Chapter 679 - 679: Journey to the West

'The Tsubame Maru Ichi-gō may be a marvel of modern engineering, but it's infuriatingly slow,' Sasuke wryly thought to himself. 'If it were just me running, I'd already be halfway to Redaku.'

The average ninja could easily outpace even the fastest thoroughbred horses thanks to their chakra, and as members of the human race, they also possessed enough stamina to put the entire animal kingdom to shame. A trip that would take a day on horseback, riding only during daylight hours, mind you, could be completed at a comfortable pace in under an hour on a ninja's legs, though Sasuke could go much, much faster if he were so inclined.

Even so, airship travel had its perks.

Sasuke surreptitiously stole a glance at Tsubaki as the airship hit an air pocket and abruptly sank a few metres, causing her breasts to smack her in the chin even as she remained completely still, buckled into her seat in front of him.

"Jii…"

"What is it this time?" Sasuke sighed. "Use your words."

Tsubaki stared at him unflinchingly.

"You were looking at me first," she said. "I was only returning the favour."

So, she had caught him stealing a glance, so what? Not that he really cared about her breasts; they might look like Sakura's, but they weren't hers… and they were far smaller than hers. Sasuke pushed himself to his feet and walked to one of the many portholes lining the sides of the airship, and he peered outside.

"There goes the Land of Birds," he muttered to himself. "It'd be faster if I jumped down and continued on foot…"

The Land of Redaku, where the Sage of the Six Paths had apparently found a cure for his affliction, lay far to the west of the shinobi continent, but to get there, one naturally needed to infringe upon the Land of Earth's territory.

That was why the Sixth Hokage had reached out to the craftsmen of the Land of Waves and asked to borrow their experimental airship, to avoid unnecessarily causing tensions with the other great nations. By flying over their heads in this lighter-than-air contraption, their sensor-nin would not be able to detect them, since airships did not use chakra to fly!

"To think that we're not even halfway there…"

Thanks to its Uchiha and Senju heritage dating back one millennium, the Hidden Leaf did possess rough maps of the Extreme-Occident, the Far West, but they were centuries out of date. Anything past the Land of Demons and Swamps was mostly uncharted territory, and what few travelling merchants ventured past there jealously kept their maps to themselves.

However, one thing was for sure: past the Land of Demons, precious few could use chakra, even though the Sage of Six Paths must have visited those places on his way to the Land of Redaku. The existence of shinobi and the chakra they used to produce miracles was likely a myth to those people.

…

The days continued trickling by as the airship continued its slow advance towards the west. There were traces of civilisation here and there, but nothing as impressive as what might be found in the elemental nations, which were themselves mostly composed of wilderness and uninhabitable wastelands.

After nightfall, Sasuke, Tsubaki and the rest of the airship's crew would gather on the deck and watch the meteor showers before going to bed. Each night, the starry tapestry of the heavens would turn into a spectacle of pretty lights streaking across the darkness. It seemed this was a phenomenon that could normally only be seen this far west, because star showers were rather rare in the east where they all lived.

"The moon is beautiful, isn't it?"

Startled, Sasuke glanced at Tsubaki, who was leaning against the deck's railing by his side. His heart skipped a beat as he took in her beautiful appearance, aglow in the moonlight. She appeared far more human than the doll he had met a few days ago in Sakura's office; perhaps she had been right to confide her to him, but even so…

"It's strange," Tsubaki went on. "I have these memories of reading Jiraiya-sama's book…"

She paused and glanced at Sasuke from the corner of her eye.

"I can recite by heart the passage where Yuzuha, the main character of The Tale of the Udderly Busty Kunoichi, witnesses her love interest receive a love confession from her childhood friend," Tsubaki continued, closing her eyes. "I can remember the words on the page, but I cannot remember how I felt reading them… that is because I am not Sakura."

Tsubaki opened her eyes, but her irises were no longer that beautiful emerald green that Sasuke could lose himself in. A black dot seemed to detach from her pupil and enter into orbit within her scarlet eyes… a one-tomoe Sharingan!

"I am not even the original Tsubaki, whose newborn consciousness was mercilessly crushed," she said dully. "I remember dying, but I do not remember feeling any terror."

Tsubaki paused to watch a shooting star fall beyond the horizon.

"Not too long ago, Sakura had a wet dream about you, Uchiha Sasuke," she said, for the first time a touch of emotion inflecting her voice. "The sexual attraction she felt towards you was a part of herself she resented, found shameful, so she excised it from herself."

Something caught in Sasuke's throat. Back then, just before giving him this mission, Sakura had flirted with him unusually suggestively… had that only been an experiment to see whether she was still attracted to him?

"On a whim, she tore Lovey-Dovey Sakura kicking and screaming from the Spiritual Plane and arbitrarily sealed her within this prison of flesh," Tsubaki said bitterly. "Every passing moment in this body feels like I'm walking through mist, like I'm half awake… it's only when I look at you that the world seems to solidify, become real…"

That certainly explained why she was constantly staring at him…

"What are you saying?" Sasuke asked apprehensively.

Lovey-Dovey Sakura represented the greatest self-expression of Sakura's love, but she had been forcefully incarnated into a human body, one through which Uchiha blood ran hot. Sasuke knew better than anyone about the Curse of Hatred, how great love could turn into great hatred…

"Just what am I supposed to do!?" Tsubaki cried hysterically, pulling at her hair. "Sakura bottled up her love for Sasuke and shoved it inside a puppet Sasuke could never love, then asked her to handle Sasuke's physiological urges! How cruel is that? How could she do such a thing to herself? To me!?"

'Knowing Sakura, she probably hadn't thought about it that deeply,' Sasuke thought to himself. 'Sakura is incredibly smart, but she can also be unbelievably ditzy sometimes.'

Sasuke glanced left and right. Attracted by the commotion, a few members of the Tsubame Maru Ichi-gō's crew had gathered on their side of the deck to watch the drama, even as a particularly spectacular series of shooting stars streaked across the night sky over them.

The airship shuddered.

"You hate to look at me, admit it," Tsubaki said tearfully. "I remind you too much of her, don't—"

An ear-splitting roar rang out as a glowing meteor whizzed right past the airship. Sucked in by the vacuum left in the meteor's wake, the airship brutally lurched sideways, and the vortex trail instantly tore the rigid shell containing the hydrogen gas balloons to shreds.