The Ways of the Ninja


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.