A strange new life

5.13

Yamato and I stood side by side, watching the results of the trap. My eyes were still glued to the corpse of the orange haired girl. A theory had started to brew in my head ever since I saw her, about the rumors and words spoken by the town’s people regarding the elusive shinobi family living nearby, and their sudden disappearance.

Linlin’s sad frown talking about how her cool older ninja sister disappeared a few months back without warning. Information gathered by Hayase indicated that most of this shinobi family had gone missing. There was also another thing nagging at me. This whole trip felt strangely familiar to me. Like an old memory that wanted to come to life. Like something important I was forgetting.

The silence stretched for what felt like minutes, but wasn’t more than a few moments.

“Good job, Hinata-san. You did well. Kakashi would be proud.”

I blinked, tore my eyes away from the corpses, stared at the jounin. My mind was still reeling from everything, not able to make sense of his words. More on reflex than conscious thought, I gave him a thumbs up.

Yamato’s hand flashed into the seals. Out of the earth, another Yamato popped out. Both original and clone’s big black eyes bore into me, until the original looked away, toward where Hayase had fled, then back at me. “I’ll go check on Sai. See what you can learn from our enemies meanwhile. I’ll leave a clone here to protect you.”

The clone nodded, flickering away after a few moments.

I looked at the Yamato, where the clone had been, at the corpses, back at Yamato again. My mind still insisted on not working like it should, and the sick feeling in my gut wasn’t going away. After a while, I nodded.

Yamato opened his mouth, like he wanted to say something, then shook his head, looked away, back at me. “If anything happens, blast something nearby. I’ll hear and come as fast as I can. I don’t think we need to worry about being stealthy anymore.” After one last long look, Yamato left.

Those words at any other time would have made me super giddy. No, I’m lying, they still made me giddy. Being praised by a canon famous jounin was like a dream come true, but the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach dulled the moment. My eyes somehow returned to the orange haired, burned body. Why was that? These weren’t the first people I killed. I killed that chunin in the land of waves, I killed more genin in the forest of death, I killed people during Konoha’s Crush. That wasn’t to say I enjoyed killing. On the contrary, I didn’t feel anything at all.

At Waves, I was giddy but not about the killing, it was because defeating that enemy meant protecting my teammates and the client and completing the mission. In the forest of death, the sound-nins I killed never even crossed my mind, I wasn’t of sound mind at that time. The invading ninjas that attacked during the exam were the enemy, and it was my duty to protect the village, the civilians and myself. I never felt any pleasure or satisfaction in the act of killing itself, nor did I ever felt guilty. So, why now?

I shook my head. I had my orders, I could dwell on the whys of things later. My hands flashed with seals, out popped a shadow clone. This one, I named Investigation-Chan. It could have been my impression, but my clone looked ragged. Her eyes looked troubled, mouth in a strange frown. She gave me a curt nod, turned away and toward the place we had to investigate. I took a deep breath, shook my head, followed Investigation-Chan.

Inspecting dead bodies for clues wasn’t what I would consider good shinobi fun, it was kinda creepy, if I was honest with myself. There were a few things I noticed. First, and strangely enough, most of the corpses were still wearing clothes. I should have guessed as much, given the center head had still been wearing a bandanna when we found the creature. The other part was their skin; now in death, apart from the charred and burned parts, they were fair and normal human looking, not like the red tinged and rough skin from before, when the chimera was still alive. At the time, it somehow made me think of the second stage of the cursed seal transformation.

That was a possibility, right? I couldn’t discard that option. Perhaps Orochimaru captured people to experiment with his cursed seal, and now that the host of the seal was dead, the effect that kept them merged ended, and the bodies separated. I made a mental note of that possibility. I wouldn’t be able to clearly state the effects of the cursed seal to Yamato— I wasn’t supposed to know any of it— but pointing out the obvious without saying ‘cursed seal’ would also work.

Maybe that was something I could confirm, the seal, I mean.

With morbid curiosity, I searched the dead bodies for a seal-like tattoo. A few minutes later, I gave up. Unless I undressed the dead people to search beneath their almost destroyed clothing, there was no mark that I could identify as a cursed seal. There was a lot I could put up with in the name of being a good shinobi. Undressing dead bodies was a bit too much though.

Another strand of thought distracted me from my musings. Had these people also been enhanced with seals inside their body? For a brief moment, I imagined myself strapping bodies to a bloodied table, cutting them open to inspect their bones and heart.

I… might need help. What were these strange thoughts? I shook the gruesome idea away. I wanted to know about the seals, but again, defiling bodies wasn’t the solution. I wanted to be free of Orochimaru’s traps, not become him.

From the bigger guy with the bandanna, I retrieved some parchments hidden in the pockets of his clothing. It was, unfortunately, written in a cipher I didn’t know. I stored that away for later, and kept on my gruesome work.

Investigation-Chan was by my side, also looking at the dead shinobi family. The investigation was enough to confirm these people were part of the missing shinobi family we heard about in the trading town. We found enough to be certain of that: Clan symbols, small notes and other personal things all pointed to that conclusion.

My clone looked from the corpses to me, walked closer. I looked at her, still distracted with my thoughts and what I needed to report. Investigation-Chan stopped in front of me, close, invading my personal space. Was it an invasion of personal space if the other person was still me? She put her arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug.

I froze for a moment, then relaxed. My arms found their way around Investigation-Chan, pulled her closer. It was nice. She smelled of moist earth and explosions. I didn’t even remember how long it was since someone hugged me like that. We stayed there for a while, more than appropriate, until Investigation-Chan pulled away. She pressed her own forehead to mine, then disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Memories, information and impressions flooded my mind. I took a deep breath, trying to organize my thoughts. There was something I needed to confirm.

My hand found its way toward my storage pouches, and to a particular seal. I took out my timeline diary. The one I wrote when I was five, just after arriving in this world. It seemed so long ago. Most of my memories of the original show were fuzzy and distant. I still remembered the important parts, but the smaller details were not so easy to remember anymore, and for some reason, it had been a while since I last consulted my notes.

In a puff of smoke, my old story book popped out of the seal. I opened it, read the pages. The story book was a childish account of Little Chef Camilla’s adventures to learn all the recipes in the world. In my storybook, the first main dish was Camilla’s first foray into the cooking arts, trying to combine Orange, Lemon and Strawberry into a delicious pie with the help of a spirit mentor, a chibi wolf-like spirit, that was a complete tsuntsun. For this main dish, Camilla had to travel to distant islands, only to be waylaid by brigands and a bridge defending troll. Don’t judge me too much, please. Orange represented Naruto, Lemon was Sasuke, Strawberry Sakura, while the mentor spirit was Kakashi-sensei.

The thing is that, at the time, I was confident that just a few mentions of the elements of the plot of the original story would be enough to make me remember everything. Yet, years later, the things I wrote barely made sense to me. Oh, I still knew the broad strokes. Land of Waves, Exams, Crushcrushcrush, Search for Tsunade, Sasuke Recovery mission, Timeskip, Kazekage Rescue Mission and more. I flipped a few pages ahead. Stopped on a particular story, marked as a side dish.

Camilla’s search for all recipes took her to a rice farm, where a perverted frog helped her find the evil snake that had lured her prized Lemon away. To make the travel acceptable, she took Orange and Strawberry, in the hopes of finding Lemon and guilt tripping him into returning to the fruit basket.

It was hogwash, of course. Side dish was my way of saying this wasn’t story canon, but part of the dreaded TV show filler episodes. In this one, Jiraya, the perverted frog, took Naruto and Sakura to the land of rice in the search of Orochimaru’s hideout. The problem was that I was a bit of a snob Naruto fan. To me, the comics were the true canon, with the TV show being a so-so adaptation, while the fillers were trash that shouldn’t be watched, or even exist— even if I did watch that one about unmasking Kakasi-sensei. Don’t blame me, it was fun.

But back to the topic. I remember now, I never really watched that series of episodes, but I’ve seen the images, and read the synopses. The Fuma clan, Orochimaru’s hideout, a monster created and left behind, a confrontation with Kabuto. Was Kabuto still hiding here?

The story book went again into the seal. I hid it with my other things. I needed to consider the original story and how my meddling had changed things. I had been putting it off for far too long. What were my plans to deal with Akatsuki? Deal with Danzo? How was I going to change the world again? But now wasn’t the time. I hated raising flags, but I would do it as soon as I was back at home.

I looked around, Yamato’s clone was nowhere to be seen. I turned away and toward where my teammates had moved to. There was a report to make, and a hideout to find, a Kabuto to hunt down. With a bit of luck, the coded notes would have that information.