( 2 February, 14 AK )
To be entirely truthful, I was kind of winging the whole 'let's keep this war going' thing. Until I managed to find someone to have my back, namely Itachi, I needed to remain on the move, and not only that, but I needed to remain a hot-target: otherwise known as a nuke-nin that was on a roll, and thusly had his guard up.
It wasn't exactly an official term, even if I had come to appreciate it.
Walking around without the protection of either a group or a Village meant that I could be ambushed at any given moment, which on one side allowed me to reap the fool bounty hunters willing to seek me out, but on the other side made me nervous.
I had long since perfected my modified henge, so my appearance no longer immediately declared my identity, but there were only so many people willing to walk on their own across the Elemental Nations in time of war.
Besides, as a Nuke-nin, the only reasonable job I could land was killing either other nuke-nin, or taking a job from a bingo book.
Taking the first road would have meant landing on myself the attention and rage of the 'Black Market' community, it wasn't something that actually worked like 'honour among thieves', but it was close enough that keeping myself from breaking other missing-nin meant not having an ambush awaiting me at every bounty station.
Going to Kiri had been mostly done because I suspected that Terumi Mei was the only reasonable person capable of holding onto Samehada, she would be able to use it to rally the last needed numbers to overthrow her opponent and officially become Mizukage, which wasn't a bad thing.
Sure, organizing the meeting between us had been a true hassle, and it required more time than the transaction itself.
Being paid upfront for a black op against her ruling Daimyo was just icing on the cake.
From what I remembered through my metaknowledge, Kisame, once he had become a member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist, was given the title of "Monster of the Hidden Mist", and formed a connection with Suigetsu and Mangetsu Hōzuki.
Kisame eventually became a missing-nin when the Land of Water sought him for plotting to overthrow its government and being involved in numerous assassinations that included another country's Daimyo.
That, during his departure, he opted to take Samehada with him simply meant that his bounty would be higher, that was all that there was to it.
I wasn't adjourned on his sins and faults, but overthrowing a government, like Mei was proving, wasn't necessarily a bad thing, and that she wanted to keep the Daimyo from interfering was simply another occasion for me to break those whispers that pictured me as a Konoha's deep cover agent.
After all, a Village tentatively cultivating an alliance with another wouldn't send a known shinobi of its forces against the lawful government of another, it didn't matter if he was a renegade, the connection was still shaming.
I was surprised that Terumi didn't want an official ruler of the land to butt in, but not al that much.
She was busy trying to reverse the current of hate towards the bloodlines, trying to become the first woman Mizukage, trying to keep enough of her forces that the war among the other Hidden Villages couldn't spill over in her territory.
There were enough headaches in that to keep her from being pointed at as the one responsible for giving out a hit-contract on the Water Lord.
I had no doubt that in a few months one of the bumbling nobles would manage to find the right shinobi to task with his own protection.
But by then, who knows? Despite my walking among the roads of Kiri blazing my chakra without fear to be found out, behaving like I was inviting a challenge, I managed to take the pulse of the country, and Mei was close, extremely so, to take over.
I didn't know how the events had unfolded in the canon teamline, but I could tell that she was being helped, and given the info I had left to Shikamaru, I was ready to bet on Konoha.
I had left the Land of Water three days before, and I kept moving west, crossing once more the south of the Fire Nation, where a surprisingly low number of shinobi was keeping up the patrols.
I needed to shake off some Hyuga or Inuzuka from time to time, but when I didn't manage that, they would retreat on their own before engaging: it seemed that Konohagakure was short enough on numbers that it didn't want to risk losing even more uselessly.
No doubt however, were I to stop for too long, I would find Jiraya on my ass, or a Root platoon.
As I ran across the trees, distractedly reminiscing about my genin days, I let my chakra out unhindered, for I had no real need to hide, while I had all the reasons to sell my confrontational nature.
Itachi has better to kill Kabuto before everything goes to shit. I thought with a grimace, besides the clusterfuck that would be fighting a Kabuto born as mix up of bloodlines, I really didn't want to have to kill Orochimaru again, for every fight against an S-rank tended to be a risk I much preferred not to take.
And his seal was bad news on that side, even if I managed to keep him from taking over Sasuke.
I wonder how will Itachi contact me? I briefly imagined that he would make use of his raven summons, which had never been explained in depth in the manga.
Were they simply a part of his genjutsu? If so, it was a strange preference, because usually, while genjutsu tended to become better the more personalized they were, signing one so blatantly as Itachi did with his ravens was a bad idea.
Well, he has Uchiha's bullshit on his side. I amended my previous line of reasoning as I ducked under a branch, letting gravity pull me for a scant couple of seconds before skipping off from the trunk of the nearest tree, casually doubling back to check for an eventual pursuer capable of masking his presence: I wasn't actually concerned, for I knew I was among the actually scary shinobi around, but being careless was a sure way of dying suddenly.
And while I have everything of worth safely tucked under the care of the only elephant I managed to convince to actually lend an active hand, I really don't want to die. Sure, the Elemental Nations were pretty from once you were an important enough player, but I had decided a long time ago that I was going to fucking win.
And if a part of me no longer recoiled at the idea of massacring other people, so be it. Once I managed to change the world I could look for a shrink.
I crossed the land of Waves without truly stopping to rest, even if I poked around only to find that both Zabuza and Haku graves had been excavated and that Kubikiribōchō had been stolen. Another irritating part of causing so many changes.
I softly reprimanded myself even as I kept running among the woods, soon enough breaching into the land of Rivers, which acted as a pillow between Suna and Konoha.
Sleeping among the branches and eating while on the run was not comfortable, but I was deep into Konoha's coalition because the minor village between the great desert and the great forest didn't truly have any choice but to follow the will of its far more menacing and powerful neighbours, so being quick on my feet was for the best.
Besides, I kind of remembered that there was an Akatsuki hold in the Land of Rivers, and that it wasn't that far south from Ame, which I would avoid like the plague until it was time for me to actually gut the apocalyptic idiots.
I had a trio of Kage-bunshin run in different directions without hiding their presence while I cloaked my own, churning the chakra in my coil s in tighter and tighter circles, keeping even the barest hint of it from bleeding out.
It was as uncomfortable as holding one's breath while wearing far too tight clothes. I felt restricted, weak, and it greatly diminished the speed through which I could tear across the land, as well as making Itachi's life a tad bit more difficult.
For now, my mission was to await news from him, to be frank, I hoped he already destroyed Orochimaru's strongholds, Kabuto in particular, and I hoped that Kisame would die soon enough.
I was interested to see how an actual battle between us would go, but I kind of suspected that without his Samehada I would be able to crush him quickly enough, since, even if he had vaster reserves of chakra than me (and thank Kami he never heard of Natural Chakra before), Suiton wasn't as deadly when used against someone with that very same affinity, nevermind one as trained as my own.
After crossing the better part of the Land of Rivers, I turned North, moving at an unbearably slow pace just shy of the border with Suna.
I had to still myself and let Nature Chakra inside of myself more than a few times as a patrol came into my range, but remaining still completely erased my presence, and so I managed to continue North.
...
If you like the story so far, please throw some power stones.
======================
If you want to read ahead of the public release on p atreon.
p @treon Link :
p atreon.com/sybife
|● sybife