Into the Desert

Natsume was clear on one fact after a few hours of walking. She had underestimated the desert. The heat was unlike anything she had experienced. The sun seemed to never get weaker and there was never a cloud in the sky. Despite her Fire nature, she was sweating profusely. The desert costume she wore was specially designed to reduce the effects of the heat on the body, but she was still consuming chakra rapidly to resist the heat.

When the sun finally set, she was able to rest and recover some chakra. Just half a day of travel had consumed a quarter of her chakra reserves. Natsume hoped she would adapt to the heat quickly to reduce her consumption. Thinking of the mission she was given, Natsume wondered if this was a trap. There was no need to deal with weak mercenaries that couldn't even make it through the desert, but after traveling for so long, they would be easier to ambush.

Now she understood why the Land of Wind was able to maintain its power despite all of its strength being concentrated in a small area. Armies couldn't attack easily without suffering from the desert! In her memories, the Land of Wind and Land of Fire were often allied. This made sense based on the topography. The only real threat to the Land of Wind was on the side without a natural barrier. If not for the hidden villages of the future, the Land of Wind wouldn't even be able to put up a fight in the future.

Natsume did her normal routine and sensed the nearby Nature energy. That is when she realized something was wrong with the desert. There was a terrible chakra distributed all over. It had soaked deep into the sand. She instantly realized why the desert was so difficult to traverse. Although considered the weakest of the nine, the Ichibi could rival its stronger siblings in the desert. It seemed that his influence was already spread throughout the great desert. Perhaps there was even an agreement with the people of the Land of Wind.

Coming to this realization, she was able to confirm that this was indeed a trap, but not one that required the Daimyo's shinobi to move. She was sent directly into the mouth of the tailed beast. With her sharingan, she could sense the sands shifting silently below the surface. The terrain was actively changing, trying to confuse and trap her. She was able to determine the presence of a subtle genjutsu. If not for her dojutsu, she would have wandered the desert until she collapsed.

Natsume was not confident in being able to handle the Ichibi in his natural terrain. Without the power of the Eight Trigram Seal, a genjutsu centered Mangekyou Sharingan, or mastery of Senjutsu, Natsume wouldn't try to fight a tailed beast. However, she suspected that the Ichibi wouldn't make a move directly. The tanuki was very arrogant from her memories and likely believed that Natsume would die on her own with just a little manipulation. Besides, the Tailed Beasts were ultimately peaceful to her understanding. If not for shinobi abusing them as weapons, they wouldn't even bother anyone.

This made her think of the Kyuubi which had been controlled by Ashina quite recently. She sighed and felt empathy for the tailed beast. The accumulated hatred was not something that could be diffused by just anyone. Natsume wondered if she could at least convince Kyuubi to live peacefully in the depths of the forest once more with the promise of protection against shinobi. Thinking of Hashirama and Madara's battle, and the ultimate capture of the tailed beasts, she had a headache.

'I can only cross the bridge in the future. There is nothing I can do about it now. The main characters in question aren't even 1 year old yet.'

Natsume laughed thinking about age. She herself wasn't even a teenager yet. She couldn't help perceiving herself as being older than she was due to her upbringing and inherited memories of a past life. Fortunately in this world, age was secondary to strength. She clenched her hand into a fist and calmed her mind. Although she was immune to the weak genjutsu, she couldn't let her guard down.

The next morning, Natsume was refreshed from a good night's rest and left before the sun rose. Reaching the border of the Land of Lightning would take her nearly a month of travel through the desert, so she decided to pace herself. Since there was excessive consumption during peak hours, she would create a shelter for herself and rest. This would cut down her travel time during the worst periods. Traveling at night would be ideal for her since she could deal with any nocturnal predators easily.

As for using Fuchikoma to directly reach the border, she immediately rejected that idea. Regardless of her Mangekyou sharingan, revealing an ability to instantly travel across the continent would make her a target. Natsume had seen how desperately the enemy shinobi tried to deal with the future Flying Raijin user. Space-time Jutsu was frightening since it could not be countered by normal means. Even the fastest shinobi of the era couldn't do anything about it.

Additionally, traveling through the desert was a form of training as well. Natsume's chakra control could be further refined under the pressure of the desert heat. Meanwhile, she could experience a different kind of nature and further her understanding of senjutsu. Perhaps she may even accidentally encounter a clan and 'borrow' their history books and jutsu scrolls. While in thought, she sensed something spying on her. She turned and noticed an eye for a split second before it turned to sand.

The technique was rather familiar. She scanned her memories and thought about the royal family of Sunagakure. The kazekage of this hidden village were all from the same family and had varying degrees of sand control. It was even possible that they were the ones who had an agreement with the angry tanuki. During Hashirama's distribution of the tailed beasts, Sunagakure mentioned already having a tailed beast. Therefore, it was possible they were already in control of this power today.