24 I Just Thought It Looks Cool

The curtain fell on a chaotic night.

Hikari and Kiba had somehow managed to get home without further incident. The kids collapsed on their bed soon after, letting exhaustion to finally reap its sweet, sweet vengeance.

When morning came, Hikari lazily crawled out of the bed, still sore after yesterday's fight. She had only managed to get a few hours of sleep before she was woken up by the intruding sunlight.

"...I want to sleep more..."

Unfortunately, she still had chores to do...

As she trotted down the hallway leading toward the main house, she could see Tsume and her team entering through the front gate.

They were still dressed fully in their work attire. Judging from the dark circles under their eyes, they must have been up for the entire night as well.

That was exactly the thing that Tsume complained about during breakfast.

"That old geezer, working people to the bone! I want to bite him to death!"

"What happened, Mom?" Hana asked out of curiosity.

Tsume stole a glance at Kiba before answering.

"Well, I guess you'll know about it sooner or later. It's your little friend, that Naruto kid. He stole something important from the Third's house."

"Whoa, really?"

Kiba gasped, trying his best to act surprised. Actually, he was trying a bit too hard to the point that it looked so unnatural...

Hikari quickly stomped on his feet. Hard.

"Gyah!"

"Gyah?" Tsume raised an eyebrow.

"N-no, it's nothing.." he sucked in a breath. "What were you saying about Naruto again?"

"Oh right, Naruto. As I said, he stole something from the Third and went missing for the entire night. But don't worry, when we found him, he's just hanging out with Iruka, your academy teacher. I guess it's just some misunderstanding."

It seemed that Tsume didn't want to talk about the scroll of seals or Mizuki's betrayal in front of the kids.

"Problem is," she continued with a frown, "We also found traces of two intruders. They were wearing these strange porcelain masks, a crude imitation of our the Anbu's uniform. Because of those idiots, we're forced by the Third to search through the village for an entire night!"

Hikari and Kiba almost choked on their food.

"M-mom, how did you know that there were two people? Did you see them?"

"Nah. You brats don't know this, but the Third has this crystal ball thing that he could use to monitor a limited number of people that he had marked. Since Naruto is a troublemaker, he got him marked as well for surveillance purposes. I think he called it Telescope Technique..."

"C-crystal ball...?"

The boy gulped.

"Yep. He even recorded the entire thing for us to see. Problem is, there's something wrong with those masks. It seems that a peculiar genjutsu had been planted on them, preventing us from getting a clear detail of their appearance. It's too suspicious, I say. It could be the work of those Iwa bastards again."

She suddenly moved her gaze to Hikari, giving the girl a heart attack.

"Oi, do you notice any weirdo following you lately?"

"N-no..."

Hikari fervently shook her head.

"..."

Why were these kids so nervous…?

Tsume kept glaring at the two for a while, sensing that something was wrong with how they were acting that morning. A wild idea suddenly popped up in her mind.

There were two masked intruders. What if her boy and this girl…

...

...Nah. No way.

She must be too sleepy to make a sound judgment. This mess got their friend involved, so it was natural for them to be upset about it. Nothing weird at all.

She downed her bowl in one big gulp, and then stood up from her seat.

"I'm going to rest. Don't you dare wake me up until the next day!"

"Tsume... sleeping too much is bad for you."

"Bug off, Kuro. Like wolves, I, too, hibernates when it's winter!"

"...No. Wolves don't hibernate. You're talking about fleas..."

The clan leader and her canine partner sauntered away while spewing out delirious nonsense.

Hana chuckled when she noticed Hikari and Kiba staring blankly at her mother's receding figure.

"Is this your first time seeing Mom like that, Kiba? It used to happen a lot when you're younger. This one time, Mom was so tired she kept blabbering about squirrel's digestive tracts."

Squirrel…

Kiba honestly had no idea what to say.

"That's why, let's keep the noise down and let her rest, okay?"

Hana winked at them.

The two nodded with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Anything to prevent them from accidentally hearing drunken zoology tidbits!

---

Later that noon, Kiba went to Hikari's room to discuss the incident from last night.

"D-damn it, why is your door so heavy?!"

Somehow, the sliding door refused to open until he poured out his entire strength.

He leaned closer to the frame, knocking it several times to make sure that it was still made out of wood.

Hearing his voice, Hikari's head popped up behind stacks of books and wooden crates.

"I put an Array on it. Its weight is increased if it's opened by anyone else but me."

As if proving her point, she walked over and closed the door with a single effortless push.

"...You put what?"

"Array. It's a specialized formula to channel qi and perform spells separate from the user… nevermind. See those talismans?"

She pointed at the rectangular pieces of paper that were placed at each corner of the room.

Kiba squinted his eyes as he checked on those papers. Aside from the Eight Trigrams symbol, the papers were also decorated with ink strokes resembling strange-looking letters that he couldn't decipher.

"What are those? Looks like crap to me."

"Not craps. They're there to make sure that our conversation couldn't be heard by people outside the room."

"...With those flimsy toilet paper?"

"Give it a try if you don't believe me," Hikari shrugged.

"Fine."

He left Akamaru inside, and then walked out before trying to close the door and promptly gave up since it was too heavy.

"..."

Ah, right, the seal…

Hikari closed it for him instead.

"Alright, Akamaru! Bark as loud as you can!" Kiba ordered.

Mmmff.

"Akamaru?"

Mmff. Mmfff.

What came out of the room was a muffled noise, as if someone was stuffing wet cloth into the dog's mouth.

...Were they playing tricks on him?

"Oi, what are you doing to Akamaru? Stop it!"

His muscles bulged out as he pushed the door open despite the added weight.

Bark!

Immediately, a dog's crisp, energetic bark fell on his ears, almost knocking him off his feet from the shock.

Eh?

"Satisfied?"

Hikari asked with a deadpan look while covering her ears. The puppy's bark was so loud that she thought her eardrums would rupture if it went a little bit longer.

"B-but…" Kiba blinked foolishly. "I only heard muffled noise just now!"

"That's the purpose of the Array," Hikari explained as she pulled the puppy into her embrace, stopping his incessant barking. "It turns our voice to incomprehensible mumbles for people outside its enclosed area."

...That's…

"That's so cool!" he exclaimed.

"Not really," she sighed. "This Array is painfully lacking compared to a perfect Sealed Room Array."

That weight-increasing Array, for instance, wasn't supposed to work that way as well.

The Array's original purpose was to seal the entrance entirely, barring access to anyone except for the creator of the Array. What she had managed to recreate was merely a watered-down version.

Spell formations. Arrays.

While she wasn't a celebrated expert in the subject matter, she had accumulated a fair amount of knowledge on that topic. After all, a cultivator would sooner or later encounter Arrays in their path to achieve immortality. Learning about them was essential in order to increase their chance of survival.

Regrettably, just like mystic arts, the working of this world had rendered the majority of those Arrays useless.

The concept of a spell Array was to change the flow of qi in an area and reform them using the formula inscribed within the Array in order to produce the creator's desired result. However, this world lacked the presence of qi, the most important component of all, forcing her to improvise.

She had modified the formula and split the mechanism in two. First, she supplied a small amount of refined qi from her own dantian to jumpstart the array. And then, she would dislodge a bigger amount of chakra and let it circulate within the formation, slowly getting them refined into qi to further power the array's effect.

The problem with this method was twofold.

First, the array could only function for a brief amount of time proportionate to how much chakra she could store during activation. It limited the duration and effectiveness of the array, especially for bigger-sized arrays that required a huge amount of qi.

Second, the formula would have to withstand the high surge of energy at the start, which means overly-complicated formulas would fail, limiting her to simple spells as a consequence.

Even so, it was better than nothing. She could at least emulate low-level mystic arts with the help of arrays. Perhaps she would even be able to solve this energy problem with further experimentation.

"This… is this ninjutsu? I've never heard about anything like this before!".

"It's an array, not ninjutsu… you know what, don't worry about it. How is your investigation?"

"I got some info thanks to big sis's colleagues. Naruto is fine. Teacher Iruka vouched for his innocence. Apparently, Naruto's action was instigated by Teacher Mizuki's manipulation."

"Mizuki..." She rubbed her chin, trying to make sense of that name. However, she only pulled out blanks. "Who's that again?"

"We kicked his ass last night, remember...? Wait a minute, when you think about it, we've just defeated a Chuunin-ranked ninja! I mean, it's still three against one, and we also have Teacher Iruka to back us up, but… Wow! Just wow!"

He pumped his fists, looking extremely pleased with himself. He wasn't even a Genin yet, and he already won against a Chuunin? Now that's a real talent!

"...Congratulations."

Hikari responded halfheartedly.

Mizuki was just a speck of dust compared to the fearsome rivals and enemies she had faced in her youth. What was there to be happy about? She could only feel exhaustion.

"That's not all! I also heard that Teacher Iruka lobbied for Naruto's graduation because he can use that goddamn crazy clone technique. He's now officially a Genin, just like me!"

"Hoo..."

Clone techniques. Was it the one that created countless amounts of Naruto?

'Lord Kokuo, can you teach m-'

'No means no,' Kokuo glared.

'Boo,' she pouted in return.

"Oh, by the way!"

Kiba's gaze turned serious.

"What's with those masks?"

"What masks?"

Hikari flashed him an innocent smile.

"Don't act cute with me! You know what I'm talking about! Those masks!"

"Alright, alright, calm down."

She chuckled lightly before taking out the dolphin and dog porcelain masks from a nearby crate.

"I had them the village's artisan to make them."

"You did?" Kiba raised an eyebrow. "When did you do that?"

"Well... a few weeks ago..." she laughed wryly.

Truth is, she wasn't the one who had requested them. The Third's spies would have tailed her the moment she stepped a foot outside of the Inuzuka's gate.

Thankfully, she had Daji to help her.

The enchantress was naturally gifted in Transformation Technique, allowing her to assume various forms at will. It was a child's play for her to disguise herself as one of the Inuzuka and left the compound to get the masks crafted.

She had also learned how to use illusion techniques of this world, the ones called 'genjutsu'. The obfuscation spell on the masks was also planted by her.

When he saw how amazed Hikari was by his achievements, the pup's maw curved up to emulate a smug smirk.

"So, our identity won't be found out if we wear these masks?"

Kiba lifted the dog mask closer to his face, growing a sudden interest with the trinket.

"Yes and no. The spell just blurred the details of our appearance so that it would be harder to pinpoint. If they already have prior knowledge about the wearer, or if they concentrate hard enough, it would still be broken through. It's more like a suggestion than a proper obfuscation spell."

Naturally, Daji's illusion arts were also limited by the absence of qi. That was as far as she could go after modifying the spells to use chakra as a substitute.

"I see…" Kiba nodded, absentmindedly playing with the dog mask in his hand. "But... why did you have them made in the first place?"

"..."

Hikari turned away to avoid his gaze.

"Oi, you… Don't tell me that you're planning to do something illegal!"

"No, I just…"

"You're just what? Hmm?"

Under his escalating pressure, she finally cracked.

"...I just thought it looks cool..."

Ever since that time when she saw Konoha's Anbu squads fighting against the pursuers from Iwa, she had fallen in love.

With their masks, of course.

"..."

For the second time on that day, Kiba had no idea what to say.