[Fic] "The Guardian in Spite of Herself" chapter 14 -- 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 14, in which, to the author's consternation, Suisen attempts to perform fanservice, Sasuke decides to act his age, the Amane family will not stop arguing, and Naga fails epically at normal interaction with civilians. (4,600 words)
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The Guardian in Spite of Herself: Chapter 14
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Something was tugging on her hair. Naga woke fast and cold -- forced her breathing smooth and her body relaxed while her mind caught up with the adrenaline rush. Then she remembered she'd asked Akaruime to be her alarm clock.
She sat up and held out her hand to the raven, who hopped up to perch on her arm. "Thanks," she murmured. "Want to go home? Nothing much for you to do until we find Itachi."
"I'll stay. You're interesting," Akaruime croaked. He turned his head, looking quizzically across the room to where Suisen lay sleeping on the other futon. "Wake her, too?"
Naga grinned. "My job, not yours. Go find breakfast and meet me when we get outside." She stretched her arm across her futon toward the darkness of the open window and flicked her wrist, giving the raven a boost into flight.
"Cute bird," Suisen said, as the dim light of an emergency lantern filled the room.
Naga turned, not surprised that the other girl was already awake. Any ninja who slept through a conversation a foreign ninja held right next to her was asking to be killed, and Suisen had never struck her as stupid. A little specialized, maybe, but never unskilled.
"I've known Akaruime since he was a hatchling," Naga said. "He is cute. He'll also peck your eyes out if you make one wrong move."
Suisen sat up, letting the sheet fall down to reveal her lack of clothing. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Hey, do you think I should try for a summons contract? I was thinking the other day that if I could get birds to hold mirrors, it would let me get shots into angles people would think were impossible. It'd be a nice ace up my sleeve."
"Like you wear sleeves," Naga grumbled. "Get dressed already. What if someone attacked while you're naked?"
"Then they'd be distracted as fuck or embarrassed like you," Suisen said with a razor grin. "I know what I'm doing and you're not on my team, Sasayaki."
"My clan is Tonoike," Naga said, standing and stretching the kinks out of her neck and spine. She ran her tongue out nearly three armlengths to wave just beyond Suisen's reach, taunting. "I wouldn't be a Grass-nin for all the tea in the world."
"Kaze-kun won't turn Leaf-nin either, no matter how gone he is over you," Suisen said. She stood and stretched as well, still naked. Her long blonde hair slithered down her back. "You'd better hope we never go to war. I'll kill you myself if you hurt him. And if chasing this Uchiha gets him killed..." She let the threat trail off.
It would have had more impact if Naga couldn't take Suisen three out of four in sparring matches. "Clothes," Naga said, turning away to grab her pack off the table between their futons. She unzipped it and fished around for clean underwear. "Dawn's coming."
"Dawn's already here if you're up high enough. Did you know that?" Suisen said, her voice just a little too close for comfort. Naga refused to react. Suisen thumped her own pack down onto the floor boards and continued. "Daylight lasts longer the higher up you are, because the curve of the earth can't block the sun as much. If I had enough birds with mirrors, I could focus sunlight an extra ten or twenty minutes into dawn and dusk. That'd be a handy edge."
"Still haven't figured out how to make your own glow?" Naga said as she changed.
Suisen made an annoyed noise. "I can do fire. Fire's easy. But I can't hold a fire jutsu and channel its light at the same time. Making pure light out of nothing is harder than you think it is -- there's a reason it's my clan's test of mastery." Cloth rustled. "You can look now, you prude."
Naga stuffed her old underwear into the canvas bag for dirty clothes, jammed the bag into her pack, and turned to walk out of the room. "Stop posing at me. I don't swing that way."
Suisen just grinned and slung her own pack over her bare shoulders, following Naga out of their rented room. "I bet I could change your mind if I cared enough to try. Hey, do you think the boys are still sleeping? I owe Kohaku for dumping his canteen onto me yesterday morning."
"The boys," Kakashi said from behind them, "are already downstairs and outside, helping my nin-dogs do a perimeter circuit of the village. You two get to accompany some more dogs up and down the streets to see if Itachi stopped to make contact with anyone. Meet back here and we'll take ten minutes for breakfast and debriefing."
Five dogs appeared in a puff of smoke and series of quiet popping noises. One of them was, of course, Hibiki. Naga snarled at the dog. The shaggy, square-faced mutt curled her lip and snarled back. She was annoyingly better at it.
"What are you waiting for?" Kakashi asked.
"You to stop sneaking up on me?" Naga grumbled, without really meaning it. "Hey. You -- Hibiki. You're with me, and whichever other one of you wants to come. We'll head north. The rest of you go south with mirror-girl."
The dogs swung their heads to look at Kakashi, who nodded his permission. Then Hibiki and a big white bulldog trotted toward Naga, while the other three turned and milled around Suisen's feet. Suisen lifted her right leg, bent it at the knee, and pouted elaborately as she brushed the sudden dusting of dog hair off her shiny tights.
"Don't know who she thinks she's fooling with that princess act," Naga grumbled as she headed down the stairs and out the door. The dogs swung out to either side of the street, sniffing at the doors of the various shops and houses. "If she just likes those clothes, whatever, but she's so annoying about it."
"Humans usually are," Hibiki agreed. "You mate even when you're not fertile -- it makes you stupid. Like you and the boy who smells like a damn moldy spice shop."
"He does not," Naga snapped. "Keep your nose out of my life."
Hibiki opened her mouth in an imitation of a grin, her tongue lolling out bright pink and wet between her sharp white teeth. "Which of us is the scent tracker? That boy smells like poison; no dog would live with him. Also, your damn target went into this building." She reached one paw up to make a claw-scratch mark in the doorframe of a small grocery shop.
Naga sighed. She was losing an argument with a dog. So embarrassing. "Great. I'll go in and talk to the owner. You find Kakashi and tell him we might have a lead."
She picked the lock and slipped into the darkened shop, looking for a staircase up to the owner's apartment.
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The caravan that left Nagarehiya was not the same caravan that entered. Yoshitaka-san and one other merchant had stayed in the city or turned on to another route, and a group of six teenagers heading north in search of harbor work had received permission to share Kurenai's escort in return for a nominal fee.
Naruto spent the entire day trying to befriend the new people, to little avail.
Sasuke trudged alongside the communal wagon that Seichi and Naruto's sister were driving and tried not to think about much of anything. He had equally little success.
Watching Naruto hang around the six teenagers -- four boys and two girls, all laughing and smiling like the world was at their feet -- was painfully like watching himself hang around Ita-- around his brother, back before... before. No wonder Itachi had always pushed Sasuke away. Who had time for indulging needy little brats?
Especially when you were plotting to destroy everything.
Something light and sharp-edged hit Sasuke in the forehead, jolting him out of his stewing thoughts. He scowled and looked around for Naruto.
The orange idiot was nowhere in sight. Seichi, on the other hand, was sitting sideways on the front seat of the wagon and grinning at him, blue eyes mocking behind his too-long bangs. "You need to pay more attention to what's around you," he said, tucking a pack of cards into an inner pocket of his long coat.
"Seichi, leave Sakama-kun alone," Naruto's sister said with a warning tone, though she kept her eyes fixed on the mules she was driving.
"I can't help it!" Seichi said. "He's so cute when he's feeling righteously put-upon. He's like a little thundercloud stomping along beside us, Yuki-chan -- I almost expect to see lightning in his hair."
Naruto's sister untangled her right hand from the reins and flicked Seichi in the back of his head. "Don't push it. Go find Yuu-kun and bother him instead, if you're that desperate for entertainment. Sakama-kun, if you're going to get lost in your head, sit up here beside me where you won't get into any accidents while you're distracted."
Sasuke shook his head. He didn't want to get close to Naruto's sister. She acted nice, and she pretended to listen and care, but she lied. She'd used genjutsu on him like he was a baby throwing a tantrum.
"I'll go with Seichi," he said as the man slid down from the wagon.
Naruto's sister sighed. "Great. Three of you together with no sane person to play referee. Try not to cause any new crises, okay?"
"Don't worry so much, Yuki-chan," Seichi said brightly. "The boys and I will be fine. Right, Sakama-kun?" He caught Sasuke's eyes and his face flashed cold for a second in tacit warning.
"I won't start anything unless the moron does," Sasuke said.
Naruto's sister groaned. "We're doomed," she said in exaggerated gloom, but a tiny smile crept across her face in counter to her words. She turned to look at Seichi and Sasuke, and the smile turned wry. "Go get Yuu-kun to stop pestering those teenagers to let him join their conversation. Think of something interesting you three can do and let him invite the others to join you. Tell him I said it's a trap for their minds."
"Sneaky," Seichi said, and laughed. He reached down and grabbed hold of Sasuke's hand so fast and smoothly that Sasuke had no chance to avoid him. "Come with me, my little thundercloud -- let's find some sunshine to cheer you up. Then we'll have rainbows, and maybe Yuki-chan will smile at me."
"Not at you," Naruto's sister said, but she didn't sound very annoyed and that tiny smile was still lurking at the corner of her mouth. "Sakama-kun, it's not fair of me to ask, but please keep Seichi and my little brother from making complete idiots of themselves."
Sasuke blinked. Why would she ask him to look after a fully trained ninja? That made no sense. And it was, so far as he could tell, impossible to stop Naruto from being loud and stupid.
Naruto's sister winked at him.
Sasuke's mind flashed back to the way his cousin Shisui would sometimes whisper in Sasuke's ear about how serious and overworked Itachi had become, and wouldn't it be fun to play a little game, a little trick or two, and make him relax for the afternoon? If Sasuke would just play along... Then Shisui would tip his head sideways and wink, with a cheerful grin flickering in the depths of his dark eyes.
It was the same wink, the same game, only this time Naruto's sister wanted him to play with that loud-mouthed idiot, not with his... with...
"Fine," Sasuke said, and let Seichi pull him away, walking toward the lead wagon.
When they were out of Naruto's sister's line of sight, Seichi reached down with his left hand and loosened Sasuke's fingers where they were digging into his larger palm. Sasuke flinched at his lack of control -- it was one thing to hurt himself, but a ninja who struck a target by accident was shamefully unskilled.
Seichi shook his head when Sasuke tried to yank his hand away. "Pushing everything down doesn't help," he said softly. "Trust me, I know. The best you can do is split yourself into pieces and even that won't work forever. Whatever you're feeling will keep coming back until you work through it."
"It will work until Itachi-- until my brother-- until I kill him," Sasuke said, reaching again for that cold, calm place inside his head, where everything was clear and nothing could touch him.
Seichi looked down at his bloodied hand for a long moment, his face gone cold and hard, but somehow sad underneath the ice.
"Your choice," he said.
Then Seichi smiled, and pointed forward with their joined hands. "So, why don't you sneak up on Yuu-kun and stick rotten leaves down his back? It'd be funny, and I promise I won't tell Yuki-chan on you!"
Sasuke looked at the trampled, fraying residue of last year's leaves that lined the edges of the road, where the huge, ancient trees spread their branches to block out the summer sun. He looked at Naruto, trudging dejectedly behind the six laughing teenagers. He glanced sideways at Seichi.
He bent and picked up a clump of leaves in his free hand. Seichi grinned and released him, waving his arms forward in encouragement.
Sasuke shoved the leaves into Seichi's trousers and ran forward to Naruto's side.
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"I still don't see how you intend to come out of this without the entire town dead and razed to the ground as a reminder to anyone else crazy enough to go up against the hidden villages," Tetsuko said as she stalked in a rough circle around Eiji's office: door, bookcase, window, desk, door, and around again. "It's one thing to spread propaganda -- dangerous, but at least potentially survivable. It's another entirely to raise what amounts to an armed rebellion. You're trying to destroy a way of life and ninja believe in preemptive defense."
"Propaganda is tolerated because it doesn't work," Eiji said yet again. "People have dreamed of life without the shinobi yoke for generations. The only thing that's changed is that the shinobi organized themselves to hold our leashes more efficiently than ever. If they can band together, why can't the rest of us? We outnumber them nearly a hundred to one. They can't kill us all -- who would support them then? And if we can use propaganda to get some of them on our side, or at least sympathetic enough to sit out the conflict..."
He leaned back against his desk and spread his hands. "I know it's dangerous. Of course I know. But we'll only have the element of surprise once. We have to move fast so by the time one of the villages notices us, we'll have the strength to withstand them. If we survive the first battle, we become a legend. From there, everything is negotiable."
"And if we die, which is more likely, we become a cautionary tale to scare children for a thousand years," Tetsuko snapped. She yanked a handful of her long brown hair in frustration. "Idiots! Ginji, why didn't you tell me sooner so we could talk sense into him? You know the odds he's set us against."
Ginji shrugged from his perch on the windowsill. "He asked me under the confidentiality clause in my contract."
"I'm your sister," Tetsuko snarled.
"He's my employer," Ginji said calmly. "For the duration of my contract, he owns me."
Tetsuko turned and slammed the heel of her hand against the office door. "Have I mentioned that I hate ninja conditioning?" she said to nobody in particular. "Listen to him, Eiji -- flip that switch so he's thinking in their patterns, and family means nothing to him anymore. Bastards. May they drown screaming in a typhoon."
Eiji stepped forward and wrapped his hands around his wife's shoulders, pressing the thin cotton of her dress to her warm skin. "Why do you think I want to destroy the hidden villages, anata? Why do you think Ginji agreed to help? If he really thought it was a bad idea, he would have told you and stopped me."
Tetsuko let her head fall forward to rest on the door, tension draining from her body as if she were too tired to care anymore. "Why is it that the one thing he managed to keep despite the training is his blind faith that you know what you're doing?"
As much as Eiji joked about fearing his wife's temper, this weary disapproval was even worse. She only got this way when she was near a drastic decision. Eiji slid one hand down to her waist and tugged gently, turning her around to face him. "Tetsuko. I'm sorry we shut you out. We should have asked for your advice from the start. Please forgive us?"
"You could never mean nothing to me," Ginji added from across the room. "Twins, remember? Eiji hoped you'd be safer outside our mess. I did tell him we should bring you in."
Tetsuko looked sourly over Eiji's shoulder toward her brother, a spark of anger flaring back to life in her eyes. "I will never understand why Aunt Takara's partner sponsored you into the academy instead of me. You have no brain. Neither do you, Eiji. They'd take me and Mitsuko on suspicion and torture me until I confessed, whether I knew anything about your plans or not."
"They wouldn't," Eiji said, pulling her into a tighter embrace.
"They can't take you if you aren't here," Ginji said, appearing suddenly at Eiji's elbow. "If things get bad, you and Mitsuko are taking a long trip out of the country under false names. Rika and Takeshi will get you clear."
"You told the harbormaster and your senior captain before you told me?" Tetsuko asked in disbelief. "Eiji!"
"It wouldn't break us if they died," he said hastily, rubbing his hand over the small of her back and wondering when Ginji would have told him about this contingency plan. Ginji wasn't supposed to keep secrets from him. They were in this together, and that meant--
Oh. Oh. No wonder Tetsuko was so hurt.
"I'm sorry," Eiji told her again. "We were wrong. I promise we won't hide anything from now on. Whatever you want to know, just ask."
"I want to know plenty," Tetsuko said. "Starting with why you think you're more expendable than I am, because if you think it wouldn't break me to lose you, you have your head stuck so far up your--"
Someone knocked on the door. "Hey, Boss! Message for you," Shio Rika called.
Eiji jumped, then turned to shoot a questioning glance at Ginji -- had they been overheard? "One-way silence jutsu," Ginji said. "Sound travels in but not out. Answer the door before Rika gets suspicious."
Tetsuko stuck her hand sideways and turned the knob, pulling the door in and open. "Make it fast," she said, leaning back against Eiji.
Rika glanced at Tetsuko's disheveled hair, Eiji's rumpled shirt, and Ginji standing right beside them instead of across the room away from accidental human contact. She grinned knowingly. "Strategy planning session, eh? I didn't see a thing. Anyway, a courier from Thunder Country dropped this off at the docks with your name on it -- here you go." She tossed a tied scroll in Eiji and Tetsuko's general direction; Ginji slid around them and caught it neatly in one hand. Rika laughed and continued: "Ginji-san, I need to run the new security setup past you. Stop by the docks this afternoon -- if that's all right with you, boss?"
"Fine," Eiji said. "Thank you, Rika."
"Anytime, boss." She nodded and closed the door, still grinning.
"'Didn't see a thing,' she says. You know in three hours rumor will have us engaged in a secret incestuous threesome. Again," Tetsuko said ruefully.
Despite his better intentions, Eiji laughed. "When do they think we'd have time? The only reason you and I get any time to ourselves is because we can dump Mitsu-chan on Ginji. But at least if people are watching us for scandal, they won't be looking for revolution."
"The more misdirection we can create, the better," Ginji said, looking up from the unrolled scroll. "This is a message from Hoshigaki Kisame, the Akatsuki representative. He'll be at the Ten Drums inn in two days. We need to get ready."
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The staircase up to the apartment was in the back room of the grocery shop, so Naga assumed whoever lived there also owned the store, and was therefore the person she needed to question. Nobody answered when she knocked, so she picked the lock, used a handy jutsu Iruka had taught her to flip the deadbolt, and walked in.
The apartment was dimly lit -- one lamp in the narrow bedroom and a sliver of brighter light seeping out from under the closed bathroom door. The shopkeeper was singing in the shower, in a clear if slightly off-key alto.
Naga turned on the kitchen light and busied herself making cheap green tea from the shopkeeper's own supply. Pointless, really -- no way was a civilian going to be happy about a ninja in her home -- but being raised in a restaurant by a woman whose answer to a crisis almost invariably involved a tea ceremony at some point tended to ingrain certain habits. Naga told herself the tea would make her seem more friendly and harmless. If nothing else, she'd have something to do with her hands.
She poured some tea into a sake bowl for Hibiki and sat down to wait.
Five minutes later, a short middle-aged woman opened the door in a rush of sandalwood-scented air, still singing as she wrapped a towel into a makeshift turban around her curly black hair. Then she noticed Naga in the kitchen and stopped dead in the doorway, wearing nothing but a towel and a pair of ragged hemp sandals.
"Hi," Naga said. "I have a few questions about a customer you dealt with five or six days ago. Would you like some tea?"
"What are you doing in here?" the shopkeeper said blankly. "You don't belong here."
"She told you -- she's here to ask some questions about a missing-nin who was in your shop," Hibiki said, leaping gracefully onto the tiny kitchen table. "The sooner you answer, the sooner we'll leave."
"We can wait while you get dressed," Naga said as the shopkeeper pulled her towel tighter around her body.
"You're a child," the shopkeeper said, still sounding slightly disconnected from reality.
"I'm a ninja," Naga corrected, annoyed. Besides, she was almost fifteen; that was nearly grown up even by civilian rules. "Look, sit down, have some tea, answer a few questions, and then I'll be gone and you can pretend this was all a bad dream. Okay?" Immediately she wanted to kick herself. Asking for permission gave the shopkeeper way too much implicit power. But it was too late to start over.
"You broke into my apartment! That is not okay," the shopkeeper said, her expression finally snapping into anger with an undertone of fear. "And that's my tea! You broke into my home and you're drinking my tea." Her free hand clenched into an awkward fist.
"We've already established that," Hibiki said, lying down on the table and twitching her shaggy tail slowly back and forth. "Can we move on now? I can call Kakashi if you'd rather hand the damn job to him," she added to Naga.
Naga hid a grimace behind her teacup. Funny as it might be to see Kakashi's reaction to a half-naked woman -- because for all his innuendo and little books of erotica, Naga didn't think he had any interest in real life sex -- throwing an unprepared person into conversation with him was cruel and unusual punishment. Plus, of course, he was male; bringing him here now would be tacky at best. "Don't bother, I'll handle it," she muttered to Hibiki, then looked back to the shopkeeper. "If you're not going to get dressed, I'll start the questions. Are you sure you don't want some tea?"
"It's my tea. You can't offer me my own tea. It's probably poisoned anyway," the shopkeeper grumbled, but she moved two steps into the kitchen, stopping in front of the window where the faint gray light of false dawn was beginning to wash away the spangled black of the night sky. She reached sideways and unfastened the lock on the lower pane.
"You don't have the training to jump out a second story window. I wouldn't advise trying," Naga said. Really, did all civilians react like this to strangers? Naga wasn't even trying to be threatening, and she'd promised to leave as soon as she'd asked her questions. People weren't this jumpy in Konoha.
She'd just get the questions done as fast as possible. "Five or six days ago, a ninja a bit younger than me came through Kaiminori. He stopped in your shop -- probably bought supplies for a trip. He has straight black hair down to his shoulders, black eyes, and two lines running down his face, like creases. He may have looked blank or tired. Do you remember him?"
The shopkeeper frowned. "That poor lost boy was a ninja? He was so young. I thought he was buying food for his family while his parents bought other supplies."
Naga's hand tightened around her teacup. Who looked at Uchiha Itachi and saw a lost boy who needed his parents to watch over him? He was a ninja. He'd been in Anbu. He wasn't somebody to worry for; he was somebody to worry about.
"He killed his parents. Killed the rest of his family too," Naga said. "One reason we're tracking him."
The shopkeeper flinched. "Oh."
"Do you remember what he bought? Did he say anything about where he was going?" Naga asked, leaning forward. Hibiki's tail swished back and forth a hair faster.
"Energy bars and dried fruit, I think," the shopkeeper said slowly. "He didn't buy any water, which I remember thinking was odd, since he said he was traveling west into the tall grass country. Groundwater isn't reliable out there, especially not in summer."
Naga exchanged a look with Hibiki. "He's expecting to be tracked," she said. "I bet he's still heading northeast. Wasn't Uchiha Noriyama supposed to be in Volcano Country?"
Hibiki wrinkled her lips up over her teeth. "Not my damn job to know that. If we're done here, you can ask Kakashi yourself."
Naga glanced back toward the shopkeeper, who was fiddling nervously with the edge of her towel turban. "Do you remember anything else about the missing-nin?"
The shopkeeper shook her head. "No. He looked tired and worried, he bought some food, and he said he was traveling west. That's all." She took a tiny step forward, sliding her hand along the countertop toward the block where her cooking knives were stored. "You said you'd leave. I want you to get out. This is my home and you need to get out now!"
"Thank you for your help," Naga said, nodding her head toward the shopkeeper. She stood and carried her half-empty teacup to the sink, stretching her arm down to snatch Hibiki's sake bowl off the floor as she went. "Sorry for disturbing you. I'll lock up again as I go." Hibiki leapt gracefully off the table and walked out at Naga's heels.
The shopkeeper stared silently after them until Naga closed the apartment door.
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End of Chapter Fourteen
Back to chapter 13
Continue to chapter 15
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 fourth scene worries me for several reasons. First, I think Naga may come off as cruel instead of just out of her element and lacking a gut-level understanding of the assumptions a civilian woman living alone will make about an intruder in her space. Second, I am trying to show some of how the ninja system plays out among civilians who don't live in a hidden village -- citizens of Konoha, I think, would react differently to a ninja suddenly appearing in their homes, though there would still be an undercurrent of fear. Third, I am basing the shopkeeper's reaction somewhat on my own reaction to surprising a burglar in my apartment this past summer, so I don't think I have any real perspective on how the scene plays out.
Basically, if you have any editing advice, I would be even more grateful than usual.
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
Here is chapter 14, in which, to the author's consternation, Suisen attempts to perform fanservice, Sasuke decides to act his age, the Amane family will not stop arguing, and Naga fails epically at normal interaction with civilians. (4,600 words)
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The Guardian in Spite of Herself: Chapter 14
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Something was tugging on her hair. Naga woke fast and cold -- forced her breathing smooth and her body relaxed while her mind caught up with the adrenaline rush. Then she remembered she'd asked Akaruime to be her alarm clock.
She sat up and held out her hand to the raven, who hopped up to perch on her arm. "Thanks," she murmured. "Want to go home? Nothing much for you to do until we find Itachi."
"I'll stay. You're interesting," Akaruime croaked. He turned his head, looking quizzically across the room to where Suisen lay sleeping on the other futon. "Wake her, too?"
Naga grinned. "My job, not yours. Go find breakfast and meet me when we get outside." She stretched her arm across her futon toward the darkness of the open window and flicked her wrist, giving the raven a boost into flight.
"Cute bird," Suisen said, as the dim light of an emergency lantern filled the room.
Naga turned, not surprised that the other girl was already awake. Any ninja who slept through a conversation a foreign ninja held right next to her was asking to be killed, and Suisen had never struck her as stupid. A little specialized, maybe, but never unskilled.
"I've known Akaruime since he was a hatchling," Naga said. "He is cute. He'll also peck your eyes out if you make one wrong move."
Suisen sat up, letting the sheet fall down to reveal her lack of clothing. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Hey, do you think I should try for a summons contract? I was thinking the other day that if I could get birds to hold mirrors, it would let me get shots into angles people would think were impossible. It'd be a nice ace up my sleeve."
"Like you wear sleeves," Naga grumbled. "Get dressed already. What if someone attacked while you're naked?"
"Then they'd be distracted as fuck or embarrassed like you," Suisen said with a razor grin. "I know what I'm doing and you're not on my team, Sasayaki."
"My clan is Tonoike," Naga said, standing and stretching the kinks out of her neck and spine. She ran her tongue out nearly three armlengths to wave just beyond Suisen's reach, taunting. "I wouldn't be a Grass-nin for all the tea in the world."
"Kaze-kun won't turn Leaf-nin either, no matter how gone he is over you," Suisen said. She stood and stretched as well, still naked. Her long blonde hair slithered down her back. "You'd better hope we never go to war. I'll kill you myself if you hurt him. And if chasing this Uchiha gets him killed..." She let the threat trail off.
It would have had more impact if Naga couldn't take Suisen three out of four in sparring matches. "Clothes," Naga said, turning away to grab her pack off the table between their futons. She unzipped it and fished around for clean underwear. "Dawn's coming."
"Dawn's already here if you're up high enough. Did you know that?" Suisen said, her voice just a little too close for comfort. Naga refused to react. Suisen thumped her own pack down onto the floor boards and continued. "Daylight lasts longer the higher up you are, because the curve of the earth can't block the sun as much. If I had enough birds with mirrors, I could focus sunlight an extra ten or twenty minutes into dawn and dusk. That'd be a handy edge."
"Still haven't figured out how to make your own glow?" Naga said as she changed.
Suisen made an annoyed noise. "I can do fire. Fire's easy. But I can't hold a fire jutsu and channel its light at the same time. Making pure light out of nothing is harder than you think it is -- there's a reason it's my clan's test of mastery." Cloth rustled. "You can look now, you prude."
Naga stuffed her old underwear into the canvas bag for dirty clothes, jammed the bag into her pack, and turned to walk out of the room. "Stop posing at me. I don't swing that way."
Suisen just grinned and slung her own pack over her bare shoulders, following Naga out of their rented room. "I bet I could change your mind if I cared enough to try. Hey, do you think the boys are still sleeping? I owe Kohaku for dumping his canteen onto me yesterday morning."
"The boys," Kakashi said from behind them, "are already downstairs and outside, helping my nin-dogs do a perimeter circuit of the village. You two get to accompany some more dogs up and down the streets to see if Itachi stopped to make contact with anyone. Meet back here and we'll take ten minutes for breakfast and debriefing."
Five dogs appeared in a puff of smoke and series of quiet popping noises. One of them was, of course, Hibiki. Naga snarled at the dog. The shaggy, square-faced mutt curled her lip and snarled back. She was annoyingly better at it.
"What are you waiting for?" Kakashi asked.
"You to stop sneaking up on me?" Naga grumbled, without really meaning it. "Hey. You -- Hibiki. You're with me, and whichever other one of you wants to come. We'll head north. The rest of you go south with mirror-girl."
The dogs swung their heads to look at Kakashi, who nodded his permission. Then Hibiki and a big white bulldog trotted toward Naga, while the other three turned and milled around Suisen's feet. Suisen lifted her right leg, bent it at the knee, and pouted elaborately as she brushed the sudden dusting of dog hair off her shiny tights.
"Don't know who she thinks she's fooling with that princess act," Naga grumbled as she headed down the stairs and out the door. The dogs swung out to either side of the street, sniffing at the doors of the various shops and houses. "If she just likes those clothes, whatever, but she's so annoying about it."
"Humans usually are," Hibiki agreed. "You mate even when you're not fertile -- it makes you stupid. Like you and the boy who smells like a damn moldy spice shop."
"He does not," Naga snapped. "Keep your nose out of my life."
Hibiki opened her mouth in an imitation of a grin, her tongue lolling out bright pink and wet between her sharp white teeth. "Which of us is the scent tracker? That boy smells like poison; no dog would live with him. Also, your damn target went into this building." She reached one paw up to make a claw-scratch mark in the doorframe of a small grocery shop.
Naga sighed. She was losing an argument with a dog. So embarrassing. "Great. I'll go in and talk to the owner. You find Kakashi and tell him we might have a lead."
She picked the lock and slipped into the darkened shop, looking for a staircase up to the owner's apartment.
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The caravan that left Nagarehiya was not the same caravan that entered. Yoshitaka-san and one other merchant had stayed in the city or turned on to another route, and a group of six teenagers heading north in search of harbor work had received permission to share Kurenai's escort in return for a nominal fee.
Naruto spent the entire day trying to befriend the new people, to little avail.
Sasuke trudged alongside the communal wagon that Seichi and Naruto's sister were driving and tried not to think about much of anything. He had equally little success.
Watching Naruto hang around the six teenagers -- four boys and two girls, all laughing and smiling like the world was at their feet -- was painfully like watching himself hang around Ita-- around his brother, back before... before. No wonder Itachi had always pushed Sasuke away. Who had time for indulging needy little brats?
Especially when you were plotting to destroy everything.
Something light and sharp-edged hit Sasuke in the forehead, jolting him out of his stewing thoughts. He scowled and looked around for Naruto.
The orange idiot was nowhere in sight. Seichi, on the other hand, was sitting sideways on the front seat of the wagon and grinning at him, blue eyes mocking behind his too-long bangs. "You need to pay more attention to what's around you," he said, tucking a pack of cards into an inner pocket of his long coat.
"Seichi, leave Sakama-kun alone," Naruto's sister said with a warning tone, though she kept her eyes fixed on the mules she was driving.
"I can't help it!" Seichi said. "He's so cute when he's feeling righteously put-upon. He's like a little thundercloud stomping along beside us, Yuki-chan -- I almost expect to see lightning in his hair."
Naruto's sister untangled her right hand from the reins and flicked Seichi in the back of his head. "Don't push it. Go find Yuu-kun and bother him instead, if you're that desperate for entertainment. Sakama-kun, if you're going to get lost in your head, sit up here beside me where you won't get into any accidents while you're distracted."
Sasuke shook his head. He didn't want to get close to Naruto's sister. She acted nice, and she pretended to listen and care, but she lied. She'd used genjutsu on him like he was a baby throwing a tantrum.
"I'll go with Seichi," he said as the man slid down from the wagon.
Naruto's sister sighed. "Great. Three of you together with no sane person to play referee. Try not to cause any new crises, okay?"
"Don't worry so much, Yuki-chan," Seichi said brightly. "The boys and I will be fine. Right, Sakama-kun?" He caught Sasuke's eyes and his face flashed cold for a second in tacit warning.
"I won't start anything unless the moron does," Sasuke said.
Naruto's sister groaned. "We're doomed," she said in exaggerated gloom, but a tiny smile crept across her face in counter to her words. She turned to look at Seichi and Sasuke, and the smile turned wry. "Go get Yuu-kun to stop pestering those teenagers to let him join their conversation. Think of something interesting you three can do and let him invite the others to join you. Tell him I said it's a trap for their minds."
"Sneaky," Seichi said, and laughed. He reached down and grabbed hold of Sasuke's hand so fast and smoothly that Sasuke had no chance to avoid him. "Come with me, my little thundercloud -- let's find some sunshine to cheer you up. Then we'll have rainbows, and maybe Yuki-chan will smile at me."
"Not at you," Naruto's sister said, but she didn't sound very annoyed and that tiny smile was still lurking at the corner of her mouth. "Sakama-kun, it's not fair of me to ask, but please keep Seichi and my little brother from making complete idiots of themselves."
Sasuke blinked. Why would she ask him to look after a fully trained ninja? That made no sense. And it was, so far as he could tell, impossible to stop Naruto from being loud and stupid.
Naruto's sister winked at him.
Sasuke's mind flashed back to the way his cousin Shisui would sometimes whisper in Sasuke's ear about how serious and overworked Itachi had become, and wouldn't it be fun to play a little game, a little trick or two, and make him relax for the afternoon? If Sasuke would just play along... Then Shisui would tip his head sideways and wink, with a cheerful grin flickering in the depths of his dark eyes.
It was the same wink, the same game, only this time Naruto's sister wanted him to play with that loud-mouthed idiot, not with his... with...
"Fine," Sasuke said, and let Seichi pull him away, walking toward the lead wagon.
When they were out of Naruto's sister's line of sight, Seichi reached down with his left hand and loosened Sasuke's fingers where they were digging into his larger palm. Sasuke flinched at his lack of control -- it was one thing to hurt himself, but a ninja who struck a target by accident was shamefully unskilled.
Seichi shook his head when Sasuke tried to yank his hand away. "Pushing everything down doesn't help," he said softly. "Trust me, I know. The best you can do is split yourself into pieces and even that won't work forever. Whatever you're feeling will keep coming back until you work through it."
"It will work until Itachi-- until my brother-- until I kill him," Sasuke said, reaching again for that cold, calm place inside his head, where everything was clear and nothing could touch him.
Seichi looked down at his bloodied hand for a long moment, his face gone cold and hard, but somehow sad underneath the ice.
"Your choice," he said.
Then Seichi smiled, and pointed forward with their joined hands. "So, why don't you sneak up on Yuu-kun and stick rotten leaves down his back? It'd be funny, and I promise I won't tell Yuki-chan on you!"
Sasuke looked at the trampled, fraying residue of last year's leaves that lined the edges of the road, where the huge, ancient trees spread their branches to block out the summer sun. He looked at Naruto, trudging dejectedly behind the six laughing teenagers. He glanced sideways at Seichi.
He bent and picked up a clump of leaves in his free hand. Seichi grinned and released him, waving his arms forward in encouragement.
Sasuke shoved the leaves into Seichi's trousers and ran forward to Naruto's side.
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"I still don't see how you intend to come out of this without the entire town dead and razed to the ground as a reminder to anyone else crazy enough to go up against the hidden villages," Tetsuko said as she stalked in a rough circle around Eiji's office: door, bookcase, window, desk, door, and around again. "It's one thing to spread propaganda -- dangerous, but at least potentially survivable. It's another entirely to raise what amounts to an armed rebellion. You're trying to destroy a way of life and ninja believe in preemptive defense."
"Propaganda is tolerated because it doesn't work," Eiji said yet again. "People have dreamed of life without the shinobi yoke for generations. The only thing that's changed is that the shinobi organized themselves to hold our leashes more efficiently than ever. If they can band together, why can't the rest of us? We outnumber them nearly a hundred to one. They can't kill us all -- who would support them then? And if we can use propaganda to get some of them on our side, or at least sympathetic enough to sit out the conflict..."
He leaned back against his desk and spread his hands. "I know it's dangerous. Of course I know. But we'll only have the element of surprise once. We have to move fast so by the time one of the villages notices us, we'll have the strength to withstand them. If we survive the first battle, we become a legend. From there, everything is negotiable."
"And if we die, which is more likely, we become a cautionary tale to scare children for a thousand years," Tetsuko snapped. She yanked a handful of her long brown hair in frustration. "Idiots! Ginji, why didn't you tell me sooner so we could talk sense into him? You know the odds he's set us against."
Ginji shrugged from his perch on the windowsill. "He asked me under the confidentiality clause in my contract."
"I'm your sister," Tetsuko snarled.
"He's my employer," Ginji said calmly. "For the duration of my contract, he owns me."
Tetsuko turned and slammed the heel of her hand against the office door. "Have I mentioned that I hate ninja conditioning?" she said to nobody in particular. "Listen to him, Eiji -- flip that switch so he's thinking in their patterns, and family means nothing to him anymore. Bastards. May they drown screaming in a typhoon."
Eiji stepped forward and wrapped his hands around his wife's shoulders, pressing the thin cotton of her dress to her warm skin. "Why do you think I want to destroy the hidden villages, anata? Why do you think Ginji agreed to help? If he really thought it was a bad idea, he would have told you and stopped me."
Tetsuko let her head fall forward to rest on the door, tension draining from her body as if she were too tired to care anymore. "Why is it that the one thing he managed to keep despite the training is his blind faith that you know what you're doing?"
As much as Eiji joked about fearing his wife's temper, this weary disapproval was even worse. She only got this way when she was near a drastic decision. Eiji slid one hand down to her waist and tugged gently, turning her around to face him. "Tetsuko. I'm sorry we shut you out. We should have asked for your advice from the start. Please forgive us?"
"You could never mean nothing to me," Ginji added from across the room. "Twins, remember? Eiji hoped you'd be safer outside our mess. I did tell him we should bring you in."
Tetsuko looked sourly over Eiji's shoulder toward her brother, a spark of anger flaring back to life in her eyes. "I will never understand why Aunt Takara's partner sponsored you into the academy instead of me. You have no brain. Neither do you, Eiji. They'd take me and Mitsuko on suspicion and torture me until I confessed, whether I knew anything about your plans or not."
"They wouldn't," Eiji said, pulling her into a tighter embrace.
"They can't take you if you aren't here," Ginji said, appearing suddenly at Eiji's elbow. "If things get bad, you and Mitsuko are taking a long trip out of the country under false names. Rika and Takeshi will get you clear."
"You told the harbormaster and your senior captain before you told me?" Tetsuko asked in disbelief. "Eiji!"
"It wouldn't break us if they died," he said hastily, rubbing his hand over the small of her back and wondering when Ginji would have told him about this contingency plan. Ginji wasn't supposed to keep secrets from him. They were in this together, and that meant--
Oh. Oh. No wonder Tetsuko was so hurt.
"I'm sorry," Eiji told her again. "We were wrong. I promise we won't hide anything from now on. Whatever you want to know, just ask."
"I want to know plenty," Tetsuko said. "Starting with why you think you're more expendable than I am, because if you think it wouldn't break me to lose you, you have your head stuck so far up your--"
Someone knocked on the door. "Hey, Boss! Message for you," Shio Rika called.
Eiji jumped, then turned to shoot a questioning glance at Ginji -- had they been overheard? "One-way silence jutsu," Ginji said. "Sound travels in but not out. Answer the door before Rika gets suspicious."
Tetsuko stuck her hand sideways and turned the knob, pulling the door in and open. "Make it fast," she said, leaning back against Eiji.
Rika glanced at Tetsuko's disheveled hair, Eiji's rumpled shirt, and Ginji standing right beside them instead of across the room away from accidental human contact. She grinned knowingly. "Strategy planning session, eh? I didn't see a thing. Anyway, a courier from Thunder Country dropped this off at the docks with your name on it -- here you go." She tossed a tied scroll in Eiji and Tetsuko's general direction; Ginji slid around them and caught it neatly in one hand. Rika laughed and continued: "Ginji-san, I need to run the new security setup past you. Stop by the docks this afternoon -- if that's all right with you, boss?"
"Fine," Eiji said. "Thank you, Rika."
"Anytime, boss." She nodded and closed the door, still grinning.
"'Didn't see a thing,' she says. You know in three hours rumor will have us engaged in a secret incestuous threesome. Again," Tetsuko said ruefully.
Despite his better intentions, Eiji laughed. "When do they think we'd have time? The only reason you and I get any time to ourselves is because we can dump Mitsu-chan on Ginji. But at least if people are watching us for scandal, they won't be looking for revolution."
"The more misdirection we can create, the better," Ginji said, looking up from the unrolled scroll. "This is a message from Hoshigaki Kisame, the Akatsuki representative. He'll be at the Ten Drums inn in two days. We need to get ready."
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The staircase up to the apartment was in the back room of the grocery shop, so Naga assumed whoever lived there also owned the store, and was therefore the person she needed to question. Nobody answered when she knocked, so she picked the lock, used a handy jutsu Iruka had taught her to flip the deadbolt, and walked in.
The apartment was dimly lit -- one lamp in the narrow bedroom and a sliver of brighter light seeping out from under the closed bathroom door. The shopkeeper was singing in the shower, in a clear if slightly off-key alto.
Naga turned on the kitchen light and busied herself making cheap green tea from the shopkeeper's own supply. Pointless, really -- no way was a civilian going to be happy about a ninja in her home -- but being raised in a restaurant by a woman whose answer to a crisis almost invariably involved a tea ceremony at some point tended to ingrain certain habits. Naga told herself the tea would make her seem more friendly and harmless. If nothing else, she'd have something to do with her hands.
She poured some tea into a sake bowl for Hibiki and sat down to wait.
Five minutes later, a short middle-aged woman opened the door in a rush of sandalwood-scented air, still singing as she wrapped a towel into a makeshift turban around her curly black hair. Then she noticed Naga in the kitchen and stopped dead in the doorway, wearing nothing but a towel and a pair of ragged hemp sandals.
"Hi," Naga said. "I have a few questions about a customer you dealt with five or six days ago. Would you like some tea?"
"What are you doing in here?" the shopkeeper said blankly. "You don't belong here."
"She told you -- she's here to ask some questions about a missing-nin who was in your shop," Hibiki said, leaping gracefully onto the tiny kitchen table. "The sooner you answer, the sooner we'll leave."
"We can wait while you get dressed," Naga said as the shopkeeper pulled her towel tighter around her body.
"You're a child," the shopkeeper said, still sounding slightly disconnected from reality.
"I'm a ninja," Naga corrected, annoyed. Besides, she was almost fifteen; that was nearly grown up even by civilian rules. "Look, sit down, have some tea, answer a few questions, and then I'll be gone and you can pretend this was all a bad dream. Okay?" Immediately she wanted to kick herself. Asking for permission gave the shopkeeper way too much implicit power. But it was too late to start over.
"You broke into my apartment! That is not okay," the shopkeeper said, her expression finally snapping into anger with an undertone of fear. "And that's my tea! You broke into my home and you're drinking my tea." Her free hand clenched into an awkward fist.
"We've already established that," Hibiki said, lying down on the table and twitching her shaggy tail slowly back and forth. "Can we move on now? I can call Kakashi if you'd rather hand the damn job to him," she added to Naga.
Naga hid a grimace behind her teacup. Funny as it might be to see Kakashi's reaction to a half-naked woman -- because for all his innuendo and little books of erotica, Naga didn't think he had any interest in real life sex -- throwing an unprepared person into conversation with him was cruel and unusual punishment. Plus, of course, he was male; bringing him here now would be tacky at best. "Don't bother, I'll handle it," she muttered to Hibiki, then looked back to the shopkeeper. "If you're not going to get dressed, I'll start the questions. Are you sure you don't want some tea?"
"It's my tea. You can't offer me my own tea. It's probably poisoned anyway," the shopkeeper grumbled, but she moved two steps into the kitchen, stopping in front of the window where the faint gray light of false dawn was beginning to wash away the spangled black of the night sky. She reached sideways and unfastened the lock on the lower pane.
"You don't have the training to jump out a second story window. I wouldn't advise trying," Naga said. Really, did all civilians react like this to strangers? Naga wasn't even trying to be threatening, and she'd promised to leave as soon as she'd asked her questions. People weren't this jumpy in Konoha.
She'd just get the questions done as fast as possible. "Five or six days ago, a ninja a bit younger than me came through Kaiminori. He stopped in your shop -- probably bought supplies for a trip. He has straight black hair down to his shoulders, black eyes, and two lines running down his face, like creases. He may have looked blank or tired. Do you remember him?"
The shopkeeper frowned. "That poor lost boy was a ninja? He was so young. I thought he was buying food for his family while his parents bought other supplies."
Naga's hand tightened around her teacup. Who looked at Uchiha Itachi and saw a lost boy who needed his parents to watch over him? He was a ninja. He'd been in Anbu. He wasn't somebody to worry for; he was somebody to worry about.
"He killed his parents. Killed the rest of his family too," Naga said. "One reason we're tracking him."
The shopkeeper flinched. "Oh."
"Do you remember what he bought? Did he say anything about where he was going?" Naga asked, leaning forward. Hibiki's tail swished back and forth a hair faster.
"Energy bars and dried fruit, I think," the shopkeeper said slowly. "He didn't buy any water, which I remember thinking was odd, since he said he was traveling west into the tall grass country. Groundwater isn't reliable out there, especially not in summer."
Naga exchanged a look with Hibiki. "He's expecting to be tracked," she said. "I bet he's still heading northeast. Wasn't Uchiha Noriyama supposed to be in Volcano Country?"
Hibiki wrinkled her lips up over her teeth. "Not my damn job to know that. If we're done here, you can ask Kakashi yourself."
Naga glanced back toward the shopkeeper, who was fiddling nervously with the edge of her towel turban. "Do you remember anything else about the missing-nin?"
The shopkeeper shook her head. "No. He looked tired and worried, he bought some food, and he said he was traveling west. That's all." She took a tiny step forward, sliding her hand along the countertop toward the block where her cooking knives were stored. "You said you'd leave. I want you to get out. This is my home and you need to get out now!"
"Thank you for your help," Naga said, nodding her head toward the shopkeeper. She stood and carried her half-empty teacup to the sink, stretching her arm down to snatch Hibiki's sake bowl off the floor as she went. "Sorry for disturbing you. I'll lock up again as I go." Hibiki leapt gracefully off the table and walked out at Naga's heels.
The shopkeeper stared silently after them until Naga closed the apartment door.
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End of Chapter Fourteen
Back to chapter 13
Continue to chapter 15
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 fourth scene worries me for several reasons. First, I think Naga may come off as cruel instead of just out of her element and lacking a gut-level understanding of the assumptions a civilian woman living alone will make about an intruder in her space. Second, I am trying to show some of how the ninja system plays out among civilians who don't live in a hidden village -- citizens of Konoha, I think, would react differently to a ninja suddenly appearing in their homes, though there would still be an undercurrent of fear. Third, I am basing the shopkeeper's reaction somewhat on my own reaction to surprising a burglar in my apartment this past summer, so I don't think I have any real perspective on how the scene plays out.
Basically, if you have any editing advice, I would be even more grateful than usual.
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