Xander listened for the next hour as Kushina told him about her life, and the village she lived in, and the role of ninja in protecting and funding the village.
He was rather more interested when she started describing the techniques she had learned, and the energy they used to power them.
They were briefly interrupted when Mizuna re-entered the room, still unable to detect Xander's presence, and sat on the bed to discuss what had happened with Kushina.
She was frankly rather surprised when Kushina claimed to have already signed a contract with her new summon, though Kushina cagily avoided revealing his name. She was irritated at being doubted, and was afraid that if his name, as strange as it sounded to her, happened to match some known missing nin somewhere, her claim would be rejected.
Finally, Mizuna explained that she had convinced the village leader, and that in three days, in front of a small group of jounin and the leader himself, she would have a chance to perform the summoning technique and prove to them all that she did have a valid contract.
Kushina cheered at this, though she complained about the delay, even when Mizuna assured her it was necessary to be sure that she did not overtax her chakra coils.
When Mizuna finally left, after having put up and taped a heavy oiled cloth over the broken window and assuring her that it would be repaired within a few days, Kushina resumed her explanations for Xander.
He learned that chakra was a combination of physical energy produced by the body naturally, and spiritual energy gained from training. Once trained, it flowed down a fine network of pathways in the body, pathways that did not quite correspond to any of the physical networks the body contained, and pooling in certain points.
With training, a ninja could increase this energy, and draw it out in various ways. She demonstrated by walking on the wall in direct contravention of the laws of gravity, though she declined to do anything else, saying that it would only result in them being invaded again.
As a test, Xander provided her with a small cinnamon flavored jelly bean designed to restore her chakra levels, and she confirmed that it felt like it had returned everything she had lost on summoning him.
"That is so cool!" she squealed. "I've heard of things like this, but they're always clan secrets, or horribly expensive. And you're just like, here, and it tastes so neat. My mouth is still tingling!"
"Hmm... in that case, I think you should have some on hand." Xander produced a small bag of mixed jelly beans and showed them to her. "The red ones are just like the one you just tried, they'll restore your chakra level." 'No need to mention that I still don't understand what chakra is. Good to know that my magically produced food can have their own magical effects though.'
"The green ones are . . ." Xander paused, then produced another handful of beans. "Here, try these as I tell you about them, these just have the flavor without the effect. The green ones are sour apple and will restore your health. The black ones are licorice," and he grinned at her look of confusion and gestured for her to go ahead and try it, "and they'll refresh you as if you just had eight-hours of sleep, in case you have a mission that goes long."
He did not say anything in case it had not worked, since he was not sure how far his ability to produce magic within what he created through this ability he had given himself went, but he had produced the bag with the intention that it would automatically refill over time. It would not be instant, to avoid anyone else noticing and stealing it from her, but over time and if it was unwatched, it should produce more beans.
He wondered if he ought to make something like that for himself, as well, though since he did not think he had chakra in the first place, he was not at all sure it would be safe to take a pill meant to produce more.
"What about the pink, purple, and red-with-yellow ones?" Kushina asked, poking at the pile he had given her.
"Ah, well, since you liked it, I thought you might like some that you could have without effect, or to give to someone if they asked what you were eating, so you would not have to reveal what you had. So the pink ones are a flavor called cotton candy. Don't worry about what that is, just try it and you'll see. And the purple ones are grape, and the red and yellow ones are cinnamon, like the flavor of the chakra pill, but with a little more bite to them."
"These are amazing!" Kushina told him, as she chewed on the cotton candy one.
Xander would have asked her to continue, but instead faded to invisibility as a knock sounded on the door. When Kushina reluctantly responded, after having quickly concealed her new prize under her bed coverings, Mizuna entered, followed by another woman, this one taller, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a fixed expression.
Xander promptly fled the room when he realized that the woman was a doctor of some sort, and was going to give Kushina a checkup to be sure she had not done herself harm in trying to summon again so soon.
Drifting up to the roof, Xander settled down, remaining an invisible patch of air since being on the roof in a ninja village was no guarantee of privacy, as demonstrated by the passage of leaping figures crossing the rooftops in the distance.
Reaching out, he felt the bit of air he had conjured in the room earlier, confirming that he could still sense it and differentiate it from the rest of the air in the room, then he reached out further.
He had wondered while listening to Kushina and thinking about the dangers of her life as a ninja whether there was something he could do to keep an eye on her, aside from giving her magical jelly beans, which would only help after an injury, rather than preventing it.
Now it occurred to him to consider his remotes, his little glass eyes, and particularly, the one he had left at the entrance to the Duke's mountain fortress. Had it been summoned here with him? Was it now in some far distant place? Or was it still in the Hell dimension? Xander focused on it, reaching out to see through it.
He grinned, staring at the now open door set in hewn rock, as a small war party marched out of it. Not only was it still in the Hell dimension, he could still reach it!
Pleased, he used the eye as a reference, and reached into the mountain and located the . . . creature, sort of, thingy . . . he really needed to figure out a name for them . . . that he had left there, and took control of it again.
He spent a minute examining the water wheel, then diving into the stream, and shifting to a liquid form when the rushing water threatened to break him up into hundreds of bubbles, he followed the descending stream up, beyond where it flowed into the room.
He followed a long tubular channel as it progressed up. It joined several other channels, becoming steadily larger, then opened up into a large room, where it passed in the open in a channel about waist height. Discreetly forming an eye in the far corner of the room by simply taking a bit of the air there and making it part of himself, to examine it, since poking his head up would be obvious, as he was in liquid form at the moment, he determined that he was in a large kitchen area.
Progressing up the path until he was just inside the walls again on the far side, he went airy and let the water push him invisibly back into the room. This allowed him to rise unnoticed into the room and get a better look at it.
The many workers here were shorter than the demons he was used to seeing, and rather more spindly, with thin arms and legs rather than the muscle-bound figures of the combat, blacksmith, and guarding demons he had seen previously.
Their clothing was fairly simple, shifts of plain brown or gray cloth with simple belts, small belt-pouches, and here and there an emblem pinned to the shoulder seemed to denote a minor increase in rank, as these were the ones bossing the others about, though even they were busily working.
They did not have near the sameness, however, that he had somewhat expected. For all that they shared a smaller stature and less muscular build, there seemed no end to the variety of body shapes. He could not identify as clear an animal influence as he had with the fox-men and turtle-men earlier, for here he would see a pig-like snout with pointy furred ears, or cat-like eyes paired with fish-like scales and yet a tentacled mouth.
There was considerable manual dexterity on display, as the small demons, which he guessed were about the size of a fifteen year old, almost adult human size, but a little smaller and thinner, wielded knives, ladles, tongs, spitting forks, skewers, brushes, twine, wire, drills, and even what looked like bulb syringes with fluent skill as they prepared platters of meats, meat pastries and pies, breads and rolls, and odd looking plants. Some did this with almost human hands on a fairly normal pair of arms, some had arms with more or fewer elbows, some had more than the usual two arms, or had arms that divided at the elbow, and others had tentacles instead of arms, or hooves, talons, or pincers in place of hands.
Sending his senses momentarily back to the bit of air in Kushina's room, he listened and blushed and quickly switched back. They clearly weren't done yet, and he really did not want to hear anything more about her monthlies.
He was tempted to taste what was being cooked here, but did not want to be responsible for their punishment if anything was discovered missing, so he moved on.
He did leave the eye he had formed in the corner, though not intentionally at the time. He simply forgot to remove it. It was a simpler eye than those he had first made. He had created it almost automatically when he wanted to see into the room without having to stick his head out, and instead of a glass sphere, or seeing through an interface between solid or liquid, it was quite literally just an eye; he had simply formed a bit of air, made it part of himself and made it an eye.
When he later looked back on it, he would feel a bit chagrined at the realization that much of his cleverness early on had been entirely unnecessary.
For now he was occupied with drifting up the pipes, and occasionally shifting his attention back to the ninja world, or to Kushina's room. Unfortunately for his intention to return to Kushina's side, Mizuna stayed with her until she fell asleep, and at that point he was ejected back to his world.
He settled his little phantom, as he chose to call it for the moment, into an open crack in the stone walls and shifted it into a dense liquid metal, so that it would not be carried off by the water, and returned his focus to his body.
A moment later, a very wide grin split his face, as Xander discovered that the bit of himself he had created and secreted in the corner of Kushina's room was still there. Just as the other bits of himself had not been summoned to the ninja world, so this separate bit of himself had not been returned when the summoning ended.
This was an important discovery, Xander felt, as it meant that if he was careful to always form a new bit of himself in each world he visited, he would be able to return to them at any time, and that in turn meant that any effort he put forth to create a home here would not be wasted.
A bit worried that only a single anchor present in the ninja's world would be too little, especially if it was discovered, Xander decided to fashion some more permanent anchors.
The first issue to solve was to make something solid enough that it would not be able to be simply blown away. After all, it would not help him having an anchor to the ninja world if it got scattered to the four winds. Besides, it made for an interesting challenge, given that he had no power over solid things, except for his own self.
That gave him the key, however, and after quickly forming another bit of himself in the ninja world, in the form of a bit of liquid mixed in the inkwell on Kushina's desk, where it would be less likely to be blown away, he started work.
Initially, he practiced in his lair, so as to not alert anyone watching Kushina. He started by forming a small bit of liquid, then fully inhabiting the liquid, and then shifting to solid form. It took a few tries, and some interesting focus and concentration to affect how exactly his fluid form translated into solidity, since he actually did not want living flesh this time.
Eventually he succeeded, transitioning a small bit of himself into the solid form of a plush doll, a little plush chameleon with cotton stuffing and large black eyes mostly concealed by cones of green fabric. There was a pouch of liquid on the base, as a weight to right the plushie and keep it from ending up on its back, along with a little pouch of fluid in each extremity, to allow limited mobility through his power. He was also hoping that the fluid would give him a focal point to ensure he could transition it back to fluid even after he pulled his consciousness back out of it.
As he expected, he could not withdraw the connection it had to himself when it was solid, as it was not then directly subject to his power, so he could not use this as a manufacturing method for gifts for his friends, but for anchors it would do fine.
Passing the plushie through himself from one fluid bit to another worked, though it felt unpleasantly like he was a sock or a pair of jeans being turned inside out.
Remembering then that he had not yet explored fully his ability to emulate NASA, he fashioned a new form from a fresh batch of liquid, modeling it after Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four as a suitably solid shape, as well as one more resistant to heat than merely Hulking out would give him. He used a separate batch of liquid to minimize the risk to himself, since what he was about to try was the equivalent of standing at ground zero for a rocket engine test firing, then entering it and going momentarily airy, he slipped out of the hideout and headed for the canyons in which he had recently played hero, leaving his original self within his hideout.
Finding a suitable canyon, and settling himself firmly against the wall, he let himself move into solid form. As he expected, he did not have enough of an idea on how to make a form like this workable, and he had to return to liquid form to shift his hands together, cupped as if firing a hadouken from the Street Fighter games in the Sunnydale Arcade.
Back in solid form, he produced a pilot light, and then started feeding liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into his cupped hands. As the flame caught and started, he started increasing the flow rate, and as the roar built in the still air, he quickly tried to form a shield of air between his hands and the flame.
He was forced to stop almost immediately, having lost control of the process when he split his attention, being forced off track by the unexpected sensation of heat in his fingers. Apparently, he could feel them melting, even if they were stone.
Reforming, he tried again, this time starting with the shield of air, basically a cup of air that he forced to remain still, then igniting the oxygen and hydrogen within the cup.
After just a few tries, he was being pressed back against the canyon wall, straining against the immense force, as a spear of brilliant blue roared out of his cupped hands.
To his amazement and confusion, when his control faltered and it slipped to the side, instead of looking like a smooth lance of blue light, as he had pictured it, it looked wavy, with an effect almost like line art, where the bands of color came together and diverged again, forming what appeared to be a series of diamonds of remarkable brightness.
As he tried again and again, thrilled with the forces he was wielding, and marveling at the effect it was having on the far canyon wall, he only slowly became aware that he was actually moving his arms and legs, bracing against the strain, and adjusting his aim slightly. When he realized this, he promptly stopped firing completely, and focused on himself.
He was still solid, as far as he could tell he had not subconsciously gone liquid, and a quick production of a mirror in the air demonstrated that he was in fact still encased in rock, still looking very much like the Thing of the F4. Shifting slowly, Xander was startled to realize that he could actually see his muscles bunching and flexing beneath his rocky exterior, as it cracked and reformed.
A bit freaked out, Xander quickly went fluid and returned to his normal shape and went solid again, watching himself warily, lest the rocky plates return. After another minute of waiting, he sighed and slumped to the ground, startled, curious, and more than a bit afraid.
After some pondering, he looked up again and realized that the self he was seeing in the mirror wasn't, that this was a fresh bit of liquid he had used, and in spite of his looking just as he had looked the last time he had looked in the mirror, his body was still in the hideout waiting for him, a fact he quickly verified by shifting into it and looking about, then shifting back again.
Distracted by slowly growing sounds of movement, Xander went transparent and quickly returned to his hideout, too busy being worried to care what the investigating demons would think of the aftermath of his personal rocket test.
Getting to his hideout and seeing himself already there, though expected, was still a bit unnerving, but he knew that he needed to at least try to understand what was going on, so he shifted again, solid to liquid and back, returning to his stone form, then sat down; though it was more of a collapsing thump than a proper sit, as he discovered that he was not quite that fully bendable yet.
Ignoring his odd position, he focused his senses inward, examining this body with his ability to sense fluids, and comparing it to his original body. Even as he watched, he could see the internal fluid networks becoming more defined. In slight disbelief, but with a growing idea of what might be happening, he turned his attention to the distant plush toy in Kushina's room, and discovered that it too had made a degree of progress at forming a network, the little pockets of fluid he left had tendrils making their way towards each other.
Shifting back into his own body, where he could speak, Xander tried to reason it out, thinking aloud. "Nothing about being able to control liquid explains a solid form developing veins or whatever. So it isn't the fluid. And I definitely did not form anything like that in the plushie, so it is not me subconsciously doing a better job making bodies, not when I can look at them and watch it growing. So it has to be something innate . . . it has to be the healing factor! When I went solid, those became part of my body, and that stupid healing factor has already put me back together from basically barbecue." He shivered, remembering the horror of that experience.
Quickly, Xander pulled the plush toy back to his side, unwilling to leave it there until he was sure. "It is either going to fix their bodies back to a point where they are alive . . . or it is going to correct them until they match my original super-soldier optimized form."
Xander watched the plushie closely, figuring that it would show those sorts of changes the fastest, as it was further from a human form than the rocky victim of cosmic irradiation. But while the changes continued at a very slow pace, he never saw the slightest sign of a change to the exterior.
A bit relieved, and a lot disturbed, Xander finally returned the plushie to Kushina's room, his reasons for wanting an anchor not having changed, though he made a note to check it regularly, to make sure it had not decided to keep going, and become fully human in form.
He returned to the Thing shape then, grumbling that his term of 'phantom' did not work at all in applying to this one, as it had far too obvious of a physical presence to support that, and getting clumsily to his feet, began pacing around his chamber, stretching and moving, then trying to talk. As he anticipated, his healing factor appeared to respond to this, improving the areas he was actively exercising more rapidly, which helped explain why it had happened at all. While in that shape and producing the rocket thrust, he had obviously been trying to shift and adjust to it, and given his inability to do so, his healing factor had kicked in to fix the problem.
When even after getting his rocky shape to the point that he could do a handstand in it, its appearance was still that of a rocky behemoth, Xander set aside his worry.
Instead, he turned his attention to the substance he had sensed so briefly in the earlier confrontation in Kushina's bedroom. He had heard a fair bit about it later from Kushina, especially regarding the almost magical effects that skilled practitioners could achieve with it. Attempting to directly produce this chakra at first seemed to have no effect.
Xander was surprised and confused at this, as he had felt certain that when the strange-eyed lady's use showed up to his senses, it meant this chakra stuff was subject to his powers.
Focusing his senses, he again tried to produce it. This time he was able to sense it as he produced it, but it was simply dissipating into the air, and doing nothing interesting or useful, and he sighed, resigning himself to returning to it later, when he had learned more of it, and of how the ninja coaxed it into working for them.
Remembering that he now had a way to get to the ninja world without being summoned, Xander quickly shifted into the plush toy in Kushina's room, then promptly formed another vaporous self and switched into it, then moved as quickly as he could away from Kushina's apartment building.
Rising into the sky, Xander picked a road and drifted along it, out of the village. He did not expect much conflict would be visible in the village itself, but if there was no conflict going on, what would they need ninja for? Logically then, if he continued looking long enough, he would eventually find a fight he could watch, which might give him more clues what this chakra stuff was all about.
As he drifted he also slid higher in the sky, steadily increasing the field of his view. He stopped while he could still discern individuals on the ground, though they looked as small as mice. While he drifted, Xander began adjusting this new shape, not wanting it to be associated with himself if he ended up using it where it could be seen.
Instead, he modeled it after some of the ninja he had seen, average height and build, vaguely Oriental features, if perhaps a bit caricatured due to the lack of a nearby model to use as a base, black on black on black clothing and mask.
He saw the occasional traveler or group of travelers on the road below. It was more than a dirt track, as there was no sign of rutting, so either it was regularly graded, or it was made of sterner stuff than rock and dirt, but it was definitely not asphalt, and there were no painted lines on it, no lane markings.
It wound through open fields, and as he rose higher, on either side Xander saw water glimmering. There had been something naggingly familiar about the ninja village but he had not previously been able to place it. Now he did, it was the salt smell of a distant ocean. Sunnydale was not exactly on the water, but compared to the desert and mountains he had experienced in the Hell dimension, this place was much closer to the humidity and faint tinge of salt in the air he had grown up breathing.
The road drifted towards the coast and the water came further into view and on it Xander spied a small fishing fleet. He was tempted to go and have a look, but reminded himself that he was looking for a ninja fight so he could get a better look at how they used this chakra stuff.
He could not help daydreaming as he continued down the coast of the tremendous advantage his powers would give in a naval conflict. Whirlpools, waterspouts, infinite ammo for his personal broadsides, or even just pulling up a massive wave to tip a ship over; if he ever wanted to be a pirate, he could definitely pull it off in a big way.
Xander had just spied some mountains in the far distance, barely visible on the horizon, having passed over several intervening bodies of water during his musing, when a sudden flare of light below attracted his attention, and he immediately headed for it.
He was promptly rewarded with a visible shockwave below, rippling through fields of grass, and zeroing in on it, he found a small group of ninja engaged in battle. He could not immediately identify how many there were, as some of them appeared to be erupting from the ground as though lying in wait, while several on the other side looked so identical that Xander wondered if he had somehow been affected by the shockwave and seeing double because of it. Though it was more like quadruple than double.
A moment later one of the fighters was struck by a spray of thrown metal stars, and promptly collapsed in a splash of water, like a popped water balloon.
Picking up his pace, Xander zoomed down to where he could clearly see all the fighters, then stopped and engaged his full senses, trying to get as much detail as possible as the ninja pulled off their techniques.
Though weapons were flying almost continually between them, from what he could see, they were not directed at the fighters themselves, and where they were, the targeted ninja had no trouble deflecting them. Rather, they were being employed to break up the balloon clones, to disrupt other special effects, and to stop the completion of the fancy hand-waving that Xander now saw accompanied most of the special effects.
"Hollywood would love this," Xander mused. It was kind of odd, as to his mind, what they were pulling off belonged more in a Chinese Kung Fu film, with badly dubbed voices, rather than a ninja flick. Although the disappearing underground and popping up again elsewhere was pretty ninja-ish, he supposed.
There was a minor degree of color difference in the clothing, as Xander started to identify the sides involved. One of the sides seemed to favor dark browns and tans, and the other had more green and blue. Their techniques showed a similar shift, with the brown/tan fighters doing the move through the ground trick, pulling up walls of earth to block attacks, and sending waves of rock at their opponents. The other side seemed to be firing water bullets, forming those water balloon guys; which actually Xander was fairly impressed by as they seemed to be able to make attacks, until the opponents got in a good solid hit, at which point they collapsed into water; and calling up concealing mists to hide their attacks.
From what he could tell, things were pretty evenly matched, and given that he saw nothing about either group of fighters that looked particularly like the insignia he had seen in Kushina's village, Xander was not inclined at first to pick a side.
Instead, he watched and learned, focusing his water senses, especially trying to work out the water-balloon people. Pulling up a mist or firing a water bullet was no great feat, and he could already travel underground without much trouble. He could form additional liquid bodies as well, but he could not have multiple of them attacking at once, which seemed pretty neat.
One by one the fighters fell, and it was not until only two were left that Xander felt forced to intervene. It came down to one female in brown and tan, injured and exhausted, against a less injured guy and the three duplicates of him on the other side. Even at the last, Xander did not intend to interfere - it was not as if they were attacking an unarmed civilian, after all.
But when the man stood back and started to loosen his pants while his duplicates moved in to overpower the tired kunoichi that Xander had enough. Fighting was all well and good, but he was not going to stand for rape.
He went solid and dropped into the clearing from above. "That's enough," he said, staring at the leering man. The ninja barked a laugh.
"She's mine," he growled, and with a fluid series of hand-motions, he summoned five more of himself and sent them at Xander.
Xander laughed. These duplicates were nothing more than bags of water, and as such, useless against him. Still, he wanted to maintain his cover as a ninja, so he mimicked some of the hand-signing motions before flicking his fingers, popping the balloon-men simply by jerking the water that made them up in several directions.
The other ninja snarled, even as Xander noticed the woman collapse to her knees in fatigue. His hands flashed again, and the area was swaddled in a dense fog.
Before Xander could react, he felt a sharp pain, and looked down to find a blade sticking out of his chest. He immediately went fluid, and the sword fell free, the hole sealing up. He struck back, drawing out one of his spiked balls from his pouch, and ripping the fog away with his power, he sent the spiky implement hurtling into the other ninja.
It met no resistance and the other ninja faded from view even as several projectiles splashed through Xander. Xander replied with several more attacks, taking a water bullet to the chest with no ill-effect, but doing no damage in return.
Realizing that he was being tricked somehow, Xander closed his eyes and reached out with his power, finding the two nearest human type bodies. A quick check confirmed one was the woman. He grabbed the other with his power, pulling it in front of him. He was surprised when he opened his eyes and could see nothing in front of him where his power insisted the enemy was.
A moment later Xander saw a long swirl of water coalesce from the various puddles remaining from all the water attacks, and form into a beautiful long, sinuous dragon, that roared and came at him. He almost failed to react, he was so surprised at its beauty and at the amazing detail in the technique; but it was, after all, water, and though he again encountered a curious resistance, he was able to stop it in its tracks.
Focusing back on where his senses told him the enemy was, he focused harder, forcing the idiot to be completely still, and delving deeper, concentrated on all the iron-bearing blood. With one sharp push, he moved all the blood five feet behind the nin.
Instantly a veil seemed to pass away from his sight, and he saw the ninja hanging in the air in front of him, quite dead. Xander shifted his vision slightly, looking at the dragon that was still hanging in the air as well, somehow holding together, because none of the water forming it could move, though he was sure that like the veil, whatever technique had been driving it as gone.
"Stay!" Xander barked at it with a silly grin, then he turned and dropped his hold on them both as he walked over to look at the lady. He felt a little guilty about not caring if she died, but then, she was a ninja, surely she expected any mission could be her last. Even Kushina, who had never had a mission yet, understood that.
That did not mean he had to stand still for rape.
He produced a healing draught and massaged her throat until she swallowed it. When she jerked up and grabbed for a knife, he stepped back and waited, giving her time to look about and see her assailant, and her dead companions and enemies. Her eyes widened, and she cast him a quick look. When he did nothing, she darted over to the ninja he had killed, checking him and confirming that he was dead.
Xander had to admit, from the front he merely looked surprised, his eyes still open and staring, his body not yet stiff. When she flipped him over and saw the intricate pattern of cuts on his flesh where his blood had taken the most direct path out, leaving his skin traced with an imprint of his circulatory system, she visibly relaxed, then glancing over the other ninja, she sighed.
Rising slowly, she walked hesitantly over to Xander, and then fell to her knees in front of him. She bowed forward, pressing her face to the ground. At first, Xander thought this was a ritual of gratitude, but when he leaned down to hear her better, he realized that she was offering herself to him. "Master, please accept this unworthy one into your service," she was saying.
He blushed to hear it, though this blush was well concealed by his face mask. He reached out and touched her on her shoulder, and when she looked up at him, he lifted her to her feet. She was a few inches taller than the shape he was in right now, and her exposed face was both pretty, blood-stained, and showing what he read as nervousness and acceptance.
"You do not wish to return to your village?" he questioned her, trying to suppress the lecherous urges reminding him that he had not had sex since leaving Naamahalat and this was a hot chick offering herself to him!
She gave a hard glare towards the fallen figures, then shook her head. "The mission has failed, I cannot complete it alone. If I return without them I will be branded a failure and given to their family to atone. I have no strength left to fight you, and as a missing nin I would not last long alone against the hunter-nin. You are strong, but even the strong may have use for the weak. Will you accept me into your service?"
Xander nodded. He did not really know what he would do with her, but certainly he could protect her against other ninja, and having saved her he felt some responsibility. Besides, having an adult, trained ninja meant he could get demonstrations of chakra techniques directly, without having to search for random fights to observe them.
The only question was where to take her? And how to get her there?
Remembering his failure to form a fluid/magic portal to his home, he wondered if knowing and experiencing this world and the demon plane would be enough for him to form a portal between these two places. If it worked, it would reassure him that he could move between different dimensions without having to depend on a summoner existing on the other side, since the plane summoners on his home world accessed was specifically blocked for him.
His decision made, Xander tried it, doing nothing outward to show what he was attempting. He focused his power on forming an eight-foot tall fluid portal between his current location and his hideout on the demon plane.
When a beautiful plane of shimmering silver appeared in the air, a tall oval eight feet high and five feet across, Xander grinned inwardly, and gestured for her to precede him through it.
She looked at him worriedly for a moment before nodding, and leapt through the portal. Xander jumped through after her, remembering only afterwards that this body was one he had formed in Kushina's hometown, and so now he had three bodies in the chamber.
His new ninja looked askance at the massive orange Thing-clone sitting unmoving in the light of a single glowing orb overhead, but said nothing. Xander stood still behind her and relaxed, making sure he was well balanced, before he slipped his mental focus out of his ninja form and into his original body, in which he then stood and walked over as if to greet the returning pair.
He had only a moment to decide if he was going to reveal the extent of his powers to her, especially the fact that he WAS the ninja she had just given her loyalty to, and though he was not sure it was the right thing to do, he also knew from what he had learned in his time with Naamahalat that some secrets were best kept, and that a show of confidence in the right circumstances could prevent a battle.
If the ninja-him deferred to the true-him, she would probably ascribe greater power and respect to him, which would reduce the potential for conflict.
His performance might have been a bit stilted, as he could only control one of his forms at a time in full, but with the ability to partition that control, to manipulate the head of one while controlling the body of the other, for example, he was able to pull off what he hoped was a convincing performance as he welcomed them back and dispersed the gateway.
When he asked for an introduction, the kunoichi blushed furiously as she realized she had not given her name even to her new Master. "This unworthy one is called Mayu," she said, directing her words to the black-clad ninja-Xander.
After Xander finished his little impromptu play, he decided to bring Mayu outside and let her demonstrate her skills for him. Curious if the portal thing would work between closer places, Xander tried it, attempting to form a similarly sized portal between his chamber and the outside.
To his surprise, though at first it looked almost mirror-like, when the fluid stilled, he realized he could actually see the outside directly, as if it was simply a window. Glancing over at the rocky self, Xander decided it would make sense if they were all to come and watch, and so he made a deliberate gesture as he expanded the portal, then stepped aside and shifted into the Thing-self, standing and nodding to his ninja-self, and passed through the doorway.
Co-ordinating his activities was not the most comfortable thing, and Xander knew he would have to work out something better before too much longer, as first he, then Mayu and his ninja-self passed through the portal. He had introduced the orange brute as Tarou, which he understood to mean 'big son' in the ninja tongue, and the nin as Ryu, or dragon. For himself, the closest he could come to Xander in their tongue was Sanjuro, which apparently meant thirty, but frankly, coming up with names on the fly was easier than actually trying to make them seem like properly separate individuals.
He hoped that everything was new enough and strange enough that Mayu would not be able to piece together what was so odd about the way the three moved before he had a chance to find a solution. Hopefully one that did not involve him taking another long step away from being human; though looking at the newly named Tarou, he was not sure he could actually get any further.
Ryu stepped forward and looked at Mayu. "Please show us your skills," he asked her.
Mayu looked back and forth between them for a moment, before nodding. Xander focused on her with all his senses as she went through a series of hand signs and then thrust her hands forward. A veritable forest of stone spikes, long and thin like needles, thrust up from the dry ground. Xander nodded thoughtfully. That looked pretty effective if you were facing a small group that was well-bunched, or to close off a stone passageway. It was also something that he was not sure he could duplicate with his powers, which was a point in her favor.
She went through another series of handsigns and opened her mouth, spitting out an impossible amount of mud, that quickly rose into a wall before her and hardened.
She made a quick slashing gesture with her right hand, and the wall crumbled away. Another series of handsigns, and she slammed her foot into the ground, and a wave seemed to pass through the ground in front of her, shooting forward and suddenly erupting about twenty yards away into a large stone wall.
She gestured again, and the wall fell forward, sending up a great cloud of dust.
After a couple more techniques, each appearing to take more out of her than the last, ninja-Xander gestured for her to stop, and had her eat a generic healing pill. He watched and monitored as she consumed it, looking surprised as she perked back up, but he did not see more of the chakra energy appear in her. Then he had her consume a chakra-restoring pill, and now found that he could see, as her coils refilled, the coils themselves, and the brighter or thicker spots where the energy pooled.
Renewed, she continued her techniques. Xander paid particular attention when she demonstrated a cloning technique that formed a duplicate of her from some of the mud she had produced earlier. It took on her coloration and appearance, duplicating even the motion of her hair in the wind, moving about independently, as far as he could see.
While he was interested in the rest of her techniques, and was impressed by some of them, he kept returning in his mind to the clone technique. Somehow, she had effectively been in two places at once without any apparent mental strain, though it had obviously required a fair bit of chakra. That was not a particular concern of Xander's, since he was confident he could produce as much chakra as he desired, he merely needed to learn how to control it. The water clones made by the ninja he had killed had been clearly directed by him, moving at his command without a word. This clone, on the other hand, seemed to be more free, less restrained and controlled.
She was clearly determined to impress him, and he was equally sure that the austere desert had her confused and worried, but she remained focused and plowed through her repertoire. When she finished, he questioned her and learned that she knew several techniques she could not demonstrate, due to certain lacks.
When he realized that one of those lacks was due to them not gathering her equipment and supplies from the battlefield, he promptly formed a portal back to it.
Returning his actual self to the safety of his hideout, he brought Tarou-Xander, intending to load him down with the weight of the equipment. After all, if she needed equipment, and the other ninja were dead, there was no reason to leave it with them.
He allowed her to perform an earth-style technique to bury the bodies after she gathered what she wanted, and found himself impressed by the apparently untouched ground that was present afterwards. She had concealed the bodies in the ground, and at the same time sealed the rents in the ground, restoring the uninterrupted pattern of grass.
She was just passing back through the portal, which Xander had dropped and reformed so that the far side was back in their hideout, when he noticed a shimmering figure out of the corner of his eye.
What he saw would eventually lead him to a new understanding of his power, but at the moment, it merely looked like he had forgotten something, as the water dragon the non-dead lecherous ninja had summoned was still present.
Furthermore, it was sitting on the ground, looking at him. Xander tried to remember exactly what it had looked like when he first noticed it, but it had been in the middle and then the aftermath of a battle, and though his mind had been improved by the super-soldier serum, it was really merely the correcting of minor damage done in his upbringing; nothing like a dramatic increase in intelligence or memory.
He waved at it casually, willing it to disperse, only to realize, moments too late to do anything about it, that its eyes had been tracking him, for he had not stopped moving when he saw it. An instant later he had passed through the portal, having already sent Tarou through, and he put it from his mind as an oddity of chakra to look into later. It would be no hardship, since studying chakra was his intent for the next while anyway.
When Mayu turned out to have a map of the world in her supplies, Xander's attention was grabbed, and the unusual water-dragon quickly forgotten.
Xander avoided showing any particular interest in Whirlpool, not wanting to find out that Mayu had some lifelong feud against them or something. There were too many advantages to having a kunoichi working for him, both in terms of learning about their world, of learning things to help Kushina, and in terms of his eventual return to his own world.