Bab 38: Prelude to the next arc! Refusal to be side characters part 2.

In the distant land of bears, a tiny village is nestled away in great canyon, the village hidden among the stars. It's people panic as they realize that their greatest treasure is missing.

"Lord Hoshikage! Th- the star!" A couple of ninja bursts into the Hoshikage's room. A beautiful young woman with flowing rose colored hair and the stoic looking guy following is her husband and a fellow jonin of the village.

"Natsuhi, Hotarubi? What is it?" The saggy old man asks looking up from his paperwork. He wears a robe similar to the hokage, with 'star' written on his hat. "What about the star?"

"It's gone!" Natsuhi says. "Someone stole it."

"WHAT!!!!!" He nearly gave up the ghost hearing that. "How can this be!?! The star is our village's means of joining the ranks of the great nations! Raise the alarm we must get it back at all costs!"

"Wait lord Hoshikage, I think this is for the better."

"For the better? Have you lost your mind?!" The old man is livid. "Wait, how were you two the ones to discover it is missing?! Did you have something to do with this?"

"N-no sir…" she didn't dare say they were actually planning this, but someone beat them to the punch. Still there was an important matter to address. "It's not that, as ninja who have mastered the star's training method, we've realized there is a deadly side effect." They both reveal strange purple markings on their bodies, the effects of the star's radiation. "Using this technique wears away our bodies over time, we're sending our ninja to early graves using it to try and bridge the gap between us and the other villages."

"I -I see…" the old man slumped back into his seat. He didn't want to waste the lives of his village's warriors to try and grow their reputation, but this was still a great loss to them. Now what will they do? Also there was the matter of the lax security if someone could steal the most important item in the village. The old man was greatly grieved trying to process all of these thoughts at once…where does he even start?

"The thief left these behind." Hotarubi finally speaks placing a bundle of scrolls in front of the Hoshikage. Inside was a wide variety of ninjutsu and kido techniques, as well as different training methods.

"These techniques are incredible…" Just skimming through them the old man is astonished, his expression took a full one-eighty turn. "We could replace the star training with this! You two will lead the team working to learn these techniques starting first thing in the morning so we can start teaching the others. Go get some rest, you will need it. Don't worry I will handle the uproar over the star."

"SIR!" The two of them leave him with the scrolls.

"I wonder who could have done this? Thanks to them not only did we not have to risk anything to try and get rid of the star, we even received techniques capable of replacing it's power." Natsuhi thinks aloud when she and her husband are alone.

"All I know is they helped our village a great deal." Her husband answers.

"True. They have my thanks." She agrees as they head home.

"Tch! I can't believe you! You steal the star and leave them techniques? What kind of thief are you!?" Ban barks at Itachi who watched everything unfold from a distant treetop.

"I am not a thief, I am a ninja of the hidden leaf." Itachi answers calmly. "Unlike the land of sky, these people are not destined to become our enemies. It wouldn't be right to cripple them so, when they could potentially be powerful allies."

"Meh…cripple is a bit of a stretch if you ask me," Ban says nonchalantly. "It's not like the star wasn't killing them slowly anyways."

"And you would have me use it?" An annoyed Itachi asks him, debating if he made a smart choice.

"The dark chakra of the zero tails wasn't a problem for us, what's a little radiation compared to my power?"

"…." Itachi couldn't argue with the greedy sword.

"Ok, another nice treasure to add to our collection. Let's have you absorb the energy so we can start looking for our next target…and no giving away our shit this time!"

"I gave away nothing of mine…" Itachi says standing up. All of those techniques and jutsu came from the leaf, in particular Yoriichi's though. A little payback for all those years of bullying. He'd use them for his own gains…the star village will have its uses later.

"You sly little weasel, you gave away Yo's techniques? Hahahahaha he'll be pissed when he sees them!" In the blink of an eye they were gone.

...................

Toph sits perfectly still, lost in meditation with her sword before her deep in some forest with a variety of lush towering trees rising as high above. Wherever this place is, it appeared to be a tranquil paradise. Even the air felt pure and clean, it was invigorating just to breathe in. It seems she has been there for some time as vines had started growing around her and abnormally large animals rest calmly all around her.

A few weeks ago, she had run into someone who Yoriichi claimed to be an important asset to the village. So if they ever met him, point him to Yo immediately. Jiraya of the legendary sanin, a user of the powerful sage arts, an elite teacher, superb intelligence agent, powerful combatant, celebrated author...and a dirty pervert. When deciding to rest at a hot spring she had to rethink her choice when she caught some creepy old man peeking into the women's bath.

Toph started to break his arms and legs, but when he defended himself by saying that it was 'research' for a novel she remembered Yoriichi was looking for this guy. So she sent him back to the Leaf with a few lumps instead, not before getting him to tell her what he knew about senjutsu and a few training tips. Apparently, there are places with such abundant natural energy one could grow by leaps and bounds just training there. Maybe she has stumbled upon one. "I bet this place is beautiful…if only there were the talking animals to tell me if I'm in a sage land." She thinks aloud.

"Either way the rich energy and peaceful atmosphere makes this a good place to meditate. Speaking of, I still haven't heard my zanpakuto talk…that needs to be fixed. Meditate it is…maybe I can learn sage mode on my own." The tiny girl plops down in front of a massive tree and starts to meditate.

At first it was difficult for Toph to stay focused. She'd get hungry or her nose would itch. The cry of a passing beast would put her on guard. She dozed off a few times. She thought of a funny joke occasionally, but no one was there to tell it to. "GAH! This is so boring!" Toph shouts as she fails to attain any sort of enlightenment in thirty minutes or less. "Maybe I'll just go fight chakra beasts…that'll be an easier way- NO! I almost forgot what a genius I am! If anyone can master this sage mode crap it'll be me!"

Sitting back up with a renewed determination Toph clears her mind and focuses solely on her breathing. So much so the outside world gradually becomes still and more quiet. Completely tuning everything out she slips into a trance…

"YOUNG ONE!" An ethereal voice calls out in Toph's mind, waking her to see she is in a completely new place. A forested mountain filled statues of monsters, gods, demons, dragons type of plant. The plant life is so lush most of the wild vegetables are taller than Toph.

"Who's there?!" Toph questions, trying to figure out where the voice came from.

A notably tall woman with, with long flowing red hair emerges the trunk of a large tree. She has a fit but slender build and wears a dress of leaves that lacked nothing in elegance despite it's materials. "I am here, child." The breathtaking woman responds putting Toph at ease, her voice was powerful yet soothing.

"Who are you? Are you my zanpakuto spirit?" The girl questions the woman. She seems pretty strong.

"You know as well as I do that is not so. I am Gaia, the spirit of the earth." The woman answers.

"Gaia?...Isn't she from…aren't you from an entirely different myth Yo made up?" Toph questions. "How does the mother of titans exist and what could she want with me?"

"Yoriichi did not make me up. While Yo didn't lie to you, his knowledge in this case is a bit off. He himself is partly responsible for me taking this form, but I am not the titan from his earth." Gaia begins to explain.

"His earth?" Toph knows Yo says a lot of weird things but is she implying he's from another earth? How does that even work?

"I will leave that to him to explain to you, I have something else to tell you about." She says getting back on topic. "Long ago, there was a time when I was simply the chakra of this planet. I had no form, no way of reacting to the events of this world be it war or peace. I watched many lives come and go throughout the ages, some borrowed my chakra and others never knew it existed. This was until a certain man transcended our realm from upon this planet, the divine energy from that event changed me…it gave me this form and the ability to act of my own free will." The woman pauses letting Toph take the story in.

"So, the alien god guy Yo mentioned was real too? And he's the reason you look like umm…a model?" Toph guesses considering she can't actually see Gaia, her other senses give her a good enough idea though. Gaia would have been more surprised at how knowledgeable she is but this is one of Yo's closest friends. Who knows what he could have told her. "Ok I got you. So what does that have to do with me? No offense, this is all so interesting, but I was kind of expecting someone else..." Toph is clearly antsy to get stronger, the spirit of the earth has to have something good for her.

"You're a bold one," the spirit smiles and continues. "But have patience little one, I know what you are after, and I will help you reach that goal. After all I am currently one of the five strongest beings in this universe," Gaia says radiating as much arrogance as grace.

"Top five in the universe? No way, really?!" Toph exclaims.

"It's true."

'Sit through a monologue and then I get a lesson from one of the strongest in the universe… I can manage that.' Toph decides she'll pay attention. "Ok so what happened next?"

"History as you know it. Though I have foreseen countless possibilities of the future ahead, two variables have effects that I can't predict for all my power. Yoriichi and Masamune. Foreign beings who have proven to completely disrupt the world's flow on a number of occasions. The two of them were created by an entity who is able to change the fabric of reality on a whim. Even I don't know much about them."

"So, Yo was made by this 'entity'," Toph air quotes "whose power my feeble mortal brain couldn't begin to fathom. Great, just when I thought he couldn't be more of a cheat…"

"Does this discourage you?" Gaia asks seeing Toph's reaction.

"The opposite, it'll be all the more satisfying when I beat him." Toph answers pounding her fists together. "So what's up with these changes, I assume you want me to help with the aftermath of them?"

"Exactly. Because of this powerful interference in most timelines the human race is doomed to always fall to Masamune and the hordes of hollows who follow him. Ages ago, the sage of six paths Hagoromo, his brother Hamura, and one known as the nameless Shinigami sealed the hollows in a separate realm. At the cost of all of the Shinigami's spiritual powers and thus his life, a seal strong enough to contain them was created."

"Since this Masamune guy came the hollows are coming back somehow?" Toph concludes. "What did Yo do?" He was the other unpredictable variable.

"With Yoriichi's birth it felt like when the hollow came into being, but this time it was a much more powerful phenomena. He is someone I never saw in any timeline, bringing foreign energies, arts, and concepts into being with the ideas that fuel those zanpakuto he crafts. When he does this those things emerge somewhere within the earth, and so-"

"You can use them all." Toph doesn't need to see to know that Gaia is cycling through many different energy sources, she can feel the changes. Her claims don't seem so farfetched with that.

"Right again. But it may be naïve to believe these are a free gift. Rifts have torn open, gates to realms unknown to any timeline before Yoriichi existed. Demonic, divine, magical, monster infested, all kinds of realms that should not exist, do. Be wary, there are those who would use these gates as a means of obtaining abilities that defy this world's logic..." Gaia says looking at Toph waiting for the response.

"Wait you mean me?" A shocked Toph asks while pointing to herself. Is she from some other world? Is she not supposed to exist?

"Don't dwell on it too much, everything happens for a reason. I was explaining how you were probably created by the one from beyond our realm to serve a higher purpose than most... many perils will be born because of this. I can only do so much to interfere in the events that are soon to unfold, so I will help attain the strength that you seek. My power is not one to be taken lightly. I hope you've prepared yourself for this, the road ahead is going to be a tough one."

"I was born ready! Lets get this show on the road!" Toph responds raring to go.