trees because every living thing had energy. She couldn't distinguish grass from the chakra that always surrounded them, but anything bigger was easy. For boulders or especially uneven ground on the other hand she needed Jiro to call out locations. So while she didn't have to walk at civilian speed she couldn't run all that fast either and she had to stay on the ground as well. Knowing were the trees were might not pose much of a challenge, the exact location of individual branches as well as their thickness were a different matter though.

Chikako couldn't sense details like that. She got a good feeling of the chakra itself and thus could tell humans, animals, summons and plants apart. Locations and distances weren't a problem either. If she had to describe what she sensed in visual terms however - which Jiro insisted she did - it was as if someone had smudged the world until things were blob-shaped at best and a foggy mass at worst.

The fact that Jiro started to apologize or cry whenever words like 'eye' or 'sight' were even vaguely implied only made things worse. She understood why he felt guilty, but in the end Chikako was the injured party and she didn't even hold a grudge. All she wanted was to work around her new disability so she could still protect them.

She'd only ever fought without using her eyes in training and that one time against Neji during the chunin exams. The latter of which didn't really count either, considering that she'd prepared a month for that fight and learned everything there was to know about her opponent's technique.

"Hey, Jiro," Chikako called out from her place in the hotspring. She was sitting in the shallows, while the tanuki played around with leaves, darting in and out of the water. "Can I transport myself to the Void the way you did while I was in Earth?"

"I told you that was Kit!" He huffed and then ducked his head as if waiting to be scolded. When no reprimand came after several seconds he apologized anyway. "Sorry. I mean if I could have done that on my own I would have called you much earlier."

"Is that a no then?"

"Maybe. I guess I could go back and ask Kit, but you could just summon him."

"I'm not sure I want him in the same dimension as me when -" she cut herself of before anythign about her current state of blindness could slip out, but Jiro's flinch said he knew perfectly well what she was about to say.

"He's my friend," Jiro told her a little indignant and then tacked on: "and he promised me not to kill you unless you attack him first."

"Have it your way then, but if he slaughters every citizen of Hot Water I'm blaming you." Not that there was anyone around to kill. Chikako had made sure to find some place abandoned to rest. She didn't know where exactly she was, but not too far from the border to Frost and nowhere near any settlements.

She bit her thumb and then smeared blood on the Summonign Tattoo, as was polite, before flooding it with chakra. This time it didn't take seconds. Kit appeared almost immediately, in his human form this time. The energy rushed out of Chikako so fast that it made her dizzy for a moment.

Her sensing depended on the amount of chakra something had when it came to how far away she could feel it. When it came to detail however the development of the pathways was the most important thing, which was why trees were mostly blobs, while humans appeared only somewhat out of focus. Jiro was barely better than a ninken, but Kit was incredibly easy to sense. She could even tell that he had his arms crossed to stare at her disapprovingly. Well, she could tell the former. The latter she inferred from the angry roiling of his chakra.

"Hi?" Chikako asked, unsure of why he was mad. "Did I interrupt something?"

"I told you not to trust yokai!" he hissed at her. "I told you there would be prices! And what do you do? The second I turn my back you -"

"That was my fault," Jiro interrupted him before he could shout himself into a frenzy. "I got hurt and she had to help me."

They switched to a different language then. Something that was more animal noises than words. Or at least Chikako thought it was a language. It was entirely possible they were just hissing and growling at each other. She tried to wait them out at first. After all she wanted to ask Kit for a favor, but after five minutes it still didn't sound like they would calm down anytime soon.

"Hey!" Chikako shouted to get their attention. "It's done and arguing about it won't change anything, so how about you help me live with it instead?"

It didn't sound like a polite request at all. In fact her tone had been more of a command if anything, but if Kit's chakra was any indication he approved. She still couldn't get a read on him or even guess at his motives, but he seemed to care about her well-being in some manner.

"What would you have me do then human? Get you another pair of eyes?" Kit snarled and yet there was none of his earlier anger left.

"I was just gonna ask you to help me with sensing. I figured you have to be good at that an manipulation chakra if you can use Fox Fire. My idea was to send out pulses of chakra in a similar way to how echolocation works," Chikako explained as reasonably as she could manage. "If the eye replacement thing is an actual option though I'd prefer that."

"Echolocation?" Kit asked. He sounded as if that was the last thing he'd expected. The confusion lasted only for a moment and then she caught that pleased note in his chakra again. It seemed he was all to willing to help as long as he wasn't expected to do all the work for her.

There was no bargain this time. All he'd asked of her so far was to take care of Jiro and allow him time outside of the Void. Since both conditions were already met he apparently didn't require anything else. At least that was how Chikako rationalized his behavior. She wasn't going to ask him, lest he decide he needed to save face and force a deal on her after all.

The only thing Kit demanded was that she figure out how to use the Fox Fire first. Then he accused her of lying to him when she told him she already had. Instead of repeating herself Chikako threw two orbs of blue flame at him. The kitsune looked so baffled that Jiro broke down laughing. Her little tanuki almost managed to drown himself too. While he rolled around, fits of giggles shaking his small frame, he managed to roll into the hotspring. There was a lot of splashing, from Jiro, and cursing, from Chikako, because Kit refused to fish him out again.

Of course once the kitsune had recovered he spent almost a whole day lecturing Chikako. Apparently her technique sucked, her control was barely adequate and she should be at least twice as fast as she was when molding chakra. She would have called bullshit, but if Kit was actually that much better than her that would explain how he could have killed the Iwa nin without her being able to tell what exactly he had done. All she knew was that he had used chakra, but that was it.

. . .

One day turned into two, then into a week and before she knew it the three of them had spent the better part of two month at a hotspring in the wilderness of Hot Water. Kit was just about the worst teacher Chikako had ever worked with. He didn't believe in breaks of any kind and that included sleep. It wasn't like he'd deliberately keep her awake, but he'd attack her at all times of night and day, to work on her reflexes as he claimed. If she had a chakra barrier in place strong enough he'd only make her fight him for a short time before he let her go back to sleep. If she didn't, however, he made her run and spar and practice until she keeled over from the exhaustion and then do it all over again.

His training was so intense that Jiro had to make sure there was food because Kit certainly wouldn't make time to let Chikako get any. By the time he declared that he needed to go back and check on his sister she was so glad to seem him go that she almost cried and then spent almost fourteen hours asleep.

Kit's assessment of her abilities had mostly been along the lines of: "I guess you don't completely suck, for a human." She couldn't even be angry with him because the only thing she'd gotten better at had been sensing chakra. He'd forced her to move around using treetops until she stopped getting smacked in the face by branches. Once she'd gotten the hang of that he made her move around a clearing to work on her echolocation idea. While an increasing number of Fox Fire orbs would chase her around, Kit would plant boulders in her path or dig holes or even throw stones at her.

Jiro had been furious in the beginning because of all the bruises she sustained during training, she even broke a finger once. Chikako had insisted they keep it up though. It wasn't fun. In fact she hated it, but Kit's method was clearly working. Being able to dodge projectiles she could neither hear nor see was a huge advantage. She couldn't read or write anything without her eyes, but at least she wouldn't kill herself by falling of a cliff either.

Chikako hadn't even realized how insecure she'd been and how defensive her fighting style had gotten until after she'd mastered the echo-, or rather chakralocation. Curiously enough Kit only mocked her for it once she could actually sense her surroundings well enough that it had reverted back to normal.

While he was oddly considerate where her lack of sight was concerned, he showed no such sentiments when it came to any other part of her training. No matter what she did or how much she though she had improved, Chikako was always too slow, had too little control, power and focus and was just generally a disgrace wasting his time. He belittled and insulted her. She never gave him the satisfaction of losing her temper though, mostly because she was too exhausted, but also because she'd asked him for help and she'd be damned before she sent him away. As long as he made her better it didn't matter how much of an asshole he was. Words couldn't hurt her unless she let them and by the end of training the same was true for sticks and stones.