AN:- Hi guys heres the next chapter. Hope you enjoy it. Would have been up sooner but was having issues with the document uploader. Once again would like to thank you for all your reviews I gotten a lot more reviews than I could have ever imagined. And thanks my beta who minimises my mistakes and makes this into a readable peice of fiction. - Nova out.
Chapter 10 – Crumbling dynasty
"Welcome Jiraiya, may I ask what your doing in Amegakure?" The figure which was unmistakably Hanzo asked.
The years hadn't been kind to the ruler of Amegakure, the once bulky powerful looking man who had managed to inspire a small nation with nothing more than his presence was now gone. In front of him stood a tall, withered old man whose face was still hidden underneath the same metallic breathing mask it had been all those years ago. The only part of the mans face which was visible was his small strange hawk like yellow eyes that where surrounded by heavy black bags, indicating a lack of sleep. From Jiraiya's point of view he could see a few stray strands of hair that were pure silver, a stark contrast from the jet black hair he remembered from the last time they had met.
"I'm here for myself," Jiraiya answered slowly; "this isn't Konoha business."
"I should hope not," Hanzo replied looking directly at Jiraiya with a calculating look in his tired eyes, "the other villages are aware of our policy for their envoys."
Jiraiya frowned, "I wasn't aware of Amergakure having such a policy?"
"That's because we don't." Hanzo snarled instantly, making Jiraiya blink in shock. The calm and composed manner that he had been addressed in just moments before had vanished in an instant replaced with a viciousness that reminded Jiraiya just how he had met Hanzo in the first place. The man's answer left Jiraiya with no doubt how Hanzo dealt with the five great shinobi villages sending their own Shinobi into his village and he'd bet his drinking fund it wasn't pretty.
"Come Jiraiya," Hanzo ordered, turning his back on both Jiraiya and the small army that had appeared in the ruins, "I'm sure we have much to discuss. The rest of you keep an eye out, if the rain is any indication they'll no doubt be here soon."
Jiraiya frowned, how could the rain be an indication? Perhaps father time hadn't just affected the way Hanzo looked.
"You don't let anybody into the village," Hanzo continued before Jiraiya could question him, "be it man, women or child. You kill on sight."
Jiraiya looked wild-eyed at the man who had given him his shinobi title. The rumours that had circulated Hanzo after the great shinobi war had been numerous but none of which had ever demonstrated this bloody thirsty side which he was being privileged to.
Various nods came at Hanzo's order and the people who had immerged from all over the place began to retreat back into their hiding place leaving just Jiraiya and Hanzo standing in the decrepit ruins of the village. The rain that had previously been drizzling was now beginning to fall harder, causing Hanzo to look briefly toward the heavens before looking over his shoulder at Jiraiya.
"You better come quickly, Jiraiya. You don't want to be here when the rain stops." Hanzo muttered just loud enough for him to hear and began to walk away leaving Jiraiya to trail in his wake.
"We're we going?" Jiraiya asked curiously as he followed the Kage like leader through the ruins of his village.
"My offices," Hanzo replied without taking his eyes of the road in front of him. The rain had now began to fall harder than ever to the point where it was bouncing of the concrete roads, "He makes it rain every Sunday you know, my men used to say it was his way of honouring the dead. I think it's just his way of making me remember the sacrifices I've had to make."
Jiraiya looked briefly towards the dark blanket of clouds that covered the sky over Ame, was Hanzo insinuating that there was someone in Ame who could control the rain? He had seen a lot of amazing Jutsu in his time but Jiraiya was a bit sceptical that a shinobi had developed a ninjutsu to control the rain. Though the Nidaime had been able to summon vast amounts of water without any water source so he supposed making it rain could be possible.
They walked for another few minutes in silence until Hanzo came to a stop outside a modest building which would easily be lost amongst the large skyscraper like buildings that littered the Amegakure. The buildings didn't look quite as run down as the others Jiraiya had walked past earlier, dim lights illuminated a few windows within the building and door which stood in front of Hanzo was a thick door with a small rectangular box that sat beside it with nothing but numbers on it.
Jiraiya watched as Hanzo walked to the little box and punched various numbers into it, whilst carefully obscuring the code from his view. The door jolted, the sound of several heavy latches unlocking making Jiraiya switch attention from Hanzo to the door which was slowly opening revealing, briefly, the inside of Hanzo's headquarters before two well armed Shinobi both of whom where equipped with giant Kunai and both of whom looked particularly menacing.
"Search him. He'll have weapons, confiscate them." Hanzo ordered as he barged past the two guards leaving them to walk towards Jiraiya as the silver haired salamander summoner ascended a humble staircase and disappeared from view.
"Please face the wall," one of the guards grunted at Jiraiya, "and don't think about doing anything stupid. Hanzo-sama had given us permission to kill if we think you're a danger to him. And we wouldn't want that would we?"
The question was laced with threat and whilst these two 'shinobi' certainly didn't worry him, he didn't want to make Hanzo anymore paranoid than he already was…if that was possible. Doing exactly as the two guards said Jiraiya stood with his face towards the wall just beside the door, his hands level with his face and his legs a shoulder width apart as he let the two guards search him.
They removed everything ninja related from him. His kunai, shuriken and even scrolls where removed from his person by one of the guards and handed to the other before they where finally satisfied that he had no weaponry upon him. Though really if he wanted to attack Hanzo it sure as hell wouldn't be with weapons, he'd use Jutsu, perhaps he'd inform Hanzo that his guards were pretty dense.
"Now if you'll just take this you can go up and see Hanzo-sama." The guard who had just searched him requested taking a vial of thick green liquid out of his pocket and pressing it into the now facing him, Jiraiya.
Jiraiya peered at the little vial, barely three inches long and about an inch thick, he had little doubt what the liquid did. He'd already taken something similar once, all be it, without his knowledge and it wasn't something he was keen to take again. He had hated the feeling of not being capable of using his chakra and wasn't keen to place himself in that situation again though without it, he wouldn't be granted access with Hanzo and that was something he couldn't afford to not have.
Bringing the vial up to his lips and gulping down its contense, wincing slightly at its awful taste, before tossing the vial back to the guard who was carrying his weapons.
"Can I see him now?" Jiraiya asked looking at both guards expectantly with slightly raised eyebrows, as both guards glanced at each other before nodding slowly.
Jiraiya wasted no time in tracing Hanzo footsteps to the door which he had disappeared into whilst he was getting…frisked by Hanzo's guards. The sound of latching bolts echoed clearly through the reception of Hanzo's silent office as the guards closed the door behind him.
Knocking lightly on the door to Hanzo's offices Jiraiya waited for an invitation to enter. Feeling the same fluttering feeling in his stomach he had when trying to battle Orochimaru and he was sure that it wasn't just nerves and was left no doubt that if he tried so much as a Bushin he'd be sorely disappointed with the results.
"Enter Jiraiya." The commanding, if slightly hoarse voice, called through the door.
Twisting the door knob and pushing it open Jiraiya walked into the private office of Hanzo. The room was bare, not at all like Tsunade's office back in Konoha, there where no documents or even a desk the only thing present in the office was a large cushion that sat directly in the centre of the room with the form of Hanzo siting quietly upon it. His silver headpiece sitting just beside him allowing Jiraiya to see his face for the first time, his hair was clearly thinning to the point where there was little actually on top of his head, his face was full of wrinkles and the left side of his face heavily scarred from what was obviously a burn. His eyes at the moment where blissfully closed, making Jiraiya wonder if he even knew he had even entered the room.
"Have a seat Jiraiya," Hanzo offered, still remaining in his meditation like state, "you must be tired after such a long journey."
Following Hanzo's instruction Jiraiya took a seat on the floor a few feet away from Hanzo and waited for the man to say something.
"Say what have you come here to say Jiraiya," Hanzo sighed, opening his eyes for the first time since Jiraiya had entered the room, "I doubt you came by to enjoy the scenery."
"I'm looking for someone," Jiraiya answered after a moment's pause deciding to get straight to the point, "A boy, well man now I suppose."
"And you think I know where you can find him?" Hanzo replied coolly, "I'd hate for you to have had a wasted journey Jiraiya but a lot of people here in Ame have died since your last visit. It's almost certain this boy was one of them."
"It's possible," Jiraiya agreed with a nod of his head, "but unlikely. There where three of them, when I left them they where competent shinobi, capable of beating one of my Kage bushins."
At this exclamation Hanzo's bushy grey eyebrow raised he clearly hadn't expected the man Jiraiya to be looking for to be a shinobi, one of his shinobi.
"He's a shinobi?" Hanzo repeated as if to clarify the point and at seeing Jiraiya's nod he continued, "He's one of my shinobi?"
"I assume so," Jiraiya responded "they where all very gifted Shinobi, I'd imagine they would have risen through your ranks fairly quickly."
A frown appeared on Hanzo's face as he tried to remember any shinobi of his that where worthy of particular note.
"Do you have a name?" Hanzo asked, "I'm afraid most of my shinobi are average, no higher than a Chunnin. Most of my more skilled followers have long since died."
"His name was Nagato." Jiraiya answered.
Hanzo's head snapped to Jiraiya so quickly the toad sennin wondered if the elderly man had done himself an injury. Though on some level he couldn't help but feel a little relieved that Nagato was obviously known by the Salamander summoner.
"We…" Hanzo's breathing had gone ragged, his eyes wide with panic and his right hand was pointing shakily, almost warningly at Jiraiya. "We don't say his name here!"
"What? Why?" Jiraiya exclaimed.
"Tell me Jiraiya," Hanzo growled, his voice suddenly turning ice cold and a dangerous look appearing in his yellow eyes, "why are you searching for my enemy?"
"Enemy?" Jiraiya repeated dumbly, "What do you mean enemy?"
"Who do you think leads the resistance?" Hanzo snapped irritably, "Your former student is trying to overthrow me, and you expect me to just think you turned up by coincidence!" By now the Ame leader's voice had gone from the growl to all out scream of fury.
"Nagato? Are you sure we're talking about the same Nagato?" Jiraiya asked. He couldn't see the little boy that he had trained all those years ago leading a revolution against the man who had given his life to keeping his village, their village, safe. Then again he supposed it had been nearly thirty years.
"Oh there has only and will only ever be one Nagato in Ame," Hanzo grumbled, "his face haunts my dreams… that red hair, pale skin and those eyes. Yes only one Nagato?"
That was it. The proof that he had travelled across three countries for, Nagato was still alive and apparently on the other side of the civil war that Tsunade had told him about. There was no way that there was anybody else in Amegakure called Nagato who possessed the Rinnegan. Now all he had to find out was where this faction's bases was and talk with Nagato…that was of course if Hanzo would let him leave.
Jiraiya wisely chose to stay quiet. Despite the fact that Hanzo knew of Nagato was a great relief to him but from the way Hanzo was speaking and the way his eyes where darting insanely around the room, he thought it'd be best to stay quiet for the moment.
"So your pupil is responsible for trying to kill me," Hanzo muttered, almost to himself more than to Jiraiya, "you trained him…Konoha trained him…"
"Whoa, hold on a minute," Jiraiya exclaimed knowing just where exactly it was that Hanzo was going with his current train of thought, "you can't be suggesting that I'm at fault here! I haven't seen Nagato since he was fourteen years old!"
"Konoha has always wanted me gone!" Hanzo exclaimed standing from his cushion much quicker than Jiraiya would have thought his old body could do, "Scared that another village would challenge the five great nations…what better way to get me gone than by starting a civil war!"
"You're insane!" Jiraiya argued, standing up from his sitting position to match Hanzo's actions and in doing so towering over the elderly man. "Your paranoid, nobody from Konoha has had contact with anybody from Ame since the second great shinobi war due to your policies!"
"Oh I'm paranoid?" Hanzo snapped "He killed my entire family, Jiraiya! My friends, anybody associated with me! He's systematically purging Ame of anything to do with me!"
"Nagato wouldn't do that!" Jiraiya denied adamantly.
"You said it yourself, you haven't seen Nagato for nearly thirty years," Hanzo told Jiraiya, "a lot can change in thirty years, Jiraiya."
"I practically raised him, Hanzo!" Jiraiya growled "I think I know what type of person he was…and would become. I don't believe for one minute he's capable of the things you're saying he is!"
"You think I got this scar by sitting to close to a candle?" Hanzo shouted, "you think my family…my wife, my children, even my grandchildren just dropped dead all by themselves? He's eliminating me…any trace of me from this village. Let me tell you Jiraiya the Nagato you think you know, no longer exists."
"There must be an explanation!" Jiraiya exclaimed, recovering from hearing the news that his former pupil, the boy he had long since thought as the child of the prophecy, may be responsible for the death of innocent children.
Hanzo stayed quiet, averting his gaze similarly to the way Minato used to do when he had been caught doing something he shouldn't.
"I came here for Nagato," Jiraiya informed Hanzo with a hint of steel in his voice, "and I will find him. Even if he is the so called leader of this resistance, I think it's best for your sake if you tell me just where exactly you and Nagato have crossed paths."
Hanzo sighed and wiped his eyes tiredly, "You have to understand. I have given my life to this village; I wasn't going to let some young punk and his band of misfits take it away from me. Many years ago, just after the war, I began to hear whispers about a group starting to form on the outskirts of my village, at first I paid no attention to it but over the years these whispers grew and grew until I could not afford to ignore them."
"Then what?" Jiraiya demanded, "You must have done something to spark this civil war! Yahiko and Nagato wanted nothing more than to protect this village not destroy it! They wouldn't just attack you for any old reason! "
"I made contact with the group," Hanzo continued solumnly "sent envoys to arrange a meeting with them. I had hoped that only the leader would turn up, that I would be able to dispatch him quickly and quietly and without his guidance this group would fall apart. No longer a threat to my rule."
"So what happened?"
"My scouts reported that three of them where coming," Hanzo continued, staring off out of the solitary window of his office and out into the streets of Ame, "two men and a women. I had a small squad of soldiers attack them for a diversion, distracting the two men so that a separate squad could kidnap the girl. The two men wasted no time in arriving at the meeting point, I could tell right then I had made a mistake. They were beyond furious."
"I can't imagine why." Jiraiya replied sarcastically.
"I didn't know what else to do," Hanzo muttered "I couldn't let them take control and these three were obviously the leaders…I had to do something!"
Jiraiya noticed his voice was full or remorse and regret though Jiraiya doubted it was true remorse for whatever actions he had taken against the three who where no doubt Yahiko, Konan and Nagato, but the remorse a condemned man showed to try, in a last desperate attempt, to make piece with God.
"What did you do Hanzo?"
"I held the girl hostage," Hanzo admitted "she screamed for the two of them to flee, pleaded with them but they didn't listen, they would have done anything for her. And they did. I made them fight for her; I promised I'd exchange her life for one of theirs, of course they both offered immediately but that wouldn't satisfy me. I made them fight to the death."
Jiraiya inhaled deeply. Hanzo had forced Nagato and Yahiko to fight to the death in exchange for Konan's life. He had no doubt that both of them would have done anything to keep Konan alive even if it meant one of them would die.
"I can see where this was going. Nagato would have done anything for Konan, even if it meant killing Yahiko and vice versa." Jiraiya informed Hanzo.
"No," Hanzo corrected Jiraiya, "Nagato was pleading with the other to kill him, begging, but Yahiko wouldn't. It was almost touching but once again the love for a woman overrode men's senses. They didn't need her; anybody could tell she was the weaker of the three, if she wasn't she wouldn't have been caught. In the end it didn't matter, Yahiko still died."
"Nagato killed Yahiko?" Jiraiya asked slowly.
"I'm not sure he meant to, the look on his face afterward suggests he hadn't. Yahiko was attacking him over and over again, taunting him…he knew what he was doing, I could see it in his eyes and finally Nagato snapped, more on instinct than anything, but one moment Yahiko is attacking him the next moment he's dead." Hanzo explained in a deadpanned voice to a stunned Jiraiya.
"What happened next?" Jiraiya asked, wanting more details about the lives of his former pupils.
"And then…" Hanzo's voice hitched "then he came back to life!"
The last bit was whispered, like he feared that somebody would overhear his crazy statement.
"Back to life?" Jiraiya asked sceptically, "no jutsu brings back the dead, Hanzo."
"I know that," Hanzo argued tartly, "but he did it. Somehow Nagato brought back Yahiko, I've seen him…fought him, he gave me this fucking scar!" He whispered harshly jabbing a finger to the left side portion of his face.
"But how?" Jiraiya asked "maybe it's some form of advanced puppetry?"
"Cant be," Hanzo said shaking his head "nobody has seen Nagato since that battle. It's like he vanished. Yahiko is the one who leads the group again, leads them into battle with her at his side. He plagues me Jiraiya. I see him everywhere, when I sleep, when I look at the clouds he's everywhere AND HE SHOULDN'T BE!"
A clap of thunder and flash of lightening briefly caught Jiraiya's attention before he turned back again to Hanzo who was staring at a spoke on his blank wall relentlessly.
"Yahiko may be the leader to our eyes," Hanzo told Jiraiya with a hint of distance in his voice, "but Nagato pulls the strings…just from where I don't know."
Another flash of lightening and the door to the office burst open, in the darkness the outline of a figure could be seen in the doorway. It wasn't hard to identify the large, bulky figure in the doorway.
"Hanzo-Sama!" the figure panted, it was one of the guards from downstairs that had searched him. "It's happening; the rebels are making their move!"
For a moment neither Hanzo nor Jiraiya said anything, and the guard just stood in the doorway looking anxiously at his leader. The rain was falling harder now and the lightening getting more and more frequent, in the distance Jiraiya could hear the shouts of shinobi between the explosive thunder.
"Well Jiraiya," Hanzo said casting a sideward glance at him as he leant down to pick up his headgear, "It's time to make a choice, your pupil or the future of Amegakure. Chose wisely because once you make a choice theirs no going back."
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The lake that rested in the centre of Ame was often overlooked now that Amegakure had undergone its rapid urbanisation. With the people of Ame more concerned upon production and buildings than the environment but there was a select few that sought comfort in the lake, taking pride in its enduring nature. Having survived through countless battles, numerous wars it had become a symbol to some who thought the village would once again look as peaceful and tranquil as the lake which had been present since Rikudō Sennin had lived here.
Though most of it's former natural beauty had been long since lost, the once sparkling blue water having been replaced with sickly, slightly green water that was due to the chemicals dumped into it by the various factories of Ame.
Underneath the clouds that where emptying themselves over the hidden village the water on the surface of the lake started to ripple, not due to the rain that was hammering down upon it but due to something else. Something underneath the surface.
The sudden rippling hadn't gone unnoticed and the shinobi that Hanzo had faithfully placed on guard duty, all turned away from their posts to watch as out of the water a small army of shinobi rose. Seemingly completely unconcerned with the water that was now dripping off of them, causing there matching cloaks to cling to their bodies.
At the front of the group stood a small band of shinobi who where quite clearly different to the others. Not just in appearance but in aura, there multiple piercings and violet shaded eyes all reflective in the moonlight as were there scratched hitai-ite but it was the way that the other shinobi stood behind them as if following the unspoken orders given by the forefront group.
"And so the battle begins." A tall, red haired man with multiple facial piercings muttered as he sat upon the protruding tongue of the largest statue in Amegakure. His ringed purple eyes watching the group of Hanzo's loyal supporters starting to gather at the shoreline as his own group stood, waiting for orders on the lakes surface. A smirk appearing on his pieced lips, as he stood on the tip of the tongue, giving his fingers a flex before hopping from his perch effortlessly as he hurtled down towards the streets. The battle for Amegakure had begun.