Medium Meld (Naruto/Gamer, Male OC)

Chapter Eighteen - Dreaming of Solitude

Traveling alone sucked, it sucked so bad that I would almost rather be crossing the Land of Wind again as long as I could have someone with me.

I missed Karenbana.

I'm not going to lie; we had spent so much time talking shit, fighting, arguing, training, and everything else in between, and suddenly I was on my own again.

It sucked.

I mean sure, it had its upsides, I no longer had to pretend to eat, I no longer had to pretend to sleep, I could train at odd hours, and it gave me nothing but time to think. No distractions, no derailed thoughts, no sudden arguments, nothing.

It fucking sucked.

Either way, by the time I had passed the border to the Land of the Bears, I incredible lonely; by the time I had crossed the border into the Land of the Earth, I was spending every waking moment training everything I could think of, trying to distract myself from the crushing loneliness.

I almost wished I had actually gone to check out Hoshigakure and that strange meteor while I'd had the chance. I probably could have found someone to talk to there, at least for a little while.

I stuck to the coast because I knew that if I headed inland, I would undoubtedly get lost in the massive country; if my map had something resembling actual scale to it, the Land of Earth was almost as big as the Land of Wind, but this time I didn't have a ninja escort showing me where to go.

Occasionally I would feel someone enter my range, but it was rare.

Most of the time, it was a chunin level ninja with their squad, probably on some kind of patrol; some of them watched me for a while but most left me alone after they saw nothing suspicious. Those moments were honestly the worst because it took all of my willpower not to just run up to them and start a conversation.

The ocean was much calmer here, and in the far distance, I could almost make out some kind of landmass; I had to check my map before I realized it was probably one of the scattered islands surrounding the Land of Snow.

I wonder who ruled there now, was it that chakra armor jackass? Or had team seven saved the day and installed that princess into a rule that would turn it into the Land of Spring? Something to investigate at the next town perhaps, surely the current ruler of a country, would be common knowledge.

Karenbana probably would have known off-hand, but she wasn't here.

If it was Gatou? Datou? Whatever his name was, I would have to go take care of him; I'm not sure what that giant mirror heater thing staying off permanently would do, but I should probably check it out at least just in case.

Hmm, there were a couple of ninjas working for that guy, wasn't there? Ice release users? Some guy that could create a massive whale and sink an iceberg, I remembered that. There were two others as well, but I couldn't remember much about them other than that they were subordinate to the whale guy.

How far away could this coastal town possibly be? It had been months; I had to be getting close. I told Karenbana to ask about getting Shiromari to reverse summon her near Taki or something; otherwise, she would have no chance of arriving in time; another chameleon could act as a point of return for her.

Hopefully, that worked out, because if it didn't, I was going to have a hell of a fight on my hands.

The situation in Taki was vague at best; I didn't know when Akatsuki got there, I didn't know how long they stayed, I didn't know if they had hung around until the green-haired-girl had come back, or if they had gone to meet her at the border.

I didn't know much of anything.

Akatsuki couldn't be omniscient though; they still needed to do some leg work to catch the Jinchuriki. Which meant that they needed to at least check the place they expected her to be, surely? They couldn't just know that she had, on a whim, decided to participate in the chunin exams.

Sure, Zetsu existed, but he wasn't omniscient either; he had to travel to the location of the place he wanted intel on; whatever information he had delivered to Akatsuki about the Jinchuriki would have said that she tended to stay in the village.

They hadn't ganked her in the chunin exams for a reason, and while it was possible that they might have been scared of Gaara, but I highly doubted it. Kakuzu could have most likely handled him at that point, at least I thought so.

Gaara was a beast, but Kakuzu was a monster.

They had to must have found out she wasn't in the village at some point, and they had ganked her on the border from what I remembered. If that was the case, I felt it reasonable to assume that they had checked Takigakure for her first.

I really hoped I was right; otherwise, the green-haired-girl was probably going to die.

I eventually found a small coastal town in the Land of the Earth, and there were people there. I had never been so happy to see strangers in my life. I think the random old dude I started chatting with out of nowhere must have thought I was crazy, but damn, it was nice to speak to someone.

I was making a somewhat decent time on this trip; I still had seven months left.

My next stop was Iwagakure.

I had originally been going to bypass Iwagakure entirely.

I had vague memories that the Steam and Lava Jinchuriki had stayed away from their own hidden village, but that might very well be wrong. I was hoping they had stayed, though, because it would be another thorn in Akatsuki's side if I could recruit them or something. I wasn't sure when they went after Steam-lad, but It was possible he was still alive right now.


If I could drop an anonymous note to Steam-lad about the Akatsuki coming to get him, he might stick closer to the village or something. I wasn't sure that it was Deidara and Sasori that went after him either, but It was the best guess I had.