>>5931850>>5931854>>5931907>>5932074>>5932082>>5932085>>5932090>>5932093>>5932115>>5932289>>5933018You give Hana the ‘ol showman’s eyebrow quirk. “You want to know my deal?”
“Yeah?”
“Alright…” You allow yourself some hesitation to build up some suspense. “... Check this out.”
You summon a sensing water sphere in all of its spherical glory. It sits inert in your hand.
“What’s that?” She asks.
“This is the Sensing Water Sphere jutsu.”
“What’s the Sensing Water Sphere jutsu?”
“It’s a sphere of water that can sense.”
“Sense what?”
“Well, it can sense whatever I want! As long as what I wan to sense is some kind of palpable energy signature, and as long as it’s reasonably close.”
“LIke, can I get an example?”
“Like, if I summoned it with the intention to search for heat, I would be able to notice all of the campfires within, like, a hundred meters or so. Easily.”
“And you couldn’t, like, use your eyes?”
“Uh…” You look around and fail to notice any campfires. “No? But I can dance too, now that you mention it.”
Hana has a blank cast to her expression like her soul is trying to drift into the abyss and leave her body behind. She eventually just walks away from you to go talk to her sister instead. She clearly just wasn’t bright enough to understand the finer points of how great this ability was for informing a tactical strategy.
—
You get back to walking after that. Another four, plodding hours of just moseying on up the road. As a ninja you’re meant to be hyper vigilant at all times, especially when outside friendly territory. Still, you were probably more sheltered than most. You had never been outside the village for any reason other than for a mission before.
Naoki and Masami had both implied that they had been outside the village gates before for reasons such as just playing or going on trips. To them, the surrounding forests must appear to be safe extensions of the village from beyond the walls, like the area of heat around a bonfire. That’s certainly how it seemed whenever you looked at them. Masami was up front, pointing out random plants and asking Kin to explain them. Naoki was in the back, and he literally had his eyes closed half the time, a relaxed expression on his face as he took in the sound of nature.
For them, this was clearly a peaceful excursion. For you though? The walls of the village may as well be a bulwark against the very forces of hell itself. A thin line of demarcated security beyond which only the kami knew what casual depravities took place.
Enemy ninja?
Thieves?
Bandits?
Rapists?
Actual, literal demons?
You lived in a world of enemies, it seemed. Why? Maybe you just didn’t trust the world as much as you should. Paranoia didn’t necessarily ooze out of your every pore, but you had a heightened awareness of the fact that, at any time, a kunai could come whistling out of the bushes, and you, or someone you cared for could be dead. Just like that. The world just felt inherently hostile to you.
