Shinobi Isekai: Round Three

Other Friends

((No song this time. Instead, behold some lovely art by @dickpuncherdraws on Tumblr! Beni's all grown up!))

The forest was miraculously untouched by the war raging within it. No. Not untouched. Unconcerned. Battlefields—bloody, pockmarked earth, toppled trees, bodies abandoned by their living comrades—disappeared before they could be marked on any map, the moss swallowing them whole and erasing all proof of human interference. Even the living feared standing still too long, lest they, too, be absorbed by the sea of green which insisted on disorienting everyone, regardless of allegiance.

It was mildly amusing to watch the two armies stumble through a region neither of their governments actually wanted. Iwa was happy to leave the entire accursed corner of Earth Country to its own devices. If any people lived among the trees, they were exempt from national taxation, if only because no one cared to brave the tree line. One might expect Konoha to be better equipped for arboreal combat, but they fared no better than their opponents, losing their way—and their supplies—more often than not. Still, the moss drenched forest was a convenient place to stage their conflict, well away from the things they wanted to protect.

It was incredibly vexing to be lost, himself, though.

He stepped into yet another clearing, identical in everyway to the one he'd just left, and his rage threatened to boil over. He could feel the caustic sting of magma bubbling in the back of his throat and he was sorely tempted to just let it spew and set the entire forsaken forest ablaze, bury it in molten stone and never see another speck of moss for the rest of his life. That would show it!

He swallowed down his anger and chakra. If he gave in, he'd give away his location, and then the idiots who liked to think themselves in charge would order him around; likely sending him to reclaim more bits of forest nobody cared about. If he could keep a low profile, then he would have a little time to himself where he didn't need to fight for a village that didn't give a shit about him, aeanyway.

He'd like to spend that down time somewhere other than the forest of hell, but he'd be stuck there if he didn't find his way out before his so-called comrades came across him in the infernal maze. He pumped chakra into his feet and ran up a tree, bursting through the thick canopy with a leap. He hung in the air for half a moment, taking in the unbroken field of green with a scowl.

No. Not unbroken.

The noxious blanket of canopy gave way before what looked like a building. Gravity began pulling him from the sky and pushed up off the tree below him with an explosion of leaves, propelling himself toward the anomaly. As he got closer, it became clear that it was a ruin of some sort, the stone worn and crumbling. He landed in the center of a square pool of water, ripples flaring out from beneath his feet. The herd of cattle drinking from it fled in a panic, rushing through a hole in the opposite wall. It was small courtyard, with buildings on either side, one in better shape than the other. His first instinct was to dismiss it as crumbling relic of days long past, but another look had him hesitating. There were signs of life. Ceramic jars lined the porch of the intact building, cloth coverings tied over their openings with twine. The courtyard was relatively free of leaf litter and the roof looked to be recently replaced with large round, handwoven trays of reed laid out atop it, laden with plants and meat set out to dry in the sun. Someone was living in the ruin. A group of forest dwellers, perhaps?

"Do you like your toes?"

He spun on his heel, tilting his head to look up at the person sitting on the wall above the pool. It was a child, looking far too much like Kumo's people to be a true native of the region. Their skin was too dark, their hair too light and curly. Well, the alliance between Iwa and Kumo was several generations old, now, so it wasn't too strange to see someone like them crawling around the backwaters.