Global Currents

Woosh!

Land of the Moon, ahoy!

I pull into a swerving descent, pulling loops, barrel and aileron rolls, lazy eights and wingovers along the way for the sheer joy of flying until I dove into a final swooping backflip un-Transformation landing on a familiar beach.

"I'm back!"

And immediately I shrug off my warm sweater and long pants, tossing them into my waist Holding and replace them with a loose chakra construct kimono sans the Uchiha logo, as clothes for the chill of Water Country or four kilometers above sea-level were hardly suitable for the tropics.

My hair turned blond and my skin tanned with a minute flex of the Chameleon jutsu.

I didn't want to create a connection between the Moon and Water Countries for anyone who might have been able to compare my appearances.

Turning, I look at a familiar figure on the beach.

"Man, looks like we both made it past the first week, huh?"

My Wood Release tree obviously doesn't answer but I don't mind. It's several inches taller by now, sprouting a nice set of green leaves and strong roots.

It's growing a lot faster than normal trees, I think?

I was pretty familiar with the things, even before I had awoken in the Village Hidden in Leaves, where trees were practically sacred. Had grown up the first time around in an ass-end forest in the middle of nowhere with little else around me, and all.

Not like I was a... wood inspector?—yeah, it's wood—or anything, but I was fairly familiar with them.

When the mother I still remembered was pregnant with me she had bought a birch sapling and planted it near the house my dad was building, allowing us to more-or-less grow at the same rate - though my birch brother had obviously shot far past me in height with the years. And my dad had often pulled me along to plant some spruces around the property to drink up some of the excess water flowing in from the nearby mountain since the land surrounding the house had been so muddy and runny.

Having two full wells of all-naturally filtered pure water was nice—tap water in the city had never tasted as good—but when the dirt roads collapsed and fell apart damn near every year because of the constant underground inflow of rainwater from the mountain...

Yeah, time to plant some fucking trees and let them drink it up.

Broadleaf trees drank a lot more than coniferous trees like spruces did, but that gave us more control over the rate of guzzling. Also had nicely created a barrier so the neighbors couldn't see us. I mean, extended family nearby is nice and all, but my aunt would shout at my cousins all day every day.

So, a little sound wall went a long way for peace of mind.

Anyhow, I was pretty familiar with trees.

I crouch down next to the tree and look it over curiously, running a finger beneath the leaves and looking under them.

"You're definitely the same kind of weird tree that was growing around Konoha..."

The leaves swayed in the wind.

"Nah, you're very pretty. Or handsome? Uh, you're a very fine and proper tree. It's just... I might have to be careful with how you look. Don't want anyone to come snooping around and realize where you came from, you know?"

It stopped shuffling, the breeze dying down.

"So, do you want to stay here or move a little inland? You're still small enough that I can do that, and your roots haven't gone that deep yet."

No answer.

Hmm...

I poke at the tree with a finger, pushing through a little chakra. The sapling seems to nuzzle against me somehow, without actually moving.

"Okay. If you're comfortable here, that's fine too."

I push through a little more chakra, letting it drink from my reserves and looking by as it grows a little, visibly, before pulling back.

"Anyhow, I got errands to handle. See ya!"

Jogging at a light pace, I head for the city again.

Right now my first job is just to get some more food. So probably a kind of test-run more than anything. But fine, I'll take it slow and easy – no point in revealing I can just pop out and back in fifteen minutes just yet. Swift Release—Bleh! Warp, Warp, Warp!—was one thing, even when combined with Flickers, but my Midnight Warp Flicker was something entirely different.

For starters, the effect of shrinking down the space-time bubble with my raven form was more than just an improvement against air resistance and less of my mass interacting with the rest of reality, because, it also allowed me to focus the intensity of the space-time bubble that much more.

If I could reach an apparent intensity of say, 1 or 2, in my human form then the smaller and more focused Midnight Warp could reach up to 5 at max burn right now. Not that I usually pushed it that hard since the chakra efficiency was pretty awful.

But that was where the Flicker came in, supercharging the space-time bubble in the initial burst.

In my human form, it reached a peak of 15—a staggering seven-fold increase from the base and a tripling over the raven form, despite the apparent size advantage—that rapidly waned until it vanished if I didn't continue pumping it with chakra. So it seemed like Warp preferred being pulsed rather than a continuous effect.

And as for the complete Midnight Warp Flicker, it had reached 30 according to clones' estimates.

Mostly because I hadn't really dared to push it any harder. I didn't want to Whoopsie myself onto the moon or anything - I had played enough space games and flown enough times into the sun—usually by accident—to known not fuck around with that. I think combining the size advantage of the Midnight Nameless with the explosive impetus of the Body Flicker must somehow work multiplicatively rather than additively...

Of course, this was all still very wooly, the measurements purely subjective and anecdotal, so a lot more testing was necessary.

Anyhow, Zabuza thought I could make it a day trip to the continent, when in fact I could make it in minutes.

It wasn't a lie, more like...

A personal distance?

He still didn't fully trust me and we both knew I could just leave behind Shadow Clones if I wanted to spy on them, but that little bit of time and distance for ourselves gave us both some measure of privacy. Besides, my life had more going on than just Water Country stuff, so it left me with more time to train and think alone.

Anyhow, I had chosen the Crescent Kingdom to make the purchases in.

Partly because the conversion rate between the ryo and the dollar was so hilariously skewed that it essentially punched my tiny budget three weight-classes up, but also because so long as I didn't buy the expensive imported foods but the locally produced cheaper stuff, I was also supporting the people of the Land of the Moon.

Normally the flow of cash was heavily controlled so that all the money flowing in was flowing right back out through the right channels at a steady rate, ensuring that only the king and his aides really got ahead. But if I went and poured all this foreign coin—converted first, of course, since there was a law against using other currencies—into the local businesses that would give them that much more leverage.

Of course, I couldn't just dump all the money I had been given right away.

I doubted their food supply could match my current demand. If I blindly turned all the money into dollars it would leave me with only a fraction of the food Zabuza wanted and piles of useless funny money that wasn't worth a dime anywhere else.

Additionally, I didn't want to build up some kind of economic bubble that would just pop when I no longer needed to come around again.

But if I did this carefully, slowly giving them some excess cash and then gradually choking out the demand to force them to diversify their income, it might just allow the locals to build something of their own with that initial infusion of capital after I left. Something which would give them options other than either servitude to the foreign interest in the city of Yuena, or subsistence fishing at the outskirts.

But that would be on them.

I was just giving them a chance while filling my own needs effectively. Anyhow, fuck taxes, fuck tariffs, fuck borders – black-wing globalism is the future!

Anarcho-capitalist ninja!

So, time to see about filling up these three storage scrolls with all the sun-dried fish and fruit I can get my grubby little mittens on.

"The sweet potato is local?" I ask, blinking as I point at a juicy-looking reddish knob thing.

"Yes...?" the sales-lady answers hesitantly, maybe worried that I will make a scene since the imported foods seem to be more highly valued and I'm clearly a foreigner right now.

Huh.

I hadn't seen many fields, not even in the backyards of residences.

Wait, this place did have a lot of trees unlike the island cultures I had been mentally comparing it to, but that didn't mean other things had to be different.

"Are the mountains here volcanic?"

"Umm...?"

She looks a little thrown for a loop by the sudden change of questions.

Right, maybe it hasn't erupted in living memory and she just doesn't know. But it could still have all those neat tunnels that volcanic mountains tend to form, that were perfect for gardening.

"Do you have any yams?"

The sales-lady blinks, brows furrowed in confusion before she nods. "Yes sir, but yams are not at all like sweet potatoes. They are not very sweet, you see, and their color or skin is not as pleasant."

"So... You sell sweet potatoes for cheap to the visitors and eat the yams yourselves?" I ask, crossing my arms and thinking.

I don't remember the exact nutritional values of either but I think they were pretty healthy. Probably on the level of potatoes, or a little above. And they probably have just as good a shelf-life.

"How long do they store, if you keep them dry and cold?"

To emphasize my questions, I drop a fat pouch of money onto the countertop between us. Her eyes grow wide at the sight of it.

"Oh, uh, weeks - months in winter, sir!"

Perfect.

"Oh, and do you know if anyone sells any dried or salted fish around here? The fish market is all fresh stuff."

The hotel staff and servants usually visit there, getting fresh ingredients for the guests and for themselves. I doubt someone like Yanami—who seemed like the average island visitor—has ever had to eat a fish that's been preserved for more than a week in her life.

A spark flashes in the woman's eyes.

The light of greed – which I don't hate at all. I'm a greedy kind of guy myself, you know?

"Only the fishermen by the cape do that, but I have an uncle who can prepare you as much as you need, sir. It will only take a day or two, sir."

I grin.

"The village by the island's southern end? I'll bring over some barrels by tonight. But I'll want to inspect the fish before you seal it. And those yams? I want a few barrels full of those too if you can provide it. Here's one thousand dollars to get you started, we'll discuss more later."

"Oh yes, sir, that is the village. I will have my sister waiting for you there with my uncle!"

Nodding, I turn to leave.

Now I just need to find some barrels.

Huh, they're still filming...

How long do movie shoots usually take? A few months? Years? I think I see someone familiar walking about, too. Maybe I should pay her a visit again.

I pull into a slow descent and land behind one of the vans, releasing my chameleon coloring back into my natural look that she should recognize in tandem with my plain kimono.

"Now, where did I put that thing... Ah!"

One box of Grass Country's finest.

My last one, since I went and tossed one at Mei. I haven't actually had any chances to sit down and brew any yet, either. Should do as an excuse to visit, right?

I knock on a van's door. This one is bigger than the one we met last in, but I suppose it's her room for the duration of the shooting, since going back to Yuena would be a waste of time every day with how rough and overgrown the forest trail is. A boat would probably be easier.

"Who is it?"

"The inter-dimensional stray," I answer cheerfully.

The silence is intense for a moment, before I barely hear a deep sigh from inside.

She opens the door, looking very unimpressed with me as she looks me over, eyes sticking to my feet for a moment. Oh yeah, I have sandals now so I only look a little rough around the edges and not like a complete wild-child.

I extend my hand with the tea.

"I was around, so thought I could come and give this. It's, uh, an apology for ruining your scene?"

She raises a dark brow, crossing her arms. But a smile tugs at her lips. "I thought we agreed the pepperspraying put us even?"

I make a mock-frowning face of deep thought.

"No... Pretty sure that was for snooping around?"

She snorts, accepting the little lacquered box with green tea. "What is this?" Before taking a whiff, her brows rising up. She gives me a curious look, but I just smile mysteriously. "Hmm..."

Still suspicious of me.

That's just healthy. Common sense, really. I mean, I did just come to mess around and waste some time.

I lean to the side and look inside her van. It looks pretty normal – I see a kitchenette, a bed in the back, dressers and piles upon piles of clothes. But it doesn't look like the movie props or dresses, so I guess they do the make-up and stuff in another van.

"Did you want to snoop around here, too?" she asks, resting the box and her hand against her hip, towering over me from inside the raised van.

"Can I?"

"Fine..." she sighs, leaning out of the van and I step back as she holds herself from falling out with one hand against the doorframe. "Sandayu!"

Then she turns around and walks inside, leaving the door open behind her.

I blink and shrug, following after her inside and dusting off my sandals by raising them in the air and expelling all the dirt and sand on them with a minute application of chakra.

But even as we're standing again on the same floor, she's way taller than me.

Which reminds me...

I walk up to her, measuring her with my upraised hand to compare our heights. She's about Kakashi's height? Tallest woman I've seen in this world, I think. Mei was the only one who came close, so I had been wondering if it was something about her tallness that bothered me so.

But no, this lady is like 5 centimeters taller than that loony, and I'm not getting that vibe at all from her...

"Are you finished?" she asks, brow raised again.

I guess she gets it a lot, being so tall. Oh! I haven't had a chance to use this joke since back before, whenever I met that Dutch guy who was like two meters tall.

"I was just checking if it's windy up there."

She rolls her eyes, turning around to put the tea on a table.

"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll still grow taller than me," she reassures me, a little teasingly.

"I should hope so. I used to be a pretty tall guy, before all this..." I answer, motioning with a hand at myself.

"Oh yes, you were thirty years old, weren't you?"

"You remembered!" I grin. "But no, this was more about... Mm, how do I put it..." I cross my arms, trying to recall the feeling Mei gave off.

I close my eyes and activate the Sharingan, flicking to the mental tab of the event.

"I just ran into this other lady and she gave off this reaaally weird vibe. But I can't put my finger on what it was. I thought it might have been because she was so much taller than me, or that her proportions were somehow off... But no?"

"Was she a ninja chasing you?" she asks, clearly thinking I was just being scolded by someone or something equally inane.

I nod. "Yeah, yeah, but nah. She was trying to kill me, but..." I shake my head, frowning as I turn off the Sharingan and open my eyes again. "That's pretty much normal, and I haven't got that sense before from other women. I mean..."

Orochimaru was creepier, sure, and while I didn't fight Anko, she did positively loathe me, so I think if that was it, I would have sensed it. But neither really gave off that vibe.

"Hmm..."

She looks a touch concerned now, yet still morbidly curious.

"Well, it was fine. I got away and she was mostly fighting this other guy, who gave back as good as he got," I say, trying to reassure her, I guess.

I hear footsteps and glance at the door and then back to the actress, who doesn't appear to have heard the approaching man.

"Someone's coming. Should I hide?"

"It's only Sandayu. Sit down, he'll make us tea," she replies with a wave of her hand and goes to sit herself.

I follow suit, taking a spot opposite her by the table.

"Yukie-sama, you called for me?" a pony-tailed man asks as he comes inside, carefully dusting off his shoes and keeping himself very demure. Something about him tickles my memory.

The body language? His face? That beard or the graying hair? Or was it her name?

Yukie... Yukie... Yukie...

I turn to peer at her face, trying to remember, brows furrowed.

She rests an elbow on the table, propping her chin on the palm, adorned by a knowing smile.

"Finally recognize me?"

"Mm... Almost. Not quite yet."

"Ah, Yukie-sama, this is...?" the man asks, adjusting his glasses and I frown at the little tanto thing he's holding in his hands.

Just put it in your pocket, man. You just look weird.

"He's a fan who brought me some tea. Make a pot, why don't you?" she orders him, dismissively, almost as if not wanting to look at him.

I am a fan—Uchiha number one!—just, not that kind of fan, lady.

Anyhow, I turn to look at him as he looks at me again.

He's much more suspicious of me than she is, but I'm not sure if he's just her agent or something else, given the weird tension between them.

"Yukie-sama, shall I remove him?" he asks, turning to her at once and puffing up.

She only snorts and then pats the lacquered box on the table. "You would only hurt yourself. Tea."

"Ah, yes, of course."

With one last look, he scampers off to the kitchenette.

Odd guy.

I couldn't sense any hostility or explicit weirdness from him, but there's something about him.

"Describe her."

I turn to Yukie, blinking once.

"Oh, right. The lady who was creeping me out?"

She nods, eyes half-lidded and looking at nothing - the look of someone wanting to be distracted after a long day of work.

"Well, uh... Almost as tall as you. Blue dress. Mesh on her limbs. Showing off lots of cleavage, so kind of big busted, too? Red, really long hair, really elaborate. Like it's covering her one eye," I show with my right hand, covering half of my face. "And then a top-knot of some kind like this," I continue, as my left goes to the top of my head. "And it's still hanging all the way down to her knees."

She listens, glancing at my pantomiming.

"Oh, and her hair is also like... there are these bangs crossing over her open cleavage, almost like she's trying to draw attention to her boobs. And lips, with the eye-covering bang..."

"That's what she looks like. Describe her – how was she behaving?"

"Err... Shouting, insulting us... Lots of personal jabs at this other guy who she knew from before. Really digging her heels in to make life for us as difficult as possible, even after it was clear she had lost."

"How old is she?" Yukie asks.

"Uh..."

I scratch my head.

She was older than Zabuza, who was like Kakashi's age, so... "Late twenties, almost thirty? She's also some kind of big-wig clan heir. Really rich and powerful, I think?"

She snorts, nodding to herself as she leans back away from the table.

"She's stressed out."

Stressed out?

Well, I can sort of see it, trying to balance her rebellion with her rivalry: One slip and she would be exiled or dead, for sure.

"It sound almost like what she really needs is..." Yukie continues, leaning forward again with a knowing look, before pausing as she looks at me. Really looks at me. Then she looks back to Sandayu, who's got the water nearing a boil already, taking it off the heat and lining up the cups. "Mm, nevermind."

I blink and wonder whether I should press her on it.

"Anyhow, she sounds like the average high-tension career woman under a lot of stress. I see the type a lot."

I'm... really not seeing it, though?

I had used to work with a lot of women back before and in some places, the Monday meetings would begin with a 'So, we didn't see a national expose in the papers about that one big fuck-up last week, good job everyone! Now, here's the next fuck-up we need to fix before we go belly up!' Scurrying from putting out one fire to the next, like...

And most of those women didn't act like that.

So, I dunno.

"There's nothing you can do about it anyway, squirt."

She gives me another teasing look.

"Look, I'm pretty sure I'm older than you, even if it's the years aren't cumulative." I'm not even sure if time flows completely the same in this place, either.

"Sure you are, sure you are."

"Yukie-sama, honored guest..." Sandayu interrupts, walking with a tray and two fine cups of tea.

She doesn't even thank him, just reaching over to take a sip without preamble.

I glance at the man, wondering at his weirdness again. It's like he's some court retainer, but also like he's trying to poison me.

"Did you put something in my tea?" I ask and he flinches, taking a step back.

Yukie looks up, frowning as well. "Sandayu, this is the old tea. Why didn't you use the new leaves?

I blink and turn to look at her. It looks the same...

Ah, did he suspect I was trying something and made her normal tea and me some of my own?

The foolhardy thing would be to down my cup as a show of confidence, but I still don't know if he did actually put something else there. Should I ask her to—no, if Sandayu doesn't trust me, he would stop her then, too.

"Did you put something in the tea?" I ask again and my Sharingan whirls to life.

He blinks, mind completely open as I skim his thoughts. Surprise, shock, a touch of fear...

But he didn't do anything weird to my cup.

I keep them spinning as I pointedly take a sip from my cup while maintaining eye contact.

"Aaahhh... You make good tea. Well, when you don't skimp out and try to use older leaves first, I suppose."

I wasn't a big tea drinker, but when my Japanologist friends made it, it was actually pretty good. Something about... tannin? You weren't supposed to stir the bag with a spoon—or use bags in the first place?—and most of the stuff we got from Asia was already tasteless compared to the real thing.

The dried-out dregs, I suppose.

When I had drunk tea of my own initiative, it was to keep myself warm and usually involved lots of sugar, cream, and more often than not, rum. The old joke we had in the boy scouts was that we had tea with our sugar.

But this stuff is pretty good.

"Sandayu," she says, putting down her cup with a loud clack.

"I—I, forgive me, Yukie-sama, I merely..." he tries to apologize, stuttering now, confused.

"Make me a new one."

"Yes, of course, at once...!"

She sighs, rubbing at her temples.

"You seem stressed, too?" I ask, after a few moments to let her calm down as the retainer scatters off.

This would be where I offered a back massage to my friends back before, but I doubt we're close enough for that now. There was something special about being the guy who could undo knots in your back, or click back into place a crick in the shoulder or neck, in a group of friends.

Massages required a lot of strength of the hands. So, I was like a Muscle Cleric in that circle – like the Muscle Wizard, but instead, to heal, I Cast Fist!

She looks up and our eyes meet again.

Yukie blinks, not quite taken aback, but clearly not having expected the Sharingan.

I wasn't wearing a disguise anyhow, so not like this reveal mattered, not after I had already shown it to the retainer. I didn't feel like muddling up his memories either anymore, just out of spite. By proving more honest in our dealings, I could take the moral high ground from now on.

"You have the same eyes..." she finally says.

Wut?

"You've seen the Sharingan before?"

"Yes." Nodding, she looks away, her entire persona shifting again somehow. Like she's using her acting to create a front to hide her true feelings behind. I catch surprise, muted loss, fear, and something like trust there before she gathers herself. "So you really were a ninja."

I make a 'yeah, duh'-face, taking another sip of my tea and letting the eyes roll black.

The silence stretches out, but it doesn't feel uncomfortable.

More like just a coffee visit from back before. Just with tea. The way my parents would drag me off along for visiting relatives or friends, and they would just sit by the table and make a little bit of small talk while I was going spare with nothing to do.

I miss my gameboy.

Weird thing to miss, but there I have it.

Sandayu comes and offers Yukie a new cup, silently withdrawing as she gives him a withering glare, but not after giving me a last speculative look. To which I maturely respond with a raspberry.

Anyhow, she appears to much prefer the newer leaves, letting out a long exhale after a sip.

"So, why would a ninja be interested in old batteries and vans?"

"Ninja aren't usually interested in stuff like that?" I ask, half curious about the question itself and half wondering how she would know that.

"As a rule... No, they don't."

She doesn't elaborate. Ho-humm... How mysterious.

Probably not an Academy Student, I think? I don't know how it works in the other ninja villages but in Konoha we barely even touched on the subject.

Anyhow...

"Where I think I came from, back before, we didn't have chakra. Just technology. It's a pretty interesting juxtaposition."

Yukie looks at me, eyes narrowing. "No chakra...? I don't see how that could work."

"Yeah, the infrastructures there and here are completely different. But there are similarities, like electricity. So I'm trying to trace along that to see if I can understand this place better."

She gives me another long look.

"'Came from', 'back before', 'there and here', 'this place...'" She repeats, looking out the window to the sea. "It sounds a little insane. Even more-so than what ninja usually get up to."

I shrug. "You're not wrong. I'm still not sure if I'm some other person who came here somehow, if the person I was simply had a revelation, or if I'm actually just straight-up delusional. But it seems like the things I 'know' from that other place are more or less correct and consistent, and don't just change to suit this reality when contradicted. As far as my memory allows, anyway."

The thing about being insane, would be that since my perspective is so skewed, any contradictory information or proof would just acquire its own slant that would make it fit in, somehow.

A part of my blindness that needed to be overcome – this reliance on an idea of canon only a part of it.

I had been trying to keep rigid track of all the principles and ideas from back before, to see if my newfound jutsus followed those rules within the bounds of my understanding, and usually when it didn't that was because I remembered only part of it, or something wrong.

But that was exactly the slant I was worried about.

Memory doesn't work by recalling the thing or event itself, it remembers the last time it remembered that event, continuously overwriting the memory each time it was recalled. Hence why traumatic memories would grow more and more traumatic, and why eyewitness accounts were notoriously unreliable.

Everyone lived in their own little reality, almost completely disconnected from each other. I would say 'objective reality', but I'm not even sure if such a thing actually exists anymore.

I had read some Buddhist stuff and the concept of Maya had always stuck with me, probably far beyond the original Buddha's intentions for the concept. Samsara and those realizations aside, would any Buddhist connect the implications of the quantum shenanigans into reality's falsehood?

As far as I could recall, the brain had still been a mystery, but my personal belief had been that it must have operated on some level by way of Quantum Mechanics and that the no-cloning theorem was why memory would degenerate and rewrite itself so.

I had never met a real practitioner and been able to discuss the ideas, so maybe they did, maybe they didn't.

"Like what?" she asks, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Well... if you think of space itself like a fabric..." I raise my kimono sleeve and grab it with my opposite hand. It's pretty thick silk, but it does give a little bit of stretch if I pull at it hard enough.

No, wait, it's a chakra construct, I can just make it stretch to demonstrate... Like so.

"And stretch it out, I can make spaces bigger and smaller."

Yukie nods, not quite understanding.

"So I can do things like this," I say and reach into the sleeve, letting it stretch back to shape with another application of chakra, and then reach into the Holding and take out as many shuriclones as I can.

I manage six on each finger, barely, and put them on the table.

"I... see?"

Hmm, fine. I reach into my kimono, into the Holding by my waist, and take out three sweaters which in no way could have fit in there without some kind of obvious bulging.

That gets a bigger reaction out of her since ninjas are pretty known for hiding little stabby things all over themselves anyway.

"But, I thought ninja could seal things away on those scrolls already?"

Yup. She's definitely more familiar with ninja than the average civilian. Definitely some kind of character in canon.

"That's right. But that requires written seals of some kind and usually handseals, too. It's like..." I frown, looking around, seeing the kitchenette where the water was heated. "Seals are like making a stove, while I can just do it like this."

I raise a hand, flex my chakra, infuse the air and then compress and squeeze it so tight that the temperature sky-rockets and ignites my stream of chakra as a small flame in my hand with a snap of my fingers.

She's wide-eyed now, staring at the fire with naked surprise, the little flame dances as a reflection in her clear-blue eyes.

"Don't you have chakra, too? I mean, more than most people. Did you go to the Academy, too? Is that why you know about seals and ninja attitudes towards technology?"

Yukie blinks, shuddering before she shakes her head. Some dark emotion ripples through her, nameless and unspeakable.

"I... No."

She doesn't say anything more, so I just leave it be.

Once is one thing - but she's completely avoided answering me twice, now. Guess I'll just have to let sleeping dogs lie.

"Anyhow, I've been going around and looking at things, to compare them. It's pretty weird how a lot of things line up, but a lot still don't. Like population sizes, and stuff."

Inhaling slowly, she shakes herself loose and returns to the present.

"Such as?"

"Well, I've been trying to compare how much people eat, before and now, ninja and civilians... Because it mainly looks like subsistence farming for most people on the continent. Rice, mostly, but some wheat, too."

She frowns. "Subsistence?"

Ah, right. That's probably not a common term here either.

"Most farmers are living on a small plot of land, barely—or somewhat dependably, I should say—surviving on what they produce, depending on weather and other things. Meaning the food production is inefficient in terms of say, manhours of work to tons of grain, for example."

"Ah..." She nods, clearly understanding what I mean, which is again somewhat surprising.

What a mysterious background.

Especially for an actress.

"There was this thing I had heard, or read, somewhere, about the tyranny of the farmers. That it's like a two-fold phenomenon, tied together. Because most farmers are so vulnerable, needing to stay put and work their land so much to create food, they are very easily ruled over by someone with a monopoly on violence. Hence, they are tyrannized..."

"The feudal lords, yes."

That's jumping over a couple of stages, but ultimately, yeah. Big warlords end up at the top of the pyramid.

And it is a pyramid.

"And secondly, because of how little food they produce, the amount they have in excess of keeping themselves and their families fed is minimal. So you need like 9 farmers in a society for one of everything else."

So to feed one lord, 9 farmers. For one samurai retainer, 9 farmers. For one poet, 9 farmers. For one servant girl, 9 farmers. For one artisan of any kind—chef, carpenter, potter, blacksmith...—9 farmers, to produce enough food.

So there were a lot of farmers.

This had been the whole Malthusian trap thing about populations growing too big to sustain themselves and then collapsing, before numerous advances in farming and the staple crops proved the idea somewhat hollow. Human ingenuity was a resource that constantly re-skewed that paradigm.

Anyhow, that tyranny seemed to be the case here.

Not just in the Land of the Moon—I would need a couple of days to fill all the barrels I had found, even if the people were willing to work all day, since I was paying them two or three times what they usually got for the work—but on this version of Earth in general, too.

With the exception that we ninja prevented the feudal lords from having an actual monopoly on violence by simply dominating it ourselves. Which was why the weird double-culture thing my clone had observed a long time ago had left him so confused when he should have been preparing for Itachi and Kisame...

"And that's not even getting into us ninja, who eat like horses, so it's like, twelve, fifteen farmers..."

I try to make a rough estimate, but I'm interrupted.

"'The excess of eighteen homes to feed one ninja'," she says, eyes distant again and I blink at her.

Holy—eighteen farmers?

That's... That's probably why ninja don't—can't—rule over the civilians directly on any larger scale. That's an untenable wealth gap. Like, the levels that the Spartans subjected the Helots to. Like, slavery in the Caribbean, or the preludes to the most violent uprisings and revolutions in history.

I don't know what she's basing that number on, but if it is the paradigm...

No stable society ruled by ninja could possibly exist. It would need to constantly expend too much energy on controlling itself, on keeping people from just fleeing, competing for too few resources...

Wow, hence Kiri?

The islands are too small to support so many ninja, hence the constant infighting. And why Zabuza sent me to get food first. That, more than any rousing speech or just cause will mobilize starving serfs into action.

"Yeah," I say heavily, throat suddenly feeling a little constricted, so I take another sip of the tea.

The train of thought won't leave me, though.

Hidden Villages have only existed for less than a century now, but even so they're not ruling anyone directly. They're holding the feudal lords essentially hostage? Or are being held in check, by them. The need for food - the drain they place on the rest of society filtered and kept under control.

Hence why there have been three conflicts large enough to be called Shinobi World Wars, plus all the other, tangentially related small-scale conflicts like what Danzo had been up to all around Konoha, in just living memory.

"Wow."

"What?" Yukie asks, looking up.

"No, I just... realized everything's fucked." I make a vague motion around us. "We just... live in a society, I guess?"

She snorts, nodding.

"Do you still want that drink?"

"Huh?"

"I think I have a bottle of sake here somewhere." She makes a rolling gesture towards one of the cupboards or dressers. "Or then Sandayu might have taken it."

I chuckle.

"Tempting, but I need to get moving over the ocean later tonight again. Raincheck?"

She nods, but she's not really feeling it, looking rather morose again.

"How about this..." I say and start putting away all the things I had taken out of my Holdings, and then drain the rest of my tea. "I'll bring a bottle over next time? Something nice and expensive. And you can decide when we drink?"

Yukie looks at me, frowning a little, no doubt wondering how she can decide when I'm the one always choosing when to pop by unannounced.

So I close my eyes and gather my chakra with the Cross-seal for Shadow Clones.

It needs the presence of mind to hear things, but not enough to spy or be a burden later on when it pops...

I need to imagine a shape, too. Something innocuous and unnoticeable...

Exhaling slowly, I form the chakra into a pair of hairpins, almost like chopsticks - taking a lacquered, glossy black finish with red and white on the top, almost like the Uchiha fan, but not quite.

"Here."

She accepts one of the hairpins curiously.

"When you want me to come by, just bend it like this..." I put pressure on the hairpin in my hands, straining it but not to the point of breaking yet. Almost like a chemical glowstick, it activates the sleeper self within. "And then say where you are before you break it. 'Land of the Moon, movie set.'"

And I snap it, making it vanish with a small pop and puff of smoke, the memory of my own voice returning to me.

"It can't hear until you bend it, but you only get one chance. So say where you are and when you're ready, and I'll pop on over with the sake, deal?"

Her eyebrows touch her hanging dark bangs as she looks back to the hairpin, obviously impressed with it. Rolling it over in her hands, looking at it from every side and angle.

"Alright."

"Cool. But I gotta run, now. I think the fishermen and cave farmers have my food order ready by now."

She blinks again before a longing wistfulness takes over.

"Must be nice, being able to just... Go away—wherever you want, whenever you want—like a bird."

"It absolutely is," I reply with a smirk.

Maybe I should look into ways of expanding the bird form?

Oh, oh!

Make like an Escsflowne mech suit that can turn into a dragon-glider—or, or, a Variable Fighter with three different modes? No, the gerwalker mode never made sense to me. But a mech suit that can turn into a fighter jet would be fucking cool!

And it would solve a potential transportation problem before it crops up since I can't take people with me in Midnight Warp Flickers right now.

I snap out and open my notebook, jotting that idea down next to the entry and drawings for the super star fortress.

"Mwahahahaha..."

The actress gives me a look, as I menacingly cackle over my future genius plans.

Ram, Dragon, Raven, Tiger – Midnight Warp Flicker jutsu!

Uchiha Sasuke – blasting off!

The world blurs past me in a blur and I ride it out, carefully adjusting my altitude as the initial acceleration bleeds out and the space-time bubble around me wanes. It's not shrinking or becoming smaller around me, rather it's becoming... shallower?

Less potent, anyhow.

Warping is still pretty mysterious to me, even though I've been pretty actively using it all this time. Or, I guess I should say that the combination jutsus with Warp are giving me headaches.

My intuitive understanding of 'going fast' said that it was better to go a long distance at an even pace than trying to sprint and go as fast as possible from the start, be it due to air resistance, tiring yourself out, or running out of breath. Pacing yourself was key, normally.

But with Warp, that logic was turned on its head.

I had nominally predicted that the Midnight Warp would be the most useful and efficient application of the Warp—partly because my Shadow Clones could use it, too—but that was turning out to be entirely wrong. For long distances, it was the Midnight Warp Flicker that was far more efficient, despite being an initial explosive burst rather than at an even pace, contradicting all my previous understandings.

I could travel really fast in the air with the Midnight Warp, my bird form zooming over land and sea like a speed demon, but it also drained my chakra reserves at a very noticeable rate.

Whereas for any given distance, making a super jump with the triple threat complete version, where I just got as far as I could with the initial Warp and Flicker bursts and easing down on the space-time bubble until it was squeezed dry and then just riding out all the leftover momentum back to the ground where I could repeat it again, was turning out to be much quicker and more efficient chakra-wise.

Even if that too punted a sizable hole in my reserves each time.

I wonder if there were some sinusoidal waveform shenanigans going on there, like with alternating currents in certain circuits or like, a reverse of how static friction is greater than kinetic friction or how the elasticity of bow limbs suffer with time.

The longer you hold a bow at full draw the less powerful the loosed arrow will be the same way holding a rubber band at full stretch will slowly cause it to weaken and finally snap. Not by a lot, but the limb hysteresis—internal friction—is still there. So maybe the fabric of reality wanted to remain at 'normal', making it harder to keep pushing against it when it 'realized' it was being stretched?

Not that I could really measure or chart any of this out and make much sense of it. A nice and clean graph would go a long way in allowing me to figure out the math behind it all, finding out the most efficient way to use Warp.

But I had no real units of measurement for chakra or space-time warp, so I was shit out of luck on that front, forced to rely on my subjective feelings. And I couldn't do something like make two Shadow Clones with equal chakra test it out, since they still couldn't Flicker.

So, the Warp jutsu was still proving too unpredictable and draining for me to use in fights just yet.

I was tempted to go back to full testing and reconfiguration mode for a full week again, but that would have to wait since Zabuza was expecting me again.

Popping the space-time bubble, I let my raven wings carry me back down to the earth now down below.

I could have just used the height I had to find a nice wind current to ride out on for hours and hours, but I had no idea where I was right now or where I needed to go, so down to the ground it was.

Swooping down into a backflip-landing, I look around.

"Getting there, I think."

It was a lot colder than back in the Crescent Kingdom. Time to put pants back on. Zabuza said he wanted to talk about the sweater later, so maybe I should keep it off for now.

Anyhow, I assume the broadcasting stance I had refined during my time in the mist, fighting against Mei – right hand in a half-Ram seal and the left hand in a half-Dragon, high above my head. I exhale and slow my breathing down until I can't feel it at all anymore, taking a minute to get my pulse so slow that it feels almost lethargic.

My own ambient chakra noise now filtered, I push outward through the half-Dragon seal and wiggle it a little for the mental image of my chakra pulsating outwards.

It takes less than a second for the first return ping from my left and then less than that for the follow-up ping from behind me.

I open my eyes.

"Drat, overshot to the east again. Guess I'm in Honey or Wolf?"

Turning towards the first ping's direction, I Midnight Flicker into the sky. At this distance, I was better off just flying normally and keeping my eyes open for landmarks.

Another thing I had been pondering over alongside my Warp jutsu's peculiarities, was chakra itself.

The final acceptance that chakra was some kind of energy field thing, relating to Quantum Mechanics, had forced me to begin evaluating chakra itself and the properties I had been attributing to it again.

Things like the ability to repel and attract the various states of matter in different ways.

I had been using mental images like 'a nail shoots through my foot and keeps me in place against the tree trunk', 'the nail is instead a flat-headed piston which pushes me away', or 'I'm inflating a balloon under me, which keeps me afloat on the water' until now to aid my chakra control because I had just accepted that chakra was chakra and that there was no point in questioning how it worked, just that it did.

But hadn't one of my early theories about how that attraction and repulsion worked been to compare it to electromagnetism?

Maybe I had been more right than I had known.

Or then I was just completely wrong and I was still completely off. Having to re-examine everything you know with no guarantee of real answers sucks.

I wanted to be someone strong enough to withstand change without being changed, so quit whining Sasuke.

Even if I come to find out everything I know is wrong, that's fine. It's just another data point to further refine my understanding of everything. It's totally fine. Slow breaths, Sasuke.

But the electric field theory, while useful and had allowed me to discover the chakra string and made learning the Flicker and Warp easier it still didn't hold all the answers.

Like why with the right amount of chakra can you stick to solid surfaces? Was it literally the same way a rubber balloon can be statically charged by rubbing it with hair or wool and then stuck to a wall, as by taking over some of the electrons from your hair or wool sweater and acquiring a negative charge it becomes attracted to the positive charges in the wall?

That was incidentally something I tried out with the leftover balloons Yanami had gotten me, just to see that I wasn't completely crazy because I was pretty much sure no one had showed that to me in this world.

And they did stick, so there, I'm not crazy!

Because if that was how it worked, then did that mean chakra itself was a particle of some kind like electrons, or was that effect similar to Lightning chakra in that it merely gathered electrons and then used those as a vehicle for the adhesion?

And why with 'too much' chakra did we explode away from a surface?

Because intuitively I had no answer for that. In theory, you could make your hair stand on end by itself, by acquiring an electric charge, the force just strong enough to repel your individual hair strands... But was that what happened with chakra repulsion?

This was the original fault of my electric field theory anyhow, meaning I hadn't really advanced anywhere with it.

I need some kind of new experiment or idea...

Which could take years.

Even then, it wasn't bound to pay off in any meaningful way. All I could do was just keep making observations and collecting data points for now and then look them over and repeat experiments to confirm them again later until finally, something fell into place and started making sense.

But that was unreliable, and...

"Wait a minute, where the fuck am I?"

Up ahead I spot the coasts of several islands which could be Water Country. But no, the climate looks off and the coastline is completely different.

I land on the beach, sighing again as I look around.

Half-Dragon, half-Ram.

Ping... Ping.

They're now both pointing in the same damn direction, which must be to the south. So this is Lightning Country, maybe?

Damn it, I wasn't paying attention at all and the sea breeze must have picked me up and blown me all the way here.

What a pain in the ass.

But I have no one to blame but myself. And quantum bullshit making no sense.

Flying into the headwind is another pain in the ass, too. So I'll need to get above it and probably use Midnight Warp to keep moving. Sighing, I take out six shuriclones to pop them for a quick refill when an idea occurs to me. Something which will be much more rewarding and easy than trying to parse out the fundamental nature of what chakra is.

I changed the texture of the kimono after creating it... Could I also use that with these?

Especially since there is a fragment myself inside each shuriken, too.

With the loss of physical kunai and my custom chakra steel senbon—it still hurts, I really liked those!—I no longer have reliable access to Flicker throws or Flicker Sling, which would put a damper on my ability to exert pressure at a distance. Öne of the Sharingan's points was complex shurikenjutsu, even if I didn't have as slavish a devotion to training it as some others in Konoha had.

I did still have chakra strings, which I really hadn't used in a long while since the direct damage Flicker applications had just rendered them so worthless in comparison, but now with shuriclones too fragile for that, I might have to start using chakra strings and Sling more often again.

That, and if this niggling new idea panned out...

I close my eyes and touch with my chakra the chakra of the shuriclones, the same way I did with the tree on the beach or the kimono.

!

There's a sense of sleeping awareness that's awakened suddenly – like intentions being transmitted, but because of how rudimentary the fragment of my self in each shuriclone is, it feels very... Uneven? Imbalanced? Lopsided.

But they can receive thoughts from me. Something like a command or an instruction, or... Reverse Coaching?

Hmm...

I take one shuriclone specifically into my right hand and coach it with an idea, before tossing it out along the rocky beach.

It flies twenty meters completely straight and then suddenly it slows down, its trajectory collapsing and it hits the rocks a mere five meters later, giving me a little neat boost in chakra along with its usual ping.

"It works."

I coached it to manipulate its own shape, turning the... flaps or edges? The pointy bits on the side with the blades anyhow, to each turn ninety degrees so they had maximal air resistance.

A completely pointless trick only making it suddenly slow down.

But if the flaps can turn completely up...

I try again with a second shuriclone, coaching it this time for all of the flaps to take a lot less drastic angle before I toss it out along the beach.

It flies twenty meters and then suddenly begins slowing down, but rising up as it does so until it eventually loses all its momentum and falls down with a pop and return of chakra. It flew much further than the first shuriclone experiment did, but not nearly as far as a normal shuriken would.

"It's like a helicopter's blade."

Or like my Midnight Nameless form's wings – airfoils that generate lift, just more by their angle than their shape. Or did they count as airfoils if it wasn't the shape doing the lift by aerodynamic force?

Another question that was impossible for me to answer, as I had never seen or heard the term used in this world.

"How did boomerangs work again...?"

It was either the uneven limbs or their weight, I think? I toss another three shuriclones before I think I have something worthwhile here. Now, how to test it... Oh, right.

Revealing my triskelion seal, I call forth the oldest clone.

"Whoa... Where are we?"

"Lightning Country, I think. I've got a deal for you – parry one shuriken at twenty meters and you can do whatever you want."

"Huh?" the clone sounds vaguely insulted, Sharingan spinning to life as he stomps away, not even taking out a kunai. I guess he intends to parry it by hand just to prove a point?

Not that it matters if he does.

I raise my left hand, in the simplest overhand throw we were taught in the Academy to first familiarize ourselves with throwing shuriken. It's a powerful and accurate throw; using a lot of really big muscles and a superb kinetic chain, allowing it to scale up even better with more mass. With the final flick of the wrist and fingers acting like an uncurling whip, a single projectile thrown from the overhead throw is one of the fastest and strongest most ninja can use.

And like with a boomerang, the initial angle determines how the shuriken can curve through the air, so it's fairly versatile, too.

The only real problem is that it's so predictable, being such a big telegraph that anyone can spot even in their peripheral vision.

Underhand and backhand throws have the benefit of not breaking the silhouette too much and can be done almost instantly if you're reaching from a knee holster, waist pouch, or even sleeves, giving them the advantages of surprise and economy of actions.

That's the basics, anyhow.

"You ready?"

He scoffs.

And I let loose the ninja star in a straightforward and easily-read trajectory.

The clone raises his hand, intending to catch the shuriclone out of the air by pushing his finger into the middle-hole to make a point.

His timing is perfect, but...

The shuriclone at the last instant changes trajectory and goes around his finger.

My Shadow Clone's eyes go wide and he barely dodges over backward, taking cue from Neo in the Matrix as he barely keeps from falling over, still taking a bloody gash through his cheek as the shuriclone barely misses his neck.

"What the fuck was that?!" he asks, stumbling back upright.

"Homing Shuriclones."

The clone blinks, before a wicked grins sprouts over him. "You fucker, you took that throwing sword trick we never got to use in writing, just instead of telekinetic interaction it's the aerodynamic profile changing!"

"Yup," I say and pop the p. "Do you think it'll work on other people?"

"Duh, it will. Throw like three of them and it'll be a guaranteed hit on anybody who's not outright dodging! Fucker, gimme the specifics over Sharingan: I'm practicing it with my own shuriken - fuck whatever else shit I was about to think up, this sounds awesome!"

I grin.

Good to know I'm still predictable.

Ah, the innocence and exuberance of youth who do not know the follies of chakra being quantum bullshit...

I envy him. I truly do.

Anyhow, I Sharingan-drop him the basic skill set and leave him to it. The next few hours will probably be a little distracting with the constant memory pings whenever a shuriken is dispelled, but I think the constant progress will cheer me up a lot more than mulling and trying to slam my head through a metaphorical wall will.

"Oh god... Imagine a fuuma shuriken with this shit..." he mutters to himself, completely ignoring me already.

"Have fun."

I look over the way I need to go and Midnight Warp Flicker off again, this time intending to keep my focus and not get distracted as I spot the increasingly familiar and still all-too dismal islands of Water Country ahead.

Keeping the acrobatics at a minimum to avoid notice over the border, I pull into a backflip-landing again beside a familiar-looking little green sapling. Unlike my little beach tree, this one has already grown considerably taller than I had expected it to in a single day.

Must be all the nutrients in the ground... Or maybe there's more chakra here with all the ninjas?

So yeah, I had planted another Wood Release tree near the meeting spot Zabuza had assigned me on Kiri. It had come a little easier than the first one, but it had still been a considerable drain on my reserves.

But it was worth it.

Because my Chadar could now detect them from anywhere in the world. Chadar standing for chakra distance and ranging. Like Radar and Lidar, just with chakra instead of radiowaves or beams of light. Unlike with the chakras of others—as had only been possible in the chakra-enriched, thick mist of their own jutsu—I could ping my own chakra very easily from anywhere.

It was the same principle at work as when Shadow Clones could return their memories to me at the speed of light over vast distances. I had first trained with it to just detect my own Shadow Clones, but by messing with the 'frequency' or spin signature a little, I had become able to find the tree I had planted in the Land of the Moon.

Even across oceans it just took seconds for a reply ping, giving me a solid direction to fly in.

Now, I just needed to be careful with where I planted trees in the future, or then I needed to figure out a way to change the spin signature of any subsequent trees so I could have different frequencies, like on a radio.

If I got too many identical return signals, it would just end up becoming confusing.

"I'll be in your care," I say and crouch to my second little tree, poking and giving it a little nudge of chakra.

It feels like it wiggles in response.

Cute.

Anyhow, I need to head for the spot and see if anyone's there to pick me up.

It's a clearing by a hilltop, giving me an unrestricted view of the surroundings, but which also gives anyone around me an open view and approach to me.

But it's empty and I can't sense anyone nearby, so I guess I have to tie up a signal.

There's a tall pine-tree nearby, where we agreed I would tie a cloth when I was here, kind of like how Haku had signaled me back in Wave that Gatou was arriving. Given enough elevation, it should be visible from anywhere in Kiri. At least with a spyglass or some kind of jutsu.

Hopefully, I won't have to wait too long.

I hate having to think up jutsu names...

And now that I've used it against Mei, that thing needs a name. Hence why I'm sitting with my booklet open and writing down kanji, trying to mix and match them with how the jutsu works and appears.

It was Chidori up to eleven... So ten thousand birds? Mandori - or would that be Manchou, or something? Was chi or sen the kun-reading, like tori was? No, no. Both had to be the same. So chidori, not sendori, so it would be manchou. Damn it.

Man—ten thousand—was an on-reading... So that was no good.

"Mm..."

The thing was, kanji could be read in a lot of different ways. Many of these could be mixed and matched pretty imaginatively, hence Japanese was a killer language for puns, and incredibly complex as a sealing language.

But not all of these could be mixed and matched freely. Kun-readings were the Japanese local ways while on-readings were for like, imported and often Chinese characters?

That's how I remembered it at least.

Should have paid more attention to how the kun- and on-readings worked in the Academy and not just memorize it with the Sharingan while bitching about how little sense it made. At this rate, I'll need to hire a scribe or scholar to help me make up this new name.

Or at least buy a dictionary for reference.

I miss the yomiwa app and jisho. Anyway, what if I just skip up to a billion? I think that was a kun-reading again.

A billion birds – a little much, but it got the point across.

"Okudori...?" I wonder, tapping at my lip with my pen, before scratching at my scalp with it. "Maybe I could work some kind of 'ou' pun there, for king?"

Would be a sufficiently grandiose name for such a ridiculously noisy and powerful jutsu. Has that 'bow down before me, peasants'-vibe in spades.

Literally. Because it would render anyone unprotected unable to stand near me at full blast.

Plus, I could make a massive plasma drill finishing move and call it 'Arc Drill' as an alternate reading, all Super Robot anime-like. I jot that down quickly, trying to remember what characters and ways there were for writing 'ku'.

Clause?

No, no... This isn't haiku and it has so little to do with speech, even if there is that sound amplification component in there...

Ward or Section?

"Royal Ward Bird? Or would that just be chou again?"

Because I think that was another on. And I was pretty sure it referred to wards, as in districts or boroughs, in cities. Rather than just space in general...

The obvious solution was to just go for nine wings and use the nine for ku, but that would be stepping on Naruto's tails. Pretty sure he would sooner or later get some kind of nine-theme going for him, if he ever got the Kyuubi to work with him.

No wait, on reading again, can't use it with tori. Fuck! No, no, king is also an exclusive on reading, so I can't use it at all, either. Double fuck! And Arc Drill would be aakudoriru – where do I even get the aa and -ru? Triple fuck!

Why do we even have kun and on readings, when we only speak one language on the whole planet anyway!? Hell, why do we even have these readings if it's English we somehow speak?!

That's it – I must be insane because this shit makes no sense!

I take a deep breath and calm down.

Sakura would be so much better at this. She actually remembered all the rules and readings for each character.

I can't believe I miss Sakura of all people. But bleh, these all suck anyway.

Maybe I should just ditch the kun-only tori and instead use tsubasa? It turns into yoku as on, which sounds pretty cool and gives me more on-readings to work with.

I scribble over the previous name ideas, looked at what I still liked, and underlined the words.

Arc, King, Wing...

Those all have on readings. Something like ko-ou-yoku if slapped together—which sounded pretty rad and could mean a dozen things...—but there was something about arc that was sticking out...

Arc, arc, arc – Koeishozen? As in a lonely and crestfallen figure.

Right, it was that typo Jiraiya had written in one volume of Icha Icha and then turned into a complete plot point, around which six characters' plots had been tied together into a satisfying finale because he didn't want to admit that it had been a smudge on the first character, just like the whole kitsune-melon beast thing must have come about.

Authors are stubborn creatures, you know?

That tentatively fit – since it inflicted despair on anyone around while forcing me to fight solo to avoid friendly fire.

So koei as 'arc shadow' rather than koei as 'lonely shadow', though obviously the latter made more sense for the idea of someone who was 'lonely and crestfallen.' But the electric arc discharge and shadow thing kind of fit – because Lightning chakra, and killing intent being a yin-thing, supposedly, from where genjutsu had originally been developed.

Though I wasn't sure if I ascribed to that whole yin-yang duality theory yet.

And shozen was anxious-like, dispirited, or discouraged... Kind of like what the killing intent part did, again. But that was redundant, especially if the original meaning of koeishozen already referred to that.

A good chuuni name used every character meaningfully.

Sho was also an on-reading of 'voice', and zen could be any number of things... 'total', 'slash', 'fear', so that was all good. But by that logic, I should replace kage—read as ei, too—because it was in the original meaning of lonely shadow.

Oh, right. 'defense' can also be read as ei.

So...

"Koeishozen-yoku." - Arc Defense Voice Fear Wings?

Okay, I'm liking how ridiculous it is - it was like that with Midnight Nameless at first too, which I had taken from Yamiyonikarasu, referring to something indistinct like a crow in a pitch-black night, just with a touch of Edgar Allen Poe.

"But it's still a mouthful."

Three characters max, Sasuke. We went through this before in the Academy; a bingo book in the future will slap a 'no jutsu' there at the end, guaranteed.

Guh...

"Ko'in-yoku."

Arc Yin Wing. Or Lonely Sound Wing, if you write it another way. Character readings are fun like that - but I'll be thinking Koeishozen-yoku every time I use it, and if someone asks me to write it, I'll write that whole five-character thing. I wonder how many aneurysms that'll cause.

And it's in the formal pronunciation—Japanese—like the root jutsu Chidori.

Just, well, an on-reading rather than a kun, but I'm so done with this shit now.

Ko'in-yoku is good enough.

Name decided, I snap shut the notebook and stand up, stretching a little. And finished just in time, too.

"Heya Haku," I greet the approaching figure.

"Hello, Sasuke-san. I apologize for my lateness," he inclines his head a little, and I can see the bags beneath his big brown eyes.

Yeah, I had been here for over two hours now, but I could never be mad at Haku.

Besides, I got a chance to meditate and recover some of my chakra once the Shadow Clone over the ocean finally popped, so that was a plus. This close to the Hidden Mist Village, using chakra might just attract unwanted attention, so I have to be careful about what I train.

"S'fine. Trouble?"

"A little bit, unfortunately. But nothing you need concern yourself over. Come."

I get up and dust my butt off, jogging to catch up and eyeing his changed wardrobe. He's ditched the sweater.

"Do I need to cover my eyes?"

He turns to look at me, curiously, before he remembers the promise made to Mei and shakes his head.

"No, that would be a little bit troublesome right now. We will deal with that if and when you shall be called to meet up with some of our other allies."

"Aww, phooey, I was hoping I would be too blind to keep up and you would have to hold my hand."

He just smiles politely at my joke.

We skirt the roads and settlements, finally stopping at another little hill where we find a wooden hatch leading into the mound itself. Like a Hobbit hole, or an underground bandit cave. How exciting.

"Zabuza-san, we have returned."

The man in question grunts, not even turning to acknowledge our arrival.

And if Haku appeared tired and drawn, then Zabuza is practically bubbling with barely restrained violence.

"Where's the food?"

I take out the three storage scrolls and the rest of the money in the pouch they had given me. It's still more than half-full and the Demon of the Hidden Mist notices that immediately, even without looking.

"You couldn't even find enough food? What good are you even for, beyond poisoning everything you touch?"

Ooh, testy.

Guess Mei must have been spreading some rumors. Hopefully, not enough to torpedo my new Zatoichi cover. I'll have to have words with her if that's the case.

"Nah, I got plenty. I just chose not to buy any more for now."

That gets his attention as he turns around and levels a baleful glare at me.

Stressed out, huh?

"You chose?" his sharpened teeth grind against each other. "After three days, you chose to fail the task I gave you?"

I roll my eyes, looking over to Haku—while still keeping my guard up in case Zabuza does decide to lash out—and say: "Open the first scroll."

"Ah, yes..." Haku nods and begins to unfurl one of the scrolls.

One of the reasons I'm not too worried is because Haku isn't either. I trust his judgment over Zabuza's mood better than my own right now, even if my value and irreplaceability are nowhere near the pretty boy's.

Seven barrels and a half-unfurled scroll later, he finally lets up his glaring and orders Haku to stop.

He walks over to one of the sealed barrels, grabbing the money pouch as well and weighing it in his hand.

"You found a grain supplier?" he asks, curious and annoyed at the same time. "Did you use that eye of yours again? It will leave a trail – the feudal lords are prickly about their profits."

I smirk—even though I could predict the flare of annoyance it would elicit—and shake my head.

"Nah. Got yams, sweet potatoes, and dried fish. Lots of dried fish. Almost two whole scrolls worth."

Minerals and vitamins are important, but the Land of the Moon is an island with more fishers than farmers so that was to be expected, and ninja tend to prefer to prioritize protein if they can help it, so it'll probably be received better, even if it was a bit more expensive per barrel than the yams were.

Zabuza frowns, slamming his fist into one barrel's top and I wince.

"I could have just opened it for you... Now it'll be a pain in the ass to re-seal, you big mule."

He merely grins through his facial covering, probably deriving some stress relief from the destruction as he tears down his bandages and grabs a dried fish.

And then eats it whole, tilting back his head and sticking out his tongue, like.

Which—I mean—lots of nutrients in the bones and cartilage. The collagen is especially important for us ninja, considering all the strain we put on our bones, tendons, and ligaments.

But also, eyes, brains, fins, and scales?

Ugh.

Maybe I'm just being prissy and need to learn to swallow whole fish to fit in with the Water folks, though.

No, wait, he's chewing. False alarm. The crack of fish skull and squelch of something tells me he's chewing it properly, a good—if very awkward for the rest of us, or me, at least—thirty chews later, he swallows and looks very satisfied.

"You found some fishing island out by the southern seas, huh. This is good fish," he says and grins again all sharpened teeth and praise all of a sudden.

I just raise a brow and give him a shrug in return.

Guess Zabuza was a fisherman's son once?

Makes sense. If he grew up gutting and eating fish, then taking the next step to gutting people as a ninja probably didn't even make him skip a beat.

"So, I only used a third of the money because they couldn't match my order in just a few days... But if I go back, they'll have more fish for about the same price by tomorrow or the day after that. It's all properly dried and will keep for weeks, too."

He nods, grabbing another fish and looking at it more closely before eating it.

See, I was prioritizing cultivating a longer-lasting and cheaper source of food over the immediate gratification of just buying what was closest and getting back quickly. Though it'll take months before the next yam and sweet potato crop is ready, meaning I've only got more fish coming on this line.

But I'll try to look around and maybe I can find more islands like the Crescent Kingdom.

Anyhow, I had gotten two out of three scrolls filled for a third of the money, rather than something like almost three scrolls worth of food for all the money.

So I'm saving your movement money here, dude.

"If we need more food in a pinch, I can still head to the continent and see what's there, but you already know about those prices. Honestly, the biggest expenditure was the barrels, so quit breaking them and wasting money, you donkey."

Zabuza merely snorts, but he knocks on the next barrel's top instead of just smashing it open, so I guess he's properly listening to me.

"What's this? Smells weird. You said jam?"

"Yam. Or sweet potato, though that was more expensive so I only bought it to fill up the rest of one barrel. But they're sort of like regular potatoes, both."

Zabuza blinks, running his tongue over his teeth—no doubt trying to get a fishbone or scale out from between his teeth—before looking at Haku.

"I believe they're like apples, Zabuza-san."

Well, I mean apple of the earth, yeah... But also no, we're not French.

"They're more like rice... You can't eat it raw, gotta boil it first. Put some butter and salt and it tastes pretty good."

He snorts. "Anything tastes good with butter and salt."

"Point. But it's good food, nutritious."

Better than rice, I think. So long as you don't peel it, the nutritional values are through the roof, comparatively.

He snorts again, clearly not buying it.

"We'll use it with the slummers and coasters who're eating bark and sand. They won't complain, even if it's new and strange," he says to Haku who nods and then turns to leer at me. "Prioritize the fish from now on. We know and appreciate fish here in Water – more blood has been spilled into the seas here over fishing rights than in all of Konoha's history, boy."

I guess that's another thing the corruption and nepotism have spread to, too.

I could point out the Uchiha massacre if I was a little pricklier, but I think that's what he was specifically alluding to. Family fighting family for food?

Well, it's not a problem.

There's plenty of fish in the sea, as the saying goes.

He takes a third now and licks his lips appreciatively, eyes gleaming. "Yeah... We can fuel another five rebellions with these, if need be."

I glance at Haku, who smiles at me and gives the smallest of shrugs.

"Anyhow, what about my clothes. I thought we were going to have a discussion about that at some point."

Zabuza makes a grunt with his mouthful, before looking at his apprentice. "H'krrhh."

"Yes, Zabuza-san," Haku says, taking one of the lit candles and turning to me. "Shall we?"

"Alright."

I hurry to follow behind him again, this time taking a better look through the underground hideout.

The walls are packed earth, reinforced with wooden beams. There are very few lights, Zabuza's room only having candles because he seemed to be poring over maps and letters right when we interrupted him. I guess experts of silent killing wouldn't need light that much.

"Nice place. Earth jutsu?"

Haku slows down and looks at me. "Perhaps. This is an old base that Zabuza-san discovered years ago. We only repaired and re-dug parts of it, since."

"So neither of you knows Earth jutsu, or are we too close to others to risk using chakra?"

"Yes – to both, I mean."

I nod.

That actually reminds me...

"So you've got Ice jutsu, right?"

He stiffens, but nods, not looking my way.

"I read that it's a combination of water and wind chakra natures. Could you show me sometime?"

Haku turns to look at me, expression blank.

Oh, right. Childhood trauma and persecution.

"I know some wind jutsu, so I could teach them to you in return...?" I try, figuring that he already probably knows more water jutsu right now than I do.

"Hmm..."

He moves on without further comment and I hold in a sigh.

Whoops.

For all that Zabuza spoke about being a tool, his temper is fraying his control and reveals his true self. Meanwhile, Haku feels emotions much deeper and is a lot more aware of his own feelings, but most of the time he's completely blank to my intention sensing.

Hence why I keep prodding him with my inappropriately affectionate jokes.

So, I forgot and just stepped on a landmine I really should have been more aware of.

"We are here," he declares as he opens a rickety, half-rotten door. Inside are several chests and boxes, with tools and clothes lying in piles on top of them.

"So, mind explaining some of the rules about clothing?" I ask, hoping to smooth over my previous faux pas. "I notice you're not wearing the sweater anymore, does that mean something?"

"It is..." He hesitates, the silence dragging out. "Complex. There are nuances for colors and articles of clothing, which alone may not mean much, but together..."

Well, that's annoying.

I had hoped it was just on the level of Scottish tartans where a single pattern was just nominally tied to a certain clan. But well, I was pretty sure no one had been lynched over those. You never knew with the Scots, though.

"Alright, but any hard and fast rules?"

"Bandages on the legs are no good," he immediately replies, looking down at my shins.

"Oh." At least I wasn't wearing the leg holster and bandage anymore. "Any specific reason?"

His brows furrow as he thinks about it for a second.

"They would soak and weigh you down too much in the water, should you need to dive or swim, I suppose"

"So arm bandages are no good, too?"

"Mm... Not as such, but I would not do it."

I nod. "Okay, then what about the face, like Zabuza?"

"Definitely not."

"Uh... Okay?" I blink, taking a step back at his intensity. "What about my hair, I've been keeping it tied up with a bandage in the back...?"

Or what if I wanted to blindfold myself...?

"No, that will have to go, too."

H-huh...

Yeah, I'm struggling with some of the logic here.

Haku steps closer to me, grabbing at my shirt to look at what I'm wearing underneath. "Mm, none of this is any good. Take it all off."

And he grabs my shirt, pulling at it forcefully.

Is this where I should 'kyaa'? I feel like this is where I should 'kyaa~!'.

"Kya—"

Haku cuts me off by yanking my shirt over my head. Tch!