The first part of Konoha you see when approaching it from the road are the walls. Forty foot walls made of a single piece of living wood that stretch all the way around the village. In theory. I can't see the Hokage Monument from the road, too many trees in the way, but I'm not sure how the wall interacts with that cliff. Is it inside the walls? It's not outside of them, and making the cliff a part of the walls would put a massive hole in the defenses of the village since the cliff faces into the village. As curious as I am, it's probably not something I should look into too hard. As inclined towards friendliness as ninja villages are towards Iron, investigating possible holes in their defenses probably wouldn't go over well.

The first part of Konoha I reach as a visitor, is a stable. Which I really wasn't expecting, such a thing having never been shown in the anime as far as I can recall.

On the other hand, no horses had ever been shown either, and those were the most popular form of transport for the majority of the Elemental Nations. Despite the presence of electricity and primitive computers, the internal combustion engine wasn't a thing here. I suspect a complete and utter lack of fossil fuels as the reason.

We dismount as we reach the stable, and the captain of our caravan guard and the caravan master arranges for our horses to be stabled for the duration of our stay. The stable building is very much like any other stable I've been in. A wide corridor going down the middle of the building, bracketed by stalls on either side. The smell of straw and horse fills the air along with a fainter scent of leather and oil. The sound of dozens of horses and their caretakers round out the sensory experience. All together it combines into a comfortingly familiar space.

I lead my horse, a three year old storm-cloud grey mare with a black mane and tail I named Cloud, in English, into a stall and unsaddle her quickly. She shakes herself, her coat revealed to be somewhat dusty by the clean spot where her saddle and blanket had been. Finished with her version of stretching, she turns to me, and nudges me with her nose.

I smile at her and scratch her in the place she likes on her neck. "Are you going to be okay here for a while?" I ask her. Some of the stable hands within ear shot look at me a little strangely. Probably not for talking to a horse, but maybe for waiting for an answer? Their attitude changes when Cloud takes a half step back and nods at me.

The horses ridden by Samurai aren't your garden variety horse. They're not even simple, specially bred war horses. Much like the Inuzuka dogs, samurai horses must have summons in their ancestry somewhere. They're more intelligent than some humans I've met, can use chakra, and some of them, when they get old enough, can learn to speak a human language.

I'm pretty sure that the Horse Summoning contract belongs to somebody high up in the hierarchy of Iron or the samurai.

Maybe the Master of Horses?

The Daimyo himself would also be a reasonable guess.

Cloud is still too young to even begin learning to talk, but she understands just fine. So I make sure to talk to her like I would any other person, which she certainly seems to appreciate. In fact, I'm pretty sure she brags about me to some of the other horses who's riders don't treat them as well.

"All right, I'll find a brush and..." I'm just starting to look around for a stable hand that I can accost for grooming tools, when I'm interrupted.

"Rho!" The call comes from one of the other samurai in my current squad. Most of the people I work with regularly have gotten pretty good with pronouncing my last name, but even so it's still a little long for mid-battle communication. I'm not sure who started it, but in most situations my name gets shortened to just it's first syllable when someone needs my attention. I turn to look at the samurai who's calling me, "The Captain wants to talk to all of us." I sigh and start to turn back to Cloud. "Now."

"I get it, I'll be right out." I wave him off before turning to my horse, "I am apparently summoned. So I'm going to have to leave you in the care of the stable hands here. Try not to eat any of them. Please? For me?"

Cloud folds one ear back and eyes the suddenly nervous stablehand speculatively. Then she turns back and her ears perk before she noses me in the chest, snuffling loudly. I take that to mean 'no promises', and 'go before you get in trouble'.

I pat her between her eyes and kiss her on the nose before letting myself out of the stall. The caravan personnel and the guards are all collected a little ways off the road and far enough from the stables to not easily be overheard. The Captain nods to me once briefly as I arrive and starts talking.

"A couple of you have visited a Hidden Village like this before," he nods to the most senior samurai in the squad apart from himself, "but for those of you who have only served during war time," his eyes land on the three remaining samurai not including myself, "or for whom this is simply their first mission," his eyes land on me for a moment then move on, "here's how this is going to work. For us samurai, we're not allowed to have armor, swords, or horses inside the village. Given we're from a nominally allied nation, or at least not an enemy one, we are being allowed to carry a knife for our own defense. And because they likely figure that if they don't let us have some form of armament we'll just sneak something in and then they won't know about it."

There's a lot of groaning and muttering from the three 'wartime' samurai, but no real objections.

The caravan master speaks up then, "That's for the samurai though. Us civilians aren't going to be carrying any weapons. Or anything that the ninja think might be used as one. We will all be searched, if they find something you don't agree with, don't argue with them. They'll be perfectly fine just not letting you in if you annoy them too much. We'll all also be registered at the gate, so they can keep track of us inside the village, and make sure that nobody gets 'left behind' when we leave."

"Samurai will also be registered," the Captain takes up the briefing again, "but as fighters, we'll have to be registered at the Hokage tower. So once we're inside the walls, we will be heading straight to the tower. After that you'll be free to wander most of the village. Just stay away from training fields, clan compounds, and any place they warn you off from. You'll get at least one warning if you're going someplace you shouldn't be. If you do get waved off, be polite, and leave."

"Isn't this all just a little bit paranoid?" one of the 'wartime' samurai asks. "The war ended a year ago. We're running caravans again, so the higher ups don't think there's much risk of hostilities breaking out again."

The Captain rolls his eyes, though whether at the question or the ninja, I'm not sure. "They're ninja. Paranoia is basically their way of life. Sure, they'll tone it down eventually, but like you said, the war only ended a year ago. It'll take another couple at the very least before they calm down at all. Any other questions?"

"What if we're invited to a clan compound or a training field by one of the Leaf ninja?" Koji, another of the wartime samurai asks. He's a twenty something male who is, I'm told, classically handsome. Apparently he's attractive enough to have quite a few female admirers, and a reputation as a ladies man. He's also one of the samurai that has sworn themselves to a noble house of Iron in addition to the Daimyo. I say 'in addition to' but 'instead of' might be more accurate outside of technicality. In any case, it's pretty clear why he's asking the question, "I mean, those ninja girls are all about 'live fast'. I bet I can pick up a couple of them during the week. Maybe even a couple at the same time..." He nudges the samurai next to him, grinning widely.

The Captain sighs, "Koji... If you're invited to a training ground or other such typically restricted place by a ninja for a spar, which is what I'm going to pretend you're talking about, then that's on them. At the same time, if anybody shows up unhappy that you're wherever you've been invited, you leave. Do not cause me problems, Koji, or I will have you digging latrines for the entire caravan all the way back to Iron." The Captain glares at the suddenly much less excited Koji, who nods. "Good. Any other questions?" Nobody responds, "Even better. Leave your armor and swords with your horses and let's get this over with."

When I get back to Cloud's stall, I find that she's trapped a stable hand in one corner of her stall by the simple expedience of slightly lifting a back hoof every time they try to move, and otherwise pretending to ignore them.

"Really, Cloud?"

I have no idea how a horse can look innocent, but Cloud has gotten distressingly good at it.

###

Registration is a far simpler affair than I had expected. They record our names, ranks, and take our pictures. They try to get samples of our chakra, which makes me extremely nervous until the Captain shoots that idea down. The man at the desk handling our registration gives a shrug and a smile which communicates 'can't blame me for trying' quite clearly.

The dark expression of our Captain just as clearly says that he can, and does.

Then, we're given most of the same warnings that the Captain had already given us about where we can and can't go, and we're reminded that we're allowed a single knife only. Though the ninja registering us goes further and tells us that even having knives, we'd better be very careful about using them. Finally, he tells us that a suite of hotel rooms have been set aside for us, and gives us the name of the hotel and the room numbers.

After that, though, we're released into the village. We samurai largely get the next week off. The Captain apparently has some sort of diplomacy thing to do, so will be spending most of the rest of the day talking to the Hokage, and we're supposed to check in on the merchants and caravaneers every so often. But Konoha has a good enough reputation that nobody really thinks that anything will happen that requires our involvement.

So we're left to our own devices.

Outside of the Hokage's tower, I take a moment to try and relax a bit. I'm now officially off duty, and I'm not really in a place where I can occupy myself with my usual activities of training or digging through the Library. Trying to think of something, I take a look around me.

On my right, I can just make out the Hokage monument over the rooftops and around the tower. I'll want to climb that at some point, but not today, I think. To my left is a largely open field separated from the plaza in front of the tower by a chain link fence. The presence of both swings and a military style obstacle course in the fenced off area is a little strange. But the presence of a large number of kids between my age and twelve tells me that I've found the outdoor portion of the Academy.

I scan them briefly to see if I can spot anybody I know, and don't come up with anything. There are a number of blond heads amongst the kids, but between the Yamanaka clan and the Senju not having been reduced to a single member yet, picking Minato out of the crowd based solely on that isn't going to happen.

Several of the kids are crowded around the fence watching me and the other samurai. Which makes sense, I guess, between the black hakama and wrap shirts, we are dressed very strangely by ninja standards.

Dismissing them, I focus forward. Straight across the plaza from the Hokage tower is an open air market place. It's full of people going about their business amongst the combination of stalls and storefronts. After a moment's thought, I decide to explore the market some.

Maybe there's something that I can get for Miku to help with her various noble lady pursuits. I'd get something for Takuma, but I really don't want to encourage him. If I see something that I think the General, Sōma, or Takeshi would like, I might pick that up as well.

Or something for Saki.

She's still stiffly formal with me, but I like doing nice things for her anyway.

The conflicted look on her face is just too funny not to.

###

I've been wandering through the market for maybe ten minutes when I notice my stalker. The girl following me is... trying to be sneaky. For a seven year old, she's even largely succeeding.

I cheat like mad though. Between my inhuman senses, enhanced by my mana network over the last seven years, and the improvement of my mana senses from being able to actually mana breathe properly, it's really hard to avoid my notice.

On one hand, being stalked is annoying; on the other, I have nothing else to do. Eh, why not, I'll play a little bit.

I wander through the market, deliberately walking through the densest crowds to see how much work she's willing to do to keep following me. To my surprise, she slips through the densely packed people like a fish through water. Actually doing a much better job than I am. The trail of lingering looks and whispered conversations I leave behind me means that my wake is ridiculously easy to follow. I maybe should have thought through my strategy better.

Which just makes it all the more surprising when my shadow abruptly stops following me. I stop in the middle of the thoroughfare, frowning as I try to parse what just happened. While keeping track of a seven year old with my wealth of enhanced senses isn't hard, the girl, whoever she is, also has another disadvantage. She's got at least three or four times the life energy of anybody else on the street, not to mention the amount of Chakra she's got. I'm still learning to parse the details of Chakra with my mana senses. Picking out those specific aspects of a person's mana still isn't something I'm great at. My shadow is full to brimming of both though, which makes picking her out of the crowd easier.

She also sort of blots out other, less impressive people near her. Which is why I'm now having some amount of trouble figuring out what's going on from where I am. She's off to the side of the market street now, and I think there's a few other people with her?

Maybe she got caught playing hookie?

The academy was clearly in session when I left the Tower.

I hesitate. On one hand, it's really none of my business. An aborted, implied game of follow the leader doesn't really entitle me to any sort of knowledge of this girl's life. On the other hand, I still have nothing better to do.

With that thought, I start back the way I came, looking for wherever my stalker had left the market proper. It doesn't take long to find where they went, my stalker's mana still standing out like a miniature lighthouse. I find her in an alleyway behind a couple of merchant stands selling fruit.

Slipping into the isolated space, I find seven children. One roughly my own physical age, the other six a range of ages that could generally be described as 'older' by varying amounts. The one my age is who has my attention though. I'm still learning to have my mana senses and my normal senses overlap in a useful fashion, but it only takes me a moment to see that this is my stalker.

The girl is shorter than I am, but just about everybody within a few years of my age is. Her hair is bright red and hangs loose down to her knees. She's wearing a sleeveless, tan, wrap tunic that falls to her mid-thighs over one of the armor mesh shirts that ninja are so fond of, and belted shut by a green obi. Black, athletic shorts finish off the outfit.

Her body language is shy and a little afraid, which makes sense as she's surrounded by six bigger, older, and presumably better trained kids. The expression on her face though is one of angry defiance.

"...you must be stupid, Tomato!" the largest of the six other kids says, shoving the red head back against the wall, "You're not even really of the Leaf!"

The girl pushes herself back off the wall so fast it looks like she bounces, "I will be Hokage, ya know!"

The boy shoves her again as his fellows repeat, 'ya know, ya know' mockingly. The girl blushes brighter and curls into herself more.

"You'll never be Hokage, Tomato," the lead boy sneers, shoving her a third time, "Go back to your own village." Well shit, if the girl is who I think she is, that's entirely uncalled for. "Oh, wait, you can't!" Yeah, this is about to get messy.

All signs of shyness or timidity vanish from the girl's body language. She straightens up against the wall, her face blank, and then plants an absolutely beautiful right cross right into the lead bully's face. There's a soft pop sound I can only barely detect, and blood explodes from the boy's nose.

He staggers backwards, clutching his face and howling in pain. The rest of the bullies seem frozen in shock at the idea that their victim might fight back. That will only last so long though, then the girl's going to get her ass kicked. Six on one odds aren't the sort of thing that even a well trained, normal seven year old can handle.

I search the area with all my senses, hoping that there's somebody of an adult persuasion near enough to put a stop to this. After a moment of searching, I find what I more than half expected. Looking up I see the black uniform and white mask of an ANBU operative, Konoha's special forces, perched on the roof of one of the buildings that makes up the alley, and watching the proceedings. Whether he's there to keep an eye on me, or the girl is immaterial.

The white, owl themed mask looks back down at me, giving no sign of what it's wearer is thinking. I raise an eyebrow in question and gesture at where the bullies are getting their composure back and are advancing on the girl.

The mask cocks to the side.

He's not going to do anything, is he?

Fine.

I turn back to where the literal back alley brawl has just started in earnest, and sprint forward. The girl is doing well, but she's moved away from the wall, letting her bullies surround her. I arrive just in time to intercept a blow that would have hit her in the back of the head. Using the boy's own momentum, I send him staggering into one of his friends, breaking the encirclement enough for me to slip by them and slide into place back to back with the girl.

She doesn't have time to do more than give me a wide eyed look before we have to refocus on the fight. Implicit permission or not, I'm hyper aware that I'm a foreigner about to get into a fight with a bunch of Konoha's ninja hopefuls. I need to be careful not to do too much damage to them. If I break them too badly I'll start an international incident. Something that's all too likely given my strength, even without my version of the reinforcement technique.

So I'm going to have to be gentle.

After a fashion.

Ku's strength nullifying defense is entirely unnecessary here. But I've discovered in my training as a samurai that the principles it uses, and the skills it teaches, make any soft art many times more effective. So the bullies rush me, and I send them anywhere else.

One throws a punch and ends up staggering into the path of his friend's kick. Another charges me and I guide him around myself and the girl behind me, and he ends up running face first into one of the alley walls. I never strike any of them.

They do plenty of damage to each other, with only minimal help from me.

The girl isn't resting on her laurels, either. I can hear her fight quite clearly. Her technique is basic, but solid, and she never tries anything fancy. Instead, she just lays into anyone in her range with a fury. The hits she takes don't seem to even faze her, though she takes more than she could have.

Between the two of us, though, the fight, if one could call it that, is over in moments. The redhead and I are left standing, her breathing hard, surrounded by the groaning boys splayed out on the ground.

After she's caught her breath, the redhead turns to me with a bright grin, "I'm Kushina Uzumaki! Future Hokage, ya know!" She blushes at her verbal tic, but that doesn't diminish her smile or stop her from planting her hands on her hips proudly.

I can't help but smile back at her. Dear god, she's adorable, "Ericka Rhostana, samurai of Iron."

"Er..." Kushia screws up her face as she tries to pronounce my name. "Erah, Erk... I'm gonna call you Eri." She finally decides with a firm nod.

Oookay...

"Sure, it's nice to meet you..."

"We should get ramen!" Kushina chirps, bouncing up and down on her toes. Then she grabs me by the wrist and starts dragging me off.

This is all beginning to seem very familiar, so my argument is half-hearted at best, "Shouldn't you be in class?"

"Nah," she waves the concern off, "I'm an apprentice, ya know!" she tells me proudly. "I only go to the academy for sparring and field exercises. The rest of the time, as long as Granny Mito doesn't have something for me to do, I'm fine. Now, come on! Ramen!"

In the end, I give in without much fight. "Sure. I've never had ramen before."

Kushina stops so fast that I nearly run into her. She spins around, eyes wide with horror, "Never. Had. Ramen?" I blink, I know that Naruto was a ramen addict, but I don't recall it being a family trait. Kushina gives a full body shudder, "This is un... unac..."

"Unacceptable?" I offer.

"That!" she agrees, pointing at me, "This is unacceptable! No friend of mine can not know the glory of ramen!"

"We're friends?" I ask, somewhat bemused. It really is like the second coming of Sarah.

"We just fought off numerically superior attackers," she says, like something she's reciting from memory after hearing it many, many times, "while fighting back to back. Of course we're friends!" Kushina hesitates for a moment, all the shy and uncertain body language I'd seen in the alley way comes back with a vengeance, "I mean, if you wanna be..."

I sigh, and give a small smile, "Sure, Kushina, we can be friends." The smile that grows in response to my words is a sight to behold, for a moment even the sun seems to dim, and I can't help my own smile growing in response, "Besides, us redheads have to stick together, right?"

I pull a lock of my shoulder length hair away from my head so the sun can land along it's full length, highlighting that instead of the black it appears, my hair is actually an extremely dark wine red.

Kushina's smile gets even brighter, "Right!"

###

I end up getting back to Iron Country's assigned suite of hotel rooms after dinner. To Kushina, ramen is a serious business, and apparently the offerings available in Konoha are seriously lacking. Which means I got something of an unofficial tour of the public areas of Konoha as I was dragged around to a dozen different ramen shops. Each shop did some specific aspect of ramen making better than their competitors, so I was instructed to try a bowl at each place and imagine the specific parts together, for the real ramen experience. I don't think I really got what she was trying to show me, and I certainly couldn't eat that much ramen.

Fortunately, Kushina seems to be a bottomless pit, and was more than happy to finish anything I didn't. And really, listening to her talk about the intricacies of proper ramen was pretty entertaining, even if I didn't really understand more than half of what she said. Just listening and watching her be that passionate about something was entertaining.

The rest of my fellow samurai are already in the common area of our suite when I finally make my way back. I hold my stomach and groan slightly from the sheer amount of broth and noodles I've stuffed into myself.

Everybody looks up as I come in and shut the door behind me. All of them have found something to do to keep themselves distracted. Books, shogi, pencil and paper, calligraphy, and weapons and armor maintenance are some of the distractions they've found.

Most of my fellows go back to their preoccupations. The Captain, however, puts down the pencil he'd been writing with. "So you got into a fight today, Rho."

I wince slightly, "It was six older boys picking on a single girl." Samurai aren't as honor obsessed as ninja like to paint us, but there are still certain standards of honor and behavior we're expected to uphold, and the Captain is closer to the stereotype than most. He'll like my reasons. "Did the ANBU tell you? There was one there at the time."

"No, actually," the captain said, sitting back in his chair, "I was still in the Hokage's office when he was informed that you were present at an incident." How the hell? No. Doesn't matter. "We watched the whole thing in a fascinating glass-ball device the Hokage has."

The Hokage has a crystal ball? That works? There's no way it's as versatile or as powerful as I'm thinking it is. Konoha would know everything about anybody that piqued their interest if it were. And there's probably some way to keep it from looking into clan compounds or other private spaces, otherwise the clans of Konoha would never stand for it's existence.

"You did well. The Hokage assured me that there would be no negative consequences from this," the captain continued. "It's good to see you making friends, Rho. It's important to interact with more people your own age." Now isn't that a complicated idea. "You have a week here, I encourage you to take advantage of it."

Well...

What do seven year old child soldiers do for fun?