Toji advanced slowly, his hands in his pockets, looking bored. Afro stood beside him, his arm resting on his sword, appearing expressionless.
They had already left the land of grass, now they were in the land of fire.
Civilians walked around them, Toji's strong physique and Afro's sword clearly screaming danger, so most stayed away from them, except for a few ronin who passed by and looked at them with narrowed eyes, sensing that Afro and Toji were one and the same.
However, the pair ignored both sides, Toji was planning to start preparing the advancement ritual early on, after all, he needed people to die for it to work.
Toji was thinking about how to create contracts for people who would die soon. His first solution was simple: find people with terminal illnesses and relatives, and make a deal for their souls in exchange for money for the family.
The problem with that is that they would all be civilians, and he would need to find 10,000 of them.
Toji wondered if he should make posters and distribute them throughout the nations: "Fushiguro Toji - Life Insurance".
The motto could be: "Dying with a smile on your face."
Toji shrugged, it wasn't worth it.
He could also offer strength to ordinary people, especially those seeking revenge, he could give them enough strength to complete this 'revenge' and then take their soul.
In any case, he didn't want to worry about it, just make as many deals as he could and let the souls be harvested little by little.
To that end, Toji went directly outside the village and separated a hundred clones at once, letting them spread out and make deals along the way.
He didn't have Bind, so he couldn't be like Jugo separating a thousand clones easily, separating 100 was already dangerous for him, but he still had a Snake clone with him, so everything should be fine as long as they weren't all destroyed at once.
Now he just had to wait. If 10,000 weren't enough, he would make 100,000, if 100,000 weren't enough, he would make 1 million. He didn't believe that with so many people, 10,000 among them wouldn't die.
//-//
Kimimaro walked beside Pakura, the two remained silent.
Each for their own reasons.
Pakura couldn't look at Kimimaro without remembering the Genjutsu, which is why she was frantically avoiding his gaze.
Kimimaro, on the other hand, was thinking about how to approach Pakura to have children for him.
Jugo-sama was very clear: get married, have children.
Here he was, having found his target, but not knowing what to say.
Kimimaro wasn't embarrassed, far from it, he didn't care much about the whole situation. The real problem was getting Pakura to accept.
If he were too direct, would she accept? If not, wouldn't he miss this chance? If it had been at the moment Jugo gave him this mission, he probably would have proposed directly, but after the conversation with Tayuya, he realized that simply wanting wasn't enough.
He needed to get the woman to accept willingly.
Tsunade was simple: give her money, and she would probably accept it.
If Tsunade could hear Kimimaro's thoughts, she would have punched him in the head a few times to see if there was any trouble in there, luckily, she didn't hear it.
Frustrated, Kimimaro sighed, thinking that being able to talk to Tayuya now would be useful.
Glancing at Pakura, he didn't notice the change in her, because before he had barely paid attention to her, so he couldn't tell if she was different or not.
Thus, he was completely oblivious to the change in the atmosphere between them.
Pakura, on the other hand, completely noticed the change in Kimimaro. The most obvious thing was the way he interacted with her: first, he looked at her sometimes, second, when she spoke to him, he responded, even if still in his irritating tone.
When Pakura seemed tired, he suggested stopping, something he hadn't done until then.
Pakura wasn't naive, she sensed that the dynamic between them had changed after that 'genjutsu'. Kimimaro seemed to have fallen in love with her.
Pakura was completely at a loss for what to do, so she ignored it, she herself didn't know much about matters between men and women.
However, it became increasingly difficult to ignore in the next city, when Pakura and Kimimaro separated to look for clues about Afro and Toji, and she ended up seeing Kimimaro inside a bookstore buying a book.
Curious, she looked at the cover and felt her scalp go numb, it was clearly a pornographic book!
Pakura turned and left as quickly as she had arrived.
A racing heart and irregular breathing.
If she hadn't seen that genjutsu, she would have just found it funny, after all, even before reincarnating, she was already almost 30, while Kimimaro was barely 18.
However, after that Genjutsu, when she thought about Kimimaro... Pakura found herself increasingly nervous.
When the pair reunited moments later, neither of them said anything other than that they hadn't found any clues and left soon after.
Even so, the atmosphere between them only became increasingly tense.
Pakura observed with amusement how Kimimaro even opened the door for her when they entered an inn, or how he offered her some pieces of meat at a barbecue, the man seemed normal, albeit a little stiff.
At first it was unsettling, but the more Kimimaro tried to appear 'nice', the funnier Pakura found the situation, at some point, she began to appreciate it and even reciprocate a few times.
One morning she even went so far as to fix his hair, which was a little messy.
Kimimaro froze, stunned, the same thing happened to Pakura shortly after the event. In the end, neither of them spoke about it.
The search continued, however there was more to this journey of two people than just searching.