Takigakure

It was still the same inn. Beneath the slightly dim, warmly colored lights, the old woman sat behind the counter, looking drowsy.

Lifting the curtain, Yura entered the inn and walked straight up to the old woman. She lightly tapped the counter, waking the dozing woman.

Opening her eyes and recognizing Yura, the old woman smiled kindly. "You're back, young lady."

"Mm." Yura gave a slight nod, set down a stack of money, and said with a faint smile, "Ma'am, I'd like to settle my bill and check out."

"You're not staying tonight?" the old woman asked.

"I probably won't be able to stay tonight." Yura shook her head. "There's a bit of a problem, and I don't really feel like dealing with it."

Next, the perceptive captain of the town guard would probably order a search of the whole town.

After all, the only suspects were either demons or ninjas.

"I see..." The old woman muttered, then took out stack after stack of neatly arranged Explosive Tags. "You stuck so many of these up in your room, child. This old woman had quite a time cleaning them all up. Here, take them back."

Yura nodded, took the Explosive Tags, and smiled faintly. "By the way, ma'am, sorry for the trouble earlier."

"What trouble? I don't know what you're talking about," the old woman replied with a smile.

"Mm..." Yura shook her head with a faint smile. "Ma'am, if Konoha's ninjas find you later, it'd be better to tell them the truth and save yourself some suffering. After all, you know nothing valuable, so there's no need to antagonize the ninjas."

"Guess this old woman stuck her nose where it didn't belong." The old woman stubbornly lifted her chin. "But I've lived long enough. I'm not afraid of the ninja lords."

"Whatever makes you happy." Yura spread her hands and sighed. "Well, I'll be off. Goodbye, ma'am."

"Goodbye. Safe travels, guest." The old woman watched Yura leave.

At the curtain, Yura stopped and turned slightly to look back. "By the way, I've been wondering: why did you help me?"

The old woman gazed into Yura's crimson eyes. The familiar look seemed to stir memories from long ago, and for a moment she lost herself in them.

Yura patiently waited for an answer.

She could more or less guess the reason: something about reminding the old woman of her daughter or granddaughter.

After a brief pause, the old woman smiled and shook her head. "There's no special reason. I suppose it's because you're very cute."

"Is that so..." Yura turned back, lifted the curtain, and smiled faintly. "You're the first person to call me cute in all my life. Thank you, Granny."

The curtain fell, and the hanging wind chime swayed softly.

Watching the solitary figure leave, the old woman, alone in the world, returned to her chair and gradually drifted off to sleep.

She traveled through the night, crossing the border into the Land of Fire. By sunrise the next day, Yura had reached the outskirts of Takigakure in the Land of Waterfalls.

The village had suffered losses while capturing a Tailed Beast, and its defenses were clearly weakened. Moreover, Takigakure was extremely secluded. Aside from the village's ninjas, no outsiders knew its location, so almost all its guards were stationed inside. Yura found a concealed spot on the outskirts and settled in temporarily.

She put the matter in the Land of Fire out of her mind for now. Besides continuing her training and developing her ninjutsu, she also needed to thoroughly scout Takigakure. To avoid alerting the village, she naturally had to keep everything covert.

As a Chunin of the village, Yura naturally knew few of its secrets, including the locations of its secret techniques, the Hero Water stores, and the Tailed Beast's location.

Black Secret Technique: Hell Butterfly

A black butterfly carrying an eyeball crawled out of Yura's eye socket. It beat its wings and flew toward Takigakure, passing through the waterfall and entering the mountain tunnel hidden behind it. Along the tunnel floor were countless bottomless pools. Beneath them, waterways plunged deep underground, branching and crisscrossing in every direction. Some led farther underground, while most were dead ends. Only a handful led to the real Takigakure.

Thanks to this natural labyrinth of defenses, Takigakure had secured its position as the most secretive village in the Shinobi World.

Yura knew the exact route. The Hell Butterfly stopped in front of a pool, then plunged into the water.

Underwater, the butterfly's shape made it difficult to move. Its hair transformed in the blink of an eye into a small fish, which swished its tail and swam deeper. After a while, it passed through the long underwater passage and emerged from the water. The fish changed back into a black butterfly, which rose into the air as its eyeball turned, surveying its surroundings.

Good. The sentries hadn't moved.

Outside Takigakure, Yura sat cross-legged atop a huge black cocoon in the forest, her eyes narrowed slightly.

The giant cocoon woven from hair was Yura's resting place. It also sheltered her from the wind and rain. Most importantly, the strands of hair buried underground spread out in every direction. Within a two-kilometer radius, Yura could sense any vibration on the ground.

Black Secret Technique: Black Nest

Sitting atop the Black Nest was like sitting on a web as a spider, quietly and patiently waiting for prey to stumble in. It was a wide-area detection technique.

Yura was at the edge of the technique's range, just close enough to reach the outskirts of Takigakure.

Yura toyed with a strand of hair between her fingers. Her black hair twisted and reshaped into a tiny, ugly puppet, which hovered above her fingertip, spinning and dancing endlessly.

This was a technique Doflamingo had developed based on the String-String Fruit: a clone puppet made of strings. It was also known as Black Knight, or Shadow Puppet. The Hell Butterfly was a variation of its form, which Yura called animal transformation.

Bayonetta's abilities included a magic that used hair as a medium for weaving and transformation, allowing her to turn into animals. She could become a panther and run at high speed, a crow and fly for a short while, a swarm of bats to evade attacks, or a snake to move quickly through water.

Such complex transformations required extremely precise control over each strand of hair. In the gaps between scouting, Yura seized every moment to practice reshaping and controlling her hair.

However, this animal-transformation ability was removed in the third game. The new ability also used hair as a medium and was called Umbran Climax. It allowed the summoned demons to merge with the user's hair, granting her the demons' powers in battle.

There were no demons in the Shinobi World, but there were Tailed Beasts.

Takigakure's layout was simple. The village lay inside a vast underground cavern, built around an underground lake at its center. It was small, nowhere near the size of Konoha. Besides some residents who had migrated from the surrounding Land of Waterfalls, it was home to several ninja clans. All told, it barely had a thousand households—only a few thousand people.

Takigakure was at the height of its power. It would only grow weaker from here, until it was little more than a handful of people.

A massive tree grew in the center of the lake.

It was called the God Tree, though it wasn't a God Tree belonging to the Ōtsutsuki Clan. Hero Water was produced by this tree, which also served as an important light source for the village. The village claimed that the tree condensed one drop every hundred years, accumulating just over ten drops in a millennium. But judging by how the village used the Hero Water, its reserves must have been replenished at a much higher rate. Otherwise, the numbers wouldn't add up.

For this assassination of Senju Hashirama, the standard setup for the twelve-man team was one drop of Hero Water per person, to be used in a desperate moment.

This tree definitely had some history behind it, but the Shinobi World was full of strange treasures. One more God Tree made little difference.

What Yura needed to find was the shrine hidden inside the God Tree, where the Hero Water was worshipped and stored.

Considering the village's defenses, it wouldn't be easy. When the time came to seize the water, she would need to cause a disturbance to draw attention elsewhere, preventing the village from using or destroying the Hero Water in desperation. Otherwise, the village's Chunin could be transformed into Jonin en masse with the aid of the Hero Water. Yura didn't particularly want to face hundreds of Jonin. Fortunately, she wasn't without help.

For example, the elite Jonin currently locked in a cage: Kakuzu.