Something Right

Kusagakure no Sato, as one of the numerous pillow-countries that had been allowed to exist with the implied expectation that each of the Great Five could have gone to help them against an invasion, wasn't even remotely as dangerous as one would expect. Between the smaller numbers and the inferior quality of its forces, the village's true strength could be measured on three points.

The first was diplomacy: the aid of the Great Five, which were always on the lookout for a new threat, allowed Kusa, like any of the other minor villages, to pull slightly less than its own weight.

The second important resource of a minor village relied on luck: from time to time, a talented individual managed to rise among the ranks, but, with the easy outclassing of their peers, pride and satisfaction tended to stop them from having the tools to reach the lofty heights of shinobi like Sharingan no Kakashi.

The third and more important resource that could rise a minor village above their station was the discovery or the development of a Kinjutsu or a Bloodline. Like Taki had once sported the Jongou, Kusa was now carefully taking the measure of the potential of the Bloodline of Uzumaki Akari and the one of her daughter, Karin.

The two Uzumaki were potential gold-mines: with the larger than average chakra reserves granted them by their bloodline, coupled with their stronger life-force, a single bite was the only thing needed to heal a capable shinobi from the brink of death.

So, the mother had been placed in the hospital, and considering her age, since she successfully pleaded for a home for herself and Karin, she had been stress-tested.

Her limits would one day be the ones to respect when her daughter took her place.

With this situation clear in mind, and swallowing what little pride she had, Karin had tried to prove how valuable her sensing was by reporting a new presence in the warehouse next to the hospital, in the hope of forging for herself a path different from the one of slow death by 'gnawing' that had turned her mother's once vibrant red hair into something dull and greying.

When the shinobi she alerted had, sneering all the while, checked out her information, they only found an abandoned sleeping bag.

But Karin knew what she had sensed: an asleep presence that was very much like an ember hidden under a coat of ashes, like the remains of a fire that was spent, tiredness and impossible 'hope' cloaking what she could see of his personality.

She felt him disappear when the Kusa-nin surrounded the warehouse, she felt how he had dropped his chakra 'somewhere' that caused him to vanish from her sensing.

Three days later, when Karin was returning from a visit to her mother, she felt him again: tired, but vibrant. Immediately, she closed in, making use of the skills she would soon need to show in order to graduate from the Academy and become a genin.

With her steps as quiet as she could make them, Karin approached the warehouse, wielding her chakra as lightly as a faint breeze in order to not give away her presence while she focused on the shinobi that foiled her attempt to show how useful her sensing could be. The one responsible for denying her the golden opportunity of being valued as something more than a tool in the hospital.

Now that she had the chance to focus on that presence uninterrupted, and with a cool mind, she felt... confused. Infiltrators wouldn't be caught by her, despite her vaunted gift, and generally shinobi were difficult to read, always closed off, purposefully cloaking themselves with their chakra in a way that prevented an accurate read of what Karin fantasized was their soul.

This presence was... different. Oh, there was control there, but it didn't feel as... constraining as the method she was somewhat used to. The chakra of this unknown was almost muted, as if it was the chakra itself moving sluggishly, even if purposefully, in a rhythm so calibrated that was almost soothing... Like a heart of fire within a dull-looking rock, a rock that... floats?

Karin frowned as her sensing shaped the unlikely image in her mind: the target of her focus felt... lighter, as if a weight had been removed by his shoulder, and tense, as if he was waiting for the other shoulder to drop.

Quietly, Karin snuck into the warehouse, planning to verify with her other senses the presence of this new element before reporting it to a full-fledged shinobi. She knew, that after the distinct lack-of-intruder resulted from her previous alarm, she wouldn't be taken seriously if she only used her sensing.

The inside of the warehouse was defined by the uncountable crates that created high walls and even isolated towers, the names of each crate coded so that only a Kusa-nin would be able to search effectively for something.

A grimace blossomed on Karin's features as she crept forward, bent low to use the uncountable crates as a cover. For everything that her mother had done for Kusa, and even with the expectation that she would need to do the same one day, the people of the minor village still treated her and her mother as strangers: as if they were somewhat lesser than those born into Kusagakure no Sato proper. I need to confirm that the intruder exists, and to report a description to someone.

The opportunity that slipped from her hands had appeared again, and she wouldn't, couldn't, let it go.

When a faint succession of sounds started to trickle into her ears, she violently banished her thoughts, making herself smaller in the place that she instinctively perceived only through chakra, knowing that unless she stumbled upon a sensor more powerful than herself, she'd be safe from discovery.

"... guessed you slipped some tracking seal of sorts, you goat-fucker." the voice belonged to an individual that was clearly simmering in irritation because of a piece of info he had just obtained, and he sounded... young. Or at least, younger than what she would have assumed basing herself on her sensing.

"Sorry." an older man's voice replied.

"No you're not." the first voice sniped back.

Karin froze. There was another person in the warehouse, one that she hadn't perceived. There were extremely few capable of escaping her sensing at such a close range, that one was casually having a conversation with the other she had spotted days before... she didn't know what to make of it, but it could hardly be a good thing.

"I meant sorry that you're so inept at being a shinobi that you didn't spot the tracking seal until now."

Gulping quietly, her red eyes wide behind her glasses, Karin shifted her weight minutely, and moved closer to the source of those two voices: now that she had heard the second man, whose voice was deep and almost rumbling, she shifted her attention, almost but not quite following the sound back to the source only to find... a bubbling pot handing over an underground stream of lava, with an unimaginable pressure ready to burst.

"Yeah, well, I've removed it now." Karin could almost hear the shrug that accompanied those words, but her attention lingered on the owner of the deeper of the two voices.

He too felt tired, with a lingering measure of worry that wasn't allowed to stop him. Karin moved carefully among the crates until she sat on the other side of a single file of them that separated her from the two unknown.

"After the scuffle with my old teammate, I immediately came here." the deep voice barely reached Karin's ear, "He's likely to follow, what about his little enforcer?"

"I wasn't his match, but he wanted me mostly unarmed and alive, so I cut his eyes and ran."

A snort accompanied the following answer: "Unarmed and Alive, uh?"

A long stretch of silence occupied the warehouse, Karin would have thought that she was alone, if not for the sounds of scrubbing that suddenly reached her, and the constant soothing 'breathing' of the ember she felt. I need to figure out a better way to describe these things, nobody will ever take me seriously otherwise.

A cork was removed from a canteen and a gurgle of water followed it, eventually slapping wetly on the ground.

"Gah!" the deeper voice echoed a bit louder than before, "Watch it! You almost got me!"

There was a flicker of amusement that ran through the ember that was the owner of the younger-sounding voice, like a vein of gold flashing like lightning: "You knew I would move to Kusa if pressed."

"I strongly suspected it, for all of our talks about the other nations, I knew you wouldn't dare to sneak into one of the Great Five, and admittedly, Kusa is actually the nearest to Konoha with a shinobi presence, the Land of Rivers is a joke, even among minor villages." the deeper voice barely restrained a bout of laughter, "I made the most of my intuition."

"Kusa will be a warzone in what? Half a Day? Less?"

"I wouldn't say warzone, Kusa is our ally, letting our forces in will not be a problem."

"So I'm the bait." the ember flared minutely, and Karin could almost feel the heat rolling over her skin, "Again."

The scrubbing sounds lessened and were replaced by a skittering of several metal pieces falling over the concrete as one of the two shinobi moved about, doing something that Karin couldn't guess: "That's the nature of the job, stop being so mistrustful of your dear teacher."

"Jiraya," the younger voice spoke, and Karin completely stilled, her mind still reeling from the absurd chat she was overhearing while the ember that she associated with the owner of the younger-sounding voice dimmed, "even if you've taught me lots, our relationship is more like a friendship with some tutoring aspect rather than a proper teacher-student one, but this is exactly the kind of bullshit that makes me fucking hate the idea of playing along."

The ember, dim as it was, slowly vanished from Karin'senses, replaced by a glowing spark that threatened to explode outwards at any given moment.

The older shinobi, who Karin tentatively registered as Jiraya, sighed: "Listen here..."

"No." the newly shaped spark was resolute in this, "For all of your dreams, you're a damn good player of this shinobi game, always accomplishing more than one objective with each action: getting me away from the Tower's underfoot, training me, evaluating me, and using me as bait for your teammate."

Only then Karin focused on the name that she had heard: Jiraya. One of the three Legendary Ninja... and what teammate were they talking about? There was only one that would have caused the birth of a warzone, and the Uzumaki overhearing the two ninja paled.

What could turn Kusa in a warzone? the Uzumaki wondered, trying to accept as real the sheer amount of clearly classified stuff she had been overhearing. The mention of an old teammate immediately brought to mind what little she knew about one of the genuinely worse nuke-nin walking around.

Her thoughts immediately went to her mother: Akari Uzumaki was holding on for the sake of her daughter, and Kusa kept her to the brink of exhaustion for their purpose of stress testing her Bloodline. If there is a large battle here, they'll kill her by biting.

Rage and despair churned in a never-ending spiral in Karin's gut, followed immediately by fear. And I'll be the next.

Shame welled up momentarily, as she realized how egoistical she sounded, even to herself, only for her rage to greedily swallow that feeling too.

"You must be slipping in your old age." the younger voice snapped Karin back into focus, and with a start, she realized she made a mistake: the relaxed feeling of the ember had disappeared, and now the fire was... predatory.

"What about your precious sensing?" Jiraya's voice sounded from behind the eavesdropping Uzumaki, who jumped up in a frightened squawk.

Karin's surroundings blurred as she was hoisted off the ground by the scruff of her neck, and an instant later she had been dropped in a stretch of a corridor formed by two high walls of crates re-adapted as a temporary shelter for the intruder that she had first perceived days before.

Hunched over a wet stretch of the floor, there was a shinobi with short, gray hair that fell in a tame mop over a frowning face. Under thin, grey eyebrows, dark eyes stared at the Uzumaki from over a straight nose, which sat over a short and unkempt beard that covered most of the shinobi's jawline and lips.

The face of the kid was angular, because with the voice she had heard and the complete lack of the faintest wrinkle on his visage, the shinobi she had spotted days before couldn't be older than her, could he? That's a very realistic beard, if I didn't know better I wouldn't suspect otherwise.

Karin chanced a glance at the shinobi that had casually dropped her from her previous position, her mind still too overwhelmed by the sharp turn of events for her to do something other than instinctively search and for any piece of information that could be useful, and barely held back a gasp.

Easily towering over her, under a shaggy mane of white hair, was the Sannin Jiraya. His left arm was in a makeshift sling, and there was a freshly changed set of bandages covering the side of his head, but that did nothing to subtract from his presence: exactly like he was physically imposing, his chakra was thick, and heavy as it weighted over his shoulder as a nonchalant reminder of the power-balance in the warehouse.

"You're scaring her." the younger, grey-haired shinobi bit out, and the Sannin's presence vanished once more, making the Uzumaki stagger from her half-sitting, half-kneeling position.

Karin's head snapped back to the younger shinobi who had been in the process of disguising himself in order to appear older. She had never seen him before, and she had never felt him besides that one time a few days before. And he had casually defended her after she had been caught eavesdropping?

As she focused on the fake-bearded shinobi, she felt confusion mounting in herself, the shock temporarily stalling the previous cycle of anger and fear: in the ember that breathed regularly in front of her, there was a spark of recognition, as if he knew her.

What?

I immediately relaxed when the intruder was revealed to be Karin Uzumaki instead of a random shinobi from Kusa, or worse Oto.

One of the fights I remembered better from my metaknowledge was the rather spectacular one between Danzo and canon-Sasuke, and in that there was one of the few memories I had of Karin: covered in bite marks, a powerful sensor, and totally inept in a fight.

That was not the person that Jiraya had fished out from behind the wall of crates: she still wore a thick pair of glasses over her red eyes, but to my limited sensing, there was nothing yet of the woman I had seen lay waste to a mokuton-creation thanks to her chakra chains. No, there was only a scared girl.

A forehead protector with the symbol of Kusa was nowhere to be seen, she had shoulder-length red hair that denoted her bloodline, and she looked a year or two older than me. So even in Kusa they graduate at 12?

I was considering the possible implications of her presence when I instinctively snapped at Jiraya, who was using the technique he once tried to pressure me with to intimidate a girl not out of the Academy yet

I dismissed my casual wondering when Karin turned towards me once more, her eyes narrowing minutely. At the same time, I felt how she was tentatively sensing around me, and I instinctively burned away her chakra with a small flare of Katon.

How can I have already messed up? I sarcastically asked myself as I forced my chakra into a concentrated, churning mass within my body, quickly letting it fall within me as Kakashi had once shown to Team 7 in order to train us in stealth. From the frown that appeared on Karin's visage, I hoped that I had managed to hide the reassuring calm that invaded me when I recognized the Uzumaki.

My eyes flickered to Jiraya then, whose only uncovered eye was staring at me questioningly: "She's just a kid, Goat-fucker." I decided to not use his name, maybe Karin hadn't heard it.

"Is she?" he casually replied, observing the shifting attention of Karin, whose lips were pressed together in a thin line while she looked at me and then at the Sannin, "What is the first thing you heard?"

Karin's eyes widened minutely at the question, and even without the Sharingan active I could see that she was thinking of the best convincing lie she could get away with: "It's meaningless." I answered in her stead, my mind furiously going over my meeting with the Toad Sage.

He had walked into the warehouse barely an hour after my return from the Summon Plane, with his arm in a makeshift splinter and a lump of bloodied bandages around his head, covering one eye. The beginning of our reunion had been spent by me using what resources I had to clean the gash on his head, which narrowly missed his eye, and making a proper splinter for his forearm.

In truth, Orochimaru wasn't one for over-committing, but he had extreme regenerative skills, that Jiraya had not. ANd I had been dangled barely out of his reach, and as Jiraya had freely admitted, his wounded state and our being in Kusa instead of Konoha were an occasion that would be foolish to relinquish in the Snake Summoner's position.

I blinked and shrugged slightly, rolling my head and temporarily marveling at the light feeling of having short hair after years spent with something resembling a mane, before focusing once more on the current situation.

Maybe Karin had heard both of our names, maybe she had heard only that Kusa was about to be the theatre for an ambush realized by Konoha, maybe she had been deaf until a minute ago: I didn't know how much the rank and file of the minor hidden village knew about the situation with Orochimaru, but I knew that the Uzumaki was a potential info leak.

Maybe, a true Konoha-nin would have simply killed her: she was a nobody, technically, only a civilian. I doubted Jiraya would do so, but scaring her into revealing what she knew was unnecessary: "She'll have to be kept out of this until the deed it's done."

The Sannin's eye met mine over the girl's head, and a slow grin sprouted on his tired features.

I shook my head minutely and made a show of scratching idly at the fake beard I had quickly crafted following the disturbingly precise memories of seeing one of the whores do the same to prepare for a 'special client'.

The white-haired shinobi kept his mouth closed, keeping the exact habit of our interaction hidden: after all, there was little point in getting a new face if he behaved in the same way he did when I was myself. Not that our relationship was well known, after all, we had traveled on our own, but it was a dangerous habit to fall into, one that Jiraya realized was easier to avoid than to grow out of.

"Did you hear my name while you were eavesdropping?" I casually turned towards the frightened red-haired girl, who was trying to figure a way out of the unexpected situation she had trapped herself in by being spotted.

"No!" she shook her head almost violently, looking at me and then at Jiraya while her hands sunk into her hair, almost tearing it out: "Please, I just... my mother cannot remain if there is going to be a battle, they'll kill her!"

I blinked at the non-sequitur, and I was forced to admit that my metaknowledge wasn't enough to divine what the hell she was talking about: "What?"

"I..." she stammered, taking a breath and attempting to get a hold of her chakra, which I could feel was fluctuating wildly: "I overheard the part of the conversation about a warzone."

She flinched while she admitted to that part, as if waiting to be struck, and Jiraya's uncovered eye found mine with a flat expression, as if to will me to tackle the distressed girl: we were on a timer, and there weren't hours available to calmly figure out what to do with the girl. The first instinct of the Sannin had been to intimidate Karin, since I stopped him, maybe prematurely, he was expecting me to take the lead. Maybe as a punishment. I decided as I spotted the small smirk he shot at me.

"And why would your mother get killed?" I asked as I started to put the necessary, scentless make-up on my face to mimic wrinkles and the needed texture to match the aged look I was going for.

Her eyes fund mine as she quickly explained her mother's bloodline, and I noticed with some appreciation that she never implied that she had the same gift, but the way she carefully avoided any mention of herself in relation to that particular aspect of the Uzumaki Bloodline was a telling detail by itself. From the glance that I quickly exchanged with Jiraya, I could tell that he caught up on that too.

I inwardly grimaced at the info she shared She was too scared by the unfamiliar situation she was in to play up the angle of the girl in distress, and maybe she guessed that trying to manipulate shinobi so far beyond her caliber wasn't wise.

You'd be surprised by what you can obtain by being straightforward. I remembered what Jiraya told me when I outright asked him about Summoning, and at the same time, I noticed the obvious parallelism between me and the Uzumaki that was just short of openly begging for either of us to help her.

At least the Uchiha Bloodline isn't something that encourages people to bite me. How would Konoha treat the vaunted 'Last Uchiha' if my bloodline's most immediate use was to turn myself into some sort of life-force battery?

"My mother..." Karin visibly strained with the choice of her words, "she can give up her life force to heal others, and she accepted to do so at all times when she brought us here, to avoid being hunted outside the village, but if there are going to be many wounded... she, she'll..." the red-haired girl swallowed loudly, trying to break the knot that she felt forming in her throat, and stared at Jiraya helplessly, instinctively turning towards the S-rank as he was the one in charge.

I am done with meaningless orders in service of a machine I dislike. I frowned, eyeing Karin carefully. I knew why I wanted to stay away from Konoha: while I needed all the power I could muster, and I was willing to kill people I didn't know to get it, I wanted it to always be a personal choice, and the existence of Danzo was worrying, if on a low-threat level as long as Itachi was alive.

I breathed in, trying to discern something from Karin's chakra, but it was too erratic, out of synch with her breath, and unfamiliar for me to be able to point out anything. I frowned as I made the final touches with the makeup, completing the look I was going for, calling to the forefront of my mind the perfect memories I had of an elderly, small man I had observed with the Sharingan months before.

I knew enough of Jiraya by know to know that he wouldn't intervene: Kusa had clearly an interest in the bloodline of Karin and her mother, and he was already straining what the term 'alliance' meant by putting at risk the Village Hidden in the Grass instead of Konoha in order to put an end to Orochimaru.

He was tired, the wounds of his clash with the Snake Summoner barely under control... he, and by extension Konoha, didn't have the kind of resources needed to jeopardize Kusa's support. He dreamed of peace, of a day in which people would simply decide that they preferred the annoyance of peace to the ruinous nature of war.

And for all of those dreams, he had already disappeared for months in order to train three orphans from Ame, right after the clash against Hanzo the Salamander, the fight that had made him reconsider his place in the world: he wasn't going for a repeat.

And when my eyes fell again on the form of Karin, who was now crying quietly, it was like Jiraya was talking directly in my head. I blinked, showing aside the thought. But the memory rose again, unbidden, unstoppable: and I saw Karin as she would become if the events miraculously returned to following the canonical history of the Elemental Nations.

Picked up by Orochimaru, used for her bloodline, used by Sasuke, by someone that I would never become. Covered in bites of people that had likely forced themselves on her until Orochimaru of all people put a stop to that.

The image of a bloodied Karin melted away, leaving behind the crying 12 years old girl. Better to die above the clouds, than to die in a cage.

"Something Right." I muttered to myself, seeing Jiraya's eye widen and his mouth open in what was undoubtedly a warning of some sort.

I simply looked at him, remembering clearly the story he had shared before Orochimaru assaulted us.

As if he was able to sense the shift behind my unflappable blank face, the Toad Summoner closed his mouth and stared at me intently.

I wasn't going to remain around for the battle against Orochimaru, and while it would complicate things, I could disappear with Karin, and maybe her mother.

I turned towards Karin: "My name is Haruto, and I'm not staying around for the battle, I might as well take you and your mother with me."

Jiraya's frown was almost audible while Karin's eyes widened disbelievingly, undoubtedly catching the hidden spark of amusement caused by my choosing a fake-name that meant 'flying'.

"You cannot just disappear on your own." the white-haired shinobi objected immediately as he put together what I was thinking about.

"I managed to arrive here, did I not?" I retorted simply, "I know about the safe drops to pass messages around your network, and we've talked about the other countries, nobody will be looking for me if you report that I'm with you... we've been ghosts for the past months, only showing ourselves to bait your old teammate, and a sick mother that purchased the services of a random shinobi to protect herself and her daughter as they travel is a good enough cover in case we need to cross a place that has some shinobi presence."

Karin's hands clamped on the front of my shirt, and I allowed it as I stared into her eyes, letting go of the forceful control of my chakra and simply exhaling, a fire churning in my gut as I watched for the Uzumaki's reaction.

Commitment is such a strange thing. I thought as the girl's mouth fell open in shock. Lee hadn't truly needed me when I sought him out, I knew that much. Neither id Neji, nevermind Tenten. I helped them in my own way, but this was different, risking myself for Karin was... It wasn't a much greater risk than the one I had already been willing to take, but taking the Uzumaki under my wing was... right.

"R... really?" the girl crying slowly dried out as she basked in what she could feel thanks to her bullshit sensing, while Jiraya took a lumbering step forward, as if to remind me that I had to gain his permission.

"You already meant to go away on your own." he accused me, and I didn't bother denying it.

I shrugged, glancing briefly at Karin as she straightened out: "Can you pack the things you or your mother wouldn't wish to leave behind?"

She nodded quickly: "I can put everything in a backpack." she sounded way too eager for a kid about to leave her home, but I didn't bother pointing it out.

"I'll meet you at the hospital." I spoke as she quickly scampered off, before turning towards Jiraya. How do I make it clear that I don't want to return to Konoha without insulting the 'Will of Fire' or the time we spent together?

For all the faults of the Toad Summoner, chief among them his casual habit of dangling me as bait in order to make Orochimaru overextend, he was a good man, and one that I had grown to respect: "I wasn't lying when I told you that I consider you a friend, but that also mean that I'm going to follow any order you give."

"I know that much..." he almost wanted to snort, "why?"

Not trying to play obtuse, I retorted with a question of my own: "How much are you willing to question the leadership of Konohagakure no Sato?"

He frowned at my apparent non-sequitur, and I chose to go with the truth, leaving out those parts that would lead him to assume what I needed: "My brother is an extraordinary killer."

"What?"

"He's an extraordinary killer," I repeated, but not to the point that he'd be able to kill off the whole might of the Uchiha clan on his own."

All that I said was the pure, unadulterated truth, and I could see the Sannin visibly stiffen.

"In a Village full of voyeur Hyuga, eavesdropping Inuzuka, and spooky Aburame, nobody noticed a clan that counted up to more than two hundred members die violently in a single evening?"

"Kid..." Jiraya closed shut his only uncovered eye while he pinched the bridge of his nose: "You'd better not be accusing..."

"I'm not accusing anyone, I like my head where is thank you." I replied matter-of-factly, "But the events draw a frightening picture, do they not?

The Toad Summoner grimaced openly as I idly scratched at my fake beard, forcing myself to perform the unfamiliar movement that I needed to turn into a habit.

When I took a step back from the white-haired shinobi, he remained still, and I took it as permission to go: "You should go to Tsunade after this, I patched you up but..."

"Don't worry, I have a thing that speeds up my metabolism something fierce..." he waved a hand dismissively, the joyful, goofy Jiraya that I was used to immediately taking the place of the serious man that had questioned me.

"In any case, she'll fix you, you're lucky that you didn't lose the eye." I wanted to slap the back of his head, "And don't tell her about the 106 thing, please."

"I like to live." he grinned goofily, "But I'll talk a little about you, if you need to use her like an umbrella while you're on the move."

I turned and started to walk away, a faint smile on my lips. I felt... eager, the imminent, true freedom that I was about to enjoy was empowering.

A hand landed heavily on my shoulder: "Sasuke." Jiraya called my name maybe for the first time since I first met him, and I stared up at his serious expression as he talked gravely to me, "Are you sure? I can cover you for a while, but you'll be on your own, and..."

"I'll be careful, don't worry." I wanted to smirk at his nacked worry, but he shook me by the hold he had on my shoulder.

"To the Shinigami with you, kid: you're not normal, we know that, but if you do this, your priority becomes that girl."

"I know."

"No you don't." he replied, "But maybe you will." his tone was softer now, Did I detect a hint of pride there?

He let go of my shoulder, and I grinned cheekily as I reigned in my chakra and prepared to walk out of the warehouse.

"Brat," Jiraya called me one last time, and as I turned I barely managed to catch the white mask he threw at me, "it's blank, and it will hide your face from sensing techniques: it wouldn't do for me to say that I know where you are if ANBU spots you somewhere else, would it?"

I smiled openly at the shinobi while I tucked away the mask in my small bag, and I flashed my Sharingan for the last time, memorizing the smiling form of the bandaged Jiraya, who even without being a proper teacher, had been a good mentor to me, and who now was letting me walk away without stopping me, trusting that I deserved to make my choices.

Freedom, here I come. I smiled brightly while I hunched forward, dragging my left leg just a bit as I perfectly copied the movements of the elderly man I had studied months before.

I only need to basically kidnap a highly valued bloodline user from the hospital and get out of the village without being spotted.

I felt a grin stretch under my fake, grey mustache: it was a challenge I intended to win.

AN

I thought about writing the actual signing of the Contract, with its stipulations and whatnot, but this stop in Kusa already risked turning into a huge pace-killer, so we have Karin sneaking in on Jiraya, who caught up with Sasuke.

I already had a whole chapter only for the meeting with the summons, I didn't want to remain stuck there while I could push the plot forward. Eventually, I'll slip in brief flashbacks, enough to introduce the summons that I'm going to use, and to touch on the more interesting aspects or history that the MC shares with the Eagles.

I wanted to experiment with having a scene reliant only on Karin's senses, how did it go? (I also used it to quickly sum up what has happened in the meantime).

About Summons:

I too thought about vultures, to the point that I flipped a coin to choose. In the end, there is a streak of nobility hidden somewhere in Sasuke, which blossoms here as 'Something Right'. To make the Vultures as effective as what I've planned for the Eagles, I would have needed roughly 20k words unnecessary for the story itself, so it's likely that I would have turned to the eagles nevertheless.

And as I have mentioned in one of the SI's thoughts, only the species of the Summons isn't enough to know shit about their values or their personality (Toads=Yakuza? What the Hell?), so I have wiggle room in any case to better define what the Eagles are and mean as a Summon.

So? Opinions about Karin and 'new' direction for the story?