( 26th May, year 14 AK )
The border between Hi no Kuni ad Kaminari no Kuni was an irregular stretch of territory in which the deep forest slowly gave ground to higher territories where snow fell hard and unforgiving during the winters, only to turn into fierce torrents during spring, and a barren, rocky ground in summer, mostly because the raging mass of seasonal rivers ripped the dirt upon which greenery could grow upon from the bottom of bare limestone.
The constant attrition between the forces of the triad Suna-Kiri-Konoha and Iwa-Kumo surely didn't help, mostly because Iwa sent to support the greater numbers of Kumo shinobi a selected bunch of jonin capable of large scale doton techniques, which were coupled effectively with the odd bloodline capable of taking advantage of the irregular territory, turning against their opponents the open ground that was the battlefield.
No longer able to use the ever-shifting dunes to enhance their genjutsu, the Suna supporting forces found themselves falling behind the neverending requests for hiding this or that outpost.
While the people from Kirigakure couldn't make effective use of the few and irregular torrents that so readily were poisoned by the Kumo shinobi, eager to make use of every tool in their arsenal to bleed Hi no Kuni dry before attempting the inevitable invasion.
More than them however, it was the Konoha shinobi that encountered the most difficulties, forced as they were to fight in a territory with little to no cover, where the ground was unwilling to be shaped in order to give ambush sites like it did when it was softened by the endless amount of roots that softened it in Hi no Kuni.
There were no branches that could be used as advantage points, no trunks among which one could lose his tail when pursued while setting up traps.
Even so, Yamanaka Ino was far from being useless, capable as she was, and having proved the general success of her fighting style coupled with the one of Uchiha Sasuke, she was relatively happy of the regular companionship of the often laconic teen.
Senbon and small genjutsu went a long way in order to make her a nuisance for whoever attempted to cross the Nobody's Ground that was the North Front of the Fourth Great Ninja War, and the ready unforgiving presence of fire that Sasuke easily rained upon their opponents, capable as he was of foreseeing their escape routes, made them a deadly duo.
In fact, despite being listed only as chunin, which was an important result, given that they were just shy of 15 years of age, they managed more often than not to drive back small teams of chunin led by a jonin, and when they were forced to fall back, least they were bottled away from the main forces of the Konoha-Suna-Kiri Triad, they did so with sharp and unforgiving cunning, which almost always cost to the invaders half of their numbers.
Since that first pivotal moment in which Sasuke had shared with her his improvised tomato soup, Ino had come to adapt and accept her role in the war, falling into a rhythm that allowed her to keep up with the constant grinding of their forces against Kumo, whose forces had, in more than an occasion, caused landslides of staggering dimensions in order to force the North Front back into Hi no Kuni.
There the Triad's forces would have an easier time dealing with their opponents, pushing back once more only to return to the initial position, since fighting uphill in unfamiliar territory that was littered with traps slowed down their forces just enough for the powerhouses in Kumo and Iwa' roosters to intervene where they were needed the most.
Still, safely seated inside of Hi no Kuni's border for her days away from active duty, Ino had never felt so close to defeat: in her hands, she held a bingo book, opened upon the page of a familiar face, where her tears had smudged the ink just enough to make it difficult to read.
"Don't dwell upon it." Sasuke spoke softly from her left, his shoulder faintly touching with hers while he maniacally controlled his equipment.
Ino's cyan blue eyes landed harshly upon the profile of her comrade, unwilling to believe his words or actually recognize that he had suggested so: "What's the point of caring about people if I could simply decide to not be upset about what happens to them?"
Onyx black eyes rose to meet hers, accompanied by a single arching eyebrow: "Does it matter what he's doing now?" he asked, his mind going back to his several encounters, remembering clearly what he had ultimately gained versus the doubt he had now that he knew Daiki to be a nuke-nin.
Like Itachi. A whisper sounded in the back of his head, only to by squashed by Sasuke's singular disposition towards tunnel vision.
A choking laugh left Ino's throat without her consent as she hopped to her fee, the bingo book flung from her hands with an enraged twitch of her wrist: "Does it matter?" she asked sarcastically, "Of course it does!"
"Why?" Sasuke cut back, "What you learned from him is no less true now that he's been declared nuke-nin. Your way of fighting, your way of thinking, they're just as sharp now as they were yesterday, the same goes for me.
You want answers? Become strong enough to demand them." his eyes shot away towards the fallen Bingo Book while he took a deep, grounding breath, forcing himself to take a hold of his almost uncontrollable temper.
A few seconds of silence stretched between them while Ino took stock of her comrade, looking over the gangly appearance of the Uchiha which had recently started the growth spurt that would finally bring him into adulthood.
It was in the way his muscles capacity changed despite the reduced time they had available for personal training, in the way his reach was sometimes miscalculated, and right then, it was in the heated voice that would have once foretold a tantrum capable of cowing any of his peers, but that had simply pushed Sasuke into taking an instant to regain control of himself.
"Is this how you deal with Itachi?" the blond kunoichi asked with a mixture of despair for how she was feeling and concern for her comrade, with a hand landing upon Sasuke's, stopping him from sharpening more an already perfect blade.
At his stiff nod, during which he didn't meet her eyes, Ino swallowed the outrage she felt every time she thought about her sensei, consciously choosing to take Sasuke's experience over her own instinctual reaction, and she seated once more at his side.
If she was a bit closer, and her proximity caused some difficulty to Sasuke, whose shoulder's movements were somewhat reduced, making him put more effort than necessary in the maintenance of his equipment, nteither of them voiced it out loud.
...
Having perceived both Hatake and the Nara, I immediately started using the Skinwalking technique that was available to me as the holder of the Snake Contract. Instead of my usual tall and blonde self, I was a slightly hunched old man, whose hair had abandoned him long before, leaving a bald head to cook under the unforgiving sun of the Land of Fire.
I could have simply sprung a trap on the incoming Konoha-nin, but there wasn't an actual need for it. Officially, I was simply leading my young charge towards the capital, where we would purchase some glasses for her, since she lost her in her brief stint as a prisoner.
Shikamaru walked leisurely behind the unlikely duo that my disguised self and Karin made. Kakashi dropped him on the day before, his nose wrinkling occasionally as the stench of garlic made itself known.
The two Konoha ninjas had reached me and Karin in the middle of the night, and had been spotted immediately by the Uzumaki girl, who was coming along nicely in her training, to the point that with less than a day of practice, she became reasonably capable of walking blindfolded without tripping.
"So... how did you meet?" Shikamaru asked us as I popped another garlic slice on my tongue to hide a grin.
I had never been so grateful for having the Sanke Contract under my belt. Among the other things that I still had to actually try on the field, the skinwalking technique was extremely useful for trolling my ex-student, whose gaze I could feel pointed between my shoulder blades.
"We... huh." Karin's lackluster reply stole a bark of laughter out of me, and I turned briefly towards Shikamaru, who was looking at us with a deadpan stare.
I couldn't tell if he suspected something or if he was needling us on orders from Kakashi, who had left as soon as he was sure that I wasn't a threat. Foolish of him, but I cannot truly insult the white-haired bastard.
I realized that I had left behind most shinobi in the Elemental Nations. There were precious few fights that I would need to take seriously, namely the ones against Kages or S-rank.
The only thing that stopped me from simply laying siege to Amegakure was numbers. I could use the war as a cover to get close, but I couldn't scout ahead, and that forced me to play this extremely dull game of 'biding my time'.
I had hoped that my teachings would be enough to push at least Shikamaru into S-class, his brain was surely capable of making each drop of chakra count, but I should have known that Konoha wouldn't risk him on an actually dangerous mission. I had to force myself against Tobirama and Hashirama to actually streamline my capabilities enough to reach the lower end of S-rank,
"A blonde shinobi rescued her from a prisoner camp, eheh!" I nodded exaggeratedly in order to keep up the personality that I was using, "They met me while I was going to the Capital, and the lass needs glasses, so the shinobi dropped her on me!"
"I don't need a babysitter!" Karin hissed in outrage even as I hopped over a large root that cut the trail.
"He just... met you and dropped the girl?" Shikamaru seemed to think that casually rescuing someone and abandoning him was right up my alley.
"Hey! I'm right here! Don't talk like I don't exist!"
Well, he's not wrong I guess. I admitted to myself in the safe confines of my mind.
"And do you often use the less traveled trails to cross Fire Country?" the Konoha-nin questioned me curiously.
"I'm old, child! Eheheh!" I once more nodded extremely seriously: "I've been walking these trails for the better part of 80 years!"
That brought the quiet once again over our small trio, and I knew that Shikamaru was now on his guard and as taut as a violin string. Beware the old people in a profession in which they die young.
My old lessons had been hammered into his brain long before, and while he was used to break them apart in order to adjust them to his own perspective of the world, some suggestions were extremely obvious.
"You're a shinobi?"
"Nah! Imma priest!" I wiggled my fingers towards him: "I've found that walking the world is the best way to do the right thing."
"Which would be?" the Nara stopped walking for an instant, ready to engage if something in my play revealed me as an enemy of Konohagakure.
"To help." I simply replied, letting my chakra ripple subtly across the air so that Karin wouldn't be alarmed by the increasing potential for hostility in Shikamaru.
"To help... who?"
"The world, obviously!" I laughed out loud as we finally reached the main road that led towards the Capital of Hi no Kuni. We were less than an hour of leisure walk from the objective.
...
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