Chapter 129 - Entering Shinobi World

Lo and Li lead Azula at a breakneck pace through the Spirit Realm. They only take a few hour breaks to sleep and eat. During that time, Lo and Li explain the circumstances of their homeland to Azula.

Li provides a sobering exposition, "The mortal world as you know it is a mere backwater stretch of land in comparison to the World as we know it. Chi as you know it is a lower form of energy, diluted across the vast distance it is separated from the source of chakra."

Azula inhales sharply. This is beyond her wildest expectations. She had thought other worlds were out of her reach without Nuwa's help. "What is the source of chakra?"

Lo says, "We do not know. We only know that chakra is most concentrated in the Earth that we call our home. So far, we have discovered 5 other planets whose natives also call their planet Earth besides our homeland. All of them are connected via the Spirit Realm, which extends seemingly infinitely and is not a planetoid."

"Based on what we have gathered so far, we call our planet, True Earth, also colloquially known as Shinobi World. The subsidiary Earths are called Fire World, Earth World, Lightning World, Wind World, and Water World. The names have nothing to do with the planets themselves, but rather which large country from the Shinobi World is tasked with overseeing it."

Li deliberately explains, "We come from the Land of Fire, therefore we are tasked with overseeing the Fire World, where you were born. Our policy towards oversight is quite lax. We do not interfere with the Fate of Fire World, but we are charged with testing and retrieving potential high-value assets for a specific reason."

"In the Shinobi World, we have an agreement with the Spirits that we will keep out of the Spirit Realm and they will keep out of the Mortal Realm, however, there are nine extremely powerful beings that we believe have lost their intelligence and constantly wreak havoc in both the Spirit and Mortal Realms. Legends say that they were humans once, all under the same teacher. That man, the Sage of the Six Paths, preached to each of them a specific animal's Dao."

Lo continues as the story takes a gruesome turn, "There were 9 nations that were in constant war back then, 10,000 years ago. The Sage of the Six Paths took in 9 orphans as his disciples, one from each nation, and taught them to always cherish each other and their loved ones over anything else, even the Dao. It worked, for a time. His disciples returned to their nations with enough strength for their voice to matter and lobbied or muscled their nations to bring a tentative peace. After a lifetime passed, the Sage left, seemingly satisfied to leave the World at peace with his disciples."

"His disciples ran into the problem of time. They had their own families, but their Daos extended their lives. They were unable to impart the Dao unto others, so they suffered the fate of losing their loved ones one after another. One by one, the pillars of each nation fell. Their compatriots uncovered evidence of atrocities they committed in their vain attempts to keep their loved ones alive. Eventually, with great loss of life, they were driven away. One was even believed to be killed, but his Dao had somehow granted him a partial form of immortality, so he was later found alive."

Li takes over, "The history going forward from there is murky. All we know is that after they escaped, they were not seen or heard from for three thousand years. The Shinobi World had even forgotten about them, other than trace records. Upon their return, they remained permanently in a massive beast form, and were stronger than ever. The wars that had periodically restarted between the 9 nations all ground to a halt since every nation needed all their high-level manpower to deal with what were formerly humans, but were now tailed beasts."

"Currently, we still face occasional harassment by the tailed beasts, to which we suffer several to dozens of casualties regularly depending on how soon our Kage and other elites can make it to the scene to drive the beast away. They appear to have degenerated into wild carnivores, either sleeping, soaking in chakra from the environment, or eating weak humans or spirits with basic chakra coils. All our attempts to treat the beasts as powerful Spirits, like Raava, and sacrifice enough of our high level manpower to incapacitate them long enough to seal them inside a human, have only resulted in bloody explosions."

With wide eyes, Azula asks, "And you think that I'll be a match for these Ancient Daoists?"

Lo and Li look away with slight guilt and Lo says, "You could say we are grasping at straws, but I believe you have it in you to beat them, or at least rise to the strength of a Kage. Especially after we saw how maturely you behaved in the years following Nuwa's death, we do not think you will lose your spiritual balance as did Sage's disciples. In fact, we normally kill Daoists in the Land of Fire if they do not show a satisfactory level of mental maturity out of fear that history will repeat itself."

Although her body language shows that she is shaken to the core by all these revelations from the twins, Azula is actually trembling with excitement. She has always loved to battle ever since her childhood, similar to Toph. It's what she is best at. She would not have helped if they asked her to go kill other people on behalf of dumb political reasons, but this issue sounds important to the wellbeing of the World as a whole, so she easily agrees. "Okay. I'll do my best. However, I'll be expecting you to repay me for sending that dragonified human after Nuwa and I. That 'test' was not something we agreed upon."

Lo and Li give her a grateful look at first, but their faces cramp up halfway through. Seeing as they are the ones lacking initiative in this situation, they wryly offer their apologies and a promise of repayment to their shared student before getting back on the road. Apparently, it's another entire month at this pace to reach the spirit portal that will bring their physical bodies to the north pole of Shinobi World.

~ ~ ~

[1 month later]

Azula is tired. Lo and Li have not let up in their pace despite numerous painful encounters with territorial Spirits. As they approach the Shinobi World, the local fauna and flora grow in strength. There had even been a tribe of large, powerful snakes who ambushed them in a swarm until Lo pulled out a Konoha treaty, which they grudgingly acknowledged. They would have been eaten up if it weren't for that paper. The three travelers have the equivalent of diplomatic immunity in the Spirit World. This also means that when some Spirits do not have the intelligence to acknowledge this fact, they have to avoid lethal retaliation on those Spirits all the same.

Thus, Azula finds herself covered in blood, that of her own and that of various Spirits, as they approach the portal. Some altercations could not be settled peacefully, so they have to book it out of the Spirit Realm. The longer they are here, the more danger they will be in. Azula has to admit that she feels nostalgic over how easy it is to teleport around the Spirit Realm with just her spiritual body. All three of them use fire thrusters for the last stretch of arctic mountain caps.

Azula is quick to notice that Lo and Li perform hand gestures prior to firebending, much like her dances, but simpler. She wonders if they are able to firebend without those gestures or if the gestures make their firebending more efficient. Setting those questions aside, she follows them for several hours until they arrive at a small fortress seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Several eagle spirits exit with armor and claw-attachments on their talons to greet the firebender trio. Lo and Li hover for a moment and pull out the Konoha treaty again, to which the head eagle of the squadron nods and gestures for them to continue into the fortress. Azula enters the heated confines of the fortress and passes by eagles, toads, snakes, bears, monkeys, dogs, oxes, slugs, rats, insects, and a clam. The clam seems to be treated as a VIP since she must be representing a large faction of sea spirits. Considering there are no waterways within hundreds of kilometers, it must have been a monumental task to transport her here where most water would freeze on the journey.

Azula did not see such a high level of civilization from the Spirits in the Avatar World. They kept to themselves and mingled with their neighbors at most. Here though, there appears to be factions, alliances, and politics between them. None of them paid any attention to the spirit blood on the three traveler's bodies. Apparently, showing up at your destination covered in blood is typical after traveling in the Spirit World.

Lo and Li pull down their shawls and greet several of the spirits with familiarity. Azula cringes when she sees them deflect the flirting of a particularly buff humanoid monkey spirit. Narrowing her eyes, Azula suspects that the only thing preventing war from reigniting, whether it is human-on-human, spirit-on-spirit, or human-on-spirit, is the existence of the tailed beasts. There is even a map with red tacks marking the latest known positions of the beasts as danger zones and a clear evacuation procedure into a deep underground chamber should one approach the fortress in the absence of a Kage-level powerhouse to force it into retreat. It's all routine to them at this point, having had to deal with the beasts for thousands of years.

Lo and Li keep Azula close and guide her into a glowing white hemispherical dome that looks exactly like the spirit portal at the north pole of the Avatar World, except with a 3 times bigger radius. They emerge on the other side of the coin in the Mortal Realm to see a very similar looking fortress with a diverse group of humans watching them closely.

Azula is deep in thought and barely paying attention to her surroundings. She glances at Lo and Li and has to admit they were very open with her regarding the specifics of the tailed beast situation. They even told her of their attempts to seal them in humans, presumably to weaponize them. This brings her to a dilemma. 'If I had the power, should I kill them and make way for wars to begin anew? What should I do, Nuwa?'

~ ~ ~

Nuwa has grown into a young woman of remarkable beauty, much like Medusa, now that she's in her late teens. She spends most of her free time training or waiting for her Big Bro Zag by the pool of the River Styx so she can see him again. Now that she has grown up, she has come to a deeper understanding on more sensitive topics. She knows that she is in love with her Big Bro Zag! She thinks about him day and night, his muscles, his comforting aura, his voice, and his snarky jokes.

She also knows that incest among mortals is forbidden, but this is not the case among Gods, so she occasionally makes shy advances upon him. Sadly, he always looks at her like she's still the adorable little girl he grew up with, or puts on an evil smirk that makes it obvious he is fantasizing about that hateful bitch, Megaera. So she is left to stomp on the ground and run off in a huff.

Today, Nuwa is waiting in front of the pool of Styx for her Big Bro Zag to die and twisting her hands in nervousness, since she wants to lie that she is 18 already and help in his job. She knows that Zagreus has mostly lost track of time due to the sleepless, constant, and monotonous grind of his job.

Several minutes later, Zagreus surfaces face up from the pool with a large bulge on his crotch and a bored expression on his face. He does not care to hide his boners anymore. He has been dying at least 5 times a day, every day for the past 9 years, so it is hard not to admire his dedication. Nuwa blushes madly and covers her face with her hair-snakies, but a small minority of them look eagerly.

"Big Bro Zag!" she calls out, despite her embarrassment, since she knows he will double dash away if she does not stop him. Zagreus pulls himself out of the blood, turns around, and the light slowly returns to his eyes as if, until now, he was on autopilot just going through the motions. "Hey.. How's it going, little sis?"

Nuwa nervously looks away and says, "Well.. umm.. I'm 18 now, so.. You said that I can come with you.."

Zagreus immediately responds, "No!" to which Nuwa looks at him aggrieved with her hair-snakies slumping down. "Wait.. it's not that I cannot bring you. You'll need permission from either Mother or Father. Yeah, that's right."

He scratches his head with a smile due to coming up with a good excuse. "I have Mother's tacit permission, so even if Father opposes it, I can still go."

Nuwa feels more and more aggravated at how obvious her Big Bro Zag is about not wanting to bring her. "Big Bro, you're just making excuses! You were never going to bring me along! Don't you know I am training every day to help you? Never mind then, I hate you! Go and die!"

Nuwa disappears in a poof of Night in the next moment, only to leave an utterly stunned and dismayed Zagreus. Hades laughs for the first time since before his lover had left him. Unfortunately, that laugh is at the expense of his son. "Bahaha! 'Go and die', she said. How superbly fitting."

Nuwa reappears in her Mother's room, forcefully teleported over by Nyx. She doesn't mind though. She had a strong and angry front in front of her Big Bro Zag, but what she really wanted to do was burst into tears. Which she does, while running into her Mother's arms. Nyx pats her back and consoles her, "There, there. Have patience, child. He will sense the depth of your feelings soon enough."

Nuwa continues crying for a few minutes before she calms down. Nyx asks, "Tell your Mother, what else is it that you desire? I would like to see you happy again; consider it a selfish request."

Sniffling a bit before revealing a shy smile, Nuwa mumbles, "I only want everyone in our House to be happy and healthy, so we can have lots of fun together." Then she slightly frowns, "Daddy and Zag are never happy.."

Nyx smiles, tightens her hug, kisses Nuwa's cheek, and soothingly says, "That's a tall order, child. I am already lending my aid to your brother, but as Father and Son, they will ultimately have to work it out between themselves. This is their Fate and their only path to happiness."

Nuwa is confused, but she understands that tantruming or crying whenever daddy and Zag argue like she did when she was a little girl will not solve anything. She also trusts her Mother dearly. "Okay, mommy."

(A/N: HUGE revamp of Narutoverse, btw! It will be nothing like Arc 1, where I followed Avatar canon closely. I will be tearing the Naruto canon into shreds, lol.)

(A/N: https://discord.gg/VD3C2BFPAu)