It took a while for her to get everything just right, but she achieved what she wanted. The man, completely naked, was bound from head to toe with metal chains created by her magic. She also tied him to a tree so he couldn't jump or move, even though she believed it was practically impossible for him to do so. She blindfolded him and temporarily sent his belongings far away, just in case he could summon them somehow. Only then did she revive him.
"Ennervate."
The man stirred slightly before going still. Anyone else would have thought he was still unconscious unless they had been watching him, like she was, or knew exactly when he would wake up—which she did. He tried to fool her like a scoundrel, but this time, he was the one at a disadvantage. Since she had ended up in this new dimension, displaced from Japan, she decided to speak to him in her freshly learned Japanese.
"Who are you?"
"…"
The man didn't answer, so she kicked him with her black dragon-leather boot. He didn't flinch, despite her lack of restraint.
"I know you're awake because I was the one who woke you up. Speak, or I'll have to think of another way to make you talk… Who are you? Why did you try to kidnap me? Where were you taking me?"
The man scoffed but said nothing. Harika rolled her eyes and raised her wand. She could use Veritaserum, but she had limited reserves and preferred to save it for situations where other… methods wouldn't work. There was no one around to object to what she was about to do, and after everything she had seen and done in the war, she had very few scruples left. So, she didn't hesitate.
"Imperio. Answer my questions with complete honesty," she commanded aloud, watching as her almost-kidnapper relaxed in his chains. "What's your name?"
"Mamoru Homura."
"What are you? How were you able to move so fast?"
"I am a ninja. Extreme speed is a common trait among ninjas, achieved by channeling chakra through the lower limbs."
Harika blinked in surprise. A ninja? Curiosity pricked at her—what exactly was a ninja, and how did they use this 'chakra' he spoke of? Still, she had more pressing questions to ask before indulging in this new mystery.
"Why did you kidnap me, and where were you taking me?"
"I kidnapped you because your powers could be a valuable asset to the Kiri rebels. I was taking you to our hideout in the Land of the Sea."
"Kiri rebels?"
"The Kiri rebels are ninjas who have been exiled, voluntarily or involuntarily, from the Land of Water, whose ninja capital is Kiri. They operate covertly to put an end to the legacy of Yagura, the Mizukage of the Land of Water."
Harika interrogated him relentlessly for a long time, as every answer led to five more questions. In the end, she discovered that there were five great ninja countries, each with a ninja capital and a civilian capital where the Kages—ninja leaders—and the daimyo resided, respectively. At that very moment, they were in the southern part of the Land of Fire, near the border with the Land of the Sea.
Apparently, there were also smaller ninja countries, but on a large scale, they held little power compared to the great nations. This was mainly because ninja wars between the major countries tended to take place in "neutral" territory—small nations that couldn't defend themselves and were periodically devastated by the great nations' conflicts. As a result, even when these smaller countries tried to recover and improve economically, they never managed to catch up with the great powers—something that worked perfectly in the larger countries' favor, as it meant fewer enemies and competitors at their borders.
"The Land of Fire itself, at the center of the map, has strategically surrounded itself with uninfluential countries," Mamoru explained in a monotonous voice. "It is bordered by eight minor nations, completely encircling its borders in a strategic manner."
Mamoru also spoke at length about the countries and the ninja and civilian villages within each nation. According to him, he was a jōnin—a high-ranking ninja—so he had a great deal of useful information.
He told her about Kumo, the most isolated and militaristic country of all, full of ninjas who thrived on war to keep the nation's economic machinery running. He spoke of Iwa, a country that used mercenary terrorist groups to cover up its dirty dealings. The only countries that seemed to hold any value for her were the Land of Wind and the Land of Fire, considering that the Land of Water was currently in the midst of a silent, covert civil war.
When she could think of nothing more to ask about this new ninja world and its inhabitants, she shifted to a completely different question:
"If you were a civilian with powers like mine… what would you do?"
"I would hide my powers but use my abilities subtly to survive. The most efficient approach would be to live in a great country, far from the ninja capital. That way, I would only have to worry about the ninjas of the country I reside in, as their enemies wouldn't easily cross their borders, giving me a considerable level of protection—something a small country couldn't provide. At the same time, I would try to get close to the daimyo by making myself useful with my powers, which would add another layer of defense against the country's ninjas."
"So… you're saying the daimyo holds more influence than the Kage?"
"In certain situations, yes. The daimyo have a sworn ninja guard, they own most of the civilian businesses that sustain the country, and they control a civilian army. Attacking someone with that much economic power is frowned upon by the noble class, so Kage often consult their daimyo on major events, despite being the country's undisputed military power."
"Mmm… I see," she murmured aloud. The ninja remained unbothered by her words since they weren't a direct order. "Where is the nearest place to find an updated world map and travel supplies?"
"The Land of the Sea."
"Where is it?"
"To the south."
"Is it far? Do they have ninjas who might detect me?"
"It's not far. The Land of the Sea has no ninjas of its own, but there could be ninjas from other countries."
"Great. Obliviate. Stupefy."
She left him unconscious again after erasing his memories and summoned his clothes back onto his body. She packed his belongings into his backpack with another spell before removing the chains. Then, she transformed into an eagle once more, feeling one of her wings still slightly sore despite the hours that had passed since taking the potion, and flew southward. She saw the sea in the distance, a triumphant feeling swelling in her chest—one she hadn't felt in hours, maybe days. Finally, something was going right.
It took her nearly an hour to reach the first cit—the first town. It was clearly not a city. There were barely fifty streets, but it did boast a large port and an extensive market where fish was the star product. She observed the villagers carefully, silently realizing that she would have stood out like a sore thumb if she had appeared in her velvet, silk, and leather magical garments. She was going to have to change her outfit, at the very least, to avoid drawing attention. She would also use a few spells to divert prying eyes and transfigure some leaves into local currency. She didn't want to stand out by flashing her gold and silver coins in what seemed to be a humble fishing village filled with traveling merchants.
She transformed her clothes into a dark yukata and swapped her boots for brown leather sandals. She conjured some money, examining it discreetly from the tree line, then transfigured a few leaves into banknotes. She walked into the crowd as if she belonged. No one seemed to give her more attention than usual, thanks to her spells, so she wandered through the market, eating an ice cream and browsing stalls.
"Excuse me," she called to a jeweler. "Where can I find a map shop?"
"Maps? At the village office. It's in the port."
"And how do I find it?"
"You'll see it right away—it's the only government building in the village."
Harika didn't insist, seeing that he seemed more inclined to keep selling and making money than to answer her questions. She walked towards the port when she caught sight of what appeared to be another ninja, but this one looked different from Mamoru Homura. His vest was green, and his pants and sweater were navy blue, almost black. He also wore a headband with another ninja symbol, which she saw from a distance thanks to her enhanced vision. It was a kind of whirlpool ending in a sharp point that looked quite a bit like a leaf, so she knew, based on the description she had received from her interrogated captive, that he must be from Konoha.
"Sensei!" called the voice of a girl. "We found him!"
"Oh? It only took you two hours," the man said sarcastically, but he ruffled the hair of a girl who, to Harika's horror, also wore a ninja headband.
She could only be twelve or thirteen years old at most, and yet... was already a ninja? Mamoru had told her about the academy and the missions, but she didn't know why she had assumed that genin didn't carry out missions outside their village. According to Mamoru, D-rank missions consisted of painting walls and cutting grass or other equally trivial tasks… What the hell was a team of rookies doing so far from home? The Land of the Sea didn't have its own ninjas, so logically, they had to be on a mission. She shook her head, looking away. The last thing she wanted was for them to notice her watching them from afar and try to interrogate her.
She still couldn't believe the number of skills that were normal for a ninja: extreme speed, brute strength, supernatural reflexes, the ability to manipulate elements… Some even had hereditary gifts, like the Yuki clan, exiled from Kiri, which Mamoru had told her about. Honestly… could she defeat them in combat? Mamoru had captured her and knocked her unconscious effortlessly. In fact, he hadn't even bothered to hide while stalking her because he thought she was a civilian. Maybe, in a ninja's eyes, she was one…
It stung quite a bit to realize that a mere muggle could incapacitate her despite her being a powerful witch. Fortunately, it seemed they weren't immune to magic, nor could they bypass her magical barriers. That would be a great help in surviving in this crazy world while she tried to figure out how to get back home.
The ding of the town office's bell sent a shiver down her spine. It reminded her of the cursed bell that had led her to that temple. Oh, how she hated having set foot in that temple. It felt like weeks had passed since she fell through that magical well, even though it had only been yesterday at midday. If it hadn't been for the ring—
She stopped dead in the middle of the street. The ring. Why did she have the feeling that the ring was exactly what Luna was talking about when she advised her to search the Japanese magical alley from top to bottom? If she hadn't had the ring, she wouldn't have escaped her kidnapper, and if it weren't for Luna's advice, she wouldn't have entered the artifact shop and wouldn't have bought the ring.
She was more convinced than ever that Luna, if not a true Seer, had at least a glimpse of that gift. Did that mean Luna knew what was going to happen and let it happen for some reason instead of warning her of the danger? Or did she simply sense that something was going to happen but not know exactly what? Either way, Harika silently thanked Luna, because the ring, even though she still didn't fully control it, had saved her life.
"Welcome to Gin no Umi. How can I help you?"
"I was told I could buy a map here."
"Maps are free," corrected the youthful-looking boy sitting behind a desk. "Would you like one of the area or a more complete one?"
"All the maps you have."
The boy didn't even blink at her request. She wondered if civilians had become desensitized to anything remotely strange, considering that anyone could control the elements with chakra and a little training. She took the maps, examining them closely, and saw that Mamoru hadn't lied. The country she had come from was the Land of Fire, and now she was in the Land of the Sea. Further southeast was the Land of Water, and eight small countries surrounded the Land of Fire, one of them with a name as absurd as the Land of Sound. Was there a lot of noise there or what? She wondered mentally, with incredulity, amusement, and a hint of madness.
This couldn't be happening… She really wasn't in Tokyo anymore. She wasn't in Japan. She wasn't even in her own damn dimension or reality or whatever this was. Where was she? How was she going to get back? She began to despair as she admitted, for the first time in hours, that she was lost. She didn't even know where to start investigating. The only place that had made sense to search was where she had fallen from the sky, and yet, there was nothing interesting there, and to make matters worse, she had been kidnapped in that patch of forest.
She sat on the beach sand, watching children play in the distance and some fishermen mending their nets while sitting in their boats, and looked at the white horizon. She had nowhere to go, no idea where to start investigating, no way to contact her friends, and knew practically nothing about this world… She was alone. Completely alone. She could no longer rely on Hermione, or Luna, or Andromeda. What was she going to do?
"Are you okay?" asked a boy with childlike curiosity, picking up the ball that had rolled near her.
"Yes."
"Are you really, really sure?" he asked again, approaching her with big, bright eyes. "My mom sometimes says she's okay, but she's not."
"… You're very smart. What's your name?"
"Enzo."
"Nice to meet you, Enzo. I'm Harika. And no, I'm not okay. I got lost, and I don't know how to get home. I don't even know if I can," she confessed. It was the truth, after all.
"Yeah…"
Enzo seemed to ponder her words but didn't know how to comfort her. He bounced his ball on the sand a couple of times while thinking, but Harika ended the conversation abruptly.
"Don't worry. When one door closes, a window opens."
"Huh?"
"It means that bad things also bring good things with them," she reassured the boy. If only she could believe her own words… "See you, Enzo."
She got up, wanting to be alone. The boy didn't follow her but instead ran back to his friends after watching her back for a couple of seconds. She walked up the beach, leaving the people behind, while thinking.
"Bad things also bring good things…" she repeated, calming down a little. "What's the good in this?"
She quickly realized that her greatest advantage was that no one here knew her or her powers. That meant that if she was smart, she could go completely unnoticed. After all, she had no chakra, so to a ninja, she was just another civilian—weak and therefore insignificant. They wouldn't pay much attention to her unless she flaunted wealth or something that made her stand out above the average person. If she approached the daimyo as her captor had suggested, she would be putting herself in the crosshairs of many people. She realized then that Mamoru's plan was a good one for a civilian with powers, but it had been thought out from a ninja's perspective. Mamoru didn't know what she was truly capable of, so he had only advised her based on the assumption that she had powers but he didn't know how diverse they were. However, despite what he thought, she was not technically a civilian or a ninja. She was a witch.
She smiled as she realized she had the start of a plan: she wouldn't go to a ninja village or a civilian capital. Avoiding those places would leave her vulnerable to the civilians or ninjas she might encounter along the way, yes, but it would also keep her far from the watchful eyes of ninjas and the civil nobility of this dimension. That would give her more time to investigate what had happened to her without anyone noticing. Thus, her first step was to live inside her suitcase for as long as necessary.
Harika returned to the market, stopping to buy a large amount of food and look for a hostel where she could remain unnoticed. She could venture back into the forest with her suitcase, but knowing there were ninjas nearby, she preferred to act like a civilian. Fortunately, she found what she was looking for with relative ease, though, now, being accustomed to luxury, her room without a bathroom felt like a hole in the wall. She set up a few barriers to ward off both ninjas and civilians alike, then conjured a couch in the middle of the room, which had slightly worn tatami floors.
"Incredible," she sighed, staring at the ceiling with blank eyes. "A world full of ninjas and child soldiers."
After a few days of resting and indulging in more self-pity than she would have liked, she started packing her things to leave the hostel and return to the Land of Fire. Her investigation wasn't going to conduct itself, and judging by the circumstances, she had a long journey ahead before she could find the first clue leading back home.
Not wanting to run into more ninjas, she decided to use her animal form to fly over the forest. Her first stop, of course, was the place where she had fallen. While she hadn't found anything the first time, perhaps it was because she hadn't searched thoroughly enough. She planned to scan a radius of a few kilometers, hoping to find something—anything—of interest. At this point, anything was better than nothing. Plus, now that she had maps, she could mark the areas she had already searched to avoid repeating them in the future.
As she flew, she pondered other ways to investigate her predicament. The image of Hermione in a library flashed through her mind. Perhaps Hermione wouldn't be so far off the mark. Maybe she could find something valuable in one of this world's libraries. After all, if she had used a portal to travel between dimensions, surely someone else had done the same before her. She mentally noted to examine the photograph she had taken of the painting. She didn't expect it to yield much yet, but she preferred to thoroughly investigate the object that had brought her here. She felt better having a solid plan to start with, no matter how fragile it seemed.
It took her a while to reach the exact location, but fortunately, she remembered it thanks to the river.
"To think that I was kidnapped here," she murmured, feeling odd speaking to herself while looking at the traces of her fall and the impact of her spell against a tree.
Thanks to the daylight, she could easily observe everything around the small clearing where she had woken up a few days ago. It wasn't particularly spacious, and there were no marks other than those they had left on the ground. It didn't seem like anything special. Just another spot in the middle of the forest. And yet, it was clear that something about it was unique—she just didn't know what yet. She marked it on her map as accurately as possible and then began circling the area outward.
She used her magic to camouflage herself, avoiding detection by ninjas, and also to aid in her search for clues, but she found nothing. A part of her had expected this, so she wasn't as discouraged as before. Though she still wanted to go home, she was no longer as desperate, because a voice inside her reassured her that, sooner or later, she would find a way back. It wasn't so much that she missed the wizarding world—other than its comforts—but she did miss her family. In fact, if she didn't have loved ones waiting for her on the other side, she might have been tempted to settle down in this place where no one knew her. Especially since she had all her belongings inside her bottomless backpack.
"That means I need to stay calm," she reminded herself. "It's only a matter of time before I find something."
Time flew as she expanded her search, making wider and wider circles around her point of entry. There were no markings, no temple—but she hadn't expected there to be. She stopped by the riverbank to eat one of the bentos she had bought before leaving the village in the Land of the Sea, gazing absentmindedly into the crystal-clear waters. She had to admit that the air in this dimension was pure and fresh. The pollution of large cities seemed nonexistent. She wondered about the society of ninjas and civilians—were they advanced, or did they live as they had in the past? She hadn't seen a single car, though she had spotted ships, which seemed more medieval than modern.
As she finished her meal, she pulled out the map of the Land of Fire. The most sensible course of action was to find a place with ancient records, which meant heading to a larger city where she could locate such archives or at least someone who could guide her. She had already decided not to approach Konoha or the civilian capital, so she would try another major city. If she found no leads, she would have to reconsider visiting the capitals, despite her reluctance.
The largest city on the map that wasn't Konoha or Keishi—the latter being the civilian capital, also called Hi no Kuni Shuto—was Mukambe, located to the west. North of Mukambe lay Keishi, so she would have to be cautious in that region, given the apparent ninja presence in the Land of Fire.
She decided to fly to the nearest city. Based on her calculations, it would take several hours to leave the outskirts of Joryoku—a village she hadn't visited—before reaching her destination, so she set off immediately. Despite her eagle-sharp eyesight—literally—she didn't see anything until midday. To her surprise, she spotted what looked like railway tracks in the distance, which completely caught her off guard. She followed the rails, knowing they would lead somewhere, and before long, she found the city. She had seen it from afar, but she knew she still had about an hour of flight left, and she was already exhausted.
She landed outside the city, in the middle of the forest, to rest for a while. She cast as many concealment spells as she could before slowly approaching the city's perimeter. She was so close to the people that she could almost touch them. Most were coming from the direction of the railway, so she assumed the station was nearby. The townspeople laughed and chatted as they strolled through the streets. Strangely, there were no ninjas, no guards, no registration office—nothing of the sort. Did that mean people could come and go freely? It seemed odd and unsafe, considering this was a ninja country… Still, it worked in her favor.
Her first priority was to confirm whether identification documents or passports existed, and if they did, forge one. With a bit of magic, she could create a false identity, so that wasn't a major concern. She was more worried about standing out due to her clothes or money. She had two options: either acquire real money somehow or use conjured money in small amounts so that no one could trace it. Conjured money would disappear after a few days, making it seem lost or stolen; as long as she didn't spend too much at once, no one would be able to track it back to her. Now that she thought about it, it might also be safer to change her facial features from city to city to remain unrecognizable.
Minutes later, a young woman of average height, with brown eyes matching her straight, short hair, entered the city without drawing any attention. Harika moved with confidence, knowing that nervous behavior was the quickest way to stand out. She browsed shops and observed the locals like any other tourist. If she set aside her investigation, she really was a tourist in a foreign land.
She searched for a library but only found a small bookstore. When she asked a local, he directed her to a government building that housed the city's archives.
"Books are maintained by the government, so they're kept in the mayor's building."
"Could you show me where that is?"
"Of course. It's that red brick building over there."
"Thank you very much."
"Don't mention it. Have a good day."
"You too."
No one stopped her from browsing Mukambe's single-floor library, so she spent the rest of the afternoon reading books, scrolls, journals, and even examining black-and-white photographs and newspaper clippings. It was fascinating. Just by reading journals, she gained a much deeper understanding of where and when she was compared to her original dimension.
This ninja world was a blend of the ancient and the modern; cinemas, televisions, radios, trains, and medical devices existed, yet airplanes, massive cruise ships, cars, and printers did not. She couldn't quite understand why some technologies existed while others did not, but she assumed there must be an economic reason behind it. After all, if manufacturing cars were profitable, she was sure they would be produced.
Of course, since she had no luck whatsoever, computers and the internet were nonexistent. That would have been too much to ask for. Luckily for her, despite growing tired just thinking about it, she was used to conducting research with quill and parchment. It would take much longer, but she wouldn't be discouraged by unfavorable conditions—especially now that she had a goal in mind.