By the time the boat scraped against the dock of the small coastal village Kimimaro had marked on the map, the sun was already rising.
Pale light spilled over the water, glinting off the battered planks.
The vessel barely held together, groaning like an old man on his deathbed.
Kimimaro stepped onto the shore and let out a quiet sigh of relief.
At least the 'coffin' had carried him this far.
He turned to the four survivors, bone still faintly protruding from his palm.
"This is where we part ways. You rowed well. You're free to go." His lips curved into a thin smile. "See? I'm not always a monster. Just most of the time."
They blinked at him, wide-eyed, as if they hadn't expected mercy.
Respect flickered in their expressions, mixed with the leftover fear he had carved into them.
One by one, they bowed their heads and muttered thanks, voices subdued but sincere.
Kimimaro studied them, amused.
Cowards, probably too scared now to crawl back to the clan, and too stained with shame to fight proudly again.
Maybe they'd vanish into the corners of the world, maybe they'd starve, maybe they'd even build new lives.
Either way, their existence meant nothing to him.
Live or die, it made no difference.
He simply felt good recently, and he let them go.
Still, he felt something faintly ironic, like he'd just liberated them.
After all, the clan would surely be destroyed soon anyway, charging into Kirigakure's jaws.
People like them would've been forced along, too stupid to refuse, too trapped by group frenzy to resist.
At least now, by accident or design, he'd spared a few.
'Let this be my sign of gratitude,' he thought, quiet and cold. 'For the last sane Kaguya ancestors, if such people even existed centuries ago. Whatever their fate is from here, it's theirs to choose. At least I've left a few survivors of the Kaguya name in this world.'
With that, he stripped the last ship of what was useful, some gold, clothes that didn't stink of blood and madness, and even the crude clan markings nailed to the hull.
He tossed the emblems into the sea like trash, so he wouldn't leave any traces.
He removed those two bright red markings on his forehead that he thought probably symbolized Kaguya's Otsutsuki natural birthmarks, proving their connection despite the distance of time.
Even if the world and the Kaguya clan itself didn't know that it probably came from there.
Kimimaro smirked at his reflection. "Fresh start."
He abandoned the wreck of a warboat for a smaller fishing vessel, one he could row alone.
It wasn't much, but it was honest wood, solid enough to carry him.
Then, with his stolen gold hidden under deck planks, he set off toward the horizon.
The sea stretched endlessly, but his eyes were fixed on a bigger island nearby, a stepping stone toward the mainland.
From there, he would find his way to the Land of Fire.
The ones Kimimaro feared now weren't the Kaguya.
That clan was already finished, hated and isolated across the Water Country like rabid dogs everyone wanted put down.
The chance of them gathering information about him, much less tracking him, was sub-zero.
Besides, his appearance gave him cover.
Light gray-white hair, bright emerald eyes, a face too symmetrical and proportional compared to those inbred savages, no one would connect him to the Kaguya bloodline.
Still, he wasn't careless.
He changed his hairstyle slightly, cut away the traditional clan markings.
No, the real threat wasn't them.
It was Kirigakure.
The village had been tightening its grip for years, cutting down bloodline clans one by one from the shadows.
They had driven the Kaguya into desperation, cornered beasts forced to lash out.
It was almost ironic, the clan's brutality had been sharpened by the very village now hunting them to extinction.
And in the current timeline, with Obito "whispering" his madness into the Mizukage's ear, Kirigakure had become a machine designed to erase bloodlines from the map entirely.
If they caught even a whisper that a child of the Kaguya still lived, especially one who had slipped the noose, they would chase him until he was ash scattered in the sea.
Kimimaro's expression stayed calm, but his thoughts turned sharper.
"They'll hunt me as prey. But prey only runs. I'll grow strong enough that when they come, I'll be the one hunting."
This was another reason Kimimaro had been so urgent to escape.
Through scraps of overheard conversations, pieced together with the fragments of memory he had devoured from the original soul, he realized the end was close.
The Kaguya clan's final rampage against Kirigakure wasn't a far-off tale; it was almost here.
The math fit too well. He was seven now.
In the original timeline, Kimimaro had been about seven or eight when the clan was annihilated. That meant the clock was ticking.
"Why wait to drown with the sinking ship?" he thought, lips curling faintly. "Better to jump early, before the fire reaches the deck."
Because who knew if this time, unlike the original, Kirigakure would not discover him then?
And even if he did slip through their slaughter nets again, what awaited him then?
Orochimaru.
The image rose in his mind, pale, snake-like face stretched into a mockery of a smile, voice dripping poison, and that filthy chakra branded into others through his curse mark.
A leash disguised as a gift.
A mockery of real power.
Kimimaro's stomach turned at the thought.
"To hell with that snake. To hell with his so-called 'gift.'"
The idea of being marked, of having Orochimaru's chakra writhing inside him like maggots in meat, was revolting.
To carry that brand, knowing the man could appear through it at will, whisper into his veins, pull his strings.
It wasn't power, it was slavery.
And for what?
Some chakra and the 'cursed seal'?
A toy trick, a child's plaything in the grand scheme of the world's true powers.
A counterfeit key to strength.
"No. I won't wear chains dressed up as blessings. Not again. Not ever."
His grip on the oar tightened, the wood creaking.
For a moment, his emerald eyes glinted with something cold, something that cut deeper than anger.
"I'll carve my own strength. Bone by bone. Step by step. If Orochimaru wants slaves, let him collar someone else. I'll break his teeth if he tries me."
The boat rocked with the rhythm of his rowing, steady as his conviction.
Other than Kirigakure, Kimimaro wasn't apprehensive about anyone else in these lands, adult or not, "armed" or not.
What were they to him, after all, whether hostile or not?
Civilians, thugs, and background characters cluttering up the stage of a shinobi's world, which were perhaps only a few decimals of the total human population.
The average villager here could probably bulldoze the civilians of Kimimaro's old world, because this world had passive chakra flow ages before Hagoromo opened his mouth.
After all, his previous world lacked even the concept of "souls", let alone the idea of chakra pathways carrying that mysterious, programmable energy born from the meeting of soul and flesh called "chakra".
Here, however, even animals breathed that chakra as casually as air. Kimimaro knew that.
However, put them beside true "shinobi", people shaped by generations of refinement and ruthless selection in the hidden villages, and by the brutal centuries before that in the Warring States era of mercenary clans, and they would similarly be easily stomped.
Actually, all of this division began with the Sage of Six Paths himself and his first, very literal, higher-level weaponization of chakra, not the naïve love and peace he preached.
So, Kimimaro now thought, he was either cruel or incompetent.
Either way, that decision birthed the supernatural killers this world politely calls shinobi.
So next to those heirs of violence, the average person might as well be an NPC.
Even academy brats in the great villages already lived on a higher plane than them.
After all, once a child learned to mold chakra, their coils expanded, and the heightened level of flow never stopped.
Chakra circulated passively more through their bodies, hardening their muscles, sharpening their senses, and fueling their stamina.
A ten-year-old who could mold chakra could thrash the strongest civilian in seconds.
And genin? That was another level entirely.
Tree walking, water walking, the academy's basic ninjutsu, it already placed them leagues above the masses.
A single genin could slaughter armed men before they even knew they were dead.
Chunin, like Kimimaro, judged himself to be now - even bigger monsters compared to that.
With chakra-enhanced strikes, speed, and durability, they could cut down squads of adults faster than their victims could even scream.
Seconds, not minutes.
That was the real hierarchy of this world.
The majority were shadows.
The spotlight always belonged to shinobi, and even among shinobi, only the rarest bloodlines stood at the summit.
Kimimaro carried one of those rare keys.
Shikotsumyaku.
A bloodline that tied directly back to the alien gods themselves, and Kaguya, the rabbit goddess, who had devoured the chakra fruit.
From her flowed Hagoromo and Hamura, and from them, six clans born from divine fragments.
Only five such clans remained on Earth, and one line clung to the moon.
Each was a relic of godhood diluted by time, but still enough to dominate the world below.
The hidden technique and elemental fusion kekkei genkai, forged through decades of unique talent and effort and etched into a clan's very genes, came only second.
So was it arrogance for a child like Kimimaro to wander alone? No.
In this world, children were born weapons, and weapons were expected to walk.
Kakashi had been a chunin at six, a jonin at thirteen, leading men into wars before he had even finished growing.
The Third Great War had sent children into slaughterhouses with forehead protectors still fresh from the academy.
The shinobi world was short-lived by design, a place where flowers bloomed fast and withered faster.
Life expectancy was measured in battles won, not years lived.
Kimimaro smiled thinly at the thought.
"A 'child' wandering alone? But, they should be afraid of me, not the other way around."