The Contract

Chapter 20

"My name is Kurotsuchi."

"Cool." Tenten's smile grew playful again. "Hey, do you know anyone called 'Akatsuchi' or maybe 'Shirotsuchi'-"

"Excuse me." Faster than the brunette would have believed possible, the Iwa kunoichi had gotten up and was about halfway toward the house.

In her sudden rush of movement, Tenten had caught Kurotsuchi's eyes.

The raven haired girl was on the verge of tears.

"Her name's Matsumoto and she was my best friend." Kurotsuchi murmured, hands clasped tightly in her lap.

It had taken more than an hour of pleading and persuasion but, in the end, Tenten had worn her down to the point where she simply decided to talk.

"She… It might seem hard to believe but I was bullied a lot as a kid. Nothing physical and the adults were never a part of it but… I had a health condition that limited how much I could exert myself physically at a stretch. For someone that wanted to be a kunoichi, that was really bad." She took in a deep, shuddering breath and Tenten realized how harrowing the experience must have been for her. "Gramps… he would have allowed me to stay home, get tutored on a solo basis but I wanted to be out there with kids like me so he went along with my wishes and I was admitted into the Academy. Of course, the instructors knew about my condition so they would allow me to pull back whenever things started getting too hard on me but the kids there… they never understood. They felt 'hey, the Tsuchikage's granddaughter's getting off easy!' and so they found ways to make my life hell. It didn't matter that I had to maintain an almost impossible grade on my written tests to ensure that they boosted my weaker physical scores, no, to them 'Pink Eye' was always getting favored by the instructors. It got… it got really bad in my third year and I was on the verge of quitting.

"That's when I met Matsu."

She paused, sniffled quietly, continued; "She was an orphan from a little village not too far off, Ishigakure and, at the time, she was god-sent. She was an outlier like me; the kids bullied her for being from a different village, for having mint-green hair and purple eyes… Whatever came to their minds, they used against her and for the first month of her stay, they forgot about me. It was the first time in my life that I could just sit back and watch others without being scorned and told not to curse someone with my 'witch eyes' and all I could do was study her. She didn't seem to care about any thing; she just did her thing and left everyone to yap at their own convenience.

"By the time the kids got tired of her and returned to their old target, I was ready to do anything to have her teach me to be like her.

"I don't remember exactly how we became friends but by the time we graduated we had become inseparable. We were put on a team with two other kids, making us one of the rare four-man squads the village had but we learned to rely on one another.

"Then, on a mission to a gambling den near Tanzaku Gai, I should have died."

Tenten stared at her; the firm conviction behind those words spoke volumes of the severity of the situation.

"We needed to clear out a den of raiders, a task we'd done repeatedly so one of my other teammates and I… we got cocky. We barreled in ahead of our sensei, ready to complete the mission and we found ourselves in the midst of a gathering of raiders that wanted us dead." 'An ambush.' Tenten thought with a frown. "We were in a fight for our lives and, we barely made it out. By the time we got out, we were drenched in blood, low on chakra and I was out of time. I'd exerted myself too much and my heart felt like it was going to blow up in my chest. I passed out.

"And the next thing I saw was Matsu's teary face begging me to wake up."

Tenten immediately understood. "They got you healed up somehow."

Kurotsuchi nodded. "They never told me how but… my health problem? It was gone for good."

Something about the details niggled at the edge of Tenten's mind; the location, the timing… With a little mental shake, she pushed the thought back, deciding that she could think it over at a later time.

"... we maintained our friendship in spite of the fact that Matsu and I had become lovers and we kept on getting better, etching our way into the history books as a team."

Tenten could feel it coming… the painful climax of the story.

"Fourteen months ago, we split up; we had decided that, when we hit Tokubetsu jōnin or higher, we'd each join a department for a year and come back for six months to learn from each other before splitting up again. I joined the Demolition Corps, Matsu joined the ANBU and that was it. We didn't see each other for a year.

"When we got back together, the other two felt that she seemed a bit cold, unwilling to talk but I just shoved it under the 'ANBU deal with crap' file and ignored it. A month in and she seemed back to normal and all was forgiven.

"Then we got a mission, our first since our reunion, to investigate claims about a military base in the ruins of Ishigakure."

Tenten's eyes widened in horror as her mind swiftly arranged the pieces together. "She discovered something in the ruins?"

Kurotsuchi's laugh was brittle and filled with nothing but pain. "No, she had discovered it earlier, during her ANBU stint; a file that detailed Iwa's quiet but systematic destruction of Ishi in accordance to the Daimyo's orders. The ruins just reminded her of her origins."

The pained laugh echoed hollowly around the room. "Did I tell you that she had the Scorch Release bloodline? On our way back, when I got a little frisky, she snapped and tried to kill me. She blamed Gramps for her loss and wanted to take me from him.

"The fight didn't even last long; we were standing over a methane pocket and, when our only male teammate overturned the earth to defend against one of her attacks, the gas was released.

"Matsu didn't hesitate; she just blew us all to kingdom come."

The tears came again, accompanied by silent, shoulder shaking sobs.

"She killed them… Akatsuchi… Shirotsuchi…"

‹‹‡››

While Tenten spoke to Kurotsuchi, Naruto leafed through the most recently published Bingo Book for the first time since his departure with Jiraiya, keeping an eye out for any familiar names. He was in the waiting room outside the Hokage's office, his appearance altered by a henge so that he looked like a random chūnin. At the desk opposite him, Shizune sorted out a sheaf of reports, performing the preliminary work to make Tsunade's life easier. Even though she knew exactly who he was, she never once glanced at him, treating him like any other shinobi and lending credence to his act.

'So Renga and Suika have been taken out of the Book.' He noted as he shut the book ad returned it to the stack on the table. 'While Sasuke, Lee and Neji have all been added. Seems like I've got a bit of work to do.'

"You can keep it if you like." Shizune said, not taking her eyes off the papers arrayed before her. "RecInt* just got it out so Missions Control will begin distributing copies later today anyway."

"Ah, thank you, Shizune-san." He grabbed the black-covered book and slipped it into a pocket just as the doors to the Hokage's office opened up.

"Thank you for your time, Shimura-san." Tsunade said as she escorted the Elder out of her office. "I'll talk to Jiraiya; tell him to hurry back."

"Order him if you have to." Danzō growled. "We have been without our jinchūriki long enough. His three-year break ended two days ago."

"It will be done." Tsunade reaffirmed as the Elder hobbled away. As soon as he turned toward the stairs, the Godaime turned on her heel and walked back to her seat, leaving the door swinging. When she realized that the young man hadn't followed her, she growled in annoyance. "Do you need a special invite?"

He decided that he didn't.

With a grateful nod toward the Hokage's busy assistant, he slipped past the doors an instant before they closed.

"Good afternoon, Baa-chan."

"Drop the disguise." She sighed, rubbing her temples and, to her own surprise, wishing that her teammate was around to work his new-found magic. "How's our guest?"

"She seemed pissed when I left." He shrugged as his disguise seemingly 'bled off', leaving him in all his blond glory. "To be fair, it was kinda my fault."

"Why am I not surprised?" Tsunade groaned. "You have an innate talent for pissing people off don't you?"

The Uzumaki simply shrugged. "One tries. Though this time, it was more of an indirect thing."

"How so?"

Naruto launched into an edited version of the morning's events, though he danced around the reason himself and Tenten had met up the night prior.

It didn't bother him that they were talking so openly about what Tsunade had classed an 'A-rank secret until further notice': the Hokage's office had an extensive sealing array engraved into its walls by Uzumaki Mito herself; as soon as the doors closed, the entire office became a dead zone of sound, preventing any one outside from hearing a peep, even when the windows were wide open. A secondary array, designed by his parents and engraved into the underneath of the desk ensured that no counter-intelligence seals could be used within the room. And considering the fact that all entrants into the Tower were first frisked by ANBU personnel who stayed outside the office as well as to keep an eye on things (really, if the Hokage couldn't handle surprise threats long enough to summon reinforcements then they likely didn't deserve the rank in the first place), there was no need to bother concealing words or anything.

"You know, I'm not sure whether to feel pissed that you had sex on the roof of my old apartment or to feel bad for the girl you kept up while having sex."

"You could do both." He suggested playfully.

Tsunade stared at him. "That would mean that I'd beat you to a bloody pulp and leave your fate hanging in the balance."

He winced at the thought. "So, uh, what was Danzō doing here?"

The question brought such a black scowl to her face that he feared he might have asked the wrong question.

"The old War Hawk wanted to know why you hadn't returned." She grunted, doing her best to control her temper. She simply couldn't understand why Danzō was so dead-set on seeing the blond seated before her as little more than a tool to be used against whoever he saw as an enemy. "As you saw, he's getting really antsy."

"So what do you suggest?"

"You need to return home." She sighed. "Publicly."

It was inevitable; his leaving the village had been a well known fact and so his return had to be just as public.

He didn't like it though; there were a few things he wanted to look into, the most pressing of which was the mystery behind the decline of the Senju. The whole thing had slowly festered from a casual thought to a pressing need and he was determined to figure out how the clan had all but died out. Returning publicly meant that he would have to be much more discreet about his investigations.

'Or I could have Shizune help me…' As the new idea developed in his mind, he returned his focus to Tsunade. "How close is Jiraiya-sama?"

"Within a day's distance." She replied, schooling her features to hide her shock. Jiraiya had told her how he had lost his standing with Naruto but to actually hear the typically disrespectful blond refer to her teammate so formally…

Naruto came to a decision. "Alright. Give me his location and I'll join him tonight. We'll show up around midday tomorrow. Has he told you about our tag-along duo?"

"Yeah. Erza Scarlet and Mirajane Strauss." Tsunade still found it strange, the idea that Naruto had picked up a pair of teenage retainers during his travels but then she knew first hand how incredibly strange luck could be. "So long as they're willing to stick with our rules and not constitute a nuisance I really don't see much of a problem with their presence."

"Ah…" Naruto rubbed the back of his head in a manner that the busty Kage recognized instantly. "That last one might be a bit of an issue."

Tsunade dropped her head into her hands. Of course. It was an issue related to Uzumaki-freaking-Naruto. It had to come with baggage. At least he was letting her know now. "What now?"

"Well… the thing is… Erza and Mira are beautiful." He admitted. "Like, really beautiful."

That explained Jiraiya's insistence that they be granted entry into the village.

"The problem is-" He hadn't even gotten to the problem yet?! "-Erza's got a bit of a short fuse and Mira's kinda like me except with her sexuality."

Tsunade felt like crying.

It sounded like this 'Mira' girl would get men all riled up and ready to blow before Erza stepped in and left a few broken bodies.

It would be Kushina and Mikoto all over again.

"Fuck this job."

‹‹‡››

RecInt- Reconnaissance & Intelligence [They work with Cryptography, Torture & Interrogation and Seduction & Infiltration to form the core of Konoha's Intelligence Division (as far as this fic is concerned anyway :) ]

So, with this chapter, we're bringing what I've termed the 'Return' arc to a close.

Arcs covered (prologue not included):

Day One [Chapters 1-5]

Day Two [Chapters 6-8]

Training [Chapters 9-11]

Return [Chapters 12-20]

Now you know what led to NaruTen finding Kurotsuchi in that barren wasteland and we're set to head into Shippuden territory.

Naruto seems mighty interested in figuring certain things out and Jiraiya's lobbied for Mira and Erza to be part of Naruto's life in Konoha going forward so those two make their return.

Well, now I've gotta think about how to move into the next phase.

Please drop reviews people. They really do help inspire me.

Later.