A strange new life

5.15

I followed hot on Yamato’s heels.

It was a few days after the chimera battle and the two of us moved through the trees in search of the damnable hideout. Hayase stayed behind at camp, keeping Sai’s company. Due to his injury, Sai wasn’t in any condition to join, which left us with a few options: retreat, wait or press on.

Option one wasn’t really an option. No way I wanted to have that black mark on my perfect completion record. I wasn’t about to abandon the mission just because someone got hurt, and it wasn’t because of my dislike for Sai. I wasn’t going to lie and say I liked the boy. At this point, I could just shrug and accept that. I don’t think I was ever going to be friends with him, but I respected him as a shinobi. His condition wasn’t critical, he wasn’t in any risk of dying. What he needed was time to recover. Abandoning the mission because of a non critical injury was out of the question. It was nice of Yamato to bring up the option, however, even if no one, Sai included, considered that a choice.

The second option was to wait. Like I said, Sai needed only time to recover. Thankfully, the injury wasn’t laced with poison, nor had it hit any vital organs. Given a couple of weeks, maybe less, Sai would be in top condition again, ready to face even more dangerous enemies for the glory of Konoha!Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Third option was to split the team. If anyone out there ever played TRPG to any length of time, they would know that option was also known as the party killer prelude. Splitting the party was tantamount to summoning death flags. Several of them, all at once.

A mix of second and third option was the agreed upon path forward. Hayase would stay behind at the hidden camp to protect Sai and hold down the fort. Yamato and I, on the other hand, would scout for the hideout location. The clues we got from the deceased members of the Fuma clan was enough to point us in the right direction, even if we still didn’t have a precise location. It was a huge area to search, but at least we didn’t need to scour the whole forest anymore.

Up ahead, Yamato jumped on a tall tree branch, but instead of jumping ahead, he stopped. Raised one hand, palm open. I jumped closer, stopped by his side.

Ahead of us, in the distance, inside a clearing by the base of the giant trees, a stair led down inside the earth. The walls were constructed of a purple tinted stone. The roof tiles above were created of a deeper shade of the same hue. At the bottom, a doorless threshold. Above it, two crimson snakes coiled, painted on either side of a grated vent. Fitting for a snake.

Yamato was silent, but his hands conveyed the new orders. “Careful, scout, investigate.”

We had discussed what to do when we found the place. Yamato wasn’t keen on taking any unnecessary risks, not while half of the team was still at the camp, but we couldn’t also just leave without gathering any information, which was the reason the two of us were here. He had wood clones, I could use shadow ones. We were the ultimate—danger free— scouting duo. With a silent nod, my hands flashed with seals. Out popped a shadow clone.

By my side, growing out of the tree, a Yamato clone appeared. My clone, Scout-chan, saluted, flickered away to do scout things. Yamato-clone nodded, merged with the tree and disappeared.

I took out a few seals, slapped them around us. These weren’t mine, but supplies provided by the village. They muted our presence, helped us hide.

There wasn’t much to do while Scout-chan did her job. While we waited, Yamato was on guard duty. I sat cross legged, a number of parchments scribbled with my prototype jutsu, pondering about clone techniques, and how to use them efficiently.

One of the biggest differences between shadow and wood clones were how durable wood clones were. Mokuton clones didn’t disappear after taking a hard impact, and the clone shared the chakra pool of the original, instead of splitting chakra like shadow clones. Wood clones, however, were not as independent. They were akin to an extension of the shinobi, which made them tricky to use in battle. One needed good multitasking abilities or the clone wouldn’t perform up to standard.

Shadow clones on the other hand, were completely independent. They didn’t depend on the shinobi for directions or orders. They worked like a functional copy of the ninja who summoned them. Which I think, was one of the reasons some people didn’t use the jutsu. I remember reading somewhere that Orochimaru used shadow clones only once, then never again after his own clone tried to kill him. Had that really happened or was it just my imagination playing tricks on me?

Wood clones also had an intrinsic connection to their creator, a function which Yamato exploited to create the transmission seed’s tracking method. It was that particular characteristic that I incorporated on my alpha version of thunder god jutsu. In the time-frame I had before the exam, I wasn’t able to tie the beacon to me and make the jutsu usable. The innate transmission from the wood clone solved that problem, and created another. Right now, any beacon I created was a temporary one.

What I was trying, while Scout-chan labored to find any traps, was to identify and isolate the aspect of the wood clone that provided this innate connection. When I managed that, I’d be able to create a permanent beacon. That would move my jutsu from alpha to beta version, with future changes being quality of life improvements.

A silent chuckle escaped me. It was at times like this I wished I still had a Byakugan. Observing the chakra flow and how it behaved while someone used the jutsu could potentially help isolate the parts I needed.

I stopped, tilted my head, looked up from the parchments toward the direction I thought Konoha would be. Could I do it? I wasn’t that attached to the idea of a Byakugan, but I also couldn’t deny how useful it would be. No one else told me what happened to Orochimaru’s eyes after he was defeated.

Out popped my board. I considered the question. I guessed it cost nothing to ask. I wrote, waved to get Yamato’s attention. Showed him the words after his attention was on me. “Yamato-taicho, do you know what happened to Orochimaru’s eyes?”

Yamato’s gaze bore into my soul, or maybe that was just the effect those huge eyes had. It was hard to know what the man was thinking when he stared unblinking at me like that. The silence stretched, and for a while, I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he looked away, sighed.

“After his defeat, the Hyuga clan reclaimed the one Byakugan eye from Orochimaru’s corpse.”

I erased the words, wrote some more. “One eye? Not two?”

Yamato nodded. “Only his left eye was a Byakugan.”

Another stray thought intruded on my head. They wouldn’t have, would they? It was so far-fetched that it might even be true. I erased the words on my board, considered this ridiculous idea, wrote another question. “Is the true reason we are searching for Orochimaru’s hideout an attempt to find and recover the second eye?”

I could see it. The divas from the Hyuga clan threatening something dumb in case the second eye wasn’t returned. I mean, they threatened civil war when I was kidnapped, and I’m sure they weren’t happy with the Old-man after he stopped Hiashi from killing me. Huh, weird.

Yamato sighed again, shoulders slumping. “Yes, but also no.”

For some reason, Yamato went quiet after that. Was he really going to drop that bomb and then say nothing else? I moved to erase my question and write another, when a raised hand from the jounin stopped me.

“You have to understand the political situation in the village is a powder-keg waiting to blow. The council wanted Lord Jiraiya to take the position of fifth Hokage, him being one of the three illustrious sannin and disciple of the third. Jiraiya refused.”

I nodded. That made sense. It was why, in the original story, Jiraiya took Naruto on a trip to find Tsunade, to convince the woman to return, and to keep Naruto safe from the Akatsuki.

Yamato didn’t stop his explanation. “In the wake of that, the Hyuga clan started to pressure the council to appoint Hyuga Hizashi as the new Hokage. One of their main claims was the village's inability to protect Konoha’s clan bloodlines. Danzo stole sharingan eyes, Orochimaru experiments with the first Hokage cells and your kidnapping among other attempts from outside agents.”

Wasn’t that a bit of a master plan from the Hyuga clan? I mean, I knew about the family seal on the branch family. Wasn’t that just placing a puppet Hokage for the main family? I wasn’t sure why they didn’t push for Hiashi instead. That one didn’t make sense to me. More importantly, wasn’t I screwed if one of them became Hokage?

“The problem is, while the Hyuga are powerful as a clan, none of their members are at the same level of strength as Lord Third, or Jiraiya, and a strong leader is needed to prevent the other villages from declaring an all out war against Konoha. Killing Orochimaru helped, losing Lord Third didn’t.”

I nodded, digesting that information.

“The chances are slim, but if we manage to recover the last eye, that could be used to dismiss the Hyuga main claim to the position.”

Huh, in the end, I thought myself smart for realizing the mission was more than they told me, but I was also way off the mark. The full scope of the mission made sense, but a nasty feeling brewed in my gut. 

What about me? Was I supposed to just hand over my eye, if we ever found it?

Why was I even getting angry over this? Wasn’t I just thinking I didn’t care for that damn eye?