Pearlescent

The cold of the northern portion of the Elemental Continent can be extremely unforgiving. It is bone-chilling during the best of days and soul-piercing during the worst. Especially at the aptly-named Land of Frost. The geography of the area makes sure of that.

Because of that, it is an extremely hard area to move around for shinobi inexperienced with cold climates. Although Naruto and Sakura had to deal with it back when they were still chasing around Sasuke… Right before they saw him again at that bridge. Where he was willing to let Karin die just because he was curious. The bridge where Sakura finally decided to try to put things to an end, even if she ultimately failed. Sakura shakes her head. “It’s best to not dwell on these thoughts…”

The trio is now covered in layers upon layers of clothing, all meant to keep the heat within their bodies for as long as possible, even if their mobility has been ever so slightly affected. That definitely beats dying of hypothermia in less than an hour. Naruto even managed to make some seals to store heat over time and then gently and slowly release it. Unfortunately, the seals were early prototypes with little storage capacity, so they barely lasted an hour. There are a few more stored, but they are saving for the trip back to the Land of Fire.

As they move up north, they are now under a time limit. They have to find somewhere to warm up and try to find “Black Blood” Dokumu. Even a cave could do the trick, as long as the three can stay warmed up, Naruto can have his shadow clones look around for the target.

The target… Naruto still finds it weird to do something so… traditionally ninja. Naruto doesn ’t like to kill. He loathes the “kill or be killed” mentality of the shinobi world. And yet, his time fleeing and then hiding from Kaguya had changed him, even if he didn ’t notice at first. He still dislikes that shinobi mentality, but some people simply are… beyond saving. Danzo… Madara … They all are sources of pain and suffering. As long as people like them exist, then more Pains will arise. All Naruto can do is keep himself anchored so he won’t become a Pain himself.

Naruto stares at the horizon, or at least at what would have been the horizon if the snowfall wasn’t covering it up. “We should check the Akatsuki soon…” By now, the Akatsuki should still be a good organization advocating for peace in peaceful ways.

As the trio moves deeper within the Land of Frost, the temperature keeps dropping to new lows as more snow falls from the dark sky. Sakura grunts. “If we stay in this storm much longer, we will freeze to death…” The trio tries to see if they can find any place they can use to warm up and rest. Hinata is working overtime with her byakugan, Naruto is trying to sense negative emotions and Sakura is keeping a lookout on the area near them.

After what feels like an eternity, the trio finally arrives somewhere they maybe can rest at. A small town. The buildings have quite the layer of snow surrounding them, save for the entrances and windows, and the stone roads seem to have been shovelled recently.

As the walk towards an inn, they notice the lack of movement within the town. Only every once in a while someone walks down the streets, and it’s only for a few brief seconds, from one building to the other. It seems like the cold of the Land of Frost can be unforgiving even for those who live here.

As they walk deeper into the town, they come across an inn. It is a bit on the larger side when compared to the surrounding buildings and it looks like it has seen quite a lot of history, but it’s clearly been well-maintained throughout its years of existence, even with the constant harassment from the snow.

They enter the building, and it is just as well-kept on the inside as it is on the outside. It is quite warm, which is a relief to the trio. They can finally begin to feel their feet and hands again. The walls have been painted a nice and cozy off-white, although there are some small cracks on the paint in certain areas.

Then, the trio feels it. The gaze of every single person inside focused directly at them. Some stare curiously, but most stare with suspicion and even disdain in their eyes, as if they’re already planning dozens of different ways to kill each member of the trio.

The team ignores the eyes staring at them as best as they can and goes straight towards the main counter, hoping to get some information on Dokumu and maybe even something to eat. They sit down and a rather tall and pale man greets the trio from behind the counter. “Good afternoon. You’re not from around these parts. What brings you three all the way to the middle of nowhere?”

Sakura replies in a neutral tone. “Nothing, really. We’re just passing by.”

The man chuckles. “Funny you say that. Lots of people just happen to be ‘passing by’ as of late…”

Sakura raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

The man sighs. “You have no idea. Half this room said that, the other half said something about ‘finding someone important’ and some rude ones either stayed silent or insulted me. Not even a single ‘good afternoon’ this entire week!” He then turns back and looks around some drawers. “There were also the ones that left this town, but most of those never came back, and I don’t think it’s because they decided to stay somewhere else…”

The pink-haired woman tries to squeeze a little more information out of the man. “Any idea of what happened?”

The man chuckles once more. “I know for certain the cause, and I know you’re after the same person as everyone else here.”

Sakura’s eyes narrow. “And why do you think that?”

The innkeeper hums. “You see as many ninja as I do, every single day for more than half of your life, and you pick up on small cues and behaviour. Some ninja can hide those, obviously, but a lot simply don’t train themselves to that extent. Most civilians and even a lot of other ninja do not pick up on these specific behaviours, after all.”

Sakura raises an eyebrow. “And if we are ninja?”

The man simply shrugs. “Then I guess more business for me. How can I serve you, mysterious ninja team?” He hands over the menu.

Sakura looks at it and makes the calculations considering their current budget. “Some warm food… The rabbit stew looks good.” She turns towards her teammates. “Are you two good with that?”

Naruto and Hinata nod at the same time. “Yep!/Yes.”

Sakura nods back. “Great! Then, rabbit stew it is.” She places the money on the table.

The man gladly takes the money with a smile on his face. “Alright.” He walks towards the kitchen to hand over the order before coming back. “Anything else?”

Sakura eyes him with some suspicion. “How do you know about the target?”

He begins to explain. “Well, at first I was very confused by a bunch of ninja and mercenaries coming all the way here, but then a mercenary with very loose lips and two or three bottles of sake in his blood talked about everything with a pretty loud voice, which I heard.”

The pink haired girl seems satisfied about the answer and decides to ask something else. “Can you tell us anything about this town?”

The man smiles widely. “Of course! You are in the village of Awaishiro. It’s mainly used by merchants as a checkpoint between the Land of Hot Water and the Land of Lightning, usually with the Hidden Cloud village, but business hasn’t been that great as of late thanks to a certain someone . I hope at least one of you manages to catch him before this village is led to bankruptcy.”

The gears within Sakura and Hinata’s minds begin to turn. This town seems like a rather strategic point for the Land of Lightning and the Hidden Cloud, so it’s obvious an enemy village is trying to disrupt at least part of Cloud’s routes.

It can’t be the Hidden Leaf, since they tend to keep their deeds in-house, not hiring outside forces.

Maybe it could be the Hidden Mist, since Dokumu at least at one point had a connection to the village, but the Mist isn’t know for forgiving missing-nin. Of course, it could be an attempt at deception, and Dokumu isn’t really a missing-nin, but that line of thought isn’t productive without a lead.

The Hidden Sand has bigger worries in the form of the much closer Hidden Stone, so them wasting their historically limited monetary resources hiring a mercenary to disrupt a single possible trade route of the Hidden Cloud, a village that’s on the complete opposite side of the Elemental Continent’s map in relation to them, would be quite inadvisable.

That leaves just the… “Hidden Stone!” the two women realize. The Hidden Stone village has a history of hiring outside forces such as mercenaries and also has a strong penchant for subterfuge and trickery, even for ninja standards.

Naruto, meanwhile, is enjoying the warmth of the rabbit stew that had arrived a few minutes ago and that Sakura and Hinata, in their mental investigation, failed to realize had arrived. The blond boy almost considered the stew as good as ramen, but he quickly realized that was just the craving for warmth talking and trying to make him say blasphemies.

During the next hour or so, everything stayed quiet, save for the occasional opening and closing of doors and drawers. The tension between the different mercenaries and ninja is palpable. Just one wrong word, one wrong move, one wrong noise… The entire inn could turn into a warzone in the blink of an eye.

However, the silence and tension is finally broken by a mercenary quickly and loudly entering the inn. He has a lot of cuts and bruises, his eyes are bloodshot and his skin has quite a few nasty eruptions and cysts. He stumbles his way to the middle of the room, accidentally hitting a pillar he seemingly didn’t see, and manages to utter part of a word with a tired and raspy voice, as if his vocal cords had been grated beforehand. “Nort…” He then stares at the floor before breaking down into pure delirium as he begins to vomit blood and then, shortly afterwards, he dies.

There is a single moment of silence before pure chaos erupts. The people in the inn quickly rush out. Thankfully, the time-travelling trio was faster than the others and managed to leave before the door became a total chokepoint.

Naruto, Hinata and Sakura are now in a nearby forest, jumping from tree to tree towards the general area Dokumu should be at. Naruto made a few clones and sent them in different directions north of the town and, after a few minutes, one of the clones dispelled and confirmed a fresh body northeast.

Naruto stares at the path ahead. “Ume, are you sure it’s really him ? Couldn’t it be someone else?”

Sakura nods. “I’m positive it’s him. The victim had signs of heavy poisoning when he entered the inn. I’ve never seen a poison like that before. He had lots of cysts and eruptions, bloodshot eyes, he was coughing blood and eventually vomited blood, it looked like he had at least partial blindness and the blood vomiting indicated internal bleeding. He was also hallucinating before his death… That’s quite the nasty poison…”

The trio looks even more determined to find their target.

The three ninja arrive at a deeper, darker portion of the forest. The pines and other trees stand tall like frozen giants covered by snow. The wind brushing past the leaves makes a quiet but rather unnerving noise, as if nature itself was warning any passersby to be careful. The ground is covered by a thick layer of snow, even with the evergreen trees blocking a lot of it from hitting the ground directly beneath them. Even the already bone-chilling cold of the region seems to be ever so slightly stronger here.

Naruto stops. “The corpse should be somewhere around here, but I can’t sense or smell anything… Wait, let me try something…” Naruto closes his eyes and concentrates for a few seconds before entering sage mode. Then, after a few more seconds, his eyes quickly open. “Wait! I feel chakra signatures deeper into the forest!”

Sakura nods. “Alright, let’s go!”

The three carefully approach the area Naruto felt the signatures. As they get nearer, some of the signatures get snuffed out. After a minute or so, the three finally arrive at the region, a clearing in the middle of the forest, and they are met with at least seven or eight dead bodies on the ground. All of them are full of cuts and bruises, and all of them have large cysts and eruptions and seem to have vomited blood. A few of them are even melting inside out.

Naruto looks around. “Alright, I felt it around here…”

Sakura also tries looking around. “We need to be careful. Taiyo, can you-”

Suddenly, they are cut by a sinister laughter. “Gegegegege…” Multiple low, growly laughter rises from the silence in unison. “It seems like my prey has taken the bait… Just like I wanted… It was getting awfully boring lately… Maybe you three will prove to be more than just small anchovies like the ones before you?”

The trio immediately go to the same conclusion as to the reason for the multiple voices. “Clones!” The three quickly form a defensive formation.

Dokumu just chuckles. “Good… Good… It seems you’re much better than the other ones already. They broke so quickly… Like twigs! Not you… No, even when facing death itself, you are not afraid… Let’s play a game: I’ll let you shoot down one of me, and if you hit the real me , I will kill you a little quicker! Gegegege!”

Naruto grimaces. “I don’t like this game…” He then speaks to Hinata. “Taiyo, how many are there?” It was dangerous to repeatedly use the byakugan. They could easily raise extreme suspicion, and the Hyuuga clan is extremely prideful and protective over their dojutsu, even more than other clans like the Uchiha. Death would be the least of the trio’s worries.

Thankfully, the only person outside of the time-travelling trio here is Dokumu, and in this battle, either the trio dies, or Dokumu dies, so there’s no need to think twice about using the byakugan. Hinata activates her dojutsu. “There are six of the same target, but I cannot tell them apart. They all have similar chakra signatures. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry. We now know more than enough to deal with him. Let’s just play it safe.” He then does the familiar hand sign of the shadow clone technique. Dozens upon dozens of Naruto clones appear, all trying to find the real Dokumu amongst the trees.

Every Dokumu chuckles at the same time. “Oh, you choose to fight back like that? What a shame… All that effort will be thrown into the trash…”

Small explosions characteristic of a shadow clone dispelling can be heard coming from the forest, and yet, Naruto can’t feel the memories of his clones returning to him. “I can’t feel my clones dispelling… It must be his cloning technique…” He looks over to Hinata and Sakura and then nods, signalling for them to be ready for battle. The women nod back.

Sure enough, in mere moments, an unfamiliar man gets out of the forest and into the clearing. He is quite burly and has a somewhat tanned skin filled to the brim with fresh injuries and old scars. His face is the least scarred part, with only a handful of them. His eyes and hair are black. He is wearing a simple grey flak vest that protects most of his torso, but his arms and legs are exposed (how he isn’t suffering from frostbite in this soul-freezing cold is beyond the trio). He is wearing black gloves and boots. His thighs and arms have pockets and holsters with many knives and other small blades in them.

The real Dokumu has arrived, and he has a vicious smile to his face. His eyes focus on Hinata. “Ooh, someone with the byakugan… I wonder how I’d look with those eyes… Yes…”

Sakura replies with pure anger as she jumps up high. “And we wonder how you’d look when you’re dead!” As she lands, she punches down the ground with all of her might, shattering it as if it were glass and forcing Dokumu to jump. The deadly poison that gives him the epithet of “Black Blood” begins to evaporate from the blood of his wounds, surrounding his body with a unique toxic gas that can kill anyone but him and maybe Hanzo of the Salamanders.

The coating of poison gas places the trio in quite a predicament. Their best combat techniques are all close-range, save for Naruto’s sage-powered rasenshuriken, but that presents a problem of its own: it’s a rather telegraphed attack. Without a distraction, any opponent that isn’t extremely overconfident would be able to build up defences against it.

Thankfully, clones are perfectly capable of making rasenshurikens and distracting the target, leaving the real Naruto, alongside Hinata and Sakura, free to evade attacks and protect themselves from Dokumu’s attacks.

The shadow clones prove their efficacy once more as they relentlessly attack the assassin while another one, hidden away, builds up one rasenshuriken. Naruto can feel that he only has enough chakra to launch one, maybe two rasenshuriken before he stops having enough chakra to feed the jutsu. He still hasn’t recovered the full extent of his chakra pool and Kurama is still completely silent.

During a moment of distraction in Dokumu’s part, the shadow clone launches the rasenshuriken. It flies fast towards its target, but, unfortunately, Dokumu manages to just barely avoid the blast radius. His vicious smile doesn’t drop. “Oh, wow! That’s a very nasty jutsu right there! Never seen that one before, too!” He then slices his arm and rushes towards the clone, poofing it.

Now, his unhinged smile has a hint of frustration in it. “Agh! Stop with these annoying clones!” The assassin grabs some of his knives and throws them around him, hoping to hit anything alive in the general area. Most of them miss, but one of them almost Naruto, forcing him into Dokumu’s field of vision.

Dokumu tries approaching the blonde ninja again, but Naruto manages to gain some distance from the maniac before throwing some kunai with smoke bombs tied to it. He uses a wind jutsu to try to incapacitate Dokumu for even just a few seconds. The missing-nin dodges again.

Then, Dokumu notices Hinata and Sakura. He viciously rushes towards them like a rabid dog. “GEGEGEGEGAGAGAGA!” He maniacally laughs. “LET’S SEE HOW YOU LOOK WHEN YOU’RE DYING AND DEEP IN DESPAIR NOW THAT THE BRAT ISN’T THERE TO PROTECT YOU! THAT’S MY FAVORITE PART!” His unhinged laughter would probably send shivers down the trio’s spine if they weren’t hardened by the Fourth War beforehand.

One of Naruto’s clones uses a wind jutsu, pushing the maniac sideways and away from both his teammates. Dokumu then cackles. “Gegege… I see… Ha! Your teammates over there can only fight close… You picked the wrong fight! You’re all useless!” He plunges forward once again, quicker than before. “GEGEGEGEGE!” He was about to reach Hinata and Sakura, but then…

…then, Naruto surprises him. Majestic and bright yellow chains erupt from within his sleeves, converging and wrapping tight around Dokumu. Their angelical glow illuminates the area around them and burns the rogue ninja’s skin. “What the-” The missing-nin is genuinely scared, but his creepy smile is still somewhat present. Maybe his face was stuck like that? 

Once Dokumu is firmly held in place, Naruto yells, not wanting to waste any more of his already limited (to his standards) chakra with the chains. “Taiyo! Fire! Now!”

Hinata promptly understands. She goes through a few hand seals, takes a deep breath and then blows out, but, instead of air, fire comes out of her mouth as if she were a dragon. For the first time since the start of this battle, Dokumu’s insane smile completely disappears. He is hit by the jutsu and yells in pain.

Fortunately for him, Hinata didn’t seem to have a perfect handle on the jutsu just yet, so she had to stop using it sooner than necessary to kill him.

Unfortunately for him, a shadow clone of Naruto managed to build up another rasenshuriken, which is now heading straight towards him. This time, it lands. A huge explosion forms and the tiny chakra needles pierce Dokumu’s skin as the rotation causes the deadly poison gas surrounding the assassin to rotate and dissipate.

Once the rasenshuriken fully evaporates away, Naruto undoes the chakra chains and lets Dokumu’s lifeless body fall to the ground. It is bloodied and filled with cuts. His blood still hisses as it turns into toxic gas, but the effect slowly stops as his body’s systems begin to fully stop.

Sakura tries to regain her breath before speaking. “Okay… Let’s just cut his head off and destroy the body.”

Naruto blinks. “Are you alright? You sound kinda… violent.”

Sakura pinches the bridge of her nose. “Look, this guy has really annoyed me and I’d rather not take an entire body filled with poisonous blood that may or may not still be volatile and reactive. We just need to be careful to not leave anything behind that Mist Hunter-Nin could use to track us.”

Then, an unknown voice speaks up. “I believe it is too late for that. Give us the body, and we might let you go.”

The trio turns around and sees a small team of hunter-nin from the Hidden Mist. They’re all wearing the blank mask used by hunter-nin and standard Mist ANBU attires. There’s four of them, two women and two men.

Sakura speaks up. “We can’t do that.”

The one in the front shakes her head. “Then, I’m afraid you leave us no choice.” They immediately attack, but the trio are able to dodge them.

Sakura immediately goes for a counter-attack, rushing towards the ANBU and hitting her square in the stomach. The enemy ninja is pushed with great force towards a tree and hits her head. She coughs up blood before completely stopping to move. Sakura turns around.

Another one of the ANBU tries to gain some distance as he warns the others. “Careful! It seems they are seasoned ninja!”

Each hunter-nin chooses a target.

The first hunter-nin moves towards Naruto. She’s definitely quick on her feet. Their battle is fast-paced, defined by whoever can move the quickest. Naruto isn’t a taijutsu master like Guy or Lee, but he is good enough to keep up with the hunter. He also learned some lightning release jutsu during his time in the Hidden Whirl. It is not his affinity, but it’s a close second.

Doing some quick signs, Naruto manages to coat his hands in a layer of lightning. It isn’t as refined and powerful as the Chidori, but it definitely makes his punches way stronger. He is thankful to have decided to learn more than just the rasengan, even if at the time it seemed pointless, since he didn’t know he would ever have another chance. With a few swift movements and well-placed punches, the hunter-nin was defeated.

Meanwhile, the second hunter-nin rushes towards Hinata. She doesn’t use her byakugan, giving her a slight handicap from her usual style, but she can’t risk one of them escaping with information that there’s a pair of byakugan eyes seemingly not under the Hidden Leaf’s protection.

Hinata is still a deadly fighter, however, and is capable of easily subduing her opponent. As much as the Mist ANBU tries to hit her, his attacks simply never land, and instead are always avoided or even deflected by the Hyuuga. Hinata hits the ninja with her palm, takes some distance, and readies a fire jutsu.

It hits, and the hunter is burnt to death by the heavy flames engulfing his body. Hinata doesn’t particularly like doing that, but she doesn’t know any other jutsu that would be able to incapacitate or kill someone faster that can be used with her current amount of chakra.

As all of the was happening, the third hunter-nin is engaging in battle with Sakura. She finds it quite annoying, since the hunter is quick and is managing to dodge her punches, and he is also likely extra-careful after witnessing what happened to his teammate.

After a lot of back and forth, the ANBU fighting her gets up close and does a hand sign. Suddenly, he explodes in a huge cloud of smoke, impairing her vision.

Sakura, however, feels that something is definitely wrong. Her eyes widen. “Genjutsu!” . She does a half tiger seal. “Release!”. The effect is immediate. The smoke dissipates and Sakura sees the hunter-nin almost stabbing her.

She manages to dodge in the last second. Then, she proceeds to punch him right on the head. The ANBU is too close and committed to his attack to dodge. The punch hits, cracking his skull before snapping his neck. His dead body violently hits the ground.

The three time travellers end their fights at around the same time. They get back together and begin to gather the bodies. Naruto speaks up. “That was… intense…”

Sakura is regaining her breath. “Yeah, it definitely was… But I guess that’s just what we are signing up for.” She stares at the corpses on the ground. “We’ll have to destroy more bodies now…”

Naruto can’t help but stare at her. “How is she a medic…”

Sakura sighs. “Let’s just get this over with.” She carefully cuts Dokumu’s head off his body and gives it to Naruto for him to store it in a scroll. Then, Hinata spends the last bit of safely-usable chakra she has to do one last fire jutsu to burn the rest of the bodies to ash before Sakura uses an acid to get rid of the remaining matter and Naruto uses a wind jutsu to scatter the ashes.

The trio is now running away from the Land of Frost and going straight to Kinko’s inn. It is the dead of night and they are just barely managing to not freeze to death in the soul-chilling temperatures. If they spend the rest of their lives without stepping a single foot on Frost, it will be too soon.