Why am I choosing to update this? Because I can. Because I already had a lot of the chapter done, and I finally worked up the time and energy to start writing again. Hopefully this will be a trend. But in the mean time, I can post this with few worries about quality because its obvious that it didn't hook too many of you. In fact, not much point in writing this except for my own edification. But I figure, some anonymous person sometime in the infinite future of the web well find this one day and appreciate the explanation. For historical significance, or whatever. I figure its going to feature in the history of how human civilization imploded because everyone was too busy cooped up on their computer and not screwing enough. Meh. We had a good run. Not really.
Enjoy the read, or whatever.
"As-salamu alaykum."
"Salām."
The words were the same. But that was all. His baby-face mouthing the guttural language with a conscious lilt and a sincere smirk. The other one saying twice as much with half the syllables. A language, a way of life he had been born to, just as he had been born to his bearish looks and scraggly beard which ended mid-chest.
Yet, Naruto couldn't help but feel that the two of them were of a kind. Not that he knew that variety. He was not a part of that exclusive club of hearty individuals which skipped up those steep stones like mountain goats, at home in their haggard skin. And resilient as they were patient. He had one, and not the other.
Not yet, anyway.
If their aloof mission leader could somehow mold himself into a character that could mesh, while not seamlessly then fluidly, with the local populace of this harsh, mountainous region, then there was nothing to suggest that he, an equal foreign presence, could not do as much.
But still, he was uncomfortable, and not just because their commander suddenly disappeared into the pitch-black interior of the brick hut with the village chief and without his weapon, which leaned on the frame outside. Not just because of the cold which now bit swift on thin air, not having been able to retrieve anything heavier than the long-sleeve shirt and light jacket from his sealed pack on their quick ascent up the winding mountain road.
His finger twitched over the trigger unconsciously, though never quite gracing the innocuous button. His paranoia due entirely to the numerous sets of eyes appraising them from every angle. The whole village had come out to take a look at their odd procession from both overt and hidden angles. Not that he could blame them, but the looks directed to their motley group were oddly painful for him. Devoid of fear or scorn, they nonetheless provided him with a profound sense of guilt.
He did not want to give them false hope. He did not want to find himself beholden to something he was not sure he could deliver.
But it was perhaps already too late. The populace of that sprawling village, mud-brick houses carved into same-colored mountainside, had already been exposed to these (mostly) pale-face individuals. Strange faces. Strange clothes. Strange talk. Once seen, never to be forgotten. They could not undo themselves.
And yet…
A sharp noise like a birdcall. His body twitched around to find the source. One of the other soldiers, one he had not yet learned the name of, was laughing along with one of the locals, the two of them sharing a cigarette. Talking through the language of addiction. He relaxed. His finger did. His nerves did not.
His friends did not.
"Hey, Naruto?"
He felt the claw-like hand on his shoulder, glanced back to see the same nervousness in his comrade's honey-colored eyes, the only thing visible behind the wrapped turban besides the dark patch of skin.
"What's up?" He talked lowly as not to spook anyone more nervous than himself, but also because he did not trust any within earshot to be ignorant of their coded talk.
"Notice there's no women around?"
"Huh? What do you mean? There's you and Tenten…" But that was it. No locals.
This was normal, though. At least for where they were. Different norms, he supposed. But their norms demanded he keep his allies safe. What would this misogynistic culture think of his female teammates and their usurpation of a warrior's role?
Though come to think of it, it was pretty hard to tell the gender of any in their group, let alone race. Festooned with equipment as they were, and bundled up against the cold, they were all one dirt-covered mass of weary eyes. Lucky, maybe.
Even though she was not as heavily garbed as the rest of them, used to the cold apparently, Naruto was remiss to admit that the muscled, bare, arms which cradled the HK SG-1 did not betray too much her femininity. The tattoo emblazoned on her bicep didn't help either.
Even in the midst assimilation, their kind had strived to be different. No matter how hard one tried, it was impossible for them to completely divorce themselves from their homeland. Skulls were the standard symbol of death and a common feature among the corps. Death to them was of course the Shinigami, here featured coiffed in the Legion's green beret, tusked mouth agape, mounted on a Falange of arrows. A finely detailed medallion, a chakra wheel rested in the open maw.
Past and present. Always one with the other. Ideally, if not practically.
Even he had one, though it was not visible underneath the jacket. In fact, not much of him was. Like his comrades, he was a nameless, faceless individual. So starkly different from the days he would lead the charge into battle, visible for miles with his crimson cloak and shimmering locks. What would these dark-skinned people make of him, he wondered. Yellow hair? Whisker marks on his cheeks? They would probably burn him at the stake. He chuckled at this dark thought. Didn't particularly know why.
A tap on his leg like an electric shock drew him right back to reality, inner musings shattered like ice and the weapon jumped in his hand. Finger dangerously close to the trigger, mind dangerously close to death.
Thankfully, they had all been trained even before their current careers to have their instincts rule over rational. His body stayed his impulse as the now terrified child retreated back to the safety of his cohorts who all stared at him with eyes wide in abject shock. Before they all burst into excited giggles and toddled off, still wrapped in the throes of fascinated elation, their dangerous game concluded with a victor, they patted the hero amongst them on the back.
He sighed, tried to relax overly-tense muscles once again. Saw the men milling about shift startled expressions for ones of amusement. Kids would be kids, no matter where they were. He wouldn't have it any other way.
Oddly enough, that shock had been the thing to finally convince him to relax, at least enough to stop treating everything like it was going to bite his head off. Not enough to drop his guard.
He could finally see the tiny village for what it was though, not merely an impersonal pit-stop on their way up. Not a last reprieve before their ascent into hell. These were homes. These were families. Strange. Devoid of the fairer sex, populated by heavily bearded, plebian peoples speaking a harsh and guttural language. Goats strung up on every other corner. Harsh way of life. A different way of life, he admitted.
There was life here. Though they were the biggest excitement in the village's history, they were unimportant in comparison to what needed to be done. Water needed to be hauled in, crops needed tending, buildings needed mending and the talk that would surround them would come later. Work was needed now, for survival. Not so different to them, then.
The wrinkled elders filtered through their dismounted unit, unimpressed. Hobbling on rough-hewn canes and shooting them suspicious looks, but nothing else. Others followed. The children went back to playing, their laughs carrying over the terraced field and into the valley below. Naruto grew bored in the sudden onset of calm.
He was grateful for the chance to stretch his legs from the relatively cramped bed of the truck, but that was the extent of it. They were not supposed to stray far from the vehicles, though the engines were turned off and none of the more seasoned soldiers seemed in any hurry to go anywhere. Of course, the second the NCO appeared from within the chief's hovel they would be expected to leap back into the vehicles and gone by five minutes ago. He could borrow their time, and never the other way around.
Hurry up and wait.
Which, as it turned out, wasn't that long. The strange but now familiar wool discus (which he noticed almost everyone in the village seemed to be wearing) atop plastic spectacles burst from the dark doorway, their commander skipping down to them with a spring in his step, weapon already slung over his shoulder and no longer forgotten by the entryway.
Instead of leaping strait into the passenger seat of the lead Landrover, he instead slowed down in front of the five greenhorns, a large fuzzy bundle the size of a cask under one arm.
"Here." He handed the hairy roll over to Naruto, who struggled to keep the tight folds from bursting on him. He carefully unwrapped it and produced a handful of the same scruffy-looking headgear. Five of them, to be exact. Each in particular shades of drab wool, hand woven and stitched, the five new recruits distributed the gifts among themselves evenly, not quite sure what to make of the strange ordeal, but not wishing to be offensive.
Their lives were in the hands of others, after all.
"You looked cold." Which was not exactly true, but a kind gesture none the less, he supposed.
Still, they managed to sort out the rest of the bundle, having to switch Pakhuls amongst one another, finally finding one to fit the giant in their midst. The rest of the package consisted of wool blankets, also equally rough and eclectic, but certainly thick, and warm.
Disarmed by the unexpected largess, four of the five turned to their commander to profess their thanks.
Only to find that the man already saddled up and ready to go. Never one to miss a beat.
They threw themselves into their truck even as his impatient words reached them. The vehicle was already moving up the narrow road. Box-huts becoming brown sugar-cubes, washed away by creamy snow as they drove away.
"Do you know what you are doing here?"
Necessitating a practical answer, unfortunately, to the existential question.
"Our objective, as it stands, is to locate the remainder of the dissidents, and either eliminate them or force them to flee into zones controlled by the Northern Alliance, or the main coalition forces to the East."
He was all focus. His fingers ghosted over lines drawn weeks, days, hours ago, following each iteration like reading years on tree rings. Hazel eyes honed behind thick lenses burning holes in the page. They spoke to him, but it was like they didn't, and preferred to remain mute.
"That seems pretty simple. Even if they are hiding in caves, wouldn't it just be easier to send in a conventional force to drive them out? Bomb the hell out of them, first, if needed?"
Naruto was nowhere near a strategist. Years of hanging around his pineapple-haired friend had not imbued him the man's expertise through osmosis. But it was a sound strategy none the less, given the lack of intelligence.
Their leader said nothing, staring at the map.
"But…where are they?" He asked the map, not them. His finger tapped on an area which had been marked and erased a dozen times over, chewing on his lip. Then his head shot up and he looked Naruto strait in the eyes, and he couldn't help but freeze.
"You know seals." It was not a question. It felt like it was the first time he was actually talking directly to the blond, but he didn't wait for his response.
"At least, you know them well enough, I am sure. You know how the Perfect-Curve seal works." He tapped several places on the map thick with gradient lines, heavily ensconced in the mountains.
Naruto hid the breath he sucked in. The man had used their word for the mysterious construct, not what the outsiders named it.
"Yeah, I know it."
How could he not? It would have been criminal to neglect studying the seal that kept the Shinobi Nations hidden for so long, virtually cut-off from the rest of the world. It was as much a work of art as it was a potential weapon. A crime against humanity and the humanities to ignore.
It wasn't even a physical change that kept their people sequestered for thousands of years. At least, nothing that could be seen from the ground. Light, gravity, and somehow geometry bent at the location of the seal. It distorted perception of the landscape from above, effectively surrounding everything within it in a valley of bent light and false numbers. Sure, the outside world had calculated the Earth's surface time and time again, but in that vastness of matter and distance, errors in calculations could be easily shrugged off. In the planetary scale, a few hundred kilometers was nothing. It was further reminder of just how insignificant they were to the rest of the world. Their entire existence, on the head of a needle.
And no one… well, no one as far as they knew, had ever broken the spell. People might have stumbled upon them and wandered into their midst unknowingly from the ground. But like everywhere else, geography determined borders. Their lands were cut off by impenetrable forests and jungles, parched deserts with no end, mountains so high that there was no oxygen left to breath, and oceans (lakes, in reality) so vast and tumultuous that it was ludicrous to try and escape them. Human curiosity only went so far. But even the most intrepid explores were dissuaded when it was not evident there was a mystery in the first place.
Cartographers had not been happy with the discovery. Millions of maps and globes had had to be redone in the wake of first contact. World governments were certainly off-put by the sudden appearance of a swath of land, bigger than some of the smaller European Nations, suddenly spawned in that vastly uninteresting plane to the west of Mongolia, bordered only by insignificant nations too busy concentrating on their own survival.
Yeah, that seal.
"So what does that have to do with-"
His question was cut off by the short man staring him down with a cocked eyebrow, finger impatiently drumming on the map laid out in front of him. Impatiently waiting for the slow-witted shinobi to come to a realization, which, to be fair, the others in the tent also failed to ken to. But he had trained to be Hokage at one point, so it was no surprise that he was the first to come to the realization.
"They are using the seal to hide their bases?"
The man stared at Naruto like the answer was obvious, which he supposed it was. But if it was so, the implications were staggering. Not just because it would make it nearly impossible to find their targets remotely, but it also by necessity meant that they had one or more ninja in their ranks. A Traitor.
Could he do it? Could he look another one of his kinsmen in the eyes and take their life? After everything they all had been through? He felt betrayal from them. He felt guilt, too, for betraying his own morals, suddenly regretting whatever foolish optimism had spurned him into leaving his home and getting involved in another war. The last one was fought as the war to end all wars. How could he be so naïve? How could they all be? There would always be another one, waiting on the horizon.
He could see why the rest of the world was so bent on continuation of bloodshed. Technology, the gun especially made things impersonal, even more so than their ninjutsu and genjutsu techniques every could. It made killing easy. But it also made it a necessity. He couldn't hold back. There was no restraining a bullet. He would have to kill his opponent, to save the ones he now surrounded himself with. He was supposed to weigh these individuals and their morals against one another, with death to the loser. Judge and executioner in each second. How could he do that?
Because he was ordered to.
The rest of the debriefing passed in a dreamlike haze. Details such as the route, stops on the way, suspected locations of their targets and the like washed over him to break on his comrades, who were thankfully professionally reserved. He tried to be. He did what he could, be he couldn't unburden himself from this profound revelation.
He unpacked and repacked his bag in silence and in robotic automation. Rote memory kicked it when it needed to, and when the evening's tasks were done, his feet found their way outside. To the night sky, to the stars, to the only thing that was familiar to him anymore.
But even there he found only confusion. The redhead teammate that came outside to talk to him was a stranger. The stars in the sky were overcome by blackness. He was a stranger.
Un etrangére.
"What the hell was that about?"
Tenten's question muffled by the scarf still wrapped over her face echoed in his ear, returning him to the next day, the present day.
"I mean, what the hell? Was the only reason to stop there to pick up blankets?"
Not that she was complaining. They had been equipped for a desert, not high desert. The blankets lost their coarseness when the barometer dropped past a certain level. Even though the sun was shining high, it was still a bit chilly in the open top vehicle. Not that they could tree-hop. Though there were a spattering of green throughout the otherwise sparse landscape, they were too far apart, and to devoid of branches to be of much use. So, they were relegated to being ported around like grain on a cart, which while an interesting experience, was also slightly demeaning to those who had spent most of their lives running to and from places.
Naruto shrugged. The man and his methods were still a mystery that defied solution. He didn't doubt that he had an ulterior motive for stopping in the town. Though it appeared like none of the villagers had ever seen one of their kind before (soldier, not shinobi, he reminded himself) it was not out of the realm of possibility that the officer had extracted some sort of information from the dourly important man. Naruto knew from hanging around his godfather, that information was disseminated in the most unassuming of places. And a few well-placed words could be worth more than all the gold in the pocket.
Although, sometimes that helped too.
He resigned himself to the fact that he would have to learn some Arabic. And Pashtun. And Persian. He may have looked somewhat more inconspicuous, with his new native headwear and layer of dust masking his lighter skin and whisker marks. But the moment he opened his mouth, the gig was up. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that.
It was possible to rely on others who seemed to have the gift of tongues. Conrad seemed to be well versed in at least half a dozen languages from his homeland (1), and seemingly just as many from abroad. It was impressive, but not all that astounding. He was smart, like Shikamaru, but focused.
There was a good chance that their temporary minder, the man called Tarek, who now resided in the passenger's seat while the darker man drove, would also have some knowledge of the native dialect. He wondered if that was the only thing the stoic man knew, as it suddenly occurred to him that he could ask one of the more veteran soldiers in their group about their enigmatic NCO.
He leaned over the center bar, draped with their too-heavy body armor to offer some minute protection to the otherwise unarmored vehicle.
"Um, excuse me…." He looked for rank but found none on the drab jacket the man wore, so he opted on the safe side. "Sir?"
"What?" They were proceeding slowly enough that one could be heard past the constant wind, and Naruto could clearly hear the impatience behind the man's response. He might have taken offense to the tone, but he wanted answers.
"What can you tell me about the commander?" Naruto crossed his fingers, hoping that the question was not too direct, nor to vague.
"What do you want to know?" The mustachioed man glanced over his shoulder in a cold stare directed right towards the blond. Dammit.
"Well…for starters, how about his name?"
Naruto figured it was a 50/50 shot. He would not put it past the short man to order his troops not to answer any of their questions. Just to screw with the newbies, hazing not an unfamiliar concept. He almost lost hope when the grim face pealed back into a smirk. But was partially relieved when he received an answer.
"His name is Michelle Belletriste."
Naruto almost felt tears of pure joy cascade down his face. But they froze before they could leave his cheeks.
"…or at least that is what everyone calls him."
At the very least, Naruto and the others now had something they could call their fearless leader. But once again, the answer brought up more questions which surrounded the man.
"What do you mean? Why do they call him that?"
Tarek shrugged and turned back around in his seat, and once again Naruto felt that his luck had run out.
"It was a name he chose for himself." Naruto's attention was immediately reengaged. "It's a tradition, in the Legion, after one has done their service, they get a new passport, with a new name. It's leftover from when the Legion would take in all kinds of scum and criminals." Something about his tone betrayed the fact that he believed this still to be the case. Though no telling if he was referring to the shinobi, or himself.
Apart from the man in question not looking old enough to have completed a full tour, Naruto himself had met just about every variety of criminal, and that man, Michelle, had none of the trappings. Although, if he was here, then he could kill. That was a given.
"So, why did he choose that name?" He wanted to comment that it sounded particularly feminine, even to his untrained ear. Curious, for a man fit to lead the hardest of hard individuals.
"Michelle. St. Michael en englais. Slayer of dragons, and the patron saint of paratroopers. Even an infidel such as you should know our unit's symbol."
Naruto thought back to the decorated chip of metal he had been handed upon completion of his jump-training. The winged figure had meant next to nothing to him at the time, it was just a symbol stamped out of sheet metal. Just like his headband. He scratched the back of his head, chagrinned on two fronts.
"Oh, yeah. Well, what about the other name?" He found all of the outsider's naming protocols to be strange, arranging them from back to front. And especially the traditions that stemmed from their convoluted religion which tended to be repetitious and boring most of the time. He had met his fair share of 'Josephs' and 'Johns'. But this was a man who chose his words carefully, and it would be foolish to assume that he did not chose his names without that same reflection.
This time there was a long pause as Tarek regarded the far-off peaks, just as Commander-Belletriste had done not long ago. Lost in thoughts both comforting and alienating. He spoke, like a sudden gust through the valley.
"Belletrist means 'someone who writes works of art'." Naruto withheld the instinct to snort. That was far more presumptuous than he had been expecting. He briefly toyed with a comparison to some of the other more arrogant individuals in his life. Did he consider his subordinates works of art in the making? Did his guidance mold them into the perfect soldiers?
"It's a joke. Belle. Triste. Beautiful. Sad. His service has been as perfect as it has been…unlucky." The more veteran soldier did not withhold his own contemptuous sound. "As if all of our stories were not tragic, no?" Naruto felt vulnerable, held within the other man's sidelong gaze. Was he talking specifically about him, or just legionnaires in general? It took a special breed to join their brotherhood, it was true. You had to be a kind of desperate, or foolhardy to throw your lot in with the likes of them. Helped to be both.
Regardless, Naruto felt that he had pressed his luck far enough, and did not want the already tense conversation to migrate over to his sphere. Their temporary minder did not seem to mind his sudden reticence either. Doubtless keeping one to oneself was common practice. Don't let yourself get too attached. Don't ask too many questions. Unless personal matters impede on duty, leave them where they are.
He glanced back to see the rest of his mismatched team regarding him warily and out of the corners of their eyes, trying as much as they could to keep their focus on the ever-potential enemy around them, and not on what could only amount to the latest gossip. He suddenly felt an emptiness in the pit of his stomach regarding those curious eyes peering out from behind masks of sameness. How well did he know even those he deigned to call friends? He clutched at the ingrained mark on his stomach, buried underneath cloth and metal.
How well did he truly know himself?
"Distance, 2600 meters."
"Got it."
"Wind speed, 30 knots. West. Adjust 3 clicks."
"Mm-hm."
"Negate that. Scale back two."
Tenten was glad she was not the one holding the rifle as she twitched at the third voice looming over the female sniper team's shoulders and overriding her decision. Discipline be dammed, she was about ready to smack some sense of propriety into the short man who hovered over the two of them too close for comfort. She would have too, if not for the fact that he was probably correct in his estimation and current position, knowing more about the mysteriously available ammunition than either the two of them.
"The wind negation seals have been shown to work for almost 2 seconds. At this range, will only effect you for the last 500 meters or so."
The two lying prone did some quick calculations in their head.
"We're getting about 1000 meters per second?" Karui piped up from her position behind the Swiss-made optic. "It's a 1100 grain bullet, too, right? That's pretty good."
Belletriste nodded behind her even though she could not see it, she could feel its tacit approval, though took no comfort in it.
"It's not much more than standard, but the fire seals give us very consistent burn and the complete lack of smoke is an obvious advantage."
"We're losing our window here." Tenten quipped back.
"Sorry." Karui focused her attention back to the mechanics of what she was attempting to do, hand reacquainted with the thick pebbled grip and cushioned buttstock which sank back into her shoulder. Dry eye blinked, found the target again in that impossibly clear frame. A bunch of toy soldiers on a dusty diorama. Despite her partner's warning, they hardly looked like they were moving from this distance. Her crosshairs returned to the hunchback one. The one with a radio. Picking his way down the slope.
"Dialed in." She intoned in practiced exasperation. "Do I have permission to fire?" She waited for answer. The clock ticked by.
Tenten was busy grinding her teeth behind her spotter's scope, glaring at the same group like her gaze alone could put bullets in them. So self-assured that her superior would try to usurp the command, she hardly noticed when he failed to say anything, impatient silence reigning. She started, glanced back over her shoulder, only to see him staring out in the same direction like a near-sighted hawk.
"Well?"
"Uh," Tenten faltered. Damnit. Shifted back to her position, tried to ignore his warm breath tickling her ear. "Go ahead."
There was a decidedly anticlimactic, soft, crack followed by yet another a split-second later as the round went supersonic. They skeletal-looking weapon kicked back into the redhead's shoulder and her hand automatically came up to eject the spent case. They waited.
One.
Two.
T-
Silently, the form crumpled, tumbled down the slope with a blanket of scree trailing after. The other forms scrambled, disappeared like cockroaches in the light.
"Not bad."
The commendation came from halfway down the slope. He had already removed himself from the two-man team before either operator could glance back at him. His interest was suddenly more piqued by whatever the overly-large lowlander was cooking up. He took a whiff of whatever was wafting off the single-burner pocket-stove which Manu hunched over.
"Smells good."
Same tone, same appreciation for a job well done. If there was a difference, none of them could see it. Then he walked back to the further truck without additional comment.
Neither woman could take much solace in their incredible achievement. They would never be able to brag about it, and the one who had seemingly the largest investment in seeing them do well had summed his elation into two words of middling praise. Plus, it was never such a grand thing to take a life. Perhaps their commander's appreciation of a well-cooked meal was justified, in that context. Didn't help their pride as skilled warriors, though.
As they moved to pack away their newly tested equipment, the empty brass shell rolled down the side of the hillock, and was plucked off the ground by a gloved hand. The two women watched as Naruto brought the still smoking scrap metal up to his nose and took a long whiff.
The smell of fire chakra was unmistakable, as was the fetid scent of hypocrisy. He held the open end up so that the waning sun could illuminate the now hollow interior. Sure enough, it revealed the same sort of digitally rendered and engraved scrawl that followed them wherever they went in the company of their new group. It was especially an affront to his sensibilities. After all of those years dedicated to learning the art, to have it so casually applied- by a machine no less! – was something that reawakened feelings he thought he had long since buried. It made him want to crush the metal cylinder as flat as a coin.
Instead, he pocketed it under the scrutiny of his fellow shinobi who were warily watching his anger grow.
He sighed and put another patch on the aging damn he had erected against his baser emotions. He could take solace in the fact that the seals he encountered thus far were in fact travesties. They were a mockery of the art they attempted to emulate, true, but because of that they would never reach their full potential. Sealing was an art form, alive and unable to be caged by this world which ruled by numbers. They could try to understand the process all they wanted, but without a practiced chakra user to support them, they would be unable to recreate even the most basic of storage seals, such as the case here.
He gave a lopsided grin to his cohorts who split their attention between the careful disassembly prosses of the weapon Naruto was sure cost about as much as their transport, and warily appraising his erratic disposition as he inspected the shell casing. He was trying to reassure them, both of their own competency as well as his control over personal distaste for the object. It might have worked, or it might have only caused them both to offer him tight-lipped smiles in sympathy.
"Well, for what it's worth, I think that you two are damned amazing."
The three looked over to where their fifth member was keeping a close eye on their flanks, in case any more stray adversaries came wandering uninvited into their encampment. Conrad grinned heartily back at them with a mouthful of pearly white teeth.
"I mean, 2600 meters, that's gotta be one of the longest shots in the world, right (2)?"
"Who knows? And who cares?" Karui huffed as she wrung her hands together, trying to clear away the smell of sulfur and the dust of gunpowder that wasn't there. "It was just one shot, and you saw yourself, there were dozens of them. How are we going to get anywhere taking them out one at a time? It's like trying to chip away these mountains with a kunai!" For effect, and to partially placate her own mounting frustrations, she did just that and whipped the knife out of one of the pouches on her hip and sunk it handle-deep into the rock-hard earth.
"Don't go looking for death."
The gargantuan voice came to them as a whisper they wouldn't have thought possible from the large man still stirring his concoction. He did not meet their collective eyes, but as soon as they saw his hulking visage in the dim glow of the gas burner, they could feel his presence once again and even catch the faintest of hints of spice carried forth on the wind.
He offered them no other words of wisdom, not that he needed to as they all sunk into a tranquil lull of introspection, the shinobi veteran mildly chagrinned at her own outburst. Naruto treaded over to the inadequate fire-they couldn't afford an open flame for fear of drawing the enemy towards them- and crouched down on the balls of his feet across from the Belgian.
Manu stopped stirring and took a spoonful of the steaming ruddy broth and gently blew on it, before handing the instrument across the way to the blond who gingerly accepted it. He gave it his own measured breath for caution, and then downed the taste. He looked pensive for a heartbeat before nodding and handing the only utensil back to its owner.
Manu nodded back in silence as the others wandered in around them, taking seats around the pot and draping themselves in the recently acquired heavy wool blankets. It was the other squad's turn to keep watch anyway. The sun was very quickly descending past the snow- crested peaks, as it did that time of year, and soon it would be night, and bitterly cold once again.
They watched the man work in silence until through yet another unspoken signal he let them know the concoction was ready. Mess-tins were distributed with nary a clatter, and the piping hot contents distributed evenly, along with a wax-paper wrapped package of grainy flatbread they had also picked up at their last stop.
They ate in silence, savoring for once the presence of spices and actual flavor in their meal, and used that as an excuse not to talk to one another. They told themselves it was prudent to do so in enemy territory, and that it was disrespectful to the cook to mince words alongside the carefully prepared goat. But the truth that most of them knew was that they still did not know one another, and were afraid to find out.
It was an irrational fear, one easily hidden in the days which passed by with them ending each night in exhausted unconsciousness. But now it was clear that in these days carried over by interminable waiting, that the human need to fill the silence would soon become insufferable. Despite this longing for human interaction, though, each held their own reticence for fear that talking might accidentally stir some revelation within themselves, and that suddenly they might not be able to understand what they were still doing there.
They might question what drove them to press on where others had failed. They might question their purpose, freezing and hungry and bristling with bloodlust on some remote peak in a land that they had never even thought of prior to arrival.
But the illusion they were willingly under was necessary for their lives to continue. Each of them had a reason for abandoning their previous existence and found solace the only way they knew how. It was the easiest path, for them. And it could only be surmounted in one of two ways, either of which was guaranteed in their position. Death was by far the most likely, and in some cases almost a relief for those that did not know how to continue living.
To continue living was harder, because then one needed to believe in something more strongly than that comforting illusion of duty and necessity. But dreams were even harder to believe in those days. The only ones they had now came in the fitful vestiges of sleep. And most of the time, not even then.
The lack of dreams was a good thing for shinobi though, and it was within this realm of featherweight sleep that Naruto was able to awake even before the hand touched his shoulder. If the African truck-driver was shocked by suddenly being confronted with azure eyes which snapped open in a radiated glow, he did not show it, and under the starlight of the last hours of night his face remained placid.
"Uzumaki. Moses." He whispered. It was their watch.
Naruto had to prod the other young man with his elbow to wake him, but only gently. The two got up as the man who woke him spirited himself away to his own sleeping bag. They disentangled themselves from the huddled mass of bodies camped next to the extinguished stove and ice-cold vehicle. Next to him on the ground, Tenten groaned as she turned away from her lost heat source and buried her nose into the side of Karui's bag.
The two males could sympathize, as soon as they exited their own bedding it turned out to be bitterly cold, and not even the hefty wool blankets could do much to retain that comforting glow of the synthetic down and warm proximity of friendly bodies. Neither could they have a fire, and so the two resigned themselves not to freeze to death as they huddled together in a shallow foxhole on the crest of the small ridge.
Naruto was understandably irritated by this latest development. Even during the war, night watches were only a formality, and could at least be done in the presence of a fire. Though in Fire country, trees made it impossible to see far in any direction, the innumerous branches and dead leaves that littered the forest floor and canopy made sneaking up on an encampment nigh impossible. Here, even though it lacked the forewarning of the debris, one could see forever in every direction, especially perched as they were on a relative peak. So the two had their own advantages and disadvantages, thought right now the intolerable cold was the most obvious.
Although, the thin and crisp air made everything clear and beautiful, at least in Naruto's opinion. Though it certainly wasn't anywhere near as fecund as his home, the mountains began to carve out their own niche in his admiration. He began to see why Karui seemed so enamored with them, and despite their lack of natural chakra, he began to feel a physical connection as he surveyed the shadowy giants imposed on their pinpricked canvas.
This landscape, these peaks. It was the same Earth that he had always tread on. Though the majority of the world had been hidden from them for the longest of times, they had never ceased being part and parcel of the planet in its entirety. Even as he felt humbled, puny as he was in that shaded landscape, he felt more accepting of his presence in it. To know that the snow that fell here, was once the rain that fell on him as he lay dying in the Valley of the End was a strangely comforting thought.
And as he thought about it, he felt more at home, more connected with the landscape than he did his own comrades. It was a confusing, and admittedly frightening thought.
"Burrr!"
Conrad shivered beneath every layer he had, trying to voice his complaints quietly but unable to silence his chattering teeth. Tearing himself away from the temporary nirvana that he had achieved, Naruto regarded his trench-mate before he sighed quietly to himself and unwrapped his own cloak only to drape it over the man's shoulders.
"Here."
Wide, ivory eyes looked at him in the dark. Naruto ignored them and turned back to his watch.
"It must be pretty warm where you're from, huh?" Having met less than cold tolerant people from Suna, he could easily surmise this simple fact given that the other man had about as little fat on him as most shinobi would, anyway.
Conrad looked at him, almost as if Naruto had asked him if he were a lizard, but then smiled and shook his head.
"Yeah, no kidding. This is the first time I have ever seen snow." Naruto nodded in sympathy, though his first time had been back in Kumo, he could understand the physical and mental shock. "Most of the time it never gets below 10 degrees." Naruto nodded after he managed the conversion over to more familiar units, but then Conrad got a very quizzical and skeptical expression on his face.
"What about you? Aren't you cold?"
Which, admittedly, was a fair question, because even though Naruto had on several layers including a waterproof parka, he could still feel the sub-zero temperatures stinging at his face, and he resisted the urge to wrap his scarf tighter around his nose.
"My… Chakra keeps me warm."
Conrad nodded solemnly, like Naruto was revealing a grave secret. It was close enough to the truth, though. Naruto supposed he could have revealed the whole story, it may have even helped to pass the time. But for some reason, he felt more uncomfortable now than he had before the end of the war. Supposedly his secrets had been declassified and handed over as a gesture of good faith to the other governments of the world, but he could not help but feel like he was under continuing scrutiny for it, especially here, especially under his particular command. He was sure that man, Belletriste, knew about it, but for some reason revealing it to his other comrades in arms made him skittish once again.
Though that was something he appreciated about the Conrad. He relished and soaked up information like a sponge, but had an intuitive amount of tact to know when he should not press a subject. Really, if anyone would be able to handle Naruto's story outside of their little ninja club, it would probably be him. Still, these were new secrets he had never shared, and he was reluctant to come clean with his former countrymen, let alone this… foreigner.
He almost laughed at this label. How could he have the gall to call anyone a foreigner these days? They were all foreigners in a foreign land under a foreign government following a foreign directive. He didn't laugh though, because upon this realization he understood completely for the first time that he was alone.
"Hey."
Conrad whispered to him, and Naruto realized that he had let this disparaging thought show on his face. Hoping it was covered up by the darkness, he reapplied a mask of alertness, just in case his teammate had spotted something suspicious.
Instead what he found was a gloved hand pinching carefully two fingers worth of dark colored squares. He stared at the proffered object, unable to identify exactly what was being offered to him, before the faceless voice supplied the answer, in the form of a question.
"Want some chocolate?"
Though he did not know if he really did want any, having never tasted it before (3), Naruto decided it best to accept the reciprocity of his comrade, and whispered a thanks as he carefully took the near-frozen squares, warmed to be edible only by virtue of being stashed in a an inner pocket. Still, they felt like they would be quite difficult to chew.
He held it up to his face and tried sniffing it. But either it had little scent or his nose was already stuffed to the brim that he couldn't discern what it was to be like. He had heard of it before, but to his knowledge never encountered it during all the meals he had had outside of the Shinobi States. If he had, then it had only come as part of the homogenous mess than constituted field rations and whatever glop they were forced to scarf down in the mess hall. Still, it was supposed to be good, both as a stimulant/ anti-depressant as well as in taste, so there was not harm.
He broke off a chunk with his sharpened canines and let the cold chunk warm and then melt in his mouth. It was like ice at first, then it became slightly sweet, then bitter and… rich. He took another nibble, savoring the little he had. To his left, his careful ears picked up the same minute snap as Conrad did the same.
They sat there in much the same silence as they had earlier that night. And yet, even lacking the presence of the others, and despite the palpable cold that had encroached on them after sunset, between the bittersweet substance and the satisfactory company he felt warmth begin to spread throughout his veins.
It certainly wasn't Ramen. But, it was good, in its own right. It was good enough, for now.
Things were good enough, for now.
"What the Hell do you want?"
Old words, for an old language.
"Now, now, Prime Minister, such adversarial words are not becoming of a peaceful head of state."
Terumi Mei did not pause while perusing the latest debriefing handed to her by one of her nameless subordinates. She missed her loyal Kirigakure shinobi by her side, as much as she detested the man who had come to see her. Though she had not dealt with him perhaps as much as his fellow countrymen, who were spread thickly throughout the new bureaucracy, his reputation preceded him by a healthy margin and reached her ears by those same subordinates.
Things only ever seemed to change on a surface level at best. Though they were actively trying to put on a front of pacifism, it was always an uphill struggle to maintain neutrality, and their more surreptitious nature always shone through.
Just as it was with Shimura Danzo. Even in the brilliant dawn sunlight, a dark aura preceded him into the room and it was this unease that made the young leader of nations ken to his presence. Danzo had matriculated well into the new order of things, he looked as peccable as ever, exchanging his plain black kimono for an equally inoffensive business suit, which actually seemed to do a better job of concealing his numerous afflictions. All of which were bodily, and none of which dulled his ever-conniving wit.
While formidable as an ally, to be on the receiving end of that wit was a position that few envied, and even fewer lasted long in. Though he was forced to renounce some of his more 'direct' fixes to obstacles in deference to the newer systems in place, he seemed handy enough in manipulating the inter-government politics to his favor. And if Mei had been paying attention enough to care, she may have even speculated that he enjoyed this new game even more. Prolonging his will had always been one of his strong suits, and even well into his August years as he was, the old War Hawk still had patience within his remaining years to achieve whatever he desired.
So, irksome or not, it was necessary to heed the man. The Kage, turned full-blood politician, quietly sighed and set down her day's reading, matching the man eye for eye.
"Well?"
If it were to be a battle of patience, there was little doubt that the elder man would come out on top. However, given that he had been the one to seek her out, rather than the reverse, she could afford to spur the man on a bit.
The man nodded gravely, not at her, but rather at the paper she had just set down on the oak slab in front of her.
"You have read the reports."
She chose to interpret the man's words as a question, rather than let the obvious demand fan her already smoldering temper, and nodded in return.
"And." Again the man questioned, but didn't.
"And what? You sought me out. What is so important as to warrant a personal meeting when a phone call or message would have sufficed."
"Please, Prime Minister, you know as well as I that either of those options would take unprecedented amounts of time to worm its way through your office staff, and by the time my advice reached you it would already be moot."
That was of course, the principle idea. The redhead thought briefly of the demure woman outside her glassed-in office no doubt on pins and needles waiting for just such a call, and privately lamented the death of that system. So much for the infamous obfuscations of bureaucracy.
"So then, out with it." She whipped the paper off her desk and tossed back her omnipresent stray crimson lock, reading the punctuated headlines drawn up for her by her staff. "Are you here to brief me on the latest decline in export numbers? Or what about those gaijin skiers who got caught in an avalanche in Kumo? Or is this about Inoichi's continued demands for an increase in rural police? Tell me: which shit-storm are you here to enlighten for me?"
She shook the paper between her two perfectly manicured nails, wishing she could turn it to ash. Things were difficult enough back when she was the definitive leader of an independent nation. Now, she had been given less power, but with no alleviation from responsibilities. And blame, let us not forget the blame. Like it was her fault when tourists decided to do stupid shit! Back when they were autonomous shinobi nations, when something like that happened, it was just another case of the weak weeding themselves out of the food chain. Now that they were forced to participate in this farce of a world government, they had to abide by international standards which frowned upon discrimination according to ability.
It was ludicrous! There was no reason they should have to abide by such arbitrary standards!
Well, there was one. She had to remind herself that they were now the weak ones, and that these seemingly feeble-minded consortiums had the power to wipe them all off the face of the map kept her towing the line, and perpetuated her paperwork-induced misery.
She repressed a shudder, thinking about other foreign leaders she had seen age perceptibly in their short tenure, and made a mental note to check for crow's feet later.
Though she took some solace in the fact that she would always be less like a prune than the man in front of her, whose creases only deepened when she facetiously recited off her list.
"You know what I am talking about."
Enough dancing around the issue then. She might have once been a ninja, but she detested the circuitous and indirect nature of politics.
"And? What of it? Why should I care if some of our former citizens are going off to fight in some other country's war? In case you haven't noticed, we have plenty enough vagabond shinobi as it is with nothing to do for themselves except be a constant nuisance and a drain on our already taxed infrastructure."
She would never be heard to say it out loud, but she agreed with the veteran politician about his stance on their current defense reserves. The limitations imposed on them by the United Nations and during the Kusagakure agreements were as laughable as they were debilitating. To take a population with over half of the working class employed as soldiers, and then to tell them that they could only have a standing army which amounted to less than a quarter of that was a plan only a committee could brew up.
True, they would still proportionally have a good deal more active soldiers than any other nations that they were aware of, but the current unemployment crisis was as a direct result. On top of that, one could not compare the quality of their defenses by the same measure. Sure, their infantry was, by definition, superior in every way to the other countries, but the eye-opening thing that they had been forced to realize not long ago was that war was no longer won by numbers of soldiers. When weapons existed that could be deployed leagues away from the farthest reaching Jutsu, there was no room for battle, there was no contest.
And so far, they were one of the few nations to be denied access to these weapons of mass destruction. Not only that, but with the destruction of the Gedō Mazō statue, they had lost their own WMD's. The world, as they knew it, was way out of balance.
"The problem is not with those prodigal sons of our soil, but with their employers. Or should I say, their employment." He stifled the Prime Minister's demand for clarity with an open palm, and she let the interruption slide in favor of elaboration. "The question is: why now? Why are our forces now being allowed to join their ranks when they had nothing but fear and resentment of us before?"
She did not have an answer for him, or rather, she was just too worn out from the non-stop problem solving that had dogged her ever since she had entered office after a close election. Far from being a token admission to diversity, Terumi Mei earned every ounce of respect she had garnered, and fought for her right to rule, tooth and nail. But now, in this world where people she had never even seen governed her and her country's fate, she wondered if she would not have been better off losing in the runoff.
She stared out of the wall-sized vista, idly thinking about the blond-haired boy who she dreamed about every time she woke up, and every morning inspired her to attack her duties with renewed vigor, for the assured hope of a better world. The sun continued to rise, right into cloudy skies.
"You don't see it as a good thing?" She asked superfluously, not believing it herself.
"No, I do not." Nothing, as they both knew, ever came without a price. "Especially when they are being used to fight against fellow shinobi."
This froze the hot-blooded woman cold, and her wide-eyed gaze turned back from the cloudy ocean scene to the somber scowl adorning the man's face.
"What?"
"That is the problem when one doesn't have full control over their citizens." He intoned, potentially drawing up his old argument in support of total indoctrination, but shelved it in favor of dealing with the crisis as it was. "Although the majority of our ex-shinobi are currently registered in the ranks of 'legitimate' (Mei could feel the man's disdain for this word) governments, there are some noticeable exceptions."
He produced a thick envelope form inside the fold of his suitcoat, and accurately tossed it to the seated leader who deftly caught it. Mei thumbed the tri-folded bundle between her two fingers, but set it down on her desk for later, careful appraisal. She gave the man in front of her all of her immediate attention.
He nodded towards the missive. "That is a list of all the potential citizens that have joined the ranks of groups opposing the Coalition forces." In essence, simply a bunch of pages copied from the international Bingo Book detailing all of those shinobi that were currently unaccounted for. Danzo would have been embarrassed to admit this paucity of information, but he was actively seeking to rectify it. There was a learning curve to this Brave New World's technological marvels, but he would not let that stop him.
"So what would you have me do?" She glared at him, as a focus for all her frustrations at the moment. "Send hunter-nins after them? In case you have forgotten, the rest of the world would consider our forces in another country an act of war, and we have already turned down an invitation to join the Coalition."
He nodded curtly, not needing a history lesson.
"This is merely a curtesy call. Something to keep you on your toes. I have already started to take care of the problem."
Mei was half-way across her desk, ready to strangle the conniving man who would go around her back to achieve his own objectives. Even when faced with the insurmountable totality of feminine wrath, Danzo did not move a muscle, and it was this unflappable countenance which kept the young diplomat from permanently erasing the man's presence.
"I am not conducting myself foolishly, I assure you Prime Minister. Nor am I manipulating powers within our own government." This admission quelled some of the smoldering anger within her, but did not stop a thick ooze of lava from dripping down her frothing mouth and burning a hole in her solid wood desk. It did not mean that she still did not distrust him, though.
"And? I am supposed to believe you?"
"Yes."
This one word answer reminded her of the other character trait highlighted to her about the man, and she backed off, for now, hoping that his earnest desire to see his country prosper really did govern his intentions. She got off the desk, but did not relax nor sit down.
"I am a diplomat now, Terumi-sama." He deferred to her condescendingly. "I have a limited amount of resources to work with, but I know how to use them. It was a simple matter to apply some of my excess budget to convincing individuals in foreign governments to look the other way when it came to our matters." He neglected to mention the healthy promise of favors he also had to dole out. "It is a mild comfort to know that this system of governance is familiar in its corruption."
Her frown deepened, not wanting to admit this to be the case, but taking some solace in their own apparent success.
"So I take it you had a hand in getting the foreign governments to accept our troops?"
Danzo shrugged.
"Some were easier than others, but yes."
She breathed heavily and turned back to the window, hoping the familiar blue would sooth her fiery temper.
"So then: what now? Do we just wait for our people who abandoned their home to do the right thing under their superiors and track down the traitors?" Though she hesitated to use that word, unsure of which was which in this case.
"In essence, yes." He admitted, and Mei felt the cloudy sky begin to dampen her mood.
"However, I would hope that you would have some faith in your people."
Her people? She supposed they were, but when did that begin? When had her boundaries been expanded past those angry waves?
"You of all people I would have thought would have more faith in the Uzumaki boy."
She did not overtly react to his statement, but he could none the less see her shoulders tense and her hands clasped behind her back tighten at the mention of this name, as he knew they would.
So, Naruto was with them, huh? She mulled over whether or not she was happy with this revelation.
The cutthroat politician ghosted away into the dark recesses of the office, and left his de-facto leader to her thoughts, his objectives completed.
She stared a long time out of her glass prison, and into the murky depths of the omnipresent gloom outside her window, hoping and praying to see just a little bit of sun peak through those gray blankets. With great reluctance, she admitted that she would have to once again rely on that young man to surpass his previous accomplishments and bring the whole world back from the brink of destruction.
She vowed to try her best to help him any way she knew how, but was discouraged knowing how much her hands were tied.
She would have been even more discouraged, had she known the totality of the situation. How could he be relied up to fill in for the heroes absent in their broadly expanded world, when he was missing such crucial parts of himself? It wasn't fair, and she knew it.
Life never was.
Notes:
1. In South Africa, though the dominant language is nominally Afrikaans, the local dialect of Dutch, many people speak English in addition, because of the numerous tribal languages such as Zulu, Xhos, Sotho, Tswana, Tsonga, Swati, Ndebele, Venda, etc. Almost no one knows them all, and very few know even a handful, finding English to be a far more useful alternative, but they still exist to good extent in the predominantly tribal regions of SA.
2. At the time I wrote this section, the longest kill shot in the world was 2500 meters. Just in the past few days, that record was smashed by a Canadian sniper at 3,450m. Still, this is a really long shot, and for them, practice, to get used to using round designed around fire chakra and seal-enhanced rounds. The normal weight for a .50 projectile is about 900 grams, so this would be a pretty heavy bullet, giving the projectile more momentum, and thus less susceptible to wind change, but without the counter-gravity seals, more prone to the effects of gravity.
3. Do they have chocolate in Naruto? They shouldn't. Unless the elemental nations span the equator, they should never have been able to grow cocoa plants, and even if they did trade for them for some nations outside, it would have been prohibitively expensive, such as was the case in Japan during the Tokugawa period.
