Traveling alone sucked, it sucked so bad that I would almost rather be crossing the Land of Wind again as long as I could have someone with me.

I missed Karenbana.

I’m not going to lie; we had spent so much time talking shit, fighting, arguing, training, and everything else in between, and suddenly I was on my own again.

It sucked.

I mean sure, it had its upsides, I no longer had to pretend to eat, I no longer had to pretend to sleep, I could train at odd hours, and it gave me nothing but time to think. No distractions, no derailed thoughts, no sudden arguments, nothing.

It fucking sucked.

Either way, by the time I had passed the border to the Land of the Bears, I incredible lonely; by the time I had crossed the border into the Land of the Earth, I was spending every waking moment training everything I could think of, trying to distract myself from the crushing loneliness.

I almost wished I had actually gone to check out Hoshigakure and that strange meteor while I’d had the chance. I probably could have found someone to talk to there, at least for a little while.

I stuck to the coast because I knew that if I headed inland, I would undoubtedly get lost in the massive country; if my map had something resembling actual scale to it, the Land of Earth was almost as big as the Land of Wind, but this time I didn’t have a ninja escort showing me where to go.

Occasionally I would feel someone enter my range, but it was rare.

Most of the time, it was a chunin level ninja with their squad, probably on some kind of patrol; some of them watched me for a while but most left me alone after they saw nothing suspicious. Those moments were honestly the worst because it took all of my willpower not to just run up to them and start a conversation.

The ocean was much calmer here, and in the far distance, I could almost make out some kind of landmass; I had to check my map before I realized it was probably one of the scattered islands surrounding the Land of Snow.

I wonder who ruled there now, was it that chakra armor jackass? Or had team seven saved the day and installed that princess into a rule that would turn it into the Land of Spring? Something to investigate at the next town perhaps, surely the current ruler of a country, would be common knowledge.

Karenbana probably would have known off-hand, but she wasn’t here.

If it was Gatou? Datou? Whatever his name was, I would have to go take care of him; I’m not sure what that giant mirror heater thing staying off permanently would do, but I should probably check it out at least just in case.

Hmm, there were a couple of ninjas working for that guy, wasn’t there? Ice release users? Some guy that could create a massive whale and sink an iceberg, I remembered that. There were two others as well, but I couldn’t remember much about them other than that they were subordinate to the whale guy.

How far away could this coastal town possibly be? It had been months; I had to be getting close. I told Karenbana to ask about getting Shiromari to reverse summon her near Taki or something; otherwise, she would have no chance of arriving in time; another chameleon could act as a point of return for her.

Hopefully, that worked out, because if it didn’t, I was going to have a hell of a fight on my hands.

The situation in Taki was vague at best; I didn’t know when Akatsuki got there, I didn’t know how long they stayed, I didn’t know if they had hung around until the green-haired-girl had come back, or if they had gone to meet her at the border.

I didn’t know much of anything.

Akatsuki couldn’t be omniscient though; they still needed to do some leg work to catch the Jinchuriki. Which meant that they needed to at least check the place they expected her to be, surely? They couldn’t just know that she had, on a whim, decided to participate in the chunin exams.

Sure, Zetsu existed, but he wasn’t omniscient either; he had to travel to the location of the place he wanted intel on; whatever information he had delivered to Akatsuki about the Jinchuriki would have said that she tended to stay in the village.

They hadn’t ganked her in the chunin exams for a reason, and while it was possible that they might have been scared of Gaara, but I highly doubted it. Kakuzu could have most likely handled him at that point, at least I thought so.

Gaara was a beast, but Kakuzu was a monster.

They had to must have found out she wasn’t in the village at some point, and they had ganked her on the border from what I remembered. If that was the case, I felt it reasonable to assume that they had checked Takigakure for her first.

I really hoped I was right; otherwise, the green-haired-girl was probably going to die.

I eventually found a small coastal town in the Land of the Earth, and there were people there. I had never been so happy to see strangers in my life. I think the random old dude I started chatting with out of nowhere must have thought I was crazy, but damn, it was nice to speak to someone.

I was making a somewhat decent time on this trip; I still had seven months left.

My next stop was Iwagakure.

I had originally been going to bypass Iwagakure entirely.

I had vague memories that the Steam and Lava Jinchuriki had stayed away from their own hidden village, but that might very well be wrong. I was hoping they had stayed, though, because it would be another thorn in Akatsuki’s side if I could recruit them or something. I wasn’t sure when they went after Steam-lad, but It was possible he was still alive right now.

If I could drop an anonymous note to Steam-lad about the Akatsuki coming to get him, he might stick closer to the village or something. I wasn’t sure that it was Deidara and Sasori that went after him either, but It was the best guess I had.

Iwagakure was a very strange village.

It was carved into a mountain, or rather on top of a series of mountain peaks. Each of the massive peaks had been flattened somehow and covered in towering monstrosities they called buildings. Each of them connected in a bizarre array of sturdy bridges.

The entire place was dark, grey, and foreboding.

The slight detour was also completely useless because neither of the beastie boys were inside the village, or if they were, they were somehow invisible to my energy sense, which I highly doubted. I could feel a massive chakra signature up in the tower, but it wasn’t a Jinchuriki.

It was probably that old guy with the bad back, and I had no intention of ever going near that guy when he could delete massive areas of matter at will. That was broken as hell; how they lost the war with Konoha is a mystery. Konoha had a single guy that could teleport a lot, whoop de doo. They could have just had the old guy fly over to Konoha and give it the Nagato treatment, Cube Edition.

How that had never happened is beyond me.

I forced myself to leave the Hidden village after a few days; as much as I was enjoying being around people, I couldn’t waste any more time here; I had a world to save.

With exactly five months left, I made it to the border of the Land of the Waterfalls.

There was a flash of something that might have once been satisfaction or triumph. Instead, it was like I was on autopilot, moving without purpose through a routine of training and traveling. Completely depersonalized, a passenger in my own body as life happened around me.

I didn’t know where Takigakure was located, so I headed east until I reached the border, days of travel, and nothing gained. I turned around immediately and started heading south, across the edge of the country.

A whole month of searching the country, and almost an entire lap around it, I abruptly started feeling energy Signatures bloom at the edge of my path. I had still almost missed it; if I had been a hundred meters east, I would have never felt anything.

With four months left, I found Takigakure.

I set up camp in a small ravine, close enough that I could feel about a tenth of the villagers in Takigakure, but remain far enough away to avoid any of the numerous patrols. I thought that finally reaching the place I had been thinking about for such a long time would bring some measure of feeling back, but instead, there was just nothing.

Everything was dull.

Almost every day, I slowly felt my Energy Sense cover more of the village, slowly but surely. I tried to create my energy defense, but I couldn’t find the focus needed to trigger the skill creation. I trained my other skills mindlessly instead, and I tried again after a month had passed but failed once more.

“Get it together, man.” I muttered quietly, “Do you want to die?”

A massive chakra signature appeared before cutting through the entrance of the village, two others following it at a decent clip as they left Takigakure behind. I had felt several things similar to it before; Naruto had been one of them. Back when we were at Sunagakure, Gaara had been another.

This was undoubtedly the green-haired-girl.

The feeling came rushing back to me in an instant, and I was halfway across the camp before I realized I had even moved. Wait, if she was leaving the village now, that meant she was probably heading towards the Chunin exams. If she was heading to the exams, that meant I barely had any time left until I had to fight.

I had lost track of time; how long did I have left? Two months?

Green-haired-girl would be heading to Konoha; first, that’s where the first part of the exam took place, wasn’t it? A month to get there, complete part one of the exams, another month to head to Suna, do the second stage, and have the exams canceled for interference.

Then she would be headed back here, which meant that Kakuzu and Hidan were probably going to check the village soon. I could feel about a quarter of the village now from my position with my Energy Sense growing larger every day; I wasn’t going to move closer yet; I would know if something happened in Takigakure if people started running away or something. I had the most commonly used entrance within my range anyway.

The panic had woken me from the fog that had clouded my mind for the last several months, and I started throwing everything I had into making sure I was ready. I needed to start developing strategies for how to start the fight off and what they would most likely do when I attacked them.

There was so much to plan, and I had wasted so much time.

Two and a half months later, I knew my time had finally run out when I felt two massive chakra signatures walk into my range. They both felt incredibly strange, but both in very different ways.

The first was cold, unmoving, and dense; it remained perfectly still with zero fluctuations, something I had never seen before. It held a large weapon that had a very faint chakra presence within it, almost as if it was the remnants of a previous chakra reinforcement.

The second signature dwarfed it; the only person who I had ever felt with a comparable level of chakra was Naruto; it was a constantly moving mass of chakra tendrils that could be nothing other than the black threads. Impossible to overlook was the four points of churning chakra that lined his back and the glowing core in his chest that could only be his own heart, all highly attuned to elements.

Hidan and Kakuzu, I had guessed correctly, I waited for them, and they ended up coming here. I hadn’t fucked it all up, I hadn’t wasted my time, I hadn’t failed everybody I’d set out to find them, and I’d done it!

It felt like a weight was lifting from my shoulders, only for it to immediately resettle when I realized I was going to have to fight them now, and I didn’t have anyone to help me.

Karenbana wasn’t back yet.

They were heading straight for the entrance of the village, with absolutely no attempt at Stealth. Then again, from what I remember, the standard Takigakure ninjas from the anime weren’t exactly known as being very strong, at least as far I recalled, but this was real now surely there Jounin were just as strong as Kakashi, Ishidate, Renga, Ruiga and Jiga. I didn’t feel very confident in that deduction.

There were outliers; of course, there always was when it came to individual strength.

Takigakure had produced the very man that I was about to fight, Kakuzu. There was also the Green-haired-girl, she was a Jinchuriki, and they were all pretty strong; there was that hero water villain nonsense as well, those guys were supposed to be strong, were they here? No wait, they were missing ninja.

Either way, I wasn’t going to have a better opportunity to gank these guys. Then while they were fighting the rest of the village, I would let Taki do most of the legwork here and help from a distance; just scaring them off should be enough for now. I would stick to my strategy I had come up with, simple certainly, but hopefully effective. Stay at the max range and bombard them with Line Spears from a distance, before repositioning, stealthing, and ganking them all over again.

Sniper tactics, baby.

I started slowly heading towards Takigakure; by now, I had witnessed several different entrances to the village, all hidden incredibly well and very infrequently used. I made my way towards the least used of them all and sat at the entrance to wait. Nobody had spotted me approach, but then again, nobody had spotted the two Akatsuki members standing right at the main entrance, who were presumably waiting for someone to come tell them to fuck off.

They waited outside for an entire minute before heading inside through the main entrance. They entered entirely unchallenged, strode halfway across the empty grass field towards the edge of the village before noticed them.

I couldn’t fucking believe it. I had more trouble getting into the fucking Land of Iron, are you kidding me? Was this main story nonsense at work here? Where were the gate guards today? Had they all vanished back into the village?

Why? Where was the god damned justice?!

I could already feel multiple Chunin level signatures moving to engage them, and most of them vanished from my Energy Sense, killed within moments. I quickly made my way through the hidden entrance, and it took me a long moment to get high enough up the small tunnel and out onto a ledge to get eyes on the pair.

I Observed them.

Name: Hidan

Title: Member of Akatsuki

Gender: Male

Age: 22

Level: 370

Next Level: 82.32%

Health Points - 9400/9400

Chakra Points - 3000/3000

Vitality 940

Strength 250

Speed 250

Perception 100

Intelligence 90

Chakra 300

Status Effects: N/A.

Emotions: Excitement.

History: Hidan is an S-rank missing-nin who defected from Yugakure and later joined the Akatsuki. There, he was partnered with Kakuzu, despite the two's somewhat mutual dislike of each other. Hidan is a religious fanatic that follows the faith of Jashin.

What the hell? Hidan was only twenty-two years old?

I’m not sure when my birthday was exactly, but I was fairly sure that I’m at least a year or two older than him. Kakashi was older than him, what the hell? How was he so strong? His health was the largest I had ever seen; it was ludicrously larger then any others I had ever seen. These were just the base stats as well, I had no idea what his chakra reinforcement bonus was, but I assumed it was large.

Hidan was a monster, but Kakuzu was something even worse than that.

Name: Kakuzu

Title: Member of Akatsuki

Gender: Male

Age: 91

Level: 450

Next Level: 12.32%

Health Points – 4000/4000

Chakra Points - 10000/10000

Vitality 400

Strength 350

Speed 300

Perception 110

Intelligence 150

Chakra 1000

Status Effects: N/A.

Emotions: Impatience. Annoyance.

History: Kakuzu is an S-rank missing-nin from Takigakure and a member of Akatsuki, who is currently partnered with Hidan. Kakuzu has once attempted to assassinate the First Hokage; while he failed, he managed to escape with his life. Kakuzu is the bearer of the Earth Grudge Fear.

Four-hundred-and-fifty.

I’m not going to lie; I was starting to have some serious thoughts about letting the green-haired-chick just take one for the team. I had been far too optimistic coming into this; he almost had as much chakra as the nine-tailed Jinchuriki, he was half a durable as Hidan, his base Strength and Speed were both leagues above everyone else.

That was before the hidden bonus.

They both had higher base stats then Kakashi, well Hidan probably was about the same level as him maybe? I hadn’t seen Kakashi’s stats in what, a year and a half? Two? How long had it been exactly? I’m not sure, but I’m almost positive he had gotten a lot stronger since then. He was over two hundred back then; he might well be up in the three hundred by now.

I had gotten my ass kicked by Karenbana when she had a base speed of two-hundred-forty the last time I had seen her; I had almost the exact same Speed at the time.

Kakuzu had fucking three hundred. Could I even track him in an actual fight? They weren’t exactly trying hard against the chunin right now, and I had a good view of the area, so it was probably messing with my perception of how fast they were moving.

The quality of Waterfalls Jounin must have been pretty low after all; because they died only slightly slower than the chunin. Almost twenty people had already died in total, and I had just been sitting here frozen like a coward.

I lifted my finger and pointed it at Kakazu and then hesitated; what was I doing? There were people everywhere; I would hit someone. How had I not thought of friendly fire? Fuck.

I started moving closer despite every bone in my body, screaming at me that it was a terrible idea, and I was about to die. I got close enough to start having difficulty following their movements, and then I pointed at Hidan when he stopped for a moment before switching targets back to Kakuzu.

Stick to the plan, dumbass.

“Line Spear.” I gritted out angrily because if I didn’t say the words, I was never going to act.

It flashed across the distance and tore through Kakuzu’s throat, out the other side of his neck before going through three buildings behind him. Kakuzu dropped the chunin he was holding by the jaw and turned to look directly at me, completely unbothered by the hole in his neck.

I fucking missed.

A black shape tore out of his shoulder in an instant, and a mask rolled forward before unleashing a series of flashing fireballs that rocketed towards my position at blurring speeds. I dove to the side of the rooftop to avoid them, and shot again, missing him as he skipped to the side in preparation for a terrifyingly strong leap forward. I unleashed five-line spears at his flight path, but he was already spinning away from the attacks before I had even fired, a hand connected by black threads gripping the roof to accomplish the mid-air roll.

None of them hit, and then Kakuzu was on me. This wasn’t the plan!

I put a third of my Mana into Iron Hide and blocked his straight punch. My defense held, but I was sent smashing down through the roof of the house to impact the floor below. I immediately Jaunted towards the closest door and crashed through it as he came down through the hole I’d made. I barely spun around the corner of the door as a hand flashed forward and turned around the fucking corner, still heading straight towards me.

I Jaunted back another ten meters and raised my finger to aim past the hand at where the door was, in preparation for him coming out. Kakuzu changed direction suddenly and came through the fucking wall to my left with his hand already outstretched towards my face, and I was forced to Jaunt backward again or be caught.

I adjusted my finger to aim at where he was sliding through the remains of the walls, already tracking me again. Vision had increased my reflexes enough to at least kind of track him, but his Speed and agility and aggression were overwhelming enough that I couldn’t move fast enough when he was this close.

All I could do was spend huge amounts of Mana to try and survive.

The fire mask was on the roof above him; I Jaunted again to avoid the fireballs that exploded on contact and reappeared back on the roof behind the mask. Kakuzu must have heard me land on the roof because he leaped up into the air again, twisted in mid-air, and launched his fist straight at my new position.

I shot at the fire mask, missed, and then jaunted back to where I had first taken the first shot at him about a foot in the air above the ledge. I immediately toggled Stealth on while I was out of his line of sight before dropping silently to the floor, and the second I was still, I dropped into Meditate.

Kakuzu didn’t immediately come after me, so he must have been tracking me via sound. He also didn’t stand still and make it easy for me; he immediately started dashing around and searching the area for my position at a speed that I could barely follow even from back here. I kept track of his fire mask as it intercepted him during one of his many passes and reunited with him.

This was fucking insane; I had almost died at least four times already.

I knew his move set in advance; I built a skillset literally for fighting him and Hidan in mind, but it didn’t make a bit of difference; he just adjusted on the fly to everything I did; he had already figured out to keep out of the line of my hands to avoid the line spears after the first fucking shot.

The only thing keeping me alive was the ability to instant cast Jaunt and my hard-fought mana regeneration. I should have tried to create a muffle sound skill; counting on being able to hide from S-rank ninjas was fucking stupid; why didn’t I think of that?

I took a few deep breaths and then calmed myself down as best I could.

Hidan was still fighting half the village in a furious melee that was leaving everyone dead or critically injured, his Speed and strength were just too high for any of them to contest him in melee, but range attacks didn’t work on him, not enough power or penetration in their water styled attacks or there throwing weapons.

I snapped my head back around to track Kakuzu as he suddenly started directly towards my position, somehow spotting me through Stealth. I immediately started raining down line spears on his position, but nothing hit him, as he started stopping, dashing, and juking around, and it made every god damned shot miss by a mile.

He ducked behind a corner of a building, out of my sight for less than a tenth of a second before reappearing, and I could feel the lighting mask he had released in that small time frame flanking back around me and sticking to cover.

How the fuck did Kakashi hit this guy with Chidori? It was noisy as fuck; I don’t give a shit what happened in the series. It was just not possible that he had managed to sneak up on this guy.

I couldn’t hit him without Stealth, not unless I managed to wear him down or he fucked up, and I didn’t think he was going to give me a free hit any time soon. The masks were his weakness here; they weren’t nearly as agile as he was; I had to start whittling them down.

I was going to fucking cheat.

I kept on firing at him as he pretended to be getting overwhelmed, all the while the lightning mask was sneaking up behind me, and I pretended not to notice it. I kept on firing until I felt the mask peek its head around the corner behind me, and then I Jaunted directly behind it without any warning.

My finger was already up at the right height for the perfect shot, and I could feel the position of the mask amongst the tendrils by its crackling energy signature.

My line Spear tore through the tendrils through the mask and carried on across most of the village before disappearing. The chakra signal died, and the masked thing crumbled to the floor. I immediately felt Kakuzu building up a massive amount of chakra in his fire and wind masks.

Oh fuck.

The sudden orb of growing fire expanded towards my position at a furious pace, taking with it buildings, roads, and trees without stopping, an ever-expanding orb of heat and rage that left everything in cinders behind it. I burned through at least two thousand Mana to escape its path, and I could already feel Kakuzu moving towards me again.

Half of Takigakure was on fire.

It would likely spread in time, but there was nothing I could do about that; I didn’t have anything to put it out with, I would have to leave it up to whoever was left of the Takigakure ninja.

Kakazu had three masks left, Water, Fire, and Wind, along with what I was assuming was his original Earth natured heart because it wasn’t currently contained in a mask. I felt another massive build-up of chakra in the Wind Mask before it unleashed what could only be described as a hurricane that hit the fire and sent it flaring up everywhere.

There was nowhere left in this quarter of the village that wasn’t on fire now.

The city burned, and I desperately fled in the only direction I could that wasn’t on fire, straight up the natural cliff walls that surrounded Takigakure. I tried launching Line Spears down at him as best I could, but nothing hit, and I was left to sprint horizontally across the wall to avoid the flashing fireballs and wind bursts that exploded against the cliff above, sending debris raining down on me.

Kakuzu landed on the wall behind me

He started sprinting towards me in a large arc, circling around my position to get above me. I took shots at him, but he was moving to fast for my aiming to matter now; he reached directly above me on the wall and flashed through half a hundred hand seals before he and the Water Mask started spewing out a massive river of mud straight down the wall at me. I desperately jaunted back down to the city, dumping more and more of my Mana just to avoid his relentless pursuit.

I was in flee mode at this point, with no thought of countering in any meaningful way, he anticipated everything I threw at him, and nothing seemingly slowed him down.

I managed to just clear the river with Speed born of desperation and turned to run sideways along the wall again, I had almost managed to clear the fire below, but he was overtaking me on the wall now, further above.

I stared at him in horror as he came down at me.

Just as he was about to reach me, I raised my arm directly in front of me and then Jaunted directly behind him, he spun underneath my Line Spear the second I had disappeared, already moving to avoid it before I had even fired.

How the fuck did-

Kakuzu’s leg smashed through my hasty guard and launched me straight off the cliff face, back towards the village. I burned another thousand mana, and Iron Hide barely held under the massive force of his attack, but I was left flipping uncontrollably through the air. I could feel that I was getting closer to Hidan’s position rapidly, and there was barely anyone left around him now.

Kakuzu was already off the wall and dashing towards me, still ten seconds out at most, while Hidan heard me and jumped straight towards me in the air.

I Jaunted ten meters above and behind him, dumping the momentum in an instant and sending a barrage of line spears at his back. Two of them hit and went straight through him, not that he seemed to notice, having already spun around in mid-air and launched his massive triple-blade-scythe towards me, it tore through the air towards me, trailing a thick cable.

Just as it was about to hit, I attempted to perform the first step of my Hidan suppression plan.

I Jaunted behind the scythe and desperately grabbed for the handle, but I ended up grabbing the cable. Instead, I immediately fired five-line spears at the cable, and it snapped under the force.

The scythe kept tearing through the air to stab blade first into a building. Kakuzu was barely seconds away now, and I Jaunted four times towards the scythe, landing on the handle, and wobbling dangerously for a second before I caught my balance.

I dropped into Meditate while standing on the shaft of the scythe, hoping for a couple of seconds reprieve.

Today was my lucky day, apparently, because Kakuzu landed next to Hidan, spoke a few words, too far away for me to hear, and then they approached me at an even pace. Hidan looked pissed off, but Kakuzu looked a lot calmer than he had barely thirty seconds before. He had seemingly unleashed most of his rage already.

They stopped below me on the street, not even bothering to take defensive postures.

“You look fucking stupid!” Hidan laughed, “Why don’t you buy a fucking mask, you dumb fuck?!”

I felt a little bit embarrassed actually, I hadn’t remembered to buy one at Iwa. So I was left to tie a spare shirt around the bottom of my face by the sleeves.

I wasn’t going to let some sweaty little twenty-two-year-old fuckstick talk to me that way though.

“Listen here, you fuck-nugget,” I said angrily, “I didn’t have time to buy one because I was too busy fucking your mother!”

Hidan started laughing harder.

“Kakuzu of Takigakure and Hidan of Yugakure,” I managed after I regained my composure. “Why are you attacking Takigakure? “

“You know who I am, on sight?” Hidan said, astonished, “Kakuzu! I’m famous!”

Kakuzu suddenly pushed a massive amount of chakra into his remaining masks; I inventoried the Scythe and Jaunted up onto the roof, heart thudding at the suddenness of it.

Kakuzu hadn’t even twitched, and the chakra settled.

“You are a sensor.” Kakuzu deduced instantly. “That’s how you were tracking me.”

Fuck.

“Huh?” Hidan said loudly, “Let’s just kill him already; I want my fucking scythe back!”

Fucking Hidan, most of the village was burning, and I hadn’t seen a single person still moving in the last few minutes; everyone had either fled or been killed. They hadn’t done this is the series, had they? Is this my fault? Did I cause this?

Had all these people died because I had come to help?

“You’ve already killed most of the village,” I said darkly, “Is that what you came back here to do? Destroy Takigakure? Revenge on the village taught you?”

“You’re stalling,” Kakuzu said evenly.

Of course, I was fucking stalling.

I only needed a little bit more time, and I would be back to full-Three chakra signatures suddenly appeared at the edge of my range.

Oh no.