Ruby was by no means a materialistic girl. Sure, she loved money as much as the next person, but the thing was that she didn't actually need it.
Housing wasn't a prime problem for her. The girl could sleep in the mud in the middle of a thunderstorm and have no problems, sure it'd be cold as hell, but why do that when she could get a cosy room to stay in just by forking out a bit of Ryo? Better yet, kill the innkeeper herself?
Food was good, though not exactly need. Yeah, it prevented malnutrition but the main reason she actually bought it was just because she liked to savour and try different types of foods. But when you didn't need to eat like the average person did... or drink water... or breathe to live, money wasn't exactly a necessity. The only actual things she needed were the clothes on her back and her three lovely weapons to work and live efficiently. After all, killing people with hands got boring after a while, what better way to kill someone with their own hands?! Gave a whole new meaning to "Why're you hitting yourself?", she felt.
But when she actually had money? Splurging wasn't exactly a problem for the silver eyed maiden.
And here she found herself at a fork in the road, her boyfrie—Er, best friend beside her, a gaping hole in her belly that was slowly healing, all dressed in a spanking new set of black robes and actual underwear—Lacy black cotton to seduce her love interest, if you were interested—her blonde partner forced her to buy, as well as a sackful of Ryo notes that could feed a whole family of four for a month.
But to the family of four, Ruby would say to them a hearty "Fuck you, starving people!" To get the small fortune, the very same she slung over her shoulder, she had gone through a test of wits, a challenge of her strengths as well as a—
Ah, who was she kidding. She killed a bunch of people and got stabbed by Haruto in the gut during their turn at the arena, faking her death so that they would get the money. Whoowee, there was a loooot of blood involved in that. Yessiree, guts and limbs covered the blood red floor of the arena, every single inch of the black marketing fighting ring had been splattered with fresh gore. She was sure that she had even killed a couple of spectators during her span of unstoppable madness. There was also a part she nearly flashed her bare womanhood to Haruto when he lifted her upside down. Boy, was that embarrassing. Darn robes, it was the reason he had made her get underwear!
Not that she was complaining. Haruto didn't look away anymore when she showed him a little cleavage. Who knew the powers sexy lingerie was so effective?
Fun times, the girl grinned happily as she absently touched her healed stomach beneath the robes.
And guess what she was going to do with all that money? She was going to buy sexy underwear! The girl reaching into her cloak and tugged at the bra, Haruto turning red at the action. Seriously, this shit felt great on her boobs! Not to mention what unspeakable wonders it did to her lady bits downstairs!
Well, she would have to set some aside and save money for Haruto. He still needed to eat and drink and breathe, no matter how boring breathing was. His immortality only went so far, thank Jashin-sama her immortality went beyond that of his.
"So, where we headed now?" Ruby asked the blonde man that towered over her.
He paused in thought, staring at the sign that showed the closest path to Kusa and the one that led directly to Wave Country. "I'd like to think that Konoha's searching for me in the place they'd least expect me to go to. Besides, Father never paid attention that time he handed me my first Chuunin mission." Ruby looked at him questioningly.
"Remember? Son of Hokage?" He reminded her, though it wasn't a prideful tone he used, but a more informative one.
"Oh, right. Carry on." That was what Haruto liked about Ruby. She never gave a shit about his status as the son of the "Fastest Man Alive" or the current strongest Konoha Shinobi.
"Well, my first Chuunin mission was a solo one to Wave Country." He elaborated, and retold his story to the silver eyed maiden.
"I was assigned to assist a group of builders in Wave, to protect the, while they built a defensive wall around the country. During that time, bandits came by in droves, taking women and gold." Ruby grimaced at the thought. She could never imagine herself as some filthy bandit's fuck-toy, unable to kill herself due to her powers. Not even her ferocious spirit would stay up against that. Probably the only time she would curse immortality. And those were not even counting the fact that she would lose her virginity to some fucking rapist.
"At first, the head builder, who was the man I was staying with, Tazuna, thought that I wouldn't be able to stop them from repeating their actions." He shrugged, supposing that it was a rather difficult task to entrust your life to a ten year old that you had just met. "I disproved his worries by using my father's signature technique, the Rasengan, on the group that attacked us. Except I used the Oodama Rasengan instead of the normal one."
"Fuck." Ruby muttered, having witnessed firsthand the destructive capability Haruto's Rasengan held. Never again would she make an innuendo about testicles in the presence of the almighty Spiralling Sphere. She had taken the smaller version to the chest and it was certainly one of the things she did not want to experience again, a small number of things that she could count on one hand. The feeling of her skin being grinded off of her bones was... For a lack of a better word, uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable.
"Must have turned them all to a paste."
Haruto nodded, confirming her guess-cum-statement. "Needless to say, after that display, Tazuna trusted me to do my job after that." As they continued in their journey, Haruto followed on with the story. "I met his family after that incident. A house wife, Tsunami, her husband and a fisherman, Kaiza, and Tsunami's son, a little spirited boy by the name of Inari. They took me in like one of their own and I found myself a second family with them."
Ruby suddenly stopped, a contemplative look on her face. She remembered something she heard a while ago. Deciding to tell him what she had heard months ago from a few stray Jashin members, she faced Haruto who was looked at her expectantly, wanting to know why she had stopped.
"It might be a little too late to tell you now, but I'm pretty sure Wave's in some deep shit." She spoke with a rare seriousness, often not found on the grinning face of Death's number one soldier.
"What'd you mean?" Worry was obvious in his voice.
"A couple of guys told me that Wave was being finacially fucked over by some shitty cocksucking midget." She shouldered the bag of money and her scythe, the pike in her clothes clanking softly as she moved. "So don't expect to see the same place you saw how many years ago? Six?" He nodded, "Basically, don't get your hopes—What the hell?"
She paused, holding out a hand to block Haruto's tough chest, pointing with her other hand at the two men that were dressed in black armour, tied up against a tree. Judging by their heads, both were knocked out cold and were probably waiting for extraction.
"You think that's a trap?"
"Who the fuck knows," Ruby shrugged, "What I wanna know is who did that to them and if they want to bleed a bunch."
"Please take care of yourself." Haruto said to her before she skipped away, scythe sitting on her shoulder.
As he watched her bounce away, Haruto couldn't help but think back at the first of the nights they had spent together during their training by the riverbanks. Doing nothing but idle chitchat and watching the stars and moon had been surprisingly refreshing for Haruto.
"Hey... Haruto?" Ruby asked as they basked in the silence of dusk, both lying next to the river Ruby had trained in. It was the day after they had gone and watched the match in the arena, choosing to start training in the night to prepare for the next tournament. Surprisingly, Ruby was, despite her mortality, dead on her feet, a rather impressive feat achieved by Haruto's harsh training.
"Yeah?" Haruto replied in kind, silently enjoying the heat Ruby provided during such nights. His finger was dipped in the river, twirling absently, forming ripples at every movement. Such nights were common, where they would enjoy the silence the world provided, occasionally starting conversation whenever a topic came into mind. Even the not too distant waterfall sounded nothing more than a trickle.
Haruto noticed that Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat and clenched her fist tightly.
"What do you think happens after we die?" Ah. He understood why she was so unnerved.
For all that Ruby was, brave, psychopathic, smug as hell and completely fearless of death, she actually was afraid of one specific thing.
It wasn't death, but what happened before and after death.
It might not have made much sense, and to be honest, Haruto didn't understand either when she had told him, but she specified, narrowed, it down.
What she would accomplish before death and if she would meet her mother afterwards. The girl wasn't stupid, she never once fooled herself into thinking that she would never die. Death was for all, and eventually she would catch you when you least expected it. Ruby had also figured out multiple things that could potentially screw her over.
Although Jashin-sama said that it wasn't a requirement, sacrifices were actually what kept Ruby's immortality going. Well, to a certain extent. As far as she knew, times when she had starved herself of bloodshed had caused regeneration to slow. So it was either that or some other unknown factor.
Eating healthy was also a good idea. Just because she was immortal didn't mean that she was free from getting diseases and what not. Suffering from malnutrition would make her significantly weaker and over eating would make her obese.
Anyone that could seal her away for all eternity without giving her the chance to reform? Avoid.
Her fears were realised when she fell head over heels for her blonde companion. Her dreams of settling down, shelving the scythe and pikes away, and raising a family—she knows, a fucking family!—could possibly be coming to fruition. To become the woman her mother was? Yes!
But reality hit harder than the volcano's eruption did. What if she outlived her children? What if her children hated her for what she had done in her "younger" years, slaughtering people for no rhyme or reason? Ah, well, "No problem!"She told herself. That could easily be solved by turning them into loyal followers of Jashin-sama. Just her, Haruto and her sweet cult loving children together forever. They'd be the same age and live until the world blew itself apart.
No, that wasn't the fear she had. The fear was dying before any of that could happen. The prospect of not becoming a wife to the man she loved, a mother to the children that would not be born. It was a fear common amongst the average person. Suddenly, she felt what it was like to fear death, to be human, to be mortal.
Then her thoughts branched out, expanding outwards to what happened after death. Oh Jashin-sama! She had reached multiple conclusions, the worst would probably be seeing her mother, the woman she would kill the whole world off for to bring back. W-What if Mama didn't love her for what she did in the Elemental Nations, that she was no better than her murderous father?! Her mother getting mad at her wasn't the problem, it was disappointing her, letting her down.
The very thought had made her weak, Haruto being forced to carry her limp body as she was feeling rather faint at the time.
He paused in contemplation, mulling over her words. "What do I think?"
"Mhm." She nodded once, hand inching over to him for comfort.
"I think the same way an acquaintance does. I met him during one of my missions, he was a bounty hunter, Spike was his name." Ruby's eyes widened when she felt his hand grab hers, sheltering her smaller appendage, "He told me once that his motto was 'Whatever happens, happens', that he went with 'the flow'."
Well that wasn't reassuring at all.
"What?!" Ruby, despite how good it felt,pulled her hand away from his. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"I mean," He calmed her down by holding onto her shoulder, "Whatever we've done, we've done it. It's too late to change it. And for the future, if and when we die, well, we can't really tell or dictate what happens right?" The girl nodded, understanding his meaning. "So, whatever happens, happens. Understand?"
"Yeah... I get it." They lapsed into silence for a moment before Haruto broke it.
"Have you tried asking Jashin?"
"No." She sighed in frustration. "Jashin-sama doesn't know, or can't tell me."
"Well then, as the Sandaime Hokage once told me, 'To the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure'."
"Hmm." She mused over the words from the fallen old man, one that struck fear into the hearts of Shinobi in the Second Shinobi War with his skills, earned from the tutelage from under both Senju Brothers."Say, what happened to the Sandaime?"
"You don't know?"
"Do I look like I know much of anything?"
Haruto conceded with a soft smile.
"He gave his life for my village."
"Huh. I'll be honest, I was going to make some kind of joke or something but now I'm thinkin' otherwise." Ruby admitted.
"You're incorrigible."
Haruto shook his head amusedly, managing to distract Ruby from wallowing around in her thoughts with that one sentence. And everything was back to normal.
"I don't know what that word means." Then she slid her hand across the mat, "T-Take my hand... I'm cold a-again." She instructed him to do so, hiding her blush and small smile with her other hand.
"Sure thing, Okusan (my wife)." Haruto joked, feeling shockingly comfortable with Ruby. His comfort zone had spread from Naruko to Ruby, but not even he got this comfortable with Naruko, being slightly formal with his little sister more than he did Ruby. To keep up appearances, he supposed. Wouldn't be good for Konoha to know that he and his sister loved each other in that manner.
"Eh?! Idiot! D-Don't say that!"
"Harutoooo, helloooooo?!"
"Huh? What?" Ruby cocked an eyebrow at him, hands on her hips.
"Daydreamin'? C'mon, I already interrogated those two, and they spilled the beans faster than my father's organs did when I split his—"
"And what exactly—" He held up a hand to stop another one of her examples involving her gruesomely killing her father, "Did you find out from them?"
"The midget guy, Gato, he hired a bunch of Ex-Kiri nin to kill some bridge builder?"
"Anything else?" He asked.
Ruby rubbed her chin, thinking for a moment.
"Hm, they said that they got beaten by a bunch of genin from Konoha. Some girl with red hair, a boy with hair that looks like a duck's butt and a little frightened pinky."
"I see... " Dread began to fill his bones, a feeling he got when worrying about people he cared and loved for. "... And they came out unscathed?"
Ruby snorted. "Not for long if the people Gato hired get to them first. Two of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. Momochi Zabuza and Kurosaki Raiga."