A New Way of Ninja, (Naruto)

21: Interlude of 3 Weeks/Years

Over the course of the rest of the evening, after Dabi had been sent back to his place, where, thankfully, no one noticed he'd been gone at all, Momo told the others all she could of what had happened.

They almost had more to tell her than she them, however, because Camie was able to fill in a lot of blanks that the shinobi had not explained to her, including who they all were and their backstories.

Momo was quite stunned to find out that Naruto himself had quite a sad history and that Gaara's was even worse than they'd been told.

But really, most of the ninjas' lives didn't sound very cheerful.

Bakugo had some comments on their power levels also, as, of course, that was what he'd been researching for all this time.

He explained to her that Naruto had the most raw power, but Sasuke had more hereditary powers that he didn't fully unlock until later in the story--later than they'd entered it.

Shoto sat in for this, though he said very little.

Still, he thought, after hearing all, that they'd done better than he'd have guessed they would against such opponents.

Wally said that maybe it was just as well they went in blind, because once he'd heard all this, he'd thought he'd have been pretty unsure about how well these people would listen.

See, Wally had done the research on the culture of the ninja themselves.

"I knew my girl would want to know their ideology," he said. "So while Camie-o and Explosion Boy were doing their research on stats and backstory, I was looking at posts people wrote about the show. It had a huge fan base when it came out, you know. Now people see it as kind of an old nostalgia trip thing."

"Yeah, it's a classic," Camie agreed. "My dad watched it."

[Remember that MHA is set in the future from our time, making this more likely.]

"Right...well, the show's whole way of thinking is kind of old too," Wally said. "And by old, I mean...uh, well, pretty barbercic in some ways."

Shine had initially gone to take a shower but was back now. She had her hair in a towel and slippers on and wore comfortable workout clothes, as if she'd settled in for the long account.

She also had, of course, some coffee.

Momo wanted to go take a shower herself but had been unable to tear herself from the discussion.

"They have this thing called the 'Will of Fire' or 'Stone' or "Lighting' or whatever nation they live in," Wally explained, holding up his phone. "It's basically that everyone just embodies the will of the whole village...which really means the Kage of it. It sounds nice on paper--everyone is united--but in practice, it means that a lot of leaders just made their ninja do these horrendously awful things to each other. They called this one village "Blood Mist Village". It's in season 1. They made the ninja students, like the young ones, kill everyone in their class."

"That's...horrible." Momo was shocked. "How could anyone do that?"

"Yean, right?" Camie made the "crazy" gesture. "And I bet y'all were thinking that the Sand were tough cookies."

"I hope that Mist Village is not one that they'll have anything to do with," Shoto spoke.

"Good news is, it did change leaders later," Camie shrugged. "The new leader was actually pretty chill. The old leader was being controlled by someone else. That happens, like, a lot in the later story."

"Can we be sure all this is true, though?" Momo asked. "And what of Itachi Uchiha's massacre? How much of what Sasuke told us was true?"

"Oh, that," Wally said. "Yeah, that was weird. I was reading about that too. People were saying Itachi was a hero basically for sparing Sasuke."