Journey of Desires

- Naruto! Give it back the good way!

- No!

- Naruko!

The scene that took place before Kilia and Hikari's eyes happened literally twenty seconds ago.

This morning it so happened that Ban didn't want to wake up at all, the task was ordered for nine thirty, and soon the time would come when they had to go explore the village.

But Ban couldn't be woken up, and Naruko had one "Beautiful" idea.

For some reason, she thought that stealing the last set of clothes by hanging it outside the window on another building, and then pouring ice water on Ban would be the perfect way to wake him up and teach him a lesson.

As a result, she managed to wake him up after all, although Ban came to his senses literally in seconds thanks to his resistance to temperatures due to training, but still, in the first moments, the ice that poured onto his body felt full.

His gaze appeared Naruko, who at that moment climbed out the window and tried to jump to the building opposite.

Now he was shouting at the girl who was sitting on the pipe of the building opposite and Ban's last set of clothes was hanging next to her, and she didn't want to give it back.

- Naruko... Are you sure?

The phrase was said with obvious notes of threat.

- Ha! You won't do anything to me, you won't go outside in just your underwear!

Ban narrowed his eyes in response and pointed his right hand towards Naruko.

- Household magic...

Hearing these words, Naruko already understood what would happen next and began to regret what she had done.

- Section 16: Binding.

I think it was quite expected that Ban did not improve his skills in magic, which he almost never uses, and as a result, the situation that happened with Hinata during the kidnapping was repeated...

Naruko, who was tied up, began to fall down, but Ban caught her in time, who, thanks to his speed, had already managed to take his clothes in one hand, quickly putting on his pants at the same time, and then picked up Naruko holding her by the ropes and threw her straight into the living room window, back to the room.

***

The guide's task that Kurotsuchi decided to accept yesterday does not require a large number of people, and therefore she went to do it alone. Finding the hotel where the travelers were staying was quite easy, after all, the girl has lived in this village since birth and knows it well.

- Hmmm, Gold Dust... Gold Dust, ah! Here!

Entering the building and asking in what direction number nine was, Kurotsuchi went to her customers. A minute later, there was a knock on the door of the room.

- I'll open it.

The doors opened and Kurotsuchi saw a beautiful girl of fairly average height with blue hair and red eyes that were a bit like brown.

- Hello, I... huh???

Kurotsuchi was about to introduce herself and ask if she had found her customers correctly when a strange picture appeared before her eyes.

A very tall man was holding a girl at arm's length who was tied up with a huge number of ropes, and in his left hand he had a strange dish, something like thin dough with a lot of filling inside, from what Kurotsuchi could see there were clearly meat and vegetables.

The man stood and ate this dish little by little, biting off pieces from it, and this was happening right in front of the tied up girl's eyes...

- Baaaaaaaan! Enough! I want to eat too!

It just so happened that Naruto has a huge appetite just like Naruto, because of the genes of her body and possibly because she is a Jinchuriki, she required a lot of food. And today she hasn't had breakfast yet, and she really liked the shawarma that Ban knows how to make from his past life, and seeing how he gobbles it up and teases her on purpose, she already started to cry from the desire to eat.

- Baaan... well please. Well forgive me, just stop...

About ten minutes had already passed since the beginning of this torture and Ban still decided to take pity, sighing and throwing the tied up girl on the couch, he sat down on a chair and began to finish the delicacy.

After the end of this scene, Kurotsuchi finally came to her senses and looked at the girl who stood in front of her with questions in her eyes.

- Mmmm... Don't pay attention, this morning Naruko decided to play a joke on her brother and as a result you just saw, hmm today Ban is in a surprisingly bad mood, usually he wouldn't do something like this.

Ban, who was there, heard these words and shouted out an answer.

- Of course, a bad mood! Even Zhivago didn't wake me up like that! You even remember where it was nicer to wake up...

He said this without looking at his sister, but then turned his face towards the guest and asked a question.

- And who are you?

- Huh? Oh, right! My name is Kurotsuchi, I'm here on a mission to be a guide for a group of tourists for a few days.

- Kurotsuchi? A familiar name.

Ban wondered if he remembered someone with a similar name in Naruto, but he couldn't remember who it was. His sister decided to give him a hint.

- As far as I remember, that's the name of the Tsuchikage's granddaughter.

Kilia turned her head towards Kurotsuchi, looking for confirmation of her words, and seeing an affirmative nod, everything became clear.

- Hm! In principle, it was expected, a safe mission inside the village with such good pay, it is logical that the old kage would give such a mission to someone who is close to him. Although... I still expected that he would give the mission to someone with a higher rank because they are better versed in the secrets of the village, and they can definitely tell you where not to poke your nose.

- Hey! My grandfather is not like that!

Kurotsuchi's indignation was visible to the naked eye.

- Yesterday I was the one who asked for a more interesting mission!

- Hm? As you say! Come in, have breakfast now and then we'll go to the village.

Having called his guest to the table, Ban went to the kitchen, so as not to show the spatial storage, he got food in another room and began to carry it to the place where three girls were already sitting, but when he put the first two plates and turned back to the kitchen, his sister called out to him and pointed with her gaze at Naruko.

- Ban, let her go already.

Ban clapped his hands and headed towards the kitchen. The ropes on Naruko began to gradually disintegrate and after a couple of minutes she was free.

Kurotsuchi looked at this scene with surprised eyes, Kiliya noticed her look and decided to explain.

- This is not ninjutsu, so you probably haven't seen anything like this before.

- Not ninjutsu?

- Yeah, you know that there are different monk techniques, the skills of the samurai from the Land of Iron?

- Yeah!

- Well, this kind of binding is just like these unique styles.

While they were talking, Ban managed to bring portions for everyone, and sat down in the place where he had been sitting before, and then he had a question.

- M? Where's Hinata?

- Sleeping.

- Sleeping?

- Sleeping!

- Why the hell is a blond gremlin waking me up with ice water, and no one bothers Hinata?

Kilia and Hikari shrugged, in fact, it didn't matter to them even if Ban and Hinata slept through the exit to the village. Then the man directed his gaze at Naruko, who also hesitantly answered.

- Well... she sleeps so sweetly... I felt sorry to wake her, I decided to wake you first.

- Yeehh, okay, go wake her up and take her to breakfast.

***

From the upcoming book about the countries of the ninja world "Beautiful Cities and What's Interesting About Them"

"Iwagakure, the second ninja village we visited.

To be honest, a village hidden in stone sounds very uninteresting, the surroundings are made up of rocks, and we often heard thoughts that Iwagakure is not worth going to, the main reasons we were told were that this village is not interesting at all and there will be nothing among the rocks.

When we were in the land of hot springs and looking for information about which ninja villages are worth visiting, we were told about Konohagakure and Kumogakure. Sunagakure does not have the best climate for traveling and therefore we did not find any people there at all. There is a civil war going on in Kirigakure now.

But in Iwagakure, according to people, we came across solid rocks and a huge round mountain without a top instead of a village.

But we were impressed from the first seconds we saw this village. Huge pipes, a ring of trees, and an incredibly large building representing the entire village.

The Village of Stone huge, it is of course not as big in area as Konoha, but because it is multi-level and built up in height, it is much bigger than Konoha.

And because such a village has a rather dense development, it is very difficult to find what you want in it, but we decided not to waste our time in vain and ordered a guide in the Tsuchikage office, and we were quite lucky since the guide was the granddaughter of the old Tsuchikage.

We wanted a guide for two reasons: the first is to quickly find what we are interested in, and the second is to know which places are not allowed to go, so that we do not have any problems with the village.

Let's start with the most important thing! Food!

Due to the fact that the village is not in the most productive place for growing crops, the prices for food and especially water in this place are very high. If in Konoha a bowl of ramen cost from 200 to 500 ryo, and in the villages of Amegakure the price was from 150 to 900 ryo, then in Iwagakure you will have to pay at least 350 ryo per serving. In general, due to the peculiarities of the food prices are much higher.

But I must admit that due to the situation with food, residents had to move towards improving various options for cooking and preserving food, as a result, in the village you can find a huge number of different canned goods with a variety of flavors.

My sister also really liked the local meat, she already loves it, and especially well-fried or dried, but due to the fact that in the stone village this is almost the main way to cook it, the locals kept improving and improving the methods of preparation, as a result, even long-stored meat, which quite often feels like a piece of a boot in your mouth, is very edible and tasty in the village of Iwagakure. You can also notice that in Iwagakure, compared to Konoha, there are a lot of refrigeration devices for food, this technology is relatively new, but even so, it is already used here everywhere, but thanks to the decades when refrigerators did not exist yet, all those types of storage and wonderful cooking options were created.

Now I want to move on to another topic, namely hotels.

There are not so many hotels in Iwagakure, apparently this is a consequence of the fact that tourists come here quite rarely, but what there is, every single one is high-quality, the prices in them are surprisingly ordinary, there is neither cheapening nor overpricing, although it would seem that the village does not really need hotels, and in such conditions they will either inflate the price so that the profit is greater, or lower it so that new guests choose where it is not so expensive, but no, as a result, the prices are approximately equal to what we saw in Konoha.

Moving on to the next point, I want to say about the baths... There are no hot springs in Iwagakure at all, due to the dense development and location of course, but there are many artificial baths, and there is even something that I have not seen for a very long time, namely Baths and Saunas, in the Land of Fire we have not seen anything like this at all.

It was quite nice to go to a sauna instead of washing in open-air springs, of course there were baths in Konoha, but in Iwagakure all such establishments are on a completely different level.

Another important thing worth mentioning is the shops and entertainment.

I can't say anything interesting about clothes, the shops sell both regular clothes and ninja uniforms. In general, the same thing that we saw in Konoha and even in the Land of Rice Fields.

But as for entertainment, it turns out there is a whole block here! Just as Konoha has a red-light district, Iwagakure has a gambling district and even various bets.

In Iwagakure, in addition to all the same games that we saw earlier in the Land of Fire, there are also, for example, bets on summoned animals, ninja who have an animal summon participate, for example, in races, and depending on the bets and place in the race, they receive a percentage of what the participants bet.

To sum it up, I don't understand at all why people have a biased opinion regarding visiting Iwagakure.

There is excellent food, a lot of entertainment, very interesting architecture and excellent hotels with saunas.

Well, and it is also worth mentioning that there is a special police force here consisting of specially selected Shinobi who keep order, and in the week and a half that we have been in Iwagakure we have not seen a single crime.