A soft tap woke me up or rather prevented me from falling asleep.
It was Shizune.
"You were right here this whole time?" I asked with surprise, causing Shizune to chuckle.
She slapped my arm lightly and spoke calmly after that, "I was outside the whole time. But did you really think I'd let you run off into a dark area and fight a Jonin all alone? When the only other combat experience you have right now is fighting against me?"
'Erm…well…technically I do have combat experience in dark regions…just in a different world.'
But since I couldn't say that out loud I just thanked her, "Well then thanks for watching my back I guess?"
"Watching your back? Mister, I did most of the work for you!" Shizune exclaimed with another slap to my shoulder.
"What! No way! You're just taking credit! What did you even do?"
I truly didn't know. Hadn't I been the one doing everything since the beginning? Slashing the two genin when they were asleep, and then baiting out the Jonin who didn't know if I was a Chunin or a Jonin and then killing him?
Wait, if Shizune was here all along did she see me use my 'seal less' water jutsus?
There wasn't enough light in the cave for me to see Shizune's face to gauge her expression but I truly hoped I wouldn't have to explain to her about my ability to travel between worlds.
I knew I'd eventually have to when things go too spicy on either side with me suffering a sudden drastic injury on either side, but until then I didn't want to sound crazy.
In spite of my thoughts, Shizune continued, "I will tell you what I did later, but what do you think the Jonin was doing when he reached the mouth of the cave?"
"Ermm…trying to keep me from escaping from the cave?" I guessed since that was what I was thinking about when I'd fought him. I assumed that he was standing there to prevent me from leaving after killing one of his genin students.
"You fool! You're naive! That's not even a Chunin level strategy! Only a genin would make such a rudimentary argument. Well but even then, I'm still partially to blame for not showing you what is possible beforehand."
"What is possible?" I mumbled my question with a puzzled look.
"Yes. A Jonin, or even a Chunin has enough knowledge about various jutsus to level an entire cave in seconds. Had he wanted he would've simply buried you all along with the cave, turning you a part of the rubble. Even a slightly knowledgeable Genin could've sealed you in here with themselves using explosion tags if they wanted."
"Ah…"
That made sense, but then-
"Why didn't he do that then?"
Shizune laughed softly with pride before kicking over the Jonin that was beside me and flipping him to lie on his front instead of his back, exposing his neck.
Pierced into it was a sharp psenbon oozing with a purplish liquid that seemed to slowly and silently be spreading through all the blood vessels from his neck, especially towards his head.
"I hit him with that." Shizune said calmly before explaining, "It's a neurotoxin that triggers the brain in such a way to make them feel fear and inhibits their capacity for logic."
"...." I gulped seeing that a simple needle could perform such ridiculous effects, but if I was in a world where people could breath out fire to burn entire armies and spit out water to cut entire mountains while a snake could remain immortal for ever and people could be resurrected from the dead, a simple neurotoxin such as the one Shizune presented was not very impossible.
I felt a short sense of defeat for a moment before a genuine sense of gratitude arose within me.
"Thank you." I said to Shizune, this time meaning it much more deeply.
"Haha~ So you finally know how great I am!!! What did you think, I'd just let you plop dead so soon? I'm Tsunade-sama's direct disciple and as someone related to her, you must also live long enough to make her proud!"
"Hm~m." I nodded in agreement before getting up with her help.
We then freed the woman that was held captive, the others had already been killed and defiled according to her. Her descriptions made me feel anger at first towards the Jonin and the three Genin with him before it was directed at myself for letting him die too easily.
Perhaps I should've let Shizune handle all this after all.
Shizune placed her hand on my shoulder and gave it a gentle pat as if soothing me that everything would be alright, it caused me some relaxation but also a slight twinge of annoyance at myself.
'And here I was proudly expounding my superior Knowledge to Tsunade that this world could simply be 'cured' if we removed Shinobi from the armies by stopping to treat them as tools and more like people who could just help everyone around us all in daily lives..'
I shuddered to think that people like this would just pass off as normal then.
'But then…weren't they in my world too? Psychotic killers, rapists, child molesters, and everything else from corrupt public servants who visit 'secret islands' to the black market where people are sold for all sorts of demeaning values.'
Shizune escorted the woman away and back to the safety of her village while asking me to collect proof of our executions in the storage scrolls she gave me.
Just their heads were enough and that is what I stored in a single storage scroll while using the others to store any other scrolls present on them or their money and other possessions.
I'd tried to read the content of the scrolls I collected, wondering if it contained any new Jutsu I could learn and master, maybe the precious Lightning Cloak Jutsu, but they were all encrypted in some way so I doubted they were jutsu scrolls and so I simply stored it away for Shizune and Tsunade to read later.
Shizune arrived not long after and we returned to the Black Market to collect our bounty while disguising our appearances.
"So…" I whispered as we entered the alleyway that we'd entered not long before, "The Midnight Butterfly huh…someone has a peculiar secret name?"
I could've sworn I heard Shizune choke a little but given our transformations I couldn't pinpoint anything from her expression but she never said anything and we arrived at the same bar that we took our missions from.
"Hand it over." Shizune said calmly, her tone not bossy but leaving no room for arguments. And I had none, so I tossed over the scrolls containing the heads of the targets to the Bartender who grabbed it out of the air and threw it into a slot on the wall.
I was puzzled for a second about what was happening before I realised.
'So they have someone behind there to check the loot?'
And my suspicions were proven right when the tag that Shizune had thrown at the bartender when we left popped out of the same hole along with a new scroll that I guess was filled with the loot.
'How much money do they have back there…'
'Wouldn't it be easier for a person of Tsunade's caliber to just rob this place of money and leave? I bet even Shizune could do it with just a little bit of her neurotoxin…'
'Does Tsunade fear having the entire black market on her tail too?'
'But…didn't she tell me that a Kage could beat up several thousand Elite Jonin at once? Wouldn't she be able to do the same?'
"Your mind is buzzing boy." The bartender growled as he handed over the scroll and Shizune's identification badge back to her with little reverence for her.
My face scrunched up a little but I kept calm until Shizune and I walked out of the 'establishment' where Shizune promptly laughed in my face.
"Seriously! Don't tell me you were thinking about stealing from the Black Market."
I stood dumbfounded wondering if I truly was so easy to read but then Shizune explained softly by answering exactly what I was wondering about, "If it was so easy to rob from them, Tsunade-sama wouldn't have asked me to ever finish missions for her."
"...so is she just letting them fatten up before she truly robs them?" I asked politely, attempting at humor but also trying to understand what was going on.
"Haha~ I should tell Tsunade-sama that. She'll love that one. But no. It's not that. It's not even that Tsunade-sama can't handle something as simple as a few rogue assassins sent by the black market after her if she did something like that. No. What's truly dangerous about this is the fact that the Black Market stops working with the entire shinobi village that does something like that."
"Wha-"
"Its a perfect system. Anyone who does it will be hunted by their own village. Of course the rogue shinobi might already be on the run from his village if he did that, but imagine only a simple wanted notice being posted for you versus an entire village actively looking for you, turning up every stone, searching for you in every corner until they've found you and handed over your head to the Black Market…it's like signing off on a death warrant fulfilled by people you know well. Not recommended."
I gulped slowly before nodding.
'No stealing from the Black Market…noted…'
But then a thought crossed my mind.
'....I don't really have a village I'm affiliated to….so…'
Luckily Shizune didn't see my face at this moment.
"Come, let's return. I'm sure Tsunade-sama is worried about us." Shizune said and I nodded before we set off towards the Land Of Hot Water, our current resting location.
'I still don't know where I'm in the Naruto World…but what do I even ask her about without sounding like a suspicious individual?'
'Does it even matter how I ask it at this point now that they're basically carrying me around?'
I thought for a while, and found a slightly indirect way to put my question so I asked Shizune about it, "Would Tsunade-sama be interested in becoming the next Hokage, Shizune-san?"