Reborn!

10: And...He's Back!

Han hummed to himself, tossing several herbs and spices into a large bubbling pot of soup that contained the goat that he had hunted earlier. Roshi was grilling rabbits next to him, sprinkling some rosemary and salt onto the tender meat of the small forest animals. The two were in a sort of pocket oasis, only in the middle of a valley instead of a desert. The two had found the place soon after having been thrown out of the village of Iwagakure after the Third Shinobi World War.

The council had deemed them too dangerous to keep in the village and had voted to extract their bijū and store them in objects until the next war came and they needed the human weapons again, but the Tsuchikage vetoed the decision. Instead, he suggested that the two jinchūriki were permitted to stay outside the village and complete the occasional supposed suicide mission sent by the council. The Tsuchikage, Ōnoki, would have refused that part of the deal, but he knew that the two jinchūriki were more than capable of accomplishing them relatively unharmed. Why would he send normal shinobi on them to die when he could just send his jinchūriki there instead, right?

The area was far away from the village and secured with Uzumaki seals that they had hired Uzumaki seal masters to make for them back when Uzushiogakure had just fallen and the few survivors had scattered. Roshi and Han managed to find one of the skilled practitioners of fūinjutsu and got the kunoichi to help them with the promise that they would not go after her. The valley was special in the sense that it changed position now and then while maintaining a barrier around them such that the valley seemed barren and lifeless like the rest of the rocky terrain.

It also hid their chakra signatures from all but the best of sensors, of which had practically died out when Uzushiogakure was felled. The Uzumaki were equipped with naturally good chakra sensory and were easily able to exceed the levels of normal tracker nin even with minimal training. Moreover, they tended to enhance their senses with special seals that they had designed on their own. Their instinctive flair with fūinjutsu was no joke either, their ability to spam powerful jutsu due to their massive chakra reserves doing nothing to convince people otherwise.

Those were the major reasons why Iwagakure, Kumogakure and Kirigakure had decided to destroy the village. Uzushiogakure was powerful, but they did nothing to assert their strength, even going neutral in the war apart from the fact that they supplied Konohagakure with seals. They were just too powerful of an enemy that three major hidden villages had decided to put aside their differences to take them out. Even then, ninety-five per cent of the troops sent out were obliterated by Uzushiogakure shinobi who had stayed behind to buy the others time to escape. Though Uzushiogakure had fallen, only forty per cent of the Uzumaki that made their homes there had perished in the battle. Given that Iwagakure, Kumogakure and Kirigakure had each contributed fifty per cent of their shinobi, Uzushiogakure made it out with the least losses although they lost their home. Despite that, the Uzumaki had no choice but to scatter since they no longer had anywhere to go. Only select groups of people knew how much the three hidden villages had lost compared to that of Uzushiogakure, but no one knew where the pockets of Uzumaki were. They had seemingly vanished without a trace.

Han and Roshi had suspicions that the Uzumaki had once again banded together and formed an even more well-concealed village where they now stayed, considering how the two had also managed to get themselves off the map with the help of only one kunoichi from the clan. However, they knew better than to inform others and risk having the major hidden villages running around like headless chickens in search of the missing Uzumaki.

The two were about to start digging into their simple meal when a hooded figure made its way into their home without being affected by the seal barrier that was also supposed to keep intruders out. The barrier only rippled slightly, letting the unknown person in without any form of resistance. It was strange for Han and Roshi since the barrier only did that for them and the Uzumaki that had made it. Even the Tsuchikage himself was unable to get through the barrier. The two quickly concluded that the intruder was an Uzumaki.