EDITED 8/11/2021. This chapter has been split and combined into the next in hopes of improving the janky pacing issues I saw.

Hi, it's Jester! It's been a while but I have this new spell and wanted to say I hope we're still cool! So maybe like—

"Ow, fuck!"

It wasn't actually the worst way to get kicked out of of a task—because most of those options were violent—but Kei jerked in surprise anyway. And hit one of her horns on the underside of the wagon.

As she rubbed her head, Kei wriggled out from the axle she'd been trying to assess and dragged her tools out after her with her tail. It was mostly a tin of nails and screws and a hammer, but she'd been learning how to use her new limb. Any progress was a good sign three weeks in.

The bouncy accent would've given away the identity of the person suddenly talking in Kei's head, but the instant certainty was a new wrinkle. Even if Jester had disguised her voice, part of Kei's brain said, Kei would just know. Extremely disconcerting at best.

Magic. It didn't seem like exposure would take the shine off.

Jester's voice rang out again, apparently in her head. The message was: Sorry! You should know you can reply, because this spell is super powerful and would be kinda shit if you couldn't. Have you read Tusk—

That said, Kei wondered if Jester knew there seemed to be a limit on the spell. Hard to tell at this stage if the problem was based on timing or word count.. She cleared her throat and said, one sentence at a time, "Thanks for the message. I hope all of you are doing well, at whatever you're working on. We're still holding up, how about you?"

That seemed about the right length.

Jester did not respond.

What was that about? Isobu asked, leaning over the edge of the cart with two tails anchoring him in place.

Apparently, Jester learned a new spell. Kei stood up and scooped up the tools, tucking them back into the wooden chest they'd come from. "Frau, uh, Merkel? Your cart should be fine now. How's your husband doing?"

"Better now," said the half-elf woman sitting on the cart, who had spent the first ten minutes of their acquaintance eying everyone except Rin with deep suspicion. She'd defrosted since, but that was after Rin had healed her husband's cracked skull and volunteered Kei to fix the cart. "Thank you for all your help."

Luckily, the job wasn't too different from some of the D-ranked missions they'd cut their teeth on decades ago. Well, C-rank. Most people inside the village didn't transport their goods quite far enough to have an axle implode. Modifying the structure of a family's traveling wagon was not rocket science just because it was made by a different country. Especially if Kei didn't need to make the repairs last a lifetime.

Honestly, the weirdest thing about the entire trip north was the number of German and British accents. After Trostenwald, Kei was (more or less) familiar with the various fantasy humanoids running around and making up this world's population, but the languages were just confusing. Then again, given that her ability to communicate hinged on her recollection of English (and Rin getting new things shoved in her brain), maybe it was better not to question the conceits of the universe. Especially as long as no one tried to make her learn languages she couldn't imagine having time for. Which was…all of them.

Rin, meanwhile, adapted in a manner that was wholly her. She pulled her hands back from Herr Merkel's face and said in a patient voice, "I've fixed what I can, but you should really think about resting once you get home. It's safe to sleep off the headache."

"I thought I'd need to keep him awake," said Frau Merkel, even as she continued to stroke her husband's hair.

Herr Merkel groaned and blinked woozily up at her and at Rin, but as long as his pupils weren't freaking out, it was probably fine. Or so Kei assumed; while she knew what a human concussion looked like, she didn't have enough experience (or willingness to scan whomever stood still) to be sure how well Rin's unexplained no-chakra healing affected them. All they'd been able to determine so far was that the ability had an upper limit and could not be used more than once a day. Otherwise, there were few constraints.

Even without it, though, Rin remained a medic to her core.

"As long as he can wake up," Rin corrected gently, "it's all right. Do you mind if we escort you home? I won't insist, but it's an offer if you're not sure how to handle the observation time."

Kei frowned at the cart. It was…fine, but the old mare that pulled it was nervous. She kept pawing the ground as long as Kakashi was in sight, so he'd wandered off to go chase the local large wildlife. It wasn't like Kei was going to stick him in a harness.

The couple's older daughter—about three or four years old, with blonde pigtails behind two pointed ears—still looked wistfully at the spot in the treeline where his white silhouette disappeared. She was at the age where every animal was either a dog, horse, or cow, with little nuance between the various degrees of "thing that can accept affection from little baby hands." The actual baby in her mother's arms did not care one whit.

Thank goodness children were easily distracted. There was still blood in their father's hair.

"What hit me?" slurred Herr Merkel in his not-German accent, trying to get an elbow far enough around to lever himself off the bottom of the cart. He failed, but Rin and Frau Merkel caught the back of his head before he could compound the concussion.

Rin explained the sequence of events (which started with a horseshoe), but Kei had her eyes mostly on the horizon as the sun sank toward it. What counted as a horizon, anyway, on a forest's only dirt road. Kakashi's chakra was roughly a hundred meters in that direction, lightning bursting from him like a thunderhead leading a charge.

"Rin, do you mind if I go…?" Kei gestured vaguely in Kakashi's direction right as thunder rolled entirely too close by.

Well, someone couldn't wait to crash a party. Probably some kind of fucked-up wizard experiments again. The Empire had problems and at least half of them were self-inflicted.

Frau and Herr Merkel both winced (while their children paid no attention), either at the noise or in fear of what it could represent, but Rin said, "Go for it."

Kei ran down the road, then leapt off the path and into the treeline to break the Merkels' line of sight. As soon as she was sure she couldn't see the road anymore, she picked up speed to weave through the trees at an appreciable fraction of her top speed. Her tail was the sole unfamiliar drag factor, as it had for the last few weeks. One of these days, she'd get used to its tug as it swayed along with her movements, but today was not that day.

There was a screeching roar of pain that ended in a gurgle, audible just as Kei approached the clearing.

Kakashi, for all the difficulties involved in his new shape, adapted with the stubbornness of a man who would do pushups with an IV still in his damn arm. In both arms. Unlike Kei, who practiced with a relatively small number of ninjutsu until she barely needed hand seals at all, Obito's eye gave Kakashi a ridiculously expanded repertoire—and he could access almost none of it. Instead of giving up entirely, he spent many of his waking hours circulating chakra in a kind of moving meditation as they traveled. Kei suspected he spent his daytime "naps" much the same way.

That hard work manifested as a strange new nature transformation, with little arcs of lightning traveling down his body in a wave. He shed sparks like an old winter coat when on the attack. He even sparked little fires if the grass was dry, which meant Isobu needed to stick close to him all the time. It seemed to force them to get along better.

And today, the adapted ninjutsu, combined with his immense size advantage over an ordinary wolf, led to Kei walking into a clearing with pretty much no concern.

Kakashi was lying in the middle of a mostly-destroyed clearing, which it appeared he'd made himself. His dark muzzle and paws gleamed with leftover seed lightning and wet blood in the fading sunlight, and his eyes locked on her immediately as he lifted his head. His long tongue lolled out of his mouth and he panted like a Samoyed, all smiles.

And next to him was a very dead owlbear, with its shredded throat resembling ground meat.

Wizards needed to invest in their magical waste removal efforts more.

"This the only one that bothered you?" Kei hesitated to pet him, given that the sparks tended to jump and give her a nasty shock.

Kakashi nodded. It did not look any less weird to see human body language on a huge lupine face, objectively, but Kei was more used to it by now. When he turned the Sharingan toward her and made eye contact, Kei heard in her head, By the time we find Obito, he'll probably be halfway to finding a way home.

"Maybe," Kei replied with a shrug. "Let's get you cleaned off, shall we? There's a river nearby."

Kakashi shook himself as he got to his feet, then trotted along toward the riverbank. Hell, given their staggered travel order, he probably knew the lay of the land better than Kei did.

At least they hadn't managed to get chased out of a township.

This time.

The population density of the Empire increased to the north of Trostenwald. Kei wasn't entirely clear on why—not being a living encyclopedia for fantasy worlds—but the biggest cities in the Dwendalian Empire were the capital, Rexxentrum, and the former capital of a nation they'd absorbed, called Zadash. As a result, there were lots more people on the road, and a generally stronger Crownsguard presence because the Empire's heartland was more able to spend money on guarding roads between major population centers.

There was a hundred-page history book compressed down to Kei's level of understanding, barely a dictionary entry. If the world produced printed smut—and banned books lists—Kei's convenient acquisition of a children's primer to Dwendalian history was not too unusual. Even if people did look at her funny for reading it where they could see.

They'd be even more suspicious if they knew Rin had stolen it several towns ago. Just walked in, did her thing, and then walked out three books richer.

Kei didn't really need to know the details.

More importantly, though, Kei got more negative attention the farther they went.

Kakashi usually didn't travel directly with their group anymore, instead taking Isobu on jaunts through just enough countryside to avoid catching too much attention. Rin could pass as human, barring maybe her eye color, but her clothes drew attention as "foreign" until they'd gone through enough secondhand shops to change that. In the nebulous time between, Rin got by with various illusions.

For Kei's part, cold glares and muttered comments were unfortunately familiar. Being a known jinchūriki was not good, but she at least had the benefit of not being picked out of a crowd from fifty paces most of the time. People who saw Kei-the-tiefling were far quicker to make snap judgements.

Or to, say, ban her from their shops so Rin had to break in later. Or inform her that she was in the wrong town. Or whatever.

Point was, Kei asked Rin every day if they needed to keep going north. The answer was always yes, until the day they met the Merkels.

"East, now," Rin admitted after they sent the family on their way. "See the mountains? I think we have the choice of cutting through or cutting south, and I genuinely don't know what's out there."

Fair point. So, all things considered, they weren't going to go find out if Kei could be condescended to by yet another city's population.

They'd figure it out.

Hiiiii, it's been a while, Jester's voice said in Kei's head a few days later. We're going toward Hupperdook on our way to the next job, where are you? Also did you read Tusk Love?

"I haven't, but I'll keep it in mind," Kei said to the empty air when the words sank in. She waved for Rin and Kakashi to stop arguing over whether his wolf form required baths. The smell would probably not work out in their favor. "We're somewhere east of Rexxentrum. Say hi to everyone for me. Stay safe out there."

Jester didn't reply.

Well, it made sense if it was a powerful spell. Probably needed to conserve her magic.

So do you need to know where we're going to, like, meet up? Because we have a thing to do and there's a time limit?

"I don't have any way to track you, actually," Kei said, mostly distracted. "If you can't stay in a specific inn in any city, we'll just guess."

"I still don't understand how this is happening, but it's really cool!" Rin yelled from above Kei's lounging tree. The beats of huge wings overhead reminded Kei of Tsuruya, but Rin didn't have nearly that top speed.

Finding that out had been a trip. Literally.

Rin was, of the three of them, the most likely to stop and smell the flowers. And to measure them. And to boil everything down as an attempt to make another medicinal tincture, or a weird tea, or to otherwise start messing with the environment in sheer curiosity. It was as much a part of her nature as the purple ink on her face. Or the purple in her eyes and hair, now. Most people couldn't see that except in bright sunlight.

So while she was walking along with her nose in a book—and Isobu rode on her shoulder, reading along—one of her new boots caught on a rock. She still wasn't entirely used to not wearing sandals anymore, but it was autumn in not-Germany and some compromises on clothing needed to be made. There were just occasional consequences.

Anyway, while Isobu was catapulted forward, Rin did the reasonable thing of trying to catch herself on her hands. Or do a front flip, or somersault, if she was feeling fancy.

Instead, two feathered wings poofed into existence between Rin's shoulder blades. They didn't help; either insubstantial or just late on arrival, Rin didn't manage a full wingbeat before she just hit the dirt. It was a bit of a coin flip, but later Kei suspected the sheer surprise of the wings distracted Rin too much to bother with concerns like gravity.

She hit the ground in a ridiculous jumble of six limbs. Her wings flapped haphazardly like a bird after colliding with a window, shedding little puffs of down that disappeared when they touched the dirt.

"What the fuck?" Kei had said, because of course she did. While she darted to Rin's side in order to help. as one of them whipped straight through her like a bad genjutsu. "Rin—"

"I'm good, I'm good!" Rin waved off assistance as she levered herself up into a kneeling position. Twisting her neck as far as she could, Rin reached back toward the right wing and tried to run her hands through the feathers. Her fingers, too, passed through them like air.

The way the wings produced their own light didn't make the effect any less strange. The effect was clearly magical regardless, but it just opened up a filing cabinet labeled "?" inside Kei's mind, which needed tabs.

So many tabs by now. Her tail-tip flicked hard enough to bounce off the ground, either in agitation or anticipation; Kei pinned the bony mass flat with one hand to stop it. One of these days, she was going to figure out how to control it perfectly, but it wasn't now.

"Fascinating," Rin breathed, shifting her shoulder in a circle like she was trying to make the corresponding wing jump. Rin's eyes gleamed with the light of "Science!" The exclamation point was quite necessary. "They don't weigh anything, and there's no corresponding muscle groups to support this development. Instead, they appear to respond to my thoughts—"

On cue, both black-tipped wings surged in a powerful downbeat that nearly dragged Rin backwards into the dirt. On the plus side, they didn't appear to have punched holes in her dress.

Kei sidestepped the wing, but Rin skidded unsteadily until Kei grabbed her wrist. "Maybe don't jump to experiment?"

As though she could do anything else, said Isobu, once he flailed upright.

"Experimentation is the whole point, Kei! I need data right this second." And with that unintentional parallel, Rin leapt into the air with a grin.

It wasn't the first time Kei wished shinobi made literally any use of helmets, but at this rate it wasn't going to be the last.

Their whole team decided to take a day off traveling to experiment. Sure, the wings turned out to last about a minute and dropped Rin from ten meters above their heads, but was something for the record books. Flight unassisted by other ninja or summoned animals probably wasn't a shinobi first—at all—but it was definitely cool.

Thus, the second day of flight trials.

Jester's voice brought Kei back to the present with, Then you should meet us in Hupperdook! I'll send another message once we know what inn we're using. Oh, you can meet Kiri! It'll be—

"All right, Jester," Kei replied, figuring she'd been cut off by her own enthusiasm again. "I'll have to check a map to figure out exactly where we are, but it shouldn't be too long. Take care."

First on Kei's to-do list in that promised sequence would have to be buying a map, but she could take care of that quickly enough. Just—

There was a distant thump as Rin's wings timed out again.

—after a bit of time to recover, maybe.

I would give that a six, said Isobu, both through his bond with Kei and aloud. The latter was probably for Rin's benefit, since Kei couldn't hear him with her actual ears. Seven for sticking the landing.

Kakashi made a barking noise, which sounded like disapproval even from a dozen meters away. Since that seemed like a brewing banter session, it was as much an invitation for Kei to participate as it was a general alert.

Team-building was always more interesting than just sitting around waiting for a magical phone call, so Kei went.

And then there…weren't any messages for a while.

Unfortunately, Kei had no means of contacting Jester on her own, even after they found an inn in Hupperdook and were introduced to the (horrifying) concept of citywide gnome raves. Even Konoha's most energetic festivals were sedate affairs compared to that explosion of light and color.

And they had plenty of actual fireworks, just to top things off. Those were better appreciated from a distance, at least by sensitive eyes and ears.

Rin still bought sparklers before they left.

"Kakashi, did you get anything?" Kei asked him, while watching the city's lights and lingering field of smoke from a safe distance.

And by "safe distance," she meant a field outside a forest outside a city that looked like a weird cross between Gondor and the orc-factories of Mordor. It was extremely vertical and built into the side of a mountain, with stairwells spiderwebbing across the stone in a dozen directions. While the city was grim and belched the byproducts of industry all day, pinpricks of party lights lit the entire length of the place in the evenings.

Kakashi shook himself from nose to tail, then sneezed. After a moment's consideration, he flipped over into the middle of the field and rolled around in the long grass for a bit. While Isobu griped about animal minds bleeding into the daylight hours, Kei planted herself on a boulder and waited. He'd get there once he got all the smoke residue off his fur.

Any luck where you are?

Not as such. The populace is less forthcoming during the day. Isobu sent her an image of bustling gnomes and dwarves running around at top speed, carrying mysterious tool or barking orders at those who did. Judging from the angle, he was riding on Rin's shoulder.

Kei found herself scratching the base of her scar, then stopped herself with a sigh. Meanwhile, her tail thumped in time with Kakashi's as he circled around the tall grass. She didn't bother stopping that fidget.

By having Rin ask around—since both Kei and Kakashi had left the city after the first night for the sake of their skulls and sinuses—they managed to determine that a group calling themselves "the Mighty Nein" had visited town and killed something inside the town's jail. Said group included a small rainbow of team members, which was as good as a fingerprint in a world like this one.

Considering this world has developed firearms, Isobu said after reporting Rin's findings, perhaps such a thought is not too far behind.

Technology doesn't work like that , Kei thought. Timing-wise, maybe, but aside from Hupperdook, they hadn't really seen any signs of a broader industrialized base within the Dwendalian Empire. Villages still lived like villages, even if a hedge mage here or there set up shop. The larger cities were entirely different beasts, with sewer systems and everything. They did a lot through magic and had distributed firearms somewhat to the army, but that didn't necessarily mean they had the logistics to manage everything.

Though maybe…

Hrm.

Kei's memory wasn't perfect by any means, but she remembered the development of blackpowder bombs and siege weapons predating personal firearms by at least a few centuries. From what she'd seen in Hupperdook during their initial trip through town, the process in their local industry might've happened either significantly faster or in reverse, which was even stranger. Hard to tell for sure what happened there without a few reference texts, none of which she could access in the (literal and figurative) field.

Kakashi nudged her leg with his nose.

"Got them?" Kei asked.

The Sharingan flashed as Kakashi rested his head in Kei's lap. Yes. They left two days ago. Heading north.

Kei blinked the red haze out of her eyes and then said to Isobu, Did you get that?

Yes. There was a brief pause as he conveyed this thought to Rin. Rin says that her dreams still directed us northeast when last we slept. Coming south to this town was a diversion in the first place, so perhaps…

I don't know why Jester would direct us here and then leave abruptly. Kei frowned up at the city on the hill. Did they forget?

When we last left them, they appeared to be an easily distracted group.

Not wrong, Kei admitted.

Kakashi made an inquiring noise, tilting the Sharingan toward her again. Are we going to try and chase them down?

"I don't—" Kei bit off the end of her sentence, then winced for real as her uneven fangs closed on her cheek. Again. "Look, I want to know where the hell Obito is, first and foremost. He has to be our top priority. If the 'Mighty Nein' just so happen to run in the same direction we need to go, that's fine, but…"

It felt wrong to prioritize anything but reuniting their team. At the same time, Kei didn't want to leave people like Jester, Yasha, and Molly in the lurch if it turned out this situation was more dangerous than it appeared at first glance.

If Obito was here, he'd tell you to prioritize helping others, Kakashi said, conveying a mild tone despite not using his voice. As Kei scratched his ears, he went on, Like it or not, he is a jōnin in his own right. If Rin's directions are guiding us in his direction, and these two goals converge in the north, your protective streak does not need to sacrifice a friendly group to find him.

Kei's open channel to Isobu transferred that thought almost as soon as Kakashi completed his argument.

"Altruistic of you," Kei commented.

Kakashi pointed out, Without Obito, we're nowhere near being able to go home, and Konoha's policy on extra jobs or mislabeled missions doesn't apply. His tail swished through the grass. If no one has any better ideas, let's go for it.

"Shortage of ideas" was definitely a running theme here.

Hopefully they are in trouble, because I want to kill something, said Isobu.

Probably wouldn't be that hard to figure out along the way. "Rin can do some shopping, then we'll go."

Notes:

1) Kei is a variant tiefling, but instead of fire resistance, she has cold resistance. Her Hellish Rebuke is ice-flavored, like Jester's, but it's entirely down to Isobu instead of genetics. Something something crushing depths of the unforgiving sea. She just needs to be physically hurt by someone to access said spell, which has yet to happen except by accident.
2) Rin is a protector aasimar of at least fifth level, and this means she can sprout spectral wings from her back and gain a fly speed for one disappointed by the actual answer.
3) Sending is a third-level spell with a 25-word limit, which neither Kei nor Jester understand at the beginning. Though, honestly, Jester should know. What with being a divine spellcaster and all.
4) Mwahahaha.