The sun spread its light and warmth over the entire country once noon had arrived. The dew on the grass turned to vapor. The flowers and leaves leaned towards the star's embrace. Cats basked beneath the pleasant heat. Sellers kept out their best stock and deals.
Natsumi had procured a large brown paper bag filled with onions, tomatoes, peppers, salt, soy sauce, fish sauce, dried spices, and oil from the various vendors.
She was minding her own business with the exception of occasionally playing with a stray here or there.
On the way out of the village, she passed through a string of alleyways in the manufacturing district, a sector filled with nothing but old cement, pipes, and smog. She hated the smell of the place. It was unnatural and disgusting, even worse than the guts of a dead fish.
If the smell was too much, she would hold her breath until she saw trees.
Unfortunately, the trip today would take longer than usual.
As she passed by a dark gap between buildings, a white mask came out from the shadows. She jerked back as a hand swiftly reached for her face.
"The hell do you want?"
She was surrounded on all sides. This was not an area where civilians frequented Any workers would be inside distracted by loud processes and machinery. Anything could happen here without it ever being known.
Such as a removal.
Regardless of which way she faced, she would be showing her back to one of the Anbu. None of them said a word.
"Who are you?"
Natsumi carelessly turned to face the one who asked. Each one of them looked the same, but at the very least she could differentiate them by sound and smell. I don't need to give my name to creepy masked bastards."
She turned her head over her shoulder, baring teeth that could and have torn through flesh. "Listen, just get out of the way already."
A needle broke against her neck. Looking down where it fell against the dirty floor, she could make out a faintly violet viscous coating on the steel tip.
They were given their orders from the moment she was seen walking in the village.
Capture her, detain her, interrogate and rip out every piece of information she had inside her, dispose of if no further value is left.
This was the consequence for any who entered the village unknown and uninvited.
Something coiled around her skin before her limbs were pulled away from her. Wires restrained her arms, her shoulders, her elbows, her wrists, her thighs, her knees, her ankles, her waist, her chest, and her neck. The lines wrenched her body in every direction. Paper seals that carried the restrain kanji immediately applied themselves to every scrap of her skin.
In such a situation, one could not move, could not attack, could not defend, could not flee, could not breathe, could not resist.
Her feet dragged against the floor.
She let out a dreadfully long, worn-out sigh as her lips curled downwards.
"Rgughhhhhhhhhh~"
And then she smiled, a forced, twisted smile that stretched unnaturally wide.
The air became frigidly cold as her body became hotter than burning coals.
Natsumi moved.
Her hand grabbed the face and tiger mask of the anbu furthest away from her and smashed him against the ground. Skin was ripped apart. Flesh was mangled and torn asunder. The bones were crushed and smashed into fragments. The brain was splattered and distorted. Blood exploded across the concrete, dyeing the alley red. Only half had been struck, leaving an exposed lower jaw.
The seals blackened and flaked apart. The wires slowly melted away.
Her tongue hung loosely out from her lips and beastly fangs. Eyes filled with malice widened with savage amusement.
She dropped the obliterated pieces of the shinobi's head and growled rapturously.
"KAHA~ Hey now, why so quiet? You're all just standing there?" She asked innocently. "It's not possible that seeing your buddy's face get smashed would scare you, is it?"
She could hear their beating hearts quicken.
"If that scares you..."
The girl flickered out of sight and carved away the spine and guts of a female anbu preparing a lightning style jutsu with the bottom of her sole.
"Then don't threaten me. It'll make me want to do that."
Natsumi rubbed her foot against the floor, flexing and flicking her toes to remove the blood staining them. On all sides, masked shinobi hurtled towards her. Within a split second, they prepared techniques of ninjutsu, genjutsu, and taijutsu.
The ground became like mud and her body began to sink down.
Violent gusts of wind and streams of fire and lightning approached from all angles.
Blades forged from the purest iron slashed towards her limbs.
Projectiles hurtled towards her unprotected areas and spine.
Chains arced around her proximity and began to tighten like a noose.
"Well, don't worry about it. Cause you won't die even if I kill you!"
Raging heat coursed through her legs and reduced the earth beneath her to a molten slag that drowned all who didn't retreat in time to escape their flesh rendering to ash. She stood alone at the center of a red glowing crater.
Natsumi opened her mouth and sucked in all the flames, devouring them.
"Now I've got-"
A plethora of water style jutsus cascaded into her and flooded the streets, causing the ground to splinter and crack from the sudden temperature change. When the water settled, a one hundred and forty-centimeter blade approached her neck with immense speed, a beheading that could cut straight through the armor of even a samurai.
She smashed the blade with her wrist and gouged out the man's eyes with her middle and index fingers.
"-a fire in my belly."
His torso was cut in half as a massive shuriken sliced through him, using his body as a blind spot. A second shuriken came out from the shadow of the first.
Avoiding both the spinning blades through the narrow gap in between, she rushed forward towards the closer attackers, only for the shuriken to change direction and follow after her.
"Geh?"
Coming to this, she chose to kick one into the clouds and the other deep into the ground.
Natsumi burst through the dark alley with tremendous speed and removed the heads of two. "You should've done what you've done best and stayed hidden. Now you've gotta wake up from a nasty nightmare... How many times does this make?"
Walls made from earth sprung from the ground and trapped her in a stone cage with no gaps. The layers continued to pile on top of each other to make a dome several meters in thickness. Chakra draining seals were hurriedly placed on the rock.
The assignment had gone to hell in every sense of the word. They were alerted of an unidentified individual with abnormal traits appearing in the village and interacting with the jinchuriki. What was supposed to be a standard capture and interrogation from the anbu had instead become a one-sided slaughter.
This could not remain buried.
It was not human.
Surely, even the Hokage would have to be informed of this, especially if there were potentially more to follow after this monster. If a juvenile beast not fully grown could butcher Konoha's hidden elites, what could an adult beast accomplish?
Her skin shattered steel. Her lungs swallowed fire. Her hands crushed bone.
The last remaining shinobi wearing a porcelain mask depicting a vulture took a step back, his body trembling despite his efforts to control it. His survival had been a matter of sheer luck. The strongest one among them, their squad captain, had been the first to be butchered in this encounter.
He had only escaped the melting earth just quickly enough to survive. His legs were covered in third-degree burns. He could not feel the pain, for the nerve endings were destroyed. The anbu staggered away to report that he had detained the intruder... and that his squad had been killed...
A rumbling echoed throughout the buildings
The remaining survivor froze.
He looked over his shoulder to see a crack in the earthen prison he had created. Ten fingers with sharp, blood-painted nails emerged from the darkness and began to pry the cage open.
The anbu ran.
After three steps, his flesh was vaporized and his bones turned to ash.
Natsumi smiled sweetly as she walked away with her hands clasped cutely behind her back, not a single scratch nor bruise marking her body. Blood had stained her hands, stained her feet, stained her face, leaving behind neither death nor life. "Sorry, but I will only lose when Hell freezes over."
.
Honestly, she was planning to rest easy inside her little wooden cabin after bathing herself in the river. Before the sun fell down, she would've been on another journey somewhere far far away.
Only...
She felt uncontent after having her blood rush so much.
Maybe she should treat herself.
Natsumi didn't really feel like cooking anything complex, but she also didn't feel like settling for something boring and simple. Simple meals were for traveling. If she wasn't traveling, then she should be eating something better.
Even if she was in the mood to make something for herself, the groceries she bought today had all been ruined. She was fine with eating plain charred meat, but again, that was better for trips through the wilderness and countries.
Eventually, she decided to walk into the village once more to find a street with nice restaurants. A stall would be fine too, but she wanted to eat somewhere indoors with slightly darker lighting.
There was a place with a nice smell and few people, so she slid the translucent shoji aside and walked in. The lighting was faint but nice. A few cheap candles were spread around the counter. Rather than the restaurant not being busy, it was simply a small place. The only folks here were elderly and parents with children. Each table was filled.
She sat down in front of a pair of red paper curtains that separated the kitchen from the counter, one of the very few seats remaining.
She shifted her scarf so that it would be farther away from her mouth when eating.
When she had settled down, the shoji was opened and closed once more. The last seat that had remained next to her was taken.
Two strangers glanced at each other.
The guy couldn't have been older than his late twenties, but his hair was clearly white. His clothes marked him as a ninja, but his monotonous eye and covered face gave more the impression of a scarecrow.
The young lady had hair of unusual color and foreign features that stood out. Her build was lithe and supple. The fangs that peaked out from her lips were strangely sharp and long.
A small strange scent from the man piqued her interest because it was a scent she knew.
Their meals were served to them and she ended up ignoring him.
She got a bowl piled high with various tempuras, shrimp tempura with mild seafoody flavor covered with a crispy, oily batter, sweet potato tempura with a buttery sweetness, robust and briny crab tempura, and a sea eel tempura with a delicate taste and flaky texture. The flavors of the tempura and its sauce seeped into the bed of rice beneath.
Natsumi started eating immediately without even blowing the steam off her food. Crumbs of fried panko, grains of rice, and specks of sauce began to stick to her cheeks and the corners of her mouth a little at a time. When she noticed, she dabbed them with her thumb and ate them too.
With her food, she got a small bowl of chili oil as well that she poured on the rice.
Kakashi got a plate of salt grilled saury with plain rice and freshly grated daikon soy sauce. He took slow bites without ever pulling down his mask long enough for anyone to catch a glimpse of his face. He ate while reading a young adult novel and took sips from a cup of Sencha tea.
Lowering his book slightly, he caught the girl staring at him.
"Would you be the unreliable sensei Naruto was talking about?" she asked bluntly. "You've got his scent around you."
"Hmm? That's rather the odd thing to ask and say to someone you've never met." He set down his chopsticks, keeping his composure. The chances of a stranger just visiting Konoha knowing of his student were close to abysmal. Thus, this was a delicate matter. She spoke about the boy as if she knew him personally. "You're neither his sister nor his mother, but I assume you heard of me from him?"
She suddenly laughed and enthusiastically clapped the jonin on the back hard enough to make him spit out his drink if he had drank any. "Sorry, sorry! He was talking about you while I made breakfast this morning. He was saying things like that, but he really was excited to get trained by you one way or another."
"Breakfast, that so?"
"Aha~" she smiled proudly, "He fussed over having to skip it for some reason, so I just made him eat anyway. I've been cooking for myself since I was a child, so I'm quite talented at it."
"It's nice of you to be concerned."
Natsumi touched her fingers to her lips, humming deeply. "Not really kindness, or anything like that. I guess it's more like... more like... responsibility! Yeah! It's like another responsibility of mine."
Kakashi took a glance at her before turning his eye back to the steam rising up from his drink. "Then I'll just have to follow my own responsibility as his sensei now."
He heard a quiet hiss of disapproval.
"What is it?"
She hooked her feet around the chair legs and rested her chin on her palm, yawning, "You don't look like you got much experience with kids, and you're not even old, so it feels like you'll be like a mean older brother rather than a mentor. Well, it's fine if it works out."
The jonin shrugged at picked up his chopsticks again.
Natsumi blinked at him, "So what's your name?"
"Kakashi. Hatake."
The girl tilted her head back, "Kakashi Hatake, huh? You've got a cool name. I'm Natsumi, the fire... Mm, guess it doesn't matter."
Several of the candles went out by the time the meal had ended.
At the end of it, only one of them knew the other's name.
...
In a private location underground, a location so submerged in secrecy that all who know of it have seals permanently placed on their bodies to prevent spreading its information through mistake, betrayal, or torture.
There are dozens of entrances, yet few are safe for humans to walk through. The air is heavy and damp. Feeble candles line the uneven stone walls, casting long, dancing shadows, their feeble illumination barely enough to reveal the contours of the chamber.
The walls of the place are carved from rough-hewn rock, damp to the touch, as if the very earth itself is weeping. The silence is deafening, broken only by the occasional drip of water from unseen crevices, creating an eerie symphony of solitude.
It is a labyrinthine network of tunnels and chambers, each more unsettling than the last.
This place carries out certain missions that benefit Konoha. Because of its core views as the unseen ones who support the great tree of Konoha from the depths of the earth,some of these missions were less than respectable, such as eliminating individuals that were considered "potential" threats. It was an organization that would cull an infant if it were for the wellfare of the village. The organisation's top priority was its secrecy, and most of its missions were carried out in the dark
A report was made to a frail, old man who sat within a cold throne made of the same foundations as the village.
He listened to the unnamed shinobi with a tiger mask speak with cold and collected thoughts.
Nothing unusual had occured.
All individuals within Konoha were accounted for.
Neither of the Anbu sent to investigate the Land of Sound were heard from, but otherwise, no relevant casualties were to be found.
The White Fang's son was assigned to train both the jinchuriki and the Uchiha whelp. No doubt a decision from the Third.
It seemed that the jinchuriki had managed to grasp a concept of fire release by training in the woods. It could only be something self-taught for there was no one around him who could have taught such a thing.
The whelp was talented, but nothing compared to his brother. However, some prodigies take longer than others to show their true potential.
It would be troublesome for either of them to grow too strong.
The best thing would be to nip such prospective threats in the bud.