“Kuso, anyone get the number of tails on the Bijū after it hit me?” I asked as I sat up, placing my hand on my head in the universal sign of 'I have a massive ass headache'.

“OK, now you have me confused! Can you speak Equish or not, make up your fucking mind!” A voice said from the cave behind me. Turning around I saw that it belonged to the Dragoness I met moments ago, Celestia not far behind her.

“So that's where Tom ended up,” Celestia said after she saw the boulder my head was recently introduced to at high speeds, a quiet chuckle escaping her muzzle with a nostalgic glint in her eyes. “” She asked me after her trip down memory lane came to an end.

“I'm fine,” I answered as I moved to a standing position, “but 'Tom', as you called it, seems to have knocked some things loose in my head. Namely a lot of my memories that were a bit fuzzy, like the fact that I'm apparently bilingual.” As I spoke, the very memories I told them of were acting as a storm in my head while I tried to make sense of them all.

“Well, at least that means I don't have to learn a new language or rely on 'Princess Sunshine' here to actually talk to you,” the clearly angry Dragoness said as she extended one of her clawed hands out towards me. “The name's Ember by the way. Welcome to my country: The Dragon Lands.”

“Kon'nichiwa, I am Hanzō,” I said as I reached out and shook Ember's hand, only to be pulled in close as she held her other hand millimeters from my left eye in a threatening manner.

“Also, now that you know what I'm saying, I want to make something clear.” She stated in a growling tone as her eyes stared at me with a stone cold glare. “Ever threaten me again, and I'll rip out one of your eyes!” Her speech was punctuated by the fact she made her razor sharp teeth visible after each word.

Her scowl quickly turned into a look of confusion as her threat only caused me to break out into what can only be called a loud guffaw. “I'm afraid you made that threat twenty three years too late!” I announced in my mirth, removing my hood and mask to reveal a jagged scar across the left of my face from just next to my nose: it moved in a crescent shape that curved through my left eye, before it ended abruptly in the top left corner just as it reached the brow. The horror on the faces of my new female acquaintances was clear as I opened my left eye, only to reveal a long scarred over and empty socket. “I lost the left one when I was three, and I carry the very object that did it.” With that, I held my dagger, Snake Fang, up to the scar, revealing it to be a perfect fit into the jagged tear.

“By the First Flame,” Ember muttered, a look of realization crossing her face when it dawned on her what her threat would mean to someone with only one eye to begin with. “I thought you were only keeping your eye in shadow to give you better sight in dark areas, like the old pirates of Equestria.”

“Nope!” I blurted out in a surprisingly upbeat tone. “What in the world was it that hit me in the head with a bolder anyway?” I asked as I pulled my mask back up over my mouth and nose.

Ember pointed behind me to my right, meaning whatever it was had been on my blind side while I was facing that way. Once turned around, I saw a stout, green, quadrupedal creature with three large horns on top of its head. It had dark fur on its back, and a wide, flat face. At the base of its middle horn, on the front, there was a dark, stripy pattern, and on its flanks and two side horns, it had orange blotches. Finally, it had a scaly tail which was shaped oddly at the end. The shape seemed to suggest that it uses its tail similar to a catapult. “I do not know how to describe that.” I said as I looked back to Ember, confusion clear in my eye.

“My ancestors thought basically the same thing,” Ember said with a shrug as she gave me a look of understanding. “So they named it after its most obvious trait, the tail.”

“Slingtails are one of the many unique creatures of the Dragonlands, and are very territorial,” Celestia said in a tone that almost reminded me of one of my Sensei's from my time in Konohagakure. “Their first reaction to a new arrival is to see how much of a threat they can be. They do this by tossing a boulder at them and seeing how they react.”

“Well, I can assure you I am quite dangerous when I wish to be,” was all I said before I leapt the chasm with ease and planted a paper bomb on the creature's back, pushed off with my hand and landed on the near vertical cliff behind it. Standing on the steep rock face I ran straight up it before flipping back to the other side, landing with my hands in the chakra focus sign, causing the paper bomb to go off behind me, the creature's head landing to my left.

As I pushed the head into the chasm behind me with my foot, I heard both Celestia and Ember say the same thing. “What. The. Hell.”

End of Chapter 1