Chapter 2
Cutting that seal off her tongue gives her more energy than sleeping had. She feels jittery underneath her skin, excitement ans nerves dancing inside her.
Out of everything she did–which has traveling to the past now–this is the one that feels hardest to grasp. Her mind gets stuck on the fact that she is truly free, now. Nevermind the fact that Danzo himself does not exist here, yet to be born, and no one could have any power over that seal, or over her.
There is no one in this time to chase after her or try to control her, no ROOT, no Konoha to declare her missing-nin. No one to call her by her designated number, or by a sickly sweet name given to her like one names a pet, or an object, with no thought but the color of her hair.
Even swords get more respect and thought put into their naming than she had gotten. She doesn't even remember what her original name was now, and all her files had when she had gotten to them was a designated number and all of her information clinically listed like a product having its value estimated. Unfortunately for her, she'd been ascertained as a gem to be obtained, a great future asset to the village. Or rather, a flower to bloom. Danzo rather loved his nature and plants references, if that wasn't rather evident by all his metaphors and naming habits. (See example #1, her “official name”).
Still, having that seal off her tongue is a burden taken off her that is visibly felt, like heavy weights dropped long after she's gotten used to them, her heart feels much lighter now, nevermind the pain she went through and the chakra–however miniscule it was–that she spent.
She ponders on her next step for a few moments; this plan wasn't as well researched or prepared for as it could have been, and she'd been a bit surprised that she succeeded, but the hesitation doesn't stay long. She already knows the next few steps she needs to take: First, information gathering. She needs to orient herself, the timeline and the power landscape other than the Senju and the Uchiha, and how to launch herself to the top of it and make herself a name. Second, she needs to find a shelter. Third, and most importantly, she needs to establish herself and her power firmly, based on what information she gathers.
Seeking out the Senju and Uchiha is an action that she must do eventually, but can wait for now. She'll start with collecting information about the settlement nearby, and ascertaining whether it's an appropriate place for her to take shelter in. She'd like for it to work out, it's a good place for her plans; small enough that she can nourish it and place herself at a high position, and close enough to the location of the village that there won't be any problems with joining them later on.
She debated for a second whether she should build a small shelter out here in the woods, but in the end she decides to seal everything back up, and venture out to the settlement after a quick clean up in the lake she scouted before.
There isn't anything urgent she needs to attend to, she has enough rations to last her a minimum of four more days, and there's a reason Fire Country is named that, its temperate enough that she can safely sleep outside in the middle of winter, nevermind what looks to be the fall season.
And so she sets out to scout the settlement nearby, hoping she strikes gold.
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She's careful approaching the settlement, walking on her feet and maintaining a low-level henge while making sure she stays out of sight. While clans are currently the biggest threat around, if only due to their sheer numbers and resources available to them, shinobi clans weren't the only shinobi around, nor were they the only ones with knowledge of chakra they were just the only ones that managed to outlive all the others and then proceed to further restrict the knowledge of it.
So, she plays it the safest she can with the amount that she still doesn't know, but she can't sense any strong chakra signature ahead. She had her doubts, at first, because there's no big farming land and that suggests frequent travel that doesn't go along with the look of the settlement, but the closer she gets the more sure she is that this isn't a shinobi family or anything similar, although samurai might fit with what she knows of their nomadic habits, but she doubts it with a location this close to warring shinobi clans and far away from people and the capital.
She puts a mild genjutsu over her as she slowly circles the settlement, hiding her presence and noting the buildings, there's what looks to be seven children all under the age of ten playing together, four small houses snuggled tight against each other on the right side further away from the main road that trails up to the settlement, and a small farming land that could be best described as a medium-sized vegetable garden than anything. At the very base of the mountain, there's a torri leading to a shrine, although it seems to be abandoned from afar.
Upon closer look, the settlement itself seems to have been through a raid or a battle, there's scorch marks alongside every building that exists, and more than half the settlement seems to have been burnt down. Aside from the four houses that seem to host the only inhabitants, there's a small house that one of the children goes inside, saying something about “comforting Jiji!”
After some snooping, she concludes this has been designated as the Healer House, for all that there seems to be no healers here. A young woman visits the old man laid up inside with some congee and cleans his bandages, and she goes back to the scorched but standing house nearby.
It doesn't take much monitoring or thinking to be able to guess what happened to the small settlement here, the number of houses (including the damaged ones) are less than ten houses, one of them a Healer's House. This settlement had been attacked, and the only people left alive that she can see are an old man, a handful of women, and small children that haven't even hit the double ages–civilian children. Whatever men there were, all of them are dead, and the women left here are weary and left busy with maintaining their households and looking after their children, and with no protection against a repeat.
While she does feel sympathy for them, sje feels a strange sense of relief and responsibility come over her, she can very easily offer protection for shelter; she doesn't even have to trick them or lie to them, she can say the her home is gone and she has nothing left, and offer either her protection as a shinobi or her services as a trained medic (both, most probably, as both are in her capabilities and any settlement under her responsibility will thrive under her.)
She goes back to the forest with grim determination. She has a plan now, however vague.