Konome Taketori walked unhurriedly into the ground-floor lobby of the Mizukage Tower, tapping her staff.
The black cloth over her eyes meant nothing to the Byakugan's clear sight.
She had little choice.
Her eyes drew too much attention.
With the cash she had taken from the Hoshino home, she had bought clothes and a blindfold. Only after changing out of the ill-fitting outfit and hiding the Byakugan did she dare show her own face in the streets of Kirigakure.
Ting, ting.
Packed earth gave way to tile, and the taps rang bright and crisp.
Chakra synthesized at her heart poured through her coils and into her eyes. Under the blindfold, her pupils pinched. The Byakugan that could see a kilometer across was stifled inside the tower.
In her vision, layer after layer of chakra flowed through barriers and seals, wrapping the building like chains. The alien chakra snarled around the tower like a constrictor closing on prey.
She could not see through.
The Mizukage's office at the apex was worst of all. Seals and an unknown, oddly colored barrier isolated it as if it were not part of the tower at all.
It looked less like a Kage's office than the cage for a death-row inmate.
Have they found Uchiha Obito.
She kept the thought to herself and let the staff lead her to the service counter.
"Little sister, what do you need."
The kunoichi behind the desk crossed one leg over the other as she trimmed her nails, letting her gaze roam over the blind girl in front of her.
"I want to post a mission."
The woman set her tools aside, pulled a mission slip closer, and took up a pen.
"Escort me to Tanzaku Quarters in the Land of Fire."
The pen paused. "Reason."
Konome frowned.
What she really wanted was Konohagakure.
She could not say that aloud, so she picked a place from the manga she had read in her past life.
Konoha sat in the rich Land of Fire, with good land and good weather.
It was the village she knew best from the anime and the one where her knowledge gave her the greatest advantage.
Konoha had its crises, but danger was not what scared her. The unknown was.
Any crisis you knew in advance, you could sidestep.
More than that, the Hyuga of Konoha were her mother's people. If she reached them, their protection would put her beyond Mist ANBU's knives, and she was not an ordinary Hyuga.
Her mother was Main House.
As the Main House's eldest daughter, she was a member through and through. The cursed Caged Bird seal did not apply to her.
If she entered Konoha, she could return to the Hyuga as a Main House lady. With two top-tier bloodlines and Konoha and the Hyuga behind her, she would have resources and a shield.
Before the Shippuden era ever began, her life would be safe enough.
As for hiring Mist shinobi to escort her, the reason was simple. She did not know the way.
This world was not Earth.
There were no bullet trains, no Baidu Maps, no smooth highways. She was six and had never left Kirigakure.
Between the Mist and Konoha lay leagues of sea and shore.
She did not even know where to buy a boat ticket.
While she weighed her lies, the kunoichi took her silence for a wish to keep details private. She kept her tone even and explained with patience.
"Missions are graded S, A, B, C, and D from high to low. If we misjudge the danger, people die and missions fail. We need a reason to assign the right rank and shinobi."
Fair enough.
Konome nodded and spun a story.
"My father has been missing two months. Before he left he said he was going to Tanzaku Quarters and would be right back, but he never returned. I want to find him."
The clerk did not blink. She wrote as she talked, words tumbling quickly yet cleanly.
"Given the distance, this will be a provisional C-rank escort, fee ten thousand ryō.
"Pay half up front. The balance is due upon completion. If we discover you hid facts or the mission proves far beyond its rank, the escort may refuse to proceed and the deposit is forfeit."
She rattled on like a patter song.
Konome slipped off her pack, counted out several large notes, and set them down.
"Good. Leave your address. If a shinobi accepts, you will be notified at once." The kunoichi did not ask how a blind girl had counted exactly five thousand ryō. Curiosity got people killed in this line of work.
"Mistlight Inn, room 304."
"You will hear within one working day. Please stay put at the inn."
Once the address was noted, Konome tapped her way out of the tower.
Morning had burned on.
Mist thinned around the summit. The sun, unshaded now, stabbed hard at the eyes.
She blinked against the glare that ghosted across her vision. With three hundred sixty degrees of sight, the Byakugan made it impossible not to look at the sun.
Head down, she followed the central boulevard's slope. People still milled and muttered about the Taketori massacre, but their talk had drifted on to other things.
In Kirigakure, bloodline clans had died before. Numbness was habit.
If not for the rumor that the Mizukage coveted a Taketori treasure, even this would have hardly stirred a word.
Suddenly,
something in her body went wrong, an itch in her flesh so fierce it bordered on pain.
She had walked only a few steps when a tremor ran through her.
What is this.
Clamping down on the sensation, she quickened her pace.
Tap tap tap.
Passersby heard the staff strike faster and looked over in puzzlement. The blind girl who had picked her way so carefully a moment ago now tapped the sidewalk as a token while her feet almost flew.
A few rubbed their eyes with the backs of their hands.
The gossip rolled on from politics to urban legends.
She hurried back to the inn.
Behind a locked door, she took off the blindfold, sat cross-legged on the bed, and looked inward.
Veins swelled at the corners of the Byakugan.
The chakra seed that glimmered at her heart was trembling. Chakra like water streamed through her coils into her eyes and condensed into ocular power.
At the center of the pale irises, the ash-gray pupils tightened and gathered, deepening to a heavy dead gray.
She poured more chakra into her eyes until the pressure pricked and burned.
A hum.
It felt like passing a gate, like a barrier giving way.
She saw herself, sitting on the bed, go transparent. Blue chakra flowed like a river through every meridian.
Twin flares of chakra burned bright at the eyes.
Under skin white as jade, crimson flesh and white bone lay naked to sight. The lovely girl was a red and pink skeleton. Muscle fibers quivered. Fascia writhed. Connective tissue braided and unbraided. Even the sparkles of metabolism in cheering cells showed as tiny currents of energy.
What is this.
The organs swallowed and breathed and slid about inside her. Bundles of muscle fiber twisted like rebar into cables, closing and drawing tight. Flesh and fat swam as if at their own whim.
Bone stood and stretched with a creak that set teeth on edge.
All through her, the meat of her body seemed to wake to itself. The tireless salarymen of her tissues would no longer do only their assigned jobs. They wanted to move.
How can this be.
Tendons leapt and pulled. Her heart jumped with them. She worried that one careless twitch would pop a vessel and flood her body with blood.
She worried for nothing.
The branches of arteries and veins curved and flexed, winding with the flesh like living wire.
She pressed down on the panic.
Calm returned, and she watched.
With the Byakugan's precision she saw a pattern. The flesh was activating in a set order. First the head and face. Then neck, chest, and belly. Now the waist and legs.
From top to bottom, head to toe.
The source was
the Byakugan.