Against the World
"There is little to do but move forward."
-x-
"She's abnormally small for her age." Tsunade commented to the Hokage. "I'm not sure why—in my initial assessment I predicted she would be on the small side, but she's barely growing. It is, quite frankly, worrying."
Dan frowned, but didn't look up from his paper work. "How so?"
Tsunade rolled her eyes, and launched into a long winded explanation.
The Hokage let her monologue for a few minutes, then sighed and cut her off. "What do you want me to do about it?"
"Let me be the one to go to the next meeting with Orochimaru, so I can discuss it with him, and have him do some testing."
"On the girl?!" Dan looked up, eyes wide with alarm.
Tsunade scowled. "Of course not, idiot. I'll give him a few samples and her file."
"I suppose that's acceptable. Very well then. Request approved."
-x-
Sixteen
It was a small affair. There was no wake or funeral proper. Hanako knew so few people there was little point.
It was fortunate I was in village when it happened, and I was notified right away. With permission from sensei, I dropped what I was doing and headed directly to the hospice. They allowed me to sit with her body, and take the time to wash it. Once she was clean, I dressed her in a white robe, since a kimono was not an option, and brushed out her thin silver hair.
Then I took out a scroll and ink, and sealed her away.
When I arrived at the crematorium I was surprised to find Tominaga Junichi, the clan head and Hanako's younger brother, standing outside.
"What right do you have to be here?" I demanded. "She was done with your family. You weren't there for her in life, why should I let you be here in death?"
"I did what I could, and she wasn't as done with us as you think." he replied calmly.
My eyes narrowed and my lips thinned. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It's none of your concern." The aging man pursed his lips, and shook his head. "I loved her, allow me this." he begged.
Reluctantly, I nodded.
The way things worked here, is that this crematorium was specifically for ninja, and was basically a DIY sort of place. We checked in at the reception and were sent to one of the chambers. I unsealed Hanako's body and placed her on the slab.
"Thank you for taking care of her." Tominaga said, idly stroking her silver hair. "Even coming here for this is a risk. If the elders knew..."
"Aren't you the clan head?" I asked curiously. "What could they do to you?"
He ignored my question and asked his own instead. "Will you allow me to be the one to burn the body?"
I nodded. If he hadn't come I would have had to use a seal, as I didn't have the skill with fire ninjutsu do to a proper burning.
And so, he set her ablaze.
I stood and watched, transfixed, until all that remained were ashes and bone.
I unsealed a simple urn from my arm. I'd picked it out nearly a year ago, when I noticed how poorly Hanako was fairing. I'd been carrying it around since, waiting for this day to come. It took longer than I'd been expecting. The past few months, whenever I visited her, she was no longer working on anything like she used to. She couldn't. She barely had the energy for speaking.
I took the chopsticks that had been provided, and slowly started moving the bones over to the urn, starting with the feet. Tominaga joined me, and we worked silently in tandem.
Soon, all that remained of Hanako was inside the urn.
Tominaga told me go ahead to the graveyard while he took care of the fees, and he would meet me at the plot she would share with her daughter.
He never made it.
-x-
The days after Hanako died were hazy. I felt alone in a way I hadn't before. Hanako may not have been a blood relative, but she was still family. She had been there for me my entire life. She was my last connection to my mother, the last person who'd known her.
And now she was gone too.
It was hard, and while my team and friends tried to be there for me, I just wanted to be alone.
In the years since I'd started wondering about my parentage, I'd let my research lapse. I'd hit a dead end, and then just never got back into it.
But now that everyone else was gone, it brought back the desire to figure out who my father was. So I pulled out my old notebook, and re-familiarized myself with the deductions and inferences I'd made back in the day.
With more knowledge of the system, there were a couple things I crossed out and added, but my analysis still seemed fairly accurate.
With the parameters of my search in mind, I headed over to the C archives.
I'd been granted access to them shortly after my promotion, and while they were in a different location than the D archives, they were pretty similar. They were deep underground, the entrance of which was in a residential building of an identical nature. The security was nearly the same, only tighter.
In the past I'd compared the D archives to a science library. The C archives were different. In set up, they reminded me a bit of what I'd heard about libraries prior to computers. Where things like newspapers and article clippings were stored in filing cabinets, and you had to manually search for things, instead of just googling information or looking up the location of a pertinent article or text in the system.
The archive was comprised of old, declassified personnel files and mission reports, maps and detailed geography books, both foreign and local, old bingo books, and other semi-sensitive documents.
Unlike the D archives, which were full of towering shelves packed full of scrolls and books, this place was filled with filing cabinets, with the occasional bookshelf scattered here or there. It was emptier, too, except for the geography section.
I wandered around, looking through old files, trying to suss out how they'd organized things here.
I found the names and pictures of both former and current department heads, and slowly made my way through them, marking out a handful of men who met the parameters of my search, and then moved onto the old bingo books. They were all at least a decade old, but I figured it was still possible to find something, and I added a few more names to my mental list of potential fathers.
I probably would have kept going, kept obsessively searching, but Team 4 was assigned a mission.
-x-
After our promotion to chuunin, we were rarely accompanied by any of our teachers on missions, and while we had yet to be sent out specifically for fighting, the missions we got were of higher importance and increased danger.
Our current mission was a B-rank escort mission. Leaf had a trading deal with miners up north in Mountain Country, which was located between Pond and Rice Fields. Our mission was to guard the small mining caravan, composed of perhaps a dozen people, as they returned home.
Fortunately, as they had come here for a delivery, their carts were mostly empty, and only contained supplies required for the journey, making our jobs easier.
A straight line from their town to Leaf was approximately 900 km, and since we were stuck travelling on the main roads, that added another 200 km or so to the journey. Furthermore, we would be travelling as fast as the miners' team of oxen could pull their carts. On the bright side, the oxen in this world were larger, stronger, and faster than the oxen of The Before. I assumed it was something to do with chakra, as most such differences are. I vaguely recalled reading in The Before that an ox could travel at a speed of roughly 3 km per hour, but the ones here could push 10.
Doing some quick math, I estimated it would take us between ten days and two weeks to reach the miners' village, and then two days to make it back. Perhaps one day if we pushed ourselves, and three if we took our time.
We were hardly going to dawdle, though. Currently, most of the fighting was over in Meadow Country and near Lightning, but we would be crossing through an area that saw heavy traffic between Earth and Lightning, which meant we were likely to be attacked once we crossed the border out of Fire.
Delays due to weather had to be considered too. It was February, and while the weather in Leaf rarely dipped below freezing, it would get colder as we headed north into the mountains.
I kept this all in mind as I prepared for the mission. I pulled on my mesh under armour, and then a thick long sleeved shirt and matching pants over top of it. I slipped my black and purple chest guard over top, and pulled on a pair of tall boots. Finally, I took out a blue pin and attached it to my forehead protector, right beside the plate.
The blue pin indicated my rank, and all chuunin and higher ranked ninja had to wear them when they left the village. Blue was for chuunin, purple for special jounin, and red for elite jounin. The idea was to recognize rank when dealing with unfamiliar but allied ninja.
Rank impersonation was a serious crime, of course. I'd actually been accused of it twice, however I wasn't actually guilty so beyond Kushina-sensei teasing and laughing at me, it didn't have much impact. Well, for me, at least. I hear the ninja who reported me got in trouble for insubordination when it came out that I held rank over them and they refused to listen to me.
I met Sakura and Aiko on the way to the north-east gate. Sakura was wearing her typical short sleeved qipao dress, however it was layered over a black, long sleeved shirt. She'd traded out her usual shorts for pants, and her sandals for boots. Aiko on the other hand had taken to wearing the standard navy sweater and pants that made up the official uniform of Leaf ninja. At thirteen, she had started to develop curves, and she hated them, so she did her best to hide it behind loose clothing. Both of them wore the standard beige travelling cloaks, which I had opted to leave sealed in my arm.
At the gate, we met the miners. Doing a quick survey, I counted thirteen of them, ten wagons, with five pairs of oxen. Two oxen each were hooked up to five of the wagons. Each of those five wagons had another attached to it from behind.
Sakura, who over time was elected our "people person," greeted them. "Hello. We are Team 4. My name is Sakura, and these are my teammates, Aiko and Sekai. We are the team of chuunin sent to escort you back home to your village in Mountain."
A large, sturdy man frowned, but greeted her in return. After a brief discussion, we left.
Aiko took the front of the caravan, Sakura took the rear, and I took the side. Ideally we'd have a fourth person for the other side, but there was nothing we could do about that.
We travelled mostly in silence along the roads. It had snowed recently, and though it melted quickly, it left the roads damp and muddy. More than once Sakura had to use her enhanced strength when one of the wagons got stuck.
It was boring, but we couldn't afford any distractions, especially on the fourth day when we neared the borders.
We had two options, we could pass through the Mountain capital, or we could cross over into Rice Fields briefly, which was a slightly shorter path, but the roads were worse. Sakura said Tsunade-sensei told her that Rice Fields would always be a safer bet for us, but not why, so trusting her mentor, we opted to go that way.
True to Tsunade-sensei's word, we passed through Rice Fields unmolested.
On the eighth day we approached the Continental River, which was both the widest and longest river on the continent. Beyond it lied the mountains the country was named for, and once we reached them the chances of attack dramatically decreased.
So of course, that is when things went wrong. Aiko barely shouts out a warning before they're upon us. The civilians were huddled in the first wagon, and Aiko hurriedly used an earth jutsu to erect a half dome protectively around them, leaving an opening to prevent enemies from tunnelling in from below without our notice. My blonde teammate proceeded to unseal her spear from her palm and position herself in front of the opening.
With knowledge that the clients are protected, I turned my focus to the enemy.
There was eight of them, half bearing the symbol for Cloud and half for Rock. Likely a team from each village, probably meeting each other.
A teenage boy came at me from the side, kunai swinging. I ducked out of the way, palming a kunai of my own. I used it to parry his next attack, and then jump back when one of his allies came at me from the other side.
I hastily cast a genjutsu on the two, using their distraction as an opening to attack with my kunai. I managed to shove my kunai up through the underside of the teenage boy's jaw, but the other ninja managed to break free from my illusion.
"You bitch!" he snarled when he saw his teammate laying on the ground, unmoving. He attacked me in a rage, forcing me back towards the first wagon as I dodged his fists. He was fast, but I was too, and I'd been drilled on dodging the way a medic is thanks to Tsunade-sensei, so he only got in a couple of glancing blows.
In the distance, I saw Sakura land a hit on one of the Cloud nin, caving in her skull. "Shannaro!"
As I approached Aiko and the wagon housing our clients, I weaved another genjutsu over my attacker. Since I was only targeting one person, I was able to use a more complex illusion that wasn't as easy to break out of. Someday, I would be able to do complex illusions on multiple targets, but that day was not today.
The chakra connection gave me the impression of what he was seeing, and I adjusted my chakra accordingly. I jumped up on his back so I was sitting on his shoulders, then grabbed his head and twisted. I jumped away before he even started to collapse. The connection cut out.
Surveying the area, I saw that Sakura was holding her own against a pair of enraged Cloud ninja, but that Aiko was struggling against the remaining three.
I hopped over, snaring them in a genjutsu as I approached, and their momentary distraction is all it took for Aiko to find an opening and thrust her spear through one of their necks. She shook him off her spear while using the blunt end to block the slash of of a sword from his teammate.
While Aiko handled the swordsman, the other began to sink into the ground, and I cursed, losing track of him.
The ground shifted beneath me, and I jumped out of the way of a massive spike, only for more sprout from the earth where ever I stood, driving me further and further from the caravan. In my attempts to avoid being impaled by stalagmites, I forgot to pay attention to where the ninja creating them was hiding. At the last second I saw him coming at me with a kunai and managed to avoid a knife to the eye, but taking it in the shoulder instead. My under armour did it's job though, and held up against the blade, keeping all but the tip from making it through.
He tried to disappear into the ground again, but I was expecting it this time. Before he was completely submerged, I slapped a seal tag on the ground, and instantly a crater was created as I sealed the earth away... And the portion of him that had sunk into it, leaving behind a cleanly cut torso.
I sprinted back towards the others, and saw that while I was dealing with the earth user, Aiko had finished off the swordsman. Sakura, meanwhile, was healing what appeared to a broken leg and a nasty burn on her arm simultaneously, with the remains of the two Cloud nin at her feet.
We regrouped, and waited to see if anyone else was coming. When no one appeared after a few moments, Sakura ducked into the wagon to check on the miners.
"You good?" Aiko asked me, and I nodded. I had a few new bruises and a small shoulder wound, but nothing too serious. I tilted my chin at her, silently asking after her. "I'm fine," she responded. Looking over her, I saw she had a few small nicks, but didn't appear to be severely injured. "Thanks for the assist with your genjutsu."
"Of course."
After Sakura ascertained that everyone was alive and finished healing us, we examined the damage.
In the commotion, several of the oxen had come unhooked and run off. Two of the carts were damaged, one only mildly, but the other was unsalvageable. The road was a mess of craters and stalagmites, making it obvious that some sort of fight had occurred here.
I sent Aiko out to find the missing oxen while Sakura changed a wheel on the cart with the help of one of our clients. I gathered up the remains of our enemies and sealed them away. Later, Sakura would set it on fire, together with destroyed wagon.
When Aiko returned with the oxen, the miners hooked them back up to the wagons. Sakura and Aiko worked together to repair the terrain, using super strength and earth jutsu respectively.
By the time we were done, no one would know anything happened here.
-x-
That night, while our clients slept, we discussed the team that attacked us in a mid-mission debriefing, to make sure we were all up to date on anything important.
"It wasn't a planned ambush," I deduced. "There were no traps, and they had little strategy. A team from Cloud and one from Rock, obviously working together, but no practice fighting alongside each other. They separated, mostly, when they attacked, instead of working together."
Aiko nodded in agreement. "They saw us and thought we'd be easy pickings." She tapped the side of her glasses, a signal indicating she'd read it in their minds.
"What rank do you suppose they were?" I asked.
Sakura hummed, gently nibbling on her lip. "I think the one who burned me was a special jounin, and the other two I took care of were definitely chuunin."
"I think the earth user I took on was a special jounin too. They were probably the leaders of each of the teams. I think one of the ones I took out was a genin, maybe a chuunin that wasn't a fighter." I tapped two fingers against my chin. "He probably had some sort of skill that was needed for whatever their mission was. The last one I got was a chuunin. Aiko?"
"Chuunin, the both of them." she offered. "I didn't learn anything about their mission."
"That's fine," I dismissed with a shrug. "That's not our job anyways."
-x-
The rest of the journey was uneventful. Once we crossed the river and started climbing the mountain trails, the temperature began to rapidly drop. The ground was littered with snow and ice, and we relied on cycling our chakra to keep us warm, while the miners bundled up in heavy winter coats and blankets in their wagon together.
We reached their village a week after the attack, slowed by the steep and icy roads. We were thanked for our services, and the leader of the miners let us spend the night at his home. We left early the morning of the sixteenth day.
Aiko took point and set the pace, as usual, and we skidded down the sides of the mountain instead of wasting time taking the roads. As we approached the Continental River again, we slowed down and employed every stealth technique Kairi-sensei taught us in an effort to avoid further conflict. Successful efforts, to our relief.
Once we returned to Fire Country, we picked up the pace again.
We crashed as soon as we got home, well after midnight. We all piled into my apartment to avoid dealing with other people. The three of us squeezed into my loft bed, lying on on top of each other.
-x-
We woke up slowly, languidly, until Aiko started stretching and accidentally shoved me off the bed. I scowled while Sakura and Aiko laughed at me, but I took the opportunity to get first dibs on the bathroom.
I took my time, taking a long, steaming shower, that left barely any hot water for my guests.
Once I was done I pulled up a rickety chair to my wobbly table and began writing my mission report. Meanwhile, Aiko took her turn in the bathroom and Sakura started on breakfast.
"Sorry, Sakura," Aiko said, toweling off her hair as she exited my washroom. "Someone used up all the hot water."
The pinkette giggled as she set down two plates on the table, and left a third on the counter. "So that's what that scream was about. I'll just shower at home. Where I can take a bath after."
Aiko took the second chair at the table, and Sakura jumped up on the counter. They made light conversation while we ate, but I ignored them to focus on my report. I wanted to get it done soon, I was hoping to meet up with Itachi or Shisui later to work on my genjutsu. Preferably both, really.
The mission made it clear that I need to improve my multi-target genjutsu skills. I'd grown too used to only having a single target during interrogations. The only time I'd been using multi-target illusions was on missions within Fire country, or sometimes Red Bean, and not on any ninja.
I finished about an hour later, by which time my teammates had already left, so I headed to the tower to turn my report in.
By pure chance, I ran into Shisui as I was leaving the tower.
"Shisui! Do you have a moment?"
"For you Sekai-chan? Of course." he replied with a smile. "What can I do for you."
"I need your help with genjusu. Or Itachi, if he's in the village." I explained. Though our lessons had ended a few months back, both Uchiha had told me I could still come to them with any problems I was having.
"You're in luck, he's in village too."
A half hour later the three of us were sitting inside Suzuki Kashiya, discussing the issue.
"It sounds like your problem is splitting your concentration." Itachi suggested, nibbling on his dango.
Shisui hummed. "Perhaps. Are you using enough chakra? That could also be it." I shrugged. "Well, try a genjutsu on us, individually and then at the same time."
"Ready?" I inquired. Itachi and Shisui both nodded.
This was one of the great things about genjutsu. I mean, what other jutsu can you practice inside a store without getting in trouble?
-x-
It turned out both Itachi and Shisui were right. It was mostly a concentration issue, but I was using less chakra than I should as well, which weakened my genjutsu. The latter was easy to fix. The former... not so much. It was just a matter of practice.
Sadly, I didn't get a chance to practice, because Team 4 was being sent out to the frontlines.
-x-
Notes: I'm terribly sorry for the pathetic fight scene. It's the first I've ever written, and well. I clearly need practice.
Before anyone complains about the girls holding their own against a genin, 5 chuunin and 2 special jounin, I'm gonna explain my reasoning.
For one, the battle lasted less than ten minutes. I imagine the weak one went after Sekai because she's small, and she took him out in a matter of seconds. The second dude she finished off in maybe two minutes. Aiko was able to hold the jounin and two chuunin off for a couple minutes thanks to knowing defensive earth jutsu and being skilled at blocking with her spear. Then Sekai helps Aiko kill one of the chuunin, and it turns into two one on one fights. Sakura meanwhile is fighting two chuunin and special jounin. They weren't expecting her strength, and the first chuunin she killed assumed she could handle a punch from a little girl. She was clearly wrong. Anyways, Sakura can 1-hit KO people, so she just needed to get a hit each on the remaining two, but got injured while doing so, which I think is realistic. Also, they drastically underestimated the girls.
I think canon's long, drawn out fights with all this talking and flashy jutsu don't fit with the setting. Ninja here are trained to end the fight as quickly and efficiently as possible, to go straight for the kill.
Anyways, hopefully with practice I'll get better at these fight scenes. I certainly hope I do because there are lots more to come in this arc.