A strange new life

5.10

Before we left town, we visited the mayor again. I think it was a courtesy visit rather than an obligation on our part. Maybe Yamato didn’t want to burn bridges if we somehow needed to come back here. I didn’t mind either way. While waiting for the ‘grown ups’ to talk the important talk, I took the opportunity to meet Linlin again. Pat her head, leave more pastries for the girl. These ones I popped out of their seal before we even left the house we slept in. No need to give even more people more information about us.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that after the girl learned I was leaving, she clammed up. Her face flashed with a lot of expressions too quickly to parse. She looked down, and her shoulders began to shake. I didn’t hear a single sound from her. What was I expecting? From everything I saw, she didn’t fit with the other kids, and her only friend, this Sasame-chan, left without even saying goodbye months ago. I knelt in front of the silent sobbing girl. Wrapped my arms around her. She grabbed my clothes, sobbed harder.

We stayed like that until the same woman from yesterday came looking for me. “Your father is waiting for you.”

I patted Linlin’s head. Took my board, thought about what to write. I didn’t want to lie, but I didn’t want to make any promises I couldn’t keep either. After I wrote my message, I guided the girl’s face to read from the board. “I’ll come back to visit if I can. If I find Sasame-chan, I’ll tell her to visit too.”

Linlin looked at me with those big, sad, tear filled eyes. She nodded, lips quivering.

Urgh, I always thought I was bad with children, but this was too much. Lilin looked like a sad puppy. I closed my eyes. Exhaled, my whole body releasing tension I didn’t even know was there. I patted the puppy’s head. I didn’t dare to look. That girl was way too adept at puppy eyeing others. I couldn’t risk it.

After that, I took my leave. No reason to keep this awkward moment longer than it needed to be. It left me thinking about a similar situation that happened in the Land of Waves, where Tsunami also went all emotional on me when I was leaving. No, I didn’t get emotional. Not then, not now. I just got a bit of dust in my eyes. That’s all.

I met with the rest of the team outside. We were ready to leave. Yamato said a few last words to the mayor and off we went into the sunset. No, of course not. It wasn’t even noon yet. Officially, our destination was Daimyo city, same as yesterday, this being just one more stop in our journey to visit family. But again, that was just our disguise. What we wanted was to search the surrounding areas for any clue about this monster in the hopes it would lead us to Orochimaru’s hideout.

We kept on the road for a few hours. Sai’s ink birds flying overhead to make sure no one followed us. When we were distant enough from the town, we left the road and ventured into the surrounding wilderness. The area around the trading town was surrounded by farming communities and rice fields. Our goal was one of the nearby forests. Hayase pointed out during the strategy meeting the previous day that any hideout wouldn’t be in the open or in a rice field. There were also the details from the monster attack: all the information happened near this one particular patch of forest. It was still a huge area to search, but it was a lead nonetheless.

I sealed away my backpack. Took out my ninja tools. I cast a Henge no Jutsu to change how I look. My ninja outfit was just too distinct to keep wearing when I didn’t want to be recognized. Which was a bummer. A thought I might mull over later. A small, rebel voice in the back of my head yelled that I should dress like a proper ninja. I ignored it—for now. That voice didn’t know what it was talking about. I don’t think this kind of disguise would fool a competent shinobi, but every little detail helped. The others did the same.

With preparations finished, we ran, dashed, hopped between tree branches.

Hayase did a midair flip, flying for a moment upside down. Instantly, it reminded me of that iconic image of Naruto doing the same in the tv show. I had no idea what sort of tactical advantage that provided, if any, but it looked cool as heck. I wanted to do it too. Laugh, and cheer, and yell. Being a ninja was awesome. I didn’t though. This was a serious mission.

The fun didn’t last long. With the speed we traveled, it didn’t take us long to arrive at our destination. It was one of the areas Hayase pointed from the rumors and hints gathered in the town.

Yamato looked at the tall, foreboding trees. Scanned the horizon, then looked at us. “Hayase, you and Hinata explore the west side. Sai and I will explore the east.” When we didn’t ask any questions, he continued. “Be careful. We don’t know what is happening here, what we want is information and the location of Orochimaru’s hideout. If you encounter this creature that is scaring the nearby villages, retreat and regroup.”

I saluted. Hayase nodded.

Yamato wasn’t finished. “Sai, send one of your ink birds with them. We’ll use that as a way to communicate between teams if needed.”

A few moments later, a black inky bird flew above me and Hayase. The older chunin looked my way. After a brief nod, he ran into the forest and I followed.

It might have been because of my biased expectations, but this place looked weird. Huge towering trees with canopy that blocked most of the sunlight. The forest had this foreboding atmosphere that made me think of horror movies. Worse yet was the silence: no skittering sound of bugs, chirping of birds or neigh of animals. Even the rustling wind sounded muted to my own ears. That didn’t stop us. Deeper into the creepy forest we went in search of a monster, maybe a hideout of a worse monster, or even a missing orange-haired kunoichi.

I concentrated on sensing any chakra around me.

One of the things I’ve neglected over the years of being a shinobi was this chakra sensing ability. I mean, there was always something more urgent to train for the immediate crisis at hand. More so when chakra sensing started to — around a lot of strong shinobi gathered in one place — be a distraction instead of something I could use. Now, I tried to push my senses as far as I could, cursing my earlier self for neglecting this ability. Even if I had no idea how to train it. No academy class covered it. I never tried to broach the subject with Kakashi-sensei. I knew sensor ninjas existed, at least I knew they existed in the original show, but it wasn’t something I had easy access to. Maybe when I was back at Konoha, I could bug Kakashi-Sensei to teach more about chakra sensing.

With thoughts of new training methods in mind, I jumped from the branch I was perched on, landing by Hayase’s side. His brow was furrowed, fingers touching a particular spot on the ground.

I took out my board, wrote my question. “Did you find anything?”

Hayase looked up, then shook his head. “Not sure. See here?” He pointed at a patch of soil near the base of the tree. I saw dirt, dry branches, decaying leaves, shrubs and all those things you see in forests. “It looks like someone hid something here, but it was removed some time ago.”

No matter how much I looked, I had no idea how Hayase reached that conclusion. Shinobi academy taught basic tracking, mostly in the form of games, but nothing that let me see whatever this clue was.

Hayase shook his head, got up. “I can’t say for certain, it was some time ago, weeks, maybe months. Let’s keep looking.”

I didn’t want to look that incompetent, I nodded my agreement and off we went again searching for a needle in a haystack.

Minutes turned into hours. Hayase pointed out more of those spots he was certain were used in the past, but even with those spots, we couldn’t pinpoint what they were used for, or even if it had any link to Orochimaru’s hideout. It was a good lead that there was something to find here, but not where to find said something. 

I did find other clues. Not that it took any super ninja tracking skills on my part. Not when the clue was a motherfucking uprooted tree, used like a baseball bat to bat other trees away. At least that was what it looked like to me.

We were still looking around for any other information when the ink bird nearby us screeched, soon followed by Sai’s voice. “We’re under attack. Please follow the bird.”

We didn’t have time to send a message back. The bird took off flying southeast, Hayase hot on its heels. I grabbed an exploding kunai, dashed after Hayase. I didn’t really care if anything happened to annoying Sai. He could take a beating, it would serve him right. But Yamato was Kakashi-Sensei’s friend and my part time teacher. Couldn’t leave him hanging for no good reason.