Shinobi Isekai: Round Three

Reflection

The child in the water was adorable. She was little on the heavier side, baby fat giving her a cherubic look that the halo of golden curls only amplified. Her skin was dark with a warm undertone and it would probably get even darker now that she was living above ground and had access to proper sunlight. It was hard to tell without a proper mirror—and because the snapping turtle kept making his displeasure with her known, sending ripples over the surface of the pool and wrecking her reflection—but it looked like her eyes were fairly light.

So, she was a living trope. The POC with conveniently pale hair and eyes. Yue, Harribel, Tsume, and Scar came to mind, and she shook her metaphorical fist at Kishimoto for following that trend. Coward. *

She reached into the surprisingly clear water—careful to avoid the evil turtle—and splashed her face, washing off the dirt and grime that clung to her. She tugged on one golden curl, uncoiling it as far as it would go and smiling a little when it bounced back. Then she grimaced.

She had no idea how to take care of curly hair.

Her hair before was straight and she had to wear it heart wrenchingly short or else risk her father's ire. She was glad to have longer hair now—even gladder that she didn't have to struggle through growing it out herself—but she was more than a little scared. Suddenly having curly hair in her own world would have been hard, and at least there she had the internet and products made especially for it. Here...

Don't worry, Choumei's guttural voice cut in. I know a few things! Look for these!

An image of berries flashed in her mind. They were big and yellow, the kind of thing that might be used as decorative plants in front of a fancy building or on a university campus only to be immediately dug up for poisoning the local fauna.

They're soap berries! You can use them to clean!

Oh, how useful. She'd never really thought about how things got clean before the advent of chemical products. She'd just kind of always assumed that soap was a thing. It was so integral to her life; she couldn't imagine her ancestors living without it. But obviously they had. Right?

She pushed herself up onto her feet, relishing the feel of the stone under her toes now that she'd discarded the sandals. She was pretty sure the weird dog things—Tanuki, Choumei supplied—had dragged them off, so she abandoned any hope of seeing them again. The temple was full of animals, each group a representative of the nine bijuu. There were tanuki, cats, that menacing snapping turtle, a clan of monkeys, a mixed herd of horses and cows, and, of course, lots and lots and lots of beetles. She hadn't seen any foxes yet, but they were apparently more skittish than the rest. The slugs she noticed for the first time as she began pushing through the foliage in search of the soap berries Choumei promised. A visceral memory of Ron Weasley vomiting into a bucket rose unbidden in her mind and she had to muscle down a gag before the poor, naked mollusk was baptized in the cruelest of fashions.

Luckily, they weren't nearly as numerous as the beetles. Those, she had to force herself not to swat away, especially when they insisted on clinging to her and whispering in teeny tiny voices that would never give her nightmares, no.

She was gonna have nightmares.

She actually had to leave the courtyard to find the berries, stepping out into the moss covered forest through the hole in the wall. There was a well worn path where she imagined the ungulates travelled between their pastures and the pool inside the temple, and she followed it gratefully until she found her quarry. The bright yellow was a splash of color against the sea of green, hanging from the edge of a long branch high above her head. So high. Way too high.