Rebirth -- Book 4

Chapter 1 - Hunted

For the first time in many ages, Konoha had been at peace. The Fourth Great Ninja war was over. Kakashi Hatake had retired as the Sixth Hokage as Naruto Uzumaki realized his life's dream to become the Seventh. Though still fragile, the bonds between the great shinobi nations were growing-- old hate dying slowly with the past.

Their struggles were far from over. Remnants of enemies still lingered in the shadows. However, for the first time in many ages, Keiko felt at home and focused on the troubles of one world. The portal that brought her to this world from her home in a parallel universe in feudal Japan lie dormant. So far as they knew, no one else knew how to use the portal without the texts she had found on her home world. It had been a means to an end. She was cast out among the Inu Yokai and hunted by her cousin, Sesshoumaru, for trying to protect humans. With no allies on her world, she travelled to others to help humans fight back against evil and learning various jutsu and magic along the way.

She had never truly felt at home anywhere until meeting the silver haired shinobi Kakashi Hatake. Despite some unusual turns, they had now been married nearly 20 years. Aside from struggles with the Otsusuki, all was well.

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Somewhere buried in the woods, gravel bounced across a rocky floor as a solitary cave shook. Characters carved into the stone wall began to glow as the quakes violence began to grow....

Keiko's eyes shot open. Light was just starting to shine through the window and stretch across the room as her eyes struggled to focus in panic. Kakashi was sitting up next to her, her reading in the low light. Sensing no external cause of her alarm he raised his eyebrow at her questioningly.

"Bad dream?" he asked as her breathing returned to normal.

"I'm not sure," she said vaguely, still focused on something she couldn't see.

Kakashi continued to survey her out of the corner of his eye. They had their fair share of strange occurrences and Keiko's senses about things that were amiss often tended to be accurate. He figured if he could get any additional detail out of her over breakfast, it might be worth mentioning to Naruto when he went up to visit the office of the Hokage later that day.

Kakashi sighed and closed his book. He reached over to run his fingers lovingly through his wife's starlight hair and his eyes softened. She seemed to come back to reality and smiled back at him. A moment later he withdrew his hand and stretched before throwing off the covers and getting on the floor to do morning pushups. Keiko went and busied herself in the kitchen.

The sound of dishes clinking became a background noise as she stood looking out the window over the sink. She stared off into the treeline leading into the woods, lost in thought.

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In the middle of the runes carved into the stone, a doorway opened and glowed as a spectrum of color swirled faster. Out of it stepped several figures. The leader was young and wore a dark coat lined with a fur collar. His dark hair was slicked back revealing an adornment on his forehead. He smiled cooly as his associates stepped through after him.

"I told you it would work, Chrollo," said a blonde-haired youth.

"Good work Shalnark," Chrollo mused. The smile widened across his face.

A petite raven-haired girl adjusted her glasses as she looked at the others. "I'm not exactly sure what we are planning to accomplish here when we don't even know what we will find," said Shizuku.

"We already went over this," glowered Phinks, his hardened expression fixed. "We're looking for new powers and technologies to give us additional advantage to our cause. If we don't find anything here, we just dial up somewhere else."

"Until we know more about the area, I suggest you keep it down," hissed Feitan behind the cowl of his shirt.

"We're short on people today so let's split into two groups and survey the area," said Chrollo, ignoring the chatter. "Machi, Shalnark, Nobunaga, you're with me to the west. Feitan, Phinks, Shizuku, and Franklin, you check out the east side. Meet back here in four hours."

The teams all nodded silently and departed.

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Keiko continued to be distracted through the morning. She had no guest lectures for the day at the Konoha academy or the joint venture academy which was co-owned by the five great nations, so Kakashi drug her along to the Hokage's office.

"Shitsurei shimasu," Keiko said at the door as Kakashi just floated in. Naruto and Shikamaru looked up from the document they had been studying behind the desk. There were still piles of papers around the room, despite that they had recently installed a computer to cut down on paperwork.

"Nee-chan," Naruto complained, "you don't need to be so formal when others aren't around."