A strange new life

5.6

“Who goes there? State your business!”

Yamato took a step forward, hands raised, palms open and towards the voice at the walls. “We’re travelers on the way to the capital. We seek home and hearth for the night.”

I assumed right at that time my disguised persona of a distracted daughter dragged on a trip she didn’t want to go. I looked out, towards the rice fields. Crossed my arms, huffed in annoyance. Kept sneaking glares at ‘dad’ for dragging me on this trip. But inside I was so giddy about visiting other places in Naruto’s world that I had to hold in my smile. 

I kept an ear out for the important bits of the conversation, but I tuned out most of it. There were too many other interesting things to pay attention to. The walls, the people, the accents, the smells. In my mind, my lack of attention was justified. I was gathering information, learning about the place. I wasn’t behaving like a country bumpkin traveling to interesting places for the first time. Nope, not at all. I was just paying extra attention to my information gathering mission.

Yamato went back and forth answering questions from the guy at the wall’s and introducing our group. He patted my head, when introducing me. My hand moved without my consent, swatting the appendage away, much to the man at the wall's amusement. 

“What news do you bring?” The same rough voice asked. He wasn’t outright hostile.

Yamato stopped, considering. Hayase answered in his stead. He took a step closer.  “We had to camp in the wilds for the past two nights!” His voice had a bit of a whine to it. I wasn’t sure if it was fake. “Last village we passed was attacked by some beast or something, no one survived.”

Hushed whispers and muttered swearing broke out from the other side of the wall. While only one person asked questions so far, the amount of voices suggested there was a crowd on the other side. I focused on my chakra sense, but no one other than us had any bundle of chakra. Civilians? 

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The wooden gates creaked open while I pondered that question. On the other side, a group of disheveled people armed with hoes, sickles, a shovel and an assortment of wooden sticks that didn’t look like weapons. There was one individual holding a rusty katana. If the lack of chakra to my senses wasn’t confirmation enough, a single glance at the crowd cleared any remaining doubt.

A hairy man, holding a sickle called us out. It was the same gruff voice. “Come in, quickly.”

We entered the town. The gate closed behind us. Hands gripped farming tools-turned-weapons harder. Another farmer approached us, the one holding the sole real weapon among the lot, the rusted katana. “Come with me,” he said to Yamato. “The town mayor will want to speak with you.”

Yamato looked at us. Blinked the secret shinobi message. Play along.

I followed ‘dad’ through the town. We passed by several skittish looking people. Some looked at us with wide eyes, others glared. A burly man even tried to step in our way, fists closed, teeth gritted. The katana wielding farmer took two quick steps toward the man. They stared at each other for a few moments before the burly man retreated with a scowl.

We were led deeper into town. It wasn’t big, at least not to what my modern sensibilities would say big, but the main street had a number of stores and other places for markets and street vendors. I knew now why this was considered a trading town. I saw a lot of places that looked like medieval Japanese versions of hotels, as well as white powdered, kimono-wearing ladies and a few men, trying to entice people to enter.

Our escort took us to one of the biggest buildings in the town’s center. We entered a foyer, and Yamato was ushered toward one big double door passage. I tried to follow, but a hand barred my path. 

The gruff farmer looked at me, then to Yamato. “This is not a conversation for children, especially girls.”

I played my part. Crossed my arms. That was some medieval discrimination bullshit at its finest. And like any entitled teenager, I made my displeasure known by glaring, pouting and then looking away. 

Yamato — the no-dad-energy — captain turned to us. “Hayase, you keep Hinata company. You can go see the sights, but don’t go too far. Sai, you can come with me or join your friend.”

Sai joined Yamato. Feeling left out, and babysat by Hayase, I left the house to explore the city. The bigger boy scratched his head, looking unsure himself. He turned to me. “Should we explore the market?”

I nodded. That was fine with me. I’m sure Yamato would report anything important later if needed. Right now, we could start our own investigation and information gathering operation.

The Honey Badger was on the hunt for the snake’s lair.

"…"

That was so bad. Delete, delete, delete. I needed better ways to think about the mission. But the situation was an unexpected opportunity. In the past month of hell training, Research-chan spent all day, every day, trying to map and understand the seals in my body. It was a time bomb I needed to solve sooner rather than later. The problem was, aside from that one blueprint for the bone seals the creep shoved into my head, I had no other information.

That whole month of carefully probing every part of my body with chakra wielded interesting results. I learned that it was the seal on my bones that was responsible for my enhanced physical strength. The whole circulating chakra thingy? Hogwash I don’t even want to remember I came up with. Assumptions over assumptions based on faulty anime logic. I still circulated chakra because it felt therapeutic, and made me feel better, but now I knew that as long as the seal was on my bones, I’d grow stronger with time. This wasn’t an effect that I would lose if I removed the seal, on the contrary, it had permanently made my body stronger.

It was my own protagonist’s cheat. The longer I live, the stronger I’d become. This whole thing reinforced my bones, muscles, and overall made me healthier and more resistant. At the cost of being a time bomb Orochimaru could pop anytime he wanted. Case in point, the seal was still trying to kill me. Damned snake never gave me a lock to disable the seal, just suppress it. I guess his real reason was to force me to seek him out when it turned out I couldn’t stop the timed bomb. But now the snake was dead, and I my hope was to find anything useful in its lair.

… I really needed to stop the badger references. I was the future Black Flash dammit, not the future Black Badger.

Case was, I wanted to find Oro’s base. Maybe if I was lucky, some part of his research survived and I could start disabling the bad part of the seals. However, I wanted to keep the good parts. The thought of getting stronger with the passage of time was something that made me giddy with anticipation. I don’t know what the limit of that was, but stronger was stronger. Imagine if I could rival Tsunade on brute strength in a few years?

I still needed to learn about the other seals: The heart, the eyes. I had a few theories. My educated guess was that the seal on my heart was the one responsible for eating all the foreign chakra entering my body. Maybe it was a defense mechanism Orochimaru added to prevent others from meddling with the seals? Only the effect now was to make me resistant to external influences. It didn’t work on Orochimaru because, being his own work, it recognized the chakra signature and offered no protection at all. That was also what made me bad at mokuton. Maybe the seal was incomplete, or parts of it aren’t working as intended, which in turn forced me to use way more chakra than needed.

It was a far fetched theory, but I had no other ideas. I shook my head. Pushing the distractions away. I've been following Hayase almost on instinct. The older chunin talked to a few of the locals. Even attracted a bit of attention from some older folk. I scanned around, found a group of kids huddled together looking at us, then discussing furiously among themselves.

I didn’t think I would learn anything new by following Hayase like a pup. I pulled at his shirt, gestured to the group of kids when he looked my way. Well, I guess it was time to meet the local kids.