A kage returns

[CDF]

"This doesn't look good, father" The boy's brow could not possibly furrow further. He was only 14 but already the skin on his forehead was a wrinkled, leathery thing layered with what seemed to be a lifetime of sand. Even for a sand dweller, he was an especially serious boy and he was right. Behind the rattling cart, possibly miles behind them, a sandstorm was brewing. They had been riding parellel to some strong winds for days, but now it seemed to be chasing them and they had no alternate path. The camels knew only one way.

His father was nervous too, but knowing his son's pentient for worrying about the inevitable, he played it down. "I know amir, come. Watching it will do nothing, we will check periodically. The poor beasts are doing their best as it is." They both looked anxiously at each other, and Sahad prepared himself for he could tell what questions came next.

"But father... we can't risk him getting hurt" Sahad nodded deeply and slowly, agreeing with all his soul and staring with a mixture of fear, love, concern and deep deep admiration for the mann tha lay on the padded floor between the two of them. He looked absolutely terrible, his skin leathery and wrinkle, dehydrated and scarred frequently where it was split open by a mixture of dryness and the whippings of the sands. His breathing was ragged and shallow and he looked like had been out in the desert for a long time.

His long white robes still had a faint reminder of regality to them, but they were torn to shreds, though considerably less than one would expect. The man himself had the same feeling, an obvious regal presence behind the beautiful eyes that would occasionally open as if they were awake only to remain stationary and soon close again.

Sahad had no doubt about it, this was the previous Kazekage, the Divine Protector, Kazekage no Hito. Their missing god just laying here on their cot. He could never forget the day of his ascencion, he was young but no boy and it was one of the rate times he got to go into the city and enjoy refridgerated beverages. Oh and watch their god take his throne.

[CDF]

These people are in danger. We need to get them to safety.

Deep feelings of irritation, rage, uselessness and anxiety erupted from the deep black abyss. There were no words in return, no sounds, just a massive sensation that could only be called an emotional scream in the ether. Hito's very soul raged against its incapacity to do anything about what his central ego was begging of it.

It too was paralyzed.

The blackness of his mind would not disappear, at times he could swear he had opened his eyes but still nothing moved, nothing appeared in his vision. He heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing. Yet every so often he knew things. He knew that he was on a cart in the desert being saved by two people that were in mortal peril, possibly because they stopped to save him. He knew he was physically capable of helping them.

And yet, he also knew that once he was a 2 year old boy that thought it'd be a good idea to eat a ball shaped mound of sand. He could feel the horrid moment of realization when the clump landed on his tongue and his mouth began to close around it. He could almost feel the rapid firing of signals from his mouth to his brain and then back agian, telling him to stick his tongue out and yell.

He knew too that he had once seen a world where the sky had a purple hue everywhere you went. It looked exactly like this planet, but with a purple tint. It seemed strange and innocuous at first, but at times it would drive Hito absolutely mad. Like having a blur in your vision that just wouldn't go away: everything was fucking purple. It made him more irritated and bitter than any of his astral travels ever had.

Oh that's right, his name was Hito.

[CDF]

That's right my name is Hito. I can fix this. Just give me control.

The unspeaking voice let out into the unhearing unknown that gripped control of his sentience or lack thereof. This existence was so confusing, he was begging for help and authority from someone but who could that someone be if not him?

Well us of course. But we're just me, and I but in the plural. If it's just us, why cant i or me or we untangle. Why cant we move and at the flick of a finger make this storm stop. Why am i fighting the urge to dig into a memory of the first time i heard music tha tmakes me want to dance?

All around the abyss, very clearly, he suddenly heard and then saw his body. He saw it form above, like he was floating above it and he could see his two saviors around him. A part of his mind told him this had to be a mental simulation, but it was constructed by real senses listening to the two and feeling the vibrations. This was accurate.

The scribes library was so close to so much potential at his pri- GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! His vision of everything seemed to twist and rip with seems along its edges, a large sense of pressure relieved in his mind and all of a sudden he was here again.

---
"My son, he will not get hurt." Sahad spoke with a sudden swell of confidence and hope.

How could he have been so foolish. In the midst of the shock of finding such a revered and lost person, Sahad had had a temporary lapse of faith. His son's panic reminded him quickly of the truth of it all. "This is our great kazekage. He is divine and if we are taking care of him, we are his divine and protected helpers. Do not lose faith."

This reminder of his faith was not quite enough to drown out the rapidly swelling sound of wind behind them. The most ominous of the sounds was the slow rattling of pebbles and other debris of the desert. They were in the outer edges of the storm already. But still, he felt something different. Something powerful and deep and divine was happening he-

"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. JUST LET ME DO SOMETHING DAMN IT." compltely disregarding the screaming duo around him that nearly died from shock as he suddenly sat up screaming, Hito extending his hand and also sent some processinig power to numbing the pain in his throat from screaming so loud after not having used his voice in so long.

Sand from outside unnaturally drifted in and into space in front of his hand, slowly forming into swirls and forms as Hito's mind did everything it could to just focus on what it was doing, and on wahtching what it was doing as that was a solid use of brainpower that was redundant but easy. He pulled from his chakra systems and prayed that nothing serious knocked him off this momentary control of consciousness. He just needed to get to the village.

The seal suddenly felt right, a pulse of chakra reverbarating in confirmation within him. He compacted the seal of sand and lowered it onto the floor of the carriage before suddenly going limp again and returning to his vegetative state.

[CDF]

"Seems you're back" The airy and somehow mystical voice reverberated through his body. Once an unpleasant sensation, now it was familiar and comforting. Smiling with some repressed frustration, Hito replied as if he were continuing a sentence. "Indeed. I was just in the present, somewhere near my home. I think I'm in peril, as are my saviors. But, as before, I am here." He sighed and waved to the wide, expansive and desolate terrain around them. It was one of the drearier places he got stuck in, but he always worked to focus on the silver lining of the good and intelligent company.

Niaji was some form of gecko spirit and was currently looking down at him from the ceiling where he assumes she had been napping. Looking up at her, he felt a brief touch of sandy wind on his face, a remnant from the body he just left behind as surely the seal he created would be doing its work by now. He sighed with a mix of irritation and resignation.

"I'm glad its you I've been brought back to. How long has it been since I was last here?" While Niaji wasn't really capable of facial expressions, she radiated her feelings through her skin as effortlessly as she used it to breathe. Hito felt her pride and joy at the sentence and in her psychic response. "Hmm, I've had two generations of offspring, so roughly 2 years for me. Last time it was only for a moment so i hope you stay longer this time" Her voice shank and became more distant at the end and Hito had just enough time to wince with awkwardness as the world around him suddenly changed again.

Now where he had been standing, he was sitting and looking across at a table at an exact replica of himself, looking impatient and irritated. "Are you listening to me?" Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, Hito ignored himself, knowing this to be a memory and not a dimensional visit. He sighed and tried again to focus on what was reality. When was now? He had felt it briefly, he just needed to remember when is now...

----

"Father... what's happening?" As always, his son managed to recover before even his older and more wisened father. He would have felt pride if he wasn't so busy alternating between astounded and reverential. Finally catching his breathe, he looked with a stupid happy smile at his son and then outside behind them.

"You see, my son? Our faith has been rewarded. Kazekage-sama has saved us." Making room for his son to peak out his head and encouraging him to do so, Amir went back to examining the former kazekage and the seal of sand he created on their floor. It glowed a bright gold as sand seemed to get sucked in from the outside and then released below them. Their carriage was no longer shaking and instead was riding as smoothly as if it had been on a paved road. The sand that was sucked in from outside was then directed through the seal and under the carriage, hardening into a temporary road beneath their feet, loosening once they were more than 3 meters away from it.

Nobody felt more relief than the poor beasts of burden pulling them along.

[CDF]

No time to think, move.

His body reacted before he did, his mind still thinking its somebody that hasn't seen combat in over a decade. Taking one step back he could practically see his opponent's next move before they made it. The way he shifted his weight to create power in his right swing, but didn't commit as powerfully as he had done in an earlier attempt. The hesitation meant a counter or a trick, and he would rather not. Timing it perfectly with the moment Hito saw a particular muscle pattern that meant a comitted attack, he slid his foot in front of the enemy's and latched out a hand that grabbed the opposite shoulder of the one rearing up for a punch.

The result was a surprised and unbalanced jounin getting pulled towards Hito and getting his legs kicked out from beneath him, the knee of the sweeping leg promptly coming up to catch his chin on the way down.


Wait.. this was a memory too. This was when they were evaluating his tai-

---

"Oh Kazekage sama, we've made it. Thanks to your protection, we actually made it." The normally somber and controlled boy was on the verge of tears. So used to suffering and misery, he had never experienced anything like a miracle before and it was opening up new worlds of emotion for him. His father, unsure how to handle it, seemed to join in instead. Equally reverential and amazed, "We never would have made it without you. For almost a full day we were in the very middle of that storm, it was a divine miracle without doubt."

Hito blinked, slowly and carefully, as if making any movement too quickly would send him spiraling back within his mind.

This is now. This is now. This is now. This is now. Don't let it go, this is here, this is now. Feel the sensations, feel the reality.

He focused on the sensation of the two strangers voices vibrating through air molecules into his ear canal. He thoroughly felt the feeling of the scratchy blanket on his skin and the retained heat that had been trapped from his body. He felt a specific ache in a back muscle that was no longer really a muscle and refrained from pondering the neurophilosophical nature of such a thing. He strained his eyes against the bright light that flapped in through the open carriage and remained completely still.

This felt... right.

[CDF]

Don't miss the opportunity.

Focusing on the space in front of him, he again gathered sand. This time was slower and more precise and he was using the entirety of his temporary focus. He needed to stay grounded in a way that was uninterruptable, he needed to combine chakra, fuuinjutsu and consciousness in a way that reliably maintained him.

He revved his mental engine to its limit and split off a comitted piece of processing. Just him chanting over and over and over, but it wasn't a sound loop, it was genuinely an entire percentage of his brainpower, his being.

As the seal formed, Hito focused on this new being, roughly 24% of his consciousness being programmed by this seal to do one thing and one thing only. Keep him here. Never forget what is now and what is real. No, too broad. What is now. This is now, that's all you need to focus on. Please, if you don't do this, it's all over.

var groundingMind (24%) = Maintain temporal presence

With the seal and the mental program created, Hito condensed it and slowly drew it into the skin on his forehead. He vibrated the molecules in the seal so they grew the perfect amount of hot to penetrate and seal into his skin while doing minimal damage to the actual tissue. Instantly, he was slammed with a wave of simultaneous relief and fatigue that he could never describe.

He collapsed with the first true smile this body had felt in 12 years.

[CDF]

Sahad and Amir, through their grand Kazekage's blessing, managed to arrive at an oasis in the vast desert. The oasis was one of many scattered throughout the sands and had no particular specialty, it was but a place where people could survive, and so they did. Sahad, with Amir at his side, recounted their harrowing journey through the sandstorm and how they stumbled upon the former Kazekage. They spoke of the divine intervention that saved them from the wrath of the desert, his voice reflecting the mixture of reverence and disbelief in the crowd's faces. The crowd listened in awe, their eyes widening with each word, as they realized the gravity of who and what lay before them.

The local elders sent for a messenger to inform the hidden village, as surely they needed to be aware. It would take many days and would not be an easy task, but they sent the messenger on the blessed chariot that brought them to safety. It was unclear if the technique used by their god would last the whole way, but it would serve as valuable evidence if it did, and the young rider was absolutely thrilled to use it. He could be heard whooping far into the distance.

----

Meanwhile, Hito, in his unconscious state, began to experience something he hadn't in years: dreams. At first, these dreams were a canvas for his desires and memories, a playground where he revisited moments of joy and peace. For somebody that had just spent a traumatic time slipping between memories with no control, it was surprising how enjoyable this was. Familiar faces drifted comfortably before him and he recognized them with feelings of love and nostalgia.

As he drifted what felt like his body through the haze, floating on thermals of emotions that glided him through periods in his emotional lifetime, a realization dawned upon him. This was more than a respite from his tormented reality; it was an opportunity for healing and processing. He has always known that dreams were significant, for they occur even in animals and sometimes in outerdimensional beings. The subconscious layers of his mind, usually inaccessible, were now open to him and seemed to be in a good mood.

Feeling a lot like his true self, Hito dove into his recent past in an effort to reconcile it all into something coherent, something tangible that his awoken self could actually use. There had to be a way to make himself functional beyond this seal that bound his mind. There had to be a way to manipulate his whole consciousness and be a functional human again. And now that he had uncovered this new way of programing his mind, he felt true hope.

-----

In the oasis, Sahad and Amir tended to Hito with reverential care, ensuring his comfort and safety. The inhabitants, in turn, showed their respect and support, providing shelter, food, and water. They were all united in their efforts to aid the Kazekage, a figure of myth and legend, now a tangible presence in their midst. Word had unsurprisingly spread and travelers from the nearest tribes, villages, oasis, and other pockets of humanity were beginning to arrive.

As the days passed, a subtle change began to occur in Hito. His breathing steadied, his face softened, and occasionally, a faint smile would grace his lips. It was as if the dreams were not just a mental journey but a physical healing process. Villagers took turns in caring for him, washing him and feeding him whatever easy liquids they could. There was never any change in him beyond that, he was never awake and he never made any sounds.

[CDF]

His thoughts and existence were difficult to parse in this state, though difficulty in parsing thoughts wasn't exactly a new challenge to the former Kazekage. Now, however, it was like a whole new set of issues. Before his mind was jumbled between past, present, future and moments that never existed. He was always himself, but always himself of a different time period. In this dreamscape, however, it felt like he almost had no identity at all. He could barely tell where his identity ended.

All of the years of his life amounted to near-infinite versions of Hito, each depending on their time and place and context. Each having certain passing thoughts, ideas, convictions, feelings. While he no longer felt like he was barrelling through time within his mind, he did feel like he was barrelling through versions of himself and his states of being. His vision wasnt changing, he wasn't hearing voices or seeing vast landscapes.

His dreamscape had frozen into his favorite representation of his mind: an infinite expanse of blackness littered with far-too distant stars. He floated in the middle of it all and just felt the waves of identity and emotion run through him, desperately searching for a hand-hold or some sense of truth and stability. It was there, he knew that, for he was capable of having this inner monologue at least. He had desires, which meant he was a real thing with a real personality, he just had to find a way to uncover and maintain that personality.

Earlier he had realized that with enough concentration and will power, he can section off entire portions of his consciousness and commit them to specific tasks. If he meditates on it properly, applies just the slightest usage of chakra but mostly depends on his intellectual control, he can treat his mind like a machine that can be commanded. He couldn't quite understand this know but he knew it anyways. This was somehow a central part of his solution to returning to the real world.

Oh, returning to the real world is the goal, isn't it? Thats what we're striving for. Let's start with that.

Who am I talking to?

Don't question it, do what works and keep moving forwards. We need to not forget Who's we? I SAID DONT QUESTOIN IT what our goal is. It's a pretty simple reminder that shouldn't take much processing, right? Let's say... 5% of our thinking power, let's commit that to just remembering our goal of returning to reality. If i commit more thinking power, I could even expand on why thats our goal, but we dont need that right now.
This would be easier if this segment had a name like the previous one. Let's call it goalThinker(5%), we'll call upon it whenever we start to feel lost as to what we're doing now.

Immediately, Hito's system felt another slight relaxation. This was a good sign, his mental state didnt improve much but there was no denying the scenario was now slightly improved. That brought him to the next point, if he couldn't trust what was in his mind, he couldn't allow his body to react to every thought, nor allow every thought to react to his body. He needed to monitor his physical meat machine to be able to understand what was making him feel what. Focusing more than before, he created bodyMonitor(10%) and gave it 10% of his mental abilities. It would now watch for any chances in his body chemistry and relay the important bits. For now it would be mostly dormant considering his sleeping state, but already he was getting a response from it telling him that he was in fact sleeping peacefullly and getting some very much needed nuerological repairs done. That explained the increasing sense of relief even when he wasnt doing anything.

That should be enough. Our body will surely reach Suna at some point soon, and by then we need to have a solution ready to use in conjunction with the team that will inevitably bein poking in our mind and body. Specifically, he had to focus now on how to turn his temporary temporal anchor solution into a permanent one, he had to figure out how to maintain his focus on a daily basis, and a draft of intuition was telling him he was going to need to create countermeasures for things like hallucinations and other mental processing issues.

Life felt unbelievably good right now, but Hito knew this was just a temporary respite from the madness. Once he returned to his true living body, he would have to deal with all the mayhem that comes with it, and it would be nowhere near this peaceful.

[Sia]

It had been a very, very long and gruelling last few weeks for Ikanbi of the desert. She was tired, finally, after having not been made to be tired by means of chakra overuse for years by now. She had become a master of conserving her very limited chakra pool, because her chakra control was second to none in the entire world. Ikanbi saw through the math and science of the world in ways that others could only dream of, and she had the age and experience by now to make the best use of it.

Through Kuuton, Ikanbi could accomplish feats that others dared to dream of and it would only begin to get wilder from that point forwards.

Some time passed, and by some time we mean generally that the sun rose and set over and over again to the point that Ikanbi truly lost the time. She had chosen to walk on foot for the therapy, even though flying was not out of the question. Truthfully, she did take a break here and there, and she skated rather than normally walking. She loved sand skating. It was one of her favorite techniques to have ever been invented so so long ago. She remembered the first time she'd seen it and how cool the ninja looked that did it for fun going down the sides of the dunes.

Ikanbi channeled chakra into her feet and eventually began sliding along the ground, a small tiny amount of sand producing and then melting itself away from the acid of her body. She tilted her rice sun hat down slightly to keep the sun just out of her eyes and began skating through Wind Country rapidly.

Surging with black chakra, arrows released forwards from Ikanbi's hands and pulled her into the air hastily. Suddenly she was flying through the air and when she landed she slid with great momentum, carving a path through wind country at a blinding speed that some others would only ever begin to think of.

She almost missed it, really, the two messengers, because she was travelling at the fasted possible speed she could achieve through her jutsu, but she saw them and circled back around, though it took a great deal of force and strength from her to change direction whilst moving in the manner that she was. It was, as it turned out, incredibly, horribly, terribly difficult for Ikanbi to change direction until after she finished moving along an arrows path. One of them needed to complete, ideally, before she tried to alter direction of movement. It was doable, of course, but it would require a strength of colossal proportions to match the strength of her jutsu, which, by her calculations, was a physical impossibility for herself, and a physical improbability for anyone else on the planet.

And yet, the arrow stopped and Ikanbi slid through the sand, suddenly turning around as a different arrow and her entire arm spun to the side and pulled them forwards and back around towards the messengers. She exchanged information with them, they recognized her, she was a frequent in and out contact of the country, there were always eyes on her, even out in the country in retirement.

Their sensory jutsu didn't detect her, and they were incredibly concerned at the blur of movement they had seen rifle past them so fast that they couldn't even identify it, and yet when she suddenly appeared in front of them and she lifted the Rice Sun Hat from her eyes to reveal her face, they were incredibly relieved to see that it was Ikanbi of the Sands.

"Which way is he?" She asked politely.

"Well, off we go then." Ikanbi said, and whether or not the other two followed her became irrelevant.

Ikanbi began sand skating once more, and again five kuuton arrows materialized around each of her hands. One from each hand extended out, about sixty meters.

"Do me a favor and throw a rock as far in the direction of the town as you can."

They didn't even question it, one of the two of them just shrugged and scooped down, grabbing a decently sized rock and then looking in the direction of the sun, then the horizon, then making an L shape with his hands and heaving the everliving particulate fodder out of the rock into the distance. Ikanbi's left arm trailed upwards from its semi-rested position and the arrow caught the rock and Ikanbi suddenly flew threw the air at a speed that shocked the two messengers and left them incredibly taken aback, and only slightly covered in sand.

[CDF]

Life in the sands was tough and tended to create the kind of personality that adapts easily to the unexpected. The two messengers were blowing sand from their mouths, mildly perturbed by the appearance of such a powerful shinobi while they were on the way to deliver news about another legendary shinobi. Now, for a little cherry of strangeness, they felt the sand Ikanbe's wake had flung onto them now drift off their body and into the carriage. It promptly got shot back out from below the carriage and packed into the road of sand that they'd been creating inadvertantly the whole way.

Now they were clean of sand again, but they had a dilema. Do they continue their original mission of taking the carriage and the news to the hiden village or do they return in case Ikanbe needed the carriage? Looking at each other with confused but mostly apathetic faces, the two came to the simultaneous conclusion that they should turn back. They weren't far and if the carriage wasn't needed, they'd just restart their mission and travel to Suna.

Plus, it was truly a joy riding in this carriage and they weren't running from an excuse to ride some more.

----

Upon arriving at the oasis, Ikanbe would find an uncharacteristcally bustling place packed to the brim with sand dwellers. Everyone seemed flustered and a little lost, but most of all, reverent. Hito was located in the best constructed home and there was an ocean of people sitting and praying around the building.

Not wasting an opportunity, the young Amir showed himself to be quite industrious when he began charging for seats closer to the building and selling things like a sweaty rag that had been used to wipe up the former Kazekage's sweat. His father hoped dearly that this wouldn't displease their god, but could not deny his immense pride for his sons quick wit.

Upon Ikanbe's arrival, there would be a wave of commotion as a path was parted for her to the building while everyone watched carefully and quietly. Hito himself was still unconscious, working hard to piece together the fragments of his mind. He had created two mental programs that were currently running: one was to monitor his body and its reactions, which included his chakra system. Another was to alert his dreamscape self when somebody with Chuunin or higher level chakra signature approached.

Once Ikanbe got close enough, a third program would activate. Hitos eyes would open and speak the following message in a monotonous tone, repeating it anytime he was touched: "My name is Ouji, Hito. I'm currently trapped within my own mind, but I'm figuring it out. Please keep me safe and take me to Sunagakure no Sato. Upon arrival, i will require iijutsu and fuuinjutsu specialists, especially if they have expertise in manipulating the brain and jikukan. I can not hear or speak right now, this is just a recorded message"

[Sia]

For a while Ikanbi stared into the Oracle Engine while she walked, peering into the past and viewing Hito from the point of view of her cousin. More of a god than a man in the eyes of so many, Ikanbi had become so detached in her time outside of the village that she hadn't ever seen it that way, but, to hear that the Kazekage specifically was unconscious and in need of help, who more appropriate to stumble upon him first than someone that actually didn't worship him the way the masses had been known to.

Where had he been? It didn't particularly matter to Ikanbi. The village and the country had moved on without him, and to Ikanbi Hito had never been a friend. Not that he had been an enemy by any means, its just that, being that Ikanbi was four times his age and retired out in the country, she really didn't ever bump into him that often. Why would she?

No, no. Ikanbi, by all accounts, had only ever heard of Hito and never really met him. She'd seen him, several times, but only in passing. Brief glimpses through hallways when she was doing missions, occasionally passing by when she was in the academy teaching, but that was only very ever so rarely these days that she even found herself in Suna in the first place.

How then had she happened to be the one to stumble upon Hito's body first?

Luck.

And sometimes that's just the way it was.

Ikanbi stared down at Hito's body for a moment, her rice sun hat shielding her chakra signature entirely from Hito's detective presence until the moment she lifted it to wipe some sweat from her forehead, revealing her as in fact not a Civilian whatsoever as the Rice Sun Hat would otherwise lead all of the sensors to believe. No, Ikanbi, when detected, was more like....an incredibly dangerous Jounin.

It was a good thing she wasn't evil.

Staring down at his body, she also made note that it was a good thing that she wasn't evil, as it would have been too easy to turn the former Kazekage into a core on the spot and jam him into a puppet. Noone would ever know any better, and Ikanbi could certainly dispose of all of the witnesses that were nearby and make it a non issue.

She wasn't evil.

That was her programming anyway.

"I am built to protect and destroy." Ikanbi said in response to the automated Hito message in a voice that sounded more like something attempting to sound human, rather than something that particularly sounded human.

A surge of black kuuton chakra as well as a light mixture of sand and acid began to accumulate around Ikanbi's fingertips, and those that watched from close by became quite nervous and were unsure of what they should do with themselves or their hands.

"Protect."

Ikanbi's voice was soft and quite monotone, but chipper in nature in an odd an not exactly human sort of way. Granulates of sand began to slither out from Ikanbi's hands and caress Hito, nudging against his flesh and pores and grinding into his body, ever so slightly causing minuscule, tiny, very tiny amounts of damage along his entire body, but also prompting him to immediately begin healing in response to it, intentionally and meticulously, tediously stimulated by Ikanbi's jutsu.

She monitored him carefully, then took a break and stared into the Oracle Engine and looked into the future, seeing a healed Hito live and well. "Of course. It would take an act of terrible proportions to stop me from getting him fixed up."

Ikanbi turned away from the oracle engine and channeled more chakra into her palms, sending iijutsu chakra and sand around Hito to gently encase him in a coffin of sorts, something to put him in a semi-stasis where he could sleep undisturbed and be transported quite evenly and peacefully. The Kuuton, truly, is what came into play the most here.

Ikanbi carefully crafted her jutsu, the Kuuton floated the sand along his body and caused it to make him feel weightless. Even if he were to wake up suddenly, he would, by all accounts, feel as though he was being snuggled under the weight of so many fluffy wuffy blankets that the only real response was to just accept being snuggled by the blankets and go back to sleep. To top it off, the iijutsu chakra would leak into his body forcefully utilizing the very minor amount of iritant between the acid and the sand, and overall would cause him to begin healing his exhausted body.

There was just one more thing.

Ikanbi moved both of her hands together, causing Kuuton to assist her and rotating the former Kazekage's singularly responsive body so that she could at least give it some water, as well as some drugs that she had on her person that would assist in the rehydration and general nourishment after having finished checking his gauges.

"Yeah, okay, you need lots of water and some drugs, not the good kind sorry, the vitamin ones, the ones I give the farmers if they pass out in the field."

Ikanbi administered a few things to him. Three shots, right in the arm, she didn't even talk about what they were, then she managed to stick a tube into his mouth just long enough to use Kuuton to move the water through it and down his throat without choking him, then she respectfully removed the tube because she knew it would be annoying to wake up with it in her mouth, so she figured he wouldn't want it either.

After that, she closed off the iijutsu sand coffin and began surging with another flow of Kuuton chakra that circled around both herself and the sand coffin, which began to be encircled by several rings of black chakra. Once eight black rings had formed around Ikanbi, the two of them began to move very slowly towards the doorway.

Once outside, Ikanbi picked up the pace, and the eight black rings began rotating, the sand coffin that contained the former Kazekage stabilized itself utilizing the Kuuton chakra. The sphere housing Ikanbi and Hito launched through the air, flying with great speed back towards Sunagakure.

She supposed Hito was worth a detour from where she had been planning on going that day.