After the incident with "Tobi" Jun and Hinoki discussed and decided to stay as a guest in one of the inns of the capital until Nazuna was recovered. Hinoki informed Minazuki and his team that they don"t have to wait for Jun and Nazuna and that Hinoki will take them on a special mission which has already be a.s.signed. Minazuki didn"t care about Jun at all to protest so he just said farewell to them and reported to the Daimyo about the completion of their mission and permission to return. The Daimyo granted them the permission and Team 2 departed.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Within one week when Team 2 had almost reached Konohagakure, Tenma by chance intruded on a gang of thieves returning from their robbing spree. Unexpectedly they turned out to be pretty skilled and used to fighting ninjas. In the fight Minazuki lost an eye and Tenma lost one of his arms. Inari was almost violated by three Bandits, however was saved by Itachi who awakened his Sharingan unexpectedly. He had already had indications of it in the last fight against "Tobi", and with additional stimulation now it wasn"t hard as he wanted to protect his friends.
Jun"s interference had enacted a change in Itachi"s future, However some parts of it remained unchanged as Inari and Tenma quit being ninjas after that, Tenma due to his physical loss and Inari due to mental trauma. Minazuki disappeared after this and was cla.s.sified as a missing nin. Itachi was put in same special trainee ANBU squad as Jun was before leaving for his special mission with Hinoki. This squad was under the Hokage due to unexpected joint efforts of Hokage and Fugaku, both with their own agendas. Itachi, who lost his only friends apart from Jun and Shisui, became a workaholic and dedicated himself to training and accomplishing missions given by hokage. In his heart was a fire to devote himself to the village and Hokage paid utmost attention to him to protect him from the likes of Danzo.
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Nazuna recovered after about two weeks of rest after which Hinoki departed with them despite the offers of the Daimyo. One week into the journey and Nazuna and Jun recovered from the stress of their previous encounter finally. Jun finally asked where they were going.
"Do you know that apart from the Five Great Villages, many small villages exist?" Hinoki asked Jun to which he nodded. "We are going to a place which used to hold one such village, the Hidden Evil Sealing Valley. Well it could not be said to be a true village, more like a experiment facility."
Jun listened with rapt attention. This was something he never knew in original works of this world.
"After the warring era, many major clans had started devising various secret methods and powers inspired by the First Hokage and his Kekkei Genkai, which could oppose even Tailed Beasts. One such clan was our Evil Sealing clan, which was made out of strong refugee ninjas from various varieties of clans of the world. However, we ran a secret experiment at that time, which we probably shouldn"t have in retrospect." Hinoki sighed before continuing.
"We had luckily captured a member of an unnamed clan who could absorb nature energy like breathing without meaning to, bringing variety of changes in him, even making him feral and beast like. After tons of research we were able to isolate that property of his bloodline. However one of the other researchers theorized something unimaginable. He believed that since Tailed beasts were made out of an amalgamation of natural energy given consciousness, it would be possible to artificially engineer one. With the extracted bloodline as a base and generations of research, various samples were generated with different animals as base. However that mad researcher got an idea to generate a Humanoid Spirit beast. So he did some forbidden research on human babies secretly and generated a spirit which could theoretically absorb Natural Energy until it fully developed into a powerful ent.i.ty like Tailed Beasts. However things went horribly wrong from then on."
Hinoki shuddered briefly before continuing. "The Humanoid Spirit however underwent a mutation. It developed use for the chakra it had been acc.u.mulating. It developed a hunger for other spirit beast chakra and devoured all experimental spirit beasts made. In the end it became an Evil that only knew how to play with others minds and generate terrifying illusions that even affect reality at its peak effect. It even abandoned its human form and became something like a huge whale like catfish with crab like legs. It even killed each of the researchers and the families that lived in the Evil Sealing Valley by driving them crazy with illusions and turning them against each other, including my own Son and his wife. However we had devised a fail-safe of five sealing mirrors which would send it into a deep sleep for many years, with the mirrors keeping track of its next awakening. Each mirror had a guardian" Hinoki said taking out the mirror he had got from Daimyo "and I was the guardian of this one. I was too late to save my family except my granddaughter who was too little at that time and was ignored by the Beast. Sealing that Beast cost the lives of four out of us five guardians. And Still asleep it stays. After that I hid all the other four mirrors in the secret domains of the other four guardians and entrusted mine to Daimyo, so that I can access it in case I need it quickly. Anyway, we need to check the status of the Beast and get the other Four mirrors, Because now finally I have a solution for cleansing that Evil once and for all. The other Four Mirrors are in The Sulfurous Valley, The Snow Covered Crystal Ravine, The Desert of Death, and finally Frontier Volcano. Once we know status of the Beast sealed in the Evil Sealing, we will visit the other four places and retrieve the mirrors. However, the mirrors are linked with using s.p.a.ce/time methods with the seal in Evil sealing valley. The mirror with us is the key and the other four mirrors are the true lock. I fear that the four locations that house the mirrors may not be as simple as what they were before."