Chapter 09

Explaining the condition of her body to Mana-san is not that hard, since she has already known about it from the beginning. The only new thing is malnutrition, but it is also expected as she has not eaten anything for almost three days. Unfortunately, she is still too weak, so Aoki has to feed her the porridge.

Right after she finished swallowing the last bite, she closed her eyes in a defeated manner, confusing both Akira and Aoki.

"So, what happened to me now? Am I going to be your prisoner? But please, let Karin-chan leave." This surprised Aoki and Akira a bit, but they calmed down quickly and replied,

"No, you will not be our prisoner. We have an offer for you. Do you want to hear about it?" Aoki asked. After seeing her nod, Aoki talked once again,

"We will take care of you and Karin-chan until you are fine enough to start a new life. After that, we will give you choices, either you want to start a new life or you can join us. What do you think?" He only gets a stunned expression from Mana-san. After a minute, she asked cautiously,

"Who are you?" She asked with a raspy voice.

"My name is Akira Sou and my friend here is Aoki Yamanaka, and no! We are not from Konoha." He said the last part quickly as he saw the stiffened expression from Mana-san. "We are not missing ninjas either, as we faked our death to leave Konoha. Instead, you can just say we are a mercenary group."

Then the next twenty minutes were spent with Aoki explaining what he wants to do as a mercenary, leaving Mana-san dumbfounded in her sit.

"Why ask me?" She asked slowly after all the explanations managed to sink through her head. She was surprised once again as she saw Aoki shrug nonchalantly,

"Because we want to." He looked at Mana-san who stared at him ridiculously. "What? We don't need a reason to ask you to join us. But if you want, I will give you one. Your Uzumaki bloodline is a good enough reason for me." Mana-san stiffened at that, but before she could say anything, Akira chimed in,

"Wait, what do you mean by Uzumaki bloodline?" Aoki looked at his friend ridiculously before he started to laugh hard, which annoyed Akira.

"Honestly, I probably forgot to tell you five years ago." He said as he wiped a tear in his eyes.

"I found it in the old record in Yamanaka's library. One of the reasons why Uzumaki was feared in the elemental nations besides their high proficiency in fuinjutsu was because of their chakra capacity and its recovery.

The Genins in Uzushiogakure had at least the chakra capacity as big as normal Jounin in Konoha. But what made them really infamous was their recovery. With that huge chakra capacity, they only need half of the time normal Jounin need to recover from the same chakra exhaustion. That is why the Senju clan really wanted to make an alliance with the Uzumaki clan in the warring state."

He ignored the dumbfounded look from Akira and turned his attention to Mana-san.

"As for you, you don't have to worry. I said it before that the Uzumaki bloodline is my reason if you need one. The truth is, we don't really need and are interested in your bloodline. If we are that attracted to your bloodline, we will not give you choices to not join us. So, what do you think?"

Mana-san took her time to think before she asked hesitantly,

"Can I talk about it with my daughter?"

"Sure, take your time. When your condition is good enough to leave, I will ask you the same question. So, think carefully." Aoki said, resulting in a relieved sigh from Mana-san as the tension in her body goes away.

"Actually, if you don't mind, can I ask you several things that have bugged me since the beginning?" Akira suddenly asked. Seeing as she has no reason to reject, she nodded at the request.

"Ask away. But I feel I don't want to answer the question, I will not talk about it." Akira nodded and said,

"Fair enough. Just so you know, I am asking out of my curiosity, so it is definitely not an interrogation." He makes his sit more comfortable before he started to ask,

"First, how did Karin know that you are her mother?" Seeing as Aoki and Mana-san frowned at the same time, Akira decided to add, "I mean, if Kirigakure wanted a loyal Uzumaki, they would separate her from the mother and won't let Karin know about you. So, how did Karin know about you?" This time, Mana-san didn't take a long time to answer,

"I planted a communication seal in her body right after she was born, in a place where the other would not think about. It was a seal my mother created and taught me before the invasion. Basically, I could communicate with her inside our mind, similar to how your clan work."

Aoki let out a low whistle, clearly impressed with that seal. Akira felt the same, but he decided to ignore that for now and asked his next question,

"How did you manage to escape from Kirigakure after almost fifteen years of being a prisoner? You don't have to answer if it is too sensitive." Akira said the last part as he saw the winced from Mana-san.

"No, it is alright." Mana-san took a deep breath before she talked, "This is all thanks to Karin. I really don't know what happened, but Orochimaru caught a wind of an Uzumaki in Kirigakure's prison and send the five ninjas that you killed before to retrieve me to be his experiment object.

I send Karin a message about my condition in fear of I would get killed. But what I didn't expect was Karin following us and managing to put a sleeping powder in their logistics. She was able to rescue me three days ago and since then, we were basically run away from those five until you killed them and saved our lives. Thank you for doing that."

Akira and Aoki's eyes softened as they saw the mother bow. "We are glad to help," Aoki said softly. There is a moment of silence before Akira coughed a little.

"Can I ask another question? I promise this will be the last." Mana-san nodded, sending a grateful smile to Aoki who handed her a glass of water.

"Did Konoha take a part or somehow responsible for Uzushiogakure's invasion?" Seeing a wince from Mana-san was enough to confirm Akira's suspicion.

"What do you mean, Akira?" Aoki narrowed his eyes. Akira knows his friend has some suspicion as to why the pair of mother and daughter always winced at the mention of Konoha, so he decided to explain.

"You noticed she always winced when we mentioned Konoha?" Aoki nodded, "Well, if you use your observation haki, you will know there are two feelings inside her. Hatred and frightened. At first, I didn't take that feeling into consideration, but when I talked about Kirigakure, her feeling is just hatred.

It is a bit weird that the only thing she feels about Kirigakure who was involved in her home's destruction, imprisoned her, tortured her, and breed her is hate. But when we talked about Konoha, Uzushio's ally, I can feel the scared and alarmed feeling inside her.

The question is, why is she scared of Konoha and not Kirigakure? That means Konoha was somehow involved in Uzushio's destruction and played a big role in it. The only thing inside my mind is betrayal. Maybe Konoha leaked the information about Uzushio's defense to the enemies or something else. And by her reaction, I can tell I am not that far from the truth."

Aoki and Akira turned their attention once again to the mother who just closes her eyes with tears threatening to fall. It makes Akira feels bad for him to make Mana-san remember painful memories. But before he could apologize, Mana-san started to talk with hatred burning in her eyes.

"You are right, Konoha betrayed us. I will never forget about what they did to us."

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Author note:

You can also read:

- Transmigrated Into Anime World as Kiyoko Shimizu's Older Brother up to chapter 44

- Naruto: Ashigaru up to chapter 14

You can read all of it at my Patreon account, pat_reon.com/zwolf1 (Without '_') Thank you for your support! :)