Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest (STORY ONLY)

Hazō kicked the last of the Out Hounds in the ribs, pulsing a tiny bit of his carefully-hoarded nature chakra into the kick in order to launch the creature a safe distance. (Experimental evidence proved this to be at least 8.7 meters. The 'experimental evidence' in question was written in scars across Hazō's legs, the teeth of the Hounds so unnatural that even respawning did not fix their marks.) With the opposition cleared away, he jumped through the final portal.

Home.

He was home. On the Human Path. In the real world, the one where he had been born and lived up until his first death.

He was standing in a meadow with a stream to his right. There was a sun overhead—a proper sun, yellow and warm and everything! There was wind! Wind, ruffling through his hair the way Mari used to do!

He emptied his lungs, pushing out every trace of the afterlife's stale atmosphere, and filled himself with as much of the living world's air as he could hold. He felt the chakra around him, an ocean compared to the tiny puddles that he had been managing with for the last...Sage's breath, how long had it been? A kiloglass? Two? More? In the twisting, shifting time of the Pure Lands, there was no way to know.

A grin spread across his face and he didn't bother trying to hold it back. Instead, he drew that ocean of chakra into himself, poured it into his legs and through that into the ground, and leaped.

The soft ground cratered downwards as he launched himself into the sky, leaping impossibly high for the afterworld and higher even than he remembered being able to leap Before. His movement startled a flock of birds into the air; one of them turned to the attack but he slapped it aside, boosting as hard as he could because why should he not? There was endless chakra here, living things everywhere that threw off all of chakra's delicious flavors, all of it ready to his hand.

His blow pulped the bird and hurled it back into its brethren; they squawked in alarm and turned away, flapping for all they were worth. Hazō arced back to the ground and landed lightly, marveling at the way the impact felt in his knees and ankles. The bodies of those in the afterlife were unnatural, unliving and not susceptible to such things. They worked until they were broken and then they dissolved, sending their owner back to their rebirth point. Sage, it felt so good to feel discomfort again!

He spun into the first steps of the Lake Dance, twirling with arms extended and one leg curved behind himself, then into a cartwheel, then into the springy back-and-forth rocking that led into the rest of the dance. His time with the People of the Lake was among his better memories of the afterlife and he would keep the promise he had made to Kirika to return her culture to the living world.

Unknown and seemingly endless hectoglasses of habit said that one never wasted an opportunity to regain chakra, so he absently pulled in more to replace the tiny bits he had expended on the leap and strike. Without needing to think about it, he split the human chakra and nature chakra apart, directing each into their respective channels and filling them to the brim. It left him giddy, the feeling of being so stuffed with chakra, of every tiniest bit of himself being energized and empowered.

With his left hand, he pulled a Geyser Strike from the ground, just to experience the sensation of casting jutsu once more. His right hand simultaneously activated an Implosion Crush wind technique to yank everything in the area into the blast of water. The techniques came easily, so easily. None of the resistance that he had faced in the afterlife; here, on the Human Path where his kind had originated, the world rushed eagerly to his will. He pulled chakra from the environment as he executed the techniques, letting the power flow through himself and into the twin jutsu instead of using his own energies. Again, there was no resistance. The chakra here flowed freely, no trace of the sluggishness he had become accustomed to.

The joy and excitement was too much, manic delight overflowing and dropping him to the ground with tears and laughter of relief.


"Name and purpose for your visit?" The words were bored, an automatic recitation by a guard who had been saying the same thing over and over for far too many hours as the river of civilian humanity seeped through the gates of Leaf. A handful of ninja had passed by, skipping the line and passing directly through the gates. Hazō could have joined them but chose instead to stay in the line, chatting with those around him. According to Yahiko, a herdsman from Grass bringing his cattle to market, the date was August 17, 1079. Hazō had been dead for nearly eight years and there was so much to catch up on.

From Yahiko, Hazō learned that the weather had been good for the past year, with plenty of good range for the cattle. Part of that was because last year the Nara Future Foundation had brought new seed and used some sort of jutsu to enrich the soil. The grass had sprouted so fast and so rich it was unreal, and the cattle had grown fat on it.

From Ryōma, a glassmaker from Lightning, Hazō learned that a squad of AMITY enforcers had been stationed in his town for the last seven months and crime had dropped to essentially nothing as a result. Amazingly, the man reported barely any incidents of civilian abuse. Given that Hazō was in disguise as a civilian laborer from the hinterlands of Fire, those around him had felt free to speak openly and thus Ryōma's reports were likely accurate.

From Giichi and Emi, a husband and wife moving to Leaf from Sand in search of a new life, he learned that the NOBURI road network now blanketed Fire and was beginning to reach out to the other nations. The technique had been spread to other nations and their own road networks were growing rapidly.

"Name and purpose of visit," the guard demanded again, his voice impatient with the daydreaming 'civilian' in front of him.

"Sorry," Hazō said, a smile splitting his face. He couldn't help it; it was so good to be home again. "Gōketsu Hazō, Lord of Clan Gōketsu, returning after eight years being dead."

The guard's teeth clamped closed and his hand twitched, almost rising into a slap across the face that would have sent an intemperate civilian sprawling. He caught himself, took a breath, and unclenched his jaw.

"Very funny," he said. "Name and purpose."

"No, seriously," Hazō said. "Gōketsu Hazō, Lord of Clan Gōketsu."

"Look, you little shit—" He cut himself off as his fellow guard placed a hand on his elbow. The man's face was sheet-white.

"It's him," the younger guard whispered. "I recognize him."

"Oh, for fuck's sake. You can't—"

"Hey, Ima let you guys figure this out, okay?" Hazō said. "I don't really feel like waiting around. If you need to find me to do some paperwork or whatever, I'll probably either be on the family estate or at Hokage Tower. Right? Cool. Bye!"

He leaped, spending a lake of chakra to launch himself over them and to the top of Leaf's mighty wall. It was a completely unnecessary bit of showboating—the gate was open and he could have simply sprinted or Substituted through. It was also incredibly satisfying, and Mareo's instruction on 'how to act like a proper legendary ninja' echoed in his ears and pulled a smirk onto his face.

"Hey, you can't—"

The rest of the guard's words were lost as Hazō leaped again, across the empty space that existed between the wall and the nearest roof. He sprinted across the ninja highway, Substituting with the various targets that were placed there to permit rapid movement by first responders. Behind himself, he could hear the sounds of a pursuit being organized but he couldn't be bothered to stop and deal with it. Instead, he cackled and left them in his dust.

The Gōketsu estate was more or less as he had left it, although more developed. The statue of Jiraiya that he had intended to build at the gate was there, but standing on the left side instead of straddling it. A statue of Hazō stood on the right side, looking off into the distance with a grave expression that Hazō was fairly certain he had never once worn in his life.

"Hey, you can't—" called one of the estate's gate guards as Hazō blew past. He didn't recognize the man, so probably a new adoptee.

As he approached the manor, Hazō slowed, debating how exactly he wanted to do this. It had taken him several days to make the run from the meadow in Fang to the gates of Leaf; the entire way, he had thought and thought on how to make his grand entrance. None of that thought had led to any conclusion.

Noise behind him said that a response team was being sent after the 'intruder', so he whispered to the estate's chakra and it shaped itself into a protective cloak around him, one that would turn aside all but the most perceptive eye and muffle the sound of his steps against all but the most sensitive ear. A bit of chakra repulsion spread his weight out so that he didn't disturb the gravel of the path too much.

The path was quite lovely; more than wide enough for a cart, made of small chunks of white marble with an admixture of the rich red granite that was the signature of the Multiple Earth Wall and MARI jutsu that Hazō had used to build so many shelters over the years. In the missing-nin days it had been artificial caves in the woods, in the clan days it had been rough and boxy emergency housing for hundreds of Gōketsu civilians.

Based on what he was seeing, the red pebbles in the path were probably the crushed-up remains of those original ugly buildings after they were replaced with the soaring, airy homes around him. A beautifully symbolic gesture, and almost certainly the brainchild of his favorite laughing, red-headed witch.

Hazō stepped off the path as a squad of Gōketsu ninja raced past, heads on a swivel as they looked for the invader and utterly failed to notice him despite passing within arm's length.

He sauntered to the manor house at the center of the estate even as dozens of ninja went bananas around him, hunting for the spy or thief or whatever the invading ninja who had blown past the gate might have been. He studied them as they moved and found himself quite pleased; they moved fast, they were organized, and they communicated well. Not so well as Raj Kabir's army had, but much better than any of the other soldiers he had encountered during his worldwalking. In fairness, every single man in Raj Kabir's army had been a ninja—or, at least, their equivalent—for over a thousand years and being unable to truly die allowed for some significantly more stringent training than a living human could sustain. The fact that the Gōketsu ninja were doing as well as they were was quite a testament to whomever was running the clan now.

The front of the manor was guarded and the door closed, so Hazō circled around. Yes, Kagome-sensei's trap arrays were there. More refined than they had been, suggesting that his teacher had remained driven to improve throughout Hazō's absence.

Pleasingly, every single one of the traps was keyed to permit Hazō to pass.

He went up the side of the building and stopped outside a fifth-floor window, only to find that the security array inscribed into the rim of the opening was not done in Kagome-sensei's style. He didn't recognize it, but it was impressive. Advanced work, about as good as Hazō had been a year or so before he invented runecrafting. It seemed rude to destroy the seals, so instead he used a Rapid Earthshaping jutsu to push his chakra (so much of it!) into the wall, preparatory to making a new opening.

Surprisingly, there was a chakra effect imbued into the walls to make it resist exactly the manipulation he was using. It was solid work, but whomever had done it was not on Hazō's level. He slid his power through the protective net and spread the strands apart enough that he could open a window and slip inside. He closed the window behind himself and smoothed the strands of the net back into place. No reason to compromise the protections against future invaders, after all.

The hallways were unfamiliar, but there was a certain logic to them and it didn't take long to find the door he was looking for.

The door in question stood open, because of course it did. The man inside had always made himself available to any Gōketsu who needed him, and Hazō was pleased to see that had not changed.

Another thing that had not changed: he was bent over his desk, ink-stained fingers swirling his brush in neat calligraphy over some account or other. Hazō grinned in wicked delight to see that he still wrote his numbers longhand instead of using numerals. Undoubtedly, the war with Kei was still ongoing but the line was being held.

Hazō leaned on the doorframe, arms casually crossed, and dropped his cloaking jutsu.

"Hey, Gaku," he said. "Got a minute to brief your Clan Head?"


"Lord Gōketsu Hazō, here to see my apprentice, Harumitsu."

Both Hagoromo gate guards stared at Hazō, eyes wide. The younger one was new to him, but Hazō vaguely remembered the senior guard from past visits to the estate when he had been working with Harumitsu on seal theory. Dai? Daichi? Something like that.

"L-Lord Gōketsu?" stammered Dai-whatever.

"Just said that."

"But you're..."

"Dead, yeah. I know. I got better. Anyway, is Harumitsu around?"

"I...uh..."

Hazō folded his arms and tapped a toe, staring Dai-whatever down.

"Uh..."

Hazō sighed, rolling his eyes in Mareo's signature 'Legendary Ninja Exasperated with Idiot Inferior' expression.

"Look...Dai?"

"Daichi, sir."

Damn, so close.

"Right. Daichi, I'm here to see my apprentice. I've been dead for a while and I've got a lot to catch up on, starting with making sure that he's okay and has been well treated during my absence. Parenthetically, I'm not too sanguine about that based on the briefing I just got, so I'm not in a particularly good mood. I'm willing to be polite about this, so option number one is that you escort me to a room and get me some tea and snacks while I wait for you to fetch Harumitsu. Now, you're probably going to want to get the steward or maybe even Ritsuface himself. That's fine, I'm planning to talk to him after I talk to Harumitsu, but it's likely to be a much more energetic conversation."

"Is there an option number two?" the junior guard asked, curiosity overwhelming good sense as he interjected himself into the conversation.

"Yeah, option two is that I head inside by myself and start smashing doors down until I find the kid, and if anyone tries to stop me I boot them through a window. Gently, of course. I've no desire to start a clan war." He allowed a little bit of his aura to leak out into the environs, pressing the feeling of the Out against their minds to demonstrate that he was no longer the meek little chūnin coming to their door with hat in hand.

The guard captain took a step back at the feeling of abominations from beyond reality, eyes widening slightly despite a clear desire to present a calm and collected face.

"If you'll follow me, sir...?"

Hazō grunted and fell into step as the guard captain led him into the Hagoromo estate house.

Three hundred and six pulse beats later (timekeeping was so much easier now that he had a pulse again!), Hagoromo Ritsuo strode through the door of the elegant waiting room where Hazō sat seiza, inscribing seals. Multiple kiloglasses in the afterlife, where seals lasted for a centiglass at most, had left him with the desire to be properly outfitted again. Granted, the Gōketsu armory had supplied him with a standard loadout, but there were esoteric things he had developed on his travels that he wanted on hand. One never knew when a gravitic lensing seal would come in handy, for example.

"Who are you?!" Ritsuo demanded.

Hazō looked up in pretended surprise. "Hm? Oh, hey Ritsuo." He packed up his equipment with practiced speed.

"That's Lord Hagoromo to you, whoever you are."

"Yeah, no. C'mon, Ritsuo. We were on such good terms before I died. I call you Ritsuo, you call me Lord Gōketsu, right? Hey, what's this I hear about your new Marriage Stricture bill?"

Ritsuo was frowning down at Hazō, so Hazō stood up and offered a sardonic bow, adding in all the frilly hand twirls that he had learned in the court of the Raj. I mock you by pretending you are a superior, those gestures said in the hyperexpressive sign language of the court. Not that Ritsuo would know that.

"I don't..." Ritsuo trailed off, studying Hazō carefully. His eyes widened very slightly. "You actually are him, aren't you? How is that possible?"

"I am me, yes. How is it possible?" Hazō shrugged. "Eh. Being dead was boring, so I decided to stop doing it. Now, I'm here to check on Harumitsu and to talk to you about this new bill you're putting up before the Clan Council. Specifically, about how you're going to drop it because it's a shit piece of legislation."

"I am, am I?"

"Yup."

"I should permit this perversion to continue? Allow our traditions to continue being violated by that abomination of yours?"

"Yup."

"'Yup'? Is that all you can say, Gōketsu?"

Briefly, Hazō considered answering that with another 'Yup', but decided that would be too juvenile.

"Look, Ritsuo, I'm just back from being dead. There's a lot of people I want to catch up with, a lot of stuff I want to do that I couldn't do while I was dead. Take a long, hot bath and feel my muscles relax. Eat a steak cooked in butter and drenched in blue-marbled cheese. Lie down with my head in Ino's lap and listen as she tells me everything that's happened in the last eight years. Hug my brother, and Mari, and Kagome-sensei, and make vague hugging gestures towards Kei from a safe distance. Start planning how we're going to pull Jiraiya and Akane out of the rift. All that stuff. Instead, I need to deal with your bullshit. So yes, you're going to withdraw this bill before it goes to the vote this afternoon."

"And why am I going to do that?" Ritsuo seemed amused, his voice condescending.

"Because I'm asking nicely. I can ask not-nicely, if you prefer?"

Hazō's aura flooded the room, invisible cracks tearing the universe apart around them so the chittering hordes of the Out could press close and struggle to reach through the Paint and into Ritsuo's mind.

Ritsuo took a step back in shock and brought his own aura up as a shield, a thunderstorm that strove to drive Hazō's away, to blindly plaster over the cracks in reality without truly recognizing what they were. Surprisingly, it worked.

Hazō frowned and focused, pressing his soul outwards, wrapping it around Ritsuo, and squeezing. The thunderstorm was contained, pressed inwards until it stopped just outside of Ritsuo's skin. More pressure risked breaking the man, and Hazō was not ready for that.

"Enough!" Ritsuo barked.

Hazō withdrew his aura slowly, pulling it back within himself and allowing the disappointed hordes of the Out to be sealed once more away.

"I am not who I was, Ritsuo," he said quietly. "I have walked with the dead and passed through worlds unknown. I have bargained with the King of Hell for a path home and mastered arts long lost, taught to me by masters centuries gone. I have danced in the courts of lords whose armies stretch beyond the horizon. I have stood guardian of our reality against the hordes of the Out. Defy me at your peril, little clan lord." His aura rose up once more, a light touch intended only as a reminder.

Ritsuo studied him for seconds that dragged on, then nodded. "Very well. I will withdraw the bill."

Hazō smiled. "Pleasure doing business with you. Now, if you'll send in Harumitsu, that would be great."

"What do you intend with him?"

"I'm going to tell him that I know your shithole clan has been looking down on him and treating him as lesser because of his glasses and the fact that he is a sealmaster instead of a field ninja. I am going to offer to adopt him out of this pit of stupidity and into the Gōketsu, where he will be honored as the brilliant young man he is. And if he says yes, he's going to stay with us tonight and you are going to smile and sign the adoption ticket tomorrow morning."

"Is this how you intend to treat with those of Leaf? As a thug, using your power to bludgeon everyone into bowing to your will?"

"Nah, not everyone. Just you. When I'm dealing with decent people, I like to start out being sweet and reasonable until they prove they don't deserve it. I used to do that with everyone, but over the kilogl—over the years I've learned that some people are simply assholes, so it's easier to pound them into the ground right at the start. You know, to get it through their heads that they can't treat me like shit or stab me in the back without getting their heads punched inside out."

Ritsuo snorted. "You are an idiot."

"Says the man who not ten seconds ago was shown that he could have his head melted off if he annoys me too much. But, sure, I'll play along. How am I an idiot?"

"I loathe you, Gōketsu. I loathe your pervert of a sister, I loathe that redheaded whore of yours, and I loathe your ridiculous so-called 'progressive' beliefs, which are really just a treasonous desire to destroy our society. Despite that, I have never stabbed you in the back nor dealt with you dishonorably."

"I think the word 'dishonorably' is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, as well as splitting some very fine hairs. But, sure. Whatever. Trust me, the loathing is entirely mutual. You're a bigot too pigheaded to see that an unchanging society is stagnant and brittle, and that change can be positive. Four years ago, I would have simply killed you and rolled over the consequences. Fortunately for you, someone I care about made me promise to improve. Thus, I am graciously permitting you to walk out of this room with your brain uninfested by Outer millipedes. Now, go get Harumitsu." He glanced down at the tray of refreshments he had been grazing on while he waited. "Oh, and some more of those ginger cookies. They were good."


Noburi laughed for ten seconds straight, so hard that he started choking and Yuno had to pound him on the back to help him get his breath.

"Seriously?" he asked, sitting up and wiping his eyes. "You seriously told him to fetch you some cookies?"

"Yup." Hazō couldn't keep the smile off his face. It was so good to hear that laugh again. It was one of many things he had forced himself to clasp tight even as the Pure Lands strove to steal them away in their quest to wash him clean as preparation for reincarnation.

"I absolutely love it and I am going to make you tell it all over again so that I can savor every moment," Mari said. "Still, I hope you realize that it's going to cause problems?"

"Yeah, sure, but eh. The conservative block already hated us."

"Yes, but this is going to pull the moderates into that camp. No one likes it when people start using their power as a club. Especially not Clan Lords."

Amusement fell away from Hazō's face as his social mask slipped. For just a moment, the man who had murdered his way through three empires and a score of lesser nations peeked through.

"I honestly don't give a shit," he said quietly. "If any of the rank and file have a problem with me, they can get fucked. If Tsunade or Naruto want to wag their fingers and scold me, whatever. I'll listen and nod politely and tell them I was a bad, bad boy and I'm very sorry. And then I'll go back to doing what it takes to keep the people I care about safe." He poked his apprentice in the shoulder and gave him a wink. Harumitsu blushed and hid his face in the enormous cup of hot cocoa he had been nursing for the past ten minutes; the steam immediately fogged up his glasses.

Mari was silent. When she finally spoke, her tone was serious. "You've changed, Hazō."

"For the better?"

"I hope so."

Hazō had no idea what to say.

"But forget all that!" Mari said, her voice once more full of delight. "Tell me again about how you smooshed Hagface like a dirty little bug." She curled her feet up onto the armchair and tucked them under herself, leaning forward like an urchin child asking for a favorite story.

"Well, it started when I walked up to his gate..."

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 three-quarters 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, Mar 19, 2025 at 8:00 AM.

The journey down the mountain wasn't as grim as Hazō had expected. Conserving his chakra meant no chakra boost, which meant no enhanced leaps and no more chakra adhesion than absolutely necessary: the chakra costs of wall-walking were trivial to the point where he couldn't even guess what they were relative to, say, a Multiple Earth Wall, but that was for a ninja whose chakra was constantly regenerating. He couldn't afford to be profligate until he knew exactly what his limitations were in this new world.

But as mountains went, this one seemed practically accommodating. Not once had Hazō barely saved himself from a fall to his doom. Not once had he been forced to stop and turn back when a promising-looking path had ended in a gaping ravine as if the earth itself was opening its mouth to swallow him whole. No, there were actual trails, and easy slopes, and gaps that a fit and healthy (if dead) ninja like him could jump without breaking a sweat. Hazō recalled Daiji's speculations about common memory and wondered if this mountain was a memory of some real mountain. Would an easy mountain be remembered more vividly because it would be climbed by more people and more often?

Then again, a deadly mountain might be better remembered because more people would appear at its corresponding location in the afterlife, and they certainly wouldn't forget that experience in a hurry. Hazō didn't lower his guard, even as he delighted in the mysteriously improved mobility that had awakened inside him, turning tricky jumps into acrobatic leaps, awkward stumbling into fancy footwork, and in one case, a nerve-wracking crossing of a paper-thin natural bridge into something very close to a precision dance (at least until Hazō accidentally looked down).

At the base, the rocky hills seemed to morph into dense forest almost seamlessly, as if nature didn't feel like wasting its time on the intermediary stages that a plausible environment demanded. To a missing-nin accustomed to anticipating the threats associated with each type of terrain, it was disorienting, like identifying the trigger for a pitfall trap only to find that there was no floor to begin with.

As for the forest, it was eerily silent. No birdsong. No rustling from the undergrowth. No distant chittering noises. On the Human Path, that would be an indication of an urgent need to be absolutely anywhere else, and in fact, by the time you noticed, it was probably already too late to run. Here, however, Hazō had no way of knowing whether this was a danger sign or perfectly normal behaviour. Maybe animals, having no souls, didn't come to the afterlife at all.

The flora, too, was strange and unfamiliar. None of the plants reached out to trip Hazō as he passed, or extended unexpected tendrils dripping with venom. It was as if the natural environment was both dead and alive at the same time, much like himself. The impression was only confirmed by the dominant type of tree in the area–each was clearly alive, a broad, hornbeam-like shape with long, thin branches, but each branch ended in a cluster of elliptical ghost leaves.

Once, Hazō was forced to double back, and he could swear the leaves he'd brushed past looked different than before. Now, the irregular rib structures almost looked like they spelled out numbers.

He hastened on. He was going to need a lot more chakra in him before he felt up to investigating these mysteries.

It took a while of exploring–there was no way to measure time beneath that eternally grey sky–but Hazō finally found the location of the first shimmer. By his estimation, it was the one closest to the Wilds and furthest away from the settlement. After absorbing it, he was planning to travel in a loop, getting both of the others on the way to his final destination. Navigating an unfamiliar forest with no map or landmarks (other than the mountain itself) was a long and trying experience, even worse than the time Ino dragged him out clothes shopping and wouldn't let him go until he'd reviewed each dress to her satisfaction–but here, he had nothing but time.

Or so he hoped. He had no idea what the flow of time was like relative to the Human Path. What if Mari was planning to reveal Elemental Mastery to the world after all, and he had mere days to find a way back and stop her? He had to remind himself again and again to have faith in her faithlessness. Mari was family. Just as his sister had learned to not believe in the Kei that believed in him, so he could surely trust Mari to betray him now, in his hour of greatest need.

Besides, if she let him down by obeying his orders, he suspected the entire afterlife would know about it very soon.

These and other wandering thoughts (was Jashin still watching over him, or had he forfeited that grace by dying without battle?) lasted until he reached the clearing and they were all replaced with wonder.

Up close, the shimmer didn't manifest as a blue glow. Rather, it manifested in an aliveness that proved beyond doubt that this was a place where vibrant reality leaked into the prison of the dead–and that aliveness manifested as colour.

The soil was no longer a vague brown. It was pale chestnut, its hue varying in patterns he could trace with his eyes. The bushes were not green. They were a verdant emerald, and the red flowers on them were a passionate vermillion that would have Akane beaming in delight before attempting to collect cuttings (while heavily armoured and with Substitution targets ready, because on the Human Path, red meant the plant was so deadly that it didn't mind giving advance warning).

Even Hazō's own skin seemed more vivid, and he spent a few seconds staring in fascination at the cerulean veins clearly visible beneath it.

Then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

Hazō dropped immediately. The nearest cover was one of the emerald bushes, and he rolled behind it by instinct before he ever consciously recognised the threat.

The creature he saw through the gaps in the bush was something out of nightmares. It was like a skeleton if skeletons were unnaturally tall, with lanky limbs and many-jointed fingers as long as his forearm. If they had narrow vertical heads with backward-curving horns, and no mouths to be seen. If the curves and protrusions of their elongated forms seemed more fit for an artist's mannequin carved by a man dying of fever, both too angular and too twisted for any human anatomy. If their eye sockets were neither filled nor empty, but bearing a liquid darkness that roiled back and forth in an awkward parody of eyes looking around.

And if that was not enough, the creature was in perfect monochrome. It wasn't just black-and-white. No, it wore monochrome like a mantle. Near it, the colours retreated, faded. By the time they got within arm's reach, there was nothing left of them. Hazō could even see a trail where the creature must have passed, a path of darkness and occlusion being only slowly reclaimed at the edges.

The creature stalked forward, every movement smooth and precise, yet jarringly arrhythmic when taken together. It was hunched slightly, as if used to spaces that could not contain its totality, and its head kept turning back and forth as if seeking something. Was it seeking him?

Hazō was still low on chakra. He had no intel on what he was facing, but it certainly didn't give the vibe of an ordinary chakra beast. His intuition spoke of chakra parrots, higher-form quislings, and other creatures with special powers that meant certain death if you didn't know how to counter them. Daizen's experience suggested that you couldn't perma-die in the afterlife, but that didn't rule out other dangers. Nobody who'd trained with Mari could doubt that it was possible to break a man's mind without ever touching his body, and Daiji's words seemed to imply that memories were a particularly fragile substance in the Pure Land.

Hazō couldn't risk this fight. Certainly not in his current state. He held still and hoped the creature's powers didn't include special senses.


Hazō tensed.

Then the creature stopped, right in the middle of the clearing. It leaned back, opening its arms wide as if in a gesture of exaltation.

The darkness in its eye sockets stilled, then began to gently ripple as if disturbed by drops of water falling in one by one.

Shade by shade, the colours in the clearing lost their vibrance.

Shade by shade, the creature's monochrome aura faded into normality.

Endless seconds passed, and nothing happened except the shifts of colour, steadily growing more intense. Hazō kept his eyes locked on the creature, watching it… feed?

Hazō felt a moment of dizziness as some threshold was reached. No, not dizziness. Something stranger.

There was a special moment, when Hazō drew on his Out-granted powers of perception. A gap after his mind forgot how to see things the human way, but before it remembered how to view them through the lens of alien truth. It was the in-between, a state of perception where shapes were not shapes but lines, and lines were not lines but measurements of distance, and distance was a concept beyond his understanding. Colours were not colours but positions on a spectrum, except that the spectrum was an illusion, and position could not be measured. It was cognitive blindness, but also a tiny hint of how the highest gods must see the world, beyond any pattern that constrained the human mind. It was impossible for Hazō to remember what the world looked like during the in-between, because the mind that was capable of seeing it had to cease to exist before the mind capable of thinking about it could come into existence.

Whatever the creature did, the sight of it briefly placed Hazō in the in-between, simultaneously beyond and beneath cognition, and in that moment, the creature stepped forwards.

A thick, fur-lined boot crunched down on the ground.

Hazō was Hazō again, and in front of him stood a stout, sallow-skinned man, his heavy leather jacket trimmed with fine white fur around the collar and wrists, and several strange bottles and vials hanging off hooks on a black belt around his waist.

The man gave a jovial smile and spent a few seconds looking around his feet, before choosing a large fallen branch to serve as a staff. He hefted it and walked away, mercifully away from Hazō, humming a jaunty tune Hazō felt like he ought to recognise.

In his wake, the man(?) left a completely ordinary clearing. No, a slightly muted clearing, its colours just a little bit drab and dreary compared to the living forest around it. Nothing had died, or even sickened, but everything was fractionally less alive. The kind of place where you'd frown in brief, inexplicable discomfort and quickly move on, without ever stopping to wonder.

As birds(?) began to sing strange and discordant songs in distant trees, Hazō realised he couldn't see the veins in his pallid skin at all.


Though Hazō approached the other two shimmers with wariness worthy of a nod from Kagome-sensei (he missed them all so much already), there were no further nightmares waiting for him.

The first was another nexus of colour, but this one resplendent with vegetation, overgrown to the point where Hazō had to resort to kunai-wielding violence to clear himself a space to sit and meditate within the area of effect. He could feel a phantom Akane (though, sadly, not the phantom Akane) reproaching him for unprovoked violence against docile plants. He assured her it was for the greater good. Maybe when he got back to the Human Path, he'd plant a new hedge on the estate to clear his karma.

The second shimmer continued to glow blue even close up. It was a great pool of water, crystal clear and with azure streams of chakra becoming visible, incredibly, where they entered the water, and fading back into invisibility where they left. Hazō found himself entranced, and he didn't know how long he spent just watching the movement of the streams before he came to and remembered to start meditating.

(In passing, there were tracks leading to and from the pool, as of wild animals coming to drink, but they were unrecognisable and in some cases unnaturally geometric.)

It was in a much more cheerful mood that he approached the walls of the settlement, made of a dark brown, almost black wood he recognised from the near edge of the forest. Sturdier than a village palisade but feeble by the standard of fortifications erected with ninja strength, up close he could see that they were decorated–not with any artistic pattern, but with inscriptions carved in a dozen scripts, many unrecognisably archaic.

Some were more modern, or at least more familiar to a sealmaster who'd studied some strange notes in his time.

"Curse the quack who promised me his elixir would be the cure. May he be cast into a chakra wasp nest with his privates slathered in honey."

"A pox on the Senju, who betrayed the treaty and left us to die. May the Hateful Singer tear out their livers and devour them."

"Damn you, traveller who told me there were no shadow wolves in that forest. Rot in the deepest pits of Naraka where liars are torn apart by their own tongues. Also, damn the shadow wolves."

And once, in enormous kanji, "FUCK YAGURA." (Hazō's smile lasted until he saw another line next to it, carved in clumsy kana low to the ground. It read, "He is a bad man and I hope he dies too.")

Hazō was nearly full on chakra, his body was obeying him better than ever before, and he was feeling confident after two successes and one time cheating a fate likely worse than death. It was time. He scanned the open gates for shadows that might indicate a lurking ambush, as was only proper, then took a few steps forward and crossed the threshold.


What do you do?

• Seek information (what do you ask?)
• Seek resources (what, and what are you prepared to barter for them?)
• Offer to help (find ways to win the hearts of the villagers and open up new opportunities, at the cost of time and perhaps risk)
• Write-in

When preparing questions, remember that you are in control of whether this becomes a meeting update.

Voting ends on Mar 22, 2025 at 1:00 PM

Hazō sipped from the mug and immediately recoiled as sharp alcoholic fumes filled the back of his throat.

"You good there, Hazō?" his host asked. Kōsei was a man comfortably past middle-aged, but Hazō wouldn't call him old. He was balding and gray-bearded with a hunchback, but he walked comfortably and had the thick arms of a laborer.

"I'm fine," Hazō said. "But this… this is a little strong for me."

Kōsei laughed. "You'll get used to it. You said you wanted to learn what life was like after death? Well, drink up and I think you'll learn right quick."

Hazō set the mug down. "I'd rather keep my wits about me, if that's okay."

"Afraid of drinking?" Kōsei asked. "I can bring in some of the villagefolk and show you that it's good fun."

"I… was just a leader, in my past life," Hazō said. He still was a leader, just a temporarily disgraced one, but he couldn't guess how Kōsei would react if he said he'd be returning to life. "I've seen enough drunkards wasting our clan's time and money to know that I'd rather not."

"Ah, it's fine, really," Kōsei said. "We don't use money, and you don't have anything left but time."

Kōsei had been the loudest voice when Hazō had arrived in the village. Thirty or so residents had come out to see the new arrival, and Hazō guessed the population was at least twice that, and they had all clamored to host the newcomer. Still, maybe selecting based on volume hadn't been the wisest approach.

Hazō shook his head, making to stand. "My apologies, Kōsei. I should-"

"Ah, sit down, sit down, kid," Kōsei said hastily. "Come on, I want to hear your story! Okay, here's lesson one for newcomers, just like you asked. You're dead. Things don't really change from here. They don't get much better. They also don't get much worse. Go out and make whatever kind of life you want, because you'll be living like that until you fade away. Want to drink? Have an endless orgy like those freaks down the street? Maybe spend all your time practicing your crafts and making everyone's houses beautiful like Mister Akito? Sure, go for it."

"What's the point?" Hazō asked. "Why does anyone do… anything, here?"

Kōsei laughed. "Drink, boy. I'll entertain your questions, but you'll need to entertain me." Hazō reluctantly took a tiny sip. "Anyways, you do what you want for fun. Your real purpose here is finding peace. That's right, peace. If you're really a ninja, you've probably been through a lot in life, even if you didn't have all that much living under your belt. While you're here, you can come to terms with that.

"Ever wronged someone? Ever been wronged? Ever feel like the thoughts and feelings inside you are like this big tangled ball of black and brown and red that you can't ever get undone because if you try to loosen up one part, six others tighten up and hurt you? Well, this is why we're here instead of in one of the higher realms. You can take the easy way out – and some do – of just forgetting everything. That's fine, but I think the right thing to do is pull the knot apart, figure it out, and actually find that peace."

Hazō frowned and sipped at his drink again. His old habits as a Clan Head were making him drink to buy time to think, and he resisted a flinch at the strength of the booze. Still, he couldn't deny that he appreciated the warmth it provided him.

"And you've found peace?" Hazō asked.

Kōsei shrugged, still smiling. "In a way. I think I've got more time before I'm well and truly ready to move on, the way Daiji was. Thing is, I'm still torn up about my grandkids. My eldest son was a useless bum, and I was taking care of his get, and now I've left them behind, and I can't exactly say I did them right even while I was alive, and… well, I still need to let go." Kōsei knocked back his drink, then grabbed the bottle to refill his mug and top off Hazō's.

Hazō took a moment to look around Kōsei's house. It was surprisingly nice, given the poverty he would have expected for such a small settlement. It was a single room, but the floor was covered in a large, faded rug, the sleeping mat of layered reeds looked adequately comfortable, and even the (currently unlit) fireplace seemed well made, embedded in the floor with a ring of even stones separating it from the room.

"Anyway, I guess I ought to keep myself useful enough that you don't go wandering off," Kōsei said, still grinning. "Huh, what's rule two around here? Okay, well, you're stuck with wherever you were reborn. If you die again while you're here, you'll just go back there. If you see someone in a bad place – maybe they're repeatedly falling off a cliff and dying over and over – it's good form to help them out. If Daiji helped get you out of that sort of situation, try really hard to avoid dying again. You never know when someone will be by next to help you out, and it would suck to spend a couple months dying, you know?"

"I was okay," Hazō said. "I just appeared on the mountainside in a stable location. I only found Daiji a couple hours later."

"Good," Kōsei said. "Well, most people in your situation would just stick around this village. We've all been to some of the other nearby villages, of course. It's not a long road, maybe a dayish. You can go if you want, but it's not so different from here. Maybe there'll be a free house there you like better than one of the free ones here. People sometimes go try to find a big city or something. Some of them die and end back here, while some others never come back. Maybe they found what they were looking for, maybe they didn't. I think a couple people said they heard from someone on the road that there might be some way to change where you go back to when you die, but why would you want to? You're dead, any place is as good as any other."

"Are there other travelers or explorers?" Hazō asked. "I think I'd like to explore this world more." He'd need to, to find a way out.

"Eh," Kōsei said. "Daiji was an explorer of sorts. He was a ninja, you see. Real helpful guy. Guess you're our only ninja now. But I don't think Daiji found anything too interesting, otherwise I imagine he would have remembered and told me and I would have remembered. Keiji and Miki are also explorers. They like nature. They go out into the woods pretty often. Usually they come back without dying, so I guess they know the area pretty well. If you stick to the roads, you'll meet more people, but there's not really any harm to going out into the Wilds either. Not like there's anything out there that can kill you more dead than you already are. Just take care if you do, alright? Keiji once got stuck in a big ravine and had to kill himself to get out. I think there's a big difference between dying to something and killing yourself, and it doesn't sound very fun."

"Well, I ran into some skeleton shapechanger thing that ate one of the shimmers and took on the form of a man," Hazō said.

"Freaky," Kōsei said promptly. "I'd stay away if I were you, but that's really your call."

"Don't know anything about it?" Hazō asked.

"Nope," Kōsei said. "Now, what's the deal with you, Hazō? I told you a bit about myself, a bit about what's holding me back from moving on, but what was your life like? A ninja and a leader at such a young age, I think you must have led a very interesting life."

Hazō sighed, looking down into his drink. Did he really want to explain his life story to this random man he'd probably never meet again?

Well, the man had been generous with his hospitality, and he'd answered Hazō's questions. And the man was right. Hazō needed to get home, but… he wasn't going to do it quickly. It would be weeks or months or years before he figured a way out, and everything he really cared about was going to happen in the next couple of days. Whatever he wanted, he wouldn't be able to influence Mari, or stop Akatsuki from razing Leaf.

That drink was suddenly looking more appealing. Foul as the strong alcohol was, the sweet bitterness of the booze felt like just what he needed. That, and maybe a little companionship.

He'd spent so long keeping secrets, hiding his feelings because if he let them out, they would be exploited. But he'd lost everything. Nothing he said could be used to hurt him in this world. Even if it could, well, these random civilians in a nowhere village couldn't do it.

He took another drink. Some part of his brain, probably Mari's training, was screaming at him for drinking, doubly so while surrounded by people he didn't trust implicitly. But Kōsei was right. What was the worst they could do to him, kill him?

"Well, maybe we should gather up some of the other people," Hazō said, slowly. "I've… I've been wanting to tell my story, and you said we could bring other people here and make this more fun. Do you think they would be interested in hearing what I have to say?"

Kōsei grinned widely, standing up and walking to the door. "Absolutely. If there's one thing it's worth doing here, it's learning each others' stories." He turned to step out into the village. "Just hang on there a bit, alright?"

A few minutes later, on a comfortable chair someone had pulled out into the main street, Hazō began. "Well, maybe it all started with my mom. She was a powerful ninja as well, the heir of one of the most powerful clans in Hidden Mist, but despite what her parents wanted for her, she fell in love with a lowborn ninja, a man below her station, but loving and kind…"


"Tooth-shaped mountains?" Miki asked. She was a woman in her forties, shorter and thinner than Kei, yet somehow seeming sturdier. Which was completely wrong, given that Kei was a ninja that could probably snap Hazō in half if she tried, while Miki had probably been a malnourished farmer in life.

"Never seen no tooth-shaped mountains," Miki said, gesturing. "There's those mountains over there, but they're normal-shaped."

Hazō nodded gingerly, trying not to aggravate his hangover. "Right, that's where I…"

Hazō blinked, making sure he was seeing right. "Where are the mountains?"

Miki looked behind her to the space where the mountains should have been. She laughed. "Guess they're hiding today. Can never guess their moods, no I can't. Don't worry about it, they're still there. Just gotta get a bit closer before they pop up. Look, if you're looking for strange mountains, I can show you some. Me 'n Keiji'll go out soon, and we can show you around. There's a nice path through the woods that'll take you to the fingerlands, and then just past that are these infinite mountains."

"Infinite?"

"Yeah," Miki said, gesturing with her hands. "They just keep going up and up and up forever. Kinda wish it was a single mountain, but it's a whole range, so you can't really get around it. Don't mean you're stuck in the fingerlands though, you just gotta keep going and eventually you'll make it to the Sphere."

"The Sphere?" Hazō asked. "Hang on, what are the fingerlands?"

"S'what it sounds like. A land where everything is fingers," Miki said. "And the Sphere's a sphere. Big ol' black orb. Unnatural. Fun to look at. Has some kanji on it, but neither me or Keiji can read. We can show you. Just stick around and we'll get you when we're heading out."


"So, who's in charge around here?" Hazō asked Yuika, a grandmotherly woman who seemed to sit in a rocking chair all day as she watched life in the small settlement pass by around her.

"No one, little one," she said, croaking out in a dry voice. "Why would we need leaders?"

"For laws," Hazō said after a second.

"What laws?" Yuika asked. "We live fine on our own. Rarely, one comes who is… truly horrendous. But what harm can they really do? Anything they do wrong can be erased and forgotten. We just exile them."

"Then, maybe a leader would lead. To step up and do what must be done for the good of the town, or to keep knowledge in case of crisis," Hazō said.

"There's precious few things this town needs," the elderly woman said. "Precious few. As for knowledge, knowledge is a slippery thing. The more you learn, the more you forget. I've been here for ages, son, but I know less than when I died!" She let loose a short, rasping laugh.

"Isn't there some way of stopping the memories getting taken from you?" Hazō asked. "You can make new memories, after all."

She shook her head. "Never. You can learn, but you'll always lose more than you gain. You can choose what gets taken, but eventually, everything goes."

"How do you choose what gets taken?"

She shrugged. "It's not hard. Just… keep it in your mind, but don't hold onto it. Imagine the memory like a box that you look into to relive it. Keep the box closed, then throw it up in the air. If you're still attached to it, you'll pull it back, but if you truly let go… it'll go in the air and stay there, and never come back. Does that make sense?"

Hazō nodded.

She cackled again. "Not that it'll matter long for you, young man! The rules here are reversed. Old crones like me have ages to live, while young rats like you have one foot in the grave. We got more memories, you see. More memories, at least, until you're done with 'em. That Daiji boy, he was trying his best to get rid of all his memories. If you let go of everything, you just disappear. It'll happen to all of us, in the end."

"So why are you hanging on?" Hazō asked.

"Because I love living," Yuika said, grinning a toothless grin. "I can't walk around any more, my joints hurt too much for more than a little bit every day, but I love seeing everyone around here doing as they please." She waved at a young woman walking down the village's single street with a wide washbasket in hand, and the woman waved back with a smile. "I know I ain't really living, but I'm still finding joy in others' joy. My old life wasn't a quarter as nice as this one is, and I'm taking my time in my little slice of heaven before I find out what's next for me. Nothing wrong with that, is there?"

"Not at all," Hazō said.

The elderly lady slowly reached over and rapped a knuckle against Hazō's head. Hazō held himself back from grabbing her wrist – he'd probably break it. "Look, you got time, son. Not a lotta time, but time. You just gotta figure out what you want, then do it. If you just want to think and talk, that's fine. I'll be here. Plus, it's not like you'll be losing memories the whole time. The way your mind goes, it has a way of knocking loose memories you thought you forgot."

"Memories you thought you forgot…" Hazō muttered. A descent, darkness, a deafening, clangorous silence…

"Now look," Granny Yuika said, "If you're getting sick of entertaining a useless old woman, why don't you go make yourself useful? Whatever ninja skills you had in life, I think you might get some joy out of using them to help others out here. It'll give you something new to chew on."

Hazō smiled softly. "Not as new as you think. I was one of… very few ninja that tried to use our powers to help people."

"Pull the other one, son," Yuika said cackling. "But I won't stop you if you want to feel good about yourself."

"You know, you said your joints were hurting?" Hazō said. "Actually, I've been studying medicine with my brother, who himself studied with the legendary Tsunade. You may have heard of her. Let me see if I can come up with anything that could ease that pain…"


Hazō waved down the twenty-something man who was circling the village's outer wall, hands clasped behind him and lost in thought. It took a couple tries, but eventually the man noticed, jumped, and hurried over to bow to Hazō.

"You don't need to bow to me," Hazō said. "I'm not your superior or anything."

"You're a ninja, and ninja deserve respect, honored ninja sir," the man said, still bent halfway over.

"Please, stand. And call me Hazō. Not sir, not 'Lord Hazō', just Hazō," Hazō said, trying to smile as warmly as he could.

The man stood hesitantly, avoiding looking Hazō in the eyes. "Yes, uh… Hazō. I'm Masaaki."

"A pleasure to meet you, Masaaki. I've been asking people, so you might have heard about my curiosity, but do you know anything about the other villages and settlements around here? Maybe anything you've heard from travelers?"

The young man blinked. "I know a little, sir. There are a couple settlements nearby. Small villages, like this one. There's a path to each of them, one on this side of the village, and one opposite us. Sometimes people travel out or come here. It's pretty common. You might have met Natsuki? She is from the village down this path, for example."

"What about farther out?" Hazō asked. "Are there bigger cities?"

"Yes, sir!" Masaaki said, before flinching away.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Hazō said gently. "It's fine. You can call me Hazō, or sir, or whatever you like."

"Right. Sorry. Yes, there are bigger cities somewhere. I don't know where. I assume if you just follow the paths, you'll find one eventually. I don't know how far though. I think there are more people that find this village than stay here, and that means they must be leaving somehow. Probably along the roads, right? But I think I lost those memories, so I'm not sure. I do know that lifesingers travel around sometimes. They listen to people's stories and preserve the best ones in their songs so that those stories become immortal long after we all fade away. I remember Daiji hated them. Thought that they were an abomination, trying to keep alive what the Sage wanted to die."

"When was the last time a lifesinger passed through here?" Hazō asked.

"I'm… I'm not sure," the young man said. "A long while back. I liked it, I was trying to hold onto those memories, but… there's only so much I can do, you know? I can't even remember what I look like when I wake up, before I go down to the pond and see my reflection…"

"Do you remember anything the lifesinger talked about?" Hazō asked.

"Yes!" Masaaki said. "I think. She told us two stories. One was about an emperor who struck a deal with the King of Hell to live beyond the time he'd been allotted so that he could build his empire and his legacy. Every time the King of Hell came to claim his soul, he bargained again for a little more time, but each bargain cost him more and more, until he was cannibalizing his empire for just a few weeks longer. Eventually, the King of Hell would take no deal, and the emperor looked back at what he'd wrought and found that he'd be remembered as the man who ruined his people's prosperity for no purpose at all. The other was about a pair of ninja, from rival clans. They were enemies, but then they fell in love somehow, but… but I guess I don't remember how that one went. I did, I swear. Damn. Maybe she told us more than two stories, then…"

"That sounds like a folk tale we have in Leaf," Hazō said. "Tears of Red. I could tell it to you sometime. Do you know where the lifesinger came from, or where she went?"

Masaaki shook his head. "I… I don't know. I assume she took the paths, right? Probably she's not wandering the wilds. Maybe she did, though. Maybe she was a ninja. Or maybe she just wanted to die and go back to where she started. She didn't seem impressed by any of our stories, except maybe Granny Yuika's. I need to ask her to tell me that story again…"

"Do ninja come by often?"

"I think they're rare," the man said. "I think Daiji kept them away. Maybe he was too grumpy or something. I think I remember seeing some other ninja, but they didn't stop for us. Maybe they were going to the cities, like the other travelers. I don't remember a ninja killing me, at least…"

Masaaki looked distressed, and Hazō suppressed a grimace. All these questions were probably reminding the man of what he'd lost.

"Well, if you have time, let me tell you about Tears of Red again," Hazō said. "I had a flute that I used to play to accompany it, but I lost it. Still, I remember the story. A long, long time ago, long before Hashirama and Madara's grandfathers were born, the Uchiha and Senju clans ruled supreme over the heart of the world. They hated each other deeply, yet, among their number was a young kunoichi of a gentle disposition. She trained her heart to be hard, yet…"


Hazō sat by the dying embers of the campfire. He'd made it himself just outside town and left it to burn all day while he busied himself asking the villagers questions and trying to help with their problems, coming back to tend it every once in a while to make sure it was still burning brightly. Now, it was finally running out of fuel.

The villagers felt much like that – embers rich with color and warmth, yet doing nothing but waiting to be extinguished. They seemed so vibrant, improving their homes, telling stories and sharing poetry, yet in the end, they couldn't fight back against annihilation.

Hazō wanted to fight back, yet… yet he couldn't tell what he was supposed to be fighting back against. He hadn't felt the supposed memory-drain so far. Was he somehow just… fine? Was he losing memories that he didn't even know he had? Or, scarier, was he forgetting not just the memories, but the mental associations he needed to notice the holes in his mind? Would he remain functional and lucid until one day the holes got too big, and suddenly he was finding countless gaps in things he knew he should have known, the way Masaaki did?

Maybe it was his fame. The villagers were nobodies, but tens of thousands of people knew Hazō's name. If Kagome-sensei was right, that would mean Hazō would decay far, far slower than anyone else here. Who knew how long he could last?

Hazō had taken it slow in this village today, but he didn't know if he could afford to. If the constant memory-loss worked the way everyone promised him it did, then this, right now, was going to be the strongest and most capable he would ever be. If he didn't find a way out (and quickly), he wasn't likely to luck into it farther down the line as a partial amnesiac. He needed a way out, fast.

The embers were finally going out. Hazō waited a couple minutes longer for them to cool.

Hazō knew he was an ordinary ninja in many regards. There was one way in which he was truly exceptional though, and that was his skill as a sealmaster. Really, runecrafting would be a far better way to try to break out of the afterlife, but all of his runic substrate was locked in now-inaccessible storage seals. Hazō would need to somehow master Orochimaru's substrate-production ninjutsu despite the memory drain (oh, and how Hazō looked forward to telling Orochimaru that teaching Hazō this ninjutsu years ago would be the Sannin's downfall). Until then, he had only seals.

To make a seal, you needed three things: Paper, a brush, and chakra ink. Paper was solved by the dozens of seals he'd kept in his bodysuit – built for wearing externally, the paper was extra thick and sturdy, and Hazō suspected that he'd be able to scribe seal designs on their backs without the ink bleeding through and interacting with the designs on the fronts. Hazō had considered improvising a brush, but a villager had eventually offered to make him one, and Hazō had gladly passed on the duty to someone with more experience in craftsmanship. That left only the ink.

Hazō grabbed a stick and poked around the firepit. The fire was well and truly out, though touching the stick's end revealed that the embers were still hot enough to burn. Still, Hazō sifted through the fire to find an evenly-black section of burnt wood, before he scooped it into his bowl.

Another of the villagers had offered her bowl to him, a simply-carved wooden thing with remarkably-visible grain underneath its well-worn lacquer. Hazō grabbed a stone and ground the charcoal with it, trying to get the black powder as fine and even as he could. Once he'd ground it as much as he could, he walked to the village's small pond and let some water run into the bowl, then mixed it with the clean end of his stick. The water quickly took on the rich blackness of ink.

Experimentally, he dabbed a bit of the ink on his finger and streaked it across one of his seal-backs, one he'd already consigned to testing. It hurt to spend his limited paper sheets in this way, but he had to test the ink to make sure it was good.

The ink was watery and thin, and it ran as he adjusted the paper. He blew on it to help it dry. He'd definitely crushed the charcoal small enough to keep the ink from looking lumpy, but it still wasn't strong. The dried ink looked more gray than black. He experimentally brushed his hand over a dry section, and the charcoal smeared and flaked.

No good. This would cause a sealing failure immediately. He needed something to make the ink take better. Hazō remembered an inkmaker in Leaf explaining how she used resin from the same tree whose wood they'd burned for the ink's charcoal, but he didn't know the appropriate ratios for combination, nor if there were other ingredients needed. Plus, Sage only knew which trees in this area had resin for inkmaking, or how afterlife-tree-ink would interact differently with the seventh-order harmonics needed to stabilize his chakra through the brushstrokes.

Well, either way, he still had one more experiment to try. He pulled his kunai from his belt, spoke his short chant while he cleared his chakra pathways, then dipped his kunai in the ink and blew across its surface. He pulsed the faintest bit of chakra through the ink and… it failed to take hold.

It could have been the ink, or the chant, or the fact that he was dead and in a different dimension… but Hazō suspected it was the kunai. The steel of his kunai felt wrong compared to the polished brass lump he normally used to create chakra ink. He would probably need something similar, a brass trinket of decent size.

None of the villagers had anything made of brass. How rare would someone be who died carrying a temple bell, or even an incense burner? Maybe his best bet would be to find a daimyo's guard who'd had brass studs on their armor, then convince a smith to melt it all down and cast it into a single lump…

The thoughts occupied him while he emptied the bowl and rinsed it. Charcoal and water were easy enough to mix, and he could always requisition a bottle from one of the villagers before he left if he wanted to carry around his mediocre attempt at ink. He was halfway back into the village when he noticed a villager flagging him down.

"Hazō!" the man said. "I finished the brush you asked for."

Hazō smiled in gratitude and took the brush as the man offered it on both palms. It was amazing. Shoddy work for any craftsman in Leaf, yet far beyond anything that Hazō could have made. The man had stripped the bark off a six-inch straight stick and sanded it to a comfortable oblong shape, leaving it smooth to the touch. The brushes' bristles were human hair, a shade warmer than black and surprisingly fine. Hazō rubbed his fingers over the bristles. It was almost too soft, but if he could solve his ink problem, he could adjust his calligraphy to account for the new brushfeel.

The only issue was the binding. A handful of strings, likely ripped from the man's shirt, bound the bristles to the brush handle tightly, and Hazō saw bits of mud rubbed into the bristles at their bases to hold everything together. That would last for many seals, but it wouldn't last forever. Hazō would need to baby the brush to keep it from falling apart. Still, it was worlds better than Hazō's haphazard idea of using needles from local trees.

"Thank you Kai, this is incredible," Hazō said.

"One more thing," Kai said, reaching to his belt, then offering the new object with another bow.

Hazō took it. "You didn't need to…"

"You've been so kind to us, taking care of Granny Yuika's joints, so please accept this as a kindness from me."

"I feel like I ought to repay you," Hazō said.

"Masaaki said you wanted to share a story, but you didn't have the right tools for it. If you like it, I would love to hear the story the proper way," Kai said. "As would we all."

Hazō tucked the carved wooden flute into his belt. "It'll be different from the instrument I learned with, so I'll need some time to learn with it… but I'd be happy to tell you all Tears of Red."

"Masaaki said it was a beautiful story," Kai said. "How did you learn it?"

"I heard it a long time ago," Hazō said. "It was the favorite story of someone very precious to me…"

---

None of the villagers that Hazō talked to had heard of anyone matching Jiraiya or Akane's description.

Hazō's performance of Tears of Red was well-attended. Hazō slept in an unoccupied house, and when he awoke, Miki and Keiji told him that they were ready to head out into the Wilds. There's a beautiful-looking shrine they've seen before, past the Sphere and somewhere up the infinite mountains (though they don't remember more detail than that), and they want to find it. A shrine like that, adorned like the night with rich blues and blacks, seems like it should be good luck. They're bringing some of their favorite trinkets to leave as offerings.

Hazō has added a delicate calligraphy brush and a wooden flute to his inventory.

Hazō has 362 CP at present.

"My offering?" the lanky twenty-something Keiji repeated. His habitual gap-toothed grin faded into something more wistful. "It's a bondmark. That's what they called them where I was born."

Keiji carefully pulled the bronze torc off his neck and passed it to Hazō to examine. The metal was still warm, and unexpectedly heavy, as if weighing down Hazō's hands with emotional significance it wasn't his place to bear. It was etched with five symbols spread across its curve, of which Hazō recognised only a stylised fox with its tongue out.

Miki, Hazō noticed out of the corner of his eye, had dropped back to give them a privacy nobody had requested.

"The circle is the symbol of perfection and eternity," Keiji said. "The gap is to prove you're wearing it by choice, because you can take it off at any time. But you never do, not once the smith-priest gives it to you on your wedding day."

Hazō nodded, a picture of Keiji's intentions beginning to form itself in his mind. "Do the symbols mean something too?"

"Lots of things," Keiji said. "Every decade you've been married, the smith-priest adds the sign of one of the kami, and the sign he picks tells the story of how you've spent your time together."

Hazō looked at the torc again, then at Keiji, who didn't look much older than him.

"You've been married fifty years?"

Keiji reached out to take the torc back before he answered, but he didn't slide it back into his neck. Instead, after a second's hesitation, he clipped it into his belt.

"That's what the torc says," he said with what struck Hazō as a forced lightness. "But all I know is, the last thing I remember is stringing the new bow my wife gave me for my twentieth summer, and then being in the Wilds and having two monsters fighting over who gets to eat me. Like donkeys, only bigger, and with lumps growing out of their backs that looked like human heads. I'm lucky I managed to run.

"It's not a gradual forgetting like everyone else around here," he added. "Twenty to however long I lived, all cut off with a sharp knife, edges so smooth and fine it doesn't even feel like they're there. Look at my body, too. It's like instead of my memories, they ate my age."

"I'm sorry," Hazō said after a few seconds. He already understood that in the afterlife, youth wasn't a blessing. How much more exploring would Keiji get to do before he lost too many memories and ended up moving on?

"It is what it is," Keiji said. "I try to be positive: even after dying, I must have got to go on a bunch of adventures, when my faith says I should've gone before the Ancient Deer of Judgement and on to my next life before my body hit the ground.

"Still," he said, looking down at the torc again, "before I go, I want to give my bondmark to somebody who'll care about it. That's the least my Yukiko deserves. I don't really know if there are kami in the afterlife, but if there are, there's bound to be one living at that shrine who'll treasure an offering with fifty years of memories inside it."

Hazō couldn't decipher the look Miki was giving Keiji's back. Somehow, he felt like it would be an invasion of privacy to try.

"Say," Keiji said, swerving the conversation so sharply off the topic that if it had been a ship, it would have capsized instantly, "doesn't that bluff look like a great place to make camp?"


The dead, of course, didn't eat. Even sleeping seemed to be optional, though Miki claimed she didn't feel right if she didn't lie down and let herself drift for a few hours whenever the mood took her. Keiji teased her lightly about it, saying only a woman without a care in the world could fall asleep while already in the sleep of the dead.

Thus, the camp was mostly symbolic. The campfire was doubly symbolic. As they rested after what felt like a few days' journey, the three swapped stories and speculations about what awaited them at the journey's end. Miki, an ordinary civilian in her past life, didn't have much she could regale him with, but Keiji had been a ranger, a profession Hazō hadn't even known existed. Apparently, rangers travelled the roads between settlements, sometimes carrying news and messages, but mostly keeping locals abreast of chakra beast activities–such as warning everyone to avoid a certain road while the chakra wrens were migrating across the area or telling a village that they might need to evacuate after a forest fire had driven packs of chakra beasts out of their natural habitat. Rangers needed strong arms, good aim, but above all, running legs to shame a ninja (Keiji said obliviously) and the blessing of the wind kami.

Needless to say, though, Hazō was the star of the show. He had visited the icy wastelands of Snow Country and survived (Mari's wrath). He had climbed into living caverns and beheld sky squid above the clouds. He had participated in the fertility rites of O'Uzu (sort of) and witnessed a school of chakra koi being propitiated through human sacrifice (if one omitted certain minor details). Even passed through a filter of basic OPSEC, the tamest of Hazō's adventures were as far beyond Keiji and Miki's wildest dreams as… well, maybe not completely beyond them, seeing as they were currently dead souls on a pilgrimage to some infinite mountains beneath a sunless sky, but Hazō still dared anyone to do better.


The fingerlands were pretty much as advertised. Instead of trees, there were humanoid fingers growing out of the ground, brown-skinned with green, yellow, or red fingernails. The hills were shaped uncomfortably like curled fingers buried in layers of soil. On the ground, finger-creatures of various shapes and sizes crawled around, contracting and extending to move, but they mostly avoided the travellers. The only threat was when the tree-fingers (and, on one occasion, a pebble path that turned out to be a path-finger) suddenly curled up and tried to grab them. Fortunately, these were not the handlands, and avoiding the grip of a single finger was no trouble even for an alert civilian. Honestly, it was a little boring.

The sphere made up for all that.

An orb of perfect blackness, perhaps four metres in diameter, hung in mid-air above a barren, dusty plain, close enough that Hazō would be able to reach up and touch it if he was feeling reckless. It has a distinct, heavy sense of presence, almost like a hint of the Third Hokage's jōnin aura, and despite being out in the middle of nowhere, it felt like an inevitable waypoint on their journey–as if, had they chosen to avoid it, their very path would curve itself in order to make sure they didn't miss it.

"I don't see any writing," Hazō said.

Miki and Keiji exchanged glances.

"Oh, right," Miki said after a second. "You have to poke it. We do it for good luck when we come by this way."

Hazō started looking around for a suitable tree branch or something else he didn't mind losing by poking an unknown alien phenomenon.

"With your hand," Miki said impatiently. "Go on, it doesn't bite."

Hazō sighed and reached upwards to poke the sinister black sphere.

Writing flared to life.

Hazō had imagined some kind of ordinary inscription, like one might make with a kunai on granite if one really needed to leave a message and happened not to have any blank paper handy. Instead, the characters were alive.

Row upon row of symbols orbited the sphere, written in rings of white light that seemed to pulse gently. The symbols rotated around the sphere's central axis, some with a slow and stately speed, others fast enough that Hazō was struggling to read them. In combination, they came across almost as chains binding the sphere in place.

Most were in unfamiliar scripts. Some were hieroglyphic, but didn't portray any objects or creatures Hazō recognised. Some were sequences of dots and lines. One looked like it was all a single continuous symbol covering the entire band, with markings above and below to aid interpretation. Some looked like kanji, but had little in common with the standard script Hazō was used to.

"Well? What's it say?"

"I don't know, I can't make out a–"

Hazō frowned. Actually, there was something strangely familiar about some of those scripts. He was confident that they didn't exist on any part of the Human Path he'd been to, but still, he was getting a sense of deja vu, like seeing something in reality that had only existed in his dreams…

That was it. At least one of those scripts wasn't writing. It was a solution to a puzzle, an encoded piece of the fabric of space and time, something only perceptible to those who'd drunk deep of the chalice of the Out and survived its poison. It was a message created for those like him… perhaps by others like him.

Hazō's head swam as his eyes saw one thing and his mind saw another.

"Handle with care," he read out. "Do not open without Something supervision. This way up." He paused and gave the featureless floating sphere a sceptical look. "Something inside. If found, do not something, and something something immediately. To something, use something attached."

He looked at the very confused civilians. "Was there something attached?"

"Oh, sure," Miki said after a second. "Big triangle of black metal, right under the sphere. Gave me the willies. One of the singers travelling through here a while back took it with him, said it'd make for a great story."

Hazō sighed. People were always going around messing with things they didn't understand.


You have not found any more shimmers so far. It seems they're not so common that you can run across them by accident unless you have a mountain's eye view or some other information advantage (or are prepared to spend time scouting an area).

Hazō spent some time meditating on lost memories during camping breaks. After a while of trying to use creative association on the subject of "dark descent", he was able to recover certain memories of Orochimaru's Basement that he really wishes had stayed forgotten. He strongly suspects that memories taken by Truth Lost in the Fog are unrecoverable, since they are supposedly erased rather than merely suppressed.


The mountains and the shrine draw near.

What do you do?

Voting closes on Mar 29, 2025 at 1:00 PM

"Ooooooh!" Honoka said, her eyes going wide as she looked out across the vast expanse of magical mayhem below us.

"This is a mall," I said carefully. "Remember that you promised to stay right next to me."

"Of course!" she chirped, rolling a crit-fail on her Believability check.

"I'm serious," I said, taking her hand to physically restrain the urge to run off that was causing her to visibly quiver. "Right. Next. To. Me. Last thing we need is you running off and doing ninja stuff in front of a bunch of people with camera phones." I thought about the possibilities. "Or in any other way look weird," I added as a general catch-all.

She looked at me with a raised eyebrow, looked down at our linked hands, and looked up at me again.

"Is it weird for old guys to hold hands with fifteen-year-old girls?" she asked, her tone conveying that she knew the answer and was mocking me.

I sighed and let go of her hand. "Seriously, Honoka. You promised."

"Don't worry, Uncle Earl. I would never break a promise."

"At least Mari hasn't yet taught you to lie effectively," I grumbled. "This is such a bad idea."

She gave me an unrepentant grin that promised mayhem, mischief, and general misbehavior.

I winced and said nothing. What was there to say? Instead, I simply looked out over the mall and attempted to plot a safe course.

I wasn't quite sure how or why I had ended up in this moment. It was probably Mari's fault; Honoka had been whining at me for weeks to show her more of Earth and I had been pushing back. Earth was no longer my home, exactly, but it was still a place that I cared about and home to a lot of people that I cared about. Setting ninja magic loose upon it was only going to cause problems. Visions had been dancing in my head from the moment that Honoka first expressed interest in Earth. Mostly visions of my door being kicked down by men in black combat vests with great big guns who swept me away to a horrifying prison somewhere and tortured information out of me on how they could get their hands on these super soldier assassins.

Granted, they wouldn't be able to hold me. Still...

"Why is everyone so fat?" Honoka asked, breaking me out of my ruminations.

We were standing on the third floor mezzanine at the south end of the mall, looking out over the sweep of crass consumerist capitalism. The place was stuffed to the gills with a cross-section of America; grandparents with little ones, harried adults shopping for a gift or clothes or whatever in between other commitments, teenagers working hard to show how disaffected and unimpressed they were, and employees whose fixed smiles were the only thing restraining them from releasing the murderous impulses caused by interacting with retail customers and running amok in an orgy of horrifying yet entirely understandable slaughter. Nearly everyone involved in the scene had the build of a typical American, meaning that they ranged from 'swivel-chair spread / dad-bod mode enabled' to 'land whale in need of scooter'.

I pondered how to answer that. It wasn't a simple question—lobbyist-induced farm subsidies meaning that corn was so overabundant that people actively looked for ways to use it, which meant high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener being incredibly cheap while market competition drove inexpensive food to be sweeter, saltier, more intense. Puritan work ethic and exploitative capitalism causing overwork that meant most people had little energy for cooking, thereby driving consumption of those inexpensive and unhealthy foods. Decades of active assaults on public schooling by half of the government meaning that few people had sufficient information about nutrition. Food deserts pushing people away from produce and other healthy sustenance and towards the aforementioned obesity-makers.

"Well..." I said, thinking. "It's complicated. The short and oversimplified answer is that a lot of the food here is too sweet and people's lifestyles make it easy to eat too much and exercise too little."

"That's dumb. Why don't they just eat better and exercise more?"

I restrained a surge of anger. This place might not be my home anymore, but it was the place that had shaped me for most of my life. Hearing some bratty, entitled little—

Breathe.

Honoka had grown up with a degree of privilege unimaginable to most Americans, or even most Terrans. A favorite daughter of the richest, most powerful ninja clan, she had been showered with love and attention, given every material object and as much schooling as she could handle. Born into the lucky half a percent of superhumans, trained from birth to be above the common herd. Yes, attitudes towards civilians were slowly shifting, and the Gōketsu were probably the best clan for non-bigotry, but the fact still remained: ninja were superior to civilians in most measurable ways. Baseline stronger and more athletic physically, superhumanly strong when they wanted to be, and gifted with magic powers. How could they not see civilians as lesser? Arguments that all humans had intrinsic value simply because they did were a hard sell.

"Do you remember when you were seven and you asked your tutors why everyone spent the entire Warring Clans period fighting one another? Why they didn't simply skip all that and move to the Village Era and the Great Peace right away?"

"Sure."

"Your tutors told you that it was complicated and that the reasons for all that were the essence of the history and political theory classes that you would be studying for the rest of your time in the GED program."

"You're saying that it's like that?"

"I'm saying that it's like that: complicated."

"That's boring."

I let that go, because there was nowhere good that it could go. "What appeals?" I asked. "If you're hungry, we could hit the food court. If you want to browse stuff then there's a JCPenny at the far end. They've got a bunch of everything...clothes, jewelry, toys, sporting gear, that kind of stuff. There's a music shop just over there—"

"Ooh!"

"—aaand, she's gone," I said with a sigh as Honoka pitched over the railing and dropped.

With anyone else, I would have lunged forward in a panic and tried to save them despite the fact that they were out of reach before my brain even started to react. With Honoka, I didn't bother. She was a ninja, she was a Gōketsu, and it wasn't like a mere three-story drop was going to hurt her.

Sure enough, five feet from the ground, Honoka triggered the Reusable Rocket Boot seals on her shoes, slowing herself to a gentle landing. She raised a hand to wave frenetically as she trotted over to a group of teenagers sitting in the food court. They had taken over two of the larger tables, both of which were piled high in plastic trays covered in mostly, but not entirely, typical teenager fare—a stack of greasy fast food burgers and fries, but also a giant salad with chicken strips and hardboiled egg, and a bowl of something reddish that was either an Asian-fusion curry or a very strident tomato soup.

Every single head in the entire area snapped around to goggle at the physics-ignoring failed suicide of a bright-eyed young woman with a bouncy smile. There was a frozen moment that brought my heart into my throat...and then everyone moved on. Most of them were shaking their heads, undoubtedly telling themselves that they must not have seen what they thought they had seen. Some of them moved reluctantly, wanting to ask questions but unable to overcome social conventions about talking to strangers and deciding that it was better to simply move on.

I watched as Honoka arrived on the perimeter of the teenager group. They were, of course, staring.

I paused, analyzing the situation. I was obviously wearing my full combat rig, including the RRBs, because I wasn't an idiot. I wasn't expecting to be attacked, but the Chosen for the Grave world had a habit of trying to kill you without worrying too much about your state of expectation. The simple fact that I was back home on boring old Earth, home of absolutely zero electricity-spitting slash mind-controlling slash eyeball-eating monstrosities, had no bearing on my long-ingrained habit of preparation.

I could hot-drop after Honoka. Alternatively, I could circle around to the escalator at the midpoint of the mezzanine, run down, then run back to the food court. The first might get me there before she finished completely blowing our cover, at the cost of completely blowing our cover. The second would be less eye-catching but also slower. Both choices were terrible and would lead to disaster.

With a muffled curse, I turned and strode for the escalator as fast as I could manage without standing out.

I kept an eye on Honoka as I moved. She was on her feet, chatting animatedly with a seated group—four boys, two girls. One obvious couple based on the hormone-induced 'as much of me must be in contact with as much of you as possible at all times' seating arrangement. One of the boys and the uncoupled girl had been having a dance off; they had actual moves, which was an advantage of the new generation. A billion hours of dance tutorials and dance competition TickyTockies or whatever they were called meant that kids these days were much more able to cut a rug than those of my generation. We used to have to dance the way the gods intended—by shuffling awkwardly around like baby giraffes, trying to pretend we knew what we were doing.

I was sixty feet along the mezzanine when Honoka interjected herself into the dance off. She must have asked, because the girl stepped back and waved her in.

My niece, of course, went in all the way.

She took the moves she had seen the other girl doing and threw it in a blender with a bit of the Elemental Nations' idea of dancing, a few moves from the Goddess Forms a Bouquet taijutsu kata, and some of the general athleticism and flexibility of a young woman who had been doing ninja training literally since she could walk.

She also had absolutely no shame, and the poor young man she was...competing with? Showing up? Seducing? Whatever the hell she was doing, she was doing it a lot better than him.

The escalator was jammed with a bunch of double-wides in red ball caps, taking up so much room that I couldn't get past them. I had to stand there, jittering and bouncing as the mechanical stairs carried me veerrrry sslllooowwlyyy down to the first floor.

It took me a highly excessive four minutes to get from where I had started to the bottom of the escalator, with an insufferable amount of yet more time to get back to the teens if I stuck to a non-eye-catching walk. This felt like an eternity, as I watched Honoka finish her dance-off and plop down on the lap of a young cross-pollination of a theater kid and a hooligan: guyliner, all black clothes that included a black T-shirt with the logo of some (probably death metal) band I'd never heard of, black leather jacket, nasal bar, and three earrings in each ear and one eyebrow. He looked like a spiral-bound notebook.

Honoka saw me hustling up and her face fell for just an instant before shifting back into an aggressively vivacious smile.

"Hey, Uncle Earl!" she called. "Meet Denise, Skyler, Johnny, Tom, Rich, and Raven."

Raven, of course, was the one she was taking pains to ensure didn't fly up into the sky. By sitting on his lap.

There are moments of clarity in life. They feel like your subjective time has sped up so that an entire mental analysis can fly past, different opinions weighing one another, different actions being considered and picked through. Suddenly, I was having one of those.

I could do what I had instinctively intended. Act out the extreme version of the patriarchal, Puritan-esque social structure that I had instinctively internalized during my youth. Drag Honoka off 'before her virtue was compromised'. (Which would also play well with the 'do not let the existence of ninja magic get out into the world' agenda, come to think of it.)

Alternatively, I could be the Responsible Adult Chaperone. Sit down, engage the kids in conversation, learn who these new people were who were clearly going to become part of my niece's life if her expression was anything to go by. Bonus points: I could embarrass the hell out of Honoka in the process. That was fun in and of itself but it also seemed like a fair punishment for her running off on me.

Other alternatively, I could be The Cool Uncle. Give her space, let her make her own choices and her own mistakes. It was the riskiest course, the one most likely to reveal the existence of ninja and the Elemental Nations to the Earth world, but it was clear that I was going to have very little agency in that determination. Honoka was going to be coming back to Earth in the future, whether I liked it or not. She was not going to be bound to my side where I could keep her under wraps. And, being honest...did it actually, truly matter? If Honoka or any other Gōketsu ninja got captured by the men in black, I would open a rift inside their cell and pull them out. If I got captured...well, I was the sealmaster. The level of restriction necessary to keep me from escaping would be beyond anything earthly authorities would likely consider necessary. Even lacking any other materials, I could use my own blood to fingerpaint a rift-opening seal, either the one that would take me to the Seventh Path or to the Human Path. I had practiced them both to the point that in the span of fifteen seconds I could draw them, infuse them, and activate them. And I could do it while blindfolded. I had practiced all that specifically so that I could escape from any imprisonment.

I scratched my arm, fingers tapping in the subtle motions of Gōketsu battle code: Unexpected circumstances. No cover prepared.

Honoka was sitting crosswise on Raven's lap with her right arm around his shoulders, so her right hand was out of sight of the teens as she shaped the signs: Mission doable. I am confident.

I nodded to the teens. "Nice meeting you all." I looked to Honoka. "H—ey, I'm going to swing by the bookshop and then hit up the vinyl store." I pointed down the way to the vintage music store halfway down the mall. "See you there in thirty minutes." I had almost said her name and then realized that I didn't know if she had given them an alias, so I barely managed to redirect the first word.

"Sounds good!" she chirped.

"You've got your phone, right?" I asked, knowing perfectly well that she didn't since I had never gotten her a phone. Hadn't even had reason to explain the part they played in modern society.

"Oh..." she said, suddenly realizing that maybe she was overestimating her ability to bullshit through an entire culture that she knew almost nothing about.

"You left it at home again, didn't you?" I asked, rolling my eyes. "You would forget your own head if it weren't tacked on."

"Uncle Earl! Don't embarrass me!"

"Hey, that's my job. You. Raven, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Set a timer on your phone, ship her off when it pings. I've got stuff to do after the mall."

He looked at me in confusion, visibly wondering who this old fart was and why RavenScytheWielderDarknessDragonEmoDeath6969 (or whatever his stupid IRL gamer tag was) should listen to him.

I met his eyes and stretched out the tiniest hint of my aura, tracing a filament of fear across the wet flesh of his brain.

He jolted, face going pale, and scrambled his phone out of his pocket, almost dislodging Honoka in the process. He swiped through apps and menus, set the timer, and turned the phone to me so that I could verify it was running.

"Thanks," I said, offering him a friendly smile. "Have fun, y'all."

I sauntered off, wondering if I had just doomed two worlds to war, destruction, and cultural cross-contamination by boy bands and bad street theater respectively.

To Minori, her morning walk was a vital part of her daily routine. When she put on her boots, grabbed her walking stick, and went to stroll through the hills near the village, it became morning, just like how when she got tired of the day's work and took off her boots back in her little hut, it became night. A sense of routine, she'd found, was the most important part of getting by when you lived inside the Great Worm.

(It was also convenient in ways nobody else in the village had caught on to yet. Minori was in charge of the storehouse, and if she happened to have "gone home for the night" whenever that wastrel Sara was trying to borrow another saw she'd only lose, well, that was just unfortunate timing and nothing anyone could be blamed for.)

Shrubby was Minori's favourite hill. Unlike the other hills, with their delicious-smelling plants that made you see everything in shades of purple for half a Minori-day after you ate them, or their shiny rocks that you couldn't ever put down if you were dumb enough to pick them up, Shrubby just had flesh shrubs–like shrubs, but made out of flesh, nothing more to it. It creeped other people out to no end, which was hilarious to watch and usually meant she had somewhere she could reliably go for some peace and quiet.

Today, she was in the middle of taking a break on Shrubby, staring out vaguely at the upward rivers in the distance, when a sudden groan made her spin around. She hefted her thwacking stick with menace.

Luckily, it wasn't the shrubs coming alive. That hadn't happened but the once, and Minori was pretty sure she knew what she'd done wrong that time. No, the groan wasn't coming from no shrub. It was coming from a fallen girl who, in all fairness, wasn't particularly shrub-shaped at all.

"A newcomer?" Minori grunted, kissing her peaceful morning walk goodbye.

She watched the girl lever herself to her feet, looking as dazed and confused as they all did at first. The girl unthinkingly leaned against a flesh shrub to steady herself, then recoiled when she felt it go squish, and nearly fell over again.

"Tough luck dying with no clothes on," Minori said. "That's going to get inconvenient fast if you decide to go exploring."

The girl looked down at herself, gave a panicked squeak, and turned redder than a blood vole that had just finished feeding. She hurriedly covered herself up with her hands.

Minori rolled her eyes. "I've raised six daughters," she said. "You ain't got nothing I ain't seen before."

"Triple negative," the girl muttered. From her tone, Minori could tell it was a foreign curse.

Minori graciously ignored it, and even shrugged off her favourite grey shawl to hand it to the newcomer (who wrapped herself in it gratefully). Minori being built the way she was, there was enough shawl for five skin-and-bones girls like her under there if they were willing to huddle up.

"So how'd you end up dying without a shred of–"

Minori stabbed her own foot with the talking stick before she could finish that sentence. It wasn't as if she couldn't guess what happened. There was a reason she always hid her daughters when the ninja came calling.

"Come on," she said instead. "I'll take you back to the village. I know we've got spare clothes in the storehouse. It's my business to check them every day."

Minori reached out for the girl's hand, but she flinched away from the touch, only confirming Minori's guess.

"Sorry, sorry," Minori muttered. "What's, uh, what's your name, lass? Mine's Minori. Just that, on account of how my village didn't care none for that fancy two-name business everyone puts so much stock in. It's not like anyone's going to confuse me with another Minori."

The girl frowned. "I… I cannot remember." She tensed. "Why can I not remember my name?"

For a few seconds, she just looked down at the veiny ground, expression troubled. Minori gave her time to pull herself together.

"I apologise," the girl said, meeting her eyes for a second before looking away. "I have a name; I am certain of it. But my entire memory feels like it is filled with fog."

"It happens from time to time," Minori allowed. "Dying can shake you up real bad, especially if it's, you know, unexpected. Sometimes your wits need a little time to unshake afterwards."

"Dying?" the girl repeated as she'd just been told the daimyo was coming to visit her village personally, and he was bringing soldiers.

"You're dead," Minori said plainly. "Sorry to see it happen to a kid so young. Welcome to the belly of the Great Worm."

"Is that a metaphor?" the nameless girl asked uncertainly.

Minori gave a dismissive wave. "I ain't no good with priest-speak," she said. "You died, and your soul got swallowed by the Great Worm instead of going straight to the wheel of rebirth. That's all. The Great Worm eats memories, you see. It's a parasite-god from the dawn of time. It digests us all bit by bit as our memories drain away into its gut. But in return, we get to exist a little longer, even if it's in a daft place like this. Then, when we've had enough, we can let go and move on, and there ain't nothing the Great Worm can do to stop us."

"That's impossible," the girl said, sounding more shaken than any of the newcomers Minori had greeted before (not that she could blame her, with a death like that). "I cannot be dead. You are mistaken."

Minori rolled her eyes again. Young ones always thought they'd live forever. Then they spurned the ancient rules and walked into the wood like Arisa's fool boy, and by the time they found out they were wrong, there were only gnawed bones left.

"I hear that all the time," she said, not without sympathy. "'I know my mushrooms, and that one was fine.' 'My brother's a man of honour who'd never stab me in the back over a girl.' 'I'm the strongest in the village; no way I lost a fight with some ninja half my size.' You can sit there and spend your time pretending if that's what stokes your fire, but sooner or later there ain't nothing for it but to suck it up and start seeing the world as it is."

She poked one of the flesh shrubs with her pointing stick by way of illustration. The shrub jiggled the way they always did. The girl shuddered, and Minori mentally kicked herself.

"It cannot be," the girl insisted. "But, admittedly, I do not remember why. Is this truly the Pure Land?"

"It's the belly of the Great Worm," Minori corrected her. "The place people go if they die and nobody prays over their body before the soul leaks out of the mouth at midnight. I got clonked on the head by a roof timber in an earthquake, so I guess ain't no one bothered to dig my corpse out in time, the ingrates."

"By that criterion, most people should find themselves inside your hypothetical worm," the girl objected. "I appear to be versed in matters of mortality. Most cultures begin to ritually pray for the deceased during the funeral period, which is rarely initiated on the day of death. Before then, the shock of encountering a corpse and the need to initiate proper storage and/or investigation procedures mean spontaneous private prayers are unlikely to take place in physical proximity–and that is assuming it is discovered with the necessary timing to begin with!"

The girl talked like a scribe, only confirming Minori's theory further. Everybody knew the cities were dens of vice and depravity, and worse, places where ninja turned up all the time.

"And most everyone does," Minori agreed. "You get people from all sorts of countries here, places I ain't never even heard of–and there wasn't a one who knew about the Great Worm and how important it is to pray over a body in time. That's proof, that is."

"The term is confirmation bias," the girl said coolly, "or perhaps it is an instance of the anthropic principle."

She took a look around, taking in the purplifying plants on the next hill over, with their gentle red and blue glow. "Regardless, I cannot remain here. My death is certainly some kind of cosmic error, and I can feel that there are loved ones who need me."

Minori sighed, already sensing trouble ahead. There was nothing worse than teenage girls with big ideas and too much time on their hands. The kami themselves knew it, which was why they had invented drink, gossip, and pretty boys.

"God or not, ain't no way out of a critter's belly except out the other end. Many people have looked, and we'd all know by now if they'd found anything. Don't worry, it may seem rough at first, but you'll get used to it. We all do. By the time you've lost enough memories that it's time to pass on, you'll be ready."

The girl gave her a sudden icy look that pierced her like a knife. Minori felt an inexplicable shiver travel all the way down to her bones at the disapproval of a girl a third her age. It was worse than the time she told her Mami that being hopelessly in love was no reason to marry a boy with no prospects (and twenty years later, she was proved right).

"If my allotted time is limited," the girl declared, "that is only the more reason to use every second to the fullest. That is the principle I have lived by, and it is the principle by which I will live again. I certainly cannot dawdle while either some hypothetical deiform annelid or the natural cruelty of fate conspires to devour the very essence of my being. There are people who need me."

She paused.

"But first, clothes. Emphatically clothes. I will also trade intellectual or manual labour for maps of the region, such supplies as a traveller may require in the Pure Land, and answers to a variety of questions. Minori, as you have displayed a basic degree of probity, I would appreciate it if you served as my guide for the initial acclimatisation period."

Yes, Minori decided. This one was going to be trouble. Then again, if Minori hadn't been prepared to support a series of very smart idiot girls through a variety of terrible but entertaining life (or unlife) choices, she wouldn't have had five more daughters after the first.

Hazō would call the sky overcast, except it clearly wasn't. He'd invented skywalkers. He knew that a grey sky was just a thick layer of clouds sitting like a blanket over the world. He knew that clouds sat at different heights, and he'd even gotten a sense for how high those clouds would be. He remembered (for now) how sometimes, while attending to his business as a Clan Head on the old Gōketsu Estate, he would sometimes see the thick cloud cover hanging low and feel suffocated as if trapped in a cave too low to walk comfortably. And he remembered how on other, clearer days, he would see a cloud that he just knew was miles and miles in the sky and had to resist the urge to abandon his duties and go run with the clouds and winds.

He never had skipped his duties just to enjoy a run. Did he regret that? Was the world a better place for the fact that he signed off on a handful more pieces of administrative trivia?

With that intuition he'd honed, he could tell that the sky in the Pure Lands was tall. If there were clouds making up that infinite gray expanse, they were higher than any cloud he had ever seen. It was the opposite of suffocating – Hazō nearly felt a thrill when he looked upwards at the sheer feeling of infinite space above him. As if, were gravity reversed, he could fall forever up into the sky without ever brushing against anything more real than rushing air.

The infinite mountains almost creeped up on them. They must have been gradually fading out of the distance, because at some point, Hazō looked up and saw them. He stopped dead.

"Yeah," Keiji said, once he'd noticed Hazō's pause and doubled back. "They sure are something, aren't they?"

They were dozens of miles away from the mountains' base, so Hazō couldn't see any fine details. He could only see their shape – rising and rising and rising. True to what his companions had said, he could see no peak. Instead, the mountains just kept getting taller and taller, receding into the distance, until the haze of the air itself kept Hazō from perceiving them anymore. He could already tell they were impossibly tall though – even from this distance, Hazō had to lean his head back to lock his eyes on their peaks.

"Hey, neat thing about these mountains," Keiji said. "Normal mountains, you can look at them straight on when you're far away, but you need to look up when you get closer. These ones? There's no top that gets any closer. If you're looking up the slope, you look up by the same amount whether you're miles out or right next to them. Neat, isn't it?"

Like with clouds, Hazō was familiar with the thin haze that air carried. Even when skywalking on clear days, he couldn't see forever. The air eventually grew misty, bluish white with enough distance and kept him from seeing the whole world from a skytower.

"Are they really infinite?" Hazō said. "How do you know, if we can't see the whole slope?"

"How tall do you think that mountain is?" Keiji asked. "If there's a thousand miles of slope, it doesn't matter to me if it's ten or a hundred thousand miles in total. I ain't getting up it either way."

"But that's not infinite," Hazō said.

"It is," Keiji said. "All that matters this side of life is what we see and experience, and these mountains are infinite to me, to Miki, and now to you. Look, if you want to run a mile or two up there and see for yourself, feel free. Not like we're in any rush to get to the shrine."

"It's fine," Hazō said, still looking out into the distance. "Sorry for stopping. Let's go."


Night never came in the Pure Lands, but arriving at the base of the mountains was as good a reason to camp as any. Miki snored loudly in a hollow in the ground, while Keiji fiddled with some bushes he'd ripped out of the slopes a little ways up the mountain (technically, zero percent of the way up) to start a small fire for them. Hazō, meanwhile, mixed some of his prepared charcoal with water in yet another attempt at making chakra ink. Keiji had loaned Hazō his bronze bondmark while they were camping, and Hazō was pretty sure that bronze and brass were both made using copper, so the metals might be similar enough for the bondmark to work in the chakra-ink production ritual.

Hazō went through the steps, rubbing the round end of the bondmark against his belt, spoke his chant, then blew over the surface of the ink. He tapped his finger against the surface of the ink and attempted to infuse it with his chakra. It didn't…

Huh? As Hazō stopped pushing chakra into the ink, he swore he felt a faint fading sensation. Like the ink had taken the chakra for a moment, then immediately lost it. Except… that couldn't be the case. The chakra hadn't actually left Hazō, had it?

Shit. Was the ink taking Hazō's chakra, then getting immediately drained by the afterlife? He'd thought that it would last longer than that, given that his seals had lasted for several minutes during his last (voluntary) visit to the afterlife, but those were infused seals rather than pure chakra ink.

No, he hadn't actually felt the ink get infused. The ink didn't feel like it had the capacity to take his chakra charge… except he didn't think he'd hallucinated that sensation of the ink's chakra fading. Maybe the ink had a capacity to hold chakra, except that capacity was much lower than it should be because of him butchering the ritual and using his own shitty ink and-

"Hey!" Keiji called out. "Watch out!"

Hazō leapt to his feet, sending-

-tamping down his instincts to send chakra through his system, instead turning with agonizing slowness to see what Keiji was looking at up the slope.

It looked almost like a tumbleweed, if a tumbleweed were made of strips of paper thinner than his little finger, and those strips of paper were constantly branching, merging, and writhing like the surface of a boiling pot.

"Paper wraith!" Keiji said, pulling out his machete, while Miki shook herself awake and rolled to her feet. "Absorbs violent memories. Don't bother talking. This looks like a strong-"

And then it was upon them.

Hazō ran forward to intercept the creature before it could fall upon the civilians, unclipping his Pangolin-claw gauntlets along the way. Keiji was using his machete, so Hazō needed a blade as well. This creature didn't seem like the sort he could punch through.

The writhing mass of paper almost shied away from his steps, tendrils folding inwards. Then, it changed, strips of paper suddenly moving like they were wrapping around a solid object, and Hazō got the faint impression of a square-jawed young man made out of origami in the middle of a storm. The man thrusted forward, a spear of paper strips appearing in his hands as he struck, and Hazō raised a gauntlet to parry – before realizing he didn't know if he could parry this attack at all.

He ducked out of the way instead. The spear thrust was slow, like a civilian's, and Hazō had rolled to his knees before the spear was even retracting back into that storm of paper. He needed to kill this thing somehow, so Hazō struck out, slashing his gauntlets through where the young man's leg would have been. The gauntlets passed through the storm of paper like it was nothing, paper strips flowing around the claws like they weren't there, but when it hit the man's leg, Hazō heard a distinctive tearing of paper as he ripped through the man's leg.

So it wasn't vulnerable except when it took form to attack. Good to know. Hazō leapt back, watching the rolling storm. Were the paper strips any shorter now? Was there any obvious sign of damage? He didn't see it "leaking" paper like blood, but the attack had to have done something. Otherwise Keiji wouldn't have gotten out his machete.

Hazō ran back in, and the wraith took form again. A teenager of indiscriminate gender put their hands together, then lances of paper shot out of its "mouth" and expanded fractally through the air.

Hazō grinned. He could take a genin. He slashed through the incoming attack, twisting and moving through the space it didn't occupy to get into its heart and rip the pieces of paper apart, before he crouched and leaped at the paper-genin, tearing through them from their shoulder to their opposite waist.

That had definitely done something. The paper strips Hazō had cut fell on the wind for a few seconds before rejoining the storm, and Hazō thought he saw a shimmer of light in the air before the storm reshaped again, this time into a tall, skinny man wielding a cudgel. The man didn't even have time to swing before Hazō tore his arm off, then slashed through his chest.

The wraith backed off, forming into the shape of a squat samurai-looking man, but Hazō pounced forward like a predator, slashing it to pieces. He was in the heart of the storm, whirling as he cut down his foes, and this wraith would soon regret-

The paper strips swarming around him didn't make another fully humanoid figure. Instead, they formed hands – one already wrapped around his wrists, the other at his neck, and Hazō found himself being thrown through the air. Hazō had a moment to appreciate the throw from his mid-air position as he saw the wraith reforming yet again, this time into a tall ninja wielding a sword, its point barely an inch from Hazō's heart.

Hazō slammed against the ground, sharp stones digging into his back. He knew he should have had the breath knocked out of him, and that he would get stabbed a moment later, but something else happened. A memory came to him.

A sparring exercise in Mist's Academy. He'd been thrown to the ground, but he wasn't a civilian who had to lie there and die under his enemy's blade.

Hazō's body moved almost on its own as he kicked against a boulder with chakra repulsion, leaping horizontally along the ground and gritting his teeth against the innumerable stones scraping against his back. The blade passed between his legs and he kicked up, knocking the sword out of the wraith's hands, even as his hands went over his head to pivot him up.

He flipped back to his feet, and in the same motion ran his gauntlets through the length of the wraith's form, from groin to skull.

The wraith burst into strips of paper that fled back up the slopes.

Hazō looked around, but there were no more threats. Apart from those couple scrapes, no one had been hurt. He felt empty. After a moment, he realized it was the silence. After a fight, he expected to hear his heart pounding in his ears, but he was dead. His heart didn't beat.

Keiji was standing back protectively with Miki, his machete up, which he lowered as he saw the wraith fleeing.

"Sage's infinite blessings, Hazō, that was incredible," Keiji said. "You were like a whirlwind of death. I thought for sure we'd be going back home after that."

Hazō shook his head. "That thing… you said it was made out of violent memories?"

"Sure," Keiji said. "You saw it. A million moments of killing and death, all bundled up into one little thing. Most of the monsters here aren't that dangerous – I think a lot of them are actually people's memories of chakra beasts reforming – but paper wraiths are a bad one and that one looked pretty strong."

"Oh!" Miki said. "Maybe it absorbed some of Daiji's memories. Daiji also did a lot of fighting in his life, so he probably had more than enough to make a paper wraith of his own. Wait, what am I saying? Are you okay, Hazō?"

"I'm fine," Hazō said. "I scraped my back a little bit, but that's all."

"Oh, well that won't do," Miki said. "Take your shirt off and come over here. I have some things to ease the pain. It wouldn't do for you to be wincing the entire rest of the journey, now would it?"



They saw the shrine before they next made camp, more than a mile up the slope of the infinite mountains. Miki had described it as "blue and black", but Hazō felt that those words did the shrine a disservice. Even the torii gate outside the shrine was a work of art – each post painted in an indigo so rich that Hazō thought he could see the gradations of a setting sun and waxing starlight in its colors, topped by a crossbeam so black that Hazō couldn't even perceive its shape. Miki forbade them from passing under the center of the beam, so Hazō got to see the post in even more detail, and it didn't even seem painted. The wood simply seemed to have that infinitely rich color on its own.

They passed through the gate, bowing as they did, and found a small basin of water waiting for them. Miki seemed to know what to do with it, washing her hands and anointing herself before stepping onwards.

The shrine itself sat on a leveled section of mountain, though Hazō could imagine no one who would have put in the effort to do this construction in such a remote part of such an esoteric dimension. Maybe it had simply… appeared this way.

The shrine's body was small by the standards of the Hagoromo's grand temples in Leaf. It would perhaps contain a half-dozen rooms inside it. A long courtyard lay before the shrine, paved with three-meter-square gray stones. Along that courtyard, a number of small gray pillars had been planted periodically, and a bald man knelt in front of one of them.

Hazō led the way to the man, passing a handful of pillars as he did. Each had a small, carved idol on top of it, clearly placed there by another worshipper, and messages written along its length.

He saw an idol of a woman, perhaps rising from an ocean. Underneath it, messages were scrawled: "May the oceans reclaim all that is here," "You fed me well in life," "Akito," and more scratchings that Hazō couldn't read as he passed by.

An idol of a great serpent, raising its head up to strike. "Wretched fool that I am." "I deserved this." "Destroy them all, as you destroyed me."

An idol of a cloaked figure. "Let me be avenged." "Survive, where we could not." "Remember me."

Hazō paused at one. He recognized the tall, bearded man with his cloak and crescent-moon staff – a common depiction of the Sage of the Six Paths across the Elemental Nations. The scratchings beneath were denser than on any pillar so far, and Hazō could barely make out any words. Some had taken to carving their words into the stone to make them last. "Protect my children"?

The bald man – no woman, by the shape of her face and body – stood as they approached. She was ancient, her face sagging with folds of skin, and her earlobes hung equally low under the weight of square-cut carmine stones. She wore long monks' robes, and Hazō couldn't help but tense slightly as he saw the sword at her belt.

She clearly noticed his reaction. "A ninja?" she asked.

Hazō forced himself to relax and offer his hand. "I'm Gōketsu Hazō. It's nice to meet you."

"I do not give my name so freely," she said, tone aloof. "But I am glad to meet you."

"Do you know anything about this shrine?" Hazō asked.

The woman shrugged. "I know less and less every day. Some things don't change between life and death, I suppose. About this shrine…"

She pointed. "It's over there. It's worth going in and seeing the being in its heart. The Prince of Bitter Nights, he calls himself. There are shrine guardians. Treat the shrine well, and they won't bother you in the slightest."

"There's really a shrine kami?" Miki asked. "Can we talk to him?"

The woman chuckled. "You can talk to him. You can also talk to any old rock or tree, girl. He's sleeping – or drowsing, at least. If you talk to him, he might talk back about the same as those rocks. He speaks sometimes, but I didn't make any sense of his babbling." She cut a wry grin at Hazō. "Maybe he doesn't bother speaking to people as unimportant as myself. A ninja might wake him up a little more."

"How did you know about this place?" Hazō asked.

"It's pretty visible, isn't it?" the woman said.

"And how did you know the shrine kami's name?"

"Mothers' blood, boy, I went in the shrine!" the woman said. "Don't grill me for things when you can poke your head in and see things for yourself!"

She gestured down the mountain. "Look, there's a settlement down that way. Maybe a dozen miles and around the bend. They send people up here occasionally, but it's not too many. Not too many dead appear around here for whatever reason. Now, this place is much too crowded for me. Enjoy your worship."

She promptly started walking away down the mountain path out of the shrine.

Hazō took a moment to inspect the idol she'd been kneeling at: a tall, leafy tree that looked much like the ancient oaks in Hidden Leaf. The messages beneath it were illegible. Some had been scratched out, maybe even by her sword.

"She seemed strange," Hazō said.

Keiji shrugged. "I've seen stranger."


Miki and Keiji started their way up the stairs to the shrine while Hazō circled the building. Hazō's eye for architecture was lacking (he had never actually figured out design plans for the new Gōketsu Estate, had he?), but he could tell that the shrine had been excellently constructed in an ancient style. Something about it felt just right – as if this were the kind of thing that the Hagoromo and the various priest castes had been imitating and caricaturing for centuries.

The building was cold. Even approaching it made Hazō feel a chill, and placing his hand against a wall felt like touching a kunai left out in winter – it robbed the heat from his skin instantly.

The roof tiles still bore that incomprehensible black color, darker than the darkest night, that made it hard to tell the shape of them, their borders, or anything at all beyond that they were there. The outer walls of the shrine were made of that indigo wood. Hazō looked closer, pressing his face almost to the wooden panels, and in between the grains and whorls of the wood, he thought he saw faint, glimmering patches of white, like stars hidden in the night sky.

A couple of the rooms had tiny, square windows to the outside, and Hazō peeked in, walking up the frigid walls to do so. One had a fountain of water, with a handful of coins glimmering in an intermediary basin before the fountain spilled out into a full bath. By its sound alone, the water was probably on the verge of freezing. The other room was totally unadorned but for the simple stone square resting on the wooden planks with a circle carved into its center.

Eventually, Hazō had to go in. He stepped up the stairs. They didn't creak or even bend under his weight. A pair of flickering yellow paper lanterns hung by the door, but more notable was the shrine guardians. Two men, each easily two meters tall, stood by the shrine's doors, wearing eldritch-looking suits of black-and-indigo armor. Each carried a naginata with a pair of red tassels hanging from just below the blade.

Miki and Keiji had walked between the guardians, so Hazō tried to do the same, only to stop suddenly as the two figures swiftly moved to cross their spears.

"You may not enter the shrine," a voice said. Hazō felt a cold wind pass over him and frowned slightly. The armor didn't have a normal faceplate – instead, the voice came through a mask painted with the visage of a laughing horned demon, white and cerulean in its cruel mirth. His fellow didn't speak, instead simply gazing down at Hazō with a mask depicting a weeping ghost.

Hazō looked them up and down quickly. They had definitely moved faster than a civilian could to bar his entry, and now that they were in front of his face, Hazō could see that their speartips seemed to darken the world behind them slightly, as if they were sucking in light.

Their armor… Hazō blinked. The demon-faced armor was empty. He could see right through it – and the ghost-faced one as well. Neither set of armor had a human inside of it. These guardians were animated suits of armor that moved on their own accord? The armor was scratched and scuffed in several places, clearly ancient, and Hazō caught a glimpse of scratches where their joints met – thin and precise as if made by a blade.

They didn't move, not even faint shuffles or the rising and falling of their chests as they barred Hazō's way.

"Is there something I can do to enter the shrine?" Hazō asked.

"Your kind will never be permitted to enter the shrine," the demon-faced guardian said, voice echoing out without its mask moving. "You inherited the Sage's legacy, then squandered and corrupted it. You carry all of his sins and none of his virtues."

"Our kind… being ninja?" Hazō asked.

The guardian did not respond, though Hazō thought he heard a faint whine from the ghost-faced guardian.

"Can I petition the kami of the shrine for entry?" Hazō ventured.

"You may not petition the kami to enter this shrine," the demon guardian said.

"My friends are in there already, speaking with the kami," Hazō asked. "If they convince the kami that I should be let in, will you let me in?"

"No," the demon guardian said. "The only way you may enter the shrine is by renouncing the Sage's tainted gift."

"Do you mean I should spend all my chakra? Or that I should become a civilian somehow?"

The demon-faced guardian did not respond. Again, the ghost-faced guardian whined softly.

"Right, good talk," Hazō said, reaching down and unhooking his Pangolin gauntlets. He put them on, then paused. "Is it fine if I cast ninjutsu outside the shrine?"

"Your corruption cannot touch the shrine," said the demon-faced guardian.

So the shrine was immune to ninjutsu? Or maybe immune to damage altogether. Probably the latter, based on the way the thin stair slats hadn't bent under his weight. Whatever, he didn't intend to damage the shrine itself. He still wanted to talk to the shrine kami. He just needed the guards out of the way.

Hazō backed down the stairs a couple steps. He definitely didn't want to get nicked by those strange blades with their inverted light. Hazō wanted to use Pangolin Earth Armor, but it cost so much chakra… better to use Ghost Scales. Pantokrator's Hammer was a more chakra-efficient form of chakra-boosting, so he'd use that too. He looked around. There were no convenient Substitution targets in range. He'd be doing this entirely hand-to-hand, then.

"Pangolin Clan Technique: Ghost Scales! Pantokrator's Hammer!"

Hazō's hard-fought chakra streamed out of him into a shell of chakra-armor, filling his body with buzzing energy. The guardians' armor was scratched, but not cracked or dented. They might be impervious to damage, same as the shrine. Those scratches in the armor chinks looked like sword markings – maybe the old lady had pulled them apart like splitting a crab by its joints? He'd use the Ghost Scale claws till they ran out, then switch to his gauntlets.

He bounded up the stairs in two massive leaps then fell upon the shrine guardians.

They raised their naginatas to meet him, so they were clearly intelligent enough to recognize his attack. He landed in front of them, then leaped to the porch ceiling, flipping midair and adhering to it. One of the guards – Ghost, Hazou decided – was taken aback, but the other, Demon, snapped its spear up to slash at him. Hazō jumped again to a pillar to the side. Ghost was only starting to look up when Hazō took it in the side, prying his claws of shimmering energy into the cracks of its armor.

Hazou felt an icy chill blunted by the armor construct, then he got the gauntlets in the crack and twisted. He felt resistance, then a snap as something inside broke, and the armor's vambrace and gauntlet fell off. Inside, he saw only another void, absorbing-

Shit, the other guardian! Hazō ducked, but too slowly, and Demon's naginata slammed into his head, throwing him to the ground. He was alive – well, not really – but his Ghost Scales had popped to absorb the blow. Ghost tried to stab down at the prone Hazō one-handed, but Hazō rolled out of the way and snatched a kunai from his belt, jamming it in a gap in Ghost's leg. He was forced back to a shrine wall as Demon slashed at him.

They were moving oddly, Hazō noted. He thought he recognized the motions. They thought they were faster than they actually were, like an old ninja trying a dodge he knew he could have done in his prime. They'd clearly degraded at different rates too – the ghost-masked guardian, especially down an arm, was much slower than the demon-masked one. Which meant Demon was the main threat.

But wait, no other part of the shrine seems to have degraded with age. Something else must be causing them to degrade.

Hazō didn't have an eternity to think, because Demon was stabbing at him again, and Hazō danced back along the shrine walls. It was fast, but Hazō was faster. He could escape into the shrine, but then he'd be trapped. If there were more of these things in there, he'd be toast.

He needed some advantage to get a clean attack off.

The lanterns!

Hazō leaped back to the ceiling. Come on… There!

Demon slashed outwards with its naginata, and Hazō released his chakra adhesion to drop out of the way. The naginata slashed through the rope holding the paper lantern in place, and it started to fall. Hazō kicked off the guardian's breastplate, then flipped midair to land on the far pillar and punched the falling lantern back at Demon.

Demon slashed through the lantern. A mistake. It burst, oil suddenly spreading out in a conflagration as Hazō grit his teeth and leapt forward to jam his kunai in the slot in the armor's neck. He got it in, prying to rip the thing's head off, but he gasped at the sudden and intense cold of its torso. Demon let go of its naginata with one hand and grabbed Hazō by the shoulder and thrusted him away with inhuman strength. Hazō tried to reorient midair but the guardian had thrown him way faster than he'd thought possible. He hit the shrine wall hard and didn't latch on, instead falling to the ground. He only saw the naginata an instant before it struck and twisted to have the blow glance off his ribcage instead of ripping through his guts.

Good thing it was one-handing, he thought. If that had been a strong, two-handed thrust, it might have gone right through him. He only realized a moment later that his skin and ribs felt absolutely frozen where the blade had passed through his shirt.

Hazō's maneuvering had split the guardians, and now Ghost slashed down at him. Hazō sidestepped the slash and kicked it in the chest. It barely stumbled – the guardians weren't just strong, but way heavier than they had any right to be – but it did stumble, and Hazō took the opportunity to dive at its leg and jam his kunai in there properly. A moment of work later, and Ghost collapsed to its knees as Hazō ripped its greave off, and with it, its whole foot.

Hazō spun and stood. That one wasn't a threat now. That just left…

The oil fire on the stronger shrine guardian was going out, extinguished by that agonizing cold emanating from the armor and spears. A shimmering light – chakra? – swirled around the naginata's tip. A moment later, that light was absorbed, and the guardian's crooked headpiece shifted and corrected itself. It lowered the naginata to point at Hazō's chest.

Had it healed with chakra, his chakra, somehow?

Shit. He'd put his all into that attack and only gotten himself cut. He couldn't win like this.

Luckily, he was a ninja. He kicked to the wall, then one giant leap took him a dozen meters from the shrine. After a few more strides, he turned to see the lead guardian watching him with its spear extended, but not chasing him.

Well, he'd gotten away. He looked around, but there were no more threats. This shrine was going to be a tougher nut to crack than he'd expected.

---

Hazō spotted one more shimmer along the route. It was a small one, but undefended. Overall, he finishes the update with 265 CP. He gained 2 FP and spent 3 FP, for a net of -1 FP.

Hazō asked Keiji and Miki about the singer that supposedly took the triangle of black metal. Miki claims it was a tall, black-haired, narrow-shouldered man carrying a massively-oversized pack who accompanied his stories with a remarkably-elaborate set of hand-drums. Keiji says she's gotten her memories mixed up, and it was actually a shortish, plain woman with tied-back brown hair who sang beautifully but was still learning how to accompany her songs with a lyre, the most recent lifesinger to pass through town. They talked about it, but couldn't resolve their disagreement. Neither of them know anything about the singer's heading beyond "going out in this direction, maybe because it's on the way, maybe because they want to grab the triangle before moving on".

Hazō has gained 50 XP.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Today at 1:00 PM.