Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Clang. Clang.

That was the sound of Izon Village's heartbeat, this morning like every morning.

Clang. Clang.

The young blacksmith stood in the village's heart, feeling the fire of life–the heat of the forge–spread through him and into the body of the village.

Clang. Clang.

Every strike of hammer on anvil was another beat. Today, he was only working on a practice piece, a ruined ploughshare remade into a battleaxe nobody in the village would know how to use. Still, his arms kept swinging, making sure the heart didn't skip a beat.

Clang. Clang.

A brief pause to wipe the sweat off his brow with the cloth he kept wrapped around his left forearm. Beware the sweat, Sensei had taught him. It gets in your eyes and blinds you. It gets in your mouth and distracts you. It gets on your hands and makes you drop things that are hot or heavy or sharp. The sweat is a tribute to the kami of craft. Gather it. Be proud of it. But never take it lightly.

Clang. Clang.

The old apron was too big for him, no matter how he adjusted it. That was just as dangerous. Imperfect tools meant imperfect work. Imperfect work meant certain death. Sensei had taught him that too.

Uzuki was preparing to slaughter a cow this week. If he asked, she'd set aside some of the hide, and Dan would tan it and make him an apron that fit. Anything he needed for his work, he'd get. Just like the forge, he was the village's heart.

"Boy."

He put down the hammer. He scanned his work space to make sure everything was safe. Then he turned to the customer.

"Are you listening, boy?"

The man was as big as a bear and about as hairy, though his intelligent, piercing gaze would have better fit the predatory eyes of an eagle. He wore fine hunting leathers, torn in places but expertly repaired, and on his breast, he bore a badge with a strange symbol: a hexagon with three vertical lines across it. It wasn't a ninja clan symbol, at least not of this land. His master had taught him those, the same way a woodsman would teach his apprentice the various tracks of deadly beasts. Was it a hunter's lodge mark, maybe?

"Fetch me your master," the hunter demanded in a rich, confident baritone. "I hear he can repair any weapon."

"My master is dead," the smith admitted. No point in pretending. They all knew that word must have spread by now, or why would the village have gone so long without any business? "He blasphemed against the kami, and they waited until he was drunk and steered him into the heart of the forest. Only the chakra dodos can survive there."

"My condolences," the hunter said in the voice of a man needing someone to throttle. The smith wanted to back away, but he calmed himself. Knowing that a customer would kill him one day was just part of what it meant to be the Blacksmith of Izon. Kami send that it would not be today.

"What am I supposed to do now?" the hunter muttered to himself. His bear's voice was not meant for muttering, and the smith caught every word. "I can't trust a kid with that. But I can't face them with it broken either. They'd never let me live it down."

Izon needed the business. It was a matter of literal survival. If he pleased the hunter, others from the lodge would come. People would hear that the new smith's hands could be trusted. The praise would make its way to the Kannagi, the masters of this land, and they'd honour the covenant again. He would repair their weapons, both common and strange, and they would protect the village from the monsters. If not, the chakra dodos would keep multiplying, and soon enough, the village's heart would beat for the last time.

"With all respect, sir," the smith said, "I've inherited all the secret arts of the Izon smiths." Mostly so that his master could leave more and more work to him while he went away to drink, but the smith never complained. He loved his work, and he was lucky compared to the typical apprentice, who would spend many years on menial work before he was allowed to make a single independent piece. In fact, the master's other, less gifted, apprentice was still in that position.

The hunter winced as if a sharp arrow had grazed his face. "There's no time. The ceremony is only a week away. The other villages here can barely handle steel, how are they going to–"

"Sir," the smith interrupted. "Trust me. I will not fail you."

The hunter took a few steps towards him. Up close, he towered menacingly over the smith, who hadn't come into his growth yet.

"Are you prepared to take responsibility?" he growled. "If you fail me in this, it'll be your head."

"The smiths of Izon repair weapons for ninja," the smith said, his voice barely trembling at all. "If our work fails on the battlefield even once, we will die the very next day."

The hunter gave a snort that could have meant anything, then dumped a roll of cloth on the counter between them.

The smith gingerly unfurled it.

"A… gauntlet?" He'd never seen its like before. The metal was stonesteel, an alloy few smiths could recognise, much less use. The workmanship was a thing of beauty, protective yet flexible, every joint angled to perfection so that the hand could move almost as if the gauntlet wasn't there. And then, the blades. Twin blades arced over the back of the hand, so thin it seemed like they should break from a single look, yet so sharp they cut his eyes even as he looked at them, and delicately serrated on the inner edge. They would sever when swung outwards and tear when swung inwards. The precision work would have brought tears to his master's eyes even when he was sober.

This was no hunter's weapon. The smith immediately dropped into dogeza.

"Forgive me for my insolence, great ninja. I did not recognise you."

"Oh, get up," the ninja said impatiently. "A craftsman doesn't grovel."

The smith obeyed, though he didn't see the connection. Craftsmen deserved respect. What they wanted was survival.

"First test," the ninja said. "Do you know what I need you to do?"

There were three lines on the badge this man bore so proudly on his chest. And looking closely at the gauntlet...

"The middle blade is missing," the smith concluded. "You need it replaced, well enough that nobody will know you broke it to begin with."

The ninja gave a tolerant grunt.

"Can you do it? You have one week."

The smith considered. He had that old sword a Kannagi ninja never came back to claim, with a stonesteel core that could be repurposed. He'd need help with the forge, especially the bellows. Tarō, the junior apprentice, could organise some people. If he started carving a custom mould today…

"It will be better than new," the smith said. There was no choice anyway. Either he pleased the ninja or the village went extinct.

Hazō hit the ground hard and rolled.

He bounced to his feet, trained reflexes throwing him into motion before Orochim—

It took only three steps to realize that Orochimaru was not going to make a follow-up attack. Or take any other action. Because he wasn't there.

Not only wasn't he there, neither was Hazō. The tree that Hazō had been sitting in was gone. So was the tree next to it, and the one after that, and every other tree within several miles.

Hazō was standing on a mountain. A big mountain.

There were trees in sight, but they were far below.

He looked around slowly. The ground was uncaring flat slabs of gray rock, broken and scattered, sloping down at a modest angle in the area immediately around Hazō and more sharply a distance off. There was no moss, no grass. Three small bushes, mostly spindly sticks and thorns, but green. The air was motionless, not a hint of wind to be felt. Everything reminded him of a party where the hosts really wanted you to leave but were too polite to say so: slightly cool and everything fixed in place like stage-wrought 'smiles'.

He looked up. No sky. Overcast, grey, not a hint of texture the way clouds would normally show. The sky was the flat, dull, uncaring color of depression.

The color of the afterlife.

For three long seconds, Hazō simply looked around. Not sure for what, perhaps simply hoping for something to prove him wrong. There was no such thing.

"FUCK!" he screamed. "Fuck, fuck, FUCK! May the Sage fuck you in the fucking ass, Orochimaru! May the—" He clapped his mouth shut.

"Listen up, maggots! Today, we WILL be practicing our stealth skills! The point of stealth is to prevent the enemy from sneaking up and slitting your fuckin' maggot throats while you sneak up and slit theirs! WHAT is the FIRST requirement of stealth? Put your fuckin' hand down, Kurosawa! That was what we call a REE-torical question. That means one that maggot pukes like you don't need to answer! The first requirement of stealth is to KEEP YOUR FUCKIN' MOUTHS SHUT! I'd best not hear any yapping today!"

Fuck.

Hazō sat down hard on the rocky ground, his legs almost collapsing under him. He was dead. He had lost.

He had been so sure! All that work, figuring out how to beat Akatsuki, the months of research, dragging his family into the wilds and away from everyone and everything they loved. All that, and he had been stabbed in the back by Orochimaru? After everything was over, damnit. They were on their way home! It was supposed to be the grand, triumphant return! Orochimaru redeemed, Hazō and the Snake Sannin collaborating on the next generation of runic weapons and defenses while Hazō remained Clan Lord in name only, with Mari and the family handling things in his name.

Damnit, the family. He had promised them that it would all be okay, that they would get to go home again. With Hazō dead and Orochimaru presumably run off somewhere, what would happen to them? Would Naruto take them back...?

Yes, he would. Tsunade had been there, had understood that Hazō was under orders and not missing. She would speak up for the others. Kei could be with Shikamaru and her gazillion other loves again. Noburi could work on being a good husband and Yuno could work on not killing any woman who looked at Noburi for more than two point eight seconds. Mari could sink back into the sybaritic lifestyle that she loved, meanwhile running rings around Leaf's political elite. Hopefully, she would take the position as Clan Lady with Tsunade's backing.

He smiled slightly, sadly, as he thought about the entrance he would be missing. Lady Senju, granddaughter of the First, former Hokage in her own right, Slug Sannin, greatest medic ever, would lead the parade from the city's east gate down Namikaze Way and through the various side streets that led to the Gōketsu estate. Mari and the rest would be in a line behind Tsunade, waving to the cheering crowds that packed the streets and leaned out the upper-floor windows. There would be bunting and thrown confetti, vendors giving away dango to the children and commemorative cookies. Hopefully there would also be carefully-hidden tears of grief, but the waving part was important for appearances. Maybe everyone would wear black armbands to remember Hazō's death.

Would they recover his body, or would it simply lie there and rot, eaten by wolves and carrion bugs?

What about the Dog Summoning Scroll? Oh, Sage, it couldn't be lost. Actually, he wasn't sure which was worse—for it to be lost in the woods somewhere such that Cannai would never have another Summoner, or for Orochimaru to have taken it and hidden it away. You couldn't be Summoner to more than one Clan, so at least there was no need to fear the Snake Summoner signing the Dog Scroll. Still.

Cannai wouldn't know what had happened to Hazō. Would the family think to send someone to notify him? It was a long way...the closest departure point would be the battle lines between Pangolin and Hyena, and even that was several days' travel. Would Kei be able to go herself, or could she persuade Pantsā to dispatch someone? No, it wasn't practical for a pangolin to do it; they would need to get through all of Hyena and Hazō had cause to know exactly how hard that was. They would either need to have Kagome-sensei convince Kumokōgō to dispatch an arachnid from the west or Kei would need to skywalk across Hyena. Oh, or maybe someone could sail from Porcupine, around the coast of Hyena. That could work.

Hopefully they would do it soon. Cannai would be worried when Hazō didn't check in. So would the puppies, and all of his other contracts. How long would it take for uncertainty and worry to turn to acceptance and grief...?

Okay.

Okay, this wasn't helping.

He was dead, yes, but he was going to be a mature, stoic ninja about it. He was Gōketsu Hazō, Lord of Clan Gōketsu, the first runemaster in a thousand years, slayer of Deidara the Explosion Master of Akatsuki. He could handle this. It was just a setback. He knew of one rift that led out of the afterlife and maybe there were more. If that failed, maybe he could research something.

Wait, could he? He had started the day with Earthshaping, spent the late morning on runic infusion, begun the afternoon by making shadow clones to clean up after the runic infusion, and then died. He was at about a quarter of his normal reserves...which wasn't enough for runic research, damnit. If he could find a way to regenerate his chakra while he was here then yes, he could eventually research his way home. Maybe.

Oh shit. Would there be a home to get back to? He had set up that deadman switch with Mari—if he died, she was to spread the nature of the Elemental Mastery weapon far and wide so that other nations could recreate it. Sure, she didn't know the Elemental Mastery jutsu itself, but that wasn't necessary. All that was needed was the knowledge 'if you make things extremely cold, you can blow a city off the map.' Spreading that knowledge would mean the end of civilization, and thus no one should have been willing to kill Hazō.

Would Mari carry through on her promise? If she did, there essentially wouldn't be a Human Path to return to. At least, not one that he would recognize. With luck, she would be smart enough to get word to those that Hazō cared about so that they could escape to the woods where they wouldn't be targets.

Of course, Mari might well not carry through. There was a good chance that her promise had been a lie, intended solely to convince Hazō that she would do it so that he could confidently tell Orochimaru that Hazō had a deadman switch, but without the actual risk of ending civilization. That would be just like her.

Actually, that would be exactly like her. In fact, that was almost certainly what she had done, damnit. He had been forcing himself not to think about this until now, but once he focused on it there was no way to turn aside: Mari had lied her ass off. There was no way she would end the world simply because Hazō had died, no matter what she had claimed.

He shook his head and shoved the thoughts away. There was nothing he could do about it for now, and now that he had died it was honestly preferable that she not follow through. He would simply assume that he was right, Mari had been lying, and that there would be a Human Path to return to. And he was going to return to it, no matter what. The afterlife would not have him.

He took stock, patting himself down to see if his gear was in place. It was; dozens of storage seals, explosives, everything exactly where he expected. He pulled out the seal containing his winter gear and unsealed a sweate—

The seal didn't work.

He tried again, then tried some of the other seals. Storage seals, nothing. Explosives, nothing. Macerators, nothing. The seals were all perfectly rendered with the inhuman exactitude of the Iron Nerve—

He frowned, head cocking as the thought of his bloodline made him aware of a difference in it. He turned his attention inwards, probing. Something was different, wrong. His body, carved into a precision instrument by tens of thousands of hours of practice, was wrong.

He reached into his core and spun chakra throughout himself.

Academy-level training spread a web of chakra through every part of his body. It was the foundational technique for running with ninja speed, lifting with ninja strength, fighting with ninja skill. It reached into every tiniest crevice and strengthened bone, toughened flesh, propelled him and his brethren to superhuman heights. His chakra was his to command, and it was the way by which he commanded and understood everything he was.

What he understood right now was that there was a hole inside himself.

He explored the edges of it, invisible waves of energy wrapping around the empty space as he groped at finding its shape. It was inchoate, unstructured, spread throughout himself. What was...

Oh.

His second chakra coil. The one that Orochimaru had implanted in order to enlarge Hazō's reserves enough that he could summon Cannai to the battle. It was gone. There was a giant hole where it should have been, the parallel tracks of chakra surging through himself were once more only a single path, his maximum reserves reduced to only what nature had granted.

Now that he looked, 'what nature had granted' wasn't what was there now. His chakra channels were different, warped from what he knew. His body was off, different somehow. The missing chakra system was part of it, and being low on chakra never felt good, but that wasn't it.

He checked around to make sure there were no visible threats; there weren't, so he sat down to meditate while he studied his body. He closed his eyes and turned his attention inwards, probing throughout himself.

His brain felt as usual. His muscles and bones were more or less as they had been. They were a little off from what he expected, but not enough to be remarkable. There was always some change from day to day, based on how he had exercised and even what he had eaten.

His fingertips were...

He frowned, eyes opening as he looked at his hands. Now that he was paying attention, he recognized that his sense of touch was more intense. He reached behind himself and trailed his fingers across the stone; a precise image built up in his mind.

He frowned as the motion of his arm slid into the familiar grasp of his Iron Nerve bloodline. The bloodline descended from the famous Sharingan of Leaf, the Iron Nerve was just as powerful in its own way but far more discreet. It permitted him to reproduce any motion he had ever made with perfect fidelity, and even to modify those motions in tiny ways so that he could practice the most efficient running motion and then use it on any kind of terrain.

And, of course, the Iron Nerve granted perfect recall of any seal or rune that Hazō had ever seen, and the ability to reproduce those seals. It was similar to the fabled jutsu-copying ability of the Iron Nerve's ancestral Sharingan bloodline, yet more subtle and ultimately more powerful. Being able to cast a copied jutsu (presumably) required that one have the appropriate elemental affinity, and definitely required that one have the chakra reserves. Reproducing a seal created by another sealmaster was impossible by every rule of sealing that Hazō had learned, yet the Iron Nerve permitted it.

He probed through his bloodline and found that everything was there as expected; every rune, every seal, every motion he had ever made. Yet everything was different as well. They came more easily to his mental grasp, they connected more smoothly from one to the next. In the past he had spent hours practicing one kick until he managed to perform it perfectly, then spent more hours substituting that kick into a taijutsu form that had been practiced with a sloppier version of the kick. Now, he could feel the various motions sliding around in his mind with no effort, locking together like puzzle pieces. That wasn't all, though. His bloodline felt...deeper? Wider? He couldn't find words for it, but he could tell that there were places within it that he had never seen and that he could not reach.

He stood up and flowed into Kata One, the first form of the Mist Academy's taijutsu style. It was just as smooth as always, so he did it again but this time he converted the overhand block into a curling limb trap and shifted the following push kick into a stomp to account for the reduced distance. There was no hesitation, no effort; his mind conceived, his body executed, no need for practice or consideration.

What. The fuck.

Was there something about the afterlife that made his bloodline different? He knew that his physical body was back on the Human Path and what he inhabited now was a construct; was that construct somehow more efficient? Was human flesh a barrier to the Iron Nerve, sand in the gears that kept the machine from running smoothly?

Hm. He had been here for...a few hours? Probably? It was hard to tell without the sun or any other way to mark time. Still. He didn't feel tired, or even slightly sore from sitting on the uneven rocks.

He shifted into more and more advanced taijutsu forms. He went faster and faster, chaining movements together and adding unnecessary and energy-expending acrobatics. No matter how hard he couldn't make himself tired, or breathe hard, or even break a sweat.

Midair, upside-down in the middle of an inverted hurricane kick, he caught movement from the corner of his eye. Instantly, he came back to his feet, knees slightly bent as he prepared to attack or defend.

The movement was to his left and far below, half a mile or a mile down a steep slope of broken scree. It was a man in a brown robe, climbing slowly up the side of a cliff on a spiraling path that would quickly take him past Hazō and out of sight.

"Hey!" Hazō shouted. He ran, leaping from stone to stone towards what might well be the only other human within scores of miles. The only other person who might know...well, anything. Where he was, if there were others around, what monsters roamed the afterlife. If there was a way out.

"Hey! Hello!" Hazō called as he bounced down the slope.

The stone slipped under Hazō's foot just as the other man's head came up and eyes locked on Hazō. The Iron Nerve shifted Hazō's balance without effort as the scree began to slide around him; within moments, Hazō was surfing down the mountain atop a wave of stone, bouncing from one shifting, tumbling rock to the next as he traversed across the avalanche towards where the brown-robed figured waited on the edge of the cliff with a look of resignation.

Hazō leaped clear, ignoring the crashing rush of stone behind him as he ran to the other man.

"Hello! I'm Gōketsu Hazō. I just woke up here and I wasn't expecting to see anyone else."

The man sighed. "Of course you did. The one place that I was sure would be empty, and of course a newbie arrives here just as I'm preparing to go. And a ninja at that."

"Go? Wait, how do you know I'm a ninja?"

The robed man snorted. "You fling yourself down the hill like that, dancing across an avalanche, and you want to claim you're not a ninja? Pull the other one."

"Oh...yeah, okay," Hazō said, blushing. He quickly hurried on. "What did you mean by 'go'? Where are you going?"

The other man was older than Hazō, perhaps in his forties, with olive skin and scars across his knuckles. Familiar scars, the kind that came from live combat with one's fists. The robe that swaddled him was a shapeless brown mass, its fabric bland and unremarkable in its flat, even texture and color. It was secured with a piece of rope made of twisted grasses. The man's feet were bare but he seemed unconcerned about the rough and uneven stone they stood upon.

He looked longingly up the mountain, then back to Hazō, and sighed again. "Fine. I suppose I can answer your questions before I go." He paused, then seemed to remember something. "Right, sit down. It will feel more natural." He dropped into a cross-legged position.

Hazō sank down opposite him, staying just slightly out of arm's reach. Yes, he wanted answers and wanted human company, but he didn't know this man.

The other man noticed and snorted. "I'm not going to attack you. Probably wouldn't matter if I did. You've still got a smidge of chakra in you, right?"

"Yes...?"

He nodded. "Sure. Newbies always come in with what they had, or maybe a little less. Hard to tell." He fell silent, fingers combing through the loose spray of pebbles around him until he found one that suited him. It was rough, oblong, about half a fingerlength and a third as wide. The man began spinning it through his fingers, back and forth.

"Let's see..." he began. "First off, yes. You're dead. Don't worry, it's not permanent."

"It's not?" Hazō asked, relief surging through him.

"No. Eventually you'll be ready to move on. As time—such as it is here—goes by, you'll find your memories will escape and drift away. When you've forgotten everything, you'll fade out and disappear. No one knows what happens next. Maybe you're reborn, maybe you're simply gone. Regardless, you won't have to be here forever."

"My memories will 'escape'?" Hazō said, struggling not to show just how horrific that idea was.

"Yeah, don't worry. It's not that bad. Sure, it's scary at first, but you'll make peace with it. Honestly, it can be nice. Everyone has things they would rather forget—moments that you deeply regret, dumb things you did or said that hurt your loved ones, the grief of a friend or lover dying, all that. Back in the first world, you're stuck with those memories for life. Here, they eventually go away and let you live in peace."

"But don't your good memories go as well? Also, may I ask your name?"

"Hm? Oh, right. Daiji."

Hazō waited, but there was no more. "Did you have a family name?" he asked.

Daiji shrugged. "Probably? If so, I let it go." He gestured vaguely around them. "I've been here a long while, Gōketsu Hazō. No idea how long, but I'm sure it's been long. It's possible to fight the forgetting, hold onto your memories. Not easy, but possible. For a while."

Daiji fell silent again, looking down at his pebble as it danced from finger to finger.

"How do I fight the memory drain?" Hazō asked after a few seconds.

"Hm? Oh, Gōketsu. Yeah, you just need to hold onto them. Your memories, I mean. Go through them in your mind, mentally relive as much as you can. It's easier for some people than others. You'll make new memories while you're here; tying those to older ones will help you hold onto both." He raised a finger. "I said it will help. It'll let you hold them longer, but you'll always lose them eventually."

He smiled slightly. "They like to escape, you see. Back in the first world, memories are these ethereal things that are easily trapped inside a skull. Here, they are more real, more solid. They actively try to escape, and you need to keep them chained up. They'll eventually slip their chains and get away. Here, watch." He tapped his forehead and extended one arm. A strand of milky something followed his fingers. It stretched like taffy, glistening and popping like hot oil on water. It reached its maximum extent and snapped clear of Daiji's forehead, forming into a tiny cloud that drifted on the nonexistent breeze for a moment before dissolving into nothing.

Hazō stared in shock.

"A memory," Daiji said. "No idea what it was of. I didn't bother to remember which one I was releasing. I think it had been especially desperate to escape and it seemed only polite to let it out."

"You just...threw away a memory?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Because they're your memories! Your memories are who you are, why would you throw them away?!"

"Eh."

Hazō gaped at the older man. There should be something to say here, something that would awaken Daiji to the insanity of what he had just done, would convince him to once more fight for his own identity. Whatever that might be, Hazō had no clue.

"It doesn't hurt," Daiji reassured him. "After a while it can be interesting. If you probe around, sometimes you can tell what got loose based on where the holes are. For example, I still have a memory about going to a ball when I was a teenager. I know I had this girl on my arm, but I can't remember her name and I can't remember a section of time after our second dance. When I can remember again, she was gone. I probably did something stupid and embarrassed myself, then she stormed off. It's nice not having to live with whatever that stupid was."

Hazō skin crawled.

"I can see you're going to fight it," Daiji said. "That's okay. Everyone does, when they first get here. You'll find that it's very stressful, and eventually you'll calm down and relax about it."

He looked around vaguely. "Let's see...oh, yeah. This is the edge of the Wilds. If you still want to fight, you should stay out of the deeper Wilds. Head that way"—he pointed—"and you'll find a town. A few hundred people, but enough to keep things stable."

"Stable?"

"Yeah. This world isn't like the first world. Back there, everything is stable. If you see a tree and look away, the tree will still be there when you look back. Here, that's not always true. Also, even if it's there it won't necessarily still be a tree.

"Things are fairly stable around the settlements. No one knows why, but I think it's because the escaping memories bleed into the environment and mold reality into something that those memories fit into. We all remember trees that stay trees, so the trees around the settlements do. Get too far away, things get wonky. That's the Wilds for you."

"I see."

"Yup."

Hazō chewed on that for a moment and Daiji let him.

"What about chakra?" If he had chakra, he could fight off whatever was in these 'Wilds'. That, and he could make a rune to get himself home again.

"What about it?" the older man replied.

"Can I regenerate it?" He carefully didn't say 'because if I can then I can bust us out of here.' Best to keep that card hidden until he knew the best time to play it.

"Nah."

Hazō's non-beating heart dropped.

"Well, not like you used to," Daiji amended. "You need to find a shimmer."

"A what?"

The older man turned to look out over the forest that spread out around the base of the mountain. After a time, he pointed. "See that light over there? That's a shimmer."

Hazō looked carefully and after a moment he caught what Daiji was pointing at. A region of the forest shimmered with a faint blue light. Searching carefully, he noticed two other such areas, widely dispersed.

"Dunno where they come from," Daiji continued. "Best guess is that somehow chakra leaks through from the first world. Anyway, there's chakra in those places. If you go to one and sit around, your coils will drink up the chakra. There's never very much and once it's gone, it's gone. Still, it's something. They aren't common and they don't tend to happen around the settlements as much...or maybe people are sneaking out and soaking up what's there. Dunno. Anyway, you'll probably need to get out to the edge of the Wilds if you want to find one."

"Do they get stronger as you go deeper into the Wilds? Or more common?"

Daiji shrugged. "No one comes back after going into the deep Wilds. As to getting stronger or more common...dunno. Maybe I did at some point and let those memories go after I stopped shimmer hunting. Every ninja hunts shimmers when they first get here, but they stop bothering after a while. Not really much need for chakra here."

Hazō struggled not to betray how appalled he was at that thought. His entire life had been centered around his ninja training; it was at the very core of who he was. If he could no longer run on walls, make seals, raise up walls for defense and shelter...who even was he?

Daiji chuckled. "Yeah, I see it on your face." He put his hands on his cheeks in exaggerated horror. "Oh my goodness! What insanity is this? Being a ninja is the very essence of who I am, what madness is this idea that I might give up on it?" He shrugged. "Give it time. There's plenty of people here, most of them weren't ninja, and there really isn't much need for chakra in day to day life."

"Life," Hazō said, pouncing on the word. "You still regard this as life?"

"Eh. As good a word as any, I suppose. 'Existence' is probably more accurate but it's a little pretentious."

"I see."

Silence fell between them again as Daiji fiddled with his rock.

"Can you show me to the settlement?"

"Nah. Just head that way, you'll find it." He gestured down the mountain with a wave that was not nearly as precise as Hazō would have preferred. "I'm done."

"Done?"

"Yeah. I decided I'm ready to move on. Said my goodbyes, wrapped everything up, came out here." He looked around. "Not quite sure why, really. I suppose I didn't want to burden anyone else. Anyway, it's been fun but that's enough for me. Good luck, kid." He stood up, absently brushing off the seat of his robes.

Hazō jumped to his feet. "Wait, please. I still have more questions."

"Newbies always do. Head to the settlement, people there will be happy to answer them. Now, if you don't mind, you're ruining my quiet moment."

"Please—"

Daiji turned and leaped off the cliff, plunging down to the ground far below. Hazō rushed to the edge, but it was far too late to interfere. All he could do was watch helplessly as the only other human for miles around fell to his death.

Midair, memories erupted from Daiji's head, exploding in all directions. With each memory released, Daiji thinned, becoming more and more transparent. Before he could reach the ground, he was gone.

---

Vote time! What to do now?

• [] Search out the settlement
• [] Go shimmer hunting until Hazō is full up on chakra
• [] Write-in

Voting ends on Wednesday, Yesterday at 8:00 AM.