Chapter 21
Yahiko didn't know what he expected, but it certainly wasn't this. The blue skies, the green lands. The colors he had already forgotten, and yet they meant nothing to him. He was already missing the cold and grey rain, even though he had only been a day without it.
He didn't even think about it, but it seemed like he already considered the Land of the Rain his home. It was amusing; he didn't miss his old world for even a second. And yet the moment he left his new one, he found it quite hard not to look back.
Yahiko wanted to believe that his old home, his old family, and his old life still had some meaning to him. That all the bad was just an exaggeration of his mind. But he trusted his feelings, and he felt nothing for that life. And that felt good, because he felt something for this one, and that proved everything to him.
"Be careful back there, the road is going to be bumpy for a bit," their wagon driver warned them.
Lying on the hay, Yahiko, Konan, and Nagato could only look into the sky. As the driver warned, soon they felt every bump on the road. It was cold, uncomfortable, and now it even got worse. And yet, neither Konan nor Nagato seemed to mind any of it as they continued to talk about the shapes of the clouds.
"What are you doing?" Yahiko turned to Konan, who was drawing something on blank paper she had with her.
"New seals," Konan replied. "This one will emit cold, and this one warmth once I am done. With them, it would be easier to regulate the body's temperature if any of us gets sick. And then there is this; it should stop bleeding if applied correctly."
Konan was full of ideas, as she continued to study fuinjutsu by herself. Yahiko was quite envious of her talent in it. He was way too clumsy to draw a seal correctly. And he has given up on learning to draw.
Though Nagato wasn't any better than Yahiko, he at least had the patience to practice. And his understanding of fuinjutsu was far better than that of either Yahiko or Konan. Though Yahiko knew it was a cool skill to learn, he would rather stick with his lightning ninjutsu.
Though he was sitting around, not doing anything either. As he looked at the skies, he channeled his chakra through the straw in his hands and tried to maintain it, making the straw hard and straight as long as he could. He did with dozens of different lengths of straw at the same time.
"I got to say, you couldn't have picked a better time to come here," the driver continued to talk. "A week before, it was freezing. I was surprised it hasn't started to snow yet. But this week, it got a lot warmer."
"Lucky us," Yahiko replied as he chewed on the straw, using his mouth to channel his chakra into it too.
"Yeah, and you're lucky you met me on the way. Even without a war, the roads aren't very safe for kids. Every corner you turn, you need to be careful of thieves, bandits, and vagrants. The country is full of them now."
"Thank you for letting us hitch a ride," Nagato said as he tied straws together, trying to make something out of it before giving up, dismantling it, and starting all over.
No matter how much Yahiko looked at it, he had no idea what he was doing. And Nagato didn't seem to want to say it either. All he knew Nagato could just be playing around, but that would mean he was done reading one of his books. And that was impossible.
"No problem, I couldn't just leave kids wandering around all alone," the driver replied. "So, the Land of the Rain, it must be tough out there if you decided to walk all the way here. I only heard rumors of it, how it was controlled by a warlord, and it is in constant conflict."
"Pretty much sums it up," Yahiko agreed. "But like everything else, it will change someday."
That's why he was going to the Land of the Iron. He liked to hear the opinions of his home country from the people of the Land of Fire, too, but he wanted to know the perspective of a country that didn't participate in war. A perspective of someone who followed a different path from a shinobi.
Of course, he thought of learning swordsmanship too. He needed to raise his physical strength, and he thought swords were pretty cool, so he was going to hit two birds with one stone. But before any of that, it seemed they had company.
"Sorry, kids, but we will have to part our ways here," the driver said as he stopped the wagon in the middle of the road.
"Are your accomplices as stupid as you are, sir?" Konan asked as she got up first, annoyed that she couldn't work on her seals anymore. "You do realize that half of the hay on this wagon is already rotten, right? Anyone not blind would realize that, and that there would be no reason for anyone to travel any distance to deliver rotten hay to anyone."
"The missy should watch her mouth." A couple of men approached the wagon from behind, with ugly-looking weapons. "Especially when she has such a pretty face, it just asks to be ruined."
"Drugs?" Nagato asked. "Doesn't feel like weapons. Maybe stolen goods. But then you should have tried to go to the Land of the Rain; they would have had better luck selling it there. And nothing else comes to mind other than it being drugs. Am I right?"
"Look at this one, he thinks he is so smart."
There were about a dozen of them now. They were waiting here for this wagon. Though Yahiko was an unexpected passenger, it didn't seem to surprise any of them. So, it would mean it wasn't the first time they picked up strangers. The question was, what were they doing with them?
"It can't be," Yahiko said as he rolled off the hay. "You don't even consider the fact that we aren't normal kids. Three kids traveling alone. They talk to a bunch of you calmly without showing any change of expression. And yet you don't even consider that they might be shinobi. You know, the kind that were trained in ninjutsu. The kind that learned how to kill before any of you even considered committing a crime. Do you really not consider such a thing?"
Now they did. But the fact that they only tensed up meant they probably hadn't seen a true shinobi in their lives. Well, the Land of Fire was quite enormous. So, it wouldn't be a surprise that they had only ever heard of shinobi, but never met one before. Now, they didn't know what to do.
For them, it was quite hard to accept that kids like them could pose any danger to them, but they also couldn't ignore what they heard about shinobi. The stories, no matter how unbelievable they might be, had to contain some truth.
"Don't be deceived." Another man came into view, this one with a samurai sword strapped to his belt; he looked to be in charge. "In the end, they are just kids. If they are shinobi, they are arrogant ones who think they can take four times their number. And I wonder how much more they would sell for since they are shinobi."
Yahiko jumped from the wagon and was prepared to show them how wrong their thinking was, but he stopped right before the samurai. Not because of him, but because of the person standing behind him.
He was tall, with spiky, silver-colored hair that reached the middle of his back, tied in a ponytail, and bangs that hung over his forehead protector. The forehead protector had a very familiar symbol on it. The same one that Jiraiya had on his forehead protector.
But what made Yahiko stiff and unable to move at all was the fact that this man appeared out of nowhere. One moment he wasn't here, and the second he was. The thugs laughed, oblivious to the shinobi behind them, as Konan and Nagato also noticed the man and couldn't move.
"As I said, they are just kids who now realize their little bluff wouldn't work on us." Yahiko couldn't understand how that man could just stand here, and nobody realized his existence. "How about you surrender to us peacefully? Then we won't have to beat you up to half dead."
Yahiko looked at the man, but he kept silent. Although Yahiko first thought that there was no need to bother with them, and he could just kick their asses before making them tell everything they knew, if a shinobi from Konoha were here, it would probably be more complicated.
"You got us," Yahiko said as he lifted his arms in surrender. "I thought that once you heard the word shinobi, you would back off. But we failed. We surrender and will do as you wish."
That got him a smile and a nod of approval from the shinobi from Konoha. And like that, he just disappeared, like he never existed to begin with. If Konan and Nagato didn't have the same reaction as Yahiko, then he would have thought that he had just imagined the whole thing.
…
Wooden cages. And poorly made at that. Yahiko could guess that any adult male could break through them easily. So, it made sense that only kids and women were kept in them. It sure gave quite an impression on his first day in the Land of Fire.
Well, it wasn't that bad. He could escape any moment he wanted, but he played along for now, meditating in peace. Though it wasn't that much of peace with the quiet sniffling and groans coming from every corner of the room he was in.
"Are you an illusion made out of a genjutsu?" Yahiko asked as he noticed a presence standing before him in the dark. "It feels like you are here, but not at the same time."
"I am a clone," the shinobi answered. "I am real, but you could say I do not exist. I can't touch anything, nor can anyone touch me. But I can communicate while still being at a distance."
"Interesting," Yahiko said as he tried to see through the jutsu, as it did seem useful. "So, have you seen enough? Do you need help to take care of things here?"
"What I need from you is your identity," the shinobi said. "I could tell that you are quite a talented shinobi, all three of you. Where are you from? What are your goals? And are you going to endanger Konoha?"
"We were trained as shinobi, and we came from the Land of the Rain. But we don't belong to any village, and our goal is to reach the Land of Iron. We have no ill intentions toward Konoha," Yahiko answered the shinobi's questions. "Now, your turn. What do you want to do with this place? It is thirty minutes away from the road, and by the smell, I can tell it was once a farm or something similar. Though I get the idea that this organization is new to this kind of work."
And then he was gone. Yahiko didn't appreciate that he was ignored like that, especially since he willingly decided to help this shinobi. But then again, he was probably quite a suspicious person to this shinobi, and there was no need for either of them to exchange more information.
Well, since it came to this, there was no need to play along either. It was time to get out and leave the rest to that shinobi. It wasn't like those idiots who started this organization were anything dangerous. And if they were hiding something, it was Konoha's job to find it out.
The wood broke as easily as Yahiko expected. Konan and Nagato, who had their own little cages, sensing Yahiko's actions, did the same. There were five other cages, with three women and two boys. Yahiko broke their cages and instructed Konan to escort them away.
"Just get them to the road and give some of our supplies so they can go to the next town," Yahiko said, ignoring the thanks he was getting from the prisoners as he walked out of what looked like an old barn.
"What if I am stopped by other shinobi?"
"Do as they ask as long as it isn't too much."
Konan nodded and sneaked away by breaking a few planks at the other side of the barn. Since there were only a few guards in front of the barn, there wasn't anything to stop Konan at all. So, she led the prisoners away.
Although the few guards who stayed to watch over this place were knocked down before they even realized what happened. Even if they noticed something, Yahiko couldn't imagine any of them posing any danger to any of them.
"We shouldn't try to interfere with that Konoha shinobi," Nagato said.
"We won't," Yahiko replied. "We're just going to make their work easier and then disappear. It didn't look like they would try to detain us or anything."
Even though Yahiko didn't even see his real body, he could tell that the Konoha shinobi wasn't someone he could fight. Not at his current level. And he didn't dare to try to find out what kind of skill this shinobi possessed.
Yet, it seemed that Yahiko's simple plan wasn't going to go as he expected. The moment he stepped forward to finish this little organization, he was stopped by the Konoha shinobi, and this time it wasn't a clone. And there were three more shinobi surrounding them.
"Don't interfere anymore," the Konoha shinobi instructed Yahiko, and he didn't look like he would take a no for an answer.
Especially when Yahiko saw Konan coming back. It seemed that even she couldn't escape their sight. Yahiko could only lift his arms in surrender and agree to do nothing. But then again, he was quite an idiot who just couldn't let even those kinds of bastards die.
And it didn't look like these shinobi could agree with Yahiko to leave them alive. As soon as one of the criminals was seen, there was already a shuriken flying straight for his head. A pebble deflected that shuriken, and a sword was by Yahiko's neck the next moment.
It was a straight-bladed tantō with a small, circular hand-guard. It gave off a white streak of chakra as it rested on Yahiko's shoulder. Yahiko could tell that his head would be cut off as easily as it was cutting through butter.
A.N. This chapter should have been uploaded a few days ago, but because of the blizzard in my area, I have lost electricity for almost the entire weekend. So, I dind't had a chance to upload it, sorry for the wait.
As always. Thanks for reading and supporting me. If you want 7 more chapters of this story and 42 chapters in total with all my current stories, please consider supporting me on pa treon ironworlf852. Thanks in advance.