24 I Just Thought It Looks Cool

The curtain had finally fell on the chaotic night.

Hikari and Kiba had somehow managed to return home without any further incident. The kids split up to their own room upon arriving, just to immediately collapsed onto their bed soon after, letting exhaustion to finally reap its sweet, sweet vengeance.

When morning came, she crawled out of the bed, still sore after yesterday's fight. She'd only managed to get a couple hours of sleep before she was woken up by the intruding sunlight.

"...I wanna sleep more..."

She still got chores to do, though...

As she trotted down the hallway leading toward the main house, she could see Tsume's group entering through the front gate. They were still wearing their flak jacket. Most likely, they had been kept up for the entire night as well.

That was exactly the thing that Tsume complained about during breakfast.

"That old geezer, working people to the bone! I really want to bite him to dead!"

"What actually happened, Mom?" Hana asked, full of curiosity.

Tsume glanced at Kiba before answering.

"Well, I guess you have the rights to know. It's about your little friend, that Naruto kid. He stole something important from the Third's house."

Kiba already knew, but he pretended to be surprised.

"Crazy, right? Then again, the Third had Anbu deployed around the village wall, so it's not like he could go anywhere. Don't worry, he's already been found. It's just some misunderstanding. He'll be fine."

It seemed that Tsume didn't want to bring up about the scroll of seals, or about Mizuki's betrayal.

"Problem is," she groaned, "there were two suspicious people who'd helped that kid. They're wearing these porcelain masks, as if imitating our Anbu's uniform. Because of those idiots, we were forced to scour the village for the entire night!"

Hikari and Kiba almost choked on their food.

"M-mom, how did you know that there were two people? Did you see them?"

"Nah. You brats don't know, but the Third has this crystal ball thing that he could use to monitor a limited number of people that he had marked. Since Naruto is a troublemaker, he got him marked as well so that he can take him back if he go too far. I think he called it Telescope Technique..."

"S-so, he saw them through this crystal ball...?"

"He even recorded the mental image and showed it to us! Problem is, there's something wrong with those masks. It seems that a peculiar genjutsu had been planted on them, preventing us from getting a clear detail of their appearance. Could be the work of those Iwa bastards."

She suddenly turned to Hikari, giving the girl a heart attack.

"Oi, you notice any weirdo following you lately?"

"Ah, n-no."

Hikari fervently shook her head.

"..."

Tsume kept on turning her gaze from Kiba to Hikari then back to Kiba, over and over again. She felt like the kids were acting strange this morning, but she couldn't put her finger on it...

...Aargh, whatever, she was too sleepy to care. Besides, it was their friends who had gotten in big trouble this time. Getting upset was understandable.

She finished her bowl in one big gulp, and then abruptly stood up from her seat.

"I'm going to rest. Don't wake me until the next day!"

"Tsume... sleeping too much is bad for you."

"Bug off, Kuro. Like wolves, I, too, hibernates when it's winter!"

"...No. Wolves don't hibernate. You're talking about fleas..."

The woman and her dog sauntered away while spewing out delirious nonsense.

"Is this your first time seeing Mom like that? It used to happen a lot when you're younger, Kiba. This one time, Mom was so tired she kept blabbering about squirrel's digestive tracts."

Squirrel... Kiba didn't know how to react to that.

"That's why, let's keep the noise down and let her rest today, okay?" Hana winked at Kiba and Hikari.

The two nodded in response. Anything to prevent them from accidentally learning about drunken zoology is always welcome!

---

By noon, Kiba visited Hikari's room in order to discuss the incident from last night.

"D-damnit, why is your door so heavy?!"

Somehow, the sliding door refused to open unless he utilized his entire strength.

He leaned closer to the frame, knocking on it several times to make sure that it was still made out of wood.

Hearing his voice, Hikari's head popped up behind stacks of books and wooden crates.

"I put an Array on it. Its weight is increased if it's opened by anyone else but me."

As if proving her point, she walked over and closed the door in one effortless push.

"...You put a what?"

"Array. It's a... you can think of it as a seal, maybe? See those inscriptions at the corners?"

She pointed at those rectangular pieces of paper with Eight Trigrams drawn on them. Each pieces had a slightly different drawing compared to the other.

"What do those craps do?"

"Not craps. They're making sure that our conversation wouldn't be heard from outside the room."

"Eh?! You can do something like that?"

"Not really," she sighed, somewhat displeased. "It's not a perfect Sealed Room Formation yet. I could only imitate the effect by turning our voices into incomprehensible mumbling."

She didn't tell him, but that weight-increasing Array wasn't supposed to work that way as well. It actually was a door-locking formation, which should've been keeping the entrance sealed shut unless the Array was broken.

Spell formations. Arrays. While she wasn't a celebrated expert in the subject matter, she had accumulated a fair amount of knowledge in that topic. It was inevitable, since peak-level experts wouldn't be able to avoid encountering Arrays in their battles. Learning about them was just another way to increase her chance of survival.

Unfortunately, just like mystic arts, the working of this world had rendered the majority of those Arrays useless.

The concept of a spell Array was to change the flow of qi in an area and reform them using the formula inscribed within the Array in order to produce the creator's desired result. In other words, Arrays required a constant stream of energy in order to perform its function.

Unfortunately, there was no qi in this world. Thus, she had to improvise.

By changing the formula, she had managed to make the Array accept its required amount of energy right at the start of activation. She achieved this feat by directly infusing chakra into the Array.

The problem was that it made the Array unstable due to the sudden spike of energy. Thus, she couldn't use complicated Arrays lest they would break apart in an instant. Another thing to note was that the Arrays would stop working after a while when they had run out of chakra, which she had to manually supply again if she wanted to maintain their effects.

Still, it was better than nothing. Perhaps with further experimentation, she would be able to solve this energy problem.

"You... is this ninjutsu? I've never heard about anything like this before!" Kiba exclaimed. Those scraps could do something this magical? He found it hard to believe.

"Believe it or not, it's up to you," she shrugged. "Anyway, how is it?"

"I got the info, thanks to big sis's colleagues. Naruto is fine. Teacher Iruka vouched for his innocence. Apparently, Naruto did all that because of Teacher Mizuki's instigation."

"Mizuki..." She rubbed her chin, trying to make sense of that name. However, she only pulled out blanks. "Who?"

"The guy whose ass got kicked by us last night, remember? Maaan, when you think about it, we've just defeated a Chuunin-ranked ninja! I mean, it's still three against one, and we also have Teacher Iruka to back us up, but anyway, I'm excited!"

He pumped his fists, looking extremely pleased with himself. He wasn't even a Genin yet, and he had already won against a Chuunin? Now that's real talent!

"Yep, yep, congratulations."

Hikari responded halfheartedly. If it was her past self's younger days, she might had felt more satisfaction after winning that fight, but now? She just felt exhausted. Compared to those fearsome opponents she'd faced during her times at the peak, Mizuki was just a tiny speck of dust.

"That's not all! I heard that, since Naruto can use that goddamn crazy clone techniques, Teacher Iruka had let him pass the exam. He's officially a graduate now, a Genin like me!"

"Hee..."

Clone techniques... the one that created countless amount of Naruto? That looked neat, maybe if she could learn it-

"No means no," Kokuo glared.

"Boo," she pouted in response.

"Oh, by the way!"

Kiba's gaze suddenly turned serious.

"What's with those masks?"

"What masks?" Hikari showed him an innocent smile.

"Rraah! You already showed it to me before! Don't act as if you've forgotten about it!"

She chuckled before taking out the dolphin and dog porcelain masks from a nearby crate.

"I got them made by one of the village's artisans."

"You?" Kiba raised an eyebrow. "When did you do that?"

"Well... some weeks ago..." she laughed wryly.

In truth, she wasn't the one who had gone to request them. Since the people sent by the Third would tail her from time to time, she couldn't go by herself. Thankfully, she had a master of disguise hiding nearby.

She shot a glance at Akamaru, upon which the dog barked happily in response.

Daji had acclimated to this world even better than Yao Huang did. She had somehow raised her proficiency in Transformation Technique even further, allowing her to change to various forms just like in her times as an immortal expert. It was thanks to her that she had managed to get the mask crafted without anyone noticing.

Not just that, she had somehow learned how to use illusion techniques, which was called 'genjutsu' in this world. She was also the one who had applied the obfuscation spell on the masks.

Seeing that Hikari was amazed at his achievements, the edge of the dog's maw curved up to form a smug smirk.

"So, if we wear this mask, our identity won't be found out?" Kiba lifted the dog mask closer to his face, suddenly growing more interested with the trinket.

"Not necessarily so. They just make our appearance harder to pinpoint. If we already have prior knowledge about the wearer, or if we concentrate hard enough, it would still be broken through. It's more like a suggestion than a proper obfuscation spell."

Naturally, Daji's illusion arts were also limited by the absence of qi. That was as far as she could do with chakra.

"But, you... why do you have these kind of things? Don't tell me that you're going to do something illegal..."

"What? No! I was just... just..."

She unconsciously turned away. Kiba didn't fail to notice that.

"You're just... what? Hmm?"

Under his escalating pressure, Hikari finally cracked.

"I just thought it looks cool... you know, those animal masks..."

Apparently, ever since that time when she saw Konoha's Anbu squads fighting against the pursuers from Iwa, she had fallen in love. With the masks, of course.

"..."

Kiba had the exact same expression Daji had made when she'd gotten hold of the girl's real intention: utter disappointment.