Chapter 3: Paving Hell's Road

Disclaimer: Disclaimers don't actually mean or do anything, but tradition is tradition. I do not claim any ownership of Naruto.

Preceding Authors Note: This chapter took way longer to write than I intended it to, but I got it done so enjoy.

September 12th Evening, 2016 RY

Outside of Boss Kawaguchi's Fort

Treeline

My eyes bulged as I realized the situation.

"Oh shit. Oh shit." I mumbled. I was transfixed by the chaos. A hand landed on my shoulder.

"It seems your time to leave has come early," the calm voice of Old Salt cut through my hypnosis. I fixed my eyes on him.

"Huh?" I muttered stupidly.

"It seems someone has taken an ire to Yamaguchi's activities and decided to stamp him out." He said, his head turning towards the fort. He stared at the fort for a moment before nodding to himself, apparently deciding to do something.

"It is unfortunate that I have run out of time to teach you, however I hope I can give you a gift that will make up for my failure. Wait here and keep low, if I do not return within half an hour I beg you to start running away from this place. You have a good head on your shoulders, I trust that you will be able to make it in the world should I fail in my last act as a teacher," He said, a certain coldness starting to enter his voice.

"What are you talking about? Where are you going to go?" I asked, but he had already disappeared from my side. I groaned and got on my stomach. I had no idea what Old Salt was up to, but I didn't like the implications of what he had said. He had just told me that I would probably end up in the wilderness with no help and no guidance, again. I was really starting to get tired of having my entire world be ripped away from me, this was the second time in four months.

Tears threatened to leak out of my eyes, but I held them back. It was really unfair how I had to not only lose my parents and home, but now lose the only person in this world that seemingly didn't see it as an asset to be used and thrown away. I did my best to banish the thoughts that haunted me, by keeping focused on the present. My breath was slow and quiet as the sounds of battle and screaming sometimes carried on the wind to my ears. The smell of fire and smoke caused my nose to tingle. My eyes picked up silhouettes cast by firelight of people fighting and running.

I knew the smart thing would have probably been to start running as soon as I had seen the fight, but a piece of me wanted to see if Old Salt would return. Our goodbye had been unsatisfying, and I wasn't ready to sever off another part of my life. So I sat and waited for the doubtful return of my teacher.

Nearly, on the dot of half an hour, the sound of rustling foliage snapped me to reality as I shot up my eyes locking onto the dark figure in the forest.

"Sensei?" I ventured.

"You should never reveal your position by asking for specific people, wait for unknown figures to identify themselves," the voice of Old Salt came out causing me to let out a breath I didn't know I had been holding. He came up and handed me a heavy backpack.

"That contains everything you'll need to survive, food, clothes, weapons, and other equipment. It also has my gift to you, Kawaguchi's master ledger. As you know that ledger has a great many valuable pieces of information in it, most importantly being the locations of Kawaguchi's money stashes. If you can get access to wealth inside you should be able to survive a long time," Old Salt stated. I hefted the backpack.

"Thank you Sensei, so now what do we do?" I asked.

"You will run, I will distract them," He stated plainly.

"Why? Can't we both run?"

"No, they will definitely catch and trap us if they can't find me. I had to fight my way out of the fort, so they know a ninja is in the area. If they can't find me nearby they will know I'm running and easily be able to find both you and me. There is no choice," He stated with finality. His logic was sound, but I hated it. I hated the whole situation. He must have been able to see my reluctance.

"Please, just follow my last order. I have a task that has to be done and you can only do that if you survive," he asked an almost pleading tone leaking into his usually stern tone.

"What task are you talking about?" Confusion evident in question. Old Salt sighed and pulled something out from his neck. It was a gold necklace; it had a gold chain with a weasel shaped pendant.

"I need you to take this necklace, go to the village hidden in the sand, find a man named Yousuke Konishi, give him the necklace, and tell him Kozuke still remembered to the end," I nodded. My eyes scrunched up as the last part of order made sense.

"To the end?" I choked up, trying to hold back the wetness I felt in my eyes. Old Salt simply nodded in response.

I had not been one to cry often before I had been shanghai'd from Earth, but now I was starting to make it a recurring event. It was weird, I wasn't close to Old Salt, he had just been my teacher. He had been the only consistently not awful thing in my life next to Tsunoda for the past 3 months. So fuck you for judging me for crying. A noise caused Old Salt to twist his head back towards the fort.

"It's time for you to go, take it and good luck on your travels. I wish I had more time as your teacher," Old Salt said handing me the necklace. I took it and tucked it into one of my pockets.

"You were a good teacher. I'll make sure the necklace gets where it needs to be," I muttered. How could words be so bad at conveying meaning to a man about to go to his death? Whatever I said wouldn't be enough for this guy who had decided to sacrifice it all just so my worthless ass could get away. Again, I was too weak to do anything but run away from problems. Old Salt smiled at me.

"Don't think those thoughts, I was where you are now. It is no good to burden yourself with those thoughts, just focus on the here and now. Now go, our time is almost up. It is time for this teacher to do what all teachers should do, pave the way for the future. Good luck," Old Salt turned away and jumped off back towards the fort. I stared as his form melted into the darkness.

I hesitated, and then started running.

I ran the whole night.

It was only when the sun came up that I stopped running. I was hungry as hell. So I stopped my endless running. I pulled out and ate a packet of trail food that Old Salt had packed for me. It was a bittersweet breakfast. My hunger now taken care of, I then pulled out the master ledger of Boss Kawaguchi's organization.

I flipped through the pages. It was important to first commit all the information to memory before I tried to actually dive into the meaning of the book. My head began to tingle as my mind started to sort through all the information my eyes had already stored to my memory. Thankfully, Kawaguchi was a prodigious labeler and I quickly found the section that was valuable to me.

'Treasure Cache Locations' The bold title at the top of the page was evidence alone that Kawaguchi had never intended for this ledger to fall into anyone's hands besides his own. I sifted through the page and rapidly came to two conclusions, Kawaguchi had made a ton of money when he was alive, and he was paranoid as hell. Dozens of Cache's with generation wealth dotted all the five nations with twice their number in mini-caches placed in areas in between the major caches.

Kawaguchi had stored a hell of a lot of money, and now I was the only person alive who could reasonably find it. If I could survive long enough to get the nearest one I would never have to worry about money ever again. The nearest cache was luckily on the axis that I had been running for the past couple hours. It was one of the smallest caches in terms of how much money it had, but it was still an astronomical amount to my needs.

This prompted me to really think about where I wanted to actually go besides getting the hell away from the fort. Besides getting the cash I didn't really have anywhere to go. I knew a lot of places that would be suitable at least in a logical sense, but when I tried to imagine myself going to some random town I only felt an undercurrent of fear and hesitancy. I would do my best not to end up in a new city all alone.

Fortunately my brain provided a simple answer. Tsunoda had been transferred to a town in the Land of Waterfalls. So if he was still alive, I could probably find him and whatever remnants of Kawaguchi's organization.

Considering my promise to Old Salt, it was a bit dicey morality wise to go immediately back to criminals, but I had no idea what to do. I could go find Tsunoda, get my feet under myself and then start being an extra good person to offset it.

My own justification was a load of bullshit, but it was something concrete that I could rest my hopes on besides 'BE GOOD'.

My short term plan on hand, my stomach full, and my body slightly rested, I set off for the location of the nearest money cache. Through dumb luck, I was already relatively close to the marked location on the map.

One short hour of light running brought me to the location. A standout hill in an otherwise unremarkable valley, at the top of the hill was a dead tree and a couple of boulders. If my information was correct the underside of one of the boulders would be a hollowed out segment with a near perfect fake covering.

The morning sun was still trying to claw its way into the sky as I made it the top of the hill. A quick round of knuckle tapping found the covering. It has the same texture and was perfectly covered, but when my hand tapped on it a hollow echo reached my ears. A knobby piece of rock jutted out of the segment, I grabbed it and pulled.

It shuttered a bit but otherwise didn't come loose. Several more tags earned me a similarly unsuccessful result. So I sat on the ground and braced my feet on the boulder and yanked with my body's full power. The cover came loose with a pop and flew backwards.

Groaning I pushed the now free slab of stone off my chest and examined the depression. Inside was a sack. I crawled over and pulled it out of the depression. It jingled in my hand. I opened it up. Inside was a collection of coins and banknotes that would sustain me moneywise at least for a year. Plenty of time to make it to a real cache, where I would have access to wealth that could make me generationally wealthy. I stashed the sack of money in my pack. I plugged the stone plate back into its spot. Having a personal place that was totally obscure and secure was worth the small amount of effort to wrestle the slab back into position. It was a tight fit, but I eventually got it in so that it was in a similar state to how I had found it.

I oriented myself towards the Land of Waterfalls and took off.

My bag now weighed down by the cash, I was now merrily dashing through the forest, my options limitless and my heart set on becoming a do-gooder. The world seemingly unable to let me have a small victory decided that it was the perfect time to start raining. My short lived good mood fell away as I continued at high speed. Kawaguchi's fort had resided in the Land of Hot Water, I had to get to a town in the Land of Waterfalls, this meant I would have to cut across the border between the Land of Sound and the Land of Fire, but I was confident I could blow through the two nations in under a couple hours. Chakra enhanced legs and endurance was such an amazing travel option. I knew that real ninja preferred hopping from tree to tree, but the prospect of falling and cracking my head open kept my feet firmly on the ground.

When I found the town that Tsunoda was in I would then figure out what the hell I was going to do, I did have to find and return the necklace that Old Salt had given to me, but I was alone right now and I needed to see a friend. Any friend, even if they still were part of an evil system. I would have enough money to live till doomsday if all the money caches contained as much as I had found in the cache to the west of the Fort. I would have money and information, maybe I could bring down the remains of the criminal cartel if Yamaguchi's death didn't already cause it to fully unwind. Maybe, I'd try taking down other cartels, I could also start my own charity or business. The world was my oyster, all that limited me was my imagination.

It seems I had gotten lost in my musings because I didn't notice that I was on an intersecting path with a person neither did the person react. It was only until I was a yard away that I noticed a guy with spiky black hair was right in front of me trudging along.

"Shit!" I cursed as I tried to adjust my course, however it was too late. The guy swung his head around and fixed me with two black eyes which began to widen as he processed the situation at the same time I did, but the laws of physics had already decreed what would happen. My chest slammed into his right shoulder, momentum being what it was, the spikey hair guy was launched sideways, right into a head level tree branch. His neck whiplashed sideways, and he spun in the air like a pinwheel before slamming to the ground on his chest, right into a scattering of sharp rocks. Whoops.

"Hey you alright?!" I yelled as I got my bearings. I got no response. The back of my mind began to tug at me as some piece of relevant information tried to fight its way into my consciousness.

"You okay?" I said again, kneeling down beside him. No response. I placed my finger on his neck, there was still a pulse. Well, he wasn't dead yet, but his neck was probably not in the best shape. I began to position myself so I could roll him over and check his frontal wounds, but that nagging bit of information finally fought its way to my consciousness. As my unfortunate friend tumbled through the air my eyes had caught a glimpse of something that made my throat tighten and blood run cold, there was a seal on his neck. Images flashed through my stream of thought, and I knew what I had to do for this victim of evil. I was going to break that seal, or die trying. I was not going to let another victim of a slave seal run to their doom. I wouldn't have a lot of time since it seemed like he was running from something, maybe his captors.

I rapidly pulled off his weird shirt, so I could get a look at the seal on his neck. It was a simple design on the 2d aspect, just three teardrops in a circle pattern, but a quick inspection with my hands leaking a bit of chakra gave me the impression that the seal was horrifically complex. This would not be a simple job, but something in me told me I could do it.

I took a moment to examine the seal in more detail, I ran my chakra through the construct and did a general body sweep. What I learned was not encouraging for my chances of breaking the seal.

In general it seemed like the seal had several functions, it took chakra from the body and converted it into a seemingly more powerful chakra, it leaked some of this chakra into the central nervous system, and it made some connection to something external, maybe a tracking seal. In short this was the perfect seal for some kind of slavery, it made the slave stronger, affected their mental state, and kept track of the slave's position.

The seal also had a lot of self-preservation methods built into the seal, any attempts to break up the internal machinery of the seal would cause the seal to pull more chakra from the body to reinforce it, while also it weaved tendrils of some kind to every piece of the boys chakra network so it could full pull on all his chakra. The final defense was that the seal somehow could take chakra meant to dispel it and convert it into its unique chakra as a means to reinforce the seal, so trying to brute force kill the seal would just cause it to first suck the slave dry of chakra and then turn the force trying to dispel as a form of fuel to sustain itself.

It was an apparently perfect lock, impossible for me to tear apart. At least if all I had learned was correct then in theory at least there was no way to safely conventionally break the seal. But much like as there was no such thing as an unsinkable ship there was also no such thing as an unpickable lock. If a lock was unpickable, you either needed a better set of tools or a shotgun. Lock makers always expected people to try the doors and give up, not blow a hole in the wall or chuck a brick through the window. I just needed to figure out where the window was and what I could use as a metaphorical brick.

A funny feeling that tugged at my attention made me examine one element of the seal in deeper fashion. A seal that used both the body's and dispeller's chakra to sustain itself, but what if it was fed bad chakra? My mouth curved upwards in a small grin. In a single moment an entire plan fell into place and I knew how to break the seal.

Chakra is an oversimplified name for the combination of two energies generated within the body, these being physical and spiritual. Now for these two energies to be of any use at all for doing useful things they must be combined together in a 1 to 1 ratio. This ratio then being chakra, which is used by everything, however the ratios don't have to be 1 to 1 for it to still be chakra, it's just that whenever the ratios of the energies aren't (or close to) 1 to 1 the chakra created from them is rather unstable and reactive.

Now because the body produces chakra at a 1 to 1 ratio and it's the only useful ratio for accomplishing anything not much thought is given to the properties of unbalanced chakra besides it being unstable, reactive, and explosive to an extent. So it's almost a base assumption that any jutsu or seal will be fed 1 to 1 ratio chakra, I mean what kind of knuckle dragger would feed a seal unbalanced chakra? It would completely tear up the internals of the seal and lead to damage of the medium it's constructed on, it would be utterly pointless. So obviously there's never any need to build a buffer system that would correct for unbalanced chakra, because like I said what kind of moron would do such a thing?

Hint, they had two thumbs and didn't give a fuck about any reasonable 'assumptions'. One time when my grandfather took me Ice fishing, I forgot to bring a lighter because I had assumed he would bring one. When we got the shack and found out we didn't have a way to start a fire in the potbelly oven. After teaching me a few new words I couldn't say in front of my mom he pointed at me.

"Boy, never make assumptions that you can't back up with facts. Here's an easy way to remember that truth. When you ASSUME you make an ass out of u" he jabs his finger at me, "and me," He points at himself. I did not contain my laughter, and it was a very cold day of fishing. But, his lesson had hit home and now I was going to make an ass out of who made this seal. I set to work with a grin.

In short order I had the three components I would need to break the seal. A chakra 'flare stack', an element that would pull most of the remaining boy's chakra reserves and burn them off as light and heat. A chakra interfacing point that would allow me to deposit chakra into the system that appeared to be the natural chakra of the boy, not outside chakra. Finally, I created a chakra 'de-ivy' mechanism to attack the seal directly.

This last element was the most complex, but it was critical to cracking the seal. From what I could see, the seal spread out tendrils of sort that wove themselves into the boy's chakra system, similar to how I've wove itself around a tree branch. These tendril's being the thing that could redirect chakra from the body into the seal for conversion. Now pulling down ivy from the bottom was always the hardest because the whole organism could rely on all its attachment points to keep it in place, but the newest branch of ivy was always the easiest to pull off while requiring the most energy on the ivy's part to reinforce and rebuild. So using the same metaphor I could use the smallest amount of chakra to pull apart the tendrils of the seal that would force the seal to expend the most energy it could to rebuild. So my seal would use a 'breadth-first' algorithm to search the tree of tendril's connections and nodes, identify a grouping of the furthest away (connection wise) from the seal, and use properly ratioed chakra to pull them apart. So I would be using the smallest amount of energy to take apart the areas that would require the most energy to rebuild on the seal's part.

In summary the whole process would go as follows. I would use the flare stack to burn off the vast majority of remaining chakra in the boy and then consistently burn whatever he would generate after wards. Then I would fill the buffer in the chakra interface point with 5 to 1 physical to spiritual chakra and keep supplying it as it was consumed by the seal. Finally, I would activate my de-ivy seal that would begin to pull apart the seal's tendril's. It would go for the tendrils that would require the most energy to rebuild while requiring the least energy from me to pull apart. Hopefully this would cause the seal to react appropriately which would probably be something like.

"Holy Shit! I'm being attacked! I need energy right away! Hey here's a bunch of chakra conveniently placed for the very purpose of repairing the tendrils of the seal, I better use it!"

Now, when the seal tries to process the unbalanced chakra in its delicate and complicated inner workings. It should do something akin to running nitroglycerin through a distillery, with predictably destructive results. So this should cause the seal's self-repair functions to kick in which should go like.

"Holy Shit! My insides have become damaged somehow! I better used some of this conveniently placed chakra to repair myself so I can keep converting all this free chakra to reinforce the tendrils!"

Simultaneously, while this cycle is repeating itself my attack seal will continue to pry the tendrils of the seal away from the boy's own chakra network. Each tendril removed in turn made the other tendrils both easier to remove and more costly to repair. However, since the seal would be busy continuously destroying itself by absorbing more unbalanced chakra it would be unable to perform repairs on the tendril network. Thus, causing a death spiral that would hopefully allow me to destroy the seal. And somehow things actually went according to plan.

It was tiring work no doubt, but I could see the network of tendrils emanating from the seal retract out of the boy's body. It was a bit of a tense moment to remove the tendrils from the chakra coils and other key organs of the chakra system, but it was no problem and soon I had the entirety of the tendrils destroyed.

I let out a whoop of excitement. I was almost done; the seal was doomed now! There was a significant amount of tissue damage around the seal, but the entirety of the seal matrix had been broken and was disintegrating before my eyes as it entered a full death spiral. It continued to pull the unbalanced chakra from my right hand into itself, which continued to do more damage to the internal machinery of the seal than it could hope to repair using the chakra it had taken. The markings of the seal continued to fade until only a dot was left and then something odd started happening. It stopped shrinking.

I felt a new burst of chakra within the seal, which didn't make any sense because I had already bled the seal dry. Where was it getting new chakra from? If the seal didn't evaporate and I couldn't pull it apart then it could pull me dry until I passed out and then start feeding on the kids' reserves again. But, where was this new chakra from? It didn't make any sense, all the chakra in the localized energy system had been burned away, unless new chakra was appearing out of nowhere then what was occurring was impossible.

Ever newer chakra began to build in the single remaining part of the seal, and began to repair the damage I had done. I began to sweat. If I didn't somehow find a way to smush out this last little dot of seal, things would start to go very badly. I was already beginning to feel the bite of my own chakra pool begin to bottom out. Images of new elements to add to the counter-seal flashed through my mind as I tried to figure out a way to salvage the situation. I would have to cut it close, but I had to do something to save the situation.

But, as soon as I began to realize my limited options, the flow of new chakra coming out of nowhere stopped. It's flow of free energy gone; the seal began to steal from my unbalanced chakra again. The repairs it had managed with its free energy were undone and the last tracking element began to fully break down. It was done. I went to raise my free hand in victory, but something came out of the seal. It was a snake.

I hate snakes. I especially hate snakes that pop out of random seals placed upon slaves that try to bite me, so I especially hated this snake. It leaped at me; fangs extended.

In all my bravery, I let out a high pitched yelp and slapped the snake with all my strength. It sailed into the forest. My chakra enhanced strength had sent it flying like it was a homerun baseball.

I looked down at the guy. He was still passed out. His shoulder area seemed to be really messed up, the tissue color was a combination of inflamed red and purples. Whatever my unbalanced chakra had done to the internals of the seal, it had also messed up the flesh of where my counter seal had been placed. I suddenly realized why people didn't try to break seals like these using unbalanced chakra, but it had worked.

I put the guys weird shirt back on him and began to weigh my options. I had nearly drained him completely dry of chakra, he had sustained a substantial head injury, and his body was already covered in scratches. I needed to get him out of the rain and fast, but whoever had owned him would want him back so I had to go somewhere that wouldn't report or spread around that I had an unconscious guy roughly my age. Fortunately, in my readings for Kawaguchi I had learned about a network of inns that if paid extra would look the other way to the status of the occupants, one of which was located close by in the Land of Fire.

I slung the kid over my shoulder and took off towards my new destination. A mid-sized town called Kohama, it was on the border between the Land of Sound and Fire, it held the Happy Morning Inn which had been an often used safe house for Kawaguchi's men. Now that distinction held less importance, but they still were able to keep quiet for a small price which was a premium I needed.

I managed to make it to the outskirts of Kohama by nightfall. The Happy Morning Inn was easy to find considering it had one of the tallest signs in all of the south side of Kohama. The desk receptionist seemingly unfazed by me lugging an unconscious body over my shoulder, I claimed he had been a traveling companion who had been struck unconscious by fever. The rain still continued to pour so it was easy for the receptionist to both accept my explanation and accept my paying an extra sum over the room cost for 'no disturbances so my friend could rest.'

I managed to haul him to a room. It had 2 beds, a desk, a bathroom, and a couch. We were both soaked to bone by the several hours of running through the rain. So I undressed the spiked hair kid to his under-garments, toweled him off and placed him in bed. Thankfully showers were common in this world, so the bathroom was equipped with one that I used to rinse off the muck and grime of 2 days in the wilderness. Dinner was the trail food I had in my travel pack prepared by Old Salt. I tried not to think about him as I scarfed down the variety of nuts, grains, and dried meat.

My dinner finished and I collapsed into bed and promptly fell asleep. I thankfully didn't dream that night.

September 14th Midday, 2016 RY

Kohama, The Happy Morning Inn

Rented Room

It was late mid-morning when I finally managed to wake up. In fairness I had been awake for nearly two whole days, broken a slave seal, and ran across a portion of a continent. I was still tired, but at this point my hunger was greater. I got up, stretched, and went on the hunt for food. Luckily, the Happy Morning Inn had its own kitchen which was happy to set me up with two bowls of meat stew and rice for only a slight overcharging of the fair price. I was too tired and hungry to care, but I did take note that hunting for breakfast beyond the walls of the inn would be prudent.

Using a provided tray I was able to easily ferry my successful hunt back to the room. I set the bowls for the spiky hair guy on his bedside table, figuring that the smell might coax him to consciousness. For my own bowl I simply just ate at the desk. The stew was mediocre, but it was the only real thing I had eaten in two days, so I wolfed it down, nonetheless. The carnage wrought upon my meal was immense. So much so that as I was scrapping the last bit of broth out of the bowl that I heard a set of groans erupt behind me. Looking around I saw the eyes of the spiky haired guy flutter. I rushed over to his bedside; his eye's rapidly focused on me.

"Who are you?" The guy's voice sounded dry.

"Hold on, drink this," I held a small glass of water up to his mouth. It parted and I carefully poured the liquid.

"Who are you?" His voice was a lot clearer.

"I'm Roger." I said cheerfully.

"Where am I?"

"The town of Kohama, the Happy Morning Inn" I answered.

"How did I get here?"

"I ran into you, picked you up and carried you here. You took a nasty conk on the head, also I broke that slave seal on your neck so you're free. No more slavery," I said with a satisfied grin. His eyes widened.

"Slave seal?"

"Yeah, the one of your neck right there," I pointed at the place of the former seal. I saw him close his eyes then wince. "Yeah, there was some tissue damage in the removal process, but it's totally gone now." I added.

"Who are you with?" That question took me by surprise.

"Who am I with? What does that mean?" I asked.

"What village are you with?" He clarified.

"Village? You mean like a hidden village?" I ventured. He nodded.

"Nobody, I'm just a guy on the run like you are, though I'm not running from anything literal. If that makes any sense?" The guy was silent. So I asked a couple of questions.

"So what's your name?" I asked. The guy's eyes which had zoned out for a bit focused back on my face. A moment of silence passed.

"Sasuke, Sasuke Uchiha," He answered. His eyes were boring straight into me. I blinked. He blinked. I blinked again.

"Cool name I guess, my full name is Roger Walker. I'm not from around here," I answered. Something in my answer put him at ease, because tension that I hadn't noticed before released and he sank back into his bed. A moment of silence followed.

"Well I got you some stew, and you won't heal without any nutrients. So will it be okay if I feed you, at least for today?"

Sasuke nodded. I picked up the bowl and began to feed him the stew. We did this in silence. Once the bowl had been cleaned dry, he rolled over without a word and fell asleep. I didn't blame him one bit. I took both bowl's downstairs and explored the town.

September 17th Midday, 2016 RY

Kohama

Town Streets

The next couple of days went remarkably similar, Sasuke and I would chat a bit before breakfast, then he would sleep. I learned remarkably little about him, he was 13, on the run from someone, and a quiet guy all around. For my own part I had regaled him with my tale of my time with Kawaguchi, I left out how I had come to be in Kawaguchi's custody just saying I had gotten lost in an inopportune time. He hadn't pressed me for the details.

In turn I hadn't pressed him for details of how he had come to be a slave on the run, we all had our own stories to tell in due time. What was concerning though was that the dead tissue around the area of the seal hadn't appeared to be healing so I was checking out the local library for any kind of hints that could be used.

The town library was a rustic building. It was seemingly not used often, but it was staffed. A bored looking teenager sat behind a desk, reading a book.

"Excuse me where are the books on medicine?" I asked. The teen lazily pointed to his right.

"Row 30," He grumbled, not even looking up from the book he was reading.

"Thanks," I said, turning right and heading off in search of the row. I looked around, but generally I was focused on the question of if I was going to be able to help fix Sasuke's shoulder wound myself or if I would have to find a doctor who could do it. My eyes drifted around aimlessly as I walked.

I made it to row thirty then stopped. Something was pulling at my attention, I turned around and looked back. The hallway was empty. The feeling didn't go away. I back-tracked, focusing on looking at all pieces of my surroundings. The feeling intensified when I reached row 13, I looked down the row of bookshelves. Nothing seemed off besides a painting on the wall at the end of the row, my instincts screamed at me to investigate. I walked down the row. My eyes scanning the book spines for anything that would jump out to me, nothing did.

When my eyes actually took in the details of the painting, my breath caught in my chest. The picture was a natural still life, it was a hill with trees and fluffy clouds but in the shape of the clouds, trees and grass shading were letters, Latin letters. The made a sentence.

"If can read, find book Kohama Local Recipes for Good Wives." I was dumbstruck. This was impossible. Maybe, I was just going crazy. I rubbed my eyes. The letters were still there, made of clouds, shaped tree branches, rocks, and shadows, but they were distinct.

In a half sleep haze I walked back towards the front desk.

"Excuse me again, do you have a book called 'Kohama Local Recipes for Good Wives'?" I asked.

"Yep, got twenty copies of em, row 5." The teenager pointed to his left.

"Thanks," I heard myself say. I walked to the row. One shelf was nothing, but copies of "Kohama Local Recipes for Good Wives.' Listlessly, I pulled one of the books off of the shelf. The title was on the front, but around it was a black and red border square. Inside were letter's disguised among other shapes. They formed a title.

'A guide, recounting, and warning for those who can read the letters of Earth'

I opened it. Inside was a foreword for the cookbook, and for the hidden book laid out in the border as a bunch of decorations on the edge of the page.

"If you can read this it means one of two things either I wasn't through enough or others have found a way across the great gap. If you are the former there is nothing in this book you will learn, if you are the latter take this book as a warning of what happened when the crew of the SS Fairfield and SM UL-20 disappeared from the face of the Earth on October 14th, 1916. Let their mistakes ward you off of the course they took, for if not my prayers have not been answered and more strife and suffering may soon follow."

Post Chapter Author's Note: So begins the main plot! Yes, Sasuke will be more of a main character in this story. However, this does not mean I am short circuiting the entirety of the plot that relates to Orochimaru and Sasuke, next chapter you should see hints of how that plot line will be able to progress normally. Also, just to state upfront this is not a romantic pairing. I have other general idea's what to do in the future in terms of personal relationships, but that's a bit off. For now, lets just follow the journey and see what mess the earlier people from Earth have managed to create.