AN at bottom

Disclaimer: I no own Naruto

Warnings: violence, swearing, bit o'blood, the usual but a bit less.

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Chap 15 The Road Occasionally Taken

Never will I admit that my screaming fit lasted almost five more seconds after bouncing through the first mirror. In my defence, I would've continued screaming if I could pull enough air into my lungs.

As it was, if gravity maintained its constant grip on us, then our falling speed would've increased by nearly ten meters per second for every second falling. Orochi had a much better time, as the Yuki whom I still haven't caught the name of had him cradled in the crook of an arm, and firmly clasped to make sure that he won't fall off or anything.

I… wasn't so lucky.

For some reason, the Yuki just had me sit on his shoulders, and let me grab onto the bandana for all that I was worth. I couldn't tighten my legs too much around his neck for obvious reasons, and bandanas really don't offer much in way of grip. Honestly, he just reminds me of a kinder, less scared, paler, and hairier Ibiki.

(I don't always pride myself on my imaginations)

He didn't have any hands to stabilize me either, as one of them was keeping Orochi in check and the other was holding a handseal to maintain the jutsu.

So, I screamed until my dear ol' snake-buddy of mine decided to slap her tail over my face. With the wind, it might've been accidental, but whatever. I nearly choked because high speeds plus obstruction-in-front-of-nose means drawing in enough oxygen was a tad difficult.

At least it resulted in a ninety percent less screaming? (The ten percent internal screaming never really stops, whoops.)

It however, had the drawback of me gurgling a bit as the wind (relative to us moving at extreme speeds) tore the air out from my lungs. Hence scrunching down and trying to bury my face in the bandana that was my sole hope of not being lost to the darkness of underground caves. Which are really dark. And windy due to relative speed/velocity/physics. Night vision is a long, drawled out no here.

That said, if Yukis can't sense the chakra in their mirrors for extreme navigation, I would eat my daggers. In the stark darkness, only the brief flares of light when we transfer dimensions (and wasn't that an interesting way to think about it?) can illuminate our surroundings. The brief flashes did nothing for our night vision, so the only reason that I knew Orochi was curled up with head tucked in was because that was the shape of his chakra.

In addition to clinging like a goddamn koala, my little brother and I both had to someway circulate our chakra in a manner so we didn't freeze.

I miss the times when I could love winter without the fear of it killing me.

Being coiled around my neck and looped about my shoulders, Dōsukēru slowly removed the tail that had ended up in my face, wary of air currents that could potentially rip her off and therefore extremely cautious of her movements. Then she sneezed and it was all we could do to hold onto each other, chakra somehow granting a temporarily magnetic-like influence with how she then stuck to me.

That's actually a decent idea though?

Tugging on my chakra, I concentrated on its flow for a second. Like always, it felt calm but energizing, and flowed around veins, muscles, bones, every identifiable organ, and even in them. Particularly the area around the stomach. From experience and random scrolls, I know that it's the pool of chakra that everyone pulls from, but honestly, how the heck was such a small location supposed to contain so much energy to power ninjas for days?

The answer was that it wasn't alone.

Unlike the swirling, vortex-like chakra source in the stomach tenketsu or something (names always elude me for some inane reason), the chakra spread everywhere else in the body flows with barely any friction, giving the impression that there might not be much.

That is so damn wrong it's almost refreshing.

Ying chakra is basically mind chakra, strength of the soul, mind, and all that not-so physical energy that's turned somewhat physical via impossible chakra physics. I have too much of it on account of being an reincarnated soul, so my chakra balance is out of whack half the time. Then there's yang chakra, that's the strength of the body, bones, muscles, organs, and everything physical, but somehow still 'physical' energy that can be harnessed as source of power without hamster wheels.

The organs, specifically the pool of chakra in the stomach, is the most prominent because chakra naturally goes to organs and other assorted body parts to sustain them with more energy than needed, hence a ninja's speeded metabolism and unusually fast recoveries from internal injuries. Unfortunately, it also provides more room for error, as speeded healing can occasionally result in incorrectly grown tissue in the ninja population.

What with the stomach and intestines and everything in that region being the provider of energy via food digestion or something, it also became the storage for this supernatural-ish energy. The stomach is a bit like a factory and storehouse mashed into one. Or at least, that's my theory. Bio was never a subject I took Before, so most information regarding this aspect is purely guesswork if not previously proven by my clanmates.

Funny how much one can learn via osmosis, or when one chooses to copy texts for pocket money.

Suddenly a hand tapped my shoulder and I subconsciously rolled it back a bit, chakra flowing just that bit faster under the layers of clothing and skin. Dōsukēru sits there, and I may or may not be a bit of an overprotective/paranoid human, but nobody gets to touch her without her permission. Permission that she always communicate to me ahead of time.

We've all lost too much recently to be agreeable with unwarrented interactions.

But the hand merely revealed itself as that of the Yuki, who I still haven't caught the name of (and probably never will, at this rate), he was probably curious why I stopped screaming and if that meant I was going to fall off anytime soon via fainting. If this was concern, well, I'm quite sure I haven't been screaming for a while now.

Tugging a bit harder on my chakra, it cycled through my system at a more efficient rate, warming bones and blood (even then, my body temperature would still be far below the medical accepted average, oh well). Then I used the chakra to stick a hand a bit too firmly to the fabric of his bandanna, like extreme friction. Therefore when he felt a palm tap the side of his head, well, he would know that the kid he's piggy-backing isn't about to die anytime soon. The same method after the little experimentation was also used to keep a hold of Dōsukēru, as we did not need to be completely stuck to each other with the normal, tree-walking-esque methods. Truth to be told, I'm envious of those that can use chakra reflexively without thinking. Unlike them who can easily run up and down the sides of buildings, I have to maintain a slow, steady pace to coordinate the chakra use correctly. Apply chakra to stick on, move other foot after removing the chakra, stick that foot on, unstick the other, rinse and repeat.

It's tedious work, but hopefully practice can make it second nature.

But… if one hand just tapped me, and another hand is keeping a hold on my brother (at least it better be if the Yuki wants to keep his head), then why the hell did he need to hold the hand seal for so damn long?

It would've been very comforting to know that he could free a hand anytime to catch little midgets and snakes falling from his shoulders. Or would he catch the snakes? That would be a hypothesis awaiting tests that I would never be do.

A bit of messing around with my senses eventually told me that his chakra was held somewhat rigidly, structured in a way probably just plain-out needed to enable the mirror-hopping. Hand seals are fickle things that somehow manage to manually program our chakra to do things, or something. If a comparison is warranted, perhaps a bit like acupuncture or pressure points? I recall someone from Before teaching me how a pressure point on the hand is good for the liver, and another is good for sleep among others. Each hand seal is like a signal to our chakra to tell it to do a somewhat basic action, and holding the last seal in concentration allows the passageways to hold the chakra in the needed position.

Or at least that's what some of my clan members assumed hand seals did, I fully agree.

How Tobirama ever made so many jutsus, I will never understand. How people learn jutsu just by learning hand seals, I will never understand as well. The Uchihas' way of learning, however, does make a bit of sense, as it sees all layers of what the chakra is going through, like seeing both the manual and the actual inner workings of a machine, while it's working. The only reason I can learn jutsu at all is probably due to my rather… detailed chakra sensing. Being from somewhere else originally resulted in my chakra being a bit harder to manipulate by hand seals alone, as my body is too conscious and therefore rendering some of the manipulations pretty much moot. The manual is just that much too vague for my liking.

Anyhow, praise the kamis and all seven layers of hell for my sensing abilities, otherwise I may never be able to fight on the same stage as all the other monsters in human skin. Monsters as human as the rest of us, sure, but monsters in capabilities all the same.

Given how the Yuki currently holds four lives in his grasp while hopping through ice mirrors at over fifty meters per second (I calculated via physics), point proven.

Given how nearly my entire clan was brutally massacred just a week or so ago, that probably proves the same point another time over.

Nobody ever said that monsters couldn't be saints, but most humans aren't saints either.

Whelp. That was mildly morbid.

Time to lighten the nonexistent mood.

Uhh, methinks the Yuki has given up on communicating with me via anything past head-pats if the bare shrug that moved me three mirrors after I patted him was any indication.

Time went on, on, and on, and so did our process through the near-pitch dark tunnel.

Running random calculations relating to the physics of our speed got boring after I started beating myself up for not knowing our real initial velocity, and all my nerves were too keyed up for me to slip into my mind-scape and take up the role of a gardener. No biggie, the green thumb belonged to my grandma of Before, any one of the two of them. Trying to avoid a potentially carnivorous pond wasn't ever on my to-do list, anyways.

Whatever I might've wanted to do, however, didn't seem to apply to real life as I fell asleep pretty much an hour into the trip.

"Wake up nee-chan!"

"Hush young child– lemme bloody sleep..." I slurred, brain evidently not up to speed.

The same voice that had hollered into my poor malfunctioning ears grumbled, before subsiding. I sighed, happy at the little reprieve for more nap time, before a clump of something cold and melting was dropped on my neck.

Suffice to say, my urge to continue sleeping evaporated as faster than a melting snowflake in a sauna.

After a moment of adjusting to the lighting and temperature (which was too-damn bright and a bit too cold), Dōsukēru decided that I had enough downtime and made her prescence known via a nudge to the underside of my chin. It took a bit of floundering to get my hand out of the mass of blankets it was trapped in, but she got a little scratch under her jaw as soon as the hand was out.

Then she bailed on me by slithering out somewhere away from the blankets.

"Orochi," I whined, pouting at the 'betrayal', "where are we?"

Thank kamis for responsible younger siblings despite being a three-year-old, because he soon came pattering to me from the mouth of the cave that we were apparently in, hands tucked into the deep pockets of his thick cloak-looking garment.

The wet stains quickly soaking through the fabric was the best indicator of who dunked the snow down my neck, obviously. There shall be revenge, but later, as it's been a while since I could actually admire snow up close and personal.

A bit of wrestling later and I had quickly tugged on the folded winter cloak (thankfully NOT Suna style), having been neatly left on the ground by the pile of mismatched blankets that looked... awfully like some of the blankets that we had stuffed into the black boxes a couple days prior.

Under my raised brow, Orochi took his slightly red hands out of his pockets before rustling out a map from... somewhere which he put on one of the flatter, relatively drier rocks, wouldn't want is tearing or something.

We're Kinmes with mysterious pockets in mysterious places, sue me.

When he laid out the map in front of me, Sugiryuu all but dropped down out of my brother's sleeve and nearly crinkling the paper, an annoyed hiss rolling off his forked tongue.

I gave the poor frozen serpent a little rub on his violet head before gently shoving him off the map that we might need to find our future with.

He left, grumbling like a soaked cat, to where Dōsukēru was dragging the majority of the blankets. On closer side inspection, it was also where there was a little open booklet, one which has barely visible seals.

Huh. Ok. Thank gods there's at least one of us that cares about organization beyond the general 'if I can find it (eventually), who cares?' mentality.

I settled down next to my little brother and watched as he looked over the map, it being the enlarged version of the elemental nations so that only Fire country was visible. It held no clue whatsoever to the whereabouts of Konohagakure, as it is hidden. Putting a hidden country on a map when it's supposed to be hidden is a bit counterproductive, even if it's a map that isn't widely spread (hence the Kinme TM, aka our clan symbol, stamp near the top of the page).

Or maybe it is, and that's why we need the stamp to proclaim our copyright of it. Who knows? Ask the merchants (who are dead-gone-ashes).

Ow my poor heart.

A couple seconds into his glaring at the map, pudgy cheeks blown pudgier in effort, little Orochi had an eureka moment and he stabbed the map with his still mildly frozen finger.

"Here! Yuki-san left us here!" Here being a patch of now-wet map between Tanzaku Gai and the entire border of River Country and Fire Country.

Crap. I just remembered my non-existent sense of direction.

Uhhh, we'll just wing it?

Rolling the map back into a scroll form, I then rolled it to Dōsukēru who gave me a rather unimpressed look. She has the sealing booklet, so she really should've expected it. Two tiny pulses of chakra along with the scent of chakra smoke accompanied the box down Dōsukēru's gullet, or rather, the storage seal in the back of her throat. It'll get to stay there with the rest of our inheritance for now.

One direction of the cave-tunnel led to darkness, lingering wisps of cold chakra, and the scent of flowing river, while the other led to too-much light and the scent of crisp winter, a scent I haven't really had the pleasure of relaxing in since over six years ago. But, relaxation can wait until there's no threat of the four of us dying from starvation, dehydration, hypothermia, boredom, or missing-nin/bounty hunters that want to make some quick cash sans the annoyance of lugging live human midgets.

Yuki-san wouldn't have left four young ones out for dead, right? And that would mean that somewhere around here would be a mean for salvation, or at least a way to hold our own.

Even then, that probably doesn't excuse my very stupid decision of flaring my meagre storage of chakra in a burst pattern that was drilled into kids since before the Clan Wars. Probably.

Hopefully the signal is international, hopefully it was strong enough, hopefully there were 'allies' in range, and kami knows, hopefully there weren't hostiles nearby.

The sun was shining, no birds were chirping, chakra was singing, and I didn't have enough shits to give to care.

Good news, the signal was strong enough.

Bad news, there was a hostile nearby.

How there was a friggin' bear in the depths of the cave hibernating without any one of us noticing, I shall attribute to bad luck. But the fact that I didn't think of how attuned animals were to natural chakra naturally, well. It was a stupid decision. That, and actually assuming the possibility that a human's chakra flare would be sufficient to affect the natural chakra in the atmosphere and enough to rouse a bear in hibernation was not really normal.

In simpler terms, I might've screwed the lot of us over by not thinking?

The sole silver lining was that the bear was just exiting hibernation, and was therefore half-starved and slow, and that there were some very tall trees outside the cave. But then again, half-starved.

"Up up upupup–" I was panicking, I know I was. But there were two lives depending on me (both of which being rather important to me) as the serpents had already found their way up. They weren't keen on doing so, but pressure of both the physical weighty-kind and the heavier, figurative type would've been bad. Meanwhile, the base of the tree was privy to a panicking kid trying to climb up its iced bark with another toddler attached piggy-back wise and a bear lumbering out of the cave not a dozen meters away.

The only slow thing in this scenario was me, who couldn't risk speed in case of inadequate chakra usage and falling/blowing myself off. The snakes' restless, agitated movements were also distracting in a way that I really didn't need.

Plowing plus hopping through the knee-deep snow already took much too long, and by the time I was a meter and a half off the ground on the closest tree, the bear had almost cut half the original distance– and was gaining speed on all fours. It smelled of wet fur and anger.

Shit.

Speed was of the essence, but not something I had.

How embarrassing, the one that's nearly the fastest among my current age group (without the stamina to back it up whoops), and I'm climbing like a sloth when lives actually depend on it.

If I die of a bear attack, well. Then I would've managed something that even as a Canadian I couldn't.

But it wasn't just me, there was also the midget stuck to my back. A midget who supposedly survives bloody everything, becomes immortal, and summons a like-wise near immortal army of Hokages to fight an equally immortal horned, three-eyed tree goddess and her will given form as a black blob with teeth.

Wow Orochi's life (and mine, as a virtue of being stuck to his) is gonna be so screwed up, not even a metaphorical automatic screwdriver would cut it.

"Faster faster faster!" the snakes hissed, curling on a higher branch. We've all been reduced to single words and no coherent sentences at this point.

Trying to accelerate the gravity-defying shuffle didn't work, and instead almost threw off my balance. The bear was too close to be comfortable. It's chakra felt scarily empty, like a void filled only with hunger.

Shiiiiii–

How can we survive this without relying on non-existent outside help?

Speed? Don't have it. Ran out. Anywhere but here, really.

Brawn? I'm a snake-kid slowly freezing to death and in the other corner– now only two body-lengths away and plowing through snow like it was nearly nearly nothing– was a bear who's at least a couple hundred pounds of pissed, hungry, muscle. Yeaahhhh–no.

Brains? Yup, but not for long.

Or actually...

Perhaps if I can't pull myself up with sticky hands, I can do so with sticky string?

Like Spiderman or a pulley system?

"The bear looks hungry..." Thanks bro, for stating the unneeded obvious.

It's not like I haven't had an abundance of stupid ideas lately, but circumstances could've been better.

Actions speak louder than thoughts.

Taking a hand off the bark was easy, especially considering that was part of the climbing process as well, but flinging the chakra string up while lengthening it along with strengthening it took much more concentration.

In fact, It almost resulted in another hand detaching from the bark, which resulted in a shift of concentration that sent the string careening off at least a foot off target.

The bear had halved its distance again and it's chakra was preparing to land a blow.

The sun peeked through bare branches and glinted off blue scales, stretched to reach the falling thread of chakra.

Thank kami, thank all the kamis.

Within the next instant, Dōsukēru had snapped back the thread and with all the advantages granted by being a chakra using snake, she swerved over and under the branch and touched the chakra string to itself, creating a nose around the thick branch.

I let go of the unstable other hand, used both to grip the thin string, and pulled.

Chakra is a strange thing. It can be physical and turned into... stuff, or even metaphysical and screw with the mind. Either way, it bends the laws of science to the will of the user.

This time was no exception.

The chakra string that originally was barely the thickness of a dehydrated earthworm rapidly expanded to the same diameter of my pinkie, a change rapidly accompanied by the loss of feeling (and probably warmth, not like I could feel it) all the way from my toes to nearly my bottom rib. Ah well, kids don't have much chakra, chakra distribution is a fickle thing, but least it overall provides with a better grip and life insurance?

Life insurance as in, it rapidly shortened and thus brought my little brother and I flying up the side of the tree? Thank kami that Orochi has enough control of his chakra to stick to me with a firmer grip, otherwise who knows what might happen. Also thank kami that he was smart enough to not choke me with the hold he had around my neck. Oxygen deprivation could potentially result in health problems such as choking, black-outs, and death via plummeting to death or devouring by bear.

Thanking kamis had apparently become the trend lately.

A bit more focusing slowed our rapid ascent, and swinging to the bark for reattachment allowed the two of us to eventually clamber onto the tree branch proper, eight or so meters above ground. I used the same technique again to get us even higher, onto a branch with a split for a larger butt-area so the bear would be less tempted to follow us. Only in Fire country can trees have branches this high up large enough for kids and snakes to sprawl over without any fear of falling even without chakra usage. Kiri's just almost all water, Kumo is debatable, Iwa is... really rocky so perhaps extreme bonsai? And Suna is ignorable with its ever so wonderful positions as a desert. So among the five large countries, there wasn't any competition at all. Tree-huggers indeed.

In fact, it's rumored that some of the border outposts are built inside some of the particularly large trees. As a person that once dreamed of going to a redwood forest in a world without bullshit chakra fertilizer, that possibility is open like the currently-non-existent canopy.

"Ohmykami thank kamis you're an amazing buddy and the best half of a soul I could ever want and–" Dōsukēru flopped onto my face, the underside of her jaw laid over the pulse on my throat.

Holy shit our hearts are beating fast.

Then she raised her tail and basically slugged my face.

"That's for not thinking through your actions."

For the record, when chakra-enhanced, scaly-limbs are really really hard.

I rubbed the top of her head. "That's for saving our hides."

There was a choking sound from around my throat, which might've came from any of us, but then we just ended up laughing and crying because we were still here, still alive.

Orochi and Sugiryuu sort of just looked from where they were varifying each others' statuses as alive and whole, used to but not really appreciative of their older sibs' antics.

Ah well, normal is the only thing that's overratted.

The angry bear snorting and faint tremors that ran through the tree every so often was also quite the evidence for the fact.

Anyways, hopefully the region that Yuki dropped us off in is on a patrol route or something, otherwise we will not be able to survive the winter. Actually, with all the resources we inherited from our... clan, we probably can, but not very well. While on that vein of thought... "Guys, whaddya think we should do with everything that the clan left us?"

I could feel Orochi's shrug from my position on the branch next to him.

"Just leave it in Ryūchi cave for now, or something. It's not like weird-looking orphans can keep their inheritance when confronted by– by– greedy humans," Sugiryuu spat.

Dōsukēru sighed from her coiled position on my stomach, but agreed with her fellow snake. "That would be wisest. Perhaps we should only bring two of the boxes? Children of a once moderately large clan won't be sent away with nothing, and it would correspond better with how there are two of you." How the you meant human went largely unsaid, racism and discrimination against anything that wasn't human was quite common.

Up till now, Orochi has been worryingly quiet, but he broke his silence with a little bit of muttering.

"Pardon?"

He looked at me, exasperation evident on his roundish, baby-fat face. "Which ones do we keep for now then?"

For a three-year old, he's awfully sharp.

"Which ones do you guys think?" I asked the not-really-huddle-but-more-of-a-snake-human-dog-pile despite having narrowed down possible choices to four in my head.

The little argument that happened was a couple magnitudes larger than any of us probably thought it could've, but in the end we decided on taking two that we had stuck mostly essentials in during the period of time where we were organizing stuff. The random frivolous objects in the sealing booklet would pretty much be like a red-herring buffer, to prevent those in Konoha from thinking that we were hiding stuff from them. Which we will be, such as the pages of the binder that held our rooms, a piece of our mobile home. Those were folded into a tiny capsule which Sugiryuu then stored into the seal in the back of his throat, the actual boxes were with Dōsukēru.

None of us two kids have any decent control over our gag reflexes, enough practice to stretch our jaws, or the capability to dislocate and then restore the bone of our jaw to its rightful position.

Therefore everything somewhat required to be stored in a secure location would go to the snakes, and Sugiryuu got the honor to keep the rooms because he was younger and should therefore be under a bit less suspicion.

Should.

Anyways... So basically, essentials for living, books and random knickknack toy-things, a hammock, and the urns containing a portion of the ashes of our deceased parents for a proper burial are somewhere in an alternate dimension accessable through the back of our bonded-snakes' throats (ho shit that sounds weird). This way, if we actually might get to plead for our belongings, there would be an emotional side that we could plead for. Burying the ashes of our parents in Konoha would be a good way for us to solidify ties to the village in the eyes of everyone else, and would probably seem like a way to keep our loyalty.

Our parents' names however, would probably never be carved onto the Memorial stone, as they've never fought for the village hidden by too much foliage.

I sent up a prayer and an apology to our parents for using their remains in this manner, and the four of us sank into an uneasy silence, broken only by the angry snuffling sounds of a bear that had lost it's prey around the base of the tree.

Stretching out my hand to Dōsukēru, she gave me a look before flicking out her fangs from their tucked-in position and gently pressing it into the pad of my thumb. Two failed summonings from incorrect hand seals and chakra flow later, the third finally gave me the plume of smoke that accompanied the messenger cobra. Over a hundred hand seals. A kami-damned hundred.

And just when I had feeling back in my legs again, poof, it's gone like the shits I occasionally don't give.

Small-ass chakra pools are small.

"Put it with the rest of our stuff?" I asked?

The cobra nodded around the mouthful of boxes, seven in total (he resembled a scaly pissed chipmunk) before the thread of chakra keeping him in this world snapped, sending the poor dude through space-time.

As feeling started returning to my legs again, slowly, Sugiryuu muttered something along the lines of "he better not puke over our stuff."

We silently agreed.

Cue the return of Silence.

Then, "what about Manda?" Orochimaru asked.

The likewise questioning hiss from Sugiryuu was not really a welcoming sound, but we all subconsciously sat up a bit straighter. For a creature that's so... bendy, Manda had for some random reason always been rather adamant on proper posture.

Dōsukēru was the one to answer this question. "We won't be seeing him for a while," a pause, hesitation while she looked anywhere but us despite being coiled right beside us. "You two will need to have enough chakra to actively sustain Manda'ss existence in this realm without harm to yourselves before he will actually allow himself to be summoned over."

Fun fact, if they really really want to, summons can ignore their summons by using more chakra than what was used to summon them to block their way over. I used the word summon(s) three times in the same mental sentence. Yay.

Another fun fact, Manda would be able to detect the amount of chakra used to summon him over, and would very likely refuse with how he knows that Kinme children of the ages eight and under are incapable of maintaining any snake naturally longer than approximately two meters and a half without slowly being consumed by nature chakra and thereby turned to stone, like what happened to Scar. There was unfortunately a lot of scientific evidence and small snake-shaped grave stones supporting those facts, and with Manda now being probably one of the largest snake summons, well. Even if he chose to solid henge into something smaller to streamline the passage between worlds, the last instant that he would be able to see the two of us would be spent seeing the children of his partner turn into statues.

Orochi looked stricken, he knew very well how we didn't have enough chakra. In fact, even if we pool our chakra, it would take years before Manda can be called into this world. The little child sniffled, then rubbed his eyes. There were a few tears, but no sobbing, just a silent acceptance that the last living parent figure in our lives could neither be seen, heard, sensed, or even smelled for who knows how long just because we were too weak. The last part might've just been me thinking, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt.

I awkwardly shuffled over on the tree branch due to tingly legs, then awkwardly side-hugged my little brother due to us being on a tree branch, who leaned in, also in an awkward manner. Just because I didn't detest physical contact anymore didn't mean I had to love it, and being on a tree branch with limited space just made it that much harder to be comfortable.

Then, I let out a sigh.

Orochi hummed questioningly, so the question was answered in the easiest way possible.

"We're in Fire Country now, and we're gonna become citizens of Konoha." Generations of Kinmes, nomadic tendencies and all, are finally going to lose such a large part of who we are with only thirteen remaining clam members. By losing our freedom like this, what else of our culture are we going to lose?

None of that was spoken out loud, but perhaps it hung in the air a bit while the silence stretched on, the bear having finally given up and returned to its cave.

The silence remained unbroken even after one by one, my family dropped off to sleep while I watched the sky darken through grasping bare branches.

Hello darkness my ol' pal, oh you brought insomnia with you. Crap. It's been a while hasn't it?

Yamanaka Hiromi dropped soundlessly onto a tree branch, two more near-silent thuds behind her signifying her teammates; entrance, before flitting out her chakra in a weak sensing pulse, like some particular, odd version of echolocation. She knew her sensei was there, just a bit undetectable. Thirty meters away, a smaller, near-invisible chakra bundling up three others repeated the same pattern it had emitted half an hour ago, and one that it had afterwards repeatedly sent out like a soft scared beacon in the middle of the Fire Country forest. But by this point in time, it wasn't even a fifth of its original strength.

Hiromi hadn't fought in the clan wars being barely into the double-digits herself, but she knew most of its signals. Perks of being a Yamanaka, anything intel related would be taught without reservation, and codes were taught as soon as they were able to speak, handsigns even before.

So when she sensed a far-off flare some kilometres out from the outpost during a low-rank supply run mission, she immediately reported it to her sensei. Her sensei informed the outpost guards who then decided to sweep the surrounding area and alert the nearest outposts to do the same, but nothing was found.

Seeing the clump of fabric and scales strapped to a branch with a much too large camouflage-coloured tarp, it was simple to see how they were originally overlooked.

But perhaps it was also because the inhabitants of the tarp also wanted to be found this time.

As Hiromi slowly hopped her way over to the burdened tree-branch, she heard whispers from her teammates, the sharp-eyed Nara commenting to the Akimichi on how the scuff marks at the bottom of the resembled predator tracks.

Somehow, despite her sensei being a Sarutobi, she got there first, and was therefore the subject of scrutiny by a pair of annoyed, golden-eyes.

"Took you Konohans long enough," the young girl yawned. "If a spider found me before you guys did, well. Something would've had to die."

OMAKE

Previously, with the Yukis (a while before the Kinme Extermination)…

Yuki Mashiro has been around for a long time. And during this long-ass time, he had the fortune to witness a Shinobi war that devastated the nations, a war far bloodier than any clan wars put together. He would know.

Joining up into nations. Pah.

Shinobi are made, not born. But when they are made, they are made to kill, ties be damned. This, he also knows.

So he led his clan of ice-wielders through thick and thin while watching the rising and falling of legends. He became one himself solely due to his sheer perseverance of not dying, so much in fact that his bingo book marks him down as a nin with potential Uzumaki blood.

It gave his clan a good laugh when they got hold of that particular copy, and the look on his (last) sibling's face was utterly priceless. Everyone that knew him knew that he was too cautious to be killed, and if there was any Uzumaki blood in him, it would've been ignored through too much cold logic.

Then a period of peace began, stretched taut by the deaths of too many after the Great Shinobi War.

(What would the next war be called? The War of Nations? What about this period of warring? The Warring Nations Period?)

If one asks Yuki Mashiro, the warring clans era was simpler, if not just because the scale of the conflicts was much smaller, but also because the clans didn't need to coexist in a village next to enemies that had been killing their kin since before they were born.

The Senju and Uchiha were a prime example, then throw in an egotistical Hyuga clan with some barbaric Inuzukas, and it would be a miracle for the Village Hidden in the Leaves to survive past Mashiro's age. All of the villages were ticking tag-bombs, waiting for the right flicker of chakra to explode spectacularly and violently.

Not joining in any villages has its downfall, sure, but it kept them hoping that one day those of the Yuki bloodline would one day not be an enemy, to anyone. With their waterways and kekkei genkai, travel becomes at least thrice-fold more efficient, and the Yukis' economy bloomed, no one starved anymore and more time was freed up to enjoy life, instead of plainly survive.

They still had their allies, the Kaguya to fall back on for brawn, the Hōzuki for their collaboration with mirror crafting, and other assorted smaller, or even bigger clans, for emergencies.

Those 'other' allies are unknowns to their enemies, if only because they could be used for as a contingency plan.

Contingency plans however, are not meant to be made, never used.

At least, that was before the Kinme called.

A ruby-speckled white snake materialized into being on Mashiro's desk, jaws clamped shut around a silver-gilded scroll. There wasn't even any smoke, the natural chakra compiling components of the summoning seal on his desk took care of that.

Sage-damnit, the leader had barely thought, startled to the point that a senbon was inches away from impaling the eye of the cobra. Actually, over ten inches above the head of the cobra, in fact. He must be getting rusty in his old age.

And what a cobra it was, arching back and fanning out its hood in a furious hiss, the venom from its fangs repressed only so that it wouldn't contaminate the precious message it carried.

A moment of silence, then Mashiro groaned, dragging a wrinkled hand over his face.

He sank back into his under-fluffed cushion and wordlessly held out a hand for the message, which the cobra dropped into his palm after another second of venomous glaring.

When the damn speckled cobra didn't leave, he merely raise a brow before with painstaking slowness, unfurled the scroll.

Watching a spitting mad cobra can be rather entertaining, even if it's merely out of the corner of his eye, especially when due to their allied status it can't atta–

The oldest Yuki's eyes snapped open in alarm as he reread the red-coloured message, and furious scribbling with a charcoal-ink based brush (thank the snake-nerds and their lazy writing habits) occupied the next few minutes. Under the watchful gaze of the finally non-spitting cobra, the soft floating mots of ice where he was sitting became the only remaining cue of where started his shunshin. The snake vanished but moments later, the return message clasped tightly in its jaws for the Kinme's leader's eyes.

When it's winter and the Kirivan is still (stuck) in Suna, only users of the waterway would be able to ferry the his message over in time.

Hence, calling on Mako, the fastest (for now) Yuki alive, who was conveniently also one of his three grandkids.

Mashiro flexed his chakra in a manner similar to a bird flexing a wing, effortless and smoothly, before snapping it out and hunting for the soon-to-be messenger. It didn't take long, as within a bare dozen of seconds, the young Yuki came careening down a corner of the main clan house.

"Yes?"

Mashiro held out a scroll and a message, not a word leaving his mouth. Peace times doesn't mean a distinct lack of hostiles, and walls have always had at least one pair of ears too many.

Even then, the aged leader did not enjoy watching the curious glint in his grandchild's eyes' fade into horror.

Mako's expression shuttered, and the young Yuki left as quickly as a breath of wind, off to deliver a message and join forces with it's recipients.

No reason to disturb the rest of the clan yet, as the conflict has not truly happened. But... whether or not it will, one thing that Yuki Mashiro knew clearer than a mirror of ice is that perhaps his clan will slowly cut ties with Suna.

Warning some other clan-driven caravans wouldn't go amiss either, as betraying an entire clan and ensuring their future is either ignorant captivity or permanent death, well. Suna should've foreseen some downsides to exterminating a neutral clan. Maybe a slow economical death with trade cutting off wasn't within their expectations, but life is always full of surprises, no?

With that ever so pleasant thought in mind, the clan leader sighed. Peace was a nice reprieve, but for those that kill for a living, it will never last.

AN: *Laughs nervously* whoops?

Good things first, this fic has reached over 100 reviews! Hence omake. SFVB also has 383 Follows, 257 Favs, and nearly 36000 views! (delighted banshee screeching in background)

Bad things well, the late update is due to: studying/cramming for IB exams, Exams, procrastination, travelling, more traveling, jet lag, crappy wifi for almost to months now, and stuff I'm probably forgetting.

Most of the chapter was typed out a month ago but it never felt enough, and especially considering it reached its 1 year anniversary last month !(^v^)!, which I wanted to update on but was in Singapore. Vacation is tiring, especially when we have to hand wash our clothes (ugh).

Uhh, I'm in China so my time-zone thing is out of whack, but it's an hour till my 18th birthday! (I smell responsibilities, they smell bad).

So yeah, thanks to all who reviewed, followed, or favourited this fic, you guys all make my day! (You people are the best in the fandom I luv you all)

If mistakes are spotted or suggestions are possible, please review/pm me! Reviews are love!

Edit: I remember something that I forgot when this was just uploaded, the omake was inspired by a plot bunny from the amazing PlunnyBreeder, despite the original prompt being more along the lines of how the Kaguya reacts instead of the Yuki.

~Cadriona Morningwing

Uploaded: July 12, 2017 (finally!)