Chapter 55 – Heading Back
“Good morning Hinata.”
I feel Hinata stir awake by my side.
“Good morning Yami.”
I give her a soft kiss and then activate my Byakugan to see what might have happened to Hinata’s body but everything looks normal in all my senses and Byakugan vision.
“How do I look Hinata?”
“Hmmm, pretty as always. I love your black eyes but I also love them in white because it was my present to you.”
Hinata obviously guessed what my eyes being white meant.
“thank you Hinata, I’m probably going to have to hide them most of the time sadly... wouldn’t wanna piss off your clan too soon, I’m saving that for when I have to take you officially away from them.”
“Hehe… I’ll wait for that Yami.Your Byakugan looks very natural, I can barely tell the extra flow of chakra into your eyes, I can’t notice the white color from a distance with my Byakugan either.”
“Ohh is your Byakugan active right now Hinata?”
“Yes”
I stare into Hinata's pretty face, unblemished by the Byakugan's usual protruding veins.
“I can’t tell yours’ is active either. No increased chakra flow and no noticeable veins either.”
“Wow, that’s amazing… I can also see further now… almost an entire kilometer away”
“It’s amazing that your Byakugan improved when it wasn't even your main bloodline upgrade.”
“So what did I get?
“Up to you to find out but since it got called the Oceanus bloodline it’s bound to be water-related”
“Water…”
Hinata puts her hand out in front of her and focuses on it.
Her hand down to her wrist turns nearly transparent with a slight distortion to it
“Hydrification, it's amazing Hinata”
“What is that?”
“A powerful Kekkei Genkai from the hidden mist. Users can turn their body or parts of it into water and use all sorts of powerful techniques based on it.”
Hinata smiles.
“I’m going to become powerful using it Yami, I promise you.”
“Im sure you will Hinata.”
“Now… I think we still have a little time before they come knocking on our door…”
Hinata spends that time well practicing her favorite techniques…
We pack our usual travel gear, ur very fat wallets and get ready to leave.
I was expecting us all to body-flicker our way back to Konoha over the course of a week but it seems Tsunade had other plans.
We took the scenic route, She bought a carriage for us to sit and talk while traveling and then had Tonton transform into a large boar and carry us all comfortably as we sat in the carriage.
If there was one issue it was that even though the carriage was large enough for us all to sit down, the spots around me were highly contested… I ended up settling on a daily rotation for sitting… and a night rotation as well.We did have to be quiet during the night to let others rest properly.
It was Sakura->Tsunade->Ino->Anko->Hinata for obvious reasons.There wasn’t much complaint about it, except for Slutra not getting to have a turn.
It’s a matter I’ve thought many times about.Should we consider Slutra a different person from Sakura or just another facet of her?
I leaned towards the latter seeing how they both share complete memories and I feel trying to divide Sakura into two might lead to some irreparable dissonance to her psyche.
Feeling safe enough while on the move due to the Byakugan and our other sensing abilities, over the first week of traveling, I went over most of what I could remember of the story.
Then I started sharing our own accomplishments and those of several individual ninjas we knew.
“So let me get this straight… Naruto and Sasuke, who up to that point had betrayed the village for years teamed up in the end against the rabbit goddess and won…” Sakura says.
“Pretty much, after somehow getting powered up by the dead spirit of the sage of 6-paths…”
“And he only remembered to do that at the last moment…”
I shrug, what more can a guy do?
“Honestly I expect part vision to possibly be wrong at any time.For starters, if I go by age the war happened by the time most of our genin generation was around 16, but it seemed in my vision chakra never slowed down development.”
“That would've been nice, I keep getting jealous of other 18-year-olds having full figures while we’re stuck in these teen bodies for a few more years.” Ino says while shedding tears.
Yeah, I would love to have the girls in their mature bodies already, though my hormones have started to show some effects at this rate it will take at least a year for them to reach their Shippuden figures.
“So how well exactly did we do on that war Yami?” Hinata asks.
“You all did admirably… Tsunade was the 5th Hokage and healed thousands of ninjas, Shizune saved a lot of people from dying and Sakura too healed key combatants while spreading a lot hurt around.Hinata and Ino fought several of the revived ninjas and white zetsu and contributed to the war.”
“and still… tens of thousands died…” Tsunade says.
“Yes… while the vision’s outcome just barely scraps the edge of being a victory, the good news was it led to greater unity and peace between the village afterward, but I have to wonder if it wouldn’t have been possible to achieve the same without sacrificing over half the adult ninja population...”
“So what did we do after the war…” Sakura?
“I sort of ends there… I only got some random trivia from afterward”
Though I remember a bit about the couples and kids born in the future, details from the so-called new era are fuzzy in my head.Ino looks at me intently before asking.
“Hey Yami, who did we end up with by after the war?”
Ohh no…