Ch20- Trials

She could see nothing but an endless plane of fire and magma with a single wooden hut in the middle of all of it.

Since she saw nothing but the hut anywhere here, Namaki made her way inside.

"Welcome. I'm glad someone has come to visit me for such a long time." Said a tall woman, who was standing in the middle of the room, closely studying the newcomer.

She was nothing short of breathtaking by human standards, at least if one disregarded the white skin and two small horns growing out of her forehead.

Seeing the calculating look on Namaki's face, the woman smiled as she continued observing her.

"Nice, I like you already! Wanna be my girlfriend?"

She didn't know what to make out of that question. She knew what a girlfriend was and what that entailed since Yui had explained it to her after asking the same question.

"Why should I?"

This made the woman frown. She had never in her life been denied like that. She was used to being declined because of her skin, heritage, or just her sexuality. But she was unable to understand why Namaki did. The only thing in her eyes was confusion and a bit of curiosity. There were no traces of disgust or aversion.

Taking no chances for any resistance, the woman restrained Namaki before placing her hand on Namaki's head and skimming through her memories.

She was disgusted. Even though she hadn't helped her brothers in fighting their mother since they had sealed her away, she still had some love for humans remaining. But she didn't expect humanity to fall low enough to force others to breed children just to use them as tools of pleasure and weapons.

Although she never could fully relate to her mother, she also despised how humans acted. However, unlike her mother, she knew that putting them into an eternal illusion wasn't the best course of action.

This conflict caused her to try to change their mother's plan, which unfortunately failed.

In the end, her brothers sealed her away before fighting their mother, since she could have tipped the scales of the fight, causing a rift in their relationship.

While her brothers decided to live on earth and the moon, she could only choose between being stuck with her sealed mother without being able to interact or using her strength to temporarily free herself and travel through the universe for ten years.

"No wonder. *smirk* I'm gonna show you what being my girlfriend brings you."

The dizziness didn't help her in understanding the strange antics of the woman as she tried to continue listening to her.

„I proclaim you my girlfriend! Anyway, let's hope you survive the trial and we'll see each other again."

This was all she could hear before she felt her consciousness slip away.

***

"Oh, you're awake! Now to the most important question, what is your name and how should I call you? Babe, Honey, Namaki, Nozomi, or Love?"

It was confusing, she had been transported in this strange plane just to have a strange woman proclaim herself her girlfriend and was now coming with a barrage of questions.

"Anyway, we'll set this aside, for now, my dear Nozomi. Since I now know that you have no clue where you are I'll explain it to you. Your enemy has used a summoning Jutsu to kill you. Since the entity hit was only a clone, your real body was brought here instead.

To clear up your confusion, these are the trials of the sun and moon. It gets too boring to explain everything about the past to you and as such, I have given you those memories, you just have to think about the information and it will pop up in your brain.

Numerous people have tried taking these trials but died while doing so. The first stage of the test will be to answer my questions truthfully. You can change exactly one thing about the rules, but be warned, if you answer 3 questions wrong you will die.

Since I'll explain the rest later, let's start.

"What is your purpose?"

"To serve."

"What is your goal?"

"To serve successfully."

"What is your greatest fear?"

"Failure."

"The person most important to you, only considering the ones you're close with currently?"

"Naruto or Namiko."

"Most Important person in your life?"

"Lord Tsuchikage."

.

.

.

"Your girlfriend?"

"None"

*Tch*

"Not nice of you. Anyway, you guys seemed to have passed. And since I like you, you now have officially earned the chance to train with me."

.

.

.

"Oh shit! I haven't introduced myself! I'm Himari Otsutsuki, nice to meet you."

Meanwhile with Namiko:

"Haruma, did I pass?"

"Yes. I am indeed surprised that you knew her so well to use your one rule change to change the person this was about. She did indeed answer as you predicted. Since that is the case we will start our training now.

.

.

.

It's been a long time since the both of us have taken a liking to our respective challengers."

***HUGE time skip***

"Nozomi, your training is almost over! Let's pause it for now, I wanna hang out since you will be forced to leave once you are finished.

It has always been like this. Himari had ordered Nozomi to be her girlfriend, which she accepted since Himari was the master of this place and thus her master. Luckily Himari had managed to tone down her absolute obedience a bit since she liked letting her partner take control sometimes, be it in bed or somewhere else.

Himari would train her till she couldn't stand it anymore, just to make her spend 'quality time' together afterward. This ranged from dressing Nozomi up to sleeping together, Himari tried everything she could imagine.

Meanwhile with Namiko:

"Go on, young one. Your training has ended. Your friend will follow you in a few weeks and don't forget the explanation for your friend's disappearance."

***

"You waited..."

It had finally been time to leave. Himari had almost created chains and tied her to their bedroom because she couldn't bear to see her leaving. However, she had finally gotten away after promising to help unseal her and live together afterward.

"Naturally, it wasn't that long anyway."

"Bullshit."

In all honesty, Namiko had waited for almost two months until Nozomi had returned, but she wouldn't ever tell her that.

Surprisingly Nozomi gave her a big hug, causing her to almost suffocate, and surprise her with the sudden show of affection.

"Big sis, you've grown."

"Yes, a lot. Though I can say the same about you too."

While Namiko had merely said that about her sister's mental state, she was flustered as her sister looked at her chest while making such a remark.

Truly interesting what one could learn when living with an Otsutsuki woman. She was never been spared from any embarrassing remark and was now quite eager to annoy her sister endlessly, something she had without a doubt picked up from her girlfriend.

"Let's go back, it's been 3 years since we disappeared. They probably think we are dead. I miss the little ones."

Indeed, it had been almost 3 1/2 years since their disappearance. Naruto had already reached the age of twelve close to a year ago and should have become a shinobi already.

If he had a good team, he might even have already taken the Chunin exams and been given the same rank as they did.

In those 3 years, both had matured greatly since the time flow there was different. 1 day on the outside was two days inside there.

Namiko had now reached the age of 21 and had grown into a beautiful red-haired woman while Nozomi had retained her adult form, with only small changes she made, mainly her hair retaining the same red color as Namiko.

Nozomi's actual age was now close to 30 as she neared the mid-Kage level. She hadn't had the chance to improve a lot in her close to 10 years undercover and had thus needed to get back to her peak before she could start improving.

While Nozomi had regained her strength and had now become a mid-level Kage, Namiko had been training a lot more and had reached the strength of a weak Anbu captain.

As both made their way towards Konoha, alarms spread through the Anbu headquarters as they picked up the presence of two Anbu-captain-level threats going straight towards them.

"Lord Fifth! We have a situation. Two shinobi at the level of the Anbu captains are going straight towards the village. Unfortunately, we do not know their intentions nor who they even are."

***

„So you both want to tell me, that you disappeared 3 years ago and couldn't get back until now. What a mess."

At first, they were surprised to find out, that the old Hokage had died in an attack a few months back but they were able to readjust quickly since none of them were close to him anyway.

However, they now had trouble trying to explain their predicament to the new Hokage t not be labeled as rouge-nin, which was troublesome since both Kakashi and Semaru were out on a mission while Naruto had left the village to go train with Jiraya.

Luckily it didn't take many days for them to confirm their identities and they were allowed to leave after only a few days in the T&I department.

________

Jo, I wanted to apologize for the quality of this chapter.

I'm kinda out of ideas for this story and don't want to stretch it endlessly without any reason, and I had to force myself into writing this chapter.

While I do still have some ideas on how to proceed, mainly in the character development, it would mainly consist of the final war arc, since only her alternate persona would be able to participate elsewhere.

Since it is like this, I will probably skip through those 3 years in a single, short, chapter before getting to the war arc. Before that, however, I have a plan to make at least one more important story part directly after they return home. I have not decided which ending to choose but it will likely be different than the original one.

So in the end, I just want to apologize to the people that had hoped for a more prolonged story, sorry but I can't.