Interlude 5 - Storytelling

I: Names, part I - Yusei

After another grueling team-training session with Shikaku-sensei, Anko and I grab some lunch. Hideo's invited, of course, but he's got some task to take care of for his other teacher today.

We go to the dango stand, just like the last eight times it's been Anko's turn to choose. There's something different about this outing, though- it's the first time I've spent any time alone with the sole female member of my new team.

Let me amend that statement; I should describe her with an adjective more apropos to the nature of our conversation. It's the first time I've spent any time with the only other clanless orphan on my team.

I never defined myself by that term, not before now. I have the memory of growing up with parents, nine-eighths of a lifetime ago, but it's so hard to identify with that information in my brain. There's something about Anko and our shared experiences, though, that forces me to confront that problem.

"I want to make a name for myself, you know?" She says it with a smile, as though she's not baring her soul to me. "Like, a real name that I can pass to my family. Something that could one day be a full clan. Something that could be proof that I mattered."

She goes on, "Not some title, not some epithet- Maniac Anko, that's just gross. Anko of the Seven Serpents? Prettier, but… it's not the right thing."

"What would you call yourself?" I ask, legitimately curious. I've never thought about naming myself. I remember having a surname once, in that other life, but it's distant now. Out of reach. That name isn't mine. Still, I haven't felt the need to have a new one.

"I dunno. Something awesome." She considers the dango in her hand, almost lovingly. "Maybe Mitarashi. Yeah, Mitarashi Anko. That's got a nice ring to it."

"Couldn't you get a family name by marrying into a clan?" It would be a lot easier than chartering a new clan, at least in this village. Konoha was founded on clans, and takes her old families (and their associated privileges) very seriously.

Anko chews her dango contemplatively. "But that name wouldn't be mine."

II: Legends - Orochimaru

"You're out of your mind, sensei." I'm sure if I can resolve the words he's just said with my image of the man, developed over so many years, as a strong and rational leader. "If you think that's a good idea, perhaps you're getting too old for your hat."

Sarutobi-sensei only frowns at me. "I didn't bring you here to insult me, Orochimaru." He sighs a long, heavy sigh. "Besides... I have one last war in me. It's what we need, I assure you."

"With who?" I won't deny that we need a good conflict right now, it's been about fifteen years of relative peace and it's crushing the village's economy. Given the success of the Second Shinobi World War, solving the similar recession in the wake of the First War, it makes sense that the Sandaime would look towards a prolonged conflict as a solution.

But we stand in a very different place than we did twenty years ago, when Sarutobi engineered that conflict that consumed the ninja world. Konoha had everything going for her then; we were the largest village, we had the most S-rank shinobi, we had the rising stars with the potential to become household names. The God of Shinobi, The White Fang, Dai the Crusher, even us, the legendary Sannin- we all paid for our epithets with the blood shed in those horrible five years. The enemy's blood spilled by our hands, yes, but also the blood of our students and our friends, our families and our lovers.

It was costly enough, but we came out on top in the end. Alas, it seems to have bought us only fifteen years.

As I run through the numbers in my head, I struggle to find a way to make things add up in a way that I can use to justify another war. I'm not sure we have the resources for anything big enough to matter.

But maybe something small will still help, hence my question. Kiri's in a rough place, the latest intel suggests the current Nidaime Mizukage's on his last legs and four of the seven swords are held by A-ranked or weaker shinobi. Suna might be struggling soon enough as well, if the drought occurs as my studies into weather forecasting have predicted.

I suspect our ability to win a war hinges entirely on picking an appropriate target.

"Take a look for yourself." Sarutobi-sensei slides a light green folder, bulging with documents, across his desk. "As you'll see, I'm not taking this matter lightly. This isn't a discussion in the abstract; the cogs have already begun to turn."

I begin to leaf through the pages, idly at first, but as I realize what this folder contains I'm forced to consider each document with the utmost of care. It's not the detailed analysis on the state of some single village or country that I had expected, not at all. It begins that way, though, and then it extends to every country in the Elemental Nations. The analyses are followed by a complicated ladder of skirmishes between minor nations, plans for political and economic dealings, specific black-ops missions to be undertaken on a particular timetable (players to be assassinated, elections to be rigged, farms to be torched)- what I'm reading is a recipe for a truly universal war.

And a plan for Konoha to come out on top, penned by our very own grandmaster.

Too bad Shikaku's wrong.

"This will never work," I inform sensei, who's sat quietly- smoking his pipe- and watched me read for the last twenty minutes. "Your plans rely on Jiraiya and Tsunade returning to fight in your war. If you don't have all three Sannin leading your charge, you can't expect Ame or Kumo to follow us into battle."

He cuts me off, saying harshly, "Jiraiya will come when I call him." He's not wrong, not about that at least. As much as he's chosen to shirk his responsibilities of late, Jiraiya's always known where his loyalties lie. Even though he's barely set foot in the village in the last ten years, Jiraiya still manages to fulfill his duties as a jounin of Konoha. His apprentice is proof enough that he takes his duties seriously, as is his wide-spanning spy network. But can we count on him to come home? That question is still up in the air- even when Jiraiya took on Minato as his sole student, he took the boy on a training journey rather than settling down within the walls of the Leaf- and it's anyone's guess.

Tsunade, on the other hand… My remaining lifespan wouldn't be enough time for me to list the reasons Tsunade would never return to fight even one battle in Sarutobi-sensei's name. I move instead to my other criticisms of the sensei's grand machination. "And I don't understand why you think Suna would form an alliance with us under any circumstance, after how we treated them in the Second War."

The face he makes in response is one of my least favorite expressions (when I see it on other people, at least): the superior smirk of one who possesses some secret knowledge. "You'll find that under Supplementary Materials, section nineteen."

"Supplementary Materials?" No such thing was included in what I read.

"Ah, my mistake." Sensei unlocks a drawer in his desk, withdrawing a second folder as stuffed as the first. "In some ways, this one is far more critical than the first."

I flip through it quickly, catching passing glimpses of the various section titles as I look for the the nineteenth. A few stand out: Psychological Analysis of S2, S1, A3, A2, A1-rank Konoha Jounin; Political Factions in Earth Country Military following the Battle of Rider Field; On the Manipulation of Grain Prices; Complete History of Conflict between Marsh Country and Demon Country; Game Theory in the Context of Shinobi Alliances. Sarutobi really put his team of experts to work producing this. I locate the recommended section, making a note to return to some of the more interesting topics that I'd skipped.

It's titled, amusingly enough, Deconstructing a History of Enmity: Konoha/Suna relations for the Modern Era. As I begin to read it, I recognize the handwriting (and the dry, always sarcastic, overanalytical tone) immediately- gods know I've seen it enough on the weirder requests sent to my division.

Following the tedious discussion of Suna's various grievances against the Leaf, the author outlines their twelve point plan to mend our bridges. It begins with the relocation of a middle-to-upper class merchant family from the Land of Fire to Wind country. This sets the stage for our future actions, which rely on the Wind Daimyo's reactions to the sudden onset of scarcity- declining food stockpiles, receding rivers, a decrease in average rainfall by ten-to-fifteen centimeters each year. (I follow the footnote here, which only refers me to some notes on differential geography and yearly climate data. Somehow tactical- no, that child- has managed to outperform one of my own personal projects. His mathematical model has apparently predicted the same drought I've anticipated, but somehow he's obtained enough precision to have the confidence to base major political decisions on it. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm going to have to steal this child. He's wasted outside of Scientific. Teaching a mind like his to play such games with human life- that's a good way to watch the world burn.) Here the recipe branches, providing different prescriptions for the different rational choices the Daimyo could make. Summarized, they more-or-less boil down to the following idea: build a culture of goodwill towards Fire Country and Konoha by feeding the masses at subsidized prices. From there, we begin to jointly host (read: pay for) the next annual chuunin exams, at which a Konoha genin will graciously surrender to a Suna genin in the finals, thereby cementing the goodwill between nations for years to come.

There are a few points after that, but, they're all minor notes on the types of treaties and agreements that will be necessary to translate this goodwill into meaningful military support during what's sure to be the Third Shinobi World War.

It's heady stuff.

"You said the plan has already begun to be implemented? Where are we on this?"

"On the Suna plans? We've already opened negotiations on the subject of the joint chuunin exams."

"So this is going to happen, then?" I don't like it much, now that I know this is something more than an intellectual exercise. War is hell, as every sane man who's lived through it knows.

"Yes," replies sensei. "It is, after all, exactly what we need."

"And what happens when Tsunade refuses to heed your call?"

"I do have plans for that eventuality as well. You see, Inoichi and Shikaku expressed a very similar doubt in her."

Of course they did, they're smart, pragmatic men. Shikaku's not the man to pin all his hopes on reckless optimism, and if I know anything about Inoichi at all, there's an entire chapter in that Psychological Analysis section devoted to convincing the Sandaime that neither Jiraiya nor Tsunade should be considered reliable here and now.

But sensei goes on, "Orochimaru, you think you know so much, but you still have much to learn about people. Our legends will come home. New legends will be born. This war will be… perfect. Konoha will re-assert herself as the dominant power in this world, and a beautiful future will follow."

I continue the sentence in my head, not willing to give it voice. This war will be horrible, this war will destroy us. Not as a nation, not as a power, but as people.

How can he say that such a horrible thing will give life to something beautiful? I'll give Sarutobi the credit he's due- the bloodbath to come is exactly what Konoha requires to prosper- but I draw the line at calling it beautiful.

But I haven't been his student for thirty years without learning the way this man thinks.

That which I would call perfect can never truly be beautiful, not to him. Beauty, he would say, comes from the flaws, the cracks, the blemishes. So Sarutobi-sensei takes an object of relative perfection and twists its, prods it, perverts it until a small crack is made in its surface. Through suffering, strength; through strength, perseverance; through perseverance, beauty.

It disgusts me.

But that's never enough for you, is it, sensei? So you push it harder and harder, you watch that crack grow. You laud and praise the continued survival under these conditions, you talk about how the beauty only increases.

The prettiest of flowers, you say, bloom only after the harshest winters. So you push and push and now you've pushed too hard. We buckle under the pressure, and you say we were never truly beautiful anyways. You move on to the next one.

That's what you do to us. You say I don't understand people, sensei, but I understand what you do to us.

We're all on that road now, even those of us who don't know it yet.

Sometimes, sensei, the object doesn't buckle. It stays strong, it struggles to keep its integrity, but by god it stays strong. The crack grows, but we don't give, we don't yield. Oh, you say, how beautiful. How superior, this one is, compared to the that buckled under the strain. But sensei, everything has its breaking point.

Eventually the crack spawns new cracks, small hairline cracks that spiderweb across our surfaces. Small hairline cracks that are the only indication that deep within, something is fundamentally broken. Eventually, it shatters completely, and you're left holding nothing.

What then?

You praise the beauty it once held, you tell others about its virtue and successes. You sing songs of its strength, and tell those you see as weak to model themselves in its image.

You're left with just a legend, sensei.

But a legend is just words, it's just a story. It can't fight in your wars, it can't feed your children.

It gives you the memory of what you lost, but a legend is no replacement for the original.

You can have your legends, Sarutobi-sensei, but before that, you had students.

Before the Legendary Three, you had Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru. Do you even remember them?

III: Names, part II - Yusei

It's funny how little thought I've given to such a defining thing. After all, that's the point of a name, isn't it? To define you.

I don't really know what the correct way to write my name. I'd never seen it written down before the first time I wrote it myself. Shikaku-sensei asked me one day, when he took me out of the orphanage. He was filling out the entrance forms for the academy, and obviously he needed by name.

I didn't know how to read or write the local language back then; I hadn't the opportunity to teach myself either of those skills at that time. Sensei taught me in about twenty minutes, and then he listed off the different ways of writing my name.

Yusei.

There were so many options, I didn't know how to choose one.

I asked him why he wrote his own name the way he does, but he only told me his father chose it. He mentioned the Nara traditions, their connection to their deer, and how that informed his father's choice. It didn't help me very much.

Hell, I don't even know who picked out my name. Was it my parents, or was it the matron at the orphanage. Did they find me as some unnamed child, abandoned somewhere? Or was I left on the doorstep, with a tidy note informing the matron who I was.

I wish I knew.

If the matron chose my name, it's probably meant to be written as 'help.' Someone probably found some scrawny-ass baby in a basket somewhere and decided it would need some help.

Or maybe someone said, "This child, he's going to grow up into a person that will help others." They'd have named me prescriptively, after a virtue I should embody.

That's not the story I want my name to tell, though. And if that's a choice I get to make, well, I'll tell my own fucking story.

I like to think that my mother named me.

And I like to think she'd have written Yusei as 'planetary.'

Because I'm actually out of this goddamned world.

Notes:

Something lighthearted at the end, because rereading Orochimaru's rant (monologue? introspection?) made me sad. A bunch of what I've written recently is a bit sad, but I think that's alright because then it's out there instead of just inside me.

The fun thing about multiple perspectives is that people see themselves differently than others do. Sarutobi sees himself as a kindly old grandfather who has to make hard decisions for the good of his people. Orochimaru sees him as a ruthless warhawk who uses people until they break. Etc. You've probably already seen some of me trying this kind of thing from the differences in how Shikaku and Yusei talk about to each other depending on who's narrating.

I'm working on an Anko chapter next. Writing from Anko's POV freaks me out a bit, because it's so far from my natural voice that it's weird to read aloud. I've been doing a little bit of work with different voices, though, in my RWBY oneshot series. So far I've done some characters that I can still identify with, a bit, but I've gone for a different approach towards writing them. Stark White, for example, is very stream of consciousness-y (don't worry though, I'm not going to suddenly switch to second-person narration in Iome). My proper voice, I think, is somewhere between Orochimaru, Yusei, Shikaku, and the way I wrote Summer. Closest to Yusei, of course, but he's still got some growing up to do.

Also, I don't actually know any Japanese. I chose Yusei's name's meaning based on my own actual name. Don't be mad if my understanding of how Japanese names work is way off-base. Thanks in advance.

And thanks for continuing to read and review I opened my eyes. It continues to surprise me when people tell me they like my writing. Thanks.