Seeing as we had found Team 7 recovering in the tree with both Naruko and Sasuke unconscious, there wasn’t really anything stopping us from just inspecting the two of them.
Sakura was focusing exclusively on the entrance to their little tree hiding spot, so I just opened a portal behind Sasuke so I could look at Orochimaru’s cursed seal on Sasuke’s neck. It wasn’t like pre-shippuden Sakura had any chance of detecting us when we had been able to do this to ANBU… admittedly through an out-of-context problem on mostly distracted ANBU, but still ANBU.
I was about to open another one next to Naruko when I hesitated. I didn’t know how the seal that trapped the nine tailed fox worked. I also couldn’t remember if being pulled into the mental landscape of the seal was fannon, cannon, or both. As much as I wanted to inspect it and how it blended the chakra into her own, it just wasn’t worth it.
That just left Sasuke. The first thing I noticed was exactly what I feared, but sorta expected. There was a tiny fragment of what must have been Orochimaru’s soul in Sasuke’s curse mark.
Why did it seem like every evil melomaniac scared of death turned to splitting their soul and placing it in people? I mean, we now had Tom from Harry Potter, Himiko from Tomb Raider, Orochimaru from Naruto, and arguably the Dr. Who Angels depending on how you viewed their ability to turn people into angels. I was also pretty sure that possession was something the Sith in Star Wars did as well. I needed to make a note to really study the holocron we got from Tatooine carefully before we opened it.
Admittedly, I wasn’t the best counter argument as I was trying to prevent death as well, but I hadn’t actually split anything and I certainly wasn’t trying to take over my girl's bodies. Yeah, my original instincts had clearly told me it was a good idea to try to bond our souls. In fact I still thought it was a good idea. Yeah we now knew that it was still the only thing helping hold myself together, but I was still convinced that my idea of empowering each other was possible… just as soon as I wasn’t so damaged.
I shook my head and got back to studying Orochimaru’s soul fragment while Amy reached through her own portal and touched the back of Sasuke’s ankle. I noticed her making some notes and holding a piece of biomass that seemed to be slowly taking the shape of an eye. Yet I couldn’t focus on Amy’s attempts at eventually replicating the Sharigan because I was too busy inspecting the curse mark soul jar.
This soul fragment seemed a lot less attached than Holly Potter’s parasite but I wasn’t sure if that was because it was brand new or because it operated differently.
Yet despite the more tentative attachment method I was pretty sure I could do even less about this one. This was because despite barely feeling my own chakra, I could practically taste the corrupted and fowl chakra rolling off that snake pedo’s seal. In fact, it was enough that I could even sort of feel it with my HP magical senses. None of the other seal work we had seen so far in this world had done that.
I considered just trying anyway to reach out and slowly pull out the soul fragment, but while my increased experience with souls and out-of-context magical abilities might make it possible to succeed, it was both risky and stupid to try without any preparation or safeguards.
Sighing, I momentarily mostly closed the portal and turned to my girls. “Well, it was certainly interesting and I am glad I got to see it, but I am not sure I can actually do anything about it.”
Taylor looked curious as she stepped around and looked at the curse mark from over my shoulder while Sabah bit her lip. Dinah looked a little upset and I wondered momentarily if she had liked Sasuke. I mean, at this point in the story he was certainly giving off the misunderstood and traumatized pretty-boy vibes. Admittedly, in my opinion, that wouldn’t last too much longer as he kinda goes full psychopath after defecting and working under Orochimaru.
That just brought up the strange moral standards of this world. Taken at face value Sasuke had betrayed the village, tried to kill Naruto multiple times, and helped Orochimaru experiment on hundreds more people (probably including Leaf shinobi) but he was accepted back into the village with a comparatively light level of punishment and scrutiny.
Then there was Sasuke’s brother Itachi who, even if he was ordered to in the original story, had killed hundreds of his own clan… his extended family… because a few Uchiha elders had been planning a Coup d'etat. That included women and infants who didn’t support the Coup and had no idea what was even going on. Yet he was thought of as a tragic hero by at least some of the cast by the end. Made even worse because it was hinted that the only reason he did it was that Sasuke might have been killed in retaliation by the village. So, instead of just stopping hte Coup in the first place to save his brother, he killed hundreds of innocents, including infants… all so his brother could live.
Finally Sasuke’s distant cousin Obito who, upon seeing his friend Kakashi kill his love interest Rin, didn’t ask any further questions and proceeded to kill Naruto’s father and his wife, a pregnant mother, and unleash a chakra beast on a village killing at the very minimum, hundreds of civilians and his former comrades and extended family. Obito then proceeded to mind control another nation’s kage and thus the village hidden in the mist, causing thousands or tens of thousands more to die… and the show tried to redeem him because he swapped sides again at the very end.
The entire thing made the somewhat flexible moral standards of Hunter X Hunter seem downright conservative and reasonable now.
Then again, the entire culture was that of mercenary assassins for hire. So when I suspected that literally everyone at or above the rank of Chunin might have killed a civilian as part of an assassination contract, maybe the people in general here were just more forgiving.
Admittedly that was ignoring the possibility that all three of them were being mind controlled or brainwashed the entire time. In fact, thinking about it now, that was somewhat likely. Yet that would still only slightly lower their culpability as all three of them were elite ninja that should have detected manipulations like that and shaken them off.
It was then that Taylor pulled my attention back to the curse mark. “Can you read the symbols around the three… tomoe, was it?”
I tried to think of what the little comma shaped elements were called but Amy spoke up first. “Yeah, they are generally called Tomoe and when made into an ornament they are called a magatama.”
I blinked as I turned to her, surprised she knew all that, but then again we had already proven Amy, Sabah, and Dinah had watched a lot of Naruto. Shaking my head I smiled. “Huh, I hadn’t actually known that.”
Not wanting to embarrass her as I could see a small blush climbing up her cheeks, I continued. “What writing were you talking about, Taylor?”
Taylor pointed towards the portal and this time I noticed that the edges of the tomoe were surrounded by dozens of other tiny markings. As I looked closer I noticed hundreds of other little symbols that I didn’t immediately recognize. The shapes had to be the ninja’s special sealing techniques. I was pretty sure that it was called Fuinjutsu. The seals were this reality’s version of runes and might as well be straight up magic for how crazy the effects could be. In fact a part of me was now curious how similar they were to the oriental magics in the HP world.
Now focusing on their shapes I had to marvel at how intricate they were. Maybe there was some way of shrinking them. I did remember something like that happening, but it was hard to know what was accurate through an anime. After a few minutes I cursed softly. “Damn! Those are impressive.”
Sighing I slumped back in my chair. “I think I need to get a copy of a Fuinjutsu primer now. If I could figure out how to combine chakra with magic I could probably make some pretty crazy stuff.”
Most of the Family looked interested in the idea, but Taylor brought me back to the topic at hand. “But can you read it?”
I frowned and glanced at the seal again before waving my hand back and forth uncertainly. “Sort of… probably because it is still a language, so I can get the gist, but the more advanced concepts escape me just like advanced runic enchantments.”
Amy leaned forward. “But could you remove it?”
I narrowed my eyes and stared at it again. “...Probably…” I muttered as I tilted my head to read it a bit better.
Reading the circle around each tomoe several times I finally felt like I was starting to get a feel for what Orochimaru had done and paused to consider it before I answered.. “Well… if I understand it correctly, the seal contains a small amount of Nature Chakra which is then filtered and injected into the victim’s chakra coils giving them a massive boost. Yet it also allows Orochimaru’s soul fragment which is also contained inside to erode their mind and free-will a little bit more each time they use it until they are little more than puppets to him. I think he might even be able to resurrect himself using them if he was ever killed”
Tapping my fingers across my knee I thought for a moment before I shrugged. “A small release rune painted onto the skin between the second and third tomoe right there…” I said while pointing, “would probably release the nature chakra and, if I am reading this right, then the entire seal would collapse and it would be just a ink tattoo. It is really only the nature chakra and the resulting cursed chakra hooks into the victim’s soul that is stopping them from simply wiping it away right now.”
Sabah looked confused and asked the obvious follow up question. “Why hasn’t anyone figured this out yet?”
I sighed and considered that for a moment. “I suspect there are probably a few reasons, but let me just ask you all to try to read the seals first.”
One by one everyone took a peak at the symbols around the Tomoes but everyone gave a shake of their head as they stepped away. Nodding, I explained my thoughts. “I remember hearing that Fuinjutsu is somewhat unique to every master who learns it. So it is less like a language and more like a story. Every story uses the same words but produces a very different result. I think the biggest difference is my language skills are apparently from Thor’s soul and their Norse All-Speak directly. I noticed it when my runes seemed to work better than everyone else's. It was why I wanted to be involved with all of them when we were engraving the shuttle. That said, I am not sure why I can’t seem to give you the full ability when I tried to copy it to all of your souls. But I can try again later.” I added as I saw Hermione pout a bit.
Rubbing my head I continued. “To be blunt, the second and third reasons I can think of as to why they haven’t just tried anyway is probably because of safety. I suspect they are nervous about removing an unknown seal on a valuable Uchiha, especially if there aren't many of them left. Then, even if they could read it and knew how to remove it, I suspect that they would be nervous about the nature chakra in the seal. Honestly I would be too if we didn’t have the soul and body safeguards we do since the Naruto story was pretty clear that exposure to nature chakra is supposed to turn you to stone.”
There were some hesitant nods before Sabah asked the question. “That explains what everyone else thinks, but are you going to try it?”
I bit my lip before I shook my head. “I don’t know if I should right now. It could save a lot of lives eventually, but I am pretty sure the power boost Sasuke had here is a significant reason Team 7 got out of this forest alive… that and I am pretty sure Sakura needs this moment to grow up. She was basically worse than useless until this point in the story and she needs to get the motivation and strength to push through and actually train. Plus we should have additional chances to help later. I will put a tracking portal hidden in his hair.”
I glanced at Dinah to confirm the possibility of helping him later. Seeing my look she took a moment to ask before she nodded back at me.
Seeing that, there was some hesitant agreement before I noticed movement in the trees and I pointed towards the screens still piping in the view from the portal cameras on Taylor’s bugs. “Right… let's try to learn what we can by watching them in action. We can try to give some subtle help if we see them struggling. I should be able to keep everyone alive even if the worst happens.”
Apparently that sentence was prophetic as we almost immediately heard Dosu from the village hidden in the sound calling Sasuke out and making Sakura panic.
Seeing Sakura believing she was going to die was still pretty hard even if she was a bit older than in cannon, but it was almost immediately obvious that we would be of almost no use in a direct battle here. Magic gave us way more utility than these teenagers but we simply weren’t fast enough to fight trained ninja.
Yet as Sakura was caught by her hair and threatened I prepared to save her life if we needed to.
It was that moment that Lee showed up and all thoughts of helping flew from my head. If I had thought that the ninja were fast before, they held nothing against Lee. I had to stop myself from gaping when I realized that he wasn’t even using the 8 gates yet.
That got even more evident as Sasuke woke up and we all got to see just what the nature chakra could do. Seeing the curse mark spread across his body before, in a blur of speed, he demolished Orochimaru’s three lackeys, nearly tearing off that enemy shinobi’s arms.
Watching the three teams separate before Team 7 started hunting for another scroll to complete this part of the exam gave me time to think as Taylor followed Team 7 at a distance.
Turning to my girls I saw most of them with their mouths open as well and I nodded. “Yeah, I think we need to figure out how to use chakra. As long as we won’t be weakened when we visit a world without Chakra like Ahri or the Lovegoods did on Earth Bet, this could be a real game changer for us.”
Amy frowned but I could tell she was coming up with something good when her mouth turned up in a smile. “I remember the story stating that most of the chakra in the body comes from the nutrients in the food, but they clarified that foods that were high in their own chakra provided a lot more. What if we get enough land and plants with chakra in them that we can farm?”
I turned to her surprised, but after a moment I tilted my head thoughtfully. “I have been thinking about grabbing a larger plot of land to build a new home on, but do you think we could actually take care of that much land? Plus we have no idea if bringing the chakra along will even work. We might even figure out a way of storing Magic so Luna and Ahri don’t have issues when we visit places like Earth Bet.”
Amy shrugged, “If we can’t, then we can’t. But it would be worth trying, don’t you think? I mean, if we want to truly up our threat level, then don’t you think we should try?”
For a moment I stared at her, then I snorted “You know what, you are right. A chance at power like that for a day or two of work is absolutely worth it.”
Opening up another portal I sent it south and east as it looked the most deserted when we had gotten a good look from when we had a portal higher up looking around.
It was Luna who clapped as she smiled. “Oh, I am so looking forward to growing up. I was so hoping to cultivate an answer.”
I froze as if I had been smacked upside the head. “... Damn it…” I cursed before I sighed out long and slow and slumped in my seat and started chuckling. “It is almost like we are reverse engineering Xianxia cultivation, aren’t we?.”
Apparently it was only Sabah that knew what I was talking about when I mentioned Xianxia which surprised me a bit. Apparently Taylor focused on English books and Amy and Dinah were more focused on anime and manga.
Deciding to start from the beginning I stood up and began to pace. “Cultivation worlds are ones where the people absorb the chi or ki or qi… or whatever they call it, and use it to reinforce their bodies and spirits to become incredibly powerful, perhaps more powerful than some gods, and by doing so they can extend their lives to become ‘immortals’.”
Sighing I paused in my pacing before I grimaced looking at each of my girls. “The thing is I really, really, REALLY don’t want to end up in any of those worlds right now… Hell, I don’t really want to end up there EVER. Cultivation stories almost always have their characters turn into murder hobos as they travel around killing anyone that gets in their way or just disrespects them causing them to lose ‘face’.” I said while making the quoting motion with my fingers.
Then I grimaced, “That is also ignoring some young master deciding to sexually assault one of you, trying to turn you into a furnace to absorb your life force, or something equally as horrible. Which would make us have to kill him… which would probably mean that we would end up going to war against some clan or other. A clan that would have elders, elders that could probably break into our pocket dimension and swat us like flies. Really, I don’t want to go anywhere near them if we can help it.”
Sabah chimed in, also looking uncomfortable. “yeah... as much as I enjoyed reading those stories, I agree. Getting killed because of something as simple as not greeting an arrogant young master properly is pretty common. They also always seem to be focusing on finding another elixir to advance their cultivation and I don’t want to make them think we have it. To say nothing about the demonic cultivators who would probably want to straight up eat our souls.”
I nodded, but I was already considering the possibilities. “That said, thinking about it now, I feel like we were already moving in that direction. I mean, the HP magic extends the witch or wizard’s lifespan, makes them tougher, and gives them supernatural senses. I am pretty sure that chakra does the same, or at least lets you stay at peak health for longer.” I snorted and shook my head. “Amy is also refining our bodies and we have decided to stop swapping them so we can grow, improve, and refine them ourselves.”
Since I was already standing up, I moved towards the center console. “Still, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Thea, can you bring up a hologram? I want to start planning our new home. If we are going to have space for everything we want then we are probably going to have to plan it out carefully.”
The following hours were spent getting all of our magical textbooks out followed by a lecture by Xeno about symbology and what we wanted to look for along with what we would want inside. I also noticed that Hermione and Luna almost looked giddy over the planning.
Turning towards him I asked. “Wait… I have been considering using an expansion charm on the land within our pocket home. Do you think we can pull that off now?”
Xeno hummed and nodded. “Yes, it will take a lot of magic to push it all out but at a stable ratio it will hold and this world does seem to have a lot even if the locals don’t seem to be using it.”
I hadn’t even noticed that, but yeah, while I wasn’t exactly an expert there was a decent amount. Not even a tenth or maybe a hundred as much as at Hogwarts… but it was there. Plus as I had noticed, pulling our souls out and back into our bodies had made magic much easier.
Nodding, I agreed “Yeah, the connection between magic and chakra is a bit weird. We will have to look into that more later. For now the question becomes, how large a landmass should we try for and what shape?”
It was Hermione who spoke up, obviously thrilled to have an answer. “There is a lot of symbology for the shape of the outer walls. A circular wall is generally considered the overall strongest by itself because there are no weaknesses but also no strengths. Four walls with towers have ties back to the four cardinal directions and thus defense to every side. Five, Six, Eight, and Twelve sided fortresses have ties to different cultures and magical traditions as well. Five can tie into the eastern 5 elements. Nine in Scandinavia is considered sacred and complete similar to the number seven in Abrahamic traditions. Three is obviously strongly lucky or complete in most western cultures and is tied into the strength of the triangle. I believe that eight has ties to the concept of fortune in China. Eight also has ties to the trigrams and balance of taiji. Thinking about it now, we also have fourty in Abrahamic texts as a symbol for completeness or sometimes is basically a shorthand for ‘a very long time’, similar to the modern saying ‘a million years’. Actually, the Chinese do the same thing with 99 or 999. In fact a lot of scholars believe that originally the contract to lease Hong Kong to the British for 99 years was the cultural way of saying ‘a very long time’ or forever. Then there is 100 as the symbol of completeness and strength in both used in a lot of militaries tied into our love of the number 10. Admittedly we won’t always be in those cultures and the books I read suggested that disconnect will weaken the metaphysical weight they have, but as long as we built it with those symbology it should work. That isn’t even considering the modern star fortresses which have also started to be studied, but their symbology and magical connections aren’t as strong, but… .” Hermione trailed off as she looked around, each of us blinking a little dumbly.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Getting a hold of myself, I blinked “that was extremely insightful, thank you.” Getting that got Hermione to blush a bit, but she was only a few months shy of 18 here and so was only moderately embarrassed by her impromptu lecture.
I didn’t add that it was a bit long winded. Maybe a bit scary as I wasn’t sure she took more than one or two breaths during all of that. Yet I wasn’t about to complain as it had been a while since we had seen Hermione’s genius for facts and connections come out to play. Then again, as much as the fact that we were out of context problems for the locals, they were out of context problems for us. This might have finally been the first time in a while that something came up that was firmly in her wheelhouse and I wondered if she had started studying the topic once we had lost our first home.
Considering it for a moment longer I turned to the rest of the Family. “I am partial to trying to combine a circle wall and a number of towers along said wall, I am just not sure how many. We can figure that all out later, but it is something to consider. That and we need to keep in mind what Xeno taught us about defenses. If we want them to be as strong as possible then we will need to go through them the same way as everyone else, no back doors.”
Taylor was the one who asked. “So, are we going to just find an empty patch of ground and grab a square mile or so?”
I swallowed. That was a lot of land “I am not sure I can do a full square mile. I can try for that diameter, but it would be pushing it, I think. Keep in mind that with what we know, we can still expand it by a factor or 10.”
Sitting down on the sofa while we looked for decent locations I considered the issues.
Specifically the problem was my technique for pulling large areas into a pocket dimension involved going out there and expanding my senses before slowly ‘pulling’ on the area around me and shifting dimensions with it similar to what I did on Earth Bet. This method would let me pull out a section of ground (unlike my portals) but it was also way, WAY slower, especially for large areas. It was why I couldn’t just shut off Alexandria and the capes that ambushed us before she would have been able to splatter me across the wall.
Our first home, which was less than 50 meters on each edge of the cube, took about an hour. Doing some mental math. A diameter of a half mile gave me a circle pretty close to 2 square kilometers. That meant I was aiming for an area 800 times larger than our first pocket home. I had gotten a lot faster than that first fumbling attempt, but even if I was 10 to 20 times faster… Well, I was still probably going to be sitting out here in the middle of nowhere for a very, very long time… maybe multiple days.
I also was going to have to drop our shuttle out of our pocket Dimension if I was going to use Lung’s soul to support the new one. I actually slumped at that. I hadn’t messed with our original pocket home for two and a half years before this and now I was going to have to remake the pocket dimension for the third time in as many weeks.
Resigned to my task, I moved our pocket home upwards and asked Thea to prepare to take control and keep us at the edge of space, several miles up. Technically I might have gotten away with staying on the ground and just casting a whole bunch of notice-me-not spells at it, but I wasn’t about to risk our safety with memories of Dr Who so fresh in my mind. Not when it was so easy to just keep our shuttle where no one in this world could get to it.
As we all looked for the right spot Dinah and Luna conversed quietly for several seconds before they pointed us a little further west. As we moved our spotting portal over we found a hill with a few towering trees on the east side with a small river flowing around the west. The rest of the area was an open meadow. I would need to be clever with the magic to recycle the water but we should be able to keep a river flowing within the pocket dimension, but it made the land look absolutely enchanting.
Stepping out through a portal onto the hill, I made sure to cast several notice-me-nots and sighed before I sat down in the center to begin my work. It was only ten minutes before I felt both vindicated and resigned. It was just as slow and tedious as I had feared. Doubly so as I had to focus so I couldn’t even watch with my girls as they followed Team 7’s progress towards the tower.
I was momentarily distracted as I heard Sabah comment on how Sasuke had saved a red headed girl that must have been Karin Uzumaki just like we saw in the flashback later in the story. Yet I didn’t really have anything to take notes with so I had to just yell at them to remind me to do something for her before she left town.
A magical compulsion to defect to Konoha would probably work as long as she talked to Naruko and mentioned her last name. I was pretty sure Naruko would be just as desperate for a family as Naruto was in cannon and Naruko would make sure she was treated right. Karin would still probably be interrogated by Konoha, but it was better than her fate of being abandoned on the way back to Grass and nearly killed before being caught and forced to work for Orochimaru.
As I continued my work I actually started to notice some strange flows of what I eventually realized were nature chakra. I wouldn’t have had any idea of what it was if I hadn’t spent multiple minutes studying it inside of Sasuke’s cursed seal. It wasn’t like I could do anything with it, but it certainly felt extremely potent.
As the hours passed while I reached out and grabbed more and more land and pulled it within the forming buble I started to get into a bit of a rhythm and it started going faster. Oh, it was still excruciatingly slow, but It was only a little more than a full day on this world, which we had since confirmed was about 36 hours, before I finally reached the mile diameter in each direction and almost 30 meters down and 30 meters up from the ground level. I was extremely thankful that Sabah had brought me some food and Taylor had transfigured me a chair from the boulder next to me, making this a little less terrible, but it was done.
The roughly forty hours apparently were just enough for Team 7 to finish up as well. More specifically, what I could hear through the portal, Team 7 had finally reached the tower and were about to enter it.
Now that the area was in that halfway in between state I prepared for the final pull. Gritting my teeth I reached out and yanked, hard, on the area around me first in one direction then another as I slowly, finally, pulled it fully out of this world and into its own pocket dimension..
Each time I pulled a part of the new hill out to add to the pocket dimension, I made sure to support it with Lung’s soul. Yet I almost instantly noticed his soul was struggling. It wasn’t much, but we might have found his limit. That made me worried as I wanted our home strong and able to take a beating while jumping realities.
It was Ahsoka who had been staying nearby that came up with part of the answer this time. “Can you shrink the area that is being covered?”
Assuming that she was suggesting we use less land and just expand it further, I was about to say no and remind her that we were limited to a 10 time ratio to remain completely stable when I realized what she was actually asking.
This time I did actually smack my own forehead as I replied. “Damn it. You are right. Even if we expand the interior of the cube, we can still shrink the exterior surface.”
It also made me realize what we could do with this. If we were willing to make something ten times bigger than we needed and then shrink it, we could get a 100 to 1 ratio. Suddenly making bottomless bags and other such items were much closer, but now wasn’t the time.
Now considering the details, I realized that if I did it right I was going to make it so the surface that Lung supported would be about 160 meters. Or a little bigger than our first home while the inside would be over seven and a half miles or approximately 20 square kilometers and almost 300 meters of soil.
Not for the first time I wondered how magic created more material during the expansion and where it went when it was shrunk, but that was probably still well above my current understanding. I mean, storage scrolls in this world were just as broken. Magic in all its forms really was crazy.
That expansion was going to be tough though and I was also going to need Xeno’s help to set it up and probably everyone who could help cast magic to contribute.
Xeno seemed to know what I was about to ask as he was already pulling out a few runestones that I would need to copy several dozen times over to better define our land for the expansions to latch onto. The good news was that I could do this while being able to watch as Naruko’s team headed up into the tower. Sighing, I pulled out my engraving tools and started my work.
It was a bit amusing to see the three of them try to figure out what the scrolls did, but after a few moments they opened the two scrolls at the same time and I watched as a man with a scar running across his nose jumped into the smoke cloud from behind to start explaining how training was supposed to work. That confused me for a bit until I remembered that actual teleportation was supposed to be limited to the Fourth Hokage’s seals and summoning animal contracts.
Even the somewhat famous body flicker was supposedly just using chakra to launch someone in a straight line, faster than the eye could see, usually with a puff of smoke to assist. Not that performing the body flicker wasn’t super human, it absolutely was, but it wasn’t actual teleportation.
Focusing back on the view through the bug cameras, I only had to wait for a moment before the tension was broken and what I now recognized to be Iruku Sensei smiled at Team 7 and offered to take them out for Ichiraku Ramen. That was when we got to see Naruko practically break down in tears and hug Iruku yelling, “Ichiraku Ramen, you mean it? Let's go now!”
I was a little intimidated by her energy, and I could tell Iruku was a bit embarrassed as Naruko wasn’t exactly flat. Yet it still seemed fairly innocent and you could just tell how genuine and straightforward she was. It actually finally let me understand a little bit of how her ‘talk-no-jutsu’ might actually function. It still didn’t stop Sasuke from rolling their eyes at her while Iruku tried to get Naruko to settle back down and Sakura to stand up and focus after she nearly collapsed with relief.
However when Iruka started explaining the differences between chakra types I turned and focused completely on his explanation.
‘If qualities of heaven is your desire, acquire wisdom to take your mind higher. If earthen qualities are what you lack, train your body and prepare to attack. If heaven and earth are opened together, the perilous path will become righteous forever.’
I listened to the explanation of Iruka as he discussed the details as apparently it was something the third Hokage wanted to put up for the entrants into the exam. However after a moment I narrowed my eyes at the words as they were written on the banners.
Now viewing everything here in the lens of a pseudo-cultivation world, I actually wondered if there was something more there. Was the way to increase our soul’s strength through studying? It sounded silly, but if I expanded studying to include diligence and willpower along with the inherent strengthening of our minds achieved through studying… well I could see it. The body half also had a more hidden point. To really prepare our bodies, we needed to prepare to attack. It was strange, but if I took it to mean that training without sparring was useless for real battle then that was absolutely true. All the way back on Runeterra, Irelia had been pretty clear on that. It was why we had been sparing with magic from pretty much the moment that we arrived at Hogwarts.
While I was considering that, Team 7 left the hall and took a moment to clean up. Unlike what was implied in the anime, Naruko’s team did get nearly two and a half hours to prepare for the preliminaries.
That break gave me enough time to finish up the rune stones and pull every magic user in the Family out onto our new pocket land to power the enlargement charms.
It took the nine of us with magic chanting and pushing with our magic for another 10 minutes before the land began to expand. However, eventually the edges of the land pushed away from us and we were left standing in the middle of an empty field of grass that should be big enough for the foreseeable future. It was just a question of how were were going to protect it.
In fact, I was pretty sure that I read that a western diet required about 2 acres per year and a square mile had 640 acres. I almost snorted as I realized we had around 5 thousand acres.
So, yeah, we had the space. It was just a question of how we would farm it. Some of that could be done with house elves and Amy’s bio engineering would help, but I might need to look into golem crafting. Harry Potter didn’t have much in that discipline, but a lot of other places did.
Regardless, at Xeno’s instruction, said expansion excluded the first 10 meters or so inside the edges of the pocket dimension which would give us enough space to build our defenses.
I had asked Xeno if we should try to compress the area we would build said defenses on as well the same way I was compressing the surface of the bubble, but he said no. “If you try to protect your home while avoiding the extra effort to make a proper defense then it would be like trying to clean your bedroom from a niffler when there is a hemmingflier already in your closet.”
After taking a deep breath in and letting it go slowly I considered for a moment. Ignoring the animal analogy, if I wanted to really make a truly strong defense, then any kind of effect that could be theoretically undone was a bad idea. And those walls would be crucial to our defense. Hermione, Luna, and Xeno were already drawing up designs for the runework that would be running along the interior of the walls that would make them basically impenetrable.
As I looked at our new land, I was also incredibly curious what the ninja would think when they found a missing square kilometer about a hundred miles or so outside of Konoha’s walls.
Now that everything was settled, I pulled open another portal in front of our shuttle out on the edge of space and Thea flew it inside and landed it on the center of our new hill.
Smiling now, as I looked around at our shuttle on a hill inside our own not-so-little slice of land and knowing it was going to be the beginning of our new home I turned to the few girls still outside with me. “That is good enough for now.”
The agreement was particularly strong from Luna and the rest of the magic users because of how much effort it took to perform the expansion.
Walking back inside the shuttle, instead of portaling due to how strained that proverbial muscle was feeling, I slumped down with everyone else and tried to relax.
Turns out we were just in time to see the preliminaries which was pretty awesome. Admittedly I was a bit disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to do something to change them, but I wasn’t even sure what I would have needed to do to accomplish that. I mean I didn’t think they were actually random for a second, but it would have been interesting making Gaara fight one of the village hidden in the sound. I was also curious to know if I could have gotten Kabuto discovered as a double agent in front of everyone.
Still, we still had a minimum of another day or two before I felt I could jump and not strain myself so we had time to try to help. In fact, while the officials were explaining the rules of the preliminaries that the examinees were going to have to go through, I opened a portal behind Karin who I had kept track of and was resting in her hotel room now that she had failed the second part of the chunin exams. Hitting her with a compulsion to tell Naruko her full name and maybe ask about asylum before she left I closed that portal and prepared for the show.
Watching Sasuke beat down that unknown leaf ninja left not only all of us but all of the Konoha ninja a little conflicted. We personally knew that that previously unnamed leaf ninja was a traitor as he was one of Kabuto’s teammates, but no one else did. So while the absorbing chakra was a little disturbing, (and how no one else wondered where he got that sort of experimental procedure if not by Orochimaru I could understand), the beatdown was still a little harsh.
Watching the next fight between Zaku and Shino Aburame was at least a little interesting. Sneaking bugs into the sound ninja’s air tubes in his arms was sneaky and just the type of tactic I expected from a ninja. I also gave Taylor the go ahead to grab a few of his chakra absorbing beetles which we discreetly portaled into a jar for future study. Turns out that her control superseded his, but he probably would have noticed more than a few going missing. Also, her nerfed multitasking abilities without the full Scion shard backing her soul up meant he might be able to control a bigger swarm than her at the moment, not that we really wanted to test that.
Watching the third match, the second one of Kabuto’s teammates fighting against the puppet user, Kankuro, I had to admit this was exciting. However most of the interest from us was in watching how well he hid his real body. Amy also made a point of asking me for some discrete portals so she could try to summon some drops of his poisons into small jars. It was a bit tricky to wave her wand through the tiny portal in the corner of the rooms without anyone noticing and I still think I saw some of the higher leveled ninja twitch, but apparently we weren’t discovered.
However, watching the next battle between Sakura and Ino was just as embarrassing as it was in the anime. Neither one of them was actually ready for this exam and part of me wondered why their Junin instructors even let them enter. Then again, in his world they were around 17 or 18 of Earth years and were being treated as the adults they legally were.
I did watch Sakura’s soul when she broke out of Ino’s mental control. I couldn’t tell exactly what happened without a closer exam but for a moment her spiritual pressure, for lack of a better word, exploded and I almost felt like there were two parts to her. Was that her ‘inner’ Sakura?
The strange thing was her soul actually felt a little like me at that moment. Was the inner Sakura some sort of reincarnation or soul bonding as well? It was that question that gave me something to think about as the two girls knocked each other out.
The Tenten and Temari fight, on the other hand, really drove home how far behind Ino and Sakura were. When Tenten pulled out literally hundreds of throwing weapons to launch at her opponent only to have them forcibly flung back at her. It was incredible and well… the cat fight that the previous match had turned into now looked even worse.
However, the final knockout by having Tenten fall back-first into Temari’s fan, nearly breaking Tenten’s spine, was brutal and I saw Amy look at me imploringly so I made a note to open a portal to help make sure Tenten survived.
We actually lost another one of Taylor’s video flies from that wind attack as it was flung back and splattered on the far wall leaving us only 3 video flies remaining. That was unfortunate as the limited field of view was now actually giving us some blank spots in the hologram we were all watching the battles through.
Taylor seemed just as annoyed as everyone else because before I even asked, she responded. “Give me a minute, I have three bees coming as replacements.”
The next match was ok. Watching Shikamaru trick Kin into being caught by his shadow was a little interesting but there wasn’t much we could learn from it. The sound-based Genjutsu illusions also didn’t properly translate through the speakers so I couldn’t even tell if we would have been affected by Kin’s mind control technique. Still regardless of how lacking Shikamaru was in actual ninja skills the shadow user did manage to trap the woman so it was still a win for him.
Yet looking at him and knowing that somehow he was the only one of this entire group that made it to Chunin this year made me frown. Honestly, well… I didn’t think he deserved it. True he was one of the very few that tried to make a plan to win, but he was planning around his weaknesses rather than just getting stronger.
By that metric of overcoming a stronger ninja with tactics, Shino, Sasuke, Kankuro, Naruto, Gaara, and Rock Lee were also all at a disadvantage in their fight and found a way around said limitation. Bloody hell, Naruto tunneled underneath Neji in the finals when he couldn’t get through his defense. That was at least as impressive as Shikamaru’s planning and tactics.
It also had to be tactics that they were judging on. Shikamaru was currently probably the forth or fifth weakest person that had been in this room, including Ino and Sakura, with really only one ace-in-the-hole ability. An ace that he couldn’t use against more than one person at a time and could only use a few times in total.
Shaking my head I refocused just in time to watch this female Naruto actually beat Kiba fairly easily. That surprised me, but as I watched Naruko perform a devastating ax kick, I saw Kiba’s nose bleed and after a moment I realized that the girl was flashing him slightly each time she jumped and kicked or punched him.
Sighing I shook my head.
Why hadn’t I realized that if her male counterpart had used sex appeal to keep people off balance and give himself an opening, then his female version would probably do the same? Still, to her defense, she did seem to have a better fighting style than I would have thought. Maybe she hadn’t been sabotaged as much since the Hokage was keeping a closer eye on her.
Regardless, in the end Kiba was knocked unconscious and Naruko walked up the stairs, petting Kiba’s puppy partner Akamaru while Kiba was carried to the medics.
When the next two members were called, my blood ran cold. Hinata was an absolute wreck as she walked down the stairs, staring down a scowling Neji. No one cheered her on. In fact, everyone was already grimacing at what they were sure was a foregone conclusion.
I bit my lip. If Naruko had been better taken care of and watched over, then she might not have met Hinata in that park. Thus Hinata might not have had anyone on her side this entire time.
Thinking about it now, in the original timeline it was pretty much only Naruto’s encouragement and her crush and admiration for him that allowed her to push through. She had seen him push through the hate and scorn directed at him and never let it get him down and used it as motivation. It was what had gotten her through her childhood. Without that… well her life would have basically consisted of just being beaten on and scorned in the disguise of training by her father, cousin, and eventually younger sister.
My fears seemed justified as we watched the match start. Looking at her as she was systematically taken apart by Neji both verbally and physically before taking a liver shot, a potentially lethal strike, and going down in a crumpled convulsing heap resulted in a completely silent shuttle.
Amy was the first to speak up. “We are offering her a chance to get out of here, right?”
I momentarily froze at the thought because ‘kidnapping’ the daughter of the Hyuga clan chief would make a lot of things a lot more complicated even if she personally chose to join us, but watching her being carried off on a stretcher I nodded. “Yeah, yeah I think we will. We all know she could be incredibly strong, but without Naruto as a figure to look up to. Well… yeah.”
I didn’t think anything else needed to be said as her limp form was carried out of the room.
It was clear that pretty much everyone was in agreement as not even Alice, who obviously still didn’t trust us in general and me in particular, complained about the plan.
Yet despite the differences we still got to see Naruko declare her vengeance. “I will show you that fate isn’t set in stone! Believe It!”
But that didn’t really raise any of our moods as we watched Rock Lee and Gaara walk out onto the arena. The match went almost exactly as it did in cannon. Rock Lee moved fast enough that we had trouble even following him before Guy Sensei gave him the go ahead to take off his weights. That was when things got truly insane. At this point none of us could even see any of his movements and even when Thea tried slowing down the video feed we had trouble tracking some of his spins.
This… this was truly super human. It was also probably the next step on our goal to become powerful enough we didn’t have to run and hide from danger. Yet I winced as I realized that Lee and Guy’s exercise routines seemed worse than many forms of torture… Walking around the village with literal tons strapped to their arms and legs. Sometimes via bunny hops or via handstands was also something I remember them mentioning. They also talked about thousands of push ups and sit ups… and we were going to have to do them since chakra seemed tied into our souls and Amy couldn’t just skip that for us.
It was as Rock Lee was opening the two of the eight gates that I felt some spiritual pressure and despite the need for caution, I opened a portal close to his back so I could look at his soul.
To be blunt, it was incredible…
He was forcing open the connection between his soul and his body even wider. Feeding his very soul into the gates to and thus his chakra which was then being pumped into his body. Yet I also saw his body begin to break down as too much power was dumped into it, too quickly. I knew that Guy Sensei could safely open at least this many gates so I had to assume Lee just wasn’t ready for this yet, making the question on why Guy was letting him use this technique here an even bigger question. Why cripple himself for a fight that didn’t really matter?
Yet, as he disappeared only to reappear already kicking Gaara, bypassing his automatic sand barrier because it just didn’t have enough time to react, I realized my mouth was hanging open and I closed it.
I glanced around and saw the rest of my girls equally shocked. I even spotted Aisha who seemed to have been sneaking more sweets from the cabinets but had lost track of her power as we watched something that didn’t seem like it should be possible.
Taking a shaky breath I leaned forward to better study the battle but Gaara was already coming out of his shock and starting to fight back. The battle went back and forth for a few seconds and Gaara tried to catch Lee only for the fight to end in the expected tragedy. It was hard to watch as Rock Lee went for an elaborate piledriver move only to have Gaara absorb the blow and reach out towards Lee to catch him in the sand. A few moments later we all winced as Lee’s arm and leg were crushed into bloody paste. His screams were both agonizing and heart wrenching.
It also made me realize that Tsunade’s chakra healing had to be truly incredible as in anywhere else including perhaps Hogwarts, those limbs would have simply been amputated.
Yet as the match was called in Gaara’s favor, I had to wonder why it wasn’t stopped earlier.
We watched as Rock Lee was not only carried away to the medics, but immediately moved towards the Konoha hospital and I realized we were probably going to have another place we needed to visit before we left.
Yeah, Tsunade would probably eventually fix him the same way as we had seen in the anime, but that was potentially months of suffering he still had to go through.
Plus, if Amy took a crack at him then we would potentially get a better understanding of how bodies reacted with chakra.
After that, the final battle between the sound user Dosu and Choji was anticlimactic. They both had interesting abilities. But sound control and the ability to expand your body simply weren’t all that interesting in comparison to what we had previously seen.
Hearing the Hokage announce that the finals would be in a month and watching everyone start to head out of the room I bit my lip for a moment with all of the things we wanted to accomplish.
Sighing, I turned towards my family. “Well, we have maybe 1-3 days left depending on what we want to do, even with the longer day-night cycle, we are going to need to get to work if we want to help.”
Our conversation was interrupted when the door to one of the crew cabins swished open and none other than Riley, AKA Bonesaw walked out and looked at all of us, confused.
No one moved.
No one even knew what to say including Bonesaw.
Personally I felt like I was seeing the impossible. Amy, Ashoka, Alice, and I had checked on her only a day or two ago and she was still completely comatose. Utterly unresponsive to any and all stimuli regardless of source.
Not one to be silent often Aisha broke the silence “Holy Shit!” and took a step away from the now open door which was next to the snack cabinet.
“Language!” Riley said as she turned and frowned at the black girl she obviously didn’t recognize. I then noticed that she blinked again in confusion now focused on herself as if wondering where that came from.
I sighed… again, longer and deeper this time. A sigh that slowly turned into a groan as I stared at the ceiling in supplication.
Somehow I just knew that this was going to be a whole thing… wasn’t it.
Interlude Hinata:
When Hinata woke up she almost wished she hadn’t.
She hadn’t even managed a single strike on her cousin Neji and this was almost certainly the blow that would finally break her position within the family.
Her sister was already better than her and her younger half siblings were already making progress towards catching up despite being only half her age.
She was almost certainly going to be pulled from active service now and married off to one of her distant cousins.
She had always known that she wasn’t going to be able to choose her spouse so the idea of having it chosen for her didn’t really bother her. She also knew her duty to bear multiple strong children was just as important as her ninja abilities.
A ninja village simply could not function without a large and healthy birth rate. Not when the average life expectancy for ninja was maybe 22… and maybe half of that in war time. She wasn’t even all that opposed to bearing the 4 or 5 children needed to keep the clan strong.
Yet…
And yet…
And yet, she wanted to do more. She had wanted to get rid of the caged bird seal. To free the branch clan from their chains.
She had wanted to change how her clan acted with other clans in Konoha. Remove the barriers the Hyuga had put up to keep themselves apart from everyone else.
She had wanted to…
She had wanted to achieve something with her life…
But she hadn’t…
And she wouldn’t…
Her spiral of thoughts was momentarily broken when she was startled to hear someone clearing their throat.