The golem reached for me, but at the last second I sprung lightly over its hands and slammed the overpowered Flame Rasengan into its chest. The golem’s entire torso blew apart spectacularly, but I’d timed my body flicker to get me away and back on the ground before the blast could hit me. Our audience watched aghast as the thing’s legs toppled, it’s arms landing just inside the circle of ninja while the head flew far, far up into the night sky.
I noted that the head’s trajectory was going to bring it down outside the circle, among a small group of younger spectators that might or might not have ninja training. Well, that wouldn’t do. I body flickered into the air next to it and kicked it back towards the middle of the circle, then flickered back down and caught it as it landed. Then I turned back to the old man, completely ignoring the hothead’s horrified stare.
“That’s one method for countering golems,” I said. “I have more. Do we have a deal, or shall I demonstrate them?”
The old man raised his hand, and the crowd stilled.
“The Bokura clan agrees to your terms,” he announced. “Let all members of the clan be aware that the presence of these two is now a clan secret, to be concealed from all outsiders for as long as possible. Roku, as your recklessness has resulted in the loss of your companion you are hereby demoted to genin until you can construct a replacement.”
“Now, if you ladies would care to step inside, perhaps we can discuss details over tea?”
The Bokura were the fourth clan we visited, and the last before we left Fire Country. After that came a leisurely tour of Earth Country, with side trips to some of the minor powers like Grass and Rain. I aged us both by a couple of months every week, until we were physically fifteen and making love with Hinata didn’t leave me feeling like a pedophile. We both missed Naruto, but being able to be together openly made up for a lot.
About a third of the clans we visited agreed to our deal, and we spent several weeks with each of them. Some were completely paranoid, trading a handful of techniques they’d stolen from outsiders but refusing to part with anything important. Others were more strategic, trading many of their own secrets for those of their major rivals, and we picked up some interesting tricks from them. More importantly, we finally had the chance to ask questions about the sorts of things most villages only teach jounin, and get answers from teachers who weren’t cooperating with each other to hide things from us.
Hinata was still focused on improving her combat power, and her ninjutsu abilities improved markedly as we traveled. I showed her a number of my more interesting water techniques to supplement the ones she picked up from our jutsu trades, and her shape manipulation was already good enough to handle Rasengan. My own studies were more esoteric, concentrating on the sealing arts, jutsu design, and further refining my chakra sight. The last project turned out to be the easiest, since nearly every clan we traded with seemed to have a subtly different approach to training chakra sensors. I was never going to match Hinata’s Byakugan for range or clarity of perception, but even in the real world I soon reached the point where I could figure out what a strange technique did just by looking at the chakra release.
Of course, jutsu trading wasn’t exactly safe. A third of the clans we contacted tried to kill or capture us instead of just saying no, and that kept us on our toes. Fighting an entire ninja clan is a hair-raising experience, especially when you don’t know what special techniques they have or how good their best people are. Some clans were relatively straightforward, like the fire users that tried a simple ambush. Others were very, very sneaky, and in one of those encounters we actually died.
Fortunately I’d aspected myself not long after we left Konoha, and the other me was currently an assistant to one of Snow Country’s better seal masters. Since she looked nothing like me there was nothing to connect us, and it was trivial for her to set us up with new bodies so we could set out again. I suspect the guys who killed us were rather disconcerted when they started hearing stories about us still being alive, but we never visited them again.
We made quite a bit of money looting the bodies of the ninja that tried to kill us, but our lifestyle wasn’t exactly frugal. Fancy hotels and nice clothes and the occasional night of partying added up, especially as our reputation spread and the assassination attempts slowed down. We started to do a bit of bounty hunter work on the side, which gave us information as well as another source of income. Some of the jobs on offer were pretty disgusting, but after a bit of debate we decided we’d just ignore them in favor of the more legitimate targets.
We spent nearly a year touring the elemental countries that way, learning and making our presence known while we found out how the seedy side of the ninja world really works. We got screwed over several times, and had some interesting little contract disputes, but it quickly became apparent that there were very few missing nin who could make either of us break a sweat in a fight. Together we had more combat power than some of the smaller hidden villages, so unlike a lot of ninja we actually survived our mistakes and learned from them.
Then Sarutobi decided he wanted us back.
“I don’t believe this,” I grumbled as I eyed the team we’d found waiting for us on a deserted forest trail. “You’re telling me the Hokage formed a special hunter squad with three jounin and sent you halfway across the continent to hunt down a couple of missing genin? What did the Hyuuga do, threaten to leave the village if they don’t get Hinata’s eyes back?”
“Technically I’m only a special jounin,” Anko pointed out cheerfully. “But yeah, that’s about the size of it.”
“Now, now, no need to get so excited,” Kakashi put in. “They’ve agreed to reinstate you, and you can even stay together. There’s a special ANBU group that has an interest in Fire Country’s strongest kunoichi.”
“Oh, we are so not going to work for Danzo!” I exclaimed. “Do you even realize the brainwashing he puts his people through?”
Kurenai sighed. “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice. Hinata, please, won’t you see reason? You can’t keep on running like this forever.”
“I’m not running, sensei,” Hinata replied serenely. “I’m living. Don’t think that being my teacher will protect you if you try to hurt Sakura.”
Kurenai shook her head, and glared at me angrily. “What have you done to her, Sakura? She was never like this before.”
“Children grow up,” I pointed out. “Guys, if we trusted Konoha to keep a deal we wouldn’t have left in the first place. Now go home, before I decide I need to kick all your asses and come up with some kind of special incentive to make you leave us alone.”
Hana paled at that, and backed away nervously. “Um, guys, can we please not piss her off? I really don’t want to know what she’d come up with this time.”
I chuckled. “Oh, I’ll make sure you enjoy it, cutie. Maybe I’ll give you to Hinata as a pet.”
“I don’t much like dogs,” Hinata observed. “Maybe you could make her a cat-girl instead?”
Anko snickered. “Hey, if you think you’re that good, maybe we should have a little contest. Let me tag along with you for a few weeks, and we’ll see who turns who. I’ve got enough of a rep the old men will give me some time to work my magic.”
Kakashi sighed. “That’s all very well, Anko, but it won’t satisfy the Hyuuga.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll give them what they want. Hinata?”
I held out my hand. She nonchalantly plucked her own eyes out, and handed them to me.
The whole Konoha team stared at her with varying degrees of shock and horror. I had to resist the urge to facepalm.