Chapter Text
When you were the strongest, you got sent on a lot of missions that you were technically overqualified for. But if anyone else had to do it, they would quite possibly lose their life.
Gojo Satoru went on many such missions. He did them almost five times a day, really. The others got to kick back and take it easy, because an exorcism that would take them days and a lot of property damage, he could knock out in a minute.
But the curse he was currently fighting against wasn’t even as strong as all that. He’d put it at a high grade two at most.
Principal Yaga had said some things about him being the only one who could deal with it, and the only reason Gojo had agreed to it at all was because this may be an insultingly weak curse, but it had a curious ability to mess with space.
He wanted to see it with his Six Eyes, maybe get some inspiration for a new way to utilize Limitless. But this thing was just boring.
“I’m beginning to have enough of you.” He scoffed, preparing his technique to twist through the pathetic creature and kill it where it stood. That was when its survival instincts kicked in and it finally did something interesting: It tried to run away.
Now, that was the only way to survive a meeting with Gojo Satoru – except that there was nowhere you could run that the Six Eyes couldn’t see. Except for this anomalous curse.
Cursed energy warped around it, tearing a hole that didn’t show up in reality, but was easily visible to the Six Eyes. But whatever lay beyond the hole… was a complete mystery.
He laughed, delighted at finally having something interesting to work with, and then fired off a blast of energy twisted up by Limitless anyway.
The creature twisted, and the blast hit both it and the crack formed behind it, which then proceeded to explode, dragging Satoru in like a black hole.
He landed on a hardwood floor, knees bending to absorb impact, and Six Eyes frazzled from all the data that was now completely different. So the curse’s special escape ability had collided with his own space-warping technique to create an unusual teleporting effect, completely unlike the gravity-manipulation style teleportation he used. Big whoop. It still couldn’t hide its residuals for shit.
He looked around carefully, even through the blindfold the tracks sticking to the rafters were apparent. All he had to do was follow them.
The jump had thrown them both into a building of some sort. Wide open planning, maybe some sort of government building? There was a lot of people staring at him, and he didn’t have time to draw up a Veil.
Whatever. This likely wasn’t in Japan, judging only by the clothes and appearances of the people. He couldn’t think of a single country that was this into weird bandannas as these people were, either. If he killed a curse in broad daylight here, no one would care.
So he brushed past them all, and went directly for the curse.
It was quick on its feet, and in the few milliseconds that Gojo had taken to reassess the new terrain, it had already located the stairs, and had sought refuge in a large door that took up the entirety of the landing.
There were guards for some reason, but they didn’t even notice the tail of the creature as it slunk under the gap of the door, so Gojo didn’t bother reasoning with them, simply shoving them aside with Infinity. He was a busy guy, and if he took more than fifteen minutes on a second grade, he might never live the humiliation down.
Turns out the door led to some important official’s office. There was a large desk positioned from across the entry door, and there was a man sitting there with a three-pointed red hat with a white quadrant at the front, with the kanji for ‘fire’ written on it.
Gojo paused, looking curiously at it, “Wait, so is this somewhere in East Asia?” He asked.
The man stood up sharply, face twisted in a scowl, and suddenly people were all around him. His Six Eyes went a little haywire, giving him mixed signals about the amount of controlled cursed energy being manipulated around him.
Ah. Gojo had walked into something interesting.
“You know, sorcerers are thought to only come from Japan, due to the effects of Tengen’s barriers on the people inside.” He commented lightly, looking around at the individuals surrounding him – some wearing animal masks, others not, all with sharp weapons ready to be thrown at him. Too bad for them, they would never hit.
“Well, I’d love to see what this little operation is all about, but right now, I need to-” He began to zero in on the curse’s location.
One of the masked people – this one noticeably shorter than the others – used what they must have thought was Gojo turning his back on them to attack him from his supposed blind spot. This was how Gojo knew these weren’t Japanese sorcerers.
They should know that Gojo Satoru had no blind spots.
Simultaneously, he did two things. First, he shot reverse cursed energy at the curse – not enough to qualify as a proper Red, just enough to make it reflexively activate its cursed technique in a repeat of what had happened just two minutes ago to land him here. Second, he used Infinity to suspend the masked attacker in midair, even as they squirmed and released truly impressive amounts of cursed energy, that seemed to almost have a strange burning, electrical quality to it.
The explosion from the curse was coming up to swallow him, so he gave the masked attacker a quick shake to try and dislodge them from Infinity, and then waved jovially to the rest of his audience, “I’ll catch up with all of you later, okay?”
The man in the white and red hat lunged forward, faster than Gojo had seen anyone move, and in his eyes Gojo could see the plain intent to kill.
Too bad, he blinked again and was back on the roof, the second grade cursed burnt out on the floor.
Wow, what an adventure! And only in seven minutes!!
He should go ask Yaga about the possibility of sorcerer communities in other countries, because the way those people moved around and manipulated their cursed energy was like nothing he’d ever seen before. They probably hated him now, but maybe the rest of Jujutsu society had a chance of getting on their good side?
But before that… he looked around him, where he was certain he had felt the masked guard still lodged onto him when the jump happened. No one was there, now.
A quick scan revealed no residuals either.
Had they had the good sense to release him before he could be teleported to a country that may or may not share a writing system with their own?
“Is anyone there?” He tried calling out, “We’re on the same side, you know!”
No response. Oh well. No one could say he hadn’t tried. He teleported back to the school.
Kakash- no, he was Hound in the mask. He was still on duty, and it was improper to forget that – Hound was sitting on a block of grey cement, overlooking more blocks of grey cement, and his nose felt clogged with smoke.
There was so much of it. Obito’s eye, always the more sensitive of the two, was beginning to blur from the way the polluted air had snuck under his mask and began to itch.
He couldn’t take the mask off to wipe away the tears. Hound was now in enemy territory. But what enemy?
When the would-be assassin had tried to shake him off, Hound had held on just as hard, using his raw lightning chakra transformation to deal damage on whatever jutsu the man was employing – possibly a Fuuton. He hadn’t realized that it was in preparation for another jump. All he had been focused on was the Hokage for some reason coming closer to the attacker, was he stupid?
No. Of course he wasn’t stupid. The Hokage was the leader of the Village and had earned that position through massive personal accomplishment. Hound knew he could probably have taken care of the assassin by himself, even without his Anbu guards stepping in.
Hound was the one whose thinking was impaired by the thought of losing someone else.
Now the strange person had gone back with the job unfinished and landed in this strange city.
Hound had retreated before their feet even hit the ground, chakra wound tight until it was next to nothing and Shunshins employed carefully to get him away from this individual until he could figure out what he was working against.
Now, he was sitting, staring at this behemoth of a city with smoke almost strangling him, and he tried to understand where he was.
By even the lightest of estimates, he had to put nearly three thousand people in this city, just from what he could see. No nation alive had a metropolitan area that dense. And these architecture styles, he’d never encountered them before.
What had the man in the blindfold said when he had barged into the Hokage office? He had referred to some place called Japan. Was this it? He’d never heard of it before.
Whatever this spacetime jutsu was, it was more complex than anything Hound had ever been taught. Which was not to say that he didn’t have some theories for what was happening.
“So, Kashi-chan, storage seals are considered to work as pocket dimensions of our own creation.” Kushina’s voice was deliberately calm, when usually she would trip over her own words as she rushed to explain concepts she liked, “The Uzumaki fuinjutsu is special as it accesses dimensions beyond our grasp and draws power from them.”
Alternate dimensions. Planes of reality. These were commonplace for those who worked in seals.
Hound was not one of those people.
He made it to ground level, and Henged into someone who fit in better with the civilians. The more he looked, the more evidence he was able to collect to support this working theory. The continents – because there were multiple continents in this world – looked like nothing he had ever seen. There were countries and flags, and strange bright screens displaying moving images instead of projectors.
None of this was possible on his world. That man, the one with the blindfold who Hound was beginning to suspect might not have had any interest or knowledge about Konoha or its Hokage, had brought him to a completely different dimension.
Okay. He had still not been dismissed from guard duty, so it was his responsibility to return quickly. The simplest route Hound could think of was to carefully retreat into an alley, tilt his Anbu mask up, roll his black facemask down, and cut his thumb open on the point of his canine.
It bled easily, the skin still not properly healed from the last time he bit it open, and Hound placed it on the ground, channeling chakra for a reverse summoning.
Nothing happened.
Hound glowered at the spot on the dank ground that was now spotted with his blood. Maybe this was to be expected. He’d never tried reverse summoning himself before. So instead, he tried a more familiar tactic.
One tiny puff of chakra-infused smoke later, and Pakkun looked up gloomily at him.
“Boss.” He nodded, wrinkling his nose a little, “Why did you bring me in this dump? My nose is sensitive.”
“My nose is more sensitive than yours, you know.” Hound said, speaking for the first time in hours. The sound of his own voice had begun to surprise him. It always sounded painfully high compared to the others’. Still, he relaxed a little, “I’m glad this worked, Pakkun. I wasn’t sure if our contract would work if it was in another dimension.”
“’Course it will. Part of it’s inscribed on your soul.” Pakkun explained, before continuing, “Another dimension, huh? Thought your Sensei had you on guard duty and you would be safe from stirring up trouble.”
Hound’s face was probably burning red, but that was okay because his two masks covered it up – except it wasn’t and ninjas were required to not feel emotion whether it could be observed or not and he was making excuses for being a failure.
“We’re still on guard duty. I stopped an impossible teleporter before he could attack the Hokage.” He stressed, “And now I’ve ascertained that the threat is not interested in trying again, we should report back. Think you can summon me to your world so that I can go from there to Konoha?”
Pakkun took a second to scratch his ear, before nodding, “Yeah, I can do that. Just let me dispel myself-” A plume of chakra smoke covered him, but when it dissipated, the dog was still there, “Huh. That’s weird. I can’t go back.”
Hound had miscalculated. Another route was closed. They were running low on possible ways out. After his summoning, what else could he use?
His weapons pouch burned with a weight that had followed him since Kannabi Bridge.
Pulling out the three-pronged Hiraishin kunai was almost muscle memory, with how many times he had pulled it out since the Hokage had reminded him of its existence. But only to look at. Never to use. Never to throw.
“Please, Kakashi. If anything ever happens, throw this.” Minato-sensei was tired, eyes red as they alone stood and looked at where Rin’s name was being etched into the Memorial Stone, “I will be there. I promise.”
He had wanted to throw it a thousand times before. Not ever because he felt overwhelmed with a task. Every mission he was charged with, he had never had trouble completing. It was more that he wanted the assurance that Minato-sensei would be there. If he ever really did need him.
But the Hokage’s time was valuable, and Hound would never delude himself into thinking he was entitled to even a second of it. So, the kunai remained in his least-used weapons pouch.
It was still immaculately maintained, of course. The blade so sharp he was certain the cut wouldn’t register to the victim until several seconds passed. Hound aimed at the cleanest spot in the alley, aimed, and threw.
The kunai embedded into the chunk of wall easily, and for a second, the world was still.
No Yellow Flash came to his aid. Same as always.
Obito’s eye was leaking again, from the air. One of the strange moving metal contraptions let out a bellowing horn that made his chest seize. That was all it was. Polluted air and unexpected noise.
Hound was a good shinobi. And a good shinobi did not feel. A good shinobi did not cry. A good shinobi most definitely did not wish for the Hokage to be in alien territory because the Hokage’s safety came before all else.
Pakkun made crooning noises beside him and carefully coaxed him down from the brief wave of panic that had overtaken him.
“You said that the guy who brought you here was non-hostile?” The ninken asked, once Hound had managed to quiet his senseless gasping.
“Yes.” Hound agreed, easily falling back into the role of giving a mission report. He always got tripped up the most when making his own plan of action over a long period of time. All his training had been to mold him into someone who followed orders, adapting was possible, but with no framework of a goal or how to achieve it – he was useless.
“Going over his actions while he was in the Hokage building, I think he was ignorant to the significance of the building.” He continued to elaborate his reasoning, “Instead, most of his attention was fixated on this odd lump of chakra that I sensed through Obito’s eye.”
Now, he began thinking on what those words meant exactly. The technique used to transport him was connected to someone who was at best ambivalent to Konoha. This could be used, actually.
Hound stood up, movements tightly controlled and leaving no room for the shakiness which had plagued him so far, “We find him again.” He decided, “Obito’s eye gives us an upper edge with genjutsu. Upon cornering him, we can compel him to send us both back.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Pakkun agreed readily, “How are we going to find him, Boss?”
Hound pocketed the Hiraishin kunai before heading towards the rooftops, “We go to the site we landed at. Sniff him out from there. His chakra is finely controlled, leaving very little clinging to surfaces, but his scent might as well be a clear line.”
Sure enough, at the scene where they separated, there was hints of the man left in the air. All in a direct line going somewhere southwest.
“Can this guy fly?” Pakkun asked in disbelief, likely noting how the line remained completely straight, not changing altitude or direction despite the very unlevel terrain.
“Some form of teleportation, I think.” Hound replied, clearing an entire roof with a particularly long jump, “Also, please remember that we don’t talk while hunting.”
“That’s just what your father told you as a baby so that he could take you out onto missions.”
Hound refused to honor that with a response.
The city petered out eventually, giving way to forests and hilly terrain. The trees weren’t nearly as big as the Hashirama variety that swamped Konoha, so Hound had to take care of which branches could support his weight while he tree-hopped.
At least the scent always remained steady.
They arrived at a compound and were immediately met with the first barrier that affected chakra around them.
Disappointingly, it appeared to be the only security measure, except for some basic walls.
Hound was concerned for the wellbeing of the residents as he tried to see if there was any catch.
“Okay, Pakkun.” He finally decided just to risk it, “You wait out here. If something goes wrong, I need you to come in as backup. They will likely want to interrogate me, since I am from a world that they don’t understand, which means my chances of being killed on sight are low.”
Pakkun nodded, and curled up so that he looked smaller than he usually was, “I’ll be watching.”
Hence, the infiltration began.
He found a board above what most people would use as the entrance, labeling this place to be Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College. A training academy, huh? He didn’t know what city Tokyo was, since the city he had landed in was called Shizuoka, and he highly doubted there was another large metropolitan area within a day’s run. Or maybe there was. This whole place was incredibly cramped.
There were a few staff he saw as he moved through blind spots and unseen crannies, and they were all brimming with honed chakra, unlike the civilians he encountered in the city, but no one close to the age of academy students. The use of college in the name was a strange choice, one he had only seen in the Capital of Fire Country. Maybe to signify the students were older?
A combination of Hound’s nose and Obito’s Sharingan was able to locate the blindfolded man with white hair to be in an office on the west side of the building.
Using wall-walking, Hound positioned himself on the ceiling directly above the door, and kept a careful hand over his mask.
The second the blindfolded man would come out, Hound would drop down and pull him into a genjutsu.
In his few months of Anbu, he had become accustomed to waiting in a single spot for hours, ready for the moment where weeks upon months of hard work accumulated to finally make a kill.
Thankfully, it barely took a few minutes before the blindfolded man – this time sans blindfold, wearing some exceptionally dark sunglasses – came out.
Hound dropped, Sharingan making eye contact from the unprotected edge of his eyes. Chakra flowed through that momentary connection, and his will was imposed on the target.
First, he had to get him to remove the glasses, to make sure the genjutsu could be established better. Then, he moved on to convincing the man to use his teleportation technique.
It was a brute force method, nothing like the subtlety Kurenai encouraged, but with the Sharingan on his side, Hound could be as clumsy as he liked.
“I’d love to do that teleport trick.” The man said finally, looking at Hound with bright blue eyes that he only just realized was probably a dojutsu. Dammit, a miscalculation driven by hasty planning.
“But I’m afraid that was a bit of a fluke.” He finished, before shaking his head. The genjutsu snapped under Hound’s grasp, and then the man lunged forward.
Hound didn’t flinch. He moved his arms up carefully, ready to counter, only for a hand to come down from behind him, and land roughly in his hair.
“Hey, you’re that guy from before! I almost thought you stayed behind.” No chakra had been properly dispelled. It had just moved a little, not enough to be molded into a Shunshin or any such jutsu. How had he done that?
Hound refused to let down his guard, backing away from him as he pulled out a pair of kunai. Already there were more people arriving.
“Gojo, who the hell is this?” asked a blond man with a stern face.
“A fanboy!” ‘Gojo’ chirped, “Remember from what I told you happened yesterday with the space warping curse? I thought he let go, but he came to find me!”
“He has knives pointed at you.” A woman with dark bags under her eyes noted. Hound was quickly losing control of the situation.
“What do you mean it was a fluke?” He tried to put as much killing intent in his voice as he could. It certainly caught the attention of these three people, but none seemed too perturbed, “How the hell am I supposed to go home, then?”
The woman with eyebags was the first to say something, “I didn’t believe you when you said all that happened. But I guess there really are uncontacted sorcerers we don’t know about.”
“And you kidnapped one of their children.” The blond man noted.
Hound remained impassive but had to correct the notion, “I am not a child.”
“Yeah, Nanamin, some people are short.” Gojo said, before addressing Hound’s question, “Also, I landed in that building because of a unique effect a curse had on my own ability. I killed it, and now I can’t replicate it. How about you try pointing it out on a map for us and I can get you an airfare ticket to it?”
“It’s not on a map.” Hound replied carefully, “I have reason to believe that you have brought me to another dimension. Having exhausted any means of return, I planned to use your technique. But… I see that that’s not an option anymore.”
Silence, as the three people loomed over him.
“Uh. Whoopsies?”
Something broke inside Hound. Possibly his self-restraint.
This was it. This was the end. Hound had been forced away from his duties. He would be given up for dead by his people. And he alone would have to bear the knowledge that he was alive and not serving like he was meant to.
Death would be a more favorable route. And taking down the one who had forced his hand in the process would be best of all.
His chakra was warping before he could think too hard, transforming into pure electric nature transformation, and kicking Obito’s Sharingan into overdrive.
“Chidori.” He hissed, in a fit of possessed bloodlust because Hound was not a traitor. He was not.
He made to charge the man – Chidori was fast. He’d noticed that he moved slower the closer he got to Gojo the last time, but lightning hit faster than anything, and it would reach – but suddenly there was sharp hand coming from an angle where there had been no one, and his vision was cut black.
“Okay, the third murder attempt was fun, but take a nap, will you?” He heard Gojo say above him as he drifted into unconsciousness.
Hopefully he woke up with some conclusive way to get to Konoha.
Either that, or he didn’t wake up at all.