We take a break from geopolitics and bouncing through trees to bring you… Gladiator?
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- Vainglory -
13: A Conqueror's Coliseum
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"Though you might conquer in battle
A thousand times a thousand men,
You're the greatest battle-winner
If you conquer just one - yourself."
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The Dhammapada
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There are some stories that are told, again, and again, and again. They're echoed in ragged whispers, to wide-eyed children. Audiences never tired of them. The underdog, the godsend, the late conqueror, the unexpected enigma turned up to deliver miracles. This was one.
A single pin could drop in the arena.
Three hundred pairs of eyes. Hushed mouths, set teeth. Blood pulsing. Checking.
Checking.
A pin could be heard, still.
Checking with bated breath.
The victory was unlike any this arena had seen, in the past.
They were ready—to laud him, murder him, scream his name, beg for mercy, worship his speed, tremble at his power, even assassinate him for the danger he now so clearly posed.
A pause.
Checking, still.
The man's hand went up, its defiant shadow falling six ways against the blazing fiery torches.
Golden hair tousled. Cerulean eyes flashing.
And the roar.
The crowd's roar was deafening—
—Shaking the very foundations of the earth.
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Some facts about Amegakure were little more than fiction, but a probing hand could discern some truths.
One.
Whereas other nations' leaders were termed "shadows", Ame's leader Hanzo was simply never seen. If he struck deals, and forged alliances, the man, like his eponymous amphibian, was too slippery to pin down.
Yet, vast sums of foreign money flowed into Amegakure, as if it was the gutter of the world. The village, more toxic metal outcroppings than a village, per se, was isolationist in word, active in practice. Assassinations. Poisons. Jobs for the dregs of other societies, straight to this gutter.
Two.
As the village hidden by rain, it was the least geographically fortified of all of the shinobi villages. It was the newest—most of its government buildings made of industrialized nuts and bolts fastened over sheets of weather-proofed iron. Rumor was that the village was constantly under surveillance, yet in practice, anyone traveling through saw it as a lawless territory. Individual strength and cunning dominated. It was more than a de facto situation. Laissez-faire governance was a way of life, a moral principle which beheld that unreprimanded violence was true success.
Despite Ame's flood plains and historically embittered populace, the people built up. Their creations were towering needle-like structures that thrust into perpetually gray skies—almost like a symbol of defiance.
Three.
Other nations saw the Ame people build up, and forgot that the populace had, a long time ago, first built down.
It was down below the flood plains where this hidden shinobi village cemented its foundation and trained its best commodities—killers for hire.
Four.
Anyone could be a killer, and thus a shinobi, in Amegakure.
It was a meritocratic system purer than any other nation's. It did not matter what past life you led, what brought you to the overcast city. You were a sinner, and you could build a life here, even flourish, if you could survive the Coliseum.
Five.
That's what locals called it—the Sinner's Coliseum.
The fighting arena was carved deep into the trenches of Amegakure, remodeled and adapted from a cavernous pit dug from an age long past, where natives of eroded, open flood plains had to hide during the age of clan wars.
There was no rain, no water in the Coliseum, only fire. Hot torches—blazing in red and yellows—lit the den. They said the bridge of stairs from the city's tallest spire leading down to the Coliseum floor counted ten thousand steps, in pitch dark. Rumor had it that the only refreshment to thirsty audience members was the blood of past battles' losers. Nobody on the outside knew every secret of the inside, merely filed into their seats to watch and wonder, and possibly commission an assassin from the contestants. Those contestants who registered, who went through the rounds, if they lived, lived only to hide every secret behind their success from others.
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[Six hours prior]
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Noya was polishing his sword.
He'd found a threaded scrap of cloth lying in the dungeon-like hallway. There was a suspicious red tinge to the thin fabric, but it was a passable rag to get at the dirty edges of his blade. Unfortunately, the metal remained stubbornly off-color, gleaming dully in the dim lighting of torch fire.
He sighed.
People just couldn't buy a good sword with honest work, anymore. Noya had spent the last two years scavenging old battlegrounds for weapons, and sold them on the booming black market. Of the equipment he'd amassed, he picked the best one for himself, unable to give away this fine piece of craftsmanship.
Why? Well, he was a young man, with his life ahead of him! He still dreamed, sometimes, of being famous. Infamous. A shinobi was measured on strength and greatness, Noya knew, not on a defunct scale of hero or villain.
But mostly, he just wanted to eat.
Nothing glamorous.
But still significant.
He had been an orphan scavenging for food as long as he could remember. The young man knew he'd had a family, once, but they'd died at the hands of a standard group of outlaws that consistently—season after season—came to Rain Country to pillage. After that ordeal, he was taken in by a criminal gang, but that outfit had been dismantled by Hanzo's forces when their dealings started escalating above petty theft. That had placed Noya in his current situation, operating a solo scavenging 'business'.
And now, several months of the Flash War had taken their toll. Fewer outfitted soldiers came through to wage large battles in Amegakure. The small nation's border was no longer in dispute under Hanzo, because people were more interested in carving pieces out of large nations—say, Konoha. Noya supposed that he should be grateful Ame citizens weren't in the thick of the war, but honestly, it just made his living hard, without fresh supplies.
The other issue was the competition. Stronger, faster, nastier sorts of guys came straggling into this country, carrying with them the spoils of war from the active battlefields. Some even came with Kumogakure heavy artillery, which, dismantled and re-tinkered, sold for many pretty pennies more than the maces and swords Noya dealt in.
These developments made him wistful for community life. It was easier to survive as a gang. He supposed he should hate Hanzo for dismantling his previous life, but he didn't.
What he really wanted to do was to impress the guy.
The Amegakure leader was an enigma, but Noya and his rebellious gang friends had seen first hand how powerful Hanzo's soldiers were, in comparison to themselves. He wanted to be a part of that group. Famous or infamous: it didn't matter. He wanted to be strong, because strength led to stability, and a roof over the head, food to eat.
"What a night to die, eh, pipsqueak?"
Noya shuffled back from the 300-pound bulk of muscle in front of him, palming his sword carefully.
"Ah," he remarked when he finally looked up. "Good to see you here, Bato."
Bato was born to instill fear into small children. The man was so tall that living in normal buildings had put a perpetual crick in his spine, and Noya was grateful to have someone this on his side, back in the day.
"Good to know not all of the old gang is dead." Bato grinned, all brutish looks and menacing atmosphere. "What's your slot number?"
"Fifteen."
The gruff face scrunched. "They rang that match already. So, you won against Thirteen?"
The man's confusion was not really a testament against Noya's ability… well, not too much. Noya was spotless, a bit sweaty from the heat down here, perhaps, but completely unscathed. Nothing intimated that he'd just engaged in a battle to the death.
"No, my guy didn't show. So I'm automatically onto the next round."
"Lucky," Bato said, eyeing the occasional passing of other contestants in the prep "chamber". The chamber was actually a long, narrow-ish hallway that extended to the actual Coliseum arena itself. It was used only for battlers, and had only old, dilapidated benches placed along one edge. For quite a few of the contestants, the benches probably wouldn't even carry their weight.
"Who are you up against, and when?"
"Number Thirty, some chick. I'm on next, after someone dies. Shouldn't take long, from what I saw earlier."
There was not an ethical bone in Noya's body, but he wondered if spying was really a good idea. Looking at the other contestants was supposedly against the rules, but maybe Hanzo kept tabs on who won without the advantage of foresight? On the other hand, Noya lived by the principle: no enforcement translated to no law.
"Easy win for you, then."
"Nah, remember that this tourney is the semi-annual one." Bato scratched his bald, scarred head. "Hanzo the Salamander is supposed to actually show up to tonight's matches, so you know the entries have multiplied and filled up with some deadlier ones."
"With lots of duds," Noya added. "Who think the money's better when it's not just a gambling night."
"No question 'bout it. Hanzo picking you up is good money. Much better than gambling money. Money's why you're here this time, ain't it?"
Noya hummed noncommittally, turning back to polishing his sword. He waved Bato off down the corridor when jeers, shouts, and screams echoed down the hall, signaling a loss or a death. A death, more likely, judging by the volume of the crowd's approval.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then twenty.
How curious. Usually, these battles ranged from three to fifteen minutes, depending on the contestants' fighting styles. Smaller percentages of battles fell to either of the extremes. Usually, twenty minutes or more meant that someone had failed to abide by the kill rule, since it took disabling your opponent three different times to win without a death. No ruffian who entered himself into this event had the luxury of time or ego to think they could easily outplay their opponent three times.
Finally, a storm of shouts erupted in the hall. Noya heard frustrated screams of "just kill him" echoing from the spectators in the arena.
Well, I guess Bato's not dead, he deducted. He knew better than to think Bato would spare a girl.
"Did you see? Crazy, right?"
Noya turned his ear to eavesdrop. Several other contestants had just returned from spying on future opponents. This tournament… no class. If Noya wasn't sure he would chicken out if he saw something particularly gruesome, he'd have spied himself.
"Fuck, I'd rip that kunoichi's arms off if she tried to blast me with those freaky chains."
"That guy was just underestimating his opponent. I'd never let a girl do that to me."
Intriguing. Noya knew that—despite his brawn—Bato had brains. Also, Bato's words earlier didn't make it seem like he disregarded the girl, but was perhaps even more wary due to her gender.
He kept musing to himself as the rest of the first round matches finished. Now and then, he wondered where they let the not-dead losers go afterward. Nowhere good, probably.
As he was contemplating how to wrestle himself into the top ten (where losers were not killed, but offered a spot in the permanent slot to fuel the gambling ring's earnings), a shinobi man wearing a respirator mask came into the hall, leading thirty or so of the other (much grimier than Noya) first-round winners.
The shinobi cleared his throat, which was a tinny, grating sound from behind the mask. "Here are your match-ups for Round Two. Do something more impressive than not die, and the Great Hanzo the Salamander will surely take notice."
A voice from the crowd of winners scoffed, "How great can he be if he's a salamander?".
It sounded female. Noya stood from his bench, trying to crane his neck inconspicuously to find the source.
Maybe she was Contestant Thirty.
It was pretty easy. She was the only female there, which was unsurprising, as these things were heavily skewed gender-wise. The other in-your-face feature, though, was her bright red hair. The fine-spun firey locks seemed to glow in the torch light.
Not her, Noya wished fervently as the announcer read off the pairings. He wasn't sure he could take on someone who'd spared Bato three times. Killed Bato, maybe. But this girl clearly either had some crazy skill (and confidence) or some crazy dumb luck. Or both.
In the end, he wasn't matched against her, but it wasn't a good result, either.
It was some form of karma, to even out his good fortune at battling a no-show the first round. His second-round was against a team of two.
Here's the thing about the Coliseum team entrants. Teams could either be great or awful, and it was correlated to the number. Usually duos did quite well.
Team entries of up to three people were allowed, as long as there was some synchronized element to the set. Since battlers were encouraged to showcase their strongest points, and some chose summons, it seemed like a small team unit of people was also fair play. Three-person teams were usually the weakest, ironically. It was hard to get a bunch of louts (scum of the earth, really, came to the Coliseum) to work together unless they knew they were too weak alone. Two-man teams, though, were generally strong, but rare. Sometimes it was brothers. Sometimes lovers.
And thus, Noya walked into the arena for the first time with a growing sense of trepidation.
He glanced around in awe, blinking at the six crackling torches, each towering from a pillar that jutted from the perimeter spectator row. The arena which he'd heard about in rumors was huge. This was not quite that big, but still impressive. Massive white granite blocks stacked up roughly around a solid dirt battle floor, which stretched perhaps just around fifty feet in either direction. However, the enormity of it was stressed by the hundreds of eyes that stared at him from individual, elevated rows. They were all waiting for his victory or his death.
Glancing beside him, he noted the grim calm of his two male opponents. One had a scarred arm, and the other sported crazy teeth.
Well, then, Arm-Scar and Crazy-Teeth. Hello.
They looked unimpressed by the crowd's hollering, as if channeling their stoic samurai face. Well, that didn't mean they would begrudge the audience's wishes for Noya's blood.
Nothing regarding their fighting style could be determined beyond their physical descriptions. However, since each contestant was allowed a maximum of three weapons, they had the advantage of a total of six potential weapons to Noya's three.
A hush fell over the arena as the two sides positioned each other on opposite ends of the field, waiting for the brass gong in the apex of the stadium to sound.
Noya wasn't scared, but he wasn't stupid, either. Fighters in the stadium displayed a range of aptitude for ninja arts. Most were not ninja, in the sense that they had never been trained in chakra control or ninjutsu. A few (often rogues from other hidden villages) were proficient genjutsu users, or even had bloodline limits.
To start, his opponents didn't perform any hand seals, merely charged at him from opposite sides.
He took a breath and jumped, using self-taught chakra control to enhance his upward trajectory. They launched into the air after him, in agile leaps rivaling his own.
Their weapons came out. Two sickles attached to steel chains sped through the air, slicing with audible woosh sounds.
Noya could not dodge mid-jump, so he hurriedly parried the chains with his sword, his other hand reaching into his pocket. He crashed his second 'weapon', a smoke ball, into his sword, releasing opaque but harmless gas into the arena. Poison gases were not allowed, given poor ventilation below ground.
His opponents were unrelenting, falling to the ground but tossing their chains up again. However, chain sickle users had a huge blind spot, which Noya knew how to exploit from years fighting guerrilla-style with numerous kinds of weaponry. So, still shrouded by smoke, Noya unwound one of the chains, and employed the one jutsu his dead mother had taught him to aid him escaping with his life. And, despite his weedy frame and small stature, it had always served him well.
The results were excellent.
As the smoke began to dissapate, Arm-Scar's sickle wound around a desperate-looking Noya. His comrade pushed a blade into Noya's side. When the smoke cleared, so did the multiple-body henge.
Crazy-Teeth, in the place of Noya, was dead.
The crowd rumbled their approval. Noya looked smugly at the work his transformation secret had accomplished. He wasn't called Bag of Tricks by his old gang just for the big burlap sack he always brought scavenging.
One down.
Unfortunately, the 'one to go' looked livid. Arm-Scar's sickle lashed out again, and while Noya was able to dodge the blade, he felt the chain lock around his torso, clamping his arms down at his sides. Strangely, the chain actually constricted, forcing the air from his lungs.
The rest happened in a swift blur. Noya wished he could recount the tale later with a much more pizzazz, but somehow, all he saw was a flash of yellow and then his opponent crumple.
A split second later, Noya's face met the dirt, too.
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The sound of very loud shouting and clamoring woke him. There were boos and cries of outrage from the audience. Noya blinked once, blearily, as he felt the loosened chains around him being unraveled. He stayed very still. Tasting perhaps centuries old dirt against his lips wasn't great, but neither was rolling around and possibly coming face to face with whatever the heck had gotten the crowd screaming with unmatched fervor.
Out of the corner of his eye, Noya peeked as the scene unfolded.
A man in a respirator who had been spectating from the sides—probably a referee, Noya thought—climbed into the dirt arena, and was valiantly trying to quiet the crowd. He met with little success.
The other standing figure was someone Noya didn't recognize.
Noya tried to stay very still, play dead, as he assessed this new blond stranger, who was currently speaking with the referee.
"Sorry I'm late," the new arrival said.
Shit, he was no older than Noya himself! And skilled, Noya thought, not without a touch of envy.
Respirator Referee said something under his breath, which he didn't catch given the noise of the audience. The were on their feet and roaring foul play. Finally, the referee made a hand motion that he was going to take off his mask. Everyone went silent after that.
"You are?" the referee asked in a rasping, filtered voice.
"Contestant Thirteen."
"You missed your number, so you're disqualified," was the deadpan answer.
The blond turned around, and pointed at the prone bodies of Crazy-Teeth and Arm-Scar. Noya went very still again, lying prone against the ground, as the man pointed at him too.
"I think I was supposed to go against that guy in the first round. So since I've beaten both him and the guy that almost killed him, I get to move on, right?"
Noya resented the wording, but did not fail to see the logic. Still, he was the one who'd done half the work, technically. Who the hell was Blondie to come strolling in claiming full credit?
"You didn't kill them."
"Oh," said the stranger. "I thought disabling was enough."
"Three times, to count."
"That'd take too long. I'd have to wait for them to regain consciousness."
There was an unimpressed tone in the blond man's voice. Crazy confidence, thought Noya. Enough confidence to talk about to a guy that silenced the stadium just by threatening to take off a mask.
"Kill, then," commanded the referee. "I'll enter you in the next round if they're dead."
The blond paused. "Okay," he agreed. "If they're all criminals."
This was Noya's cue.
He stood up, wobbling from lingering dizziness.
"I object," he said cheerily. "I'm not a criminal. Just an honest man, living in a cruel world." He garnished his bald-faced lie with a smile and a jaunty wave at the confused audience members. Their buzzing comments rang around the echo chamber of the Coliseum.
The Blond Wonder (who, on top of everything, also had a good-looking mug, Noya saw, annoyed) looked surprised.
"You can stand!"
"Of course I can stand, so don't count me out, yet," Noya said, regretting his words immediately.
He wasn't quite sure what his next move would be if Blond Wonder declared a fight to the death right here and now. Just because he was willing to risk his life didn't mean he was willing to walk happily to his demise.
"Huh," the man said in reply, and—
—in the next instant, Noya felt steel kissing his throat.
S-Shit.
Noya didn't even recall blinking.
"H-how did you…" the referee's eyes were wide, as if he were the one against the kunai.
"That's two, right?" the blond man said cheerfully.
The kunai's pressure eased against Noya's skin. In the next instant, the weapon was flung to the far end of the stadium. The blond man stepped—
—and suddenly, he was at the far end of the arena.
"Ready, Mr. Honest-Man?" the man shouted over at them.
The referee didn't even have time to comment. The kunai was again pressed against Noya, this time against his heart.
"And that's three," the stranger said.
Only Noya heard him.
The Coliseum audience had exploded into a shocked frenzy.
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It turned out that the tournament officials didn't kill a match's loser, if they thought you were sort of impressive.
The mark of impressiveness wasn't anything directly related to combat strength or deadliness—actually, it was an affinity to chakra manipulation.
"You're here, too?" Noya remarked. "Now you're the lucky one."
"I disagree." Bato grumbled, his massive hulk crouched in the corner. "I'd rather die than be ashamed in front of the best patrons in the land."
"Cheer up. You'll get your vengeance one day," Noya said pragmatically.
He sat down on the single bench in the small cell. This stone-walled cell the losers were put in was a bit dank, but overall kind of nice. There was a small window, where they had a fairly good view of the battle arena, even if they could only see everyone's feet. Noya felt content being entertained by the fighters outside, knowing that he'd secured what he'd come to do, without having to risk his neck several more times. This was, in a sense, the optimal outcome.
"If we stay alive, Ol' Hanzo might even teach us some ninjutsu," Noya piped. "You said your mom's side of the family were all ninja, yeah?"
"Lousy ones," said Bato. "Your chakra manipulation tricks were better than anything my grandmother taught me, before she got axed."
"Hmm."
Thinking about axes, Noya fingered the sword they'd let him keep as he left the arena in (relative) disgrace. He hadn't had the chance to show off this sword's real trick, which was the surprise he'd been saving for getting into the final ten.
No chance of that now.
He sighed, all melodrama. "I wonder what weapons our vanquishers brought."
Bato frowned. "Don't call them that. That girl was some sort of witch, I swear. She didn't even have any weapons, just this weird glowing chakra that morphed into solid chains."
Noya was quite glad he'd taught Bato what he knew about chakra back when they were stealing stuff together, if just for the fact that he got a more accurate assessment of the tournament's advancers. "That's insane confidence. And I thought my guy was bad. That man only brought some freaking kunai to use!"
Come to think of it, Blondie seemed to perform witch-y magic, too. What was that weird teleportation jutsu? It seemed familiar, somehow, but Noya had never encountered anyone with a similar technique. Maybe he'd read about it?
The rest of the tournament unfolded from their small square cell window. Noya watched with fascination as the crowds roared whenever Blondie's feet would disappear and reappear in a different position altogether.
Yep. Weird. Potentially black magic.
The other strange thing was that Blondie never seemed to kill anyone, just disable them. Judging from the placement of the feet, he knocked them out in the back of the neck, the same way he'd done to Noya and his opponents. However, all the others, unlike Noya, never woke up, and so the matches were declared in Blondie's favor with utmost efficiency.
Matches finished in three to fifteen minutes, generally. Usually, the fastest matches ended in three minutes.
The extreme could be pushed to two minutes.
No one had heard of two seconds.
So, with KO after KO, but no deaths, Blondie advanced to the semi-finals. Some of his 'vanquished' were promising fighters, it seemed, though there was no chance for them to prove their mettle. A few more losing contestants had entered the cell, and it was a grumbling but happy-to-be-alive group that pressed to the small window, watching fancy footwork and trying to guess at the action unfolding back in the arena.
"I'm glad Red is moving on," Bato grumbled. "At least it won't look like I lost to some pansy-assed girl."
"Nah," a new addition to the room, Satoru, said. "She's pretty much a pansy. She's sparing all her opponents."
"Well, at least most of those losers are being killed by the tournament officials, unlike that Thirteen's opponents," a grizzly older man named Miyamoto growled. "This cell's getting crowded."
Noya silently agreed, jostling to see out the window against the truly enormous and awful-smelling hair of another contestant, who had performed a tricky piece of fire jutsu.
Time progressed. None of Contestant Thirteen's other opponents got to show their mettle, either. The cell's guests was heavily skewed in favor of those who'd simply been unable to retaliate against Blondie.
Finally, there were only two rounds left.
By this time, the crowd was presumably on their feet, if the shuffling, shouting mass of sandals, boots, and other more interesting footwear were any indication. It was always easy to tell when Blondie was in a match. There was a deathly hush that followed the screaming, and then, after two seconds, more screaming, louder than ever.
For some reason, the shouts were different this time. There was a lot of clapping, and whistling.
"Aw shit, I can't see" said Miyamoto, who had weak eyes and was pressed against the window like the rest of them. He clapped his hands into seals, and pressed against the stone wall.
Pieces of wall above and below the window fell away, reshaping the visibility from the cell. The losing occupants could now see fully what was going on in battle, and see the reactions of the audience, who were indeed on their feet, shouting themselves hoarse.
What he saw made Noya blush, just a little.
Not that he was a kid, mind you.
You would blush, too, if you saw two contestants you had previously admired for their professional bad-ass-ness, behaving like… well, like children—tumbling the length of the arena, pinning one another down in turns, and both flushed red from exertion.
"Wow," said Satoru, except he stretched it out like "wooooow", suggestively. "I'll bet there's history. Five hundred ryo."
"You don't have five hundred ryo," Bato said, scowling at the scene in the arena. "That's why we're here."
"I will when Hanzo hires me, shortly," Satoru snapped. Then, his attention was stolen back to the 'fight'.
"O-ouch," Noya commented sympathetically, when a particularly hard and unrefined kick hit Blondie close to the groin. He didn't like the dude, but no man deserved that from a red-haired demon.
Red's strange glowing chakra chains caught all incoming kunai from the back, and it seemed weird, but Blondie wasn't just attack her from the front. He seemed determined to end it neatly with a blow to the back of the neck.
But now Red's chains had confiscated three of those teleportation kunai, and were floating them several feet away from her physical body, in an effort to keep Blondie from teleporting near her.
The man finally stood still.
The audience, who had been screaming for the kill and cheering the strange new tension simultaneously, grew deathly quiet, unsure of what would happen next.
"I just have to disable her, right? What counts as disabling?" Blondie shouted to the referee.
"Whatever gets her to stop fighting. You disable her once, you win," was the game reply. In response, the crowd roared its disapproval, asking for blood. It made sense, since they'd essentially not gotten the blood bath they had signed up for, with these two strange pacifists, who were dancing (er, wrestling) around each other.
Noya felt like there was a lot of favoritism, even if this guy was admittedly amazingly efficient. Why did he get altered rules?
His sense of injustice quickly made way for a constricted feeling in his throat as he watched.
Blondie was walking. In a straight line. Toward Red.
She seemed ready to move back, sensing a trap, but none was forthcoming. From his vantage point, Noya thought he could see the male contestant's mouth form words, too quiet for anyone but his opponent to hear.
It seemed to shock her.
Red's whole body jerked, and her chains seemed to rear like serpents. She brought one of Blondie's kunai in front of her, but still a good three feet away, as if ready to launch it at its owner.
Surprisingly, the man kept walking, his pace even and normal. His hands, though, were swift. Noya and Red noticed at the same time that he'd taken that one kunai away from her, plucked it off like a fruit from a shining chakra tree branch.
Red's defenses were up. Her face was contorted, angry, but also… confused?
Noya watched, riveted, as the blond man flung his kunai forward.
The din from the audience shook the cavern. Death! Finally a frontal assault!
But instead of the kunai meeting its mark, the blond teleported and caught the tool, a hair's breadth away from his opponent's face.
Two glowing chakra chains sprouted, snapping down on his wrists.
It's over, Noya thought.
Then it happened.
Blondie leaned down and kissed her.
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[Thirty minutes prior]
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Kushina squatted in a little isolated nook she'd found. This strange underground monolith was a labyrinth, reminiscent of Kumogakure's basements perhaps, but well lit. Unfortunately, it was less well ventilated. It smelled unmistakably of man sweat. Its halls rang with the chorus of male bravado, too. To escape the sexist jeers of her opponent's, she'd taken to hiding in its nooks and crannies between matches. She could crouch here and assess when she was due upstairs by noting the sounds of the audience that permeated through the walls.
What a strange tournament, though. Finding and registering in the tournament was fairly easy. Ruffians gallivanted through Ame to find basic necessities of life, and tracking one down for information had been an easy hunt. It turned out, though, that a no-name passerby getting an audience with Hanzo was more difficult than Tsunade had let on.
The so-called Sinner's Coliseum tournament comprised of death matches. The general public was barred from attending. You had to have an 'in'. Everything was hush-hush. The only people who bore witness to the way the tournament ran were the contestants, the semi-legendary Hanzo, some gambling ring administrators that ran the venue, and the richest echelon of Amegakure (or possibly the entire continent) who were invited according to Hanzo's good graces.
The rules were strange, too. She'd gotten the various additional 'soft' rules from the hapless thieves she'd rounded up. Kushina had brought no weapons with her, because it was a more efficient way to reach her true objective. Apparently, it was easier to gain favor with Hanzo if you showed a special skill—something no one else had. And since her chakra was inherently more weapon-like than others', coming barehanded into matches would definitely catch the Ame leader's eye.
Fighting itself was sloppier than jounin work. There was some nervousness, especially on her first round against a hulking brute of a man. But she'd quickly noticed that most of the contestants weren't ninja. Yes, some possessed basic chakra control, but they were not trained. That made all the difference. Their fighting was more physical than anything else, and she could just play to their weaknesses.
Of Kushina's opponents, some of them could legitimately kill chuunin. Perhaps a few could even get lucky on a jounin if their skills matched up well. But overall, this tournament seemed to be a hunting ground for raw materials, not a stadium for the most advanced technical fighters.
However, one contestant stood out.
Judging by the speed with which he finished off his foe, he could be trouble. What was happening up there, that made the crowds explode like they did for the now-established tournament favorite? Kushina gnawed the inside of her cheek in frustration. Surely, the contestant couldn't keep it up in every single round, no matter how fast he or she was.
And so, despite the rules on spying, and despite hating to show early for her match, Kushina made her way over to the arena right as the referee was announcing the first semi-final.
They rang the gong, and the two contestants faced off. Neither noticed their next opponent watching over the sea of the audience.
But she noticed him, and her mouth went dry.
"Minato."
It was a good thing that she'd decided to come early, even if it turned out no spying was needed. The blond missing nin launched two kunai, one in front of the other, and flashed. The match was ended in two seconds, per usual.
The opponent looked like he knew elemental jutsu, but it was never a good match up against the Yellow Flash in an arena. Residual chakra crackled around the man as he fell to his knees. Minato had chopped him swiftly across the back of his neck.
"He's unconscious," Minato declared a second later. Staff peeled off of the side of the arena to tow the contestant's prone figure out.
The audience, as always, went ballistic. A few standing near her noticed her from her characteristic red hair. The mix of taunts and cheers began. Some wanted her to be the one to end this blond fighter. Some wanted the blond fighter to have a perfect record. As row after row of audience seemed to all catch on, they parted for her to pass through, barraging her with encouragements or spittle.
Too late to run, it seemed.
There was no making a fancy entrance into the ring, so Kushina opted for surprise. Minato wasn't interested in the crowd's wild shouting and murmuring. He was busy helping carry the loser off the battle arena, his back turned to her.
Quick as a deer, she leapt past the squat wall enclosing the battle field, and stood just inside, waiting for him to turn.
"Your next opponent," the referee announced when he saw her enter, more for Minato's benefit than for the audience, who was going ballistic, shouting for death in the tournament final round.
At long last, Minato turned around. As he looked up, his blond hair caught the torch light and reflected molten gold.
"K-Kushina."
His face registered a string of emotions, too quick for her to read them.
"Begin," the referee said.
Neither contestant moved to oblige the man, nor the audience. The spectators were in pandemonium, their lusty bellows calling for the last match to be especially gruesome. There was a history of the final contenders being as violent as they were skillful, Kushina knew.
It was not impossible that this was exactly what was in store. Minato's eyes—they were darker, Kushina thought—reflected a more subdued blue that promised new secrets, new battles.
"Fancy seeing you here." Kushina's voice was all false bravado. "Who sent you?"
Probably went running to Tsunade, too.
Or not.
His gaze was lasered on her, still. To Kushina, it was his alone that mattered amidst the howls of bloodlust from their onlookers. He casually moved closer without any indication for battle.
"Sensei sent me," Minato replied, and his voice broke at the very end. "He died, though."
Sorrow washed over Kushina, momentarily evaporating her concern that this was all some weird set up by Tsunade. Strange, she thought. So that pervy old man had this sort of effect on people. She'd respected him, found it hard to hate him, perhaps even liked the Toad Sage.
Minato turned his head from side to side, quickly, clearing his thoughts of grief.
"He told me come meet Hanzo. And to find you."
Kushina's brain sped through the possibilities, wary of betrayal, or some catch. That was close to Tsunade's instructions to her. So Hanzo the Salamander commanded uniform respect from at least two of the Sannin. Was it only because he believed in political asylum? Would Minato be content to live out his life here, in solitude, like she intended to do herself?
"What if I didn't want to be found?" She buttressed her reply with a sniff, trying to not read into Minato's words—trying not to think about their parting, and the look on his face back then.
"Stalker," she spat, just for good measure.
A small part of her expected him to smile, to quirk his lip. Maybe—that small part whispered insistently—the tension in their parting on Whirlpool had been a fluke. Maybe his hateful expression wasn't due to her, or a rejection of their friendship, ally-ship, whatever-the-hell-ship.
Minato only looked back, face placid. Sad, but calm.
"I'm sorry. I want to know—"
He flung his kunai, and she thought one thing.
Death.
She was dead.
"—what happened nine years ago."
Her breath came out in a rush. She gasped, his quick closeness petrifying. Why would he pretend to fight her, but come close to her to speak of secrets?
"Now's not the best time, is it?" she whispered.
His heart thumped close to her own. "No spies here, when we're fighting," he replied. "It's a better place than any other in Ame."
Her chains shot out, glowing like thick, liquid amber. They strapped around Minato like bullwhips. The crowd roared in crescendo.
"Get down," she commanded. He had time to give an imperceptible nod.
A blast of elemental chakra swept through the field, kicking up stones and battering the crowd like a small whirlwind.
She fell on top of him, a chain of chakra spearing the ground dangerously close to his head.
"You owe me," she breathed, before wrestling his body back on top. "Because I hate you right now."
Like most boys, Minato seemed taken aback with the turn of the conversation to cover her feelings. Especially in the middle of a carefully-strung fight to the death.
But Minato wasn't a professional for nothing. He put on a convincing display, and Kushina truly feared for her life as his Rasengan bored into the ground right as they switched positions yet again.
"Hate me if you want," Minato said hurriedly. "But tell me… Who killed the Third?"
"Raikage? You did," Kushina huffed, wide-eyed as she concentrated on delivering another punch to the ground. She twisted, and she was back on top.
"No." Minato put a hand out to block her blow. "Hokage. Nine years ago."
"Dunno." Kushina twisted back, hurling chakra out into the audience, silencing them momentarily, making a good show of strength.
Minato wanted to roll his eyes at her theatrics, but this was serious. "Mito… involved?"
Were you? He wanted to ask. Was I?
"Also—ouch—dunno" Kushina ducked.
"Were you?" the blond blurted, finally.
"No way," Kushina cried indignantly, mid-roll. "Why would I be?"
"Then… what… happened?" He dodged a succession of chakra pin missiles.
"Mito took me…" she gasped out, no space to think as she faked her continuous attacks.
"…Back to my delegation. Andyoufoughtofftheguyswhoweretryingtokidnapme," she finished in a rush of breath as she rolled on top again.
Blue eyes widened, and Kushina could almost make out every individual eyelash, they were now so close. His arms were caged within hers, and his knees poised to kick her off again.
"I don't know what to believe. I-I have a lot of questions," Minato murmured in the brief lull. "Will you answer them?"
Fuck.
Fuck.
No matter how bitter and conflicted she felt, he was the man who'd dug her village's graves. He was the child who had saved her.
She gave him her best grin, but it came out a bit watery and sad.
"Y-you bet, 'ttebane. After I kick your ass."
The look in his eyes was pure wonderment.
"Okay." Minato smiled, finally. It stopped her breath, and when he flickered away, the afterimage left Kushina to fall into the empty space, her mouth tasting soil.
"But now I need your help, to meet Hanzo," Minato said, from several inches above. "Only you can do it."
The blond crashed a fist down, only to hit dirt, as Kushina careened away.
"All take and no give. You never answered my questions," she puffed. "What do you want with Hanzo? What are you going to do, now?"
Because at the end of the day, Danzou had destroyed his bargaining chip with her. Now that Whirlpool was gone, she was a free agent. She was able to seek political asylum in Amegakure because Danzou had no legitimate claim over her anymore. And, if Danzou pursued her, what did she care if she brought more battle in an already war-hardened country? It was better than staying on the broken island of her youth, waiting for people to hate her out of old superstition.
Minato looked almost completely relaxed, comically brushing a hand to his chin, and Kushina took the chance to clap her knees around his neck and twist. The lateral force rammed Minato's cheek against the ground, dirt smudging his complexion.
"What I'll do?" He wrenched her appendages off, sincerity apparent as his voice grew so low, Kushina subconsciously leaned closer to hear.
"Build a nation. Here. With you."
Kushina rolled away almost immediately.
"Not a chance," she growled.
How many people had wanted to do that, with her? Build a nation. Protect a nation. Destroy a nation.
She quaked, uncertain of Minato's knowledge, nor his intentions.
He got up and dusted himself, picking his kunai from his waistband. He didn't to register her genuine hurt before throwing them at her, as if he wanted to talk more.
Her chakra chains caught the metal implements, keeping them far away.
"The answer's no." Kushina repeated, voice raised so he could hear her loud and clear. "I find Hanzo to grant me asylum. Then I stay out of you big nations' crazy wars. That's it."
"Please," Minato shouted back.
"I said NO, Stupid Sunshine."
He smiled ruefully. "What if I win?"
"Over my dead body, and please… you can hardly knock me out without your kunai."
Minato paused, seeming testing the air, finding nothing. "What happened to my old seal on your back?"
Kushina looked smug.
"It was simple. Just scrubbed it off. Hah, take that," she gloated. Well, the process did hurt, but her predilection for healing fast came in handy. At the time, she'd wanted absolutely nothing to do with Minato, who she thought hated her, and hated the world, for that matter. Scrubbing off the connection had been therapeutic. It had marked the end. She wouldn't seek him out again, despite what Tsunade suggested. She'd just wanted to start her life over, in Ame, and not be a danger to Whirlpool and everything she cared for.
So how the hell did he find her again?
Several feet away, Minato was looking admiringly at her, as if assessing her dedication as an adversary, or a worthy partner in crime.
"I don't want to kill you. I could disable you some other way," Minato said.
"All talk."
His next words were addressed to the referee, the creepy dude in the respirator mask. Kushina's eyes narrowed, her mind uncomprehending the meaning of Minato's requests to the man.
So when the Yellow Flash launched his final assault, her instinctive reaction was unprepared, and it left her unguarded.
Oh.
Oh hell, 'ttebane.
.
.
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tbc
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Suzu: Yes. Yes, I did.
All will be explained. I do not do rom-com accident kisses because those stress me out with their laws of physics.
Background regarding the tournament's contestants: It's important for me to assess, realistically, what sort of characters would actually be interested in serving under Hanzo. I think a good chunk of the most powerful missing nin are off seeking glory in the Flash War itself, as mercenaries or simply because they are crazy bloodlust-y, per Kishimoto's formula. Another reason is that Hanzo scouts the most powerful guys himself, without a tournament. I think this particular funnel system lets Hanzo pick up the ones with potential, to be trained further. That leaves a LOT of non-shinobi criminals who naturally turn up in Amegakure.
Regarding Minato getting a challenging opponent: He will, next chapter! You can guess how it plays out, but there are clues here.