Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter. Does this count as a Wednesday upload? Surely it does. It's still Wednesday for like half the world. Next five chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
XXXXX- MIKOTO UCHIHA
Mikoto was no stranger to forests. Children of the Uchiha were expected to learn the forests of the Land of Fire like the back of their hands before they spent a decade on this world. As the daughter of the Clan Heir at the time, she learned the forests—even despite the active hostilities—before she had turned seven. So that was why she was able to tell within seconds that there was something wrong with this forest.
For one, it was dark. Too dark. Not the dark of night with the moon covered by clouds. This was an oppressive kind of darkness. Without her Sharingan, she would not have been able to see a hand spread in front of her face. That told her early on that whatever summon creatures she had shown affinity to, they were capable of either seeing in pitch darkness or did not need to see.
Bats? She sure hoped not. The rats of the sky as a summon would be far from enjoyable. Kushina would tease her relentlessly. Not like she cared all that much for Kushina's approval, but it would still be inconvenient. Add to that the fact that Sensei expected all three of them to leave this with a measurable increase in power and threat potential, and she was even less interested.
Still, she kept her ears strained for anything that could be picked up in the dark, quiet forest, but as it had been since her arrival, the forest was quiet. Too quiet. No croaking of frogs, no hares scratching along the foliage underfoot, no creatures in the trees. Whatever summons called this place home had either hunted it dry of life, or had frightened everything that lived here so thoroughly that nothing dared to make a sound. If she had to pick, she would rather the latter. Creatures too stupid to keep their prey ecosystem alive had nothing of interest to her.
So she hoped for the latter and kept moving while straining her senses to notice any change in the surrounding environment. There was nothing for a while, and then she felt the first disturbance in her chakra system. A disturbance that preceded an intense feeling of vertigo that made her want to drop to her knees and vomit out her intestines. She quelled it with control of her body and then shifted her chakra flow, creating a counter-disturbance that shattered the genjutsu in one go.
She felt better instantly. What an interesting genjutsu. And then came another intrusion in her chakra network. This one was far gentler and more insidious. It shifted perception just a bit. Just a tiny bit. Everything was a few centimetres to the left of where it should have been. Without her Sharingan, she would never have noticed. People got it wrong when they tried to conceptualise the advantage the Sharingan gave to its users when it came to genjutsu.
The eye of hypnosis had been studied relentlessly, so few misconceptions existed there, but when it came to the ability to resist such genjutsu, the information out there was oftentimes more untrue than not. Some assumed that genjutsu resistance worked as an offshoot ability to the eye of hypnosis, but that was far from the case.
The ability to cast genjutsu did not in and of itself give any person a higher ability to resist them. Chakra control, observational skills, and experience were things that improved genjutsu ability, and those things did give some higher resistance to general genjutsu. The eye of hypnosis let an Uchiha go by without having to worry much about the basic building blocks of genjutsu. Sharingan genjutsu was a crutch for the talentless as much as it was a springboard for the blessed.
Resistance, on the other hand, came from the unique perception granted by the Sharingan eyes themselves. While anyone with a Sharingan could look and see if another person was disturbed with a genjutsu, turning that attention inwards was difficult enough to do on the best of times. In battle, it was nearly impossible. It was the Sharingan's visual acuity and eidetic memory that were the true barriers. Few people understood what it took to see as the Sharingan did, and so any illusory worlds would fall apart from being not fleshed out enough, from not having the requisite level of detail. And then the second part was that the eyes never forgot anything. They saw the world in immense detail, and then all that was burned into long-term memory instantly.
Even the slightest deviation in that environment would be noticed. This genjutsu, despite its subtlety to most others, might as well have announced itself with a blaring alarm and the sound of trumpets to her. But she did not dispel it. She could not see who was placing the genjutsu on her, but by allowing it to remain, she would ideally be able to trace the chakra signature back to its owner.
She kept two images of reality in her mind at the same time. The one that her mind knew to be the truth—the one gained from her eyes and memory having been able to track reality in the preceding minutes before the foreign chakra had invaded her system—was the first. The second image of reality was the one created by the genjutsu. Anyone not an Uchiha would have failed to even conceptualise the possibility. Any Uchiha with less than three tomoe would have balked at the difficulty. Any Uchiha with three tomoe in their Sharingan not named Uzume or trained by the madman that was Shorirama Senju would have failed to take the risk. Because it was a risk.
Remaining within an opponent's genjutsu gave them all sorts of opportunities to end your life when the time came. And then there was the chance that the decision to remain in the genjutsu was not your own. There was the chance that your opponent had planted a suggestion within their genjutsu to prevent you from deciding to break it even if you did discover it. A very real risk, and one she did not fool herself as to the possibility of.
But still a risk that she decided was negligible. This impulse had not come from nowhere, after all. Sensei was fond of letting her ensnare him in genjutsu after genjutsu to lull them into a false sense of confidence—of security. The glee on his face when he tore through them like training dolls in an academy classroom even as he should have had no idea they were there was burned into her mind quite thoroughly. She threaded her chakra with the one playing with her perception of reality and began to follow it.
She mapped it out in the distance just in case the genjutsu user realised what she was doing and ended it early, but it seemed they did not. They did not even seem to consider it a risk, clearly assuming that her change in direction was seemingly random. It was only when she was within clicks of reaching it that the chakra system began to shift the genjutsu it had placed upon her. It sent more chakra in, and if she had not noticed the first one, this one would have been even harder to stop.
For one, it sacrificed subtlety for power, instead having the first one shift focus from working through messing with her vision to forcing her to ignore the intrusion to her chakra system. And ignore it she did. The additional genjutsu created an averting effect on the most direct path to whoever had set the genjutsu up. And this is where Mikoto differed both from her Sensei and her Aunt. Shorirama-Sensei and Uzume-nee would both have shattered the genjutsu there and sprinted the rest of the distance to find their assailants, smiles on their crazed faces. Mikoto, on the other hand, she knew to thread the line. She kept going, and played along with the genjutsu, moving away.
If there was one thing she understood, it was forests, and sometimes, the best way to reach a goal was not the most direct path.
After all, she could destroy trees at will, so what did she lose from giving her opponent a false sense of security as regards her approach? She veered to the side just as they wanted her to, and then began to walk along the forest seemingly aimlessly. All the while, she analysed what she could of her opponent. The chakra network was highly developed, but completely inhuman. The circuits did not flow in the same way a human chakra network did—from the heart, along 361 nodes, and then back to the heart again and again unless expended. It was like the whole creature was chakra. Chakra was infused into its very being in the way it just would not have been for a human being. And it was a lot of chakra, to be fair. The only issue being that the chakra was massive. More than she had. Not quite Sensei or even Kushina levels, but still quite a bit.
It would not be an easy opponent to face, but at least she was sure that this would not be a fight to the death. The creature was still trying to test her. The genjutsu got more varied and divergent over time, as if it was trying to see how much it could get away with and how long it would take for Mikoto to break out. It was a master of its craft. If only it knew that she had long mastered and then transcended basic genjutsu.
She waited until she could sense the chakra a few hundred metres to the right. The path was blocked by several trees, but that would not be a problem. Not for a student of Shorirama Senju. She followed the thread of chakra she had sent on a course straight towards her opponent, and then injected her own genjutsu. A simple thing, but as expected, it noticed, and had broken out of it in a second. A second that gave her time to layer an even more complex one, and then two more before she shattered its own hold on her and dove into the ground.
She knew where her opponent was, and so cared little that the echolocation of the ground seemed to be muted by some sort of force that made the sensation she received back from the earth feel like it was being sent through a layer of… something. Just interference or something like that. So when she rose from the ground, her eyes devoured her opponent with a greed spurred by her previous inability to see or sense much through the muted ground.
It was an Owl. Roughly the size of two people standing on each other's shoulders, and wide enough that it was like three or four adult males standing next to each other. Its eyes narrowed at her arrival. Surprise? No, not that. Its wings spread out, her eyes tracking each one as they stretched far and far. Too far for her to see their length without turning her head from this close. That was data as well.
They bent inwards, and she weaved out of the way as the one from the left stabbed into the ground where her feet had once been.
The Owl straightened up, stepping backwards. Mikoto, about to shift the flow of the fight and take the fight to the creature, came up short. Shocked by the disengagement. She nodded, taking a step back of her own. She knew what the end of a spar looked like.
"Good work on finding me. Good work on tricking me, Summoner." Mikoto nodded at both compliments, noting the word used there. Summoner. Had she already passed the test?
"You have earned the right to summon me by finding me and not dying when I engaged. But of the Owls of the dark forest, I am the weakest. If you want to be able to summon my brothers and sisters, you must pass their tests," the Owl said.
"Their tests? Each Owl has their own test?" she asked, not quite sure she was following. That made no sense. A summoning clan was an all-or-nothing deal. Sensei had the whale contract and so could summon all the whales. It wasn't like he had to convince each whale to allow him to summon them individually. That would make no sense and be a waste of time.
"Yes. We are not a clan as most other summons would consider themselves. Consider us more like an alliance of related parties. Each of us maintains their own territory in this forest, and we rarely interfere with the activities of each other. However, the true strength of the Dark Forest can only be called upon by a Summoner who has earned the right to summon each and every one of us," the Owl said. Mikoto barely resisted the urge to sigh. This sounded like a slog already. The good news was that this one already admitted to being the weakest, so that meant there was some power to be gained in seeking the rest out. Still a slog, but perhaps a worthwhile one. Only time would tell.
"What is your name, Summoner?" the Owl asked. Oh, she probably should have asked first, shouldn't she? Just calling him the Owl in her mind would be pretty confusing when she finally got to meet the others.
"Mikoto Uchiha. And what is your own name, Great Owl?" she asked, offering a bow that the Owl returned with a nod that barely registered.
"I am no Great Owl. I remain in my adolescence. I only just split out from my Mother four moons before today. You may address me as Cikap-kamuy, the master of the mind and its many arts. To my South and my North are my fellows. You may proceed in either direction, if you dare," the Ow—Cikap-kamuy, she corrected herself, said.
"Thank you. But I must ask, how strong is the strongest of your kind?" she asked. Best to know if all this would be worth it.
Cikap-kamuy gave her a look, the owl's black eyes seeming to say nothing and everything at once.
"Stronger than you," he said, and then he turned. As he did so, Mikoto felt a burning sensation begin to appear on her arm. She looked down, pulling away her sleeve to find that a tattoo of Cikap-kamuy had etched itself on her arm.
"You may summon me whenever you wish. And if I have need of you, I will summon you. Go on, Mikoto Uchiha. Much awaits," he said.
XXXXXX- KUSHINA UZUMAKI
The Crabs. Well, Gyuki was right. They were assholes, she thought as she swam through waves that threatened to swallow her whole. 'Keep swimming until we say stop. When I stop you, you should be ready to begin the test,' the giant one had said. Not something she would have much minded, but one condition for all of this had been the inability to use chakra during the process. All of it had to be done without chakra. And that meant the freezing cold water was sending a bone-shaking chill straight into her with no interference beyond the little her clothes could provide.
The cold water would have been unfortunate but manageable on its own. What made the whole situation that much worse were the waves that kept trying to swallow her whole. How would she even know when the test was to begin? They had asked her to swim out and keep going until they called. Kushina might not have been able to use chakra, but she did still have a strong body and years of experience swimming through Uzu whirlpools with her cousins before she had been sent to Konoha to take up her duty. Cousins. Cousins who had not survived the attack on Uzushio, and whom she had never got to see again despite the promises they had made to each other.
She tried to turn her mind away from it, focusing only on her breath, but her mind refused to be drawn away. Sakura, Hana, Kasumi, Sora, Tsukiko—their names came without bidding, over and over again. How could she have forgotten them? Those who made her feel welcome even though she had been marked to be taken away from the village from a very young age. Trying to focus on just the swimming motion helped for a second or two—giving her some much-needed respite before a voice cut through her focus.
"You stole my Cousin, you thief. Bloody good for nothing tomato-hair." The voice was familiar. Tsunade's. She shook, not able to bring herself to complete the stroke. The water felt heavy on her skin. Even the little droplets of water that clung to her skin felt like anchors holding her down and preventing her from moving. And she struggled her way through until she could struggle no more.
Her next stroke was shorter, and the next sloppier and shorter still, until her limbs just refused to co-operate completely. Her feet were her only respite, and she tried to keep moving with them, but even they stopped working after some strokes. Nothing worked.
Her feet stilled, no longer able to keep her moving or even to keep her floating regardless. She just began to sink. The weight of the water forcing her down, and then more as more and more water piled above her. She had to hold her breath, she knew. Even as she went deeper and deeper until she could see no more light, she held her breath.
Do not breathe, Kushina, she commanded her body, and it listened.
A/N: Summons are fun, did I say that? Writing their various ways of doing things feels so enjoyable. Next five chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.