After a long while, Saul got up from the now drowsy Karin. With a flash of light, he healed her arm. Weakened from all the blood and chakra loss, her droopy eyes closed after he healed her and she immediately fell asleep. Saul grabbed some nearby covers and draped them over her at the couch.

It had taken a truly enormous amount of chakra to mend his body fully. Saul had drained Karin more than ever before in order to fundamentally restructure his body to the extent it wanted to be. But it was worth it. It was all worth it.

Saul felt lighter than ever before. The exhaustion that never seemed to leave him after his hard training was now completely absent, and his mind was sharp.

"Saul-kun..." Hinata yawned, "How did it go?"

The white eyed girl had been watching him tirelessly even into the dark of the night. She had been worried, he thought.

"Amazing, Hinata. I feel better than ever. Why don't you go to sleep? I'll be up for a while longer."

Hinata rubbed her eyes and smiled lovingly at him, "It's late, Saul-kun. Don't take too long. I want to wake up in your arms..."

The woman who had been speaking before him turned into smoke. Saul turned and smiled wryly to himself. Silly girl.

Looking outside his window into the inky black darkness of the night, Saul saw the night sky. It was dark, cloudy. Rain drops fell down from the sky, creating small streams of water along the grass. Yet in this seemingly mundane scene, Saul saw more than he ever had before. The darkness of the night no longer inhibited his vision.

His eyes followed a single droplet as it fell down to the earth. It was an almost spherical shape marred only by the slight tail end that still pointed to the sky. During the fall, small ripples were visible within the spherical shape that traveled up to the tail. And then, the crash.

The spherical droplet compressed into a more ovular shape, then burst out and literally exploded. Countless smaller versions of itself were shot out, only to repeat the same cycle as its parent with a slightly different trajectory. The once mundane sight had become magical to his new sight.

Saul looked away from the window and began making himself a midnight snack. He had run out of sustenance very quickly during the healing, and it felt like he was starving. Saul ate bite after bite until the fridge was completely clear of any food that could be eaten raw. And yet, he was still hungry.

The rice bag was opened. The rice within was washed, strained within the sink. Water boiled, and the rice was put into the pot to simmer. Once it was done, it was quickly consumed only for more to take its place.

Saul's chakra enhanced stomach was a furnace. Food was burned as mere fuel, leaving room for more and more. Soon, there was almost nothing left within the house.

Feeling only slightly satiated, Saul decided a small outing would do him some good. He couldn't exactly eat everything, could he?

So there he walked. In the middle of the night, covered in a small cloak of chakra that repelled the rain. The water could not stick to his skin or clothes as he moved, untouched by the elements. Slowly yet surely, Saul grew further and further away from what was the realm of man. What would he be like in a couple of years?

A disturbance in the wind around him broke his ethereal state of reverie. His enhanced senses fed back into his subconscious, and his subconscious mind prompted him to look. High above him was an approaching figure, peeking its head above the rooftops. They met eye to eye.

The figure was wearing a bone white mask of a sloth. They stared at each other for a moment, before the figure gracefully flipped down from the rooftop and landed in front of Saul. The Anbu did not reach for any weapons and her posture was open, yet... Saul didn't let his guard down. He had never been approached by an Anbu before. This was highly abnormal.

"Who are you?"

As he asked the question, he examined the woman further. Long, purple hair. Red markings along the mask, there to simulate cracks. The emotionless line of the animal's mouth. Bare shoulders, one marked with a red tattoo. A long handle of a katana slung around her back. And a Chunin flak jacket. Saul knew he had seen this Anbu in the original series, but he didn't remember who she was exactly.

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you. One does not learn the identity of a Konoha Anbu so lightly. Tell me your name and ninja rank, please. And what you're doing out so late."

Saul's guard dropped slightly. So this was just an Anbu patrol, huh. His heightened senses allowed him to notice her even in the midst of the night. Yet those very same senses had also led to this encounter. If he had not noticed, she most likely would have just monitored him silently.

He pulled out his ninja headband from his pocket - he had taken it off earlier when he was healing himself to keep it from feeling uncomfortable. He wrapped it around his forehead.

"I am a Konoha Genin, named Saul. I was just out to get a breath of fresh air for a change of pace."

"A change of pace...?"

"That's right."

This woman was clearly suspicious, but he was actually telling the truth. It was highly ironic to Saul that none of his other escapades had met with such scrutiny when he was actually doing something mutinous, but in those cases he also carefully crafted routine routes and alibis for any such scenarios. He had felt no such need to do so for his current outing, yet this careless innocence seemed to garner more suspicion than planned criminality.

"No random Genin should be able to pick up on my movements."

"You should have seen me in the Chunin exams then. I was a finalist after all. Do you really have to make things difficult? Just going on a walk shouldn't be a crime."

The woman paused for a moment, weighing her options. Saul was already beginning to hate her on the inside. Her mannerisms reminded him of the very woman who sent him to this world in the first place.

"...Come with me. I need to verify that you truly are who you say you are."

"..."

This wasn't the country of his previous life. Konoha was a village of ninja. Ninja did not have rights, nor did they have laws to protect them. Even if they did, to follow said rules or not was up to the whims of whoever enforced them in the moment. Ninja were all tools of the village, and the Anbu were the hand of the Village's authority.

Foolishly creating a disturbance over a minor issue could ruin everything. Saul had paid the ultimate price before while trusting the law to protect him. Before he died, he expected his rights to be upheld and enforced by those who should enforce them. He would not make the same mistakes again.

"Lead the way."

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