Meet Otter

Date Posted: 11/26/15

Word Count: 1817

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto nor any of its canon characters.

REVIEW REPLIES:

Axellover2: YOU ARE MY FIRST REVIEWER. *throws confetti and gives you cookies* Thanks! :D I realized for myself that there are sparse few ANBU Flashback arc fics surrounding Kakashi, Tenzo, and Itachi that aren't slash. So, I thought I'd write one for myself for NaNo. I have a lot planned out for this story and God willing, I'll see it through to the end. :) Anyway, thanks for reviewing and I hope you stay tuned!

ALSO, a big thank you to all those who favorited/followed! I hope you're enjoying things so far. God bless you!

~Penelope

It was times like these that Red Uzumaki seriously questioned his choice of career. Why he thought going into psychology was a good idea, he didn't know. He'd once thought it was in hopes of changing the outlook of this shinobi world one troubled operative at a time. But it was getting harder to keep with that goal when faced with uncooperative clients - like Suzume Ochimashita. A certain Otter of Team Ro.

It wasn't that Suzume was an inherently bad person. On the contrary, he was a decent fellow. Polite enough. Agreeable enough.

But his blank-faced obliviousness was maddening.

Red slurped another mouthful of ramen, and then pointed at his client - or, in their current setting, his friend; he was on his lunch break - with his chopsticks. He made sure to swallow before speaking.

"Doesn't it bother you, though?" he said, shaking his head to rid his field of vision of a long flyaway lock of red hair. "Not having straight answers?"

"You don't have that problem if you don't ask stupid questions," Suzume deadpanned in response.

He sighed. That intentional ignorance, that was what rubbed him the wrong way. "Yes, but what if you were asked to kill someone, a stranger, and nobody told you why. Just ordered you to do it. Wouldn't that bug you?"

There was a short pause as the sandy-haired blond thought this through. "…No? Because I was aware of the risks when I took the job. That is my job. To take orders. Without question."

"But how can you rely so surely on somebody else's judgment? There's a time and place to concede to authority, but that doesn't mean you stop having your own thoughts and opinions." To Red, this was a simple truth. Who, in their right mind, just went along with whatever they were told?

"Thoughts and opinions shouldn't effect the mission," said the ANBU, sounding like a parrot repeating a popular phrase. It was tossed around so much among shinobi, one would think that was their ninja way, not protecting the village and its people.

"Even at the risk of your friends? Or the risk of somebody missing something somewhere, and an innocent person getting hurt because of it?"

He stuffed some more noodles into his mouth, rather angrily. But the noodles were a healthier target for his frustration than the person causing it. Suzume watched him with a blank expression.

"My friends are ANBU. They signed up under the same awareness as I did." He eyed the noodles hanging out of Red's mouth with distaste. "As for the hypothetical situation… That won't happen. I'm sure the higher-ups know what they're doing better than that."

Red swallowed his food and then banged the butts of his chopsticks on the countertop, making the condiment jars rattle. "There you go again. You put too much stock in those that were put into place over you. Just because they have the power doesn't make them right."

"No," said Suzume, "it makes them in power. And it makes it my duty to follow their orders despite my personal feelings."

Red sighed. Somehow, all of this made perfect sense in his head, but it wasn't turning out right at all. "I don't mean to let emotions rule you; that's just stupid. But to abandon any and all convictions for the sake of a simple order? You'd sacrifice your humanity so willingly? Without a fight?"

This sent the other man into silence again, and Red felt mildly satisfied with that fact. He took a few more slurps of his lunch while he waited for the response.

This debate had been going on since the beginning of their monthly evaluation, which started an hour and a half earlier.

As if reading this new train of thought, Suzume scrunched up his nose and replied with his eyes on the counter. "Why are we still talking about this? The session ended twenty three minutes ago. Why am I even here?"

Red pointed to the bowl still sitting in front of him. "Because I bought you lunch."

"I don't even like ramen…"

"Too bad. Eat, or you owe me fifty ryo."

Suzume sighed, and played with his chopsticks instead.

"This shinobi world needs a revolution," Red continued with his point, determined to make it. "Our operatives have dropped like flies for generations, and only maybe… 60% of those have been due to deaths in battle."

"You pulled that 'statistic' out of the air," Suzume grumbled. Red ignored him.

"The rest are thanks to psychological stress resulting from their duties. The way we've been raising up ninja is all wrong! And part of it is because we've been telling you and you've been too willing to just throw away conscious thought and become mindless drones!"

Offense stained the ANBU's expression, and he folded his arms over his chest. "I'm not a drone."

"Prove it. Think for yourself."

"I do!" Suzume stabbed his noodles with a stick. "I think that I'm perfectly fine following the Hokage's orders. And I think that you're toeing the line between opinion and treason."

"Treason?" Red almost choked on his food, coughed a little and hurried to recover himself. He sent the other man an incredulous look. "Are you serious? I have an opinion and I'm not afraid to express it, thank you very much. Forgive me if I hesitate to kill without reason."

"We have reasons. Sometimes they're just as simple as doing as we're told."

"That's the point!" Red's hands waved as he spoke. He caught himself, glanced up at the man behind Ichiraku's counter, and forced his animated habits down. "It's not good enough! It's not good for your mind to let yourself become so, so… blank. Most of us have a personal nindou, but not you lot. You're not black, you're not white. You're an ambiguous grey. You don't have convictions, and they say it makes you a more effective shinobi, but I think it just destroys what makes you human."

"But being human isn't important in 'this shinobi world', as you say." Suzume set his chopsticks down on the counter. "Being a ninja is. My goal isn't to simply be human. I want to be a shinobi, more specifically an ANBU, and I want to do well as such. I do as I'm ordered. That is my nindou. There's nothing else to it." With that, he stood and stepped away from the noodle bar. "I should go. I owe you fifty ryo, okay?"

That was that. Red knew better than to push it further, especially since as of a half hour ago, he was speaking strictly as a civilian. He wasn't acting as a psychologist, or a shinobi. For the moment, he was himself and himself alone. That tended to loosen his tongue even more so than usual.

So rather than get in the last word, he sighed and nodded. "Fine. Whatever."

Otter made his way out like the hounds of Hades were at his ankles. Red, keeping his back turned toward the street outside the shop, waited until his footsteps had faded away. Then he sipped down the broth from his bowl, and set the heavy dish down with a breath of satisfaction.

"Teuchi…" he started, getting the shop owner's attention before he braced his elbows on the counter in front of him. "I don't sound treasonous, do I?"

The middle-aged man rubbed his jaw and 'hmm'ed while he thought for a short moment. Then he shrugged one shoulder with an air of helpless resignation. "I couldn't say. The definition of treason varies from person to person."

"I'm not wrong to think it's better to let yourself feel, though." Red played with one of his chopsticks, twirling in between his fingers while he spoke.

Teuchi gave a rueful chuckle. "You're asking the wrong person, kid. I just run a noodle shop. I leave ninja business to you ninja."

Red sighed. He was afraid of that. While he imagined a good number of civilians would agree with his philosophy, it was ridiculously hard to find support among his own peers brandishing the Leaf's symbol on their hitai-ate. Therefore, it was that much harder to judge whether or not this cause was wrong. He didn't think it was, wouldn't say that it was until proven otherwise, but he didn't like the idea of being willfully ignorant.

Not like Ochimashita.

"You've got passion, though," Teuchi said after a pause. "And I think it's a worthy goal, whether it's treasonous or not. Isn't that what your point was?"

Red nodded slowly. "Everybody has a will that taps directly into their emotions whether they like it or not. The will and the emotions themselves are not what cause the problems. It's the misuse of it all. That's what people don't get."

"People call that the Will of Fire, don't they?" Teuchi smiled. "Everybody has one."

The psychologist frowned at that. That didn't sound right… "No… No, that's not it. The Will of Fire is an all-inclusive concept. It's not to each their own. The Will of Fire is about the good of the Land of Fire and all its inhabitants. The actual good. Not what everybody thinks is good."

"But what if one person's idea of what's actually good for the Land of Fire is different from the next? Haven't you thought of that?" Teuchi spoke with a paternal curiosity, not any sort of accusation. "And who's to say what 'the actual good' is? You're encouraging personal conviction, but that's a variable you can't predict. Everyone's personal limits are different."

This was getting confusing. Red began to shake his head, feeling too many theories and questions flying at his mind at once. It was always so simple until he tried voicing it. Why did people have to complicate things?

"That's not… That's not what I mean. I don't mean let everyone define their own right and wrong. That's chaos waiting to happen. But… there's right. And there's wrong. In our efforts toward security, we can't blur that line. That will yield the same result."

Teuchi nodded solemnly, and raised his hand to pose one final question. "And who decides where the line is?"

Red's frown deepened. He glanced over his shoulder, where his client and friend disappeared. Every time he did this, he risked Ibiki Morino's wrath by toeing the boundaries of the professional/patient relationship. But the way Ochimashita thought… the way that everybody thought, telling shinobi who dared join the ANBU to embrace their inner darkness, their inner greys… that was wrong, wasn't it? It was so wrong.

But who was he to say that? He was just another shinobi, and not much more than a psychiatrist. He hadn't been on an active field mission in two years. He didn't have much authority. Just a personal goal.

"I don't know. I haven't gotten that far yet."