A strange new life

5.23

Packing up everything left me empty of chakra and exhausted. Hayase chatted all day long about this or that code, often trying for minutes to understand some new piece of information or another. I could understand his enthusiasm, but I just wasn’t feeling the same. Mental breakdowns and gruesome autopsies weren’t conducive to a happy mood. Even so, I nodded at the appropriate times, displaying the appropriate level of tired, but genuine interest. I liked that stuff, after all. I think Hayase got so into his own geekness he forgot to be weirded out by me.

That night, chakra depleted and tired, Yamato excused me from the watch rotation. I wasn’t going to complain. If ordered, I would have tried, but I don’t think I was in any condition to stay awake and concentrate all night.

Warm blankets embraced me. My eyes drooped. Before I fell asleep, I pushed my chakra one last time. Another Hinata-chan joined me under the blankets. It felt nice to cuddle with her. Sleep found me soon after.

The feeling of being watched woke me up. The side of the bed was empty, my other self dispersed when I fell asleep. I cast my senses out, trying to feel anything that could point out why this kept happening.

Two bundles of chakra, one was the familiar earthy flavored one that I knew was Yamato. Something about that was nagging at my mind, chakra flavor? Another, this one smaller, slept in the adjacent room. By the size, I knew it was Hayase. Which left the one at the living room as Sai.

All around, other smaller bundles of chakras were moving around the camp. Sai’s ink constructs. Somehow, my sensing range seemed to have expanded, or Sai was keeping his constructs closer. While I was still looking for the source of the disturbance, Sai’s chakra churned. He held the new small bundle for a while, and soon after it left the house. It flew out of my perception range. I guess Sai was doing a staggered recon area. For a moment I thought my range had gone up.

I brushed those thoughts away, sleepiness making me think strange things. I kept searching for what had woken me up, but when I caught myself dozing for the third time, I called it a bad job, tucked back into covers, and fell asleep once more. When I catch the peeping bastard, I’d teach them a lesson.

We departed the next morning before dawn. Yamato unsummoned his awesome portable house. I adjusted my travel bag. Somehow, it fell to me to carry all the stuff we gathered. It was just paper seals, but outside their storage, they were bulky. I think Yamato was bullying me, or maybe obfuscating the fact he left me with the laboratory data. I wasn’t sure.

Yamato turned to our team, specifically the pale boy. “Sai, please report our new plans to Konoha. We’ll use the same details we discussed yesterday.”

Sai nodded, pulled out a seal scroll, pencil and ink. With a flourish, he created an ink bird. The construct flew up and landed on his shoulders. Next, Sai took a more mundane piece of parchment, and held it to the bird. The ink thing swallowed the paper, fluttered its wings, took off flying.

I followed the construct until it left the range of my chakra perception.

“Stay focused, we will travel fast.” Yamato advised, then started running.

We stopped a few miles later. I judged that was far enough. Yamato gave me a considering look, Hayase looked nervous, Sai was just indifferent. That was fine, it was my moment. My hands flashed, out popped a clone. She was alert and ready. Eyes sparkling and face open in a full-wicked smile. Body swaying in anticipation. I understood her, I wanted to smile myself. But I didn’t. I had better self control than my clones. I adjusted my footing. Found something to hold on to quiet questing hands. 

My clone, the awesomest Bomber-chan, gave me a nod, a salute. With a quick hop my way and a devious smirk, she took me into a hug and planted a kiss on my cheek. The gall of that gal! Three pairs of startled eyes stared at me. My ears burned. Damn it. The clones were getting out of control.

With another cheeky grin, Bomber-chan saluted the three flabbergasted boys, then flickered away. I endured their curious gazes until I knew it was time. They might have asked more than a few questions. I didn’t bother with answers. Pretended I hadn’t heard it. I raised my hand, fingers splayed, then lowered one by one. 

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I hoped they understood.

The explosion was a muted thump that shook the world. It was glorious. Even prepared as I was, I windmilled to keep my balance. There was no plume of smoke or blast of fire. The hideout was too deep underground for that, but I did see a huge swath of trees toppling in the distance. Nice! Another good memory. I needed more of those.

Yamato had crouched, both hands on the ground for support. Sai, fast on the uptake, had copied the jounin. Hayase was still trying to ask silly questions. Served him right, now he was picking himself up from the ground. With one last salute to Bomber-chan, the ever short lived, I turned around and led the way away. They wouldn’t ask questions if we kept running, right?

This time, we weren’t worried about not being seen. Our pace was fast and demanding. We kept out of traveled paths, preferring to tree hop in a direct line toward our destination. Yamato set a grueling pace even for shinobis. We didn’t even stop for lunch. The devil!

Boy was I glad I didn’t arrive in Middle Earth. With my size, I’m pretty sure I’d be a hobbit and that just wouldn’t do. Imagine having to run all day long without second and third breakfast, without lunch even. Madness.

We stopped when night fell. Yamato found us another hidden place among a copse of trees and summoned up another portable house. He didn’t look tired. He barely looked winded. The cheating bastard.

I shambled inside. An entire day of running was a different sort of torture. I might have gone a bit overboard with the weight seals too. It felt good to push myself. It wasn’t as bad as hell month though. Hayase looked worse than me. He all but collapsed on the first cushion he could get his hands on.

Sai, surprisingly, didn't look all that bad. His cheeks had a bit of color. An entire day of running was all that it took to put some color back on his skin. I guess I couldn’t judge by appearances. I was expecting Sai to be the one half dead, with Hayase doing better at the prolonged exercise. Teaches me to make assumptions.

My shambling took me to the kitchen. Yamato peeked inside before I could start cooking.

“Something light Hinata-san. It won’t end well if you cook anything heavy after an entire day of physical exertion.”

I nodded. That was a shame. I was in a mood for something more complex. In the end, I made a light veggie stew. It wasn’t the best, but it was tasty. I served the food, got my bowl and sat by Sai’s side. The boy cast a glance at me that I couldn’t really understand. What was going on inside his head?

I sipped my soup, popped my board. Tried again to mend a bridge I don’t even know how I burned. “Bit of a silly question, but is painting your hobby?” I gave the pale boy a cheeky grin. I mean, I knew the question was silly. I was trying to appeal to his sense of humor here.

Sai looked from his food to me, to the board, to the food again. I saw a flicker of something in his eyes. “No.” He answered again in a tone that screamed: stop bothering me.

I sighed. Well, this was getting sillier by the moment. I couldn't force someone to be my friend. I wasn’t about to do a Naruto and annoy the shit outta of the guy until he became my best friend. I wasn’t that patient, or desperate. I tried, that was more than enough for me. If he didn’t want to connect, it was his loss, not mine. Now I could badmouth him in peace in the quiet of my mind.

Yamato had observed the whole exchange. Hayase too. Awkward. I wonder what they were thinking. I unpopped my board, picked up my food, got up and went to sit with Hayase. It was time to geek over encrypted messages and learn more about them. I would need that knowledge soon enough if I was going to decipher Orochimaru’s notes. And I guess geeking out with the older chunin would help him forget to be weirded out by all that lab business.

The grueling travel pace continued until we had crossed the Land of Hot waters and arrived near the port city we would use to reach the Land of Waves. There, we had to assume our disguises again. There wasn’t much to say about that leg of the trip. We purchased more supplies, purchased passage, contacted Konoha’s spies for another report and updated info. I was glad to unload on those poor spies the loot from Orochimaru’s hideout. Carrying that many dangerous, and potentially valuable, seals was nerve wracking. 

I kept the ones from the lab though, for a few reasons. Yamato agreed that giving those away before I had a chance to make a copy for myself could set me back for a while. The intelligence department wasn’t in the business of giving away forbidden and valuable information. Orochimaru’s experimentation data was highly valuable. I also hadn’t told Yamato about the changed seals. I didn’t want others to know about them just yet. 

As it was expected, Konoha wasn’t prepared to send a full contingent of reinforcements. The situation was a cauldron waiting to boil over back at home. The jounin commander, however, promised at least one more team to support us. It just would take some time for them to arrive. A couple of days at earliest.

That tidbit of information didn’t change our plans. Yamato was right, we couldn’t delay the mission to wait for reinforcements.

We left the port city the day after we arrived.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

It wasn’t a long journey, from Hot Waters to the Land of Waves. A full day's worth with the boat we managed to get passage on. For this next part, I cut back on the weight training. It was enemy territory now, and I wanted to be in top shape for the hideout. It might take one or two days to get the soreness out of my muscles, but based on the information we had, it would take a few days to arrive at the southern hideout.

We didn’t discuss the mission, nor did we use jutsu. We were inside enemy territory now, and any lack of focus could spell disaster. Inside our quarters, we had another coded conversation. Yamato reinforced the need for secrecy now. It was best to stay under the radar than cause a political incident for the village at this critical stage.

A day of travel later, seasick and nauseated, we arrived at Mists territory. A distant part of my mind cursed Yamato’s decision to play the civilian again. Why couldn’t we just run over the water until we arrived here? Another part of me was sad that our path didn’t take us close to The Great Naruto’s Bridge. Maybe on the way back, I hoped. Another not so distant part wondered if Fate-kun would conspire against me and put Haku on my path again. That would be funny, wouldn’t it?

Disguised as traveling companions, we left the port city. There was no running today. Our objective was to reach the coast, near where the island was, and scout from there, while we waited for the reinforcements. We could have reached there in a few hours at a ninja go brrr speed, but again, we wanted to stay unnoticed. There was no way to say if the people in the hideout had spies nearby, nor did we want to alert Kiri about our presence.

Problem was, the world didn’t want us unnoticed.

When we were a few hours away from the city, I noticed the first bundle of chakra. Further than I normally would. Did my perception range really increase? I thought it was dumb sleepy brain thoughts. Did confronting my inner demons give me a power up? I scoffed at that last thought.

Noticing the chakra wasn’t all that uncommon, sometimes, a blip of chakra passed near my perception. It happened often enough on Konoha or on the road that a single blip wasn’t really worrying. But then there was a second, and a third, and a fourth and more. Worse, they were all around us. At the distance they were, they had stopped just shy of what once was my previous sensory range.

How? Why? What gave us away? I looked up, Sai’s bird was a small black dot in the sky, barely visible. How had these shinobi escaped Sai’s notice?

Urgency building inside me, I skipped forward closer to Yamato while still keeping up with my excited daughter persona. Tapped his shoulder, hands flashing with my code. A part of me really hoped these were our promised reinforcements. Waring. Shinobi. Strong. Surrounded. Quantity unknown.

I was expecting Yamato to try to play it cool, try to investigate. It didn’t happen. The man’s hand flashed with seals. Out popped two wood clones, he barked orders and all hell broke loose.

The enemy attacked. Each I could see was dressed in a dark uniform, with no visible markings. A featureless white mask with no opening for the mouth or nose. Kunais, exploding tags, smoke bombs, enemies flickering and trying to stab us in the back. More and more chakra blazes appeared around us. From the intensity, I couldn’t think of anything else than chunins and jounins. My hands trembled. I gripped a kunai in return.

The first few moments of the ambush was utter chaos. It also managed to separate our team.  

Out popped a shadow clone, just in time to intercept a shinobi trying to stab me. I whirled, parried another attack. I flickered to avoid a thrown shuriken, only to be hit by a chunk of earth protruding from the ground. I threw my explosive, in the ensuing boom, I took two other explosive tags, threw them and flickered again. Yamato wasn’t far away, but there were so many shinobi between me and him that I couldn’t approach. I tried.

I kept fighting, and injuries kept pilling. I failed to dodge a punch. A shuriken found its way into my leg. A group attack from three other ninjas left me with a kunai stuck to my sides and having to flicker wildly to escape. Not even pumping my body full of chakra was enough. No matter what I tried, the enemy was prepared. My speed, which I considered my best asset, was matched and surpassed. It was like they knew everything that I could do.

At some point, I found myself back to back with Sai, panting and trying to catch my breath. The nausea from the seasickness hadn’t left me entirely. My legs still hurt from all that running. 

Sai stumbled into me when I was being attacked by two other shinobis, with my clone too far away to help fend them off. His ink counstructs swarmed the attacking enemies, forcing them to retreat.

Now, I guarded his back and he guarded mine. Sai looked ragged and hurt, but still in better shape than me. His ink constructs were all over the place: birds, tigers, giants and more. Great distractions, keeping the enemy busy. Giving us a chance to breathe. By this point, I was about to throw caution to the wind. Using mokuton would leave me chakra drained, but what other choice did I have?

I was cursing myself for not having prepared a beacon for my prototype thunder god jutsu. I had no idea where Hayase was, or what happened to Yamato. At some point, they just weren’t in the range of my perception anymore.

Before I pulled the big guns and burned myself with mokuton, I whispered a question to Sai. In the original story, the chunin was someone Danzo considered a prodigy. He was also more prepared, fit and powerful in battle than Hayase, who was years older. Even here, he managed to push away enemies I was having trouble dealing with. “Do you have a plan?” The pain on my throat was nothing compared to my worry about the others. 

There was a moment of silence, then I felt a prickle of pain on my neck. My body froze, my breath hitched. I couldn’t move, couldn’t keep my balance. I fell down. Sai’s indifferent face made its way into my field of vision. Looked down on me.

“Yes.” He answered, voice emotionless. “It’s working perfectly.”

His foot found my face and darkness claimed me.