Uzushiogakure was the strongest minor village out there. People from every village feared the Uzumaki, feared their sealsmasters, and feared their suiton. So it was inevitable, in a way, when two of the major shinobi villages banded together with one goal: leave Uzushio a pile of rubble. In a few days, the Uzumaki went from the leaders of a feared shinobi village, to a dying bloodline. Yet the Uzumaki survived. They found their way to every corner of the Elemental Nations, by good fortune and not.
Uzumaki Quest (Naruto AU)
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The Uzumaki Bloodline (Chargen)
Fifty years after the establishment of Uzushiogakure, it was ransacked. Decades of infiltration and sabotage from Iwagakure and Kirigakure had finally cracked Uzushio's legendary seals wide open, a golden egg fresh for the taking. It took days for the once great village to be reduced to rubble, the scarce survivors fleeing for Konoha through tripley secret tunnels as the Uzukage and their contingent of remaining shinobi stayed behind. They weren't staying with a noble purpose in mind, but with a furious goal to tear the invaders apart limb by limb, to hurt them like furious dogs without their masters. This last desperate attempt would tear apart hundreds of invading shinobi, despite the interference of the Tsuchikage and the Seven Swordsmen. The terrifying counterattack would go down in legend. Kiri shinobi would drunkenly wobble around their bars, boasting about surviving Uzushio, where two of the Seven Swordsmen died, leaving Hiramekarei and Kabutowari to be abruptly handed down to their apprentices. Iwa shinobi would recount the terrifying strength of the Uzukage, summoning barriers with twitches of her hands that sliced shinobi in half from fifty feet away. They were too dangerous to be left alone, they would say. And these stories floated through the elemental nations. Kusagakure heard it, Sunagakure heard it, Kumogakure heard it, Amegakure heard it. They all remembered Uzushio through those final legends, that the island of the Uzumakis and the sealing experts were too strong to be left alive.
But Uzushio and the Uzumaki didn't die with Uzushiogakure and the Uzukage. Their bloodline endured. Konoha might have received the bulk of the refugees, but Uzumaki spread across the Elemental Nations without any direction in mind. Across all the major nations, Uzumaki found their way to nooks and crannies, for better or for worse. And where there is one generation of Uzumaki, the next generation will follow. This next generation of Uzumaki will be raised where everyone has heard of the legendary strength of Uzushio's final stand. And where stories are told of your bloodline's strength, everyone will fear you, and want you.
[ ] Wind Country: You are a half-blood Uzumaki. Your father was a romantic, a roaming shinobi who was renowned for his excellent suiton. He fell head over heels with a civilian woman in Sunagakure, and after three months of whirlwind romance, they were married. He left just as suddenly only to die in Uzushio's final stand, his signature suiton jutsu tearing apart dozens of Iwa shinobi. It will only be a matter of time before you will be noticed for your potential.
[ ] Lightning Country: You are a half-blood Uzumaki. Your mother was a chuunin of Uzushio, a budding sealmaster in the making. She fled Uzushio during the invasion all on her lonesome, having forged her own seals to flee the island. She had the unfortunate fate of getting captured by Kumogakure shinobi as she wandered alone, having teleported into the middle of Lightning Country. You are her unwanted child, left alone in a Kumo orphanage. You are expected to become an exemplary Kumo shinobi.
[ ] Earth Country: You are a pure-blood Uzumaki. Your father was one of the key traitors to Uzushio who helped Iwa and Kiri break the seals protecting Uzushiogakure. After the destruction, he was extracted from the ruins of Uzushio by the invading Iwa nin and brought to Iwagakure as a loyal ninja. Along with him, he brought you, his one year old child. You are seen as an expendable tool of a hated bloodline.
[ ] Water Country: You are a pure-blood Uzumaki. Your mother was as civilian as an Uzumaki could be, a humble housewife and genin. Her husband, however, was one of the few traitors to Uzushio, and couldn't bear to see his pregnant wife die. He warned her of the invasion mere days in advance, and she fled into the depths of Water Country, hoping to hide where no one would look. You were born into hiding, in a dirt-poor village near Kirigakure. No one knows who you are, but the bloody mists will shape you nonetheless.
One of the goals of this quest is to write a story that is solidly taken away from the typical canon and story of Naruto. For this reason, I want to write a story where Konoha isn't the main player in it, and the main driving 'ultimate goal' is different. For this reason, this story is AU. In it, there is no Moon's Eye plan. Madara died at the Valley of the End. Zetsu is not Kaguya's son, and Kaguya does not have any plans to reincarnate herself. Other elements of the world may also be AU.
But Uzushio and the Uzumaki didn't die with Uzushiogakure and the Uzukage. Their bloodline endured. Konoha might have received the bulk of the refugees, but Uzumaki spread across the Elemental Nations without any direction in mind. Across all the major nations, Uzumaki found their way to nooks and crannies, for better or for worse. And where there is one generation of Uzumaki, the next generation will follow. This next generation of Uzumaki will be raised where everyone has heard of the legendary strength of Uzushio's final stand. And where stories are told of your bloodline's strength, everyone will fear you, and want you.
[ ] Wind Country: You are a half-blood Uzumaki. Your father was a romantic, a roaming shinobi who was renowned for his excellent suiton. He fell head over heels with a civilian woman in Sunagakure, and after three months of whirlwind romance, they were married. He left just as suddenly only to die in Uzushio's final stand, his signature suiton jutsu tearing apart dozens of Iwa shinobi. It will only be a matter of time before you will be noticed for your potential.
[ ] Lightning Country: You are a half-blood Uzumaki. Your mother was a chuunin of Uzushio, a budding sealmaster in the making. She fled Uzushio during the invasion all on her lonesome, having forged her own seals to flee the island. She had the unfortunate fate of getting captured by Kumogakure shinobi as she wandered alone, having teleported into the middle of Lightning Country. You are her unwanted child, left alone in a Kumo orphanage. You are expected to become an exemplary Kumo shinobi.
[ ] Earth Country: You are a pure-blood Uzumaki. Your father was one of the key traitors to Uzushio who helped Iwa and Kiri break the seals protecting Uzushiogakure. After the destruction, he was extracted from the ruins of Uzushio by the invading Iwa nin and brought to Iwagakure as a loyal ninja. Along with him, he brought you, his one year old child. You are seen as an expendable tool of a hated bloodline.
[ ] Water Country: You are a pure-blood Uzumaki. Your mother was as civilian as an Uzumaki could be, a humble housewife and genin. Her husband, however, was one of the few traitors to Uzushio, and couldn't bear to see his pregnant wife die. He warned her of the invasion mere days in advance, and she fled into the depths of Water Country, hoping to hide where no one would look. You were born into hiding, in a dirt-poor village near Kirigakure. No one knows who you are, but the bloody mists will shape you nonetheless.
One of the goals of this quest is to write a story that is solidly taken away from the typical canon and story of Naruto. For this reason, I want to write a story where Konoha isn't the main player in it, and the main driving 'ultimate goal' is different. For this reason, this story is AU. In it, there is no Moon's Eye plan. Madara died at the Valley of the End. Zetsu is not Kaguya's son, and Kaguya does not have any plans to reincarnate herself. Other elements of the world may also be AU.
Character Sheet
Name: Kouyou Honoka (Kouyou Uzumaki)
Title: None
Age: 3
Appearance: You're a short and wiry child, with only a bit of pudgy baby fat remaining on your limbs. Your hair is cut short, into jagged, spiky strands of rusty red hair. Your eyes are a murky grey. You are cloaked in a threadbare grey shirt several sizes too large for you and a worn pair of blue shorts, scuffed with dirt and mud. When you smile, your teeth are a bit too sharp.
Position: Civilian
Primary Skills:
Advanced Skills:
Mundane Skills:
Title: None
Age: 3
Appearance: You're a short and wiry child, with only a bit of pudgy baby fat remaining on your limbs. Your hair is cut short, into jagged, spiky strands of rusty red hair. Your eyes are a murky grey. You are cloaked in a threadbare grey shirt several sizes too large for you and a worn pair of blue shorts, scuffed with dirt and mud. When you smile, your teeth are a bit too sharp.
Position: Civilian
Primary Skills:
- Physical Skills:
- Taijutsu: Untrained
- Bukijutsu: Untrained (40/50 XP)
- Stealth: Untrained
- Chakra Release:
- Genjutsu: Untrained
- Ninjutsu: Untrained
- Nature Transformation: Untrained
- Chakra Manipulation:
- Chakra Control: Untrained
- Chakra Sensing: E- (50/100 XP)
- You can sense active use of chakra nearby, as long as it spikes high enough or is sustained long enough. Looking at someone makes it easier to sense their chakra.
Advanced Skills:
- Fuuinjutsu: Untrained
Mundane Skills:
- Survival: D (300/600 XP)
- You can easily survive in the forests of Water Country, with some tools. You might struggle somewhat in other environments.
Skills work on a rank basis, for narrative use. Skill ranks are not the end all be all. I am still partially working out the system.
Mundane Skills work on a more compressed basis, with there only being E/D/C/B/A/S/EX, with each level having the XP cost of the + of their rank.
Incapable
Untrained
Untrained
- F (0 XP)
- E- (50 XP)
- E (100 XP)
- E+ (150 XP)
- D- (200 XP)
- D (250 XP)
- D+ (300 XP)
- C- (400 XP)
- C (500 XP)
- C+ (600 XP)
- B- (800 XP)
- B (1000 XP)
- B+ (1200 XP)
- A- (1600 XP)
- A (2000 XP)
- A+ (2400 XP)
- S- (3200 XP)
- S (4000 XP)
- S+ (4800 XP)
- SS (5600 XP)
- SSS (6400 XP)
- EX (8000 XP)
Mundane Skills work on a more compressed basis, with there only being E/D/C/B/A/S/EX, with each level having the XP cost of the + of their rank.
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A Village within the Mist (Chapter 1)
[X] Water Country
You are Kouyou Honoka, daughter of Yanagi Uzumaki. You've lived in the village of Senki-Mura for all your short life. The mists sit heavy on Senki-Mura, an ever present reminder of the village's proximity to Kirigakure. That's what Yua-obaachan tells you, when she's hunched over in the rickety chair in the left corner, talking with her creaky, dry voice for hours at a time, stories of oni and shinobi filling the air in the cramped room. Kirigakure, she'd rasp, is the village of the shinobi. Kirigakure is the village of the bloody mist. They are butchers and assassins, she'd say, over and over again. If you ever see a shinobi, Honoka-chan, you should hide and run, because they'll eat you. Do you know how to recognize a shinobi, Honoka-chan? They all wear a hitai-ate, a metal plate, somewhere on their body. She'd reach down with her slim wooden walking stick and shakily draw the Kiri hitai-ate into the dirt floor, and point at it. If you ever see this, Honoka-chan, what should you do? She'd wait for you to answer in kind.
"Run," you'd say. And she wouldn't smile, but she'd nod. And hide, she'd say. Run and hide. She'd then smear out the icon from the floor, leaving the dirt as if she'd never said anything in the first place.
Her stories were always more boring. She'd drone on in her stale voice, reciting something from memory she'd said a hundred times before. She talked about strange spirits that'd eat you if you lied to them, or would drown you if you boarded their ship. She talked about strange shinobi, ones that had red eyes like blood, or ones who could summon a blizzard to smother a village in it's sleep. There were a thousand stories she knew, and she always had new ones.
Yua-obaachan would never permit you to play when she was telling her stories. When she arrived, she expected you to sit down on the dirt, or on your futon, sometimes. She'd creak her way through the door and park herself on the chair, and demanded that you sit still. It was hard to push down the twitches that ran through your body after sitting for hours, listening to Yua-obaachan. When kaasan came back, as the sun was setting, normally, she would look at Yua-obaachan with a nasty look in her eyes, and Yua-obaachan would leave without a word passing between them. Then kaasan would help you up, her worn face inspecting your every inch, and she'd push a bowl of rice, or fish, or daikon, into your hands.
You don't see kaasan very frequently. She wakes before you, every morning, and disappears into the mist before you could ever say goodbye. Sometimes she shows up as the sun is high in the sky, filtering through the mist with a harsh glare. She'd find you, wherever you'd wandered off to, and follow you around. She doesn't know you know that she follows you sometimes, but you noticed her one time, and you make sure to not miss her again.
When kaasan shows up, it'd be late, when the moon is softly shining through the mist, an iridescent glow reflecting off of small puddles. She'd walk you back home, and sit you on her lap. She'd tell you secrets, secrets that you're not supposed to tell anyone, not Yua-obaachan, not Shicho-sama, and definitely not Touma-kun.
Kaasan is a shinobi, she'd whisper to you. She's an Uzumaki, and you are too. You'd wiggle in her grasp and ask her why you're Honoka and not Uzumaki, like her, and her voice would sound more tired. Because being Uzumaki is dangerous. Because being Uzumaki means that people wanted to kill her, and they'd want to kill you too. So no matter what, Kou-chan, never tell people you're an Uzumaki, okay? But you can always remember it, and think it inside your heart.
Kaasan told you, on other nights, that because she was a shinobi, she had to protect Senki-Mura. That it was her duty. That was why she was gone into the mist, at all times, to protect Senki-Mura. She told you that all shinobi had leaders, and hers was Shicho-sama. In the past, she had a different leader, the Uzukage. They were great and powerful, and commanded hundreds of shinobi. Whenever she talked about the Uzukage, her voice would get distant and she'd stop looking at you, instead staring into some vacant point a million miles away.
Kaasan told you that the greatest secret of all was that she loved you, and then a smile would force its way onto her lined, tired face. She'd insist that you smile back, and wouldn't stop tickling you until you did.
Kaasan would be gone the next day, afterwards. Disappeared back into the mist, leaving you alone once again. You weren't allowed far from home. Only as far as the river and past a couple houses the other way. You could play in the river bank, pulling out seagrass and tying it into frivolous knots. You could draw in the dirt, as long as you rubbed out the drawings afterwards. You could get as muddy as you wanted, as long as you washed it off yourself.
Sometimes Touma-kun would come to play with you when you were out by the river. Touma-kun was a lot larger than you, and he'd push you face-first into the river. He'd laugh as you'd get back up, and boast that he was going to become a super strong shinobi. You'd attack him back, jumping at his knees and trying to pull him down with you, scraping at his pants legs with your nails. He'd always win, always end up on top at the end. Sometimes you got him good, like when you hit him in the eye that one time by jumping off the side of the wall. Eventually, you'd be too tired to get back up and he'd laugh and leave you in the river as he left. You'd have to pick yourself up anyways, and clean yourself up anyways before night fell, or kaasan would know, and she'd be upset.
You didn't want her to be upset with you.
The night was young, and kaasan had you in her lap, her hands carefully threading through your hair, when the door was slammed open. A man stepped in that you'd never seen before. His face was grizzled with a shaky black beard and his nose had an aggressive slant to it.
He cut through the sound of kaasan's voice like a tearing a piece of seagrass in two.
"Yanagi-san." The word was all but snarled. "Shicho-sama demands your presence at once." You are dumped off of kaasan's lap without warning.
Kaasan raises her voice, and you shake. "Ichiro, in what way was this part of the deal?"
Ichiro raises his voice to match. "We don't care about this child, Yanagi! You will come with me, or whatever deal you have with Shicho-sama, will be called off."
For a second, kaasan looks like she's about to collapse. Then she swallows. "Alright," she murmurs, her voice as quiet as the wind.
Kaasan follows Ichiro out of the door without a word. The sudden silence inside is deafening, and you feel like you're still shaking.
Where is kaasan going?
[ ] Follow her: Kaasan is gone, following a strange man who you've never met. And kaasan is upset. She's followed you many times before, perhaps you can follow her as well.
[ ] Stay here: You're not allowed far from home, and kaasan always leaves to go much further away. If you were to follow her, she'd be furious at you. A terrifying idea.
You are Kouyou Honoka, daughter of Yanagi Uzumaki. You've lived in the village of Senki-Mura for all your short life. The mists sit heavy on Senki-Mura, an ever present reminder of the village's proximity to Kirigakure. That's what Yua-obaachan tells you, when she's hunched over in the rickety chair in the left corner, talking with her creaky, dry voice for hours at a time, stories of oni and shinobi filling the air in the cramped room. Kirigakure, she'd rasp, is the village of the shinobi. Kirigakure is the village of the bloody mist. They are butchers and assassins, she'd say, over and over again. If you ever see a shinobi, Honoka-chan, you should hide and run, because they'll eat you. Do you know how to recognize a shinobi, Honoka-chan? They all wear a hitai-ate, a metal plate, somewhere on their body. She'd reach down with her slim wooden walking stick and shakily draw the Kiri hitai-ate into the dirt floor, and point at it. If you ever see this, Honoka-chan, what should you do? She'd wait for you to answer in kind.
"Run," you'd say. And she wouldn't smile, but she'd nod. And hide, she'd say. Run and hide. She'd then smear out the icon from the floor, leaving the dirt as if she'd never said anything in the first place.
Her stories were always more boring. She'd drone on in her stale voice, reciting something from memory she'd said a hundred times before. She talked about strange spirits that'd eat you if you lied to them, or would drown you if you boarded their ship. She talked about strange shinobi, ones that had red eyes like blood, or ones who could summon a blizzard to smother a village in it's sleep. There were a thousand stories she knew, and she always had new ones.
Yua-obaachan would never permit you to play when she was telling her stories. When she arrived, she expected you to sit down on the dirt, or on your futon, sometimes. She'd creak her way through the door and park herself on the chair, and demanded that you sit still. It was hard to push down the twitches that ran through your body after sitting for hours, listening to Yua-obaachan. When kaasan came back, as the sun was setting, normally, she would look at Yua-obaachan with a nasty look in her eyes, and Yua-obaachan would leave without a word passing between them. Then kaasan would help you up, her worn face inspecting your every inch, and she'd push a bowl of rice, or fish, or daikon, into your hands.
You don't see kaasan very frequently. She wakes before you, every morning, and disappears into the mist before you could ever say goodbye. Sometimes she shows up as the sun is high in the sky, filtering through the mist with a harsh glare. She'd find you, wherever you'd wandered off to, and follow you around. She doesn't know you know that she follows you sometimes, but you noticed her one time, and you make sure to not miss her again.
When kaasan shows up, it'd be late, when the moon is softly shining through the mist, an iridescent glow reflecting off of small puddles. She'd walk you back home, and sit you on her lap. She'd tell you secrets, secrets that you're not supposed to tell anyone, not Yua-obaachan, not Shicho-sama, and definitely not Touma-kun.
Kaasan is a shinobi, she'd whisper to you. She's an Uzumaki, and you are too. You'd wiggle in her grasp and ask her why you're Honoka and not Uzumaki, like her, and her voice would sound more tired. Because being Uzumaki is dangerous. Because being Uzumaki means that people wanted to kill her, and they'd want to kill you too. So no matter what, Kou-chan, never tell people you're an Uzumaki, okay? But you can always remember it, and think it inside your heart.
Kaasan told you, on other nights, that because she was a shinobi, she had to protect Senki-Mura. That it was her duty. That was why she was gone into the mist, at all times, to protect Senki-Mura. She told you that all shinobi had leaders, and hers was Shicho-sama. In the past, she had a different leader, the Uzukage. They were great and powerful, and commanded hundreds of shinobi. Whenever she talked about the Uzukage, her voice would get distant and she'd stop looking at you, instead staring into some vacant point a million miles away.
Kaasan told you that the greatest secret of all was that she loved you, and then a smile would force its way onto her lined, tired face. She'd insist that you smile back, and wouldn't stop tickling you until you did.
Kaasan would be gone the next day, afterwards. Disappeared back into the mist, leaving you alone once again. You weren't allowed far from home. Only as far as the river and past a couple houses the other way. You could play in the river bank, pulling out seagrass and tying it into frivolous knots. You could draw in the dirt, as long as you rubbed out the drawings afterwards. You could get as muddy as you wanted, as long as you washed it off yourself.
Sometimes Touma-kun would come to play with you when you were out by the river. Touma-kun was a lot larger than you, and he'd push you face-first into the river. He'd laugh as you'd get back up, and boast that he was going to become a super strong shinobi. You'd attack him back, jumping at his knees and trying to pull him down with you, scraping at his pants legs with your nails. He'd always win, always end up on top at the end. Sometimes you got him good, like when you hit him in the eye that one time by jumping off the side of the wall. Eventually, you'd be too tired to get back up and he'd laugh and leave you in the river as he left. You'd have to pick yourself up anyways, and clean yourself up anyways before night fell, or kaasan would know, and she'd be upset.
You didn't want her to be upset with you.
The night was young, and kaasan had you in her lap, her hands carefully threading through your hair, when the door was slammed open. A man stepped in that you'd never seen before. His face was grizzled with a shaky black beard and his nose had an aggressive slant to it.
He cut through the sound of kaasan's voice like a tearing a piece of seagrass in two.
"Yanagi-san." The word was all but snarled. "Shicho-sama demands your presence at once." You are dumped off of kaasan's lap without warning.
Kaasan raises her voice, and you shake. "Ichiro, in what way was this part of the deal?"
Ichiro raises his voice to match. "We don't care about this child, Yanagi! You will come with me, or whatever deal you have with Shicho-sama, will be called off."
For a second, kaasan looks like she's about to collapse. Then she swallows. "Alright," she murmurs, her voice as quiet as the wind.
Kaasan follows Ichiro out of the door without a word. The sudden silence inside is deafening, and you feel like you're still shaking.
Where is kaasan going?
[ ] Follow her: Kaasan is gone, following a strange man who you've never met. And kaasan is upset. She's followed you many times before, perhaps you can follow her as well.
[ ] Stay here: You're not allowed far from home, and kaasan always leaves to go much further away. If you were to follow her, she'd be furious at you. A terrifying idea.
Red Pain Prison (Chapter 2)
[x] Follow her
Kaasan has just left when you decide to follow her. You swallow. Kaasan would never approve of you doing this. She would be upset.
You wait until you cannot hear Ichiro and kaasan's rushed footsteps, and then quietly push open the door. You can barely see their blurred figures through the mist, heading away from the river and deeper into the village proper. You've never gone deeper into the village before, where houses stand tall and proud, standing interlaced with crooked, sinuous trees that hug the houses like chains. You keep your footsteps light on the packed, muddy dirt, your bare soles popping slightly as they pull off the mud. The only light over the sleepy village was the waning moon, peeking up from the horizon, pale light reflecting slightly off of the intermittent puddles, giving a hazy glow to the light mist that suffused the village.
Kaasan and Ichiro are walking much faster than you can, walking with much longer legs and purpose in mind, and you find yourself running, struggling to keep up with them while at the same time not abandoning stealth. At the rate you're going, Ichiro and kaasan will get so far away you won't be able to see them at all.
In the distance, you see kaasan and Ichiro make a sharp turn, easily disappearing behind a sudden wall of tall, straight trees. You scramble to keep up with them, your feet slapping the ground as you run in a frenzy, leaping over a wooden bridge that crosses an idyllic stream, until you turn into the copse of trees that they disappeared into. You don't see them at all, not even blurred figures shifting about at the end of your vision, but the trail through the trees is singular, winding and long.
You're no longer sprinting, but you move down the trail as fast as you can while still being quiet. The winding trail is flanked by small flowers, unruly in their location but maintaining an unbroken line along the trail. The flowers are white and petite, and you think you've seen them before, growing along the edges of the river.
As the mass of trees along the sides of the trail grow thinner, you can make out the top of a house peeking out above the treeline ahead. The house is taller than the trees surrounding it, three stories tall, and its walls are covered in wooden patterns. This must be Shicho-sama's house, you figure. It is far grander than any of the other houses in the village, and Shicho-sama said he was its lord.
Once the trail opens up to the front of Shicho-sama's house, you creep out as stealthily as you can. The walls are rice paper and wood, and you can hear voices indistinctly filtering through them. The front doors to the building are left wide open. Inside, an empty room, decorated green cushions, two paintings hanging from each wall, and a glass table. You creep into the room on your tiptoes, the floor making the slightest crinkle with each footstep. On the table four cups sit forgotten, one having been unceremoniously knocked over, leaking clear liquid onto the floor.
On the other side of the room is a courtyard, with gravel floor, bushes in a myriad of geometric patterns, and standing proud in the center of it is a shishi-odoshi fountain, a bamboo rod that clacks as it overflows with water.
The voices that are echoing through the house are coming from the floor above you, and you hear them much clearer now that you've snuck inside.
"Playing coy won't get you much, old man." The voice isn't Ichiro, or Shicho-sama. "You're just pushing yourself closer to an early grave. Would be a shame, as well, right? With how much effort you're clearly gone through to get here."
"Why would I have anything to hide, shinobi-san?" The voice is Shicho-sama's, this time, but you've never heard it quite like this. "I am but a humble servant of the Water Country." His voice is trembling, but it remains whole.
You hear Ichiro's voice next. "Shicho-sama, I have returned from my search of the village. I have not found anything new."
There's a moment of silence. "Thank you, Ichiro-san," Shicho-sama says. "Although, shinobi-san, we may be able to strike a deal."
The unknown shinobi laughs, deep and hearty. "You want to strike a deal?" His voice is seized with heaving laughter.
There was a thunk, and a wet gurgle. The shinobi's voice lost every ounce of laughter and joy. "I'm not here to make deals, old man. Just hand over your pet shinobi to us. It'll be your head next."
"Yanagi!!" Shicho-sama screamed, his voice high and tight. There was an explosion of movement upstairs, feet colliding with the floor with a series of heavy, powerful thuds.
"Oh, at least you had enough to bring them to us," mused the shinobi above you. "I'll let you live, old man."
There's a tearing sound across the courtyard as someone leaps through the flimsy wall, and a second later, a second body follows them. "Aw c'mon, Yanagi-san! We just wanted to see what all the buzz was about. Some lord of a minor village found themself a shinobi, after all! We just wanted to snatch you up and put you to better jobs than killing other minor lords that your minor lord had some stupid feud over."
The first person who jumped through the wall was your kaasan. The second person was a rabidly grinning woman with a proud Kiri hitai-ate worn around her head.
Yua-obaasan told you to run and hide when you see a Kiri shinobi. Yua-obaasan told you to run and hide when you see a Kiri shinobi. You start fleeing.
"What makes you think I want anything to do with you?!" Kaasan's voice rings out, loud and clear.
"Well you're my pet project," says the first shinobi's voice, somehow finding itself behind you in the courtyard from an upstairs room without a sound. "A shinobi, this close to Kirigakure, working for one of our minor lords? It couldn't be a missing nin, none of them are that stupid. So it must be some new blood, and hey, maybe we could actually use them instead of throwing them to the dogs we might normally do."
"I couldn't care about your ambitions, dog!" Kaasan says, her voice cracking.
The shinobi laughs at her like he laughed at Shicho-sama, loud, hearty, and filled with life.
Kaasan raises her hands up. "Fuuinjutsu: Red Pain Prison!" Her voice roars. You turn back despite yourself, standing still in the middle of the clearing in front of the house.
The courtyard is alight with towering red sigils. Red light envelops the three figures standing inside the seal, and they arch back as pain fills their pain receptors. Screams break free of kaasan and the second shinobi's mouths, wretched and hurt, filling the air and the sky. Their screaming permeates the air uninterrupted for the better part of the minute, and as you watch, their body's convulse and twist in horrid ways.
Blissful silence returns to the air as the three of them collapse. The first to get up is the first shinobi, standing tall and strong as soon as he gets his bearings. The second is kaasan, slumped over and coughing up blood even as she tries to get up. The other shinobi doesn't get up at all.
The first shinobi snarls a single word. "Uzumaki." He lunges across the courtyard, so fast you don't notice him move until kaasan doesn't have a head anymore.
He lifts her head up high and inspects it, checking her hair, her eyes, and inspecting her mouth, uncaring and impassive as blood weeps from her severed neck and her body flops onto the gravel.
"That's six heads now. Have no idea how one of the bastards got this close to Kiri, but it's always a good day when I expand my collection." He pulls a scroll out of his pocket and, with a puff of smoke, seals away her head.
He disappears a second later after picking up his unconscious comrade, disappearing just like he appeared.
[ ] Run: You don't know where the shinobi went, that killed kaasan. If he finds you, he might know you are Uzumaki, and you are weak. Run and hide, like Yua-obaasan always told you.
[ ] Enter the courtyard: Kaasan is in the courtyard. She's dead, like one of the legendary shinobi from Yua-obaasan's stories. It doesn't seem real, like she should get up at any moment.. Perhaps you can say goodbye.
Afterwards, you will not have kaasan to rely on anymore. You'll have to take your life into your own hands.
[ ] Flee over the river, where the mist grows thicker: In the center of the thickest mists lies Kirigakure no Sato, the great shinobi village of Water Country. You will blend in with the poor in the dense population centers closer to Kirigakure.
[ ] Flee away from the river, towards the ocean: You've never seen the ocean before, but kaasan had told you stories of it. The shore is home to trade ports and merchants, with plenty of fish and wealth.
[ ] Stay in Senki-Mura: Senki-Mura is the only place you've known. It's where kaasan lived. Even if things are never the same again, it's fine to hold onto things, right? Shicho-sama might be willing to help you.
Kaasan has just left when you decide to follow her. You swallow. Kaasan would never approve of you doing this. She would be upset.
You wait until you cannot hear Ichiro and kaasan's rushed footsteps, and then quietly push open the door. You can barely see their blurred figures through the mist, heading away from the river and deeper into the village proper. You've never gone deeper into the village before, where houses stand tall and proud, standing interlaced with crooked, sinuous trees that hug the houses like chains. You keep your footsteps light on the packed, muddy dirt, your bare soles popping slightly as they pull off the mud. The only light over the sleepy village was the waning moon, peeking up from the horizon, pale light reflecting slightly off of the intermittent puddles, giving a hazy glow to the light mist that suffused the village.
Kaasan and Ichiro are walking much faster than you can, walking with much longer legs and purpose in mind, and you find yourself running, struggling to keep up with them while at the same time not abandoning stealth. At the rate you're going, Ichiro and kaasan will get so far away you won't be able to see them at all.
In the distance, you see kaasan and Ichiro make a sharp turn, easily disappearing behind a sudden wall of tall, straight trees. You scramble to keep up with them, your feet slapping the ground as you run in a frenzy, leaping over a wooden bridge that crosses an idyllic stream, until you turn into the copse of trees that they disappeared into. You don't see them at all, not even blurred figures shifting about at the end of your vision, but the trail through the trees is singular, winding and long.
You're no longer sprinting, but you move down the trail as fast as you can while still being quiet. The winding trail is flanked by small flowers, unruly in their location but maintaining an unbroken line along the trail. The flowers are white and petite, and you think you've seen them before, growing along the edges of the river.
As the mass of trees along the sides of the trail grow thinner, you can make out the top of a house peeking out above the treeline ahead. The house is taller than the trees surrounding it, three stories tall, and its walls are covered in wooden patterns. This must be Shicho-sama's house, you figure. It is far grander than any of the other houses in the village, and Shicho-sama said he was its lord.
Once the trail opens up to the front of Shicho-sama's house, you creep out as stealthily as you can. The walls are rice paper and wood, and you can hear voices indistinctly filtering through them. The front doors to the building are left wide open. Inside, an empty room, decorated green cushions, two paintings hanging from each wall, and a glass table. You creep into the room on your tiptoes, the floor making the slightest crinkle with each footstep. On the table four cups sit forgotten, one having been unceremoniously knocked over, leaking clear liquid onto the floor.
On the other side of the room is a courtyard, with gravel floor, bushes in a myriad of geometric patterns, and standing proud in the center of it is a shishi-odoshi fountain, a bamboo rod that clacks as it overflows with water.
The voices that are echoing through the house are coming from the floor above you, and you hear them much clearer now that you've snuck inside.
"Playing coy won't get you much, old man." The voice isn't Ichiro, or Shicho-sama. "You're just pushing yourself closer to an early grave. Would be a shame, as well, right? With how much effort you're clearly gone through to get here."
"Why would I have anything to hide, shinobi-san?" The voice is Shicho-sama's, this time, but you've never heard it quite like this. "I am but a humble servant of the Water Country." His voice is trembling, but it remains whole.
You hear Ichiro's voice next. "Shicho-sama, I have returned from my search of the village. I have not found anything new."
There's a moment of silence. "Thank you, Ichiro-san," Shicho-sama says. "Although, shinobi-san, we may be able to strike a deal."
The unknown shinobi laughs, deep and hearty. "You want to strike a deal?" His voice is seized with heaving laughter.
There was a thunk, and a wet gurgle. The shinobi's voice lost every ounce of laughter and joy. "I'm not here to make deals, old man. Just hand over your pet shinobi to us. It'll be your head next."
"Yanagi!!" Shicho-sama screamed, his voice high and tight. There was an explosion of movement upstairs, feet colliding with the floor with a series of heavy, powerful thuds.
"Oh, at least you had enough to bring them to us," mused the shinobi above you. "I'll let you live, old man."
There's a tearing sound across the courtyard as someone leaps through the flimsy wall, and a second later, a second body follows them. "Aw c'mon, Yanagi-san! We just wanted to see what all the buzz was about. Some lord of a minor village found themself a shinobi, after all! We just wanted to snatch you up and put you to better jobs than killing other minor lords that your minor lord had some stupid feud over."
The first person who jumped through the wall was your kaasan. The second person was a rabidly grinning woman with a proud Kiri hitai-ate worn around her head.
Yua-obaasan told you to run and hide when you see a Kiri shinobi. Yua-obaasan told you to run and hide when you see a Kiri shinobi. You start fleeing.
"What makes you think I want anything to do with you?!" Kaasan's voice rings out, loud and clear.
"Well you're my pet project," says the first shinobi's voice, somehow finding itself behind you in the courtyard from an upstairs room without a sound. "A shinobi, this close to Kirigakure, working for one of our minor lords? It couldn't be a missing nin, none of them are that stupid. So it must be some new blood, and hey, maybe we could actually use them instead of throwing them to the dogs we might normally do."
"I couldn't care about your ambitions, dog!" Kaasan says, her voice cracking.
The shinobi laughs at her like he laughed at Shicho-sama, loud, hearty, and filled with life.
Kaasan raises her hands up. "Fuuinjutsu: Red Pain Prison!" Her voice roars. You turn back despite yourself, standing still in the middle of the clearing in front of the house.
The courtyard is alight with towering red sigils. Red light envelops the three figures standing inside the seal, and they arch back as pain fills their pain receptors. Screams break free of kaasan and the second shinobi's mouths, wretched and hurt, filling the air and the sky. Their screaming permeates the air uninterrupted for the better part of the minute, and as you watch, their body's convulse and twist in horrid ways.
Blissful silence returns to the air as the three of them collapse. The first to get up is the first shinobi, standing tall and strong as soon as he gets his bearings. The second is kaasan, slumped over and coughing up blood even as she tries to get up. The other shinobi doesn't get up at all.
The first shinobi snarls a single word. "Uzumaki." He lunges across the courtyard, so fast you don't notice him move until kaasan doesn't have a head anymore.
He lifts her head up high and inspects it, checking her hair, her eyes, and inspecting her mouth, uncaring and impassive as blood weeps from her severed neck and her body flops onto the gravel.
"That's six heads now. Have no idea how one of the bastards got this close to Kiri, but it's always a good day when I expand my collection." He pulls a scroll out of his pocket and, with a puff of smoke, seals away her head.
He disappears a second later after picking up his unconscious comrade, disappearing just like he appeared.
[ ] Run: You don't know where the shinobi went, that killed kaasan. If he finds you, he might know you are Uzumaki, and you are weak. Run and hide, like Yua-obaasan always told you.
[ ] Enter the courtyard: Kaasan is in the courtyard. She's dead, like one of the legendary shinobi from Yua-obaasan's stories. It doesn't seem real, like she should get up at any moment.. Perhaps you can say goodbye.
Afterwards, you will not have kaasan to rely on anymore. You'll have to take your life into your own hands.
[ ] Flee over the river, where the mist grows thicker: In the center of the thickest mists lies Kirigakure no Sato, the great shinobi village of Water Country. You will blend in with the poor in the dense population centers closer to Kirigakure.
[ ] Flee away from the river, towards the ocean: You've never seen the ocean before, but kaasan had told you stories of it. The shore is home to trade ports and merchants, with plenty of fish and wealth.
[ ] Stay in Senki-Mura: Senki-Mura is the only place you've known. It's where kaasan lived. Even if things are never the same again, it's fine to hold onto things, right? Shicho-sama might be willing to help you.
The Less Walked Trail (Chapter 3)
[X] Enter the courtyard
[X] Flee away from the river, towards the ocean
You stumble back through the open doors with eyes for only one thing. Your feet crunch through the gravel of the courtyard and you see kaasan's headless body. The gravel beneath her neck has been stained a grisly red. You grab kaasan's hand with your much smaller hand. It's as cold as the night air in your hands.
"Kaasan," you say, her name coming out wet and garbled. Get up, you want to say.
She wouldn't get up, even if you called out for her a hundred times.
There is no face to look at, to remember one last time. Just her slight body, short like you will grow up to be, covered in her dark kimono, as ragged as your clothes are. There are a few strands of her red hair, darker than your hair is, mixed in with her blood.
"She's dead, child." The voice was hoarse and tired. It was Shicho-sama, stepping out of another doorway into the courtyard.
"You," you said. You let her die. You brought her to those kiri shinobi. You killed her. Your voice fails you. The words can't come up past the squeezed tight feeling in your chest.
"She died for you, you know." His voice has a wry tilt to it. "Funny, really."
You made this happen, you scream silently, you killed her. Shicho-sama, no, Shicho hears none of it.
"Why are you still here, child? I never even invited you." He laughs dryly. "She didn't die for my sake, or for my reasons. When she died, she only ever thought of you." You watch as he leaves, his sandals echoing on the wooden floor of his mansion. You think that if that shinobi had attacked him, he would have died just like kaasan.
You grab a lock of kaasan's hair from where it lies in the blood-soaked gravel and stuff it into your pocket.
When you finally leave her side, your footsteps crunch with an unspoken fury.
-/-
You won't stay in Shicho's village anymore. You'll go where the mist is thinner, to the great expanse of water that dwarfs the river. You had started walking without a goal in mind, but by the time you had met with a trail going northward, you had decided to get far away from Kiri. If you were near Kiri, their shinobi could find you.
Away from the river, and away from the mist.
But still, the road was hard. You don't know where you were going, you don't know where the trail would end, and you have never walked this long before. The soles of your feet are burning, even despite the cool mud that you're trekking through. Your legs feel almost boneless. The only reason you're still walking is the feeling of pulsing blood racing through your body, keeping your face flushed red, the idea that stopping now would be giving in, and the rising feeling that you don't know what you would do if you stopped. The trees here are sparse, growing tall and wide, one trunk every twenty feet, their shade not falling upon the trail, letting the moon shine directly down on you.
The moon is high in the sky, on its slow descent back to the horizon. Your eyes burn from the feeling of keeping them open. Each step feels like a gargantuan taking, pulling your foot from the mud, planting it just one more step forward. But you have to power through. What would you even do, if you stopped? You don't know how to get food. Every second you stay where the mists were thick was a second wasted. You have to keep going.
You have to keep going, keep pushing forward.
You have to keep going, take another step….
You have to.
Your eyes were closing, you couldn't fight it anymore. Just, one more step, just have to go one more step….
You were asleep before you hit the ground.
-/-
When you wake up, the sun isn't yet fully risen. You're covered in mud, leaves and sticks, on your face, in your clothes, on your limbs and in your hair. Your muscles complain as you fight to get yourself up, tired from a long night of pushing yourself harder and harder and then followed up with an even worse time sleeping splayed prone in the middle of a muddy trail.
"Are you lost?" There's a face in the middle of your field of vision. Someone has crouched down to look you in the face. You can't force any words out, but you manage to shake your head. You're not lost. You don't need help, you'll make your way to the coast on your own.
"Okay," he says, and he reaches down and picks you up like an unruly cat. With one arm wrapped around you, he slings you over his shoulder. And then, as if he has done nothing out of the ordinary, he starts walking down the trail.
You scrabble to get out of his grip. Touma-kun, even being several years older than you, had never been able to pick you up like this. You used your nails and your arms, scratching feverishly against his thick jacket, pulling on the prayer beads wrapped against his neck.
He grunts uncomfortably at your efforts. "I thought you were going this direction?" He points down the trail with his free hand.
You were. It would be much easier as well, to be carried than to keep walking.
When you cease your frantic attempts at freedom, he continues walking down the trail, his sandals slapping wetly as they pull out of the mud.
The man carrying you is less of a man and more of a teenager, a boyish look to his face despite his height. He's well tanned and well built, with lean muscle showing through his baggy clothes. He wears a beige jacket without a hood or decoration, and a ring of blood red prayer beads hangs off his neck. When you touch them, they're much heavier than you'd think they'd be, like you're holding a log and not a single bead. His hair is cut short, but its spiky nature is still clear, even with how short it is.
You bounce slightly in his hold with every step, and it makes almost a soothing rhythm. Despite the budding sunlight coming from the rising sun, you find your eyes slipping closed once again.
-/-
Your face is covered in cold sweat, and a word is trapped in your mouth. You have to get away from Kiri, you have to get away from Kiri. You scrabble against the grip the teen has you held in.
He lets you go, and you drop to the ground like a disgruntled cat. You pull yourself together, an unspoken question in your eyes as you look up at him.
He looks back at you. "I'm going to show you how to fish." He pulls a knife from an indistinguishable pocket in his pants and presses it into your hands. There's a confident, easygoing smile on his face. He gestures behind you.
Behind you is a quietly gurgling stream, naughtt but 4 feet wide and half a foot deep.
"Fishing with a knife is hard. Watch me."
He pulls a second knife out of his pants, and crouches down at the edge of the stream. He gestures for you to get closer.
He holds the knife in a reverse grip and stares intently down at the stream with intent focus, his breathing stilling until you can't even hear it. He sits there, completely motionless for half a minute, and then in a burst of movement, he thrusts the knife down and skewers a trout straight through the head.
He shows off his catch. "Hitting the head is the best. You shouldn't try it though. Just hit anywhere on the fish with a good strike." He sets the wriggling fish down on the ground a couple feet away from the stream. "Now, you try."
He moves aside and you crouch down next to the stream just like he did. You slow your breathing and stare intently down at the stream beneath you.
When the first fish comes by, you snap out as fast as you can and miss entirely, striking a solid rock at the bottom of the stream. You snarl at the pain that flares in your wrist.
"Don't look in front of you. Look upstream, and follow a fish as it comes to you. Then strike as it moves into your range."
You miss the second fish as well, lunging for a strike at it as it swims leisurely past you, just outside of your reach. You growl.
"Let some opportunities slip you by. Here, patience is the master. Wait for the best opportunity before striking."
You let four more fish pass you by before you strike out at a fish once again. This time, you cut it, a gash opening on its side, and it flails in the water even as it swims on.
"Go! Get that fish, with your hands, with your knife. When the enemy has been weakened, that's the time to strike!" You leap into the water at his words, and in two steps you bring yourself close enough to skewer the fish entirely with the knife.
You pull the knife out of the water, the fish sliding off the knife as you do, and you catch it with your other hand. It's a wider, fatter fish than the one the teen killed, with pink scales unlike the other's silver. When you look up at the teen, he offers you a wide grin.
"Next, you need to prepare the fish." The teen shows his own catch. He carefully shows you how to gut the fish, pulling the entrails out and throwing them away into the stream.
"If we had a fire, this is where we'd cook it. But we don't. So now, we'll just eat it." He slides his knife into his gutted fish and peels off a line of meat to eat. "Avoid eating the head or the fins. If you want to, you can cut off the scales like so."
Once you've finished with your fish, throwing away its remains into the stream, the teen bows to you. "My student, it was my pleasure to be your teacher."
His point made, he turns and walks back onto the trail.
You run to catch up to him, and tug on his pants. When he turns, you show him the knife he gave you, and try to give it back to him.
"Keep it," he dismisses you. "You can't be left defenseless."
You trail after him, your stubby limbs having to take three steps for every stride of his lanky legs, and he slows down to keep pace with you.
While you walk with him down the trail, he takes the opportunity to talk to you, explaining things and teaching you.
Choose two:
[ ] Himself: He talks about himself, his duty, and his faith.
[ ] Knives: He teaches you about the correct ways to use a knife. Particularly in combat.
[ ] Survival: He teaches you the basics about how to survive alone in the wilderness, how to start a fire, and how to find shelter.
[ ] Chakra: He teaches you about the existence of the inner energy within everyone, chakra. He thinks the most important part of that for you is not using it, but sensing other's chakra.
[X] Flee away from the river, towards the ocean
You stumble back through the open doors with eyes for only one thing. Your feet crunch through the gravel of the courtyard and you see kaasan's headless body. The gravel beneath her neck has been stained a grisly red. You grab kaasan's hand with your much smaller hand. It's as cold as the night air in your hands.
"Kaasan," you say, her name coming out wet and garbled. Get up, you want to say.
She wouldn't get up, even if you called out for her a hundred times.
There is no face to look at, to remember one last time. Just her slight body, short like you will grow up to be, covered in her dark kimono, as ragged as your clothes are. There are a few strands of her red hair, darker than your hair is, mixed in with her blood.
"She's dead, child." The voice was hoarse and tired. It was Shicho-sama, stepping out of another doorway into the courtyard.
"You," you said. You let her die. You brought her to those kiri shinobi. You killed her. Your voice fails you. The words can't come up past the squeezed tight feeling in your chest.
"She died for you, you know." His voice has a wry tilt to it. "Funny, really."
You made this happen, you scream silently, you killed her. Shicho-sama, no, Shicho hears none of it.
"Why are you still here, child? I never even invited you." He laughs dryly. "She didn't die for my sake, or for my reasons. When she died, she only ever thought of you." You watch as he leaves, his sandals echoing on the wooden floor of his mansion. You think that if that shinobi had attacked him, he would have died just like kaasan.
You grab a lock of kaasan's hair from where it lies in the blood-soaked gravel and stuff it into your pocket.
When you finally leave her side, your footsteps crunch with an unspoken fury.
-/-
You won't stay in Shicho's village anymore. You'll go where the mist is thinner, to the great expanse of water that dwarfs the river. You had started walking without a goal in mind, but by the time you had met with a trail going northward, you had decided to get far away from Kiri. If you were near Kiri, their shinobi could find you.
Away from the river, and away from the mist.
But still, the road was hard. You don't know where you were going, you don't know where the trail would end, and you have never walked this long before. The soles of your feet are burning, even despite the cool mud that you're trekking through. Your legs feel almost boneless. The only reason you're still walking is the feeling of pulsing blood racing through your body, keeping your face flushed red, the idea that stopping now would be giving in, and the rising feeling that you don't know what you would do if you stopped. The trees here are sparse, growing tall and wide, one trunk every twenty feet, their shade not falling upon the trail, letting the moon shine directly down on you.
The moon is high in the sky, on its slow descent back to the horizon. Your eyes burn from the feeling of keeping them open. Each step feels like a gargantuan taking, pulling your foot from the mud, planting it just one more step forward. But you have to power through. What would you even do, if you stopped? You don't know how to get food. Every second you stay where the mists were thick was a second wasted. You have to keep going.
You have to keep going, keep pushing forward.
You have to keep going, take another step….
You have to.
Your eyes were closing, you couldn't fight it anymore. Just, one more step, just have to go one more step….
You were asleep before you hit the ground.
-/-
When you wake up, the sun isn't yet fully risen. You're covered in mud, leaves and sticks, on your face, in your clothes, on your limbs and in your hair. Your muscles complain as you fight to get yourself up, tired from a long night of pushing yourself harder and harder and then followed up with an even worse time sleeping splayed prone in the middle of a muddy trail.
"Are you lost?" There's a face in the middle of your field of vision. Someone has crouched down to look you in the face. You can't force any words out, but you manage to shake your head. You're not lost. You don't need help, you'll make your way to the coast on your own.
"Okay," he says, and he reaches down and picks you up like an unruly cat. With one arm wrapped around you, he slings you over his shoulder. And then, as if he has done nothing out of the ordinary, he starts walking down the trail.
You scrabble to get out of his grip. Touma-kun, even being several years older than you, had never been able to pick you up like this. You used your nails and your arms, scratching feverishly against his thick jacket, pulling on the prayer beads wrapped against his neck.
He grunts uncomfortably at your efforts. "I thought you were going this direction?" He points down the trail with his free hand.
You were. It would be much easier as well, to be carried than to keep walking.
When you cease your frantic attempts at freedom, he continues walking down the trail, his sandals slapping wetly as they pull out of the mud.
The man carrying you is less of a man and more of a teenager, a boyish look to his face despite his height. He's well tanned and well built, with lean muscle showing through his baggy clothes. He wears a beige jacket without a hood or decoration, and a ring of blood red prayer beads hangs off his neck. When you touch them, they're much heavier than you'd think they'd be, like you're holding a log and not a single bead. His hair is cut short, but its spiky nature is still clear, even with how short it is.
You bounce slightly in his hold with every step, and it makes almost a soothing rhythm. Despite the budding sunlight coming from the rising sun, you find your eyes slipping closed once again.
-/-
Your face is covered in cold sweat, and a word is trapped in your mouth. You have to get away from Kiri, you have to get away from Kiri. You scrabble against the grip the teen has you held in.
He lets you go, and you drop to the ground like a disgruntled cat. You pull yourself together, an unspoken question in your eyes as you look up at him.
He looks back at you. "I'm going to show you how to fish." He pulls a knife from an indistinguishable pocket in his pants and presses it into your hands. There's a confident, easygoing smile on his face. He gestures behind you.
Behind you is a quietly gurgling stream, naughtt but 4 feet wide and half a foot deep.
"Fishing with a knife is hard. Watch me."
He pulls a second knife out of his pants, and crouches down at the edge of the stream. He gestures for you to get closer.
He holds the knife in a reverse grip and stares intently down at the stream with intent focus, his breathing stilling until you can't even hear it. He sits there, completely motionless for half a minute, and then in a burst of movement, he thrusts the knife down and skewers a trout straight through the head.
He shows off his catch. "Hitting the head is the best. You shouldn't try it though. Just hit anywhere on the fish with a good strike." He sets the wriggling fish down on the ground a couple feet away from the stream. "Now, you try."
He moves aside and you crouch down next to the stream just like he did. You slow your breathing and stare intently down at the stream beneath you.
When the first fish comes by, you snap out as fast as you can and miss entirely, striking a solid rock at the bottom of the stream. You snarl at the pain that flares in your wrist.
"Don't look in front of you. Look upstream, and follow a fish as it comes to you. Then strike as it moves into your range."
You miss the second fish as well, lunging for a strike at it as it swims leisurely past you, just outside of your reach. You growl.
"Let some opportunities slip you by. Here, patience is the master. Wait for the best opportunity before striking."
You let four more fish pass you by before you strike out at a fish once again. This time, you cut it, a gash opening on its side, and it flails in the water even as it swims on.
"Go! Get that fish, with your hands, with your knife. When the enemy has been weakened, that's the time to strike!" You leap into the water at his words, and in two steps you bring yourself close enough to skewer the fish entirely with the knife.
You pull the knife out of the water, the fish sliding off the knife as you do, and you catch it with your other hand. It's a wider, fatter fish than the one the teen killed, with pink scales unlike the other's silver. When you look up at the teen, he offers you a wide grin.
"Next, you need to prepare the fish." The teen shows his own catch. He carefully shows you how to gut the fish, pulling the entrails out and throwing them away into the stream.
"If we had a fire, this is where we'd cook it. But we don't. So now, we'll just eat it." He slides his knife into his gutted fish and peels off a line of meat to eat. "Avoid eating the head or the fins. If you want to, you can cut off the scales like so."
Once you've finished with your fish, throwing away its remains into the stream, the teen bows to you. "My student, it was my pleasure to be your teacher."
His point made, he turns and walks back onto the trail.
You run to catch up to him, and tug on his pants. When he turns, you show him the knife he gave you, and try to give it back to him.
"Keep it," he dismisses you. "You can't be left defenseless."
You trail after him, your stubby limbs having to take three steps for every stride of his lanky legs, and he slows down to keep pace with you.
While you walk with him down the trail, he takes the opportunity to talk to you, explaining things and teaching you.
Choose two:
[ ] Himself: He talks about himself, his duty, and his faith.
[ ] Knives: He teaches you about the correct ways to use a knife. Particularly in combat.
[ ] Survival: He teaches you the basics about how to survive alone in the wilderness, how to start a fire, and how to find shelter.
[ ] Chakra: He teaches you about the existence of the inner energy within everyone, chakra. He thinks the most important part of that for you is not using it, but sensing other's chakra.
Ranboku-Shi, City of the Heart (Chapter 4)
[X] Survival
[X] Chakra
You and the teen walk down the trail for several days together. In that time, he takes it upon himself to continue teaching you. The first night, he shows you how to make shelter. He takes you off the trail and into the forest.
He shows you how to find and build a temporary shelter. To find fallen branches and dead leaves and set them up into a lean-to, to prop it up on a dead tree. To find somewhere where the trees stand tall, with their leaves spread wide and thick so that rain won't fall on you.
"It's better to use crafted materials for a shelter, if you have them." He explains. "Large pieces of fabric can be reused multiple times. You can use your clothes for them, if you have more layers or you have other ways around the cold." He lends you his jacket to construct a shelter with. He didn't have a shirt on underneath.
You go to sleep under a shelter of your own making.
The next day, you tear apart the shelter to remove traces of yourself, and get back on the trail. The sun is rising in the sky and clouds threaten to smother its light completely, a clear forecast of rain on the horizon.
An hour into the walk, the teen starts to talk. "Chakra is an energy within all humans. It is the combination of the body's energy and the heart's energy. Through training, anyone can use their chakra. The results of their training will rely on their inherent potential, and the strength of their will."
"Chakra is the energy that shinobi use, as well as monks and samurai. Through chakra, they elevate themselves above the average people of the world. No civilian is able to take down a shinobi."
He lets those words sit in the air. If you had had chakra, could you have saved kaasan?
"The first step to using chakra is finding it within yourself. You have lived with your own chakra beneath your skin your entire life. You don't know what the feeling of chakra is because it's all you've ever known. Instead, focus on my body. I will be running chakra through my hands randomly. Try and pick out those moments."
You stare at his hands for the rest of the day, trying to feel those moments of chakra. You think you pick it up, a couple times, a burning heat that you can feel distantly from his direction. But it could have just been the sun.
You don't stop until the sun is well on its way down the horizon, its yellow glow turning orange as the night sky rises opposite to it. You and the teen peel off the trail and walk to a small river, wider, deeper, and rushing by in peels of white as it breaks upon the rocks.
"Fishing in rivers can be significantly harder than in streams. Catch five fish."
You squat along the side of the river with your knife held in hand. The first fish flashes by you, the river carrying it much faster than the stream would have.
"Patience," he says. He didn't need to, you would have remembered anyways.
You hit the first fish you lunge at, and you set it next to you carefully. You let four more fish pass you by until you lunge again, and miss. It disappeared under a spray of white water before you thrust, and you miscalculated.
You wait longer before lunging again, landing a perfect strike to the head. Landing a perfect head blow makes up for missing the previous lunge, you think. You let even more fish pass you by before going for the fourth, fifth, and sixth kills, and each time, you land a kill. You stand up proudly, looking at the teen. His smile is warm, even if his voice is cold.
"Now, we will set up a fire to properly cook your catches." He shows you how to pull up dry branches in the leafy debris of the forest floor, the branches that are brown and crooked, thin and long, and other branches, wide and thick, and some small kindling, tiny, flaky and easily broken.
He builds a tall square of sticks, overlapping one after the other with all the sticks that you have found. He clears a large area around his pile of tinder, a good three feet of dead ground on all sids to prevent the fire from spreading out. He pulls a knife from his pockets, this one different from the one he showed before.
"You need to find a good fire-starting rock. A good fire starting rock is one that is hard and strong, that your knife will cut against and not easily mark. The best option is flint." He pulls a jagged piece of flint from one of his pockets. "This was obtained in a marketplace. Good fire-starting rocks can be hard to find here. If you need to find one, either dig through the forest floor, or find a cave or cliff-face."
He throws you both the knife and the piece of flint in a casual underhand. "Strike the knife against the flint. Hold the flint in the direction of tinder. It will take multiple tries."
It does take multiple tries. You strike the flint a total of seventeen times. You count each and every try. Eventually though, a spark catches the tinder on fire, and in a short time, the whole pile is alight.
You and the teen gut the fish now, remove their scales, and skewer them on long branches you found in the undergrowth. You cook the fish over the fire, turning them this way and that to keep an even distribution of heat.
The roasted fish is one of the best things you'd ever eaten.
When you're finished eating, the teen speaks up. "Watch me carefully, and try to reach out with your senses."
He moves his hands into strange formations, slowly and carefully. "Sution: Purified Water Stream." He spits out a stream of clear water, dousing the fire instantly. That time, you felt something, well and truly. The energy he brought through his hands and mouth.
He smiles and bows. "My student, it was my pleasure to be your teacher."
The next day, he continues his exercises in your chakra sensing. "Training in chakra can take a long time. It is important that you pick fights you can win. If you can sense others' chakra, you'll be able to understand at what level of chakra training they are in."
He cycles his chakra through his hands for different amounts of time throughout the day. Sometimes for a flash so quick you never notice it, sometimes he holds the chakra for over a minute. You focus so hard on his hands that you trip and fall several times throughout the day, but you catch him cycling his chakra at least a third of the time.
When you stop that night, he has you do all the little steps, catching the food on your own, setting up the fire, cooking the food, and setting up the shelter.
"You don't need ninjutsu to get rid of a fire, my student. When a fire is small like this, you can smother it with dirt or your feet." You give him a look at putting your bare feet into the fire. "It'll build pain tolerance," he says, a smile stretching across his face yet his voice only a note higher than before. He takes off his own sandals and stomps the fire to nothingness in front of your eyes.
The routine continues for the next few days, walking with him for miles as you focus on his cycling of chakra, and you provide all the food and shelter. He lectures you on the various animals that roam Water Country, and how to treat each one. As you walk, the mist gets thinner and thinner until it's like it's almost not there at all. On the fifth day of walking, the small trail you'd been following until that point meets up with a wide, dirt road that's flanked with small stones.
"This road leads to Ranboku-shi, the largest port city north of Kirigakure," the teen says. "We'll reach it within the day. Once we reach Ranboku-shi, I'll leave for my temple."
He looks at you. "Ranboku-shi will be like nothing you've ever seen."
He's not wrong. When the skyline of Ranboku-shi breaks past the horizon, you are stunned by its sheer size. It stretches across the horizon like a bloated, fat hog, hundreds of times larger than you could imagine Senki-Mura. You can see the ocean just past it, a line of hazy blue that seems flat with how far away you are from it. You can see at least two dozen ships sitting idly in the harbor. You can see buildings that stretch taller than Shicho's house, for, or maybe even five stories tall, decorated with beautiful symbols. You can see a long road crowded by stalls bustling with people. You can see vast stretches of ramshackle wooden houses crowding the east side of the city, and you can track the path two rivers take through Ranboku-shi, cutting windy paths through the masses of buildings. There are patches of greenery even in the depths of the city, small forests swallowed on all sides by roads and buildings.
It takes half an hour of walking to cross the remaining distance to Ranboku-Shi. A tall white-painted gate greets you, with two shirtless monks, with the same blood red prayer beads, holding tall pointed spears guarding it. The gate is strange, for it stands alone, with no wall around it.
"Greetings, brother Kaeru," the left one says. "Did your journey bear fruit?"
"Greetings, brother Maguro," replies the teen, apparently Kaeru. "I was graced with bountiful harvest. Will your heart grant us passage?"
"You are always welcome within our walls. We pray your companion, too, shall find light within our walls." Both the guards push open the doors with their free hand, letting you through.
You walk past a dozen similarly white painted buildings before Kaeru stops you.
"My student," he begins. "It was my pleasure to be your teacher. I must leave now, to return to the Temple of the Heart, which lays upon Arashi Mountain." He gestures behind him, where a tall mountain towers on the west side of the city. "You will remain my student, even though we will now be separated. If you ever need to seek my guidance once again, I," he chokes on his words slightly. "I will grant you passage into the Temple of the Heart."
Kaeru shoves a small sack into your hands. "This is my gift to you as a teacher for your accomplishments under me. I pray that you find the light within your heart without me." The sack is heavy with what feels like small pieces of metal.
Kaeru bows to you one last time, long and deep, and then he's gone, leaving you alone in Ranboku-shi.
What do you do?
[ ] Go to the docks: The ocean in all of its glory lies just alongside the docks at the edge of Ranboku-shi. You've never seen anything as huge as it before, and it must be far larger than even Ranboku-shi. The ships that rest in the docks fascinate you as well. Where do they even go?
[ ] Go to the tall buildings: You can see the cluster of tall buildings peeking up even from where you stand at the city's edge. What type of people need buildings that tall? They'd tower even over the self-important Shicho's house.
[ ] Follow Kaeru: He's not going to get rid of you that easily. You'll follow him to his temple and learn more about the secrets of chakra from him, to become strong. He's a monk, like the stories Yua-obaachan told you, so there must be someone there who leads him, like the Uzukage lead kaasan.
[ ] Write-in
[X] Chakra
You and the teen walk down the trail for several days together. In that time, he takes it upon himself to continue teaching you. The first night, he shows you how to make shelter. He takes you off the trail and into the forest.
He shows you how to find and build a temporary shelter. To find fallen branches and dead leaves and set them up into a lean-to, to prop it up on a dead tree. To find somewhere where the trees stand tall, with their leaves spread wide and thick so that rain won't fall on you.
"It's better to use crafted materials for a shelter, if you have them." He explains. "Large pieces of fabric can be reused multiple times. You can use your clothes for them, if you have more layers or you have other ways around the cold." He lends you his jacket to construct a shelter with. He didn't have a shirt on underneath.
You go to sleep under a shelter of your own making.
The next day, you tear apart the shelter to remove traces of yourself, and get back on the trail. The sun is rising in the sky and clouds threaten to smother its light completely, a clear forecast of rain on the horizon.
An hour into the walk, the teen starts to talk. "Chakra is an energy within all humans. It is the combination of the body's energy and the heart's energy. Through training, anyone can use their chakra. The results of their training will rely on their inherent potential, and the strength of their will."
"Chakra is the energy that shinobi use, as well as monks and samurai. Through chakra, they elevate themselves above the average people of the world. No civilian is able to take down a shinobi."
He lets those words sit in the air. If you had had chakra, could you have saved kaasan?
"The first step to using chakra is finding it within yourself. You have lived with your own chakra beneath your skin your entire life. You don't know what the feeling of chakra is because it's all you've ever known. Instead, focus on my body. I will be running chakra through my hands randomly. Try and pick out those moments."
You stare at his hands for the rest of the day, trying to feel those moments of chakra. You think you pick it up, a couple times, a burning heat that you can feel distantly from his direction. But it could have just been the sun.
You don't stop until the sun is well on its way down the horizon, its yellow glow turning orange as the night sky rises opposite to it. You and the teen peel off the trail and walk to a small river, wider, deeper, and rushing by in peels of white as it breaks upon the rocks.
"Fishing in rivers can be significantly harder than in streams. Catch five fish."
You squat along the side of the river with your knife held in hand. The first fish flashes by you, the river carrying it much faster than the stream would have.
"Patience," he says. He didn't need to, you would have remembered anyways.
You hit the first fish you lunge at, and you set it next to you carefully. You let four more fish pass you by until you lunge again, and miss. It disappeared under a spray of white water before you thrust, and you miscalculated.
You wait longer before lunging again, landing a perfect strike to the head. Landing a perfect head blow makes up for missing the previous lunge, you think. You let even more fish pass you by before going for the fourth, fifth, and sixth kills, and each time, you land a kill. You stand up proudly, looking at the teen. His smile is warm, even if his voice is cold.
"Now, we will set up a fire to properly cook your catches." He shows you how to pull up dry branches in the leafy debris of the forest floor, the branches that are brown and crooked, thin and long, and other branches, wide and thick, and some small kindling, tiny, flaky and easily broken.
He builds a tall square of sticks, overlapping one after the other with all the sticks that you have found. He clears a large area around his pile of tinder, a good three feet of dead ground on all sids to prevent the fire from spreading out. He pulls a knife from his pockets, this one different from the one he showed before.
"You need to find a good fire-starting rock. A good fire starting rock is one that is hard and strong, that your knife will cut against and not easily mark. The best option is flint." He pulls a jagged piece of flint from one of his pockets. "This was obtained in a marketplace. Good fire-starting rocks can be hard to find here. If you need to find one, either dig through the forest floor, or find a cave or cliff-face."
He throws you both the knife and the piece of flint in a casual underhand. "Strike the knife against the flint. Hold the flint in the direction of tinder. It will take multiple tries."
It does take multiple tries. You strike the flint a total of seventeen times. You count each and every try. Eventually though, a spark catches the tinder on fire, and in a short time, the whole pile is alight.
You and the teen gut the fish now, remove their scales, and skewer them on long branches you found in the undergrowth. You cook the fish over the fire, turning them this way and that to keep an even distribution of heat.
The roasted fish is one of the best things you'd ever eaten.
When you're finished eating, the teen speaks up. "Watch me carefully, and try to reach out with your senses."
He moves his hands into strange formations, slowly and carefully. "Sution: Purified Water Stream." He spits out a stream of clear water, dousing the fire instantly. That time, you felt something, well and truly. The energy he brought through his hands and mouth.
He smiles and bows. "My student, it was my pleasure to be your teacher."
The next day, he continues his exercises in your chakra sensing. "Training in chakra can take a long time. It is important that you pick fights you can win. If you can sense others' chakra, you'll be able to understand at what level of chakra training they are in."
He cycles his chakra through his hands for different amounts of time throughout the day. Sometimes for a flash so quick you never notice it, sometimes he holds the chakra for over a minute. You focus so hard on his hands that you trip and fall several times throughout the day, but you catch him cycling his chakra at least a third of the time.
When you stop that night, he has you do all the little steps, catching the food on your own, setting up the fire, cooking the food, and setting up the shelter.
"You don't need ninjutsu to get rid of a fire, my student. When a fire is small like this, you can smother it with dirt or your feet." You give him a look at putting your bare feet into the fire. "It'll build pain tolerance," he says, a smile stretching across his face yet his voice only a note higher than before. He takes off his own sandals and stomps the fire to nothingness in front of your eyes.
The routine continues for the next few days, walking with him for miles as you focus on his cycling of chakra, and you provide all the food and shelter. He lectures you on the various animals that roam Water Country, and how to treat each one. As you walk, the mist gets thinner and thinner until it's like it's almost not there at all. On the fifth day of walking, the small trail you'd been following until that point meets up with a wide, dirt road that's flanked with small stones.
"This road leads to Ranboku-shi, the largest port city north of Kirigakure," the teen says. "We'll reach it within the day. Once we reach Ranboku-shi, I'll leave for my temple."
He looks at you. "Ranboku-shi will be like nothing you've ever seen."
He's not wrong. When the skyline of Ranboku-shi breaks past the horizon, you are stunned by its sheer size. It stretches across the horizon like a bloated, fat hog, hundreds of times larger than you could imagine Senki-Mura. You can see the ocean just past it, a line of hazy blue that seems flat with how far away you are from it. You can see at least two dozen ships sitting idly in the harbor. You can see buildings that stretch taller than Shicho's house, for, or maybe even five stories tall, decorated with beautiful symbols. You can see a long road crowded by stalls bustling with people. You can see vast stretches of ramshackle wooden houses crowding the east side of the city, and you can track the path two rivers take through Ranboku-shi, cutting windy paths through the masses of buildings. There are patches of greenery even in the depths of the city, small forests swallowed on all sides by roads and buildings.
It takes half an hour of walking to cross the remaining distance to Ranboku-Shi. A tall white-painted gate greets you, with two shirtless monks, with the same blood red prayer beads, holding tall pointed spears guarding it. The gate is strange, for it stands alone, with no wall around it.
"Greetings, brother Kaeru," the left one says. "Did your journey bear fruit?"
"Greetings, brother Maguro," replies the teen, apparently Kaeru. "I was graced with bountiful harvest. Will your heart grant us passage?"
"You are always welcome within our walls. We pray your companion, too, shall find light within our walls." Both the guards push open the doors with their free hand, letting you through.
You walk past a dozen similarly white painted buildings before Kaeru stops you.
"My student," he begins. "It was my pleasure to be your teacher. I must leave now, to return to the Temple of the Heart, which lays upon Arashi Mountain." He gestures behind him, where a tall mountain towers on the west side of the city. "You will remain my student, even though we will now be separated. If you ever need to seek my guidance once again, I," he chokes on his words slightly. "I will grant you passage into the Temple of the Heart."
Kaeru shoves a small sack into your hands. "This is my gift to you as a teacher for your accomplishments under me. I pray that you find the light within your heart without me." The sack is heavy with what feels like small pieces of metal.
Kaeru bows to you one last time, long and deep, and then he's gone, leaving you alone in Ranboku-shi.
What do you do?
[ ] Go to the docks: The ocean in all of its glory lies just alongside the docks at the edge of Ranboku-shi. You've never seen anything as huge as it before, and it must be far larger than even Ranboku-shi. The ships that rest in the docks fascinate you as well. Where do they even go?
[ ] Go to the tall buildings: You can see the cluster of tall buildings peeking up even from where you stand at the city's edge. What type of people need buildings that tall? They'd tower even over the self-important Shicho's house.
[ ] Follow Kaeru: He's not going to get rid of you that easily. You'll follow him to his temple and learn more about the secrets of chakra from him, to become strong. He's a monk, like the stories Yua-obaachan told you, so there must be someone there who leads him, like the Uzukage lead kaasan.
[ ] Write-in
Chakra Sensing +50, up to E- (50/100 XP)
Bukijutsu +15 (40/50 XP)
Survival +300, up to D(300/600 XP)
I've added some description on how the ranking system works on the character sheet. Also going to start trying the open voting functionality.
Bukijutsu +15 (40/50 XP)
Survival +300, up to D(300/600 XP)
I've added some description on how the ranking system works on the character sheet. Also going to start trying the open voting functionality.
Sensei Kougeki no Wokou (Chapter 5)
[X] Go to the docks
The stories of the sea you have heard from kaasan and Yua-obaasan make it sound unreal, like something that shouldn't exist, something far greater than the river you knew. But the glimpse you got of it peeking up over the horizon over the intimidating size of Ranboku-shi makes it seem real, that there really is an immense body of water, formidable and undrinkable, that stretches past the horizon a hundred times. That people really travel over it with gargantuan vessels larger than houses, with sails spread wider than the sun. You could see glimpses of them on the horizon, back then, mere brown specks topped with white resting near the vast stretch of washed-out blue behind them.
You want to know what the ocean is like. Yua-obaasan said it was dangerous, that waves ten times the size of men billowed across it. Kaasan said she grew up across the ocean, and that she crossed it to come to Water Country, and that the ocean was beautiful, and that she missed it.
Ranboku-shi's myriad of buildings blurred past you as you move through its streets. As you went deeper into its depths, the buildings got louder and more colorful, with signs you can't read popping up over what felt like every building, and crowds of people getting more and more dense until you couldn't hear your own thoughts over the clamor of footsteps and voices.
You push the world out of focus until you can't hear them and you can only hear your footsteps and the beat of your heart as you slip past the hordes of people, holding to the edges of the road, pushing yourself to keep moving faster.
You zone back in to a soft hand pressing down on your shoulder. A dark skinned woman with blond hair, dressed in a wealthy shirt decorated with floral patterns, and a long skirt looks down at you.
"I said, are you okay? Do you need help, child?" she says, her eyebrows furrowed and a sad look in her eyes. You shrug her hand off of your shoulder and shake your head no, and keep running towards the docks.
The first thing you notice as you get closer to the docks is the smell of salt and fish. It's pungent and heavy, settling over the roads with a deliberate weight. You pass by merchants and tradesmen shouting from over the stalls about their prices and their fish, with stalls cram packed with produce. There are somehow even more people here than earlier, at least forty people crammed into the road.
Then the docks are in sight, and all your thoughts leave your head, because you see the ocean behind it. Roiling waves dance in the distance, a symphony of blue. The rhythmic crash of waves as they slam into the beach beneath the wooden docks, the salty brine in the air. You find yourself climbing over a fence and clambering onto the docks before you know it, peering down at the ocean over the edge of the docks.
You dip one hand into the ocean and scoop up a handful of seawater, and stick it into your mouth. It tastes nasty, far too strong and salty, far stronger than anything you've ever had before. You spit out the water into the ocean, trying to get the taste off of your tongue. It doesn't work, but you keep on trying.
Wiping your wet hand on your pants, you decide that that experiment was a failure. Don't drink the ocean.
The ocean was gorgeous nonetheless. The sun reflecting off of it created shimmers of white that rose and fell with the waves, that were clear as day without any mist suffocating it with blank whiteness.
You inspected the ships next. They were vast, wooden things, that were submerged halfway into the waves, that stretched as tall as the tallest tree you saw on your journey here. Some of them had colorful, flashy flags fluttering half-heartedly in the wind at the top of the masts. Other flags were completely white and washed-out.
You picked out one ship that was larger than any other, completely painted over in block red and white, even under the water, where barnacles encrusted it's hull, and stretching twice as far as the dock itself did. It's attached to the dock only by a row of massive ropes and complex knots that reach from the dock all the way up to the deck of the ship, a dozen or so feet above you.
The gargantuan ship is mysterious. Why do ships need to be so massive in the first place? What could possibly take up this much space? You clamber up the ropes, your hands chafing against their surface, but by suspending yourself across three separate ropes, you manage to climb all the way onto the deck.
You take a moment to catch your breath, and then look around the deck. The most prominent feature of the deck are the masts, as thick around as trees yet never tapering. There's a set of cabins, sitting strategically at the back of the deck, and a gaping opening in front of them, a set of stairs that leads into the depths of the ship.
You jiggle the door handle of one of the cabins. It's locked, and so are the others.
Footsteps interrupt your inspection of the deck and someone bursts forth from the staircase. It's a man with short, straight black hair, a pair of glasses resting crookedly on his nose, and a chubby face that makes him look young, dressed in a ratty blue kimono and a straw farmer's hat. He's carrying a slim bag over one shoulder that he holds gently. He takes one look at you and laughs easily.
"Oh, it was just a child. Sorry about this, but I don't want you taking the fall for me!" He grabs you with one arm, carrying you pressed against his body like the bag he has slung over his other shoulder. You wriggle in his grasp, disgruntled with his treatment of you, but you stop moving as he leaps off the deck and runs down the ropes with practiced ease, his other hand keeping his straw hat on his head. He keeps running down the docks with you in his grasp when two figures burst from the ship you were just on in similar fashion.
"Those shinobi really aren't happy with me now," he laughs, his feet hitting the ground at a breakneck pace. One of the shinobi, still sprinting after you, releases a spray of kunai that nearly clips your carrier.
"I need a distraction to get away from them," he says, thinking aloud. "Can't make hand seals while carrying the child, can't get weapons while carrying the child, hmmm…" he trails off.
He jerks suddenly as he shoves an ordinary dock worker out of the way with enough force to send him staggering, almost knocking him off the edge, another spray of kunai coming close enough to graze him.
"Well, I'll come back for you. Don't worry! I won't let anything bad, well, worse than this happen," he says, quiet enough that you have to strain to hear him. Then he moves you to his other hand and throws you bodily off the docks like a football, and you make a solid airtime before your sudden physical introduction to the ocean. The splash of water you make is large enough to briefly hide the man's figure.
The water stings against your eyes, and you keep your mouth screwed close from drinking any more of the sea water. You've never swum before, outside of paddling in the shallows of the river, and it shows. You struggle to swim upwards, your arms flailing more than propelling you with any proper form. Your lungs burn as you nearly reach the surface, the sun gleaming through the salty water.
A hand catches you on the wrist and pulls you up out of the water. It's one of the shinobi who was chasing the man, a Kiri hitae-ate tied around her neck, a look of contempt draped across her features, standing on top of the rolling ocean waves.
"Hey brat," she says. "You know anything about that man who threw you?" Her point is punctuated by her drawing a kunai.
You shake your head no. What if she knows, will she know? The Uzumaki all have red hair, you have red hair.
"You sure?" she drawls, her kunai inching towards your throat.
You try to get her to drop you, wiggling your wrist and clawing at her grip on you. You shake your head no more emphatically.
She sighs. "Just say words brat, I don't want to make it a thing to kill a baby barely off of her mother's teat."
The words come up dry in your throat but you force them out. "No," you choke.
She looks at you like a barnacle. "That wasn't that hard, was it." She releases your wrist and you plop back into the salty waves. "Wait up, Souta!" she hollers as she bounds off of the ocean waves and towards her companion.
You flounder alone in the ocean waves for what feels like ages before you figure out how to kick your legs to get propulsion. In that time, you tasted more salt than you'd ever liked to imagine. Even then, you struggled against the ocean waves, your limbs starting to feel heavy from a long day of walking and struggling against the ocean waves. Even when you got close to the beach, the wooden docks, supported above sea level and spanning the vast majority of the beach, got in the way. Your arms weren't long enough to grab onto it, but it got in the way of simply swimming onto the beach.
When you were pulled out of the ocean this time, you took it with slightly less complaint than the previous time. It helped that you were set down immediately this time.
"Alright, kid. Funayoi said it was you he threw into the ocean, that ungrateful brat, so he said we should at least give you something for your troubles." You give your rescuer a look, your hair stiff with salt and your clothes heavy with absorbed water. At least you made sure to hold onto your knife and the pouch that Kaeru gave you.
Your rescuer is a dark skinned woman with overly long black hair that spills all over her shape. She wears black on black with a bit more black, with a thick, bulky vest riddled with pockets. She reeks of gunpowder and cigarettes.
"Yeah, yeah. It got the shinobi off his back though, so don't cry me a river."
She starts walking down the docks with her hands buried in her pockets. "What, you follow or not? Funayoi'll have to find you himself if you run away now."
You fall in line and follow her. She leads you to another ship, over half a mile down the docks. It's not even half the size of the ship you ventured upon earlier, but it's still quite large. The sail is only a blank white, boat unpainted and frankly wooden. It's tied down with only a single, larged, corded knot, but a rope ladder has been conveniently drooped down it's side.
Atop the ship, you're greeted by a small crowd, Funayoi hiding within. A purple haired woman wearing tarnished black samurai armor with her hands on her hips stands at its front. Dark eyebags shadow her eyes and her face is twisted into a wry smile, a scar cutting across its right side.
"Sorry about my ol' quartermaster Funayoii here chucking you into the ocean like a rat. Apparently some bastard among us hasn't learnt his manners yet, treating a young lady like that."
"Language!" Funayoi hisses from his place in the crowd.
"Yeah yeah, she really is a kid," the woman muses. "How old are you? Four? Three?" You nod when she says three.
"Damn, really? Most three year olds I've known of woulda been too busy crying to walk back to look me in the face. But whatever. I'm the captain of these idiots, Captain Oui. Funayoii insisted that we make up the trouble to you," she says, rolling her eyes, as a couple of people in the crowd jeer at him. "So I'll do you a favor. Any one favor kid, but it can't be ridiculous. I'm not moving the moon for you, or make you a princess or anything stupid. I'll even stick around in this shitty city for longer than we planned."
Your rescuer coughs behind you.
"You can leave now, Taihou. Go back to making out with your cannon," Oui says, rolling her eyes. Your rescuer skips out from behind you and runs below deck.
"What's your answer, kid?"
[ ] Transport: Oui and her crew will take you away from the Water Country and away from Kirigakure. They might get into trouble on the way, but it would be a small price to escape to Lightning Country or Wave Country.
[ ] Training: Funayoi is capable of getting away from two shinobi chasing him at once. His captain, Oui, must be stronger than him, and she has two sheathed swords at her side. If she trains you, you could be strong too.
[ ] Recruitment: You want to join Oui's crew. It'll get you out on the beautiful ocean, away from Kirigakure, and you could learn from them as well. You'll probably be turned down for your age, but the offer will remain until you get older.
The stories of the sea you have heard from kaasan and Yua-obaasan make it sound unreal, like something that shouldn't exist, something far greater than the river you knew. But the glimpse you got of it peeking up over the horizon over the intimidating size of Ranboku-shi makes it seem real, that there really is an immense body of water, formidable and undrinkable, that stretches past the horizon a hundred times. That people really travel over it with gargantuan vessels larger than houses, with sails spread wider than the sun. You could see glimpses of them on the horizon, back then, mere brown specks topped with white resting near the vast stretch of washed-out blue behind them.
You want to know what the ocean is like. Yua-obaasan said it was dangerous, that waves ten times the size of men billowed across it. Kaasan said she grew up across the ocean, and that she crossed it to come to Water Country, and that the ocean was beautiful, and that she missed it.
Ranboku-shi's myriad of buildings blurred past you as you move through its streets. As you went deeper into its depths, the buildings got louder and more colorful, with signs you can't read popping up over what felt like every building, and crowds of people getting more and more dense until you couldn't hear your own thoughts over the clamor of footsteps and voices.
You push the world out of focus until you can't hear them and you can only hear your footsteps and the beat of your heart as you slip past the hordes of people, holding to the edges of the road, pushing yourself to keep moving faster.
You zone back in to a soft hand pressing down on your shoulder. A dark skinned woman with blond hair, dressed in a wealthy shirt decorated with floral patterns, and a long skirt looks down at you.
"I said, are you okay? Do you need help, child?" she says, her eyebrows furrowed and a sad look in her eyes. You shrug her hand off of your shoulder and shake your head no, and keep running towards the docks.
The first thing you notice as you get closer to the docks is the smell of salt and fish. It's pungent and heavy, settling over the roads with a deliberate weight. You pass by merchants and tradesmen shouting from over the stalls about their prices and their fish, with stalls cram packed with produce. There are somehow even more people here than earlier, at least forty people crammed into the road.
Then the docks are in sight, and all your thoughts leave your head, because you see the ocean behind it. Roiling waves dance in the distance, a symphony of blue. The rhythmic crash of waves as they slam into the beach beneath the wooden docks, the salty brine in the air. You find yourself climbing over a fence and clambering onto the docks before you know it, peering down at the ocean over the edge of the docks.
You dip one hand into the ocean and scoop up a handful of seawater, and stick it into your mouth. It tastes nasty, far too strong and salty, far stronger than anything you've ever had before. You spit out the water into the ocean, trying to get the taste off of your tongue. It doesn't work, but you keep on trying.
Wiping your wet hand on your pants, you decide that that experiment was a failure. Don't drink the ocean.
The ocean was gorgeous nonetheless. The sun reflecting off of it created shimmers of white that rose and fell with the waves, that were clear as day without any mist suffocating it with blank whiteness.
You inspected the ships next. They were vast, wooden things, that were submerged halfway into the waves, that stretched as tall as the tallest tree you saw on your journey here. Some of them had colorful, flashy flags fluttering half-heartedly in the wind at the top of the masts. Other flags were completely white and washed-out.
You picked out one ship that was larger than any other, completely painted over in block red and white, even under the water, where barnacles encrusted it's hull, and stretching twice as far as the dock itself did. It's attached to the dock only by a row of massive ropes and complex knots that reach from the dock all the way up to the deck of the ship, a dozen or so feet above you.
The gargantuan ship is mysterious. Why do ships need to be so massive in the first place? What could possibly take up this much space? You clamber up the ropes, your hands chafing against their surface, but by suspending yourself across three separate ropes, you manage to climb all the way onto the deck.
You take a moment to catch your breath, and then look around the deck. The most prominent feature of the deck are the masts, as thick around as trees yet never tapering. There's a set of cabins, sitting strategically at the back of the deck, and a gaping opening in front of them, a set of stairs that leads into the depths of the ship.
You jiggle the door handle of one of the cabins. It's locked, and so are the others.
Footsteps interrupt your inspection of the deck and someone bursts forth from the staircase. It's a man with short, straight black hair, a pair of glasses resting crookedly on his nose, and a chubby face that makes him look young, dressed in a ratty blue kimono and a straw farmer's hat. He's carrying a slim bag over one shoulder that he holds gently. He takes one look at you and laughs easily.
"Oh, it was just a child. Sorry about this, but I don't want you taking the fall for me!" He grabs you with one arm, carrying you pressed against his body like the bag he has slung over his other shoulder. You wriggle in his grasp, disgruntled with his treatment of you, but you stop moving as he leaps off the deck and runs down the ropes with practiced ease, his other hand keeping his straw hat on his head. He keeps running down the docks with you in his grasp when two figures burst from the ship you were just on in similar fashion.
"Those shinobi really aren't happy with me now," he laughs, his feet hitting the ground at a breakneck pace. One of the shinobi, still sprinting after you, releases a spray of kunai that nearly clips your carrier.
"I need a distraction to get away from them," he says, thinking aloud. "Can't make hand seals while carrying the child, can't get weapons while carrying the child, hmmm…" he trails off.
He jerks suddenly as he shoves an ordinary dock worker out of the way with enough force to send him staggering, almost knocking him off the edge, another spray of kunai coming close enough to graze him.
"Well, I'll come back for you. Don't worry! I won't let anything bad, well, worse than this happen," he says, quiet enough that you have to strain to hear him. Then he moves you to his other hand and throws you bodily off the docks like a football, and you make a solid airtime before your sudden physical introduction to the ocean. The splash of water you make is large enough to briefly hide the man's figure.
The water stings against your eyes, and you keep your mouth screwed close from drinking any more of the sea water. You've never swum before, outside of paddling in the shallows of the river, and it shows. You struggle to swim upwards, your arms flailing more than propelling you with any proper form. Your lungs burn as you nearly reach the surface, the sun gleaming through the salty water.
A hand catches you on the wrist and pulls you up out of the water. It's one of the shinobi who was chasing the man, a Kiri hitae-ate tied around her neck, a look of contempt draped across her features, standing on top of the rolling ocean waves.
"Hey brat," she says. "You know anything about that man who threw you?" Her point is punctuated by her drawing a kunai.
You shake your head no. What if she knows, will she know? The Uzumaki all have red hair, you have red hair.
"You sure?" she drawls, her kunai inching towards your throat.
You try to get her to drop you, wiggling your wrist and clawing at her grip on you. You shake your head no more emphatically.
She sighs. "Just say words brat, I don't want to make it a thing to kill a baby barely off of her mother's teat."
The words come up dry in your throat but you force them out. "No," you choke.
She looks at you like a barnacle. "That wasn't that hard, was it." She releases your wrist and you plop back into the salty waves. "Wait up, Souta!" she hollers as she bounds off of the ocean waves and towards her companion.
You flounder alone in the ocean waves for what feels like ages before you figure out how to kick your legs to get propulsion. In that time, you tasted more salt than you'd ever liked to imagine. Even then, you struggled against the ocean waves, your limbs starting to feel heavy from a long day of walking and struggling against the ocean waves. Even when you got close to the beach, the wooden docks, supported above sea level and spanning the vast majority of the beach, got in the way. Your arms weren't long enough to grab onto it, but it got in the way of simply swimming onto the beach.
When you were pulled out of the ocean this time, you took it with slightly less complaint than the previous time. It helped that you were set down immediately this time.
"Alright, kid. Funayoi said it was you he threw into the ocean, that ungrateful brat, so he said we should at least give you something for your troubles." You give your rescuer a look, your hair stiff with salt and your clothes heavy with absorbed water. At least you made sure to hold onto your knife and the pouch that Kaeru gave you.
Your rescuer is a dark skinned woman with overly long black hair that spills all over her shape. She wears black on black with a bit more black, with a thick, bulky vest riddled with pockets. She reeks of gunpowder and cigarettes.
"Yeah, yeah. It got the shinobi off his back though, so don't cry me a river."
She starts walking down the docks with her hands buried in her pockets. "What, you follow or not? Funayoi'll have to find you himself if you run away now."
You fall in line and follow her. She leads you to another ship, over half a mile down the docks. It's not even half the size of the ship you ventured upon earlier, but it's still quite large. The sail is only a blank white, boat unpainted and frankly wooden. It's tied down with only a single, larged, corded knot, but a rope ladder has been conveniently drooped down it's side.
Atop the ship, you're greeted by a small crowd, Funayoi hiding within. A purple haired woman wearing tarnished black samurai armor with her hands on her hips stands at its front. Dark eyebags shadow her eyes and her face is twisted into a wry smile, a scar cutting across its right side.
"Sorry about my ol' quartermaster Funayoii here chucking you into the ocean like a rat. Apparently some bastard among us hasn't learnt his manners yet, treating a young lady like that."
"Language!" Funayoi hisses from his place in the crowd.
"Yeah yeah, she really is a kid," the woman muses. "How old are you? Four? Three?" You nod when she says three.
"Damn, really? Most three year olds I've known of woulda been too busy crying to walk back to look me in the face. But whatever. I'm the captain of these idiots, Captain Oui. Funayoii insisted that we make up the trouble to you," she says, rolling her eyes, as a couple of people in the crowd jeer at him. "So I'll do you a favor. Any one favor kid, but it can't be ridiculous. I'm not moving the moon for you, or make you a princess or anything stupid. I'll even stick around in this shitty city for longer than we planned."
Your rescuer coughs behind you.
"You can leave now, Taihou. Go back to making out with your cannon," Oui says, rolling her eyes. Your rescuer skips out from behind you and runs below deck.
"What's your answer, kid?"
[ ] Transport: Oui and her crew will take you away from the Water Country and away from Kirigakure. They might get into trouble on the way, but it would be a small price to escape to Lightning Country or Wave Country.
[ ] Training: Funayoi is capable of getting away from two shinobi chasing him at once. His captain, Oui, must be stronger than him, and she has two sheathed swords at her side. If she trains you, you could be strong too.
[ ] Recruitment: You want to join Oui's crew. It'll get you out on the beautiful ocean, away from Kirigakure, and you could learn from them as well. You'll probably be turned down for your age, but the offer will remain until you get older.