Disclaimer: Naruto is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto and various other parties. No money is being made from this story, and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Note: This is the sequel to "The Way of the Apartment Manager." It's still an AU story. In the canon timeline, Yukiko was one of the nameless casualties of the Kyuubi's attack... but in this world, she lived. Eight years later, the effects are beginning to snowball. Asuka Kureru suggested the idea that became the nucleus of this story, when she wondered if Sasuke might also end up as a tenant in Yukiko's apartment building. I've thrown a LOT of other stuff on top, but that was the original spark. Thanks, Asuka!
Summary: The reward for a job well done is a bigger job. In this case, Ayakawa Yukiko's new job is a lot more complicated than anyone expected. The Uchiha massacre and its aftermath, in the world of "The Way of the Apartment Manager."
Chapter the Tenth, in which Naruto and Sasuke are discovered (you didn't seriously think they'd stay hidden all the way to Tengai, right?), Naga and Kakashi continue to do nothing in particular, and a Cloud-nin arrives in Tengai to put Eiji in a moral bind.
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The Guardian in Spite of Herself: Chapter 10
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The Hokutou road had way stations every five to ten miles, catering to travelers and marking side roads to local villages. Yukiko liked to take advantage of their solid roofs and hot meals and often detoured through the countryside to gauge a region's civilian economy, but the merchants in this caravan had more specialized businesses and cargos. They pushed on past several stations and camped at the side of the road, circling the wagons at sunset to form a rough enclosure.
"It's rough on the bones," Yoshitaka-san told Seichi as they unhitched the mules, "but we'll reach Nagarehiya sooner - midmorning the day after tomorrow, if we're lucky. And the less time we're on the road, the more time we have to do business in the city."
"I miss the inns," Seichi said, leaning against Yoshitaka-san's wagon and stretching his feet toward their campfire. "I used to stop everywhere that had food and beds, so I could play every night without wearing out my welcome anywhere." He shuffled as he spoke; cards cascaded from hand to hand without any apparent conscious direction, their faces stained orange-gold by the firelight.
Yoshitaka watched the display for a moment, and then clapped his hands. "We're all friends here, Seichi-san, and I don't play for money - my wife would disembowel me - so I'd be happy to help you warm up your old skills after dinner."
The cards slapped down into Seichi's left hand, jack of hearts topmost. "Yuki-chan? Would you disembowel me if I relapsed a little? One game of poker never hurt anyone..."
Yukiko shrugged. "I'm willing to learn. But first, dinner." She pulled out a collapsible pot and tripod, a canteen, and three packages of noodles. "It's nothing special, but it'll hold us for the night." She was glad Naruto wasn't around. If the kid saw her eating instant noodles, she'd never be able to drag him away from Ichiraku ramen stand again.
The water had just started to boil when a commotion broke out across the circle of wagons. The Grass siblings and the pretty woman from Water Country were shouting at each other, while the older Wind woman had pushed her veil back to yell at all three of them. She seemed to be sheltering someone behind her, against the side of a communal wagon.
Kurenai appeared from the darkness beyond the camp, spinning a minor genjutsu to encourage calm and silence. "What's the trouble?"
The four civilians all answered at once, talking over each other, but Yukiko caught the words 'intruders,' 'ruined,' and 'children,' and a horrible suspicion bloomed in her mind. "Yoshitaka-san, please watch the noodles for me," she said, and hurried across the shadowed clearing.
"We're not spies!" a terribly familiar voice shouted from behind the Wind woman. "And we didn't mean to smash your stupid plants, but if you're gonna be such jerks about it, then I'm not sorry!"
Naruto's face - sporting a wide bandage over his left cheek - glared out from under the woman's shoulder. The Uchiha boy, Sasuke, stood sullenly beside him.
Yukiko wanted to beat her head against a tree. She took a deep breath instead. Then she spun a quick genjutsu to alter Naruto's hair color and hide the demon marks on his face, and stepped forward. "Please excuse me," she said, bowing to the Grass siblings and the Water woman. "This is my younger brother, Yujiro, and his friend Sa- Sakama. Yu-kun likes to play jokes on me, and he seems to have thought it would be funny to sneak along on my trip. I'm very sorry for this incident, and if you get your goods assessed in Nagarehiya, I'll pay for whatever damage the boys caused above and beyond the typical hazards of overland transport."
Naruto opened his mouth. Sasuke slapped a hand over it before the kid could say anything. Yukiko made a note to thank him later. After she killed both of them.
Kurenai shot her a confused look and the hand-sign for 'compromised mission.' Yukiko shook her head subtly and answered with 'later' and 'go along with me.' Kurenai shrugged. "I'll have to ask how they got around caravan security, Yukiko-san, but for now, please take charge of your brother and his friend so we can make a preliminary investigation of the wagon."
"Sure thing, no problem, thank you!" Yukiko said, darting forward to grab Naruto and Sasuke by their shirt collars. "Come on, you little idiots. We have lots to talk about."
She dragged the boys past Yoshitaka-san's wagon and into the charcoal shadows under the massive trees, crunching twigs and dry leaves under her feet as she went. She didn't stop for several minutes, until they were well away from the caravan and hidden behind a fallen, half-rotted tree trunk. Moonlight streamed through the gap in the forest canopy, washing the world colorless and blurred around the edges; it lent the shadows a menacing edge of uncertainty.
"Stay still," Yukiko commanded, letting go of the boys to cast a sound-distortion over the area, just in case someone had followed.
Then she grabbed Naruto's shoulders and shook him, twice. "What in the name of the kami were you thinking? You could have been killed - by traps or monsters in the forest, or if the way station guard had found you and not pulled his strike in time. And I'm on a mission! I can't drop everything to take you back home, but I can't keep you with me either. Then you'd really get killed!"
"I would not!" Naruto protested. "I'm a ninja now, like you!"
"No, you're not," Yukiko said, raking one hand through her hair and wishing for the comfort of her forehead protector. "You're sneaky and you can be smart, but you don't have the reflexes, kid, and you still don't think about consequences. A ninja wouldn't have followed me. A ninja knows when to obey orders and how to be patient. Naruto, do you even understand what you and Sasuke did?"
"It was my idea," Sasuke said, startling Yukiko out of her focus on Naruto. "I- my brother- Itachi-" His fists clenched. "If I can't kill him, I want to see him die."
Yukiko blinked. Itachi? True, the ripples of his bloody departure had rescheduled this mission, but why would Sasuke think that Itachi - an S-class traitor - had anything to with a routine assassination? "We're not going anywhere near your brother. Last I heard he was in Grass Country, not in the northeast."
Sasuke shifted, drawing back into the shadows. "But you talked about him. You said you'd never done assassination, and you'd be happy when he was dead." Naruto nodded in vigorous agreement.
Huh? Yukiko blinked again. When had she said anything like- oh, right! Kakashi had dropped by to tell her about his mission with Naga... and Sasuke must have been in the hallway at exactly the wrong moment. Shit. "I was talking to the man assigned to track your brother," she told him. "My mission is completely unrelated. It's still important, though, and you two may have compromised it beyond repair."
Sasuke closed in on himself, crossing his arms over his chest; Naruto looked torn between guilt and defiance. "But we haven't done anything, Yukiko-neechan," he said. "You're not fighting anyone now, and we'll stay out of your way when you find the bad guys, I promise!"
"Kid, shut up while I think." Yukiko tugged on a strand of hair and wondered how to fix this mess. She couldn't send the boys home alone; that was just asking for trouble. Kurenai couldn't take them back to Konoha; that would leave the caravan officially undefended, which would be a breach of contract. She and Seichi couldn't leave the caravan without compromising their mission; the point of traveling slowly with merchants was to build a deep cover in case anyone in Tengai got suspicious and traced them.
But she couldn't keep the boys with her either. For one thing, she didn't think Naruto could manage deep cover if his life depended on it, which it would in Tengai. For another, there was no way on earth she could take the surviving Uchiha heir into danger. Maybe she could ask Yoshitaka-san to watch over them? He planned to leave the caravan in Nagarehiya and head west instead of north.
Yukiko considered that for a moment, then felt like slapping herself. She'd let her emotions overpower her mind - if this had been a battle, she would have died from sheer stupidity.
The obvious solution was to leave the boys in Nagarehiya with the Leaf-nin on long-term police contracts. A message to Konoha would bring someone to take them home, where Iruka and Sarutobi Hokage-sama could make sure Naruto and Sasuke understood just how stupid - and how lucky - they had been.
"I'm not going to strangle you, though you may end up wishing I had," she said to the boys. "You're going to get a small taste of ninja life until we reach a place where I can turn you over to be someone else's headache. I'm on a deep cover mission, so you have to pretend not to be ninja. Don't talk about kunai, jutsu, or the academy. Ever. Kid, you'll be my little brother Yujiro. Sasuke, you'll be his friend Sakama. Make up your own family name if you want one, but don't use Uchiha. That's a dangerous name now."
Sasuke snorted. "Nobody will believe the moron's your brother. He doesn't look anything like you."
Yukiko laughed, too irritated to care about being nice. "Really? Look again, Sakama-kun. His hair is blue-green, just like mine. Anyone who saw Yu-kun's true face before I cast the genjutsu will write the yellow off as a trick of the moon and firelight. For your disguise, I advise a smile. I've only seen three people from your clan who smiled more than they frowned, so I bet that would make you nearly unrecognizable."
"Hey!" Naruto said. "Don't pick on Sasu- on Sakama! He's a jerk, but that's not his fault. Anyway, it was my idea to follow you, not his. Be mad at me, not him."
Sasuke stared blankly at Naruto, as if he thought Naruto might be an illusion spun out of moonlight: a fever dream instead of flesh and bone. Yukiko almost sympathized. Some days, the kid's mind just didn't seem to work on the same path everyone else's did.
"Idiot," Sasuke said finally.
"You're both idiots," Yukiko said before Naruto could respond. "It doesn't matter which one of you came up with this idea; you both went along with it, so you're both at fault. Now come with me so I can introduce you and make excuses for whatever you damaged in that wagon."
She lifted the sound-distortion and headed back toward the caravan. Naruto and Sasuke trailed after her, bickering.
Yukiko felt a headache settling in for a long visit.
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The pack found nothing on the first day. "That's life," Kakashi said with a shrug, and sent them away in puffs of smoke. "We'll reach your campsite around noon tomorrow. If we don't pick up his back trail, that's just how it goes."
"How can you be so calm?" Naga asked, shifting on a branch in search of a more secure and comfortable position. "He's a fucking traitor, he has creepy unknown jutsu, he was Anbu, and he's insane. Can't just say 'Oh well, too bad' if we don't find him."
"Actually, we can. Where else do you think S-class missing-nin come from?" Kakashi leapt into Naga's tree, two branches further up, and tucked his pack against the trunk. Naga scowled. She preferred him farther away, but the giant trees were growing scarce as they neared the forest's edge, so it was either share this one or separate. When hunting someone as dangerous as Uchiha Itachi, separation was stupid.
Naga slept deep and hard, refusing to think about Tsukihime in the hospital, or all the ways her mission might go wrong. She woke - again - with a dog in her face. This time, she just sighed.
"Your master's a bastard," Naga told Hibiki as she carried the dog down the tree.
"You don't need to tell me," Hibiki said. "Trust me, we're all very damn aware of that. Now let me get to work." She hit the ground running, and the pack fanned out into the underbrush.
Kakashi drifted over to Naga as she shouldered her pack. "It's not impossible for Itachi to still be in this area. Aerial surveillance might be useful."
Naga shot him a sour look, but she nicked her thumb with a kunai and clapped her hands three times, spreading blood over the contract scars on her palms. She didn't need the actual scroll to summon small ravens anymore. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Chakra rushed through her, twisting into the otherwhere of the summon beasts, sending a guideline for them to follow back to her. She hoped she got Akaruime - she worked best with him, since he'd grown up knowing her - but she still had trouble aiming her call at specific birds.
Three ravens popped into the air in a waft of smoke and feathers. "Hi!" croaked Akaruime, folding his wings and landing on her shoulder. "What's up?"
"Surveillance," Naga said. "We're tracking a missing-nin named Uchiha Itachi - male, my height, longish black hair, lines on his face." She traced her fingers down her cheeks to demonstrate. "Watch for him and for Grass-nin. Report anyone you find. Don't get killed."
"On it!" Akaruime said. The other ravens croaked their agreement, and all three hurled themselves into the air in a rush of wings.
"Happy?" Naga asked Kakashi.
"Writhing in ecstasy, Naga-chan!" he answered, and sprinted after his dogs before the phrasing registered. Naga ground her teeth, then blew her frustration out on a long hiss. She eyed the trees, wrote them off as too spindly for a reliable pathway, and charged after Kakashi, leaping light-footed over tangles of underbrush and vines.
By noon, they still had no sign of Itachi's trail, and they were closing in on the Grass Country border; trees fought for dominance against bushes, wildflowers, and sweeps of tassel grass. Lunch was nothing but a quick stop for ration bars and for Kakashi to swap out his dogs for fresh trackers. Naga fed crumbs to her ravens and watched Kakashi for signs of exhaustion. Multiple summons weren't as easy as he made them look.
"I know my reserves," Kakashi said, catching her surveillance despite her attempt to stay on his blind side. "I'll sleep hard tonight, but I'm not as decrepit as you think I am. I'm more than capable of fighting anyone up to Itachi's level, and it's your job to make sure we don't run into him by accident." He smiled, that mocking curve of his eye and the subtle shift of his lower face underneath his mask.
"Whatever," Naga said, tossing her hand to launch Akaruime back into the air. "Let's go."
The sun hovered two hand-widths above the horizon when they reached the border, marked by a shallow stream. Kakashi whistled, shrill and piercing, and his hands flashed through a quick jutsu to call in his pack. Naga sent her own call to Akaruime, leaving the other two ravens on wide patrol.
"Any luck?" Kakashi asked Pakkun as the dogs loped down to the water and drank. The stubby dog waved a forepaw dismissively and trotted off to join his fellows. Kakashi sighed and flopped bonelessly to the ground. "So much for that - Itachi must have swung deep through Grass Country, starting from further south or north. We'll find your campsite tomorrow and start again from there."
"Um," Naga said, watching Akaruime swoop in from upstream, a black glove clutched in his feet. "Actually, let's go there now. Grass-nin are waiting." She caught the glove as the raven dropped it - thin leather, last joint of the fingers cut off for delicate work, barrier seals stitched into the backs and the palms. Yeah, this belonged to Kafunnokaze. He had spares, but he'd want this one back.
Kakashi endeavored to look astonished. "You want us to explain our internal problems to a foreign village? How rash - I'm shocked!"
"Stop being a jerk," Naga snapped, stuffing the glove into her vest pocket and letting Akaruime perch on her shoulder. "If they're hunting, they're willing to help. That saves diplomatic crap. Besides, they know the ground." Kafunnokaze's team had spent all spring and summer on border patrol. They had the best chance of guessing Itachi's path, and she bet they were furious at the bastard for evading their sweeps.
"Valid points," Kakashi conceded. "All right, let's go see your boyfriend."
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Tetsuko, running ahead of schedule as usual, handed Eiji a sheaf of cargo lists and voyage itineraries when he dropped by her office for lunch. One hour later, Eiji was down in Rika's office, giving instructions to his captains while Rika supervised the loading of their ships. "Remember the cover story: your security guards are lone shinobi hired only for your current voyages. Don't give customs inspectors or affiliated shinobi any reason to think otherwise. You can let profit margins slip a bit until the situation in Tengai returns to normal. I won't dock your wages for these voyages. Beyond that, as always, I leave matters to the weather and your own judgment. Questions?"
The captains stirred, but before anyone could speak, a hatchet-faced man - one of Eiji's new personal guards - sliced through the gathering and knelt at his feet.
The captains shifted uneasily. Missing-nin were the monsters in children's bedtime stories, and Eiji had sharpened their distrust of all shinobi by pointing out the inevitable results of the hidden village system. They understood that shinobi who repudiated their villages were no longer necessarily the enemy, but maintaining peace between civilians and shinobi was touchy. Eiji hoped to blend both groups in the future, but for the moment he and Ginji had settled on separation as a more practical policy. For his captains to see him dealing openly with a shinobi, right in their midst...
Eiji clasped his hands and counted to ten before letting himself speak. "Yes, Kamisori-san?"
The guard raised his head and stood, his movements fluid despite his stocky build. "Eiji-dono, Ginji-san requests your presence at your office. An emissary from Hidden Cloud wishes to speak with you."
Eiji's hands shifted, the thumbnail of his right hand driving into his left palm where no one could see. "I see. Thank you for the message." He pushed back Rika's chair and stood, laying his hands flat against her desk. "I apologize for cutting this meeting short, but something important to the whole town has come up. If your questions or concerns are pressing, please tell Takeshi-san or Rika-san today and consider their responses final."
Takeshi shrugged as the other captains turned toward him. "Sure. Okay, you lot. Who'll catch the evening tide and who needs to wait for morning?" As the captains began talking over and around each other, Eiji followed his guard out of the office and away from the docks.
"How long ago did the Cloud-nin arrive?" Eiji asked as they walked through the narrow, twisting streets of his town. His left knee barely twinged despite the brisk pace; the sky would likely stay clear for the next day or so.
"The Cloud-nin evaded the outer sentries, but we doubt he was in town before noon. Ginji-san spotted him at half past, buying a skewer of fried shrimp and trying to persuade the yatai owner to gossip about your organization. He'd hidden his allegiance, but Ginji-san read the skill in his movements and recognized his face." Kamisori touched his own forehead protector, where a deep line gouged through the symbol of Hidden Stone, and shrugged. "Once he realized his cover was broken, he declared himself and requested a meeting."
"I see. Thank you, Kamisori-san."
Eiji's mind raced in circles for the rest of the walk up the hill from the harbor district. Hidden Cloud shouldn't have grounds for suspicion yet. Why would a spy investigate him and Ginji? If this shinobi had no grounds for suspicion, perhaps they could avoid giving him any. But what would seem suspicious to a man steeped in paranoia? Could something have tripped his superiors' attention already, back in Hidden Cloud? But Ginji had been thorough about building a consistent support of truth around the vital lies in his reports, so Hidden Cloud shouldn't have grounds for suspicion yet...
The front room was unnaturally hushed, all his clerks straining their ears for noise from the second floor offices. The two traders in the far corner seemed equally curious; they stared blatantly as Eiji walked toward the stairs. He forced himself to walk steadily, smoothing out his limp, giving them nothing to construe as a weakness.
Eiji stopped outside his office, rolled down his sleeves, and checked that his collar was buttoned. He looked back down the corridor toward Tetsuko's office - her door was shut, thank the kami - and prayed, very quickly, that she and Mitsuko would have the sense and luck to stay out of this mess.
He opened his door.
The Cloud-nin, a pale man with short black hair, a sleeveless black shirt, and heavy civilian-style boots, sat perched on a corner of Eiji's desk, facing sideways to watch the door and window at the same time. Behind him, Ginji leaned against the window frame, playing cat's cradle with a ribbon of crackling electricity. Ginji glanced up as Eiji walked through the door, and the dead blankness in his face and eyes confirmed all the warnings that an open, deliberate use of his elemental chakra suggested. The envoy either knew or suspected something major; there was little chance of a peaceful resolution.
Eiji clasped his hands behind his back, fingers locked together in a death-grip, and nodded his head in a cursory imitation of a bow. "Welcome to Tengai," he said. "I hope you haven't been waiting long."
"That depends on how you define 'long,'" the Cloud-nin said. His voice was deep and raspy, as though he'd screamed his throat raw at some point in the past. "I won't delay further. Amane Eiji, Hidden Cloud condones a certain amount of missing-nin activity in Tengai, of which I'm sure you're aware. Recent civilian gossip indicates significant increases in that activity. Amane Ginji's reports, however, make light of this. I'm here to investigate the discrepancy."
"Ah," Eiji said. He moved toward his desk, allowing his guard to slip into the room behind him and shut the door. "That's easily explained. I've started using missing-nin as security forces on my ships. I find that they cause little trouble at sea, and they're both cheaper and more convenient to hire than Cloud-nin. As you said, Tengai is a center of unofficial activity, so missing-nin are always available on short notice, whereas hiring Cloud-nin requires a several day delay for messages to travel from here into Thunder Country. Because I only hire on temporary contracts, the missing-nin don't remain in Tengai to disrupt the area and Ginji-san finds little additional trouble to deal with or report."
He smiled at the Cloud-nin, falsely sincere, and spread his hands in a gesture of innocence.
The Cloud-nin remained neutral. "I'll make my own investigations to confirm your assessment of the situation. If I find anyone marked for death in the bingo books, I'll have to kill them regardless of their employment status. Please keep your dogs from interfering. The consequences would be unfortunate." His eyes skipped over Kamisori as if the missing-nin were unworthy of consideration, nothing but a crippled pet or a nondescript piece of furniture.
"Thank you for your warning, and I'll do my best to facilitate your mission," Eiji said, still smiling. "Now, if you have no other messages, I have a business to run." He pulled his chair out from his desk.
"That's all for today. I'll speak with Amane Ginji tomorrow. Please release him temporarily from his contract as your security chief, to avoid conflicts of interest." The Cloud-nin nodded in an equally insincere imitation of respect and slipped out the window.
Kamisori looked from Eiji to Ginji in search of orders. "Follow," Ginji said, his voice flat and cold. "Tell the others to increase surveillance distance. Never get within a hundred meters and never try to hide from him." Kamisori sketched a hasty bow and left, closing the window behind him.
After a moment, Eiji collapsed into his chair. "Shit."
"Exactly," Ginji agreed, weaving lightning between his hands. "Hideo isn't stupid. He'll notice the fleet leaving. Once he has that line, it's only a matter of time before he reels us in. We're all guilty by Cloud's laws. What do you want me to do?"
Eiji stared at his hands. They were still callused from years spent learning the merchant shipping business from the bottom up, and ragged around the fingertips where he'd bitten his nails to the quick as a boy, waiting through endless weeks and months to hear if Ginji would survive his missions and his advanced training. They were rough hands, but they were clean. He had never used a weapon.
"Eiji." Ginji's voice was soft. His hands, no longer wreathed in sparks, were open and gentle as he reached across the space between them. Burn scars streaked his fingers, the only visible record of all the death he had caused.
Eiji clenched his fists, pulling away.
"Kill him."
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AN: Thanks for reading, and please review! I am, as always, particularly interested in knowing what parts of the chapter worked for you, what parts didn't, and why.
The revised version of this chapter was posted on 1-3-16.