Morning.
A gauzy crown of cloud draped the peaks of Kirigakure.
Walking its streets, Kono Taketori felt as if she were living on a cloudbank. The view swam and wavered, like looking through low-prescription glasses misted with frost.
Last night's downpour had not stopped until the small hours. Stepping out at dawn, she found the streets held little standing water. Only the uneven hollows in the paving cradled thin pools.
Tap tap went the blind cane on the stones, sotis sloshing through shallow puddles. Kono's fawn-brown ankle boots, neat as a deer's hooves, pressed the shifting bricks and sent grimy rainwater rippling up from the seams.
Thonk thonk... tap.
The cane stopped.
Kono stood before Kirigakure's main gate, right hand on the cane, left hand held by Karin Kozan.
Behind them lood her two bodyguards, Arata Okamura and Sena Yamato.
Farther off.
Through the mist.
Mari Kurio was negotiating with the ANBU posted at the gate.
"Do you know who Sensei Mari's brother is?" Karin whispered as she steadied Kono.
The quick bond between girls could be strange. One eting and they were hand in hand, as if they had been friends for years. Of course, when they turned, it could be over sothing as small as a word.
"Who is he?" Kono asked.
"Kurio Shun, codena Feral Fang, Captain of ANBU."
Arata threw up both hands. "Kono, you may not realize how big a deal the ANBU Captain is. He answers only to the Mizukage. One rung below the top, and above everyone else."
"You forgot Elder Genji," Sena murmured from behind, needling him, and earned a glare for it.
So that was it.
Mari Kurio was Feral Fang's kid sister. No wonder the ANBU had been so polite when she appeared. Even from a distance Kono had heard their greetings.
The na Feral Fang tickled her mory.
Kono sifted through the fragnts.
A night black as pitch. A forest like a at grinder, where blood twisted itself into the fog.
A brown-haired, blue-eyed ANBU commander, oppressive as a storm front, led a wave of masked killers. Twin blades in hand, he split a man in the Taketori crest clean in two with a single stroke.
They had called him Feral Fang.
And the man he cut down, silver-haired, massive, his face carved in stone, was Kono's father.
…
"It is done."
Mari finished at the checkpoint and returned their stamped credentials to the three genin. Karin let go of Kono's arm to accept the papers, folded them with tidy care, and tucked them into the inner lining of her shirt.
"Kono, you have nothing to prove identity, so you require additional screening," Mari said.
Kono kept her face smooth. She did not know what expression she ought to wear before the sister of her father's killer.
She was no isekai transplant with no ties. She had been reborn across the knife-edge of life and death, with both sets of mories intact. That was why, even at the very start, she had adapted so brutally fast to this world of shinobi.
Six years of this life were small against thirty of the last, yet her present mories still tugged at her bones. Her mother, eyes torn out, teaching her to open the Byakugan. Her father, taciturn, drilling her in taijutsu. Their deaths overlapped perfectly with the parents she lost in the earthquake before.
Unaware of any of this, Mari Kurio squeezed Kono's small hand and led her to the gate proper. The crow-masked ANBU waited. Mari's tone was sour. "Do it."
Mist Crow stepped forward, unbothered by her temper. He had already asked the Captain about Mari. The answer had been clear. Do not provoke. Do not block. Above all, do not give the murderer of Hoshino and Naoko an opening.
"Little miss, could I have your hand," he said. Even muffled by the mask, a careless lilt rode his voice.
Kono could read nothing more. Her vision was pitch black.
Konoha had its chakra detection barrier in the stories. She did not know whether Kirigakure used the sa.
To be safe, while she had waited at the gate for Mari, she had quietly shut down her internal chakra circulation. She caged her physical and spiritual energies in the lower and upper dantian to keep them from rging, so no chakra would be produced. If there was a sensor, it would find nothing.
This was only possible with the Byakugan's micro-control paired with Shikotsumyaku's command of the flesh.
She lifted her hand.
Steel flashed.
Coolness, then a jab of pain in her fingertip.
"Hsst."
She snatched her hand back as if burned. Even without chakra, the passive aspect of Shikotsumyaku was still there. She could feel the pad of her index finger sliced open, already knitting.
"What do you think you are doing?" Mari pulled Kono behind her, eyes cold as knives at the sight of Mist Crow's blood-spotted kunai.
"Easy, easy. Standard procedure," he said.
The flare of hostility drew the genin in. They ford a wedge around Kono and stared down the ANBU. Sena and Arata flanked her, while Karin gently took Kono's left wrist and dug into her pouch for salve and bandage.
"Everyone, breathe," Mist Crow said, palms down, voice calm. "The shinobi world is riddled with strange techniques. Foreign spies have tricks by the handful. There is Henge that is indistinguishable from the original, seals that suppress chakra signatures. Routine checks do not catch those."
Blood Hound rumbled beside him. "No matter how good the transformation, the form is still built out of chakra. Damage the construct and the true body shows."
Mari's face thawed a notch at the explanation, then tightened again when she looked down at Kono's pinched, bun-faced wince. Her dislike for the ANBU deepened.
Between the three genin.
Kono lowered her head and rode out the sting. She clenched her hand, using her thumb to pick the nearly closed cut back open. The tug of flesh made her brow crease. Warm slickness seeped between her fingers.
She had no idea when their inspection would end. The Byakugan's flesh-control rode on ocular power, and ocular power ca from transmuted chakra. With her chakra stopped, she had lost that fine control and could only hold back Shikotsumyaku's healing by hand.
Fortunately, with no chakra in circulation, the healing itself had slowed. The cut did not seal at once.
"Good. Transformation check complete. Now we proceed to the formal screening," Mist Crow said. He passed the bloody kunai to Blood Hound, ford a quick seal, and moved past Mari to face Kono.
Behind the comic beak of the crow mask, his tone stayed almost playful, yet the eyes in the cutouts were razor keen.
"My nerves are sensitive. If the little miss makes any sudden moves that could be misunderstood, a warning would be appreciated. I would hate for us to end in a situation nobody wants to see."
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