[Fic] "The Guardian in Spite of Herself" chapter 13 -- Naruto
"The Guardian in Spite of Herself" is the sequel to "The Way of the Apartment Manager," which can be found in final form on ff.net , or in beta draft with comments on my journal. It also has fanart.
Here is chapter 13, in which the differences between chuunin and trainee ninja are made very clear, Kakashi kindly gives exposition about the Uchiha, Naga and Kafunnokaze are cute, Eiji and Ginji get into hot water, and Sarutobi Hokage-sama attempts to save the author from a horrific plot hole. (Time will tell whether he succeeded.)
Um. So, yeah, there's been a two and a half year gap since I posted any of this story, and you almost certainly want to reread at least chapter 11 and chapter 12 to remind yourself what's been going on. Sorry about that, but, you know, better late than never? (4,500 words)
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The Guardian in Spite of Herself: Chapter 13
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"I'm not going back," Sasuke said.
Yukiko blinked. Huh?
"Of course you're going back," she said after a moment of pure disbelief. "I'm not asking; I'm giving you an order."
"You're not my guardian. And if Naruto's not a ninja yet, I'm not either -- we're both only students -- so you're not my commander or team leader. You can't give me orders," Sasuke said, still showing that eerily calm surface. Yukiko had no clue what was going on in his head, and she wished it weren't unethical to use genjutsu to pull him under and make him talk.
"For all practical purposes, I am your guardian, and in any case, I'm an adult and you're a kid. But we're not arguing about that." Arguing over authority meant you'd already lost -- she'd learned that from Naruto. "At least two villages would love to kidnap you, and you don't want to know what Mist-nin and Cloud-nin would do to you to get their own version of Sharingan. You're going back to Konoha where you'll be safe."
"No."
Yukiko folded her hands and stifled the urge to scream. "Okay, so you're going home tied up and under protest. I'm sure Naruto will have lots of fun drawing on your face and otherwise making you look like a complete idiot. That's your choice. Seichi and I will take you to the guard post in the morning."
"No," Sasuke said again. "I don't need to be safe. I don't care what happens to me as long as I get strong enough to kill Itachi. I don't care about Konoha either -- you couldn't protect my family, and you didn't even tell me my cousin was alive. I'm not going back." He folded his arms and glared at her, in a miniature version of his clan's typical disdain.
Yukiko sighed. Then she set her hands in a rat seal, flicked a delicate network of chakra around Sasuke, and said, "Yes, you are. Now go to sleep."
Seichi caught the boy before he hit the floor. "Clean work."
"It's always easier when the target doesn't know how to fight back, and I shouldn't have wasted time arguing in the first place," Yukiko said, slightly embarrassed. Seichi straightened, Sasuke's torso and legs curled awkwardly in his arms, like a jumble of severed body parts rather than a living child. Yukiko turned away and gathered Seichi's cards; the thick paper was smooth, slightly worn around the edges, and warm from his hands. "Thanks for grabbing him before he cracked his head open. Take him to the boys' room, will you? He should sleep straight through to noon unless I undo the jutsu."
"Thorough work, too," Seichi murmured. "Do you want me to explain anything to the fox brat?"
Yukiko twisted back around, cards crumpling in her hands. "Never call him that. His name is Uzumaki Naruto, and you take him for who he is -- not what his body imprisons -- or I'll tell everyone you got drunk and tried to rape me. I won't interfere with the mission, but I can make your life a living hell until we get home."
Seichi shrugged; one of Sasuke's arms slid off his shoulder and swayed with the motion. "Fine. I don't care about the Kyuubi. I just thought 'fox brat' sounded more polite than 'hyperactive menace.' I won't do it again. Also, you can have that deck of cards; they're useless as weapons once they get bent."
He opened the door one-handed and slipped into the corridor.
Yukiko stared at the sheaf of cards in her hands. Slowly, she began smoothing out the folds.
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They reached Kaiminori just before sunset. The dogs stumbled across Itachi's scent halfway there and Kakashi decided to follow the trail rather than heading directly for the village, just in case Itachi had swung off in an unexpected direction.
Suisen checked in with the local Grass guard-post, Kohaku went in search of take-out for dinner, and Kakashi took Naga and Kafunnokaze to reserve two rooms at the inn. "Girls in one, boys in the other," he said. "No hanky-panky... unless I get to watch." He winked.
Kafunnokaze stood on Naga's foot until she subsided.
Five minutes later, Kohaku and Suisen arrived carrying boxes of rice, vegetable stir fry, tofu with sesame noodles, and pickled crawfish with peapods and water chestnuts. They borrowed some dishes and chopsticks from the innkeeper -- who smiled nervously at such a large group of ninja -- and went upstairs to eat and talk.
"Do you have any clue where Uchiha Itachi might be going?" Kafunnokaze asked as he handed Naga the rice.
She sat on the floor beside him, crossed her legs, and scooped a blob of sticky white onto her plate. Then she handed the box on to Kohaku and shot an inquiring look across the circle to Kakashi. "You're the boss. How much can we tell?"
Kakashi prodded a lump of tofu with his chopsticks. "There were eleven Uchiha out of town when Itachi killed his clan," he said slowly. "Four were military police on local patrols; they're confirmed dead. One was Uchiha Tsukime, Naga's partner. As for the other six...
"Uchiha Hanzo was leading his genin team on an escort mission in east Fire Country. He's presumed dead; jounin-sensei don't abandon their teams. Uchiha Mayumi was training a daimyo's guards on the southern coast and Uchiha Kensuke was guarding our ambassador in River Country. They've both vanished. Uchiha Noriyama and his partner were in Volcano Country. Neither has reported in since the day of the incident. Uchiha Akaro and his team were patrolling the Waterfall Country border. He failed to make a rendezvous and his team is still searching for him. Finally, Uchiha Shiburi was on detached infiltration duty in the eastern islands. We have no idea what her status is."
Kakashi tapped his chopsticks against his plate. "I suspect Itachi killed Hanzo first, then swung southwest to kill Mayumi and Kensuke. He missed Tsukime but presumably continued northeast toward Noriyama and Akaro, and he'll eventually head to sea to reach Shiburi. The problem is that we don't know exactly where his three final targets were, so our chances of confirming their status -- alive or dead -- are less than ideal. And we have no way of knowing how far behind Itachi we are."
The Grass-nin absorbed the information for a long moment, while Naga frowned at Kakashi. "Classified," she reminded him.
"There's no point hiding potentially mission-critical information from our partners," he replied, his voice slightly muffled by rice in his mouth and the napkin held in front of his face. "I'll just kill them if they try to report the details back to Hidden Grass."
"Hey! That's interference in the internal affairs of an ally!" Kafunnokaze said, jabbing a chopstick toward Kakashi. "Besides, what makes you think you could take down all three of us?"
Kakashi smiled, his eye crinkling into that maddening crescent. "You and Naga would remove each other from the equation, which leaves one jounin with over fifteen years of field experience against two chuunin with less than ten years' experience combined. Do the math."
"He has a point, Kaze-kun," said Suisen, licking soy sauce off her fingers and nudging Kafunnokaze with her elbow. "Stop trying to show off for your girlfriend -- you're just making us all look stupid."
"I am not showing off," Kafunnokaze grumbled.
"Yeah, showing off implies that he's doing something tricky and getting it right," Kohaku agreed in a deceptively bland tone.
Naga stifled a smile and grabbed Kafunnokaze's hand before he did anything rash. "Everyone's against me," he said, but he squeezed her hand so she knew he wasn't too insulted. Good. There was no place for personal conflict on missions.
Kakashi tapped his chopsticks on the floor, pulling her attention back. "Are we done with amateur drama hour? Yes? Good. Here are your orders: Naga, summon a raven and send a report back to Konoha. You lot, leave a report with your local agent, whoever he or she is. I promise not to spy on you, but the last thing we need is Hidden Grass accusing me of kidnapping you, or you of treason. Then turn in for the night -- we shouldn't need watches here, so catch up on sleep while you can. We head northeast at dawn."
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Eiji found it oddly difficult to meet Tetsuko's eyes at breakfast, or to touch Mitsu-chan.
He'd ordered a man killed in cold blood. Before, he'd always managed to avoid direct responsibility. Asking Ginji to keep order did result in occasional casualties, but Eiji had rationalized that away, telling himself that if the troublemakers had seen reason they would have survived. He had no excuses here.
The Cloud-nin was dead at his word. It was a necessary price, but to hold the weight of a human life in his hand, balance it against his goals, and make that choice... Eiji shifted his grip on his spoon to keep from clenching his hands into fists. Ginji's stifled flinches at Mitsu-chan's hugs and trust suddenly made a sickening amount of sense.
Eiji forced himself to swallow a few mouthfuls of whatever his housekeeper had cooked, and Ginji did a fair job of distracting Mitsu-chan by asking her to demonstrate her new calligraphy skills on his arm, but Tetsuko knew something was wrong. There was no way she could fail to notice -- all three of them had known each other far too long to hide the existence of a secret.
Finally Tetsuko plucked the chalk from Mitsu-chan's fist, wiped her mouth with a napkin, straightened her dress, and led her out of the kitchen. "Time for school," she said when Mitsu-chan pouted. "If you learn another stroke, you can practice on Uncle Ginji again tonight."
Eiji looked at Ginji. His hand was tense on the table's edge, knuckles white with tension. "She won't let us hide much longer."
Ginji shrugged, unsympathetically. "So? We knew she'd find out sooner or later. Besides, you need to talk to someone about Hideo and Tetsuko's more comforting than I'll ever be."
Hideo. Not 'the Cloud-nin.' Hideo. Was it strength that let Ginji use the dead man's name so easily, or just another sign of the burnt-out scars the academy and the council's orders had left in his mind and heart?
"How well did you know him?" Eiji asked, looking down at his hands.
"More than some, less than others. We shared a few missions, helped administer a chuunin exam three years back. One time Kote Minami dragged us out to a bar, got drunk, and offered to fuck us both at once." Ginji quirked a ghost smile at Eiji's obvious shock. "I turned her down. Hideo didn't, but I heard he made sure to tie her wrists to the bed frame so he got a head start in the morning. Hideo was a bastard, but he wasn't stupid. He would have unraveled our secrets fairly soon."
"Though not as soon as I have," Tetsuko said.
Eiji jerked his head up and stared over Ginji's shoulder. Tetsuko leaned against the kitchen doorframe, her face stern and unamused. "What in the name of the kami, the elements, and the corners of the world were you idiots thinking? And why didn't you tell me from the beginning? You've gone and caught us all in a riptide, and if you two thought ignorance would protect me and Mitsu-chan--"
"He did," said Ginji.
"Oh, Eiji did -- but not you? Yet you went along with his plan." Tetsuko folded her arms and glared at her brother and husband. "I'm not sure if that makes me angrier at you or him."
Eiji found his voice. "Ginji, you traitor. You must have heard her footsteps. Why did you keep talking?"
Ginji shrugged, pushing his chair back from the table as if to remove himself from the line of fire between Tetsuko and Eiji. "I told you, she was going to find out sooner or later. It's best to get the fight out of the way before the Akatsuki representatives or more Cloud-nin arrive to complicate the situation."
Eiji looked helplessly at Tetsuko. She stared back, blue eyes flat and uncompromising. "Ginji's right. We won't have time to argue later; we'll need to be rowing in the same direction when your mess crashes down on our heads. So talk, anata. You think you're doing something important? Convince me."
Eiji swallowed. "I--"
He couldn't do it. A week ago he could have, with no problem. A week ago he'd known he was doing the right thing. But now he'd stepped into the shinobi's own world, and no matter how he justified it, a man was dead.
Ginji took pity on him. "Eiji wants to bring down the hidden villages," he said. "He wants complete civilian oversight of all ninja, and he wants to outlaw the training of children under age twelve."
"Sixteen," Eiji said.
"Twelve," said Ginji. "Killing can wait until sixteen, but muscle memory and chakra manipulation need to start sooner." He turned back to his sister. "As long as the hidden villages rule the shadows, people will always hire ninja for unethical jobs. As long as the academies systematically train children to be heartless killers, new missing-nin will always threaten the roads and the peace. As long as everyone lives in fear, no land and no technology can be used to its full extent."
"Imagine spreading electricity beyond the largest towns," Eiji said. "Imagine telephones connecting every village, not just isolated systems within cities. Imagine fixing engines to wagons and ships to speed trade. Imagine cultivating the empty lands instead of ceding them to bandits and missing-nin. Think of what we could do without the hidden villages' weight on our backs, Tetsuko!"
He leaned forward, reaching his open hands across the table toward his wife. "Think of no more children stolen away from their families and friends, and given back broken."
Tetsuko's eyes snapped to Ginji.
There was a long, pregnant silence.
"Think of wars fought by thousands of young civilians who have no idea how to disable instead of kill," Tetsuko said eventually. "Think of Cloud-nin killing you and stealing Mitsuko. Think of me and Mitsuko left alone while you and Ginji die in agony." She shook her head. "Eiji, are you crazy? I know you've been gathering missing-nin, but there is no way on earth one civilian town and a rabble of outcasts can take on even one hidden village, let alone all of them."
"True," said Ginji. "That's why we're working on an alliance with a group called Akatsuki. They're a partnership of ten S-class missing-nin, and they are willing to work with us to destabilize the existing order."
Tetsuko unfolded her arms and drummed her fingers against the doorframe, clearly unconvinced. "Assuming you don't get killed in the next month, what happens when the old order is gone and you start building a new one? Will your lawless allies look kindly on that?"
"We'll sail that strait when we get there," Eiji said, trying not to let his own doubt show in his voice or eyes. He kept his hands flat and open on the table, though he wanted to clench them tight enough for his fingernails to draw blood. "I wanted to keep you safe--"
"Safe? As if the council and hunters would ever give anyone associated with traitors the benefit of the doubt!" Tetsuko laughed bitterly.
"--keep you and Mitsuko safe," Eiji continued doggedly, "but it's too late for us to turn back now. All we can do is continue forward. Now that you know, why don't you listen to our plans and help me and Ginji find and fix the flaws?"
Slowly, Tetsuko's face softened, until she was merely annoyed rather than furious. She tucked her long brown hair behind her ears and straightened the cuffs of her shirt, settling into her calm, public face. "Fine. We'll go to your office, where you idiots will tell me everything. Then I'll figure out a way for us all to get out of this alive."
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Sasuke wasn't speaking to Yukiko. That was okay; she didn't need him to be friendly.
He wasn't speaking to Naruto, either, which was problematic since the kid hated being ignored. From the minute they arrived in the common room of the Seven Larks for breakfast, Naruto had refused to shut up or sit still, constantly trying to get a reaction out of Sasuke. By the time Yukiko shoved them and Seichi out the door and headed for the guard station, she honestly hoped Sasuke would snap and attack -- if he didn't, she might, and that was no way for a big sister to act.
Seichi seemed to pick up on her mood. They'd barely started uphill before he grabbed Naruto around the waist and threw the kid over his shoulder. "Hey, brat, shut up," he muttered. "The little men in iron shoes dancing in my head are bad enough. You don't need to cheer them on."
Naruto squawked. "Yukiko-neechan! Help!" He started wriggling, then kicking and hitting, but without any real force or aim.
Sasuke snorted. Yukiko glanced down and caught a tiny smile just vanishing off the corners of his mouth. So he was alive inside that silence. Good. Naruto was obviously getting to him. With a bit of luck, the kid would have Sasuke softened up to something nearly normal by the time they got back to Konoha.
Seichi banged once on the guard station door and barged in without waiting for an answer. Fortunately, the guard on duty had been briefed by the other Leaf-nin and didn't try to stop him. "Hey, you, go find Kurenai-chan," Seichi said. "I want to hand these brats over to the sucker who's going to take them home -- and the sooner the better. They're annoying Yuki-chan, and when she's annoyed, my chances go down."
"I hate him. I really, honestly hate him," Yukiko muttered under her breath as the guard slipped through the inner door. Even the assassin persona was better than Tsukene.
Beside her, Sasuke snorted again.
"Oh, laugh it up all you want," she told him. "You're still going back to Konoha under heavy escort. There will be no more surprise adventures from you or my charming little brother."
Sasuke glared at her for a second before he remembered he was ignoring her and dove back into the eerie blankness he'd worn last night, and in the Uchiha compound. Yukiko stifled the urge to scream.
Seichi had dumped Naruto onto the large desk, carelessly sweeping aside the neat stack of paperwork and the brush and ink stone. "Stay still, brat, or that guard over there will do horrible ninja magic to you," he said, shaking one finger in Naruto's face. "And stay quiet. Got it?"
"The door's closed," Yukiko said dryly, as Naruto sputtered, obviously wanting to proclaim that he was a ninja and ninjutsu wasn't magic. She spun a fine thread of awareness outward, brushing over the inner rooms. "No clients in the building either. Drop the act, both of you."
"Nobody's gonna do ninjutsu to me! I'm a ninja, dumbass!" Naruto shrieked, lunging at Seichi. "I'm gonna be the best ninja ever and someday I'll be Hokage and then you'll see how great I am and you won't ever--" Seichi grabbed Naruto by the waist and flung him into the air, then caught the kid by the ankles a bare heartbeat before he slammed into the ground. Naruto shot his hands forward to brace himself against the floor. "Stop doing that, you jerk!"
This time, Sasuke laughed outright.
"One thing all ninja need to learn," Seichi said, in a calm, flat voice completely at odds with his casual posture, "is respect for the skills of our opponents. Otherwise we overestimate our ability to confront them directly, and that kind of idiocy gets people killed. If you're lucky, you'll be the only casualty. If you're unlucky, you'll survive and have to live with the knowledge that you caused your teammates' deaths. You're not Hokage yet, Uzumaki Naruto. Don't attack me again."
Naruto sputtered in embarrassed fury. "But-- you-- what-- Yukiko-neechan, why didn't you tell me he's a ninja?!"
"I figured it out," Sasuke said, folding his arms and giving Naruto a superior look. "You're just too stupid to pay attention."
Huh. Come to think of it, Sasuke hadn't reacted at all when Seichi started spouting classified information last night. And yet he hadn't said anything... Yukiko frowned, trying to puzzle out the brat's motivation. Naruto made sense, more or less. Why couldn't Sasuke?
Seichi turned to Sasuke, his eyes cold and sharp. "Speaking of that, what made you suspect me? It's important for Yukiko-san and I to pass perfectly as civilians."
"You walk too quietly," Sasuke said slowly. "You don't flinch when light hits your eyes -- you control your reaction. I saw your hand move toward a knife once." He paused, then smirked slightly. "Also, I already knew Naruto's sister is a ninja, and there's no way she'd put up with you if you weren't her mission partner."
Seichi went very still, killing intent suddenly flooding through the room. Yukiko found a kunai in her hand with no memory of reaching for it, and she prepared to step in front of Sasuke and try to defuse Seichi before he did something drastic.
"You can't let the kids get--" she started to say.
Seichi laughed.
"Done in by flirting," he said, letting go of Naruto's ankles. "The rest I could explain away as symptoms of a life on the road, but that last one..." He shook his head, eyes alight with rueful humor -- real humor, not Tsukene's mask or the assassin's ice. "Ame would never have let us live that down, don't you think?"
"Who's Ame?" Naruto asked, swinging his legs down carefully and standing back upright.
Yukiko closed her eyes so she didn't have to watch Seichi's smile. "Someone we used to know. That's all." She was not going to talk about her old teammate, even if she was Seichi's cousin. Fortunately, Kurenai walked into the room before Naruto could ask more questions.
"We brought the kids," Yukiko said hastily. "Will they be leaving for Konoha immediately or waiting a couple days for an escort?"
Kurenai looked uncharacteristically uncertain, and instead of answering, locked and barred the inner door behind her. Then she put a silencing jutsu up around the room and carefully locked and barred the outer door as well. Yukiko's sense of unease grew with each second. Finally Kurenai went over to the disarrayed desk and drew a tightly bound message scroll out of her sleeve. "Nobody is returning to Konoha," she said, unrolling the paper and pinning it flat with an ink stone and a brush rack.
Huh?
"We received new orders from Sarutobi-sama himself at dawn," Kurenai continued, looking down at the message scroll with a confused expression. "He said that the situation in Konoha is obviously unstable, and for their own protection, it's best that the boys remain away from the village with their locations known to as few as possible. I didn't reveal their identities to the ninja stationed here, which means the three of us, Sarutobi-sama, and whoever received my report are the only people who know where Sasuke and Naruto are. Therefore, we've been given an additional assignment to guard them."
"But what about--" Yukiko began.
"The original mission still stands," Kurenai interrupted. "We're ordered to take them to Tengai, and then to circle west along the northern coast until the Military Police have been restructured and restaffed, and Konoha is safe again."
"Hey, hey, does that mean we get to help with your mission, Yukiko-neechan?" Naruto asked, dashing across the room to yank at her jacket. "That's so cool!"
"It's not cool," Yukiko snapped. "And it's not happening. Has the Hokage gone insane? We can't take kids into enemy territory. Hidden Cloud wants to kidnap Sasuke and use him for spare parts in a breeding program -- we'd be handing him over in gift wrap!"
Everyone turned to stare at Sasuke, who looked utterly blank. Then his frown sharpened. "I can take care of myself," he snapped.
"No, you can't," Yukiko snapped back. "If you could, you and Naruto wouldn't have gotten caught in the caravan. You wouldn't even be here, because you'd have taken the time to get better intelligence before sneaking out of Konoha on a wild goose chase."
"Hey!" Naruto said.
"This has to be a mistake," Yukiko continued, turning back to Kurenai. "Are you sure there isn't a coded message in with the obvious one?"
Kurenai shook her head, still looking troubled. "Those are our orders. I don't like them any more than you do, but when the Hokage tells us to do something--"
"--we do it," Seichi finished. His eyes had gone cold again, and he flicked a single card back and forth between his fingers, snapping it front to back as it wove from forefinger to little finger and back again. "It's not as bad as it sounds. The last place Hidden Cloud will think to look for the boy is under their own noses, and the kids will make our cover a lot more convincing. If," he added, turning his cold stare on the boys, "they can keep a secret."
Naruto gulped and clutched Yukiko's jacket harder. "I can! I keep lots of secrets!"
Sasuke snorted. "I'll make him keep his mouth shut. And we'll stay out of your way," he said, his voice far too calm for the situation. Yukiko looked sharply at him. His hands were clenched, fingers digging into his palms, reopening his cuts even through the bandages.
"Hey," she said, walking over and grabbing his hands. "Didn't I tell you there's no sense hurting yourself? Save that for your enemies."
Sasuke yanked his hands away. "Don't touch me. And don't say stupid things. What's the point of waiting for enemies? Nobody knows where that man is, and civilian kids don't kill people. They don't even train."
Naruto let go of Yukiko's jacket and slapped the back of Sasuke's head. "Don't call Yukiko-neechan stupid, you jerk! You're the one who's stupid. Training isn't just weapons and ninjutsu. You can play hide-and-seek, you can watch people and figure out what they're doing, you can set up practical jokes -- all kinds of stuff! And I bet I'll be the one making you keep your mouth shut 'cause you won't be able to pretend you're not a ninja. So there!"
Yukiko looked helplessly up at Kurenai and Seichi as the boys glared at each other. "Um..."
Kurenai spread her hands and shrugged. Seichi tapped his card against the rest of its deck, then made all the cards vanish. "Whatever else happens on this mission," he said, "it certainly won't be boring. Let's go pack and meet the rest of the caravan. Tengai awaits."
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End of Chapter Thirteen
Back to chapter 12
Continue to chapter 14
Read the final version on ff.net. (Trust me, you want to read the final version. The journal version is a beta draft, with all the boneheaded mistakes that implies.)
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The opening two scenes have been more or less done for ages now, and probably don't need much editing. Eiji's scene... this is only the second time Tetsuko has had much of a speaking role, and I am not sure I am introducing her very well. Any advice would be welcome. And the fourth scene is basically a giant plot contrivance, so if you can think of any better justification that would produce the same basic result (i.e., the same people heading to the same places), please tell me.
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
Here is chapter 13, in which the differences between chuunin and trainee ninja are made very clear, Kakashi kindly gives exposition about the Uchiha, Naga and Kafunnokaze are cute, Eiji and Ginji get into hot water, and Sarutobi Hokage-sama attempts to save the author from a horrific plot hole. (Time will tell whether he succeeded.)
Um. So, yeah, there's been a two and a half year gap since I posted any of this story, and you almost certainly want to reread at least chapter 11 and chapter 12 to remind yourself what's been going on. Sorry about that, but, you know, better late than never? (4,500 words)
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The Guardian in Spite of Herself: Chapter 13
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"I'm not going back," Sasuke said.
Yukiko blinked. Huh?
"Of course you're going back," she said after a moment of pure disbelief. "I'm not asking; I'm giving you an order."
"You're not my guardian. And if Naruto's not a ninja yet, I'm not either -- we're both only students -- so you're not my commander or team leader. You can't give me orders," Sasuke said, still showing that eerily calm surface. Yukiko had no clue what was going on in his head, and she wished it weren't unethical to use genjutsu to pull him under and make him talk.
"For all practical purposes, I am your guardian, and in any case, I'm an adult and you're a kid. But we're not arguing about that." Arguing over authority meant you'd already lost -- she'd learned that from Naruto. "At least two villages would love to kidnap you, and you don't want to know what Mist-nin and Cloud-nin would do to you to get their own version of Sharingan. You're going back to Konoha where you'll be safe."
"No."
Yukiko folded her hands and stifled the urge to scream. "Okay, so you're going home tied up and under protest. I'm sure Naruto will have lots of fun drawing on your face and otherwise making you look like a complete idiot. That's your choice. Seichi and I will take you to the guard post in the morning."
"No," Sasuke said again. "I don't need to be safe. I don't care what happens to me as long as I get strong enough to kill Itachi. I don't care about Konoha either -- you couldn't protect my family, and you didn't even tell me my cousin was alive. I'm not going back." He folded his arms and glared at her, in a miniature version of his clan's typical disdain.
Yukiko sighed. Then she set her hands in a rat seal, flicked a delicate network of chakra around Sasuke, and said, "Yes, you are. Now go to sleep."
Seichi caught the boy before he hit the floor. "Clean work."
"It's always easier when the target doesn't know how to fight back, and I shouldn't have wasted time arguing in the first place," Yukiko said, slightly embarrassed. Seichi straightened, Sasuke's torso and legs curled awkwardly in his arms, like a jumble of severed body parts rather than a living child. Yukiko turned away and gathered Seichi's cards; the thick paper was smooth, slightly worn around the edges, and warm from his hands. "Thanks for grabbing him before he cracked his head open. Take him to the boys' room, will you? He should sleep straight through to noon unless I undo the jutsu."
"Thorough work, too," Seichi murmured. "Do you want me to explain anything to the fox brat?"
Yukiko twisted back around, cards crumpling in her hands. "Never call him that. His name is Uzumaki Naruto, and you take him for who he is -- not what his body imprisons -- or I'll tell everyone you got drunk and tried to rape me. I won't interfere with the mission, but I can make your life a living hell until we get home."
Seichi shrugged; one of Sasuke's arms slid off his shoulder and swayed with the motion. "Fine. I don't care about the Kyuubi. I just thought 'fox brat' sounded more polite than 'hyperactive menace.' I won't do it again. Also, you can have that deck of cards; they're useless as weapons once they get bent."
He opened the door one-handed and slipped into the corridor.
Yukiko stared at the sheaf of cards in her hands. Slowly, she began smoothing out the folds.
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They reached Kaiminori just before sunset. The dogs stumbled across Itachi's scent halfway there and Kakashi decided to follow the trail rather than heading directly for the village, just in case Itachi had swung off in an unexpected direction.
Suisen checked in with the local Grass guard-post, Kohaku went in search of take-out for dinner, and Kakashi took Naga and Kafunnokaze to reserve two rooms at the inn. "Girls in one, boys in the other," he said. "No hanky-panky... unless I get to watch." He winked.
Kafunnokaze stood on Naga's foot until she subsided.
Five minutes later, Kohaku and Suisen arrived carrying boxes of rice, vegetable stir fry, tofu with sesame noodles, and pickled crawfish with peapods and water chestnuts. They borrowed some dishes and chopsticks from the innkeeper -- who smiled nervously at such a large group of ninja -- and went upstairs to eat and talk.
"Do you have any clue where Uchiha Itachi might be going?" Kafunnokaze asked as he handed Naga the rice.
She sat on the floor beside him, crossed her legs, and scooped a blob of sticky white onto her plate. Then she handed the box on to Kohaku and shot an inquiring look across the circle to Kakashi. "You're the boss. How much can we tell?"
Kakashi prodded a lump of tofu with his chopsticks. "There were eleven Uchiha out of town when Itachi killed his clan," he said slowly. "Four were military police on local patrols; they're confirmed dead. One was Uchiha Tsukime, Naga's partner. As for the other six...
"Uchiha Hanzo was leading his genin team on an escort mission in east Fire Country. He's presumed dead; jounin-sensei don't abandon their teams. Uchiha Mayumi was training a daimyo's guards on the southern coast and Uchiha Kensuke was guarding our ambassador in River Country. They've both vanished. Uchiha Noriyama and his partner were in Volcano Country. Neither has reported in since the day of the incident. Uchiha Akaro and his team were patrolling the Waterfall Country border. He failed to make a rendezvous and his team is still searching for him. Finally, Uchiha Shiburi was on detached infiltration duty in the eastern islands. We have no idea what her status is."
Kakashi tapped his chopsticks against his plate. "I suspect Itachi killed Hanzo first, then swung southwest to kill Mayumi and Kensuke. He missed Tsukime but presumably continued northeast toward Noriyama and Akaro, and he'll eventually head to sea to reach Shiburi. The problem is that we don't know exactly where his three final targets were, so our chances of confirming their status -- alive or dead -- are less than ideal. And we have no way of knowing how far behind Itachi we are."
The Grass-nin absorbed the information for a long moment, while Naga frowned at Kakashi. "Classified," she reminded him.
"There's no point hiding potentially mission-critical information from our partners," he replied, his voice slightly muffled by rice in his mouth and the napkin held in front of his face. "I'll just kill them if they try to report the details back to Hidden Grass."
"Hey! That's interference in the internal affairs of an ally!" Kafunnokaze said, jabbing a chopstick toward Kakashi. "Besides, what makes you think you could take down all three of us?"
Kakashi smiled, his eye crinkling into that maddening crescent. "You and Naga would remove each other from the equation, which leaves one jounin with over fifteen years of field experience against two chuunin with less than ten years' experience combined. Do the math."
"He has a point, Kaze-kun," said Suisen, licking soy sauce off her fingers and nudging Kafunnokaze with her elbow. "Stop trying to show off for your girlfriend -- you're just making us all look stupid."
"I am not showing off," Kafunnokaze grumbled.
"Yeah, showing off implies that he's doing something tricky and getting it right," Kohaku agreed in a deceptively bland tone.
Naga stifled a smile and grabbed Kafunnokaze's hand before he did anything rash. "Everyone's against me," he said, but he squeezed her hand so she knew he wasn't too insulted. Good. There was no place for personal conflict on missions.
Kakashi tapped his chopsticks on the floor, pulling her attention back. "Are we done with amateur drama hour? Yes? Good. Here are your orders: Naga, summon a raven and send a report back to Konoha. You lot, leave a report with your local agent, whoever he or she is. I promise not to spy on you, but the last thing we need is Hidden Grass accusing me of kidnapping you, or you of treason. Then turn in for the night -- we shouldn't need watches here, so catch up on sleep while you can. We head northeast at dawn."
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Eiji found it oddly difficult to meet Tetsuko's eyes at breakfast, or to touch Mitsu-chan.
He'd ordered a man killed in cold blood. Before, he'd always managed to avoid direct responsibility. Asking Ginji to keep order did result in occasional casualties, but Eiji had rationalized that away, telling himself that if the troublemakers had seen reason they would have survived. He had no excuses here.
The Cloud-nin was dead at his word. It was a necessary price, but to hold the weight of a human life in his hand, balance it against his goals, and make that choice... Eiji shifted his grip on his spoon to keep from clenching his hands into fists. Ginji's stifled flinches at Mitsu-chan's hugs and trust suddenly made a sickening amount of sense.
Eiji forced himself to swallow a few mouthfuls of whatever his housekeeper had cooked, and Ginji did a fair job of distracting Mitsu-chan by asking her to demonstrate her new calligraphy skills on his arm, but Tetsuko knew something was wrong. There was no way she could fail to notice -- all three of them had known each other far too long to hide the existence of a secret.
Finally Tetsuko plucked the chalk from Mitsu-chan's fist, wiped her mouth with a napkin, straightened her dress, and led her out of the kitchen. "Time for school," she said when Mitsu-chan pouted. "If you learn another stroke, you can practice on Uncle Ginji again tonight."
Eiji looked at Ginji. His hand was tense on the table's edge, knuckles white with tension. "She won't let us hide much longer."
Ginji shrugged, unsympathetically. "So? We knew she'd find out sooner or later. Besides, you need to talk to someone about Hideo and Tetsuko's more comforting than I'll ever be."
Hideo. Not 'the Cloud-nin.' Hideo. Was it strength that let Ginji use the dead man's name so easily, or just another sign of the burnt-out scars the academy and the council's orders had left in his mind and heart?
"How well did you know him?" Eiji asked, looking down at his hands.
"More than some, less than others. We shared a few missions, helped administer a chuunin exam three years back. One time Kote Minami dragged us out to a bar, got drunk, and offered to fuck us both at once." Ginji quirked a ghost smile at Eiji's obvious shock. "I turned her down. Hideo didn't, but I heard he made sure to tie her wrists to the bed frame so he got a head start in the morning. Hideo was a bastard, but he wasn't stupid. He would have unraveled our secrets fairly soon."
"Though not as soon as I have," Tetsuko said.
Eiji jerked his head up and stared over Ginji's shoulder. Tetsuko leaned against the kitchen doorframe, her face stern and unamused. "What in the name of the kami, the elements, and the corners of the world were you idiots thinking? And why didn't you tell me from the beginning? You've gone and caught us all in a riptide, and if you two thought ignorance would protect me and Mitsu-chan--"
"He did," said Ginji.
"Oh, Eiji did -- but not you? Yet you went along with his plan." Tetsuko folded her arms and glared at her brother and husband. "I'm not sure if that makes me angrier at you or him."
Eiji found his voice. "Ginji, you traitor. You must have heard her footsteps. Why did you keep talking?"
Ginji shrugged, pushing his chair back from the table as if to remove himself from the line of fire between Tetsuko and Eiji. "I told you, she was going to find out sooner or later. It's best to get the fight out of the way before the Akatsuki representatives or more Cloud-nin arrive to complicate the situation."
Eiji looked helplessly at Tetsuko. She stared back, blue eyes flat and uncompromising. "Ginji's right. We won't have time to argue later; we'll need to be rowing in the same direction when your mess crashes down on our heads. So talk, anata. You think you're doing something important? Convince me."
Eiji swallowed. "I--"
He couldn't do it. A week ago he could have, with no problem. A week ago he'd known he was doing the right thing. But now he'd stepped into the shinobi's own world, and no matter how he justified it, a man was dead.
Ginji took pity on him. "Eiji wants to bring down the hidden villages," he said. "He wants complete civilian oversight of all ninja, and he wants to outlaw the training of children under age twelve."
"Sixteen," Eiji said.
"Twelve," said Ginji. "Killing can wait until sixteen, but muscle memory and chakra manipulation need to start sooner." He turned back to his sister. "As long as the hidden villages rule the shadows, people will always hire ninja for unethical jobs. As long as the academies systematically train children to be heartless killers, new missing-nin will always threaten the roads and the peace. As long as everyone lives in fear, no land and no technology can be used to its full extent."
"Imagine spreading electricity beyond the largest towns," Eiji said. "Imagine telephones connecting every village, not just isolated systems within cities. Imagine fixing engines to wagons and ships to speed trade. Imagine cultivating the empty lands instead of ceding them to bandits and missing-nin. Think of what we could do without the hidden villages' weight on our backs, Tetsuko!"
He leaned forward, reaching his open hands across the table toward his wife. "Think of no more children stolen away from their families and friends, and given back broken."
Tetsuko's eyes snapped to Ginji.
There was a long, pregnant silence.
"Think of wars fought by thousands of young civilians who have no idea how to disable instead of kill," Tetsuko said eventually. "Think of Cloud-nin killing you and stealing Mitsuko. Think of me and Mitsuko left alone while you and Ginji die in agony." She shook her head. "Eiji, are you crazy? I know you've been gathering missing-nin, but there is no way on earth one civilian town and a rabble of outcasts can take on even one hidden village, let alone all of them."
"True," said Ginji. "That's why we're working on an alliance with a group called Akatsuki. They're a partnership of ten S-class missing-nin, and they are willing to work with us to destabilize the existing order."
Tetsuko unfolded her arms and drummed her fingers against the doorframe, clearly unconvinced. "Assuming you don't get killed in the next month, what happens when the old order is gone and you start building a new one? Will your lawless allies look kindly on that?"
"We'll sail that strait when we get there," Eiji said, trying not to let his own doubt show in his voice or eyes. He kept his hands flat and open on the table, though he wanted to clench them tight enough for his fingernails to draw blood. "I wanted to keep you safe--"
"Safe? As if the council and hunters would ever give anyone associated with traitors the benefit of the doubt!" Tetsuko laughed bitterly.
"--keep you and Mitsuko safe," Eiji continued doggedly, "but it's too late for us to turn back now. All we can do is continue forward. Now that you know, why don't you listen to our plans and help me and Ginji find and fix the flaws?"
Slowly, Tetsuko's face softened, until she was merely annoyed rather than furious. She tucked her long brown hair behind her ears and straightened the cuffs of her shirt, settling into her calm, public face. "Fine. We'll go to your office, where you idiots will tell me everything. Then I'll figure out a way for us all to get out of this alive."
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Sasuke wasn't speaking to Yukiko. That was okay; she didn't need him to be friendly.
He wasn't speaking to Naruto, either, which was problematic since the kid hated being ignored. From the minute they arrived in the common room of the Seven Larks for breakfast, Naruto had refused to shut up or sit still, constantly trying to get a reaction out of Sasuke. By the time Yukiko shoved them and Seichi out the door and headed for the guard station, she honestly hoped Sasuke would snap and attack -- if he didn't, she might, and that was no way for a big sister to act.
Seichi seemed to pick up on her mood. They'd barely started uphill before he grabbed Naruto around the waist and threw the kid over his shoulder. "Hey, brat, shut up," he muttered. "The little men in iron shoes dancing in my head are bad enough. You don't need to cheer them on."
Naruto squawked. "Yukiko-neechan! Help!" He started wriggling, then kicking and hitting, but without any real force or aim.
Sasuke snorted. Yukiko glanced down and caught a tiny smile just vanishing off the corners of his mouth. So he was alive inside that silence. Good. Naruto was obviously getting to him. With a bit of luck, the kid would have Sasuke softened up to something nearly normal by the time they got back to Konoha.
Seichi banged once on the guard station door and barged in without waiting for an answer. Fortunately, the guard on duty had been briefed by the other Leaf-nin and didn't try to stop him. "Hey, you, go find Kurenai-chan," Seichi said. "I want to hand these brats over to the sucker who's going to take them home -- and the sooner the better. They're annoying Yuki-chan, and when she's annoyed, my chances go down."
"I hate him. I really, honestly hate him," Yukiko muttered under her breath as the guard slipped through the inner door. Even the assassin persona was better than Tsukene.
Beside her, Sasuke snorted again.
"Oh, laugh it up all you want," she told him. "You're still going back to Konoha under heavy escort. There will be no more surprise adventures from you or my charming little brother."
Sasuke glared at her for a second before he remembered he was ignoring her and dove back into the eerie blankness he'd worn last night, and in the Uchiha compound. Yukiko stifled the urge to scream.
Seichi had dumped Naruto onto the large desk, carelessly sweeping aside the neat stack of paperwork and the brush and ink stone. "Stay still, brat, or that guard over there will do horrible ninja magic to you," he said, shaking one finger in Naruto's face. "And stay quiet. Got it?"
"The door's closed," Yukiko said dryly, as Naruto sputtered, obviously wanting to proclaim that he was a ninja and ninjutsu wasn't magic. She spun a fine thread of awareness outward, brushing over the inner rooms. "No clients in the building either. Drop the act, both of you."
"Nobody's gonna do ninjutsu to me! I'm a ninja, dumbass!" Naruto shrieked, lunging at Seichi. "I'm gonna be the best ninja ever and someday I'll be Hokage and then you'll see how great I am and you won't ever--" Seichi grabbed Naruto by the waist and flung him into the air, then caught the kid by the ankles a bare heartbeat before he slammed into the ground. Naruto shot his hands forward to brace himself against the floor. "Stop doing that, you jerk!"
This time, Sasuke laughed outright.
"One thing all ninja need to learn," Seichi said, in a calm, flat voice completely at odds with his casual posture, "is respect for the skills of our opponents. Otherwise we overestimate our ability to confront them directly, and that kind of idiocy gets people killed. If you're lucky, you'll be the only casualty. If you're unlucky, you'll survive and have to live with the knowledge that you caused your teammates' deaths. You're not Hokage yet, Uzumaki Naruto. Don't attack me again."
Naruto sputtered in embarrassed fury. "But-- you-- what-- Yukiko-neechan, why didn't you tell me he's a ninja?!"
"I figured it out," Sasuke said, folding his arms and giving Naruto a superior look. "You're just too stupid to pay attention."
Huh. Come to think of it, Sasuke hadn't reacted at all when Seichi started spouting classified information last night. And yet he hadn't said anything... Yukiko frowned, trying to puzzle out the brat's motivation. Naruto made sense, more or less. Why couldn't Sasuke?
Seichi turned to Sasuke, his eyes cold and sharp. "Speaking of that, what made you suspect me? It's important for Yukiko-san and I to pass perfectly as civilians."
"You walk too quietly," Sasuke said slowly. "You don't flinch when light hits your eyes -- you control your reaction. I saw your hand move toward a knife once." He paused, then smirked slightly. "Also, I already knew Naruto's sister is a ninja, and there's no way she'd put up with you if you weren't her mission partner."
Seichi went very still, killing intent suddenly flooding through the room. Yukiko found a kunai in her hand with no memory of reaching for it, and she prepared to step in front of Sasuke and try to defuse Seichi before he did something drastic.
"You can't let the kids get--" she started to say.
Seichi laughed.
"Done in by flirting," he said, letting go of Naruto's ankles. "The rest I could explain away as symptoms of a life on the road, but that last one..." He shook his head, eyes alight with rueful humor -- real humor, not Tsukene's mask or the assassin's ice. "Ame would never have let us live that down, don't you think?"
"Who's Ame?" Naruto asked, swinging his legs down carefully and standing back upright.
Yukiko closed her eyes so she didn't have to watch Seichi's smile. "Someone we used to know. That's all." She was not going to talk about her old teammate, even if she was Seichi's cousin. Fortunately, Kurenai walked into the room before Naruto could ask more questions.
"We brought the kids," Yukiko said hastily. "Will they be leaving for Konoha immediately or waiting a couple days for an escort?"
Kurenai looked uncharacteristically uncertain, and instead of answering, locked and barred the inner door behind her. Then she put a silencing jutsu up around the room and carefully locked and barred the outer door as well. Yukiko's sense of unease grew with each second. Finally Kurenai went over to the disarrayed desk and drew a tightly bound message scroll out of her sleeve. "Nobody is returning to Konoha," she said, unrolling the paper and pinning it flat with an ink stone and a brush rack.
Huh?
"We received new orders from Sarutobi-sama himself at dawn," Kurenai continued, looking down at the message scroll with a confused expression. "He said that the situation in Konoha is obviously unstable, and for their own protection, it's best that the boys remain away from the village with their locations known to as few as possible. I didn't reveal their identities to the ninja stationed here, which means the three of us, Sarutobi-sama, and whoever received my report are the only people who know where Sasuke and Naruto are. Therefore, we've been given an additional assignment to guard them."
"But what about--" Yukiko began.
"The original mission still stands," Kurenai interrupted. "We're ordered to take them to Tengai, and then to circle west along the northern coast until the Military Police have been restructured and restaffed, and Konoha is safe again."
"Hey, hey, does that mean we get to help with your mission, Yukiko-neechan?" Naruto asked, dashing across the room to yank at her jacket. "That's so cool!"
"It's not cool," Yukiko snapped. "And it's not happening. Has the Hokage gone insane? We can't take kids into enemy territory. Hidden Cloud wants to kidnap Sasuke and use him for spare parts in a breeding program -- we'd be handing him over in gift wrap!"
Everyone turned to stare at Sasuke, who looked utterly blank. Then his frown sharpened. "I can take care of myself," he snapped.
"No, you can't," Yukiko snapped back. "If you could, you and Naruto wouldn't have gotten caught in the caravan. You wouldn't even be here, because you'd have taken the time to get better intelligence before sneaking out of Konoha on a wild goose chase."
"Hey!" Naruto said.
"This has to be a mistake," Yukiko continued, turning back to Kurenai. "Are you sure there isn't a coded message in with the obvious one?"
Kurenai shook her head, still looking troubled. "Those are our orders. I don't like them any more than you do, but when the Hokage tells us to do something--"
"--we do it," Seichi finished. His eyes had gone cold again, and he flicked a single card back and forth between his fingers, snapping it front to back as it wove from forefinger to little finger and back again. "It's not as bad as it sounds. The last place Hidden Cloud will think to look for the boy is under their own noses, and the kids will make our cover a lot more convincing. If," he added, turning his cold stare on the boys, "they can keep a secret."
Naruto gulped and clutched Yukiko's jacket harder. "I can! I keep lots of secrets!"
Sasuke snorted. "I'll make him keep his mouth shut. And we'll stay out of your way," he said, his voice far too calm for the situation. Yukiko looked sharply at him. His hands were clenched, fingers digging into his palms, reopening his cuts even through the bandages.
"Hey," she said, walking over and grabbing his hands. "Didn't I tell you there's no sense hurting yourself? Save that for your enemies."
Sasuke yanked his hands away. "Don't touch me. And don't say stupid things. What's the point of waiting for enemies? Nobody knows where that man is, and civilian kids don't kill people. They don't even train."
Naruto let go of Yukiko's jacket and slapped the back of Sasuke's head. "Don't call Yukiko-neechan stupid, you jerk! You're the one who's stupid. Training isn't just weapons and ninjutsu. You can play hide-and-seek, you can watch people and figure out what they're doing, you can set up practical jokes -- all kinds of stuff! And I bet I'll be the one making you keep your mouth shut 'cause you won't be able to pretend you're not a ninja. So there!"
Yukiko looked helplessly up at Kurenai and Seichi as the boys glared at each other. "Um..."
Kurenai spread her hands and shrugged. Seichi tapped his card against the rest of its deck, then made all the cards vanish. "Whatever else happens on this mission," he said, "it certainly won't be boring. Let's go pack and meet the rest of the caravan. Tengai awaits."
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End of Chapter Thirteen
Back to chapter 12
Continue to chapter 14
Read the final version on ff.net. (Trust me, you want to read the final version. The journal version is a beta draft, with all the boneheaded mistakes that implies.)
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The opening two scenes have been more or less done for ages now, and probably don't need much editing. Eiji's scene... this is only the second time Tetsuko has had much of a speaking role, and I am not sure I am introducing her very well. Any advice would be welcome. And the fourth scene is basically a giant plot contrivance, so if you can think of any better justification that would produce the same basic result (i.e., the same people heading to the same places), please tell me.
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