AN: Another new chapter, and the first of this little 'mini-arc'. I'm not sure how many chapters it will take, maybe two or three more, but I hope to do a lot with this, as it's something I've never really done before, and I'm pulling inspiration from all over the place. I don't know whether Horror/Mystery is something I can write well, so with this chapter and the ones following it, please give me some good feedback, please? Also, I've now got a job, so expect updates to be less frequent.
Beta'd by: The trolling SnarkLord
Chapter 17 – A Mission
Yugito looked over her mission report as she ate her breakfast. From what she could gather there had been a series of strange attacks that had some sort of connection to local superstition. The village leader had then collected some funds together and sent a mission request to their nearest ninja village, Kumo.
She hadn't really chosen this mission specifically, instead simply swiping it from the available B ranks in the office. She was supposed to do so many missions of each rank per month, so this was nothing new to her. She always read the mission description over once she'd grabbed the scroll, and she was doing so now while enjoying a plateful of sashimi.
"Something interesting?" A voice asked her, making her almost jump out of her skin in surprise.
Looking up, Yugito found a young, blonde boy sat opposite her, giving her a smile. Her eyes widened as she realised who the hell he was.
"Naruto?!" She whisper-yelled. "How the hell did you get here?"
"I'm a kid, people don't look twice at me." Naruto shrugged.
"Not what I meant!" She told him. "How the hell did you get all the way from Fire Country to Lightning without anyone in your village noticing you're missing?" Internally, she admitted that Naruto's point was relevant as well. Genin generally weren't any younger than ten, so a seven year old could slip by unnoticed.
"I only left yesterday afternoon." Naruto told her. "I've been in Kumo for a while as well." He grinned at her. "I can travel pretty quickly you know, so I have the entire weekend free."
"I don't suppose you'd tell me how?" She asked.
Naruto shook his head. "That's my secret to keep."
"Well I can't exactly show you the sights, I have a mission to get to. Maybe Killer B can show you around." Yugito told him, getting an unimpressed look in response.
"B's far too visible, I saw him earlier." Naruto told her. "You are more solitary, and even being near you like this has earned me some looks now and then."
"You are, what, thirteen yeas my junior?" Yugito sighed. "Of course we're going to get odd looks."
"Fair point." Naruto admitted. "Given how little time I spend with people, I guess I might be noticing more than I otherwise would."
Yugito's curiosity was roused when she heard him stumble over the word 'people', like he'd intended to say something else and corrected himself at the last moment. However, she couldn't think about how to ask him about that without making it obvious she was digging for something.
"So if you've seen B already, what are you going to do now, just go home?" She asked.
"Who knows?" Naruto replied. "Maybe I'll follow you on your mission, what is it?"
Yugito considered answering, before realising that there was nothing particularly critical or secret about it, and so decided to tell him. "Just an investigation, there's been a few strange deaths at a village down the bottom of the mountain that the locals want help with looking into."
"So there's no reason I couldn't tag along?" He asked.
"If you die then it's your own damn fault." She bluntly answered. "Just make sure the gate guards don't see you leaving with me."
"I'll probably reach the village before you do." Naruto smirked slightly her.
Yugito rolled her eyes in response. "If you really did get here from around Konoha in less than half a day then you should be able to, especially as I've got official channels to go through before I leave the village."
"See you there then." Naruto grinned, before wandering out of the door.
"Sure." Yugito murmured to his retreating back. "Friend."
xxxxx
Despite keeping an eye out for him, Yugito didn't see Naruto at all when she went home and packed a bag for a two week mission – she didn't expect it to take that long, but it always pays to be prepared – or when she went to register her mission with the missions office.
She didn't see him when she left the village through the gates and started heading down the mountains. She had thought he might have been waiting for her out of sight of the gate, but no, it seemed he had either gone straight to the village – though how he'd know which one it was as she hadn't told him – or he was much better at going unseen than she had expected.
She made it all the way to the bottom of the mountain, going at shinobi speeds, without encountering anyone other than merchants, general travellers, and fellow Kumo ninjas. In fact she had even started to wonder if her earlier meeting with Naruto had been some sort of delusion brought about by too many late nights.
"It wasn't a delusion, Yugito, he really was there." A voice echoed inside her mind.
"Nibi? You've been quiet for a while, nothing to say?" She responded.
"That boy… he confuses me. I sensed something that I've never heard of before with him, and something that I know should be impossible." The two-tailed cat replied.
"Is he a threat?" Yugito immediately asked.
"He has the potential to be incredibly powerful, if that is what you mean." The biju said offhandedly. "However, if you're asking if he has any malicious intentions, I doubt it. I may not be as good as my eldest sibling at sensing these things, but he appears genuinely friendly to me."
Yugito didn't respond to that, merely acknowledging the point and slipping into a professional mindset now that she was on a mission.
She and her biju had an odd relationship, even compared to other jinchuuriki and their sealed beasts. There was a certain level of respect there, definitely, but there was also no particular friendship either. Yugito was a Kumo kunoichi, and as far as she knew, that was what she would always be. For her, the Nibi was a source of strength that could help her when she needed it.
On Matatabi's part, the cat had long realised that there wasn't a great deal of choice available to it. After Hashirama Senju had handed them out like party favours, they'd been stuck with their respective villages, to be transferred from host to host when the previous one became useless or died. Yugito at least wasn't a particularly insulting host like some Matatabi had had in the past, and so their relationship remained fairly cordial, with Yugito taking Matatabi's chakra only when she really needed it, and the biju occasionally offering a comment or two on Yugito's life.
However, Matatabi was currently rather confused. When she had first seen Naruto, she could tell straight away that he was a jinchuuriki – and on top of that his chakra carried the 'flavour' of Kurama quite strongly as well – but there had been something else there as well, two things actually. One of those things was hint of another biju, Isobu if she read it right, but the more confusing thing was that the biju 'flavour' to Naruto's chakra seemed… dormant, like the three and nine tails weren't actually there.
Fading to the back of Yugito's mindscape, Matatabi prepared to do something that she had never really thought she'd use much, especially not to contact one of her more grouchy siblings. Appearing in that empty space that mentally connected all nine biju, Matatabi roared out Kurama's name.
"What do you want, pussy-cat?" Kurama irritably asked once he arrived.
"Your jinchuuriki, Naruto, confuses me. I can sense you within him, but it's almost like you're not there, and I swear I can feel Isobu's presence as well." The look in Matatabi's eyes demanded an explanation.
"Most of my chakra is inside the blonde brat, but he's created a technique that allows me some small amount of freedom outside of his seal." Kurama smirked at the black and blue feline. "Jealous, are we?"
"Yes, I am." Matatabi readily admitted. "And what of Isobu, I thought he was sealed inside of someone in Water Country?"
"He was sealed in them." Kurama answered her. "However, we've found that, because of this shared space we biju have, he could jump across from one host to another, so long as he left all of his chakra behind. Given that his old host had been turned into a mindless meat puppet and Naruto made him a small body, it wasn't a difficult decision to make."
"We can transfer ourselves between our current hosts?" Matatabi asked in surprise.
"Yes, so if you run into trouble too big for you and your vessel to handle, you could make a move before you're forced to spend years pulling yourself together." Kurama told her.
"Noted, but I don't think there's much out there that Yugito can't handle when using my chakra, and I have no particular reason to leave her right now. Perhaps if my next vessel is an annoying and uncultured ingrate." Matatabi replied.
"By the way, just how did your vessel get from Konoha to Kumo so quickly?" Matatabi asked. "That's rather respectable for a human, and all of the techniques I can think of for moving that fast aren't the sort of thing taught to children."
"He has a rather impressive movement technique, however that's not how he got there so fast." Kurama reluctantly complimented the hirenkyaku technique. "He rode on the back of a youkai that he bribed with human treats."
"A youkai?" Matatabi wondered.
"Yes, a youkai, now go away, I was enjoying some fresh meat when you called me here." Kurama growled, before vanishing from the mindscape.
"Ever the predator, brother." Matatabi sighed, following suit and returning to Yugito.
xxxxx
Yugito eventually came across Naruto when she was almost out of the mountains, only a couple of hours away from her target destination in fact. The blonde wasn't stood at the side of the road, nor was he just lying around waiting, he appeared to be training or something. Whatever it was he was doing apparently had something to do with the small turtle sat on his head that he was talking to.
"So water manipulation is all about giving it at least a little free reign? Directing it rather than forcing it? Forcing it works when working with pressurised water though, I guess that makes sense, but for a more 'natural' flowing water technique, you need to think like water." Naruto was muttering to himself. "Crushing force, an implacable tide that will flow around an obstacle and into any small gap presented to it."
"Naruto." Yugito called out, interrupting the blonde's constant murmuring.
"Hey, Yugito." Naruto greeted her. "I realised that I didn't know where I was supposed to be going once I'd gotten out of the village, so I asked about rumours and stuff and ended up in the generally right area."
"What rumours have you heard?" Yugito asked seriously. After all, anything that she learned might help her complete this investigation sooner.
"There's been a number of deaths, though exactly how many I don't know. Some rumours say an entire village has been killed, but I think that's exaggeration. At present, I'd say that there's been a minimum of a dozen deaths, but probably two or three times that many." He told her. "All of the bodies share some unusual traits, one of the notable ones being that each body has lost some organs, though if the killer has any preference for a 'trophy', I don't know what it is. The other little titbit I heard was that an empty skin was always found next to the most recent victim, and there's already stories spreading about a demon that wears the skins of its kills to trick people and make them their next meal."
"Demons?" Yugito asked sceptically.
Naruto shrugged. "While not all of the stories agree, most of them say that several young boys spent the night in a 'cursed' cave and disturbed the sleep of the monster, accidentally unsealing it and unleashing it on the village."
"So there might be something that was previously sealed and gotten loose." Yugito muttered, knowing that there were some places around the nations where things had been sealed away, Demon Country having many such places, though not all of them. "I don't suppose you would happen to be a seal master, would you? I'm not."
"I get by well enough." Naruto answered vaguely.
Yugito, however, made a mental note of the younger boy's admission. It was the only indicator she had of what skills he had. Well, that and whatever method he was using to keep up with her pace. While she was doing nothing more than actively channelling chakra through her body – her legs more specifically – there was a blue flickering light around his feet that indicated the use of some sort of technique he was using.
"If something needs sealing away, can you do it?" Yugito asked bluntly.
"It depends on what needs sealing." Naruto protested. "As long as it's nothing too powerful, then yes I can do it. However, if it is something strong, I can only seal it if it's been beaten down first. I've never really focused on sealing things away, you know, I've been more interested in active seals."
"So you're capable enough to look after yourself?" She pressed.
"Capable enough, yes." Naruto clarified without divulging what exactly his skill level was.
"That'll have to be enough then." Yugito said, before falling silent, most of her attention on getting to the village she was to investigate, though some of her focus was on the speed technique Naruto was using and trying to figure out how it worked.
xxxxx
Upon arriving at the village, while Yugito went to speak to the head of the village, Naruto split off from her and attempted to locate the cave the rumours mentioned. That shouldn't be too difficult to do, there could only be so many caves nearby, and there were ways to narrow down the search even further.
However, what Naruto first noticed when he started looking was the stench that seemed to permeate the area. It was like some sort of unholy combination of putrid, rotten flesh and the sickly sweet smell of honey. Strangely though, none of the villagers seemed to be reacting to the smell, and Naruto turned to his youkai companions to see if they had any explanation.
"This smell… this is definitely a demon of some kind." Benio told him. "That overly sweet smell is telling me that much, and the scent of dead flesh tells us a little more."
"So there really is a 'flesh' demon or something around here?" Naruto asked, trying not to gag as he did so.
"Yes, but how the demon uses flesh, I couldn't say." Benio offered as much as she could. "Does it gain power by eating it? Does it animate corpses? Does it wear the skin as a disguise? There's so many ways one can use flesh, I just hope that we don't find it being used for a curse."
Tsurara frowned. "Yes, flesh curses can be some of the worst against humans." She added her opinion. "I remember a time, about three or four centuries back, where a rather vengeful bitch cast a curse on a family that caused their penis to start rotting when they turned seventeen, with it eventually falling off."
Naruto shivered in disgust at that mental image, and turned to Takame and Masami to see if they had anything to add, which they didn't. The blonde boy began to think that leaving Madara behind to guzzle down whatever sweets he could beg, or buy with the money Naruto had left him, had not been the best idea.
"Let's go find this cave, see if that can tell us anything about what was supposedly sealed here." Naruto suggested. "Isobu, can you try and stay in contact with Matatabi, please? Tell her to contact us if Yugito runs into something she doesn't understand."
"I will, Naruto." Isobu agreed. "You just be careful as well. You might know more about demons and how to handle them, but an expert you are not."
"I know, Isobu, and thank you for your concern." Naruto thanked the turtle.
"Well it's not like Kurama is going to show any concern, so I might as well do so." The sanbi added.
"We both know that Kurama's pretty jaded, and with good reason too. Maybe one day he will care, but for now I'll more than make do with your worrying, thank you." Naruto grinned. "Now, let's see what caves we can find."
With that, Naruto activated his hirenkyaku, flickering over towards the cliff face and the caves at the bottom of the mountain. The first was too shallow to really have anything in there, and the second didn't have what they were looking for in it, but the third one he checked had the small shrine, boulder, and sealing rope within it.
Naruto grimaced at seeing the broken rope, or more specifically how low quality it was. Given that it had held for as long as it had though, it had more than done the job it was designed for. Still, he did what he came to do and examined everything there to see what he could find.
"This rope has been corroded by the demon's power, so we're dealing with something of at least second level, maybe third. That's not too much trouble as long as we get to it soon enough, but if it has been feeding as voraciously as the rumours suggest, there's no telling how much power it's stored up already." Naruto reported to the youkai.
"If we're right in that it's using skins as a disguise, though, that will cost it at least a little of its power." Benio said. "Not a great deal, but it is something at least, and if we can figure out who the most recent victim is, we may possibly be able to work out who it's currently pretending to be."
"It'd be easier if we could track it by scent, but this smell is everywhere." Naruto complained. "At least with it we can tell the demon is somewhere within the village, or at least nearby. Though with me and Yugito here, it might decide to move on before it's discovered, so we'll have to keep an eye on that."
"At least you found something out." Masami comforted Naruto. "Let's see what Yugito has found and see if we can match up information."
xxxxx
Yugito was currently talking with the village head, an old woman who looked like a shrivelled up prune. She had an attitude to match it as well, certain that Yugito wouldn't be able to do anything about the 'demon', and she was just wasting her time.
She did give Yugito the information she asked for though, a list of names, locations, and estimated times of death for all of those that had died. She was given access to the outbuilding all of the corpses were being kept in as well, and she was heading over to said building to go over the cadavers when Naruto caught up with her.
"Did you find anything?" Yugito asked, not really expecting much and actually surprised when Naruto responded with an affirmative.
"We're definitely dealing with a demon here, and it's a flesh beast." He told her. "It was a shoddy sealing job from what I can tell, either done by someone with only a minimum of skill and knowledge, or done hastily. I can confirm that it's still somewhere near the village, if not within one of the buildings right now."
"A flesh beast?" Yugito murmured. "Explain."
"A demon that uses flesh as a medium for its abilities. Whether that be devouring it for strength, animating it, using it as a catalyst for curses, or something else, I can't tell." Naruto repeated what he'd learned barely a few minutes ago. "Usually, they're not particularly strong as far as demons go, but with enough of a supply of flesh, they can become really nasty."
Yugito didn't question the source of his knowledge, and instead asked for the best way to deal with such creatures.
"Fire's good, burn away their supply of flesh." Naruto said, with Benio telling him what little she knew. "Physical damage, such as cuts or bruises, won't do a lot though, so water and wind are both out as well. Lightning can work a bit, but it has to be powerful lightning, and trapping them in earth is only slowing down the inevitable."
"I can do fire." Yugito told him. "That and lightning are my specialities after all."
"Just make sure you make it as hot as you can." Naruto cautioned. "The demon will resist damage somewhat." Naruto then looked skywards, eyeing up several grey clouds. "Let's also hope that it doesn't rain too soon, that will only make things harder."
"If it rains, it rains." Yugito said. "Now let's take a look at the bodies, see if there's anything they can tell us."
Naruto nodded, and followed his fellow blonde into what appeared to be a small barn for hay storage. Once inside, however, they found it empty of any hay bales, and instead filled with thirty-four corpses, all laid side by side on the ground.
Yugito looked at the younger boy, impressed when he managed to quickly get over his unease at the sight of so many dead bodies. He only paused for a moment, taking three deep breaths, before setting himself straight and focusing on the injuries they had. Most fresh genin, in Yugito's experience, would have at least turned green, if not thrown up, at the sight, so Naruto was obviously made of sterner stuff than most.
"Are they in order at all?" Naruto asked.
"Apparently, or at least that's what the village head told me." Yugito replied, watching as Naruto examined the corpses in an attempt to see any sort of pattern in which organs or limbs they lost. "Shall we start with the obvious stuff, first?"
"Sure." Naruto agreed. "The skin?"
"Yes, the skin." Yugito agreed. "As we can see, each body has been, for lack of a better word, 'peeled' quite completely. However, there's no cuts on the skins to show how it was removed, almost like it was taken off all at once, but there's too little stretching for this to have happened any 'normal' way."
"The bodies are too complete and large for the skins to have been 'emptied' bit by bit too." Naruto agreed. "All this means though is that our target can essentially 'teleport' a skin off someone's body. There's not even any cuts in the skin to indicate what it was that killed them, no claw or teeth marks, nothing."
"Their jaws have been dislocated though, and there is some damage to their tongues." Yugito countered. "Like something crawled into their mouths."
"Yeah, like a parasite or something." Naruto nodded. "If that's so, it means they were likely attacked from the front, lending credence to the idea that the demon wears skins as a disguise. After all, with a monster on the loose, a village like this will close ranks and rely on each other, won't they?"
"Not always." Yugito disagreed. "Sometimes panic can cause people to start blaming and suspecting anyone and everyone, but I don't think that's the case here. There's an established legend of an age old demon for them to blame, so gathering together does make some sense in this case."
"Right, and with them looking outwards, the problem is likely coming from their friendly neighbour." Naruto grimaced. "Of course, to properly integrate with the community, it's possible that the demon gets at least a little knowledge from the ones it kills, so it can act more like them."
"That's assuming it's actually hiding that way." Yugito said. "For all we know, it could be hiding out as someone's pet dog, or a wild animal that comes into the village to feed every now and then."
"True." Naruto admitted. "I might be jumping to conclusions a bit."
"Theories and ideas are good, but don't become blind to other possibilities." Yugito advised him.
"Right." Naruto made a mental note of her words, in case he ever had an investigative mission in the future.
"Now, let's look at what organs are missing from the bodies." Yugito told the younger blonde, and the two got to it. Naruto started from one end, Yugito the other, and when they met in the middle, they totalled up all of the missing pieces.
As it turned out, the most common missing organs were the heart, lungs, and genitalia. The number of missing legs was also quite a bit higher than the number of missing arms, with only six of them missing their heads. There were a few other missing organs here and there, mostly from the digestive system, though a few eyes and tongues were also missing.
"Okay, I can't make any sense about what organs have been taken." Naruto admitted.
Yugito couldn't either. "If there were bloodlines amongst them, taking their reproductive organs would make sense, but these are just ordinary civilians."
"That's from a ninja's perspective." Naruto said. "Why would demons care about bloodlines? No, they were taken for another reason, I just can't think of what that might be."
Yugito sighed. "For now, the best thing we can do is ask a few questions of those who are close to the victims, friends, family, and neighbours, before we start patrolling the village to keep an eye on things."
"You handle that then." Naruto suggested. "I'm not officially part of this mission after all, and I do have certain advantages when it comes to searching for demons."
Yugito gave him a curious look, remembering what he'd told her earlier, and how he'd said that the 'flesh beast' was still somewhere around the village. Unless she was much mistaken, Naruto was a sensor of some type, perhaps even with a speciality in detecting non-humans or something. If that was the case, it really would make sense for him to patrol while she did other things.
"If you find yourself in trouble, flare your chakra high and I'll come and assist you." She told him. "I will do the same if I encounter our target, two on one is always better than one on one."
"Be careful." Naruto warned her. "As far as we know, the flesh beast could be posing as anyone or anything."
"Understood." Yugito said, before leaving to speak with the relatives of the deceased.
Frowning, Naruto also left the barn, but paused as he considered where he should start his search. The demon would need somewhere to store its spare flesh, assuming it didn't just eat it straight away, and it was common for beings of all stripes – human, youkai, and demon – to have a 'lair' of some description, somewhere they could retreat to in safety.
The question was, where would he find it?
Caves were too obvious, though they would still need to be checked, and cellars, as much as they would make sense, would also be far from perfect. The best place that Naruto could think of for a lair would be an outbuilding that no one paid much attention to, but also wouldn't be somewhere a person couldn't go freely. A crypt may also be somewhere to check out, though that was only if the local graveyard had one, which he doubted.
For now though, Naruto began to wander around the village. He remained as unseen as he could – which wasn't difficult when he was only hiding from civilians – and kept his senses sharp to try and find the demon. The scent he associated with this specific demon wasn't any stronger or weaker around the barn, but maybe he'd get a face full of it somewhere else in the village.
With this thought he mind, he began his patrol, accompanied by his youkai companions and Isobu.
xxxxx
Yugito sighed tiredly to herself as she finished speaking to the sixth family so far. Things were getting rather repetitive from her point of view. She'd offer her condolences for their loss, ask about any strange behaviour they might have exhibited, get an answer along the lines of 'they were fine until they died', and then she'd ask about where they'd been, who they'd talked to, and anything they think might be relevant, before noting down their answers.
So far she had bugger all to show for all of the effort she'd put into this mission, and she hoped Naruto had had more success than she did. If he could use his senses to narrow down the list of suspects and/or locations they needed to search, then she'd be a happy ninja.
She wasn't holding out much hope there though. With the speed Naruto had displayed earlier, matching her even – for a ninja – pace, he could have crossed the village several times over already. If he hadn't found anything yet, she doubted he would find anything any time soon.
For now though, she had plenty of people to ask the same set of questions over and over again.
'Joy'.
xxxxx
Hunger. Need more. So Hungry. So Long. Feel Power. Feel Lots Of Power. Need To Eat. Too Much Power? No. Human Power. Chakra Power. Not Demon Power. Feed? No. Not Yet. Need To Prepare. Need More Flesh. Smell Power. Smell Spirits. They Can See. They Can Hurt.
Need To Be Careful.
Need To Be Complete.
Need To Be Whole.