18. Flight of the Earth

Something was wrong; Minato could tell. He was not the only one.

"We should've bumped into someone by now," Kushina said, reading his thoughts. They were sitting in the shade of some thick, rare trees they had never seen before. They had already crossed the Grass, unnoticed by Grass shinobi. They had entered the Earth country, but there were no signs of any Iwa-nin either.

"But I thought we were just trying to pass unnoticed?" Rin asked, confused as of why the three jounin seemed alarmed.

"We've been walking for five days," Minato answered. "Even though we're trying to sneak by, there doesn't seem to be anyone to … sneak by."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Obito asked quite unconcerned as he stuffed his mouth with rations.

"It's an unusual thing," Minato said, trying to eat with more manners despite the fact that he was starving.

General Hiromu came back from his watch, looking sort of puzzled.

"There's a village nearby," he said. "I took the chance to take a closer look at it. It's abandoned."

"How weird," Kushina said.

"I suggest we investigate a little further," the general said. "We might find something useful there."

After finishing their rations rather hurriedly, they got up and walked the short distance between their lunch seats and the abandoned village.

It wasn't big. The main street was easily found, and behind the buildings at each side of it, small streets filled with tiny, simple houses and workshops sneaked their way to the edge of the forest surrounding the whole village.

"Keep close to me," Minato told his team, who immediately packed up behind him and looked around nervously. He opened up a door to what seemed to be a restaurant and walked in.

Despite being an abandoned restaurant, it was fairly clean. Dust had fallen on to the tables and chairs, but the layers were still quite thin. It seemed to have been abandoned on purpose; the chairs had been drawn tight up to the tables, the glasses behind the bar were all washed and placed tidily on shelves, bottles of alcohol had been removed and the lights were turned off. The kitchen and the storage was empty for any sort of food.

The situation seemed the same for every building. The hotel rooms looked as though they were still waiting for guests. Doors to houses were firmly locked and the stables had been cleaned out.

General Hiromu and Kushina – the latter carrying a small bag over her shoulder - joined them after having searched their own parts of the village.

"People have been here recently," Kushina said, at which she received agreeing nods. "I couldn't find any food, but I found a few weapons."

The general searched the bag; its content was mostly shuriken and kunai, but also a couple of weird weapons Minato had never seen before.

"It looks like they left on purpose," Minato said. "Every house has been left clean, and they took all essential things with them."

"It's weird," Kushina said and frowned. "D'you think that was the case for the Grass as well?"

"Maybe, but I don't see why they had to move."

"I had a look at their tracks," the general said, handing Kushina the bag of weapons. "They seem to have walked in that direction -" he pointed North-West, "- so the problem must be coming from the South."

"We just came from the South," Kushina said.

"Maybe we're the problem," Obito suggested.

"I don't think villages would flee just because six Leaf ninja decided to take a walk," Kushina replied, giving him the very characteristic 'that was stupid'-look only she could make. "I meant that if there were any problems from the South, we would have noticed, wouldn't we?"

"You're right," Minato said, but he still couldn't figure out why people had decided to leave their homes to travel North. "But we can't stay here, we have to move."

They left the village, keeping an eye out for any sudden movements that might suggest that people were still there. Though they walked until sundown without seeing or hearing anyone.

"It's just weird," Kushina said, gazing up at the starlit sky as though it would give her an answer. It was Minato's watch, but Kushina had been so pensive about the whole situation that she couldn't help discussing it, and currently, Minato was the only one awake.

"Maybe they've discovered a storm coming this way or something," she said. "I hope not."

"I hope Konoha knows, in that case," Minato said, but didn't find it likely that a storm was approaching. So far, the sky had been spotless and there had barely been a breeze.

Kushina yawned.

"You should go to bed," Minato said. "You've missed an hour of sleep already."

"Unfortunately, I don't have a bed right now," Kushina said, but got up. "'Night."

"'Night," Minato replied.

Though it was weird. And through his whole watch, he couldn't help thinking it through, either.

The day after, they discovered more empty villages, and the general sent a bird to the Hokage to inform him of the rare situation. "Best have knowledge of our neighbour's issues," he had told them as he sent the bird off. Now, however, the general thought of it was more than just an issue.

After two more days of walking along the coast to avoid bumping into shinobi from Iwa, they had crossed at least twenty small villages, all abandoned. The general sent another bird.

"All right," the general said and zipped up his backpack. "We face our biggest worry yet. We have transport to cross the sea, but the problem is, unless they've made port near another abandoned village, there will be people everywhere. We have to get through unseen. Another problem is that the only place we could meet our transporters, is at a rather large village."

"Who're we meeting?" Minato asked.

"Our safest chance was to take a ride with the smugglers," the general replied. "We have reliable sources here who know the underground community rather well. They fixed us transport, I just hope the smugglers trust us enough. We could be anyone trying to lock them up."

"How far away are we?" Kushina asked.

"About half a day's walk," the general said. "But we're running out of time, so I suggest we pick up the pace."

And picking up his bag again, he turned and signalled for them to follow. Leaving the track and disappearing between the thick trees, they broke into a run.

When the sun set once more, everyone seemed to have reached the point where they couldn't run another meter if they wanted to.

"We're nearly there," the general said as he handed out rations. "Wait here, I'll check the situation. Let's just for once hope this place is as abandoned as the others."

He left, while the others ate in silence, hoping for the best. Though when he came back, he looked rather pale.

"It's not abandoned," he said; his face, however, looked worse than concerned, but he didn't seem to find the words to tell them why. So they followed him and walked for ten minutes, trying to keep as quiet as possible.

They neared the edge of what seemed to be a small hill, and lying down flat on the ground, they crawled their way to the very edge, looking down a steep wall of stone. They looked over the large village, and Minato felt his insides turn.

He looked at Kushina. She looked nauseous.

They had found out where all the people from the smaller villages had fled to.