"Whoa! Hot! So hot!" Natsuhi abandoned all pretense of her refined image, panting heavily as she grabbed a cup of water and drained it in one go.
The two lightly injured Hoshigakure shinobi followed suit, gingerly taking a single spoonful. Within seconds, their faces turned a vibrant crimson, and they were sticking their tongues out in a desperate bid for cool air.
In stark contrast sat Uchiha Hikari.
Though her cheeks were flushed and beads of sweat dotted her forehead, she continued to eat with gusto, clearly savoring every bite.
Sansho-baaba stood in the kitchen with a gentle, knowing smile, preparing several glasses of lemonade for the group.
"The true essence of the Curry of Life lies in its heat. It awakens dormant cells and breathes new life into the body," she explained. "However, it's rare to see someone finish a whole portion without flinching."
"Another one!" Hikari held out her empty plate, clearly unsatisfied.
The old woman looked at the girl—red-faced, sweating, and with a single grain of rice stuck to the corner of her mouth—and took the plate with a chuckle. "It seems I've met a true connoisseur today."
After lunch, Hikari rented several guest rooms to settle the wounded. Natsuhi stayed behind to tend to the two injured Hoshigakure ninja.
The following morning, Hikari arrived at the Kurosuki family's stronghold within the Katabami Gold Mine. At the entrance of the village, dozens of Kurosuki clansmen were packing their belongings, preparing for a mass migration. Many wore looks of deep anxiety; they had only recently defected from Kirigakure under Raiga, and now, with their leader dead, they were being uprooted again to an unknown land.
Hotarubi was busy supervising the logistics with his team.
"My Lady, the Kurosuki clan is ready to move," Hotarubi reported as he approached Hikari.
"Kurosuki Buntarō greets My Lady." A shinobi from the clan accompanied Hotarubi. He wore a slashed Kirigakure protector and shared a faint resemblance to Raiga.
The newly appointed clan head dropped to one knee. "My Lady, I embolden myself to ask for mercy for Raiga's wife and child."
"Raiga had a family?" Hikari crossed her arms, glancing toward the crowd.
"Yes," Buntarō pointed toward a woman in the distance who was in the early stages of pregnancy. "His wife is only a few weeks along."
Hikari waved her hand with an indifferent shrug. "I have no interest in making life difficult for women and children."
A widow and an unborn child—the inherent pride of the Uchiha made such petty cruelty beneath her.
"Thank you, My Lady!" Buntarō exhaled a breath of pure relief.
He then proceeded to give a detailed report: "The Kurosuki clan consists of fifty-eight people. Including myself, we have one Jounin, one Special Jounin, four Chuunin, and six Genin."
Twelve combat-ready shinobi. The rest were non-combatants: elders, women, and children. While not a massive clan, it wasn't insignificant either. After all, not every clan was the Uchiha, capable of fielding dozens of Jounin at a moment's notice. A clan of the Uchiha's scale was an anomaly—a single family that could realistically topple a small nation.
Under Hotarubi's direction, the Kurosuki clan disguised themselves as a merchant caravan transporting ore. They set off toward the border of the Land of Wind, planning to skirt the desert and head north into the Land of Stars.
"My Lady, are you not coming with us?"
At the summit of the Katabami Gold Mine, Natsuhi—who had finished settling the wounded into the caravan—asked softly.
"No. I have business to attend to. You all head back first." Hikari gazed toward the East, her eyes resolute.
"Understood!" Natsuhi bowed and withdrew.
Over the past six months, she had come to realize that this young girl possessed power far beyond any ordinary Jounin. In Hoshigakure, Hikari was second only to Lord Shura. Furthermore, the ambiguous nature of her relationship with Shura led the Hoshigakure ninja to treat her with the reverence reserved for a Lady of the house.
Once Natsuhi departed, Hikari watched the caravan disappear into the distance before turning East. Moving at full speed, it took her less than a day to cross the border into the Land of Fire.
Following the vague directions in her memory, Hikari first arrived at the Old Uchiha Compound.
Since the founding of Konoha, the entire clan had moved within the village walls. This ancestral site, not far from Konoha, had been reduced to a haunt of ruins and overgrowth. Hikari walked among the shattered walls, stopping before a collapsed stone gate. A vine-covered crest of the Uchiha fan clung to the rock. Her gaze softened.
"The Uchiha Clan..."
During her centuries of imprisonment, her feelings toward her kin had been a tangled web. After her parents died and she awakened the Mangekyō, the clan were her only blood relatives. As a child, she had been desperate for their acceptance, yet she loathed being treated as a mere weapon.
For hundreds of years, she had hoped they would find her. She had waited for a rescue that never came. Then, a man had finally broken her seal, only to tell her that the Uchiha had made peace with the Senju and Uzumaki—the very clans that had discarded her.
That lingering sense of being betrayed and forgotten was a wound that refused to heal.
Meow?
A sudden cry broke her reverie. She turned to see an orange tabby cat perched atop a crumbling pillar, watching her with curious eyes. It seemed to be tilting its head, as if trying to remember if it had seen her somewhere before.
"A ninja cat?" Hikari recalled that the Uchiha had a long-standing partnership with the Nekomata dens, sourcing many of their specialized weapons from them.
As if sensing a kindred spirit, the cat leaped down and trotted over to Hikari, sniffing her hem. Hikari reached out her hand. After a moment, the cat pressed its head into her palm, purring as it rubbed against her.
Feeling the soft fur, Hikari's melancholy lifted slightly. She scooped up the cat and looked toward the horizon, where Konoha lay.
"Time to head to the village."
She whispered a quiet encouragement to herself: I'm not going to see the Konoha Uchiha. I'm just going to see Menma!
Meanwhile, inside Ichiraku Ramen in Konoha.
Naruto sat slack-jawed, watching in awe as Hinata polished off her tenth bowl of ramen.
Suddenly, Menma—who was peacefully sipping his broth—shivered. A phantom chill ran down his spine.
Is there something following me? Menma activated Kagura's Mind Eye, warily scanning the surroundings.
Nothing... no White Zetsu in sight. Then what was that?