Journey

10 months later…

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Erity and Kamikoto sat in the kitchen. Kamikoto had seen Erity's interest in sealing, he had decided helping her with the least he could do. Over the last three months he had been teaching her the basics of Uzumaki sealing. Fuinjutsu was complicated, but he believed that Erity had the right type of brain to learn the dying art. He had been amused when she came up with the idea to use several dozens of shadow clones to accelerate the process, but he hasn't stopped her. She was learning very fast and while there were many things he could not teach her, there were many more he could.

People bussled in and out of the house, preparing for the trip to Konoha. In gratitude for teaching their prodigy, the clan had gifted Kamikoto the eyes of a recently deceased elder. The man's vision had not been amazing before he passed and the eyes were not a good match for the Uzumaki, but he could see again, if poorly. He had been tutored to send small amounts of chakra to his eyes and had continued transfusions from various clan members...though he would never have the vision he once did.

He stared at the 46 Erity's diligently learning from his 6 or so clones. A young man walked into the house and greeted Kamikoto with a bow.

"Uzumaki-san, a letter for you from Konoha."

He hadn't been expecting that in all honesty. He had informed the village of his survival..but…

The letter was a formal recall. He was to return as soon as he could.

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The road to Konoha from the valley could be rough. Out of the 400 or so active clan members, only around 20 were home at any given time. Most of the clan was currently working to hunt missing-nin and defend various civilian targets, as they refused to get directly involved in the war at this time. The lack of members meant the roads were not well maintained.

Currently Erity was the vanguard, clearing debris and scaring off potential predators from attacking the convoy. Most girls at the age of 5 couldn't move the heavy logs or stones, but she was about 20 times stronger than your average 5 year old, so it was irrelevant.

They would travel for a month, most likely. Erity went further down the road, looking for obstruction. She didn't find any in the immediate future to deal with, which was good. She decided to head back to the convoy.

Then she felt something...her instincts flared and she darted off the path into the forest. She just managed to escape the sight of two Shinobi running down the trail. She managed to disguise her chakra in the forest in time to avoid being spotted. There were three, probably Chunin. They didn't notice her...they weren't expecting trouble, most likely. They were at a fork in the trail...they went a direction that didn't encounter the convoy.

She decided she'd follow them for a bit.

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Team Minato consisted of three very unhappy Shinobi. Rin, Kakashi, and Obito were on a mission to deliver a message to Uzushiogakure. It was a b-rank mission, in theory, but they had yet to encounter anything.

They had been in warzones, fought and killed more than they could count, and they were playing messenger.

Kakashi Hatake felt off. Something in the forest they walked through seemed dangerous...hungry. Yet his fight instincts didn't flare. He would sense if a Shinobi were around, he was sure it was just paranoia.

Obito Uchiha was bored beyond belief, this was not what he wanted to do with his life. He was going to be Hokage, how would this help him. Suddenly an eerie feeling came over him, like he was being watched. He looked over to his similarly bored teammates and saw nothing on their faces. He ignores it.

He shouldn't have ignored it.

Within a single second, a knife was at Rin's throat and she was in a tree, and Obito's Shuriken were gone.

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When Erity saw the leaf protectors, she calmed, and decided to play with them. They should have detected her, they were too calm.

It hadn't been particularly hard to sneak up on the Chunin. She would have never succeeded if she had wanted to kill them, but she didn't, so their prey instincts didn't fire. She tightened her hold on the girl and she tensed.

"So, did I get you because of overconfidence, a lack of skill on your end, or skill on my end. I'm willing it was a mix of the three, how about you?"

Obito spoke first in a growl, "Hurt her and I'll end you."

She smiled and dropped Rin, jumping down beside her.

Kakashi spoke second, "What technique did you use, you should not have been able to avoid our detection."

"I didn't. Had you been on guard you would have sensed me. I didn't have to hide myself, really. You should probably work on that.", She had a smirk as she responded.

"What, we're supposed to take that from you brat? What are you, 7?", Obito was pissed.

Rin just about three up on the side of the path.

"5, actually. Just grew up in a forest. And yes, you do get to take it from me, because you didn't detect me."

Rin finally spoke, "How the *cough*...f-uck are you that strong?"

Erity let out her best predatory grin, "Take a wild guess."

A strike of fear ran through Kakashi, which was sort of embarrassing for him, seeing as it was literally a little girl. "Night hunters clan. You were stalking us."

"Right-o."

It was Obito's time for a bit of fear. Despite being loose allies with the family, many Konoha-nin feared the name Naitohanta. Most of that fear stemmed from the fact that they never had a reported failure to kill a target. Which meant that they were 100% successful...or just never let anyone survive their failures. The Uchiha pretended they weren't scared of the ancient clan, but most of them accepted that the odds were against them.

"Why did you... nevermind, can we please just continue with our mission?", Rin pleaded.

"No", Erity said, letting the message scroll down from her sleeve, "I think I have someone who'd like to talk to you."

"And why do we need to talk to them?"

"Because I just figured out who you are, team Minato."

After that, she ran towards the convoy.