"I thought about how there are two types of secrets: the kind you want to keep in, and the kind you don't dare to let out."
― Ally Carter, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover
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There is an odd sense of familiarity in Jōren Falls, in a way that makes Ren feel rather nostalgic. Sure, the place is crawling with giant spiders, but it also has trees of significantly more normal sizes than the ones in and around the village, not influenced by Hashirama's mokuton. The foliage, likewise, is much more lush than the 'bushes and grass' that is more common in Konoha. There are leaves and ferns and patches of flowers and herbs between tree roots—a typical temperate forest with typical temperate trees and foliage.
The first day, Ren doesn't really do much training. She only has time to put her bag down in the small cave that Inoue leads her to, cleaned and prepared with the bare necessities—a fire pit and a spider-silk hammock and little else, because all she would do there is sleep anyway—and the moment she steps out, she is stopped by what seems like a literal wall of spiders.
The whole area is crawling with them, and even Ren, who likes spiders significantly more than a regular person and has raised a colony of her own, stops in her tracks at the sight.
Anyone else might scream and run at the sight, and Ren wouldn't blame them at all. She almost wants to run away herself. She doesn't blame the spiders, though. Who knows when they had last seen a human, if ever?
There are faces she recognizes among them. Aki, Jun, and Kyo are hanging somewhere in the trees, Takuya-sensei is staring at her, unamused as ever, and the glitter of Kagami's abdomen catches her attention as the mirror spider waves at her from where she sits with her family.
"Quite a crowd," Ren mutters, kneeling in front of some of the smaller spiders. "When was the last time you saw a human, huh?"
The spider closest to her chitters, and Ren only barely understands the 'never' among the clicks. There's a chorus of what sounds like agreements to the statement, before someone yells 'what about the other guy', and everyone shushes them.
Ren's head, however, snaps in the direction where that question came from, like a bloodhound on a trail. She hasn't forgotten about the secret person that even she, as the spider summoner, hasn't been told anything about.
"I know what you are thinking," Inoue says from behind her, where she had come down from the treetops soundlessly and so at one with the surrounding nature chakra that Ren hadn't sensed her at all. "You may well meet him soon."
"Why wasn't I told, though? Aren't I your summoner?"
"His sob-story was rather compelling, and so was his bargain," Inoue says airily, dispersing the spiders with a wave of her hand. "Though it was heavily impeded by the length of his recovery."
That is much more information than Ren had gotten earlier from Kana, so at least she is getting somewhere now. It is a he, he had come to the Falls severely wounded, and he has enough sway to not only prevent his death but also convince the spiders to keep him a secret from their summoner. And normally that might not be a big deal, but the spiders haven't had a summoner in a long while, so they have been keener on keeping good relations with Ren than they would otherwise have been.
The more (or stronger) the summoners, the more stable the realms are, or something like that. She needs to ask Kana or Inoue more about that.
(The spiders seem to really appreciate the fact that Sasuke has been eyeing their contract speculatively.)
"Walk with me. You are yet to meet Chiyo-Kakka, after all," Inoue says and moves forward, and Ren has little choice but to follow. It's a good opportunity for a talk, at least, so she does. The spiders scatter around them, parting before Inoue like a crawling sea of chitin and legs, and soon move away to return to their own devices. Ren will be here for a while, after all, they'll get their chance to interact with her later. She's also curious about the spider matron.
"I have a question, Inoue-san," Ren turns to Inoue. "Actually two. Why do you call Matron Chiko 'Kakka', and also, can you be summoned?"
Inoue looks at her, and her mandibles twist into something resembling a smile. "I call her Kakka for that is what she is; Her Excellency Chiyo, Matron of the Jōren Falls. She is our current sovereign. Kana-dono is powerful and wise and here to help with the more delicate issues, and I just—am here, to react to special occurrences, such as an attack, or you needing training. Chiko-Kakka, however, rules us all."
So in spider-speak, at least in Jōren, 'Matron' basically means 'Queen'. Good to know.
"As for summoning; indeed, I can be summoned. I am one of the three guardians of Jōren, and therefore, one of the most powerful spiders here, so it stands to reason you should have access to our power, as you have to Kana-dono's. For my power, I will not be easy to call forth; your intent is there, but the amount of energy needed to open a pathway for me is greater than for any spider you have called upon so far. Chiyo-Kakka, for the sheer magnitude of her size, will prove even more difficult to call forth than I. I also require a token to be summoned, as the in-between tends to not be very keen on letting me cross the thresholds as I please. I am—I am not a regular spider, as you must have noticed. "
"Your top half was a bit of a hint," Ren shrugs, and Inoue chuckles. It sounds all kinds of wrong, now that Ren is properly listening to the spider. No spider speaks in the way humans do, there's always a slight tremor in their voice, or clicking. That's normal, though, since they don't actually have human vocal cords. "So what are you then? Jorogumo? Tsuchigumo? Something else?"
"Jorogumo," Inoue nods. "Chiyo-Kakka is a Tsuchigumo, actually."
"Oh? That would make sense, I guess. From what little I've heard of her, she is apparently rather big."
"Indeed. Though, while decades old, she is not even at her full size yet."
"How big she is now, then?"
They reach a clearing that ends abruptly at a cliff. The way down is steep, all jagged rocks and withered branches. Below them is more forest, all in various states of spiderweb coverage, and behind the forest lays a jagged mountain range, half-hidden by clouds.
"See for yourself," Inoue chitters, and her smile looks almost natural, as she moves her hand in an arch, as if to show Ren the scenery beyond the cliff.
And there, between the cliff and the distant mountains, stands a spider—dark gray, sleek, with horn-like growths covering her legs, carapace, and abdomen, with eyes glowing a sinister yellow that Ren can see shine even from this distance.
Because, the thing is, the spider before them is about a kilometer, maybe more, away. And Ren can still easily see the color of her eyes—for with legs thicker and taller than trees, Matron Chiyo stands nestled among the sea of green as if she were a mountain.
"Oh," is all Ren can say.
After all, another name for tsuchigumo is ōgumo, which literally just means 'big spider', and that—honestly fails to do Matron Chiyo any justice.
She's humongous.
Inoue chuckles in her weird clickery way and flares her chakra like a beacon for once, and Ren has to turn away because it's so bright she can feel it like rays of summer sun blazing against her skin. Matron Chiyo notices them, and turns fully in their direction. From the front, she looks a lot like a trapdoor spider, all menacing gloss and long, fang-tipped mandibles.
The only difference is that, instead of one, she has three pairs of them, folding together in a manner that even Ren finds creepy. The way in which spiders can read unnatural and alien to humans through just the force of their existence has never been more apparent to her.
Chiyo reaches them surprisingly quickly for the distance she had been away from them (about a kilometre, maybe one and a half). Ren is once more faced with the sheer magnitude of the size of the spider matron, standing taller than the cliff. It brings a scene from Moana to the forefront of Ren's mind, a long-forgotten movie of a world that still haunts her, where Te Fiti held Moana on the palm of her hand.
Yeah, that is about the size comparison going on.
"We finally meet," Chiyo rumbles, her voice echoing across the valley. "I am Chiyo, the third Matron of Jōren Falls, like my mother and my grandmother before me."
Ren only nods, with an awkward 'nice to meet you, I'm Ren'. So she's cowed by the size and power of the demonic spider standing in front of her, so what.
"I'm yet to have things to say to you," Matron Chiyo rumbles. "Thus I shall leave you in Inoue-hime's care for now. I shall call for you when it is time for us to speak."
Ren nods respectfully. She's not particularly fond of figures in power, especially heads of state (Hiruzen's incompetence guaranteed that), but the Matron commands a certain sense of respect that the Hokage could only dream of.
"Leave now," Matron Chiyo rumbles. "Your teachers will be waiting for you in the cave."
"But—"
But Ren didn't even properly decide what she wanted to train yet, other than a widely understood 'get stronger' and 'start on Sage Mode'.
"Fret not," Inoue chuckles. "Today, we will merely be assessing your level. All we have for now is hearsay, and we need a proper baseline. When Kana-dono attacked you, you were only running, were you not?"
"Well—there was nothing in it for me to really attack her, was there?"
"True. This time, I suggest you do attack, however."
"I—Wait, what do you mean by this time?!"
It becomes rather painfully clear when they return to the outcropping by the base of the cliff where Ren's temporary lodging is located. The second they step onto the clearing, something big launches itself at Ren with great speed, and only years of training allows Ren to evade the attack, catapulting herself off of Elder Kana's back, as the momentum carries the large spider until she hits the trees. Ren jumps a distance away, propelled by chakra and sheer muscle, until she reaches the trees on the opposite side and sticks herself to the trunk. Kana turns around, folds her legs a bit, and pounces right at Ren, forcing her to evade again.
This time, Ren jumps forward too, sliding under the spider and kicking her in the sternum. Kana yelps in surprise and falls to the side inelegantly.
"Wait, wait, wait!" Ren shrieks, "Do I use lethal force? What? Inoue?!"
(Thankfully, Inoue is the one currently holding Awai, who Ren had passed to her a few minutes back during their walk, so Ren can fight without worrying about squishing him.)
Inoue tilts her head to the side with a smile.
"If you do not want to be hurt, I suggest you try to hurt Kana-dono instead."
Ren yowls, angrily yanking at the chest pockets of her vest, pulling out a small red scroll. With only a bit of chakra, it unfurls into the two pieces of her guandao that snap together, and Ren whirls away from Kana to buy herself the precious split second to grip the blade properly and slam its flat side into the spider's sternum, vaulting Kana over her head and slamming her into the ground with as much momentum as she can muster.
Kana is actually really damn heavy, heavier than Cobalt in fact, which Ren finds odd because Cobalt is about four times Kana's size.
They continue their bastardized game of tag for a while, and Ren becomes very much aware that Kana had been going easy on her when she chased her last time. Things shift when Inoue, because she's apparently evil, raises her hand, and several more spiders that Ren doesn't recognize jump into the fray.
Ren considers breaking down and crying as she tries to not be overwhelmed by the onslaught, but in the end she lasts just a few more minutes.
"Your heart was not fully in it," Inoue says, standing above her imperviously and Ren groans from where she lays on the ground. Thankfully none of the spiders bit her, but she's absolutely covered with web and hairs.
"I was surprised."
"So if someone attacked you out of the blue—"
"That's different. You're my summons, you're bound to me by blood and contract, some rando trying to kill me will get different treatment."
Inoue hums, and then shrugs. "In any case, I think I have a good enough idea of your basic skills now, so we will begin training tomorrow—"
"I want Sage Mode," Ren huffs petulantly. "And the Mystery Person you've deemed good enough to teach it to."
Inoue sighs.
"All in due time. And that person's circumstances forced our hand in this regard. Trust me, Spider Sage Mode is not something to be taken lightly."
Ren looks at her questioningly.
"It can grant power, yes, but its cost is terrible."
"I don't know what the cost is."
"...I will show you one day."
"One day when?"
"When Chiyo-Kakka declares so. For now, do some endurance training."
"Eeeeeh."
"Three laps around the periphery of this cliff level should suffice for now. Off you go."
"Godfuckingdamnit if that's all you're gonna teach me I'm going back and bothering Gai to it, he at least makes it fun—"
"And beware the slings nipping at your heels."
"Wha—? Shit! Fuck! Stop biting my shoes, you brats! Where the fuck did you even come from?!"
Inoue chuckles as Ren vanishes into the trees, the slings hot on her heels even as she breaks into a sprint. Elder Kana quietly moves to stand by her.
"Are you certain that we should teach her the Sage Arts, Inoue-hime?" Kana asks wistfully. "That boy almost died for it and we only let him because it was the only way for him to survive. And even then, it is incomplete. I fear that Ren will—"
"She will not," Inoue says sharply, with enough conviction to silence the tarantula. "I believe in Ren. I believe she will not lose herself like the others. I—I have to."
"Princess—"
"We must have faith, Kana-dono. In us, in Ren. We must have faith that she will perfect this power, and not become warped by it. If not, we and this realm might very well be doomed."
