The Martial Arts of Friendship and Feminism
031. Sunrise
Jiraiya was sitting cross-legged in a small, dirty inn room, drinking sake and wondering how his errant student was doing. He knew that Umino Iruka wouldn't have graduated a complete dunderhead and that Tea Country was as safe a place as they came outside Konoha's walls, but this was Naruto. He had long since come to the conclusion that Naruto's good luck at gambling was some karmic recompense for his abysmal luck in life. If there was an accident, incident, attack or catastrophe happening within five miles of Naruto, he could be counted on to get caught in the cross-fire.
(This theory didn't explain how Tsunade-hime could be so unlucky, but he was convinced that Karma just was a bitch who had it in for the Sannin.)
Jiraiya hadn't been there for Naruto when he was a kid. Partly this was because he had been honestly dreadfully busy, but partly because watching someone who was so much like Minato and Kushina at the same time had been painful – and he had a lot of experience in running from pain. When he had accepted Naruto as a student he had intended to make up for his past neglect and care for his friends' son, and of course Iwa of all places had to start acting up.
Iwagakure wasn't precisely at the peak of their power now either, having yet to fully recover their strength from the losses of the last war – which was the only reason they hadn't attacked Konoha yet, after the Chunin Exam Invasion. That kerfuffle had sent very mixed signals to the Hidden Villages. On one hand, if a village was strong enough that an invasion of two villages – and one of them a member of the Big Five – could be crushed in an afternoon, that village was obviously strong. On the other hand, a village that had lost its Kage had to be weakened. It had taken him a few weeks to find out that there was a lot of plausible deniability going on in Iwa right now. The Tsuchikage wasn't officially aware of the plans of some of his elite jounin at all, and if things fell through he could declare them missing-nin and call it a day.
Ah, politics! That was one mistress that liked her whips, chains, blindfolds and gags. Hmm, maybe a new Icha Icha about a few Iwa jounin who bore completely coincidental resemblance to certain Iwa high-ups and a busty, kinky noblewoman dominatrix… That stuff always sent the Tsuchikage up a wall.
The second best part about writing porn was all the barely veiled insults you could throw. With plausible deniability, of course.
This particular situation was about unnamed Iwa personage contacting a missing-nin for a job. Completely unremarkable, unless you suspected said missing-nin of being part of Akatsuki. Jiraiya was fairly certain that Iwa wasn't up to date with that, but this didn't make the situation any better. Akatsuki, Red Dawn, the bane of his and more importantly Naruto's existence.
"Here's to you, Naruto. Wait some more weeks yet," he said and toasted to the empty room. The sunrise wormed its way in through the tiny window and painted golden-red patches on the off-white walls. He was just drunk enough that it felt very symbolic and meaningful. Now if only his faithful network would bring back some news from Makimura, but Matsuzaki had been suspiciously quiet. Oh, well, no news was good news, surely?
To hell with optimism, maybe he should write Tsunade and ask for a report.
032. Sunset
That same day Mizushima Konatsu celebrated being dead with her brother. The sun had set on their old life and new was still hiding behind the horizon. The private party included a huge bowl of take-out ramen, courtesy of their new boss who was completely addicted to the stuff, apple dumplings courtesy of Miwa – and a fresh batch of apple bombs in her scroll, these set to explode on impact – and tea with just a touch of sake, courtesy of Tsubaki-sempai and herself. In Kiri, when you were old enough to kill for the village, you were old enough to drink, and if you drank enough to kill your liver or to get yourself killed in a prompter manner, you were obviously too dumb to live anyway. Alcohol-assisted gene pool cleansing.
Konatsu wasn't that stupid. She had added to sake directly to the boiling water and boiling destroyed alcohol, only leaving the fang of the taste behind. Her liver was going to remain completely virginal until she hit sixteen and so was her brother's if he didn't want his head bashed in. It was a matter of luxury to her, to be able to afford to basically throw away alcohol that comforted her.
"Are we going to stay here, Natsu?" Kaede asked and leaned back against his arm, watching the sun set behind the roofs in a fiery red and amber ball rather than her. The house didn't have much in the way of a porch, but it was a good place to sit on all the same. The ground still hadn't recovered from the beating it had received when Naruto had taken on Taiki and Konatsu felt her mouth twitching at the memory.
"For now at least. This isn't a bad place to regroup," she promised breezily. They had gotten out with their lives. She still had a hard time believing it had been this easy, but they were in a peaceful, uninteresting country, under the wing of a very powerful – if somewhat special – young shinobi who was a student of one of the Sannin, they had a job that would pay for lodgings of their own in a few months' time and they were officially dead.
Really, it could only be better if they could somehow safely rub this to their father's face, but alive was better than petty satisfaction.
"That's good. I like it here, and some of those girls show real promise," Kaede said and sipped his tea. It was true that they weren't all horrible and in time they would be pretty decent fighters for civilians. Being a fire brigade intendant wasn't what she intended to do her whole life, but she would keep practicing with Taiki and whip those girls up to shape and see then what she wanted to do with her life. Who knew, maybe in a few years' time Naruto would have some real combat work for her to do? And maybe he would be up for fling when they were older. Konatsu wasn't infatuated like some of his rescuees, but he obviously had good genes and their baby would be kick-ass.
She was going to say something nice and inane when a voice that rattled the newly fixed windows sounded from the house behind their backs.
"WHAT YOU MEAN, THEY THINK I'M A YAKUZA BOSS!"
"Oh dear, somebody clued him in," Kaede laughed. He hadn't been too keen to tell Naruto what people really thought of him and neither had Konatsu, if only because watching the misunderstandings breed new, fascinating misunderstandings had been so much fun.
"So do you think we should tell him he's a cult leader too?" she asked. The conversation inside was going on at lower volume now and they couldn't quite make out the words through the closed door.
"Maybe we should leave that to another day?" Kaede proposed and toasted her. The tea was only lukewarm now, but something still warmed in her stomach. It was a nice, temperate night and she was feeling very mellow.
"I will make friends with them and show them I'm not a criminal! This is a promise!" Naruto declared, now clearly heard through to door. Konatsu almost snorted the rest of her tea up her nose at the thought of how that would go down and Kaede honestly giggled.
"How about we make a bet, Natsu?" he proposed. "How many people will beg for their lives before Naruto is through befriending them?"
She watched Kaede smile, Kaede laugh, Kaede live. Kaede who had been bullied for his unisex name up to the point when he stabbed one of the bullies with his practice kunai, Kaede who had the will to live, but not the skills to fight her. Her brother would live, now. Just for that she would have two kick-ass babies and give one to Naruto.
033. Too much
Yamamoto Takumo was a frustrated man when he returned home after yet one more day of futile attempts to find something they could arrest Satou Naruto over. After the initial bloodbath had ceased there had been rather annoying lack of obvious law-breaking. Oh, he didn't suspect for a second that Satou did engage in drug dealing, money laundering and extortion… Though for some reason he appeared to have very dim view on prostitution… It was truly obvious that he had ninja background, for never before had it been this difficult to find even the least credible clues of organized crime going on.
A part of him was even happy it was so difficult; at least for now he didn't have to wonder how they could arrest the boy-man. Being so pathetically happy about this didn't make him happy at all.
"That bad today?" Reiko asked, peeking through the kitchen door. She was wearing a pink apron with print that read KISS THE COOK. So he did and immediately felt a little better.
"It's good to be home, dear. Where's Ruka-chan?" he asked and allowed his shoulders to relax. Wonderful scent of fish and ginger wafted from the kitchen.
"She's sleeping in her cradle, finally. She's been very restless today, I think she may be teething," Reiko answered and gestured him to sit down. It was a wonderful scene, domestic, comfortable, intimate. Of course it was too good to last. There was a firm knock on the door and when Takumo opened, the polite greeting words turned to ashes on his mouth as he behold the cheery visage of one Satou Naruto with basket in hand.
"Satou…san," he stammered, his thought turning to his wife and his little girl, too young to even understand what kind of danger her father had put her in. How foolish he had been! Just because old Saehara had never attempted to have him killed didn't mean a shinobi would think such an action more trouble than it was worth!
"Hi, I'm Satou Naruto and you are Yamamoto Takumo, right? It's nice to meet you, can I come inside?" Satou was all sunshine and smile as he slipped by Takumo, without bothering to wait for permission. There were two people at his back, a girl and a boy approximately the same age. Both of them were so small, but they carried blades openly – and walked with the deadly grace of a really big cat.
"And you are Yamamoto-san's wife, right? Here, this is for you." Satou presented the basket to his lovely, brave wife. Reiko's face was pale, but her mouth was a determined line as she accepted the gift. There was a bottle in the basket and a small paper package, probably full of some dry goods. Reiko thanked him with a voice that only trembled a little and Naruto turned back to face him.
"So, I found out you have these really funny ideas about me…" he started and Takumo broke there and then.
"Please don't… There are plenty of crimes to busy myself with in a town the size of Makimura. Please leave my family in peace." He had never begged for mercy in his whole life, but never before had his family been threatened. If only it was just him, then he could spit at the shinobi-yakuza's face and at least go down with his honor intact. The hate he felt for himself over what he had just offered burned in his stomach like raw alcohol, but even he had his price. The thought of his family dead or worse – and he knew that any yakuza worth his first ryo could come up with ever-so-worse – was just too much for him to bear.
"I didn't mean it like that!" Satou protested and his face twisted into a very convincing facsimile of hurt and the unnamed girl whispered something to the boy that sounded like "first time." That didn't sound promising at all. "I'm going to befriend you."
034. Not enough
At first Naruto was at a loss as to how he would convince the Chief of Police of his innocence, exactly. Usually showing people you were strong enough to kick their ass at least got them to listen, but he couldn't very well fight a civilian; that just wouldn't be sporting. It would be like, like Neji beating up Hinata-chan. After doing something like that he would need the corrective kick to the behind.
In Konoha asking someone to train with you was what you did when you wanted to make friends, at least for the ninja. Naruto was pretty hazy on how the civilians did it, as he'd never had a civilian friend before he started taking C-rank mission outside the village and there befriending people mostly involved defending them. He had never gone to a movie before Kakashi-sensei ordered his team to watch the Princess Fuun movie just before their totally awesome mission where he got to safe his first princess and friendly activity to him was a training spar. Eating together was friendly, he did it with Iruka-sensei, but he wasn't in the habit of going to cafes or restaurants; no-one could outright refuse to accept him in, but the service was usually cold enough to frost over his eyebrows.
Friendship and martial arts were practically the same thing in Naruto's life. Eventually he had just decided to soften things a bit, tone them down.
"You know I'm training a fire brigade, right? Well, the Great Naruto Fire Brigade hereby challenges the Makimura Police Department to a sports day! We will have all kinds of competition, like hitting the bull's eye and swimming and races, and I'm not even letting Idate compete in that because it would be unfair. It will be fun. And friendly."
Yamamoto and his wife were staring at him. Their eyes bugged, their mouth hung open just a little. Naruto was used to funny looks, but these were the sort of funny he had gotten from Kiba when he once proposed they should glue the practice kunai to the ceiling back in the Academy, like what he just proposed was just plain too silly for words. He frowned and wondered what it could be. Maybe Yamamoto thought that girls competing against his police was foolishness? A small storm cloud begun to gather over his head as Naruto considered that possibility. If it was so, then he would ask Tsubaki-chan and Konatsu-chan to take part as well and kick everybody's asses, just out of principle. This was something everybody learned at young age in hidden villages: being told you fought like a girl was no insult and the girls were ready to prove it. Anytime.
(Being told you fought like a fangirl was a different thing entirely, but even that one insulted non-fangirls much more than it insulted boys.)
"Is this some kind of gender prejudice thing?" he asked. "Because there is nothing wrong being a female. Half of humanity is female. Your wife is a female! You don't want to insult her, do you?" Yamamoto looked suitably panicked at this thought, though he was still gaping. His wife, whose name he hadn't heard yet, had closed her mouth and tilted her head a little. She looked at him really hard, like she was trying to see through him like a Hyuuga. It was kind of unnerving and Naruto rubbed the back of his head, grinning sheepishly.
So, it appeared that convincing the police that he wasn't a criminal wasn't enough; he also had to convince them that girls weren't weak. Well, his girls were up to the task and Yamamoto's wife would probably make him sleep on the couch as punishment for his chauvinism anyway. The thought left him feeling that warm satisfaction he got after a job well done especially if Iruka-sensei or Kakasi-sensei – or even Ero-sensei, for that matter – praised him. He was going to make the world, or at least Makimura, a better place to live one idiot at a time.
040. Sixth sense
Some things can't be quantified, Yakushi Nono once told her surrogate son. Cut a human down to the atomic level and you still won't find love or loyalty or soul. Some things can only be sensed.
Sometimes even ninja have to make do with ordinary postal services. Doihara Taiki didn't have a summon contract or any sort of ninja animals so his letter travelled two day over the waves in a postal ship. Its destination was a small port town named Hakusuicho, because, so the old tales said, there the wind blew the water white. In Hakusuicho a Kiri agent who went by the name Akira sent on the heavily encrypted report. Unknown to his village, though, the lowly chunin who felt himself underpaid and undervalued was also part of certain infamous Sound leader's information network and diligently copied every word. He couldn't break the signet, but he had a simple tool that consisted of two sheets of glass and a bright lamp under them. He slid the envelope between the layers and turned the lamp on, reading the letter through the paper. It wasn't easy, as the paper had been folded and the kanji overlapped, but he managed with the aplomb of long practice.
As the report hadn't been stamped as either Busy, Classified or For Eyes Only, it waited two more days in the small Hakusuicho outpost for the round of a courier-nin. The original and the copy both reached their destination seven days after they had been sent, one in Kiri's mission office and the other on the table of Otogakure's Head of Intelligence, one Yakushi Kabuto. When the Mizushima family hosted a small, sedate gathering to celebrate that the honor of their family had been redeemed through very final means, Kabuto knocked on the door to one of Orochimaru's laboratories. He had picked this moment on purpose. Orochimaru was always distracted when the statistical analysis of the use of different recombinant viruses for gene transfer.
"What is it, Kabuto?" Orochimaru asked with an impatient voice from behind the closed door. Kabuto opened it and stepped inside.
The laboratory was blindingly white and blindingly brightly lit. Jars greeted him with a colourful glow as the light reflected off green and amber liquids inside. They held organs: hearts, lungs, eyeballs, brains. But today the room was dominated by colour-coded files full of raw data from the current experiment and the statistics from several previous ones. Orochimaru graced him with a stern look as he flipped through a couple of different pages on several ledger sheets in two different ledger books spread over a side table.
"Orochimaru-sama, I have received an intelligence report that I believe demands my presence in Tea Country," he intoned smoothly and bowed his head respectively. Orochimaru's modus operandi was to find the downtrodden and the abused, the diamonds in the rough, and then claim their absolute loyalty for himself. Their only worth in their own eyes was that which they could give to their Orochimaru-sama; but nothing comes for free.
The cost of this tactics was that cynical, naturally suspicious Orochimaru had become highly complacent in his faith in his followers loyalty. Oh, the irony.
"Do as you feel you must," Orochimaru snapped in clear dismissal and turned back to his papers. Kabuto didn't smile even behind his back. Ordinarily it wouldn't be quite this easy, but right now a bomb going off in the corridor would be only an annoyance to the Shodaime Otokage.
Kabuto felt… a strange sort of fulfillment that he thought he would rather like to explore some more. Granted, the report mentioned Satou Naruto – but Kabuto had developed a good eye for details and even better intuition over the years. A jinchuuriki cult and Naruto in the same sentence were too big of a coincidence. It was like some benign spirit had whispered to his ear, like he was a yumemi, a dream gazer, whose dreams whispered of true things. He was completely, absolutely certain that Naruto was recalling him at long last.
"Maybe I should take the Uchiha with me," he proposed. "He has been demanding lately." And demanding was the last thing Orochimaru wanted now. He pushed his glasses up his nose, allowing the glint of light on glass to hide the tiniest hint of glint in his eyes. This was the greatest proof Orochimaru was taking him for granted: the Snake Sannin didn't even hesitate.
AN: Shiro = white, mizu = water, cho = town. Again, GWG? I'm just tacking these components after one another.
EDIT: I have been told that when combining multiple kanji, you use the Chinese readings, not the Japanese. Ergo the town name Shiromizucho was changed to Hakusuicho. That... actually sounds a LOT better. Thank you to reviewer Hafny. (And I'm not sure if Makimura's right or wrong, but it stays anyway. At this point I just coldn't think of my little brain baby as anything but Makimura.)
