Menma and Snow drifted on the open sea for four more days.
Fortunately, the weather had been kind—mostly cloudy skies, with soft breezes that pushed the raft forward at a gentle pace. It gave them some kindness, keeping thirst and stress out of the raft. Well, most of it.
Snow, for one, had been feasting gloriously. Her once elegant, queenly figure had now softened into a cute roundness. Her tiny belly bulged ever so slightly after every meal, and Menma, unable to resist, would poke it like a naughty child with a temptation problem.
Of course, this would cause Her Highness to turn away dramatically, refusing to meow at him until her digestion had reached the "second hunger" stage. Menma was convinced that at this rate, another week would turn her from a empress feline to a round dumpling queen.
Not that he minded. He adored her anyway.
As for Menma himself—he was… okay. Not great, not dying, just slowly simmering in the middle. He was dehydrated, definitely, and had taken to eating the tuna for water content too. Over half of it was gone already, but at least he hadn't had to chew on rope yet. That was a win.
Today, like the previous days, Menma sat down cross-legged on the creaky raft to meditate. Time to do his hourly chakra sweep—see if any passing ships or miracle fish had shown up.
Thanks to constant trying, his sensing had improved dramatically. Now he could expand his awareness to the full sixty-kilometer range in just a few seconds, and process everything faster and cleaner than ever. If he ever opened a seafood market, he'd find the fish before other fishermen even cast their nets.
With calm breaths, he let his mind settle into stillness. His chakra web stretched out—first softly, then faster and farther until it surged across the waves like sonar.
Then… the moment of decoding the data came which would take minutes but this time...
His eyes shot open just a few moments later.
He senses cought two things.
First one, a good news. A ship. Faint and moving away from him, right near the edge of his range. Still reachable… barely.
The second one, bad. Very bad. Behind him at the edge of his senses beyond what could reach his eyes.
A storm.
A real one. Heavy rain, winds like howling banshees, waves like titans. A giant wall of doom closing in at top speed, just half an hour from swallowing him whole.
His mind snapped into motion.
Ship or death. That was the choice.
Opening his eyes wide, Menma immediately jumped up and unfastened the raft's covering and started grabbing supplies that could be carried.
Snow jolted awake, alarmed at all the commotion and particularly offended at the large hunk of tuna being thrown overboard like common garbage.
"I found a ship!" Menma shouted quickly as he packed. "It's our only shot right now, Snow. I can't take the raft or anything heavy, or we'll lose both the ship and our safety. We've got to swim there. Because there's a massive storm on our tail, so if we don't make it..."
He didn't finish the sentence as he didn't need to.
Snow, understanding the weight of the moment and leapt onto his shoulder.
Thunk.
His shoulder dipped noticeably.
"Dear… I think we might need to talk about your diet after this."
Meow! I'm perfect and you know it!
"Of course, of course," he laughed. "You're flawless. But I'd like my left arm to live through this journey, if you don't mind."
Meow!
"Hahaha, alright, my little queen. Hang on tight—this is going to be a wild one."
Suddenly, a thought hit him.
"Teacher Fox!" he called out mentally. "If I open the gates and run full speed… can I walk on water like how brother Kakashi sometimes does?"
"…You're dreaming beautifully," Kurama deadpanned from inside.
"…okay. Plan B it is."
Menma turned toward the direction of the ships movement, intended to cut it in the middle of it's road and squat down, ready to jump. But for a second, he hesitated. This old floating pile of rope and hope had carried him all this way. It had held through storm, fish fights, and Snow's tuna-powered rampages.
He placed a hand on it gently.
"Thank you, my friend. You brought us far. We'll never forget you."
Then with one final pat, he aimed again and dove into the sea.
Behind him, the tired old raft bobbed quietly in the growing tide. It didn't complain. It didn't creak. It just drifted slowly, disappearing behind waves—carrying the memory of its little captain and his white parrot, lost to the ever growing waves in horizon.
----
Menma was panting heavily as he had kept swimming at his top speed for one hour. It was way harder than he thought. Cutting the surface, while carrying many kinds of stuff was hard already, but the wind and waves that were getting bigger behind him, was the main reason for his exhaust.
Now, he could hear and feel the massive weight of waves big enough to overturn small ships as well as the lightning cracking loud enough to shake one's soul behind him. He knew that the storm was getting closer by each passing second and he had to hurry but he couldn't see the ship at all!
"Snow! Can you.... See the ship's light...?"
Menma shouted loudly while fighting against the current.
Meow!
"Alright, then I'll have to try to.... sense it! I won't be able to keep up with the current, which means.... We will drown for a short moment! Be... Ready and grab tight! ... Cough... Damn it!"
Menma gulped down another mouthful of sea water choking hard. Snow, pulled hard on her claws, grabbing as hard as she could and called out that she was ready! Menma nodded at her and then, stopped moving for a short moment, just enough to be swallowed by the sea water along with everything he was carrying as a whole.
For a moment there was no longer anything on the surface of waves and sea. Two lives, were lost from the frame. The camera zoomed out, looking here and there trying to find the two missing MCs but couldn't do so! Just as the reader were getting impatient, a red figure, burning hot, unlike everything around it shot out of water and ran on the surface of the sea, like a ghost that had run from the depth of hell!
Menma was holding the drowning snow, who had lost her grips on him, inside the water and was taken away from him by the current. He desperately tried to catch her the moment he felt her claws let go of him, but he missed the chance to do so.
Just the moment he almost lost her forever, Menma opened up till gate five, turning into a creature steaming red and blue, looking like a mystery from the lost times.
His temperature rose to the point that water couldn't even touch him, making him a bobble of steam and just like that, he rushed or to be more specific, he evaporated water straight toward snow، who had gotten even farther from him.
Grabbing her, he jumped out of sea and tried to run in the direction of the ship he sensed earlier and once again, he proved that he can surpass what anyone and everyone expects!
Meow!
Snow, who finally breathed air in a warm embrace, gathered enough energy to call him weakly while checking his empty back.
He had to let go of packages he had prepared before to catch up with snow, once again, leaving them with nothing but a half filled ninja pouch and a short sword, along with food pills.
"What are you sad about? Let us reach a piece of land and I'll haunt you tens of them!"
Meow! Meow!
"What do you mean mine were ugly?! I, no, we were just unlucky. So I'll hunt you the king of tuna fish in the future to prove my abilities as a fisherman! Now, don't be sad and rest while warming up. We will reach it soon."
Earlier, Menma's direction had changed slightly due to the sea movement and that ship, had also changed direction due to the storm, resulting in not reaching each other. But now, he was close enough and had marked the ship and could sense its general location, which saved him from being lost again.
All he had to do was just to reach faster than the giant waves behind him and hope that the ship could survive this storm safely.
Menma ran toward the ship, and after a few minutes, he was close enough to distinguish the ship's outline through the rain and storm. Knowing that he now looked like a literal torch in the darkness, he quickly closed the gates—bringing with it a wave of deep, muscle-ripping weakness.
He had been stretched too far over the past week, and this last-minute gate opening had nearly pushed him over the edge.
Falling into the cold seawater again, soaked and freezing, both Menma and Snow felt utterly drained—physically, mentally, spiritually. They just wanted to be out of the sea. They just wanted to climb aboard that ship and take a good, long rest.
Menma could sense the ship drifting farther, so despite the fatigue, the muscle strains, the absolute burning in his arms and legs, he kept paddling hard, dragging himself and Snow closer, just fast enough to reach it before the storm hit them full force.
His body was screaming for sleep, but all he could do was shove the scream down and paddle harder with the promise of resting enough once he reached it.
Finally, just as Menma felt he'd hit the bottom of his energy reserves, he reached the ship's side.
It was moving fast, obviously trying to outrun the storm. Judging by its diagonal heading, it might actually pull it off.
Menma trying to know what he would face on the bord, glanced at the vessel, trying to get a read on what kind of ship it was—but got little out of it.
It looked like a humble fishing schooner—weather-worn timber, sails patched like a quilt, and a name so faded it was practically erased. But beneath that unassuming shell... was a different beast. A sleek, narrow hull clearly built for speed. The darkened varnish below the waterline cut glare, and its frame creaked in ways too controlled to be natural—designed to mimic age and harmlessness.
He didn't understand much about ships, but this one felt... off.
Not wanting to waste more time, Menma extended his senses. There were many chakra signatures on board, nothing unexpected. But one section of the ship had fewer people.
Locking on to that point, he swam around to reach it, only to get smashed back by the ship's powerful wake and breaker waves.
Several tries, all failures. Each time he got close, the ship rejected him like it knew he wasn't welcome.
Running out of options, Menma grabbed the last kunai from his pouch. Swimming back a short distance to line himself up, he turned diagonal to the ship's path, and charged. Just as he reached the ship, he dived low and burst out of the water, riding a wave upward.
He drove the kunai deep into the wooden hull and hung from it with one hand, his feet skimming the ocean below. A big wave could still grab him and fling him away like trash.
No choice. He once again gathered his entire will and energy, finally, pulled himself and Snow up slowly, until the ring of the kunai reached his chest.
Panting, soaked, chilled to the bone, Menma found a small crevice to brace the toe of his worn-out sandals and steadied himself.
RUMBLE! Tup!
The moment lightning lit the sky, he yanked the kunai free with both hands and threw himself upward, stabbing it again into a higher beam just as the thunder cracked overhead.
Higher and higher.
Each time thunder rolled or a wave slammed the ship, he moved—timing his ascent perfectly.
One kunai.
One boy.
One cat.
Rain, wind, gravity, exhaustion...
nothing stopped them.
They climbed together, slowly, painfully, silently.
No child should ever face this kind of test of courage, of endurance, of sheer survival.
And yet they climbed.
Kurama and Minato, the silent witnesses inside Menma's seal, could only watch.
They saw the boy, a boy who deserved warmth, love, safety, fighting tooth and nail just to survive.
They saw him earn what he should have been given freely: protection, comfort, home.