Tis but a scratch.

"Mito, did Tsuna-chan arrive here?!"

"...Huh? No I don't think so, wouldn't we have noticed if she did? She's still on the other side I can feel it."

"...? Then what did I just feel stepping into the forest?"

"Someone stepped into the forest? That can't be Tsuna-chan can it? She'd have been sent directly over here."

"Yes, but Kaguya is hanging around the person and watching over them."

"..Kaguya? But I thought she was going to watch over the person she chooses to send back!"

"I… I don't know… I'm just as confused right now."

"But even she shouldn't have been able to bring anyone other than Tsuna-chan here! No one can break through the layer unless they have a connection to us! It'd be hell to have to be stuck in that forest outside!"

"....I know….they're in the forest right now."

"So it is someone who has Tsuna's body but not her soul. Tsuna-chan should've passed through here even if she died right?"

"....that should be the only other choice….. But….the feeling I'm getting from my plants outside is just a little different? Are you sure your seals are working as they should?"

"You think I'll make a mistake?"

".... Let's just wait and watch what this person is here to do, we can't interfere unless there's a creature outside that breaks the rules anyway after all."

"....This is a mess isn't it… I wonder how things will change from now on.... I hope Kaguya knows what she's doing."

…..

"Mito! The body of the Four Tails is on the move! I'm going back to seal it!"

"How did the seal that secured in place break so soon in the first place!? Wasn't it supposed to take a decade more?"

"I don't know….but I felt Kaguya's presence along with that little kid that had entered here….."

"....Whatever are they doing?"

…..

Walking down the wooden stairs from high up in the statue a red haired woman with a few wrinkles on her face found herself looking around carefully as she used multiple chains on her back to interact with seals placed and drawn all around the walls.

*Puff*

With a sudden puff of smoke clouding her vision inside the room, she found a child barely aged four years old pop into existence inside the room, without any clothes, holding onto a white furred rabbit that was looking around along with the child.

"Oh…Kushina-san? I did it?"

The boy whispered a few words as he locked eyes with the red haired old lady and then immediately passed out.

"HASHI!!!! COME HERE AND HELP ME!!!!"

A relatively older man with a few wrinkles on his face just like the red haired woman formed out of the wooden wall and stepped into the room at the sudden shout for him.

"What happened Mito, Oh-"

"Quick! Block that mess below his waist and help me out."

…..

**Third Person POV**

'It has been three months since the last call Megumi made to all of us.'

'He hasn't called us since the last time he did.'

'For the first few days, most of us had hoped that Megumi would be there, talking to us once again after he got through whatever he had been going through.'

'But he just never did.'

'No one came to this room in the house anymore, everyone avoided it like a plague.'

'My birthday should've been celebrated last week.'

'Megumi's birthday should've been celebrated last week.'

'How is it right for a person to go away so soon?'

Sakura held the book that Megumi had made for this world, immersed in the drawings painted on its pages.

'Did he know that he'd be dying? Is that why he wanted us to always move ahead?'

*sigh*

Sakura slowly placed her copy of the book on the table right beside the book that had the snowflake communication seal on it. She looked at it for a few moments as tears still threatened to come back to her but then closed her eyes and took in a deep breath before exhaling out again.

Sakura walked a few steps towards the stack of papers placed on the floor and picked up the first few papers into her hands.

'I wonder how much he had to improve his chakra control just to be able to survive in whatever condition he was in for him to be able to write so much with such accuracy from such a large distance.'

'Haha… and here I was complaining along with Tsunade-sensei that we'd tease him about how terrible his chakra control was when he got back….'

Tears threatened to spill from Sakura's eyes as she looked at the pages that were dedicated to her.

Passing a stream of chakra into the seals Megumi had drawn on the paper uisng the machine before his last call, Sakura found a simple genjutsu unfolding in front of her.

It was what Megumi had seen when Sakura was on the grass surrounded by cats, laughing.

Breaking out of the genjutsu and reading the writing on the pages for the n'th time Sakura found herself sobbing softly as she remembered the time she spent with Megumi.

'That's right. Megumi left me with the responsibility of keeping everyone together.'

'I shouldn't let him down any longer, where ever he is, what ever he is doing. He promised us we'll meet again eventually, so we must spend our time doing our best so that when it is finally our time to move on to the place he's gone to, we're prepared to stand proud, to show him that everything he did for us was not in vain.'

Sakura steeled her eyes and walked out of her room holding the stack of papers which she pushed under the door's of who ever was in their rooms so that they'd read what they had been avoiding to for the last three months.

.....

"Mito is he going to be alright?"

"He is alright."

"You said he'll wake up a whole week ago though!"

"....sometimes people's bodies are much weaker than they appear."

"But he's a senju! We aren't weak! We're filled with vitality!"

"Yeah, yeah and you also said he didn't have the right connection to his body."

"I mean…. That's what I think? I'm not sure, he just seems so similar to Tsuna, I can't help but confuse him with her whenever I'm not looking at his soul."

"Maybe his body is only adapting to the soul now that it has the chance to, since he was out there all this time having to always keep his life on the line."

".....but how did a four year old make it here… and how did he even survive all this time…..and why is Kaguya with him."

"Kaguya said he was an interesting kid."

"She did?"

"Yeah, she said, he was a surprise even she couldn't predict."

"Hmm….."

Mito continued to pour water into the flower pots she was tending in her balcony garden as Hashirama looked down closely at the boy who looked like he was sleeping peacefully.

"Did she tell you why the kid resembled Tsuna-chan so much?"

"No, you know how she is, she just went back to sleep after telling me to ask the kid myself."

"By the way Mito….what are you going to give me!?"

"Give you something? On what occasion?"

"You know…..you lost the bet… you said he'd wake up a week ear-"

*Bonk*

"Hashi! That's a kid who was severely injured! How can you gamble with his life! Gambling is bad Hashi!"

"....you always say that whenever you lose…" 

"Did you say something!"

".....no."

'Goddamn kid you made me lose a bet, I'll make sure to earn it back from you.'

*Bonk*

"Why did you hit me Mito!?"

"Don't think bad things!"

…..

**Third Person POV**

"Sensei, he said to get as many people the communication device as possible by the next three years."

"Will it really make that much of a difference to let people communicate so easily?"

".....I mean…I'm sure Megumi is talking about it based on what happened on his continent so it might not be as much in ours?"

"...?Maybe"

"But sensei are you sure that following this strategy would work to keep us protected?"

"It should because we are going to be turning it into a game of finding a needle inside the haystack for our enemies by creating so many other similar sources of information that they won't be able to latch onto us for anything."

"I'll do my best at making all the seals Sensei!"

"Yes, yes do your best, but also make sure to improve yourself, it won't mean anything if you're still weak when we have to finally fight against our enemies."

…..

'Ughh….why do I feel so terrible?'

*SLIP*

*THUD*

"OUCH!"

Megumi tried to stand by using his right hand and push himself off of the hard wood floor and supported himself with the help of the bed he was just sleeping on to stand up.

Fixing his balance a little Megumi began looking around the room he had found himself inside off.

It was a room that looked like it had been entirety out of a tree, but the tree someone how had processed wood inside it which gave it the feeling of a modern room.

"Hmm…Where am I? Where is Kaguya? Is she alright?"

Spotting a window on the opposite side and moving toward it with the support of a wall Megumi looked outside the room he was in.

'The height….this is the third or the fourth floor?'

Looking outside Megumi spotted a familiar mountain with smoke coming out of it in the distance as he squinted his eyes at it with a bit of resentment but quickly erased it as he had much more important things to worry about right now.

'...I am still inside the forest.. But then where am I? The buddha statue? There was someone else here this whole time? Why didn't they help me at all?'

'In fact how am I alive right now? I thought I needed medical help to stop myself from bleeding out?'

"You're awake." 

"Huh?"

Hearing the voice of an elderly lady so close to him startled Megumi as he almost slipped and fell out the window he was looking through.

A firm warm hand wrapped around his waist as it held him up to help him regain his footing once again since he still hadn't gotten used to his new sense of balance.

Megumi tried to look at the woman who had held him up and said, "Thank you."

He hadn't yet spotted who exactly it was that had held him up since she was standing against the window with only source of light behind her, covering up all her features.

"Who might you be?"

"Since when did the manners of the kids in Konoha decrease so much that they've stopped respecting their elders?"

"...?" 'deja vu…'

*sigh*

"Little guy, I'm asking you for your name!"

"Oh, my name's Megumi."

"Hm~m! Good. So. Megumi do you want to tell me why you're here?"

".....?"

"What happened?"

"....I'm sorry, it's just a little too much finding out that you're still alive when you were prepared to die just a little earlier."

"....It's alright."

The old lady placed her hands on Megumi's head and ruffled his hair softly as she spoke, "You may call me with the name Mito and the title Baa-san."

"...Mito? Mito Baa-san?"

"Yes.."

".....but….wait a minute…you're Mito Uzumaki? The wife of the First Hokage of Konoha!?"

"...yes.."

"WHAT THE HELL! WHY ARE YOU HERE!? Oh…you mean I am dead after all."

*Smack*

With slight chop to his head to quiet him down, the old lady continued as she moved away from window to stop blocking the light that was hitting her face as it lit up her features.

"You aren't dead and this place is still real, after all it is a prison."

"Prison?"

"Yep. But enough about that for now, I'm sure we can talk about that later. So tell me now Megumi-chan, how did you find yourself here? And how are you related to Tsuna-chan." The woman asked with a slightly cold undertone to her warm voice which promised violence if she didn't learn the truth.

Megumi looked around for a second to think if he could afford telling the truth to this woman who claimed to be Mito Uzumaki.

"First can you tell me why you didn't help me when I was in the forest earlier?"

"That's easy. We couldn't. We are stuck inside this place." Mito said as she tapped the wooden walls around them.

"Stuck here?"

"Yes Hashi and I fled to this place to save ourselves from a bad man."

'Hashi? Hashirama?'

"....? You chose to come here right? Then why can't you just step outside?"

"You should've felt it right? When you teleported here."

"What..?" Megumi closed his eyes as he tried to remember what his last moments were like before he had woken up.

'I remember watching the stone ball come flying at me…'

'I remember breaking the boundary between my self and nature chakra to absorb nature chakra into my body to try and teleport myself by converting myself using the seals I had on me into chakra to seal myself into the planet…in hopes that there was some way to unseal myself later on.'

'I remember having to watch as the rock began crushing my legs while my body was converting itself into nature chakra and then choosing to give up the leg in exchange for bringing Kaguya along with me. After all I had only enough to teleport around the part of my leg that wasn't destroyed entirely.'

'I remember the feeling I got as I was thrust into an indescribable vast expanse that made me feel humongous as if I had become the mountains, the rivers, the seas and the clouds…and then just as I was loosing my sense of self I remember the feeling of find a place where I could teleport myself to. It was a strange place, that felt like it belonged to the planet but wasn't the space of the planet, it was something that had been adjoined to it. Like someone had frankensteined a chimera together.'

'I remember teleporting into the place, because for some reason I could move into it whie retaining my consciousness and then passing out.'

'Did Kaguya not make it, was my chakra not enough?'

"You can't go out because that isn't your space?" I asked making a rudimentary conclusion.

"Well… if that could be considered an explanation it would be the most basic one… but yes, what you said is correct. We can't go out because we are not a part of the space of the planet, we are dead according to the planet and there are rules that stop us from interfering with the place."

"So you're escaping death by holding yourself back in a little world of your own? What the hell…"

"So….? Why are you here? And how are you related to Tsunade."

"Ah…my apologies, I am just a little suspicious…. After all it isn't everyday that you randomly meet people who the entire world thinks are dead….it's like you are ghosts or something…not that you can't be since you're so old but… you know…"

A few veins throbbed on Mito's forehead as she tried keeping her calm under the barrage of Megumi's unintended insults.

"My name is Megumi Haruno, Mito-san. Tsuna-nee is my elder sister, who helped me gain a new body after I was trapped as a spirit in someone else's body and the reason I probably feel familiar to her is because my body was most likely made by using her cells."

"Tsuna-nee?"

"...a..well that is how I refer to her. By the way you said, we and mentioned Hashi, when you said you were trapped here, is the first Hokage here too?"

"Oh, fufu~ you want to meet him?! Are you his fan!? He is in fact here… he's feeding your pet."

"...?" Megumi's eyes widened as he was struck with a realization. "Kaguya is alive!!!!????"

Megumi tried to run to go and see Kaguya but tripped over his non existent leg and almost fell to the floor, when Mito had to hold him by his waist once again to save him.

"You've got to be careful little boy!"

"Thank you Mito-baasan! But could you take me to meet Kaguya! I miss her!! She was the only thing that kept me sane all throughout the time I was there in the forest, alone! She's quite important to me."

Mito had an amused smile on her face as she watched Megumi jump into excitement at the mention of Kaguya but kept to herself and helped him move by holding him.

"Hee~ Alright, but you better slow down, Kaguya-chan isn't going to run away to anywhere. She has all her limbs and you've only got two, so I'm sure she'll understand if she has to wait a little to see you."

Megumi felt a little overjoyed inside since he wasn't alone and there was someone he knew to keep him company along the way.

'I hope I'm not going to be saying 'Tis but a scratch.' by the end of my life here in this world.'

-------------------------

Thank you for reading!

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