The air in the Inuzuka Wolflands tasted of frost and discipline.
Kuromaru moved through the "Earth Garden," his paws sinking silently into the sculpted waves of green terrain. Above him, the white birch trees stood like bone sentinels, their pale bark scarred with black horizontal lines that created a dizzying barcode against the sky.
He paused, sniffing the wind.
It smelled of crushed pine needles and the peppery scent of purple corydalis. But underneath the wild scents, there was something else. A lingering scent of... Tsume.
Being around the woman had changed him. It had gotten him in "a way." He found himself thinking less about the hunt and more about strategy. He found himself judging the posture of the squirrels. He was becoming civilized.
ROAAAAAR.
The sound shattered the stillness.
It wasn't the bark of a ninken. It was deep, guttural, and vibrated with the heavy bass of an apex predator. A bear.
Kuromaru's ears—the one that remained and the scar where the other used to be—swiveled forward.
Aggression. Posturing. A threat.
Someone is in danger, Kuromaru realized, his hackles rising. In the land I protect.
He didn't hesitate. He launched himself off a grassy mound, using the rolling topography to gain speed, becoming a black blur against the white trees.
He tracked the sound south, past the "Monster Wolf" scent emitters that marked the clan perimeter.
He leaped the tamagaki—the sacred wooden fence that separated the Inuzuka's wild domain from the mundanity of Konoha proper. His paws hit the dirt of a maintenance trail, hidden from the village by a thick line of cedars.
He knew this place. Through the trees, he could see the tall, reinforced walls of the Konoha Zoo.
BARK! BARK-BARK! AWOOO!
The second sound was different. High-pitched. Fearless.
Kuromaru burst out of the brush and skidded to a halt on the dirt path.
The scene was chaos.
A massive plastic cooler lay overturned on its side, spilling slabs of raw beef into the dust. Next to it lay a plastic nametag: Yamabiko Onikuma.
The feeder, Kuromaru deduced, smelling the fear-sweat lingering in the air. He was late. The beast got angry. The human fled.
And there was the beast.
A bear, easily three times the size of a man, with mottled dark brown fur and eyes red with irritation, stood on its hind legs. It swiped the air, letting out a roar that shook the leaves.
But the bear wasn't advancing. It was hesitating.
Because of her.
Standing between the bear and the village was a dog.
She was massive—easily twice Kuromaru's size, though still dwarfed by the bear. She was a Great Pyrenees mix, a mountain of white fluff that looked like a god had reached up, grabbed a low-hanging cumulus cloud, and given it teeth.
Sekiumu.
Her paws dug into the dirt, anchoring her weight. She didn't look like a ninja dog. She didn't wear a forehead protector or a vest. She looked like a farm dog who had wandered off the pasture.
But she wasn't backing down.
Growl.
The sound coming from her chest was deep, resonant, and utterly serious.
The bear stepped forward, foam dripping from its jaws.
Kuromaru tensed his muscles. The human employee, Yamabiko, had clearly fled, leaving this creature to fend for herself against a monster.
Coward, Kuromaru thought, baring his fangs. I will aid her.
He prepared to spring. To strike the bear's jugular.
But before his back legs could uncoil—
BOOM.
The white cloud launched.
She didn't bite. She didn't nip. She threw herself forward like a furry cannonball, generating a terrifying amount of kinetic energy for something so fluffy.
WHAM.
She collided with the bear's stomach mid-air.
The impact was visceral. The bear's eyes bugged out. The wind was knocked out of it with a wet whoosh. The massive predator tumbled backward, flailing like a clumsy cub, crashing into the dirt with a thud that vibrated through Kuromaru's paws.
The bear scrambled up, wheezing, looking completely bewildered.
Sekiumu didn't let up. She followed the momentum, barking a deep, booming warning that echoed off the zoo walls.
The bear looked at the meat. It looked at the white demon.
It turned and scrambled back through the broken fence, retreating into its enclosure.
The Spark
Silence returned to the path, save for the heavy panting of the white dog.
Kuromaru stood frozen. He had seen Jōnin hit with less force than that.
The white dog shook herself, a cloud of dust and loose fur exploding from her coat. Then, she turned.
She saw him.
Kuromaru stood tall, his black fur stark against the trees, his eyepatch and scars visible in the dappled sunlight. He braced himself for a challenge. Wolf hierarchy demanded it. He was an intruder in her fight.
But she didn't growl.
Her dark eyes went wide. They practically sparkled.
Oh, her expression seemed to say. Wow.
She trotted over, her gait bouncy and light, completely at odds with the violence she had just committed. She sat down in front of him, tilting her massive, fluffy head.
"Hiii," she yipped, her tongue lolling out in a happy grin. "My name's Sekiumu!"
Kuromaru looked at her. He looked at the overturned cooler. He looked back at the bear's enclosure.
He took a single, respectful step forward and sat on his haunches. He didn't try to dominate her. He didn't try to correct her posture. He just looked her in the eye.
"I am Kuromaru," he rumbled, his voice grave.
Thump-thump-thump.
Sekiumu's tail began to whip back and forth furiously, kicking up dust.
Kuromaru felt a strange sensation in his own spine. A loosening. A warmth that had nothing to do with the sun.
Hesitantly, awkwardly, the Wolf Lord's black tail twitched once. Then twice.
Then, he began to wag it back.