Pakin did his best to sit still on the examination table as Dr.Hari performed his examination.

  Dr.Hari poked and prodded at the bruises on Pakin’s front and back, asking questions about his discomfort. Once the doctor had finished his palpations, a nurse wheeled an ultrasound device into the room. Dr.Hari applied some prewarmed gel to Pakin’s stomach and glided the wand slowly over the giant bruise.

  Pakin stared at the image displayed on the terminal. It really is incredible how modern this world feels, especially outside of Fuwayama. More modern tech had become commonplace as he and Gera had moved further north and towards the heartlands of Lightning. A computer in a post office, a small TV in a restaurant, and a few motorbikes every now and then. None of it was impressive, especially to someone who’d seen a 4K TV, but Pakin still found himself staring whenever he spotted technology he recognized. The ultrasound was definitely the most complicated thing he’d seen since leaving home, and it made him wonder how advanced the hidden cloud would be when he got there.

  “Pretty weird, huh?” Dr.Hari asked, taking the wand off Pakin’s stomach. “Can you turn around?” Pakin complied, and Dr.Hari applied some gel onto his back. “It’s called an ultrasound machine. This thing in my hand is a wand, and it’s scanning the inside of your body. It uses sound waves to make a picture of the inside of your stomach. It’s kinda like radar. Do you know what that is?”

  Pakin replied, “Yeah. Sound waves are produced, and then a computer or some other mechanism receives those same waves as they bounce off obstacles. Those waves are interpreted and translated onto a screen.”

  Dr.Hari didn’t respond for a few seconds. Adults tended to do that when he sounded too bright. So, even though Pakin had dropped most of his kid act from Fuwayama, there were times he dumbed down his lexicon to avoid weirding people out. Thinking about his old life had caused him to regurgitate facts he knew, without thinking about how it might sound coming out of his eleven-year-old mouth.

  “That’s right. This one, in particular, sends out a ton of tiny waves, so that way it can make a more detailed picture.” Dr.Hari moved the monitor around the examination table so Pakin could see it better. Then, he passed the wand over his back and pointed to an oblong smudge onscreen, “See that’s your kidney, in perfectly working order too.” Dr.Hari outlined the organ with his finger. “I’m on the lookout for any internal bleeding, that’s the most dangerous part of big bruises like the ones you’ve got. Sometimes internal bleeds can go undetected until they cause serious problems, which is part of why I got this machine. To prevent things like that from going unnoticed.”

  Dr.Hari finished the ultrasound and handed Pakin a warm, moist towel to wash the gel off his body.

  “Well, Pakin, I’d normally tell you to wait a few more days before making the trek to Kumogakure.” He turned and gave Pakin a suspicious stare. “However, your wounds are healing very fast.”

  Pakin fidgeted sheepishly, making the paper covering the examination table crinkle. It’d only been one full day since the night he’d been attacked, so he could understand the doctor’s suspicion.

  Yesterday morning, Gera taught Pakin a technique to channel molded chakra into his chakra lines so his body could use it. She explained, “It’s part of why I had you training to use your chakra during conditioning. Your body uses chakra like fuel, and the more you can give it, the better. So, training with it increases muscle growth, bone density, yada yada, science stuff.”

  Pakin thought ‘science stuff’ was probably crucial to that explanation, but Gera seemed unenthused about knowledge unrelated to cutting or kicking things.

  Gera had also instructed him not to tell Dr.Hari. Traditional doctors tended to frown upon chakra use to enhance healing, mainly because they didn’t understand it. In many cases, that was intentional as ninjas and their respective villages liked to keep chakra knowledge close to their chests.

  “You don’t have to tell me about it.” Dr.Hari sighed. “I live right next to a hidden village, I know how you shinobi like your chakra. However, as knowledgeable as Ms.Gera seems, I doubt she’s a trained medical shinobi. So, what she probably didn’t know is that stitches can cause damage to wounds healed too quickly with chakra. They tear the tissue they're anchored in, making the scar bigger or creating an entirely new wound.”

  Pakin reached up and touched his cheek in shock, and Dr.Hari waved away the boy’s concerns. “I figured you’d be doing something like that, so I used absorbable stitches. Just be careful next time. Also, make sure to eat a lot when you use that technique. You’re body uses calories to fuel your healing, not chakra.”

  Dr.Hari got up from his wheeled stool and walked Pakin out of his clinic. The two emerged in the early morning light, joining Gera, who’d been waiting patiently outside.

  Gera shook the doctor’s hand and said, “Thanks for waking up so early to check on him, and sorry about almost blowing up on you at the inn. That was uncalled for.”

  Dr.Hari smiled warmly and replied, “It’s alright, Ms.Gera, it was a stressful night.”

  After Pakin’s check-up was completed and Dr.Hari gave his approval, the two set out on the road to Kumo at a leisurely pace.

  The sun was already setting when Gera motioned Pakin close and pointed ahead to a huge mountain looming ahead.

  “That’s Mount Toyokumo, the village is on the other side.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Pakin was puffing along beside her and let out a groan. Despite the doctor’s okay, their several-hour-long hike had been excruciating. Looking up at the mountain that lay between him and his destination, he managed to huff out, “You’ve got. To be. Kidding me.”

  Gera giggled, but Pakin could see that her smile didn’t reach her eyes. She’d already offered to carry him once, but he’d refused. Foolishly proclaiming that he’d reach his new home on his own two feet.

  “Come on, it’s not that bad. You’ll see.”

  The two walked for forty more minutes before the side of the mountain came into view, and Pakin could make out shapes bustling at the mountain’s foot where three other roads converged. Getting closer, he realized it was dozens of people, carrying big backpacks, driving trucks, and moving around in front of a massive tunnel.

  Not a tunnel, a gate. Pakin corrected himself. He only grew more curious as the tunnel grew and details began to come into view. Two massive red doors hung open on either side of the tunnel’s entrance, their size dwarfing any building Pakin had seen in this new world. The duo moved through the thin crowd entering and exiting the mountain. Pakin heard Gera laugh as he stared wide-eyed at the gate on the right side of the tunnel.

  It had to be at least three stories tall! The whole thing was made of wood planks three meters wide each, painted with a gorgeous crimson laquer. Steel adorned the door in rivets punched evenly into the outside border, and in large, inlayed clouds that floated across the gate’s surface.

  Gera let him ogle the door for a few seconds before pushing him along and saying, “Come on, the tunnel’s even more impressive.”

  Pakin noted all the different kinds of people moving in and out of the tunnel as they moved towards the entrance. Most of them seemed like merchants, either carrying big backpacks full of merchandise or trying to maneuver trucks full of goods on designated roads along the outer sides of the tunnel. Some were travelers, just normal folk passing by, but occasionally one person would get intercepted by a person in uniform and pulled away. The rest were clearly shinobi, working as guards, heading out, or just getting back from missions, some looking beat up but happy, others looking spotless and bored. He did spot one shinobi, a girl, maybe one or two years older than him, crying silently in the arms of another. After a few seconds, a guard approached the pair and guided them away with a compassionate look.

  Gera and Pakin waited in a small line before being called up to one of the short booths that lined the entrance to the tunnel. Gera offered the shinobi inside an ID card and some paperwork that Pakin had signed that morning. He looked over everything, handed it back to her, and leaned forward from his seat to look at Pakin.

  “Welcome to Kumo, kid. Name’s Yoshi! You need anything from border control, come see me.”

  “Thanks. I’m Pakin, it’s nice to meet you.”

  Yoshi sat back in his chair and smiled wide, saying, “No problem. Good luck with the program!”

  They waved goodbye, and Pakin panned his vision across the tunnel's walls. The whole thing was as wide as a six-lane highway. The walls mirrored each other, carved with intricate detail to depict what looked like the village's founding story.

  The story was told through meter-long reliefs, each depicting a different scene. The first showed a man in a long coat standing above a battle between feudal-looking ninjas. The next showed the same man, now in the middle of the fight, with his hands locked in the snake sign. Lightning crashed down around him, separating the two armies. The third depicted him reaching out to help one soldier from each of the opposing armies. The final and largest scene showed him leading a large group of people towards a mountain covered in clouds.

  As they walked, Pakin pointed at the man with the coat and asked, “Is that the first Raikage?” The stoneworks depicted him in great detail, with sharp, handsome features, a mop of shaggy hair, and focused eyes.

  “Yeah. The rest of the story is in the other tunnel going through Mount Saegichi.”

  Other mountain? Pakin thought, before they exited the tunnel, and he was greeted with a view that took his breath away.

  The tunnel ended at an elevated, semi-circular clearing overlooking a massive valley. The tunnel had spit him and Gera into the middle of a cityscape that sprawled down into the flat bed of the valley’s center. The buildings continued up the opposite slope, stopping at the same height as the clearing where he stood. An identical clearing sat a little farther down the valley, also slightly above the city’s edge.

  Oh my god.

  The city itself was amazing enough, but what truly blew Pakin’s mind and made him feel like he was really in a completely different world were the giant stone pillars.

  Sprouting out of the earth at various points in the valley were rock pillars bigger than any of the buildings surrounding them. Some of the pillars even had structures built on them, their shape giving them the appearance of toy tops punctured and lifted into the air by lances of stone.

  Some pillars had bridges crisscrossing between them, with small specs that must be people moving between them. Others stood as isolated giants, standing like guardian obelisks for the city below.

  A winding river bisected the city at the base of the valley. It flowed around several pillars, heading east, until it hit a lake that spanned from one slope to the other. Perfectly parabolic cliffs on either side made the lake seem like it’d come fully formed from the sky and sliced through the mountains and valley below to make room for itself.

  Seven pillars, larger than any others in the valley, jutted from the lake. Each housed a top-like building, just as gigantic as their supporting pillars. Robust stone bridges joined the pillars and their building, and several stone platforms almost seemed to float off the sides of several connections. Above it all, a building was suspended by four supports jutting from the four most prominent pillars.

  Pakin couldn’t believe his eyes; so much of what he was seeing didn’t make sense. The size of the pillars, the buildings attached to them, and the giant lake, all of it defied common sense.

  It’s real, it’s all real. I made it, I’m really going to be a ninja. His thoughts filled him with a jumbled mess of visceral emotions: Relief, amazement, exhaustion, sadness, anticipation. But most of all, it filled him with a burning desire to go out and see it all up close.

  He turned to Gera and told her exactly how he was feeling.

  “I want to see everything!”

  Gera smiled brightly at him, and placed an arm around his shoulder, stating, “Of course you do, kiddo, but it’s real late and we’ve gotta get up early tomorrow to take care of all your school registration.”

  Pakin’s excitement dimmed slightly, but Gera clarified, “After that, I’ll take you out to see a few of the pillars. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to show you as much as possible before school starts.”

  Pakin grinned at his teacher and exclaimed, “I can’t wait!”