Chapter 25: Three Canes for a Gnarled Hand

Kakashi glanced up when he felt someone approach him from behind in the jounin archives. He couldn't really say he was surprised when Uchiha-san smiled politely at him, her calm exterior belying her probable reason for being here.

"Hatake-san." She nodded her head the exact amount required of her as the Uchiha matriarch.

"Uchiha-san." He bowed low, as was required of him. Being the last living member of his line did not make him much of a clan head, and Clan Hatake had never been as prominent or large as Clan Uchiha. "Is there something you wanted?"

"Hmm." She pulled out a file with carefully constructed casualness. He wasn't surprised when it turned out to be on Wave Country. "For a man that claims to be building a simple bridge, is it not fascinating how he began building it on Fire County's side of the divide? One must wonder why he has not chosen to support his own nation and build it from that side."

"You suggest that the mission is mislabelled."

"Perhaps not mislabelled in this case as much as underestimated by the clients; it is entirely probable though. It is all too common, but it is too late to go back, isn't it?"

He nodded, wondering when she was going to get to her point. He tensed when her eyes activated.

She fixed him with a long stare, the three tomoe circling her pupils restlessly. "Naruto and Sasuke had better come through this alive. There are those that want them dead here, and there are those that will want them dead out there. I'm counting on you to handle those out there. I'll deal with those here."

Kakashi had to wonder why Naruto was among the ones she wanted protected no matter what. Sure, she seemed to care for his most rambunctious student and had certainly been almost as much in charge of raising Naruto as Matsuku-san, but fretting to the extent where she would risk threatening him seemed a little farfetched. There was something going on here, and Kakashi wasn't sure he wanted to know. It was entirely too likely that it was clan business.

"I would have done so without your intervention." He was a more than a little offended.

"Of course, but it never hurts to be sure. My gut tells me that this mission isn't going to go well, but I am not up-to-date on the latest intelligence about Wave Country and all that might be going on there. I leave that to better heads than mine since Wave is relatively insignificant despite the fact it is a close neighbour."

He sighed at her not so subtle hint that he had some reading to do before he dared to set foot outside the village. He had the feeling that browsing through Icha Icha Paradise for the hundredth time wouldn't cut it. This was why he hadn't tried to become a jounin sensei earlier: dealing with overprotective parents and siblings was hell. Uchiha-san was the devil because he had no doubt that she could fulfill the promise in her red eyes that if her son did die on this mission, he would be strung up by his balls from some tall building for all the world to see as punishment.

Her eyes switched back to their normal dark grey, and she smiled pleasantly at him as though she had been commenting on the weather rather than calmly informing him that she would be causing bodily harm if two boys didn't live for at least another ten years. No, messing with Uchiha-san was not a good idea. He had no intention of finding out just how cracked she had become over the years. He almost—"almost" being the keyword—pitied Itachi.

She handed him the file and left. He suppressed a groan when he saw just how much catching up he had to do: Wave Country had become quite interesting in the past ten years as far as Intel was concerned.

Damn.

Well, at least they were sober today. That was the best thing that could be said for the grumpy pair that Sasuke had been assigned to herd around Fire Country until some insignificant bridge was completed. However, it was the first positive thing he had noted about Tazuna and Keji.

Today seemed to be a day of firsts. For the first time, he had been late. Ryuuka had not been interested in letting him go away for another week or two. She had wrapped her arms and legs around his left leg and had refused point blank to let him get anywhere near the door if he wouldn't take her with him. Kaasan had been amused. Ryuuka hadn't been a happy camper while he had been trying to bring Tsunade back.

Another first was that Sakura actually looked almost confident about the whole situation. As a rule, she always looked nervous and uncertain at the start of missions. Sasuke wasn't sure if this was a bad omen or not, but since he wasn't superstitious, he disregarded the entire thing and the presence of a raven on the gate's lintel. Throwing rocks at the bird would attract undue attention. Killing it with kunai would give rise to uncomfortable questions and motherly ire he was rather predisposed to avoiding.

One thing hadn't changed one whit: Kakashi was late, almost an hour late. Tazuna and Keji were not like Riko-oneesan: they were not confident that the jounin would catch up with them if they left in protest. Sasuke regretted this deficiency. It had been amusing as hell to watch the dog get reamed out by a woman that couldn't even hold a kunai correctly, much less throw it. A bridge builder and his buddy weren't up for that though. No, they just grumbled, snarled, and picked on the ninja present, the moron being their favourite target.

For some reason, Naruto seemed to have a penchant for attracting negative attention from any sort of bully, as if he had been born on a day when the stars were misaligned for godly favour and good fortune.

First, there had been the fox and the Yondaime. Now, Sasuke didn't know all that much about the much-vaunted Yondaime, but he did know that shoving a powerful demon inside a baby wasn't very nice. If someone had done that to Ryuuka, Sasuke would have roasted the ass without a second thought. Sasuke didn't have a clue why the moron didn't resent the Fourth Hokage more. The man's actions fell well within the definition of bullying: singling out a victim, punishing him, and foisting problems onto that victim. Naruto didn't seem interested in Sasuke's opinion, so Sasuke kept it to himself.

The next bully Naruto had managed to get on his case was that orphanage director. Sasuke had never met her, but Naruto used her as a synonym to "bitch" or "evil witch" in all of his stories. Alongside the mythical figure, there were various other half-remembered bullies from his time before getting out of the orphanage. Some of them were fellow orphans that Naruto sometimes recalled clearly enough to point out on the street and play pranks on, and others were formless adults that his friend could never quite place. All of them had been pissed off with the loser for one reason or another and had either put him at the mercy of the orphanage director or inflicted punishment themselves. Naruto had never indicated aloud which was worse.

After these fairy-tale terrors, the ones Sasuke knew came along. The biggest bully still in Naruto's life had to be Riko. Oh sure, it was all for the idiot's good, but she still bossed him around, punished him whenever she deemed him deserving, and generally made a nuisance of herself. Sasuke acknowledged that she really did seem to care about the idiot, but Sasuke still deemed her a bully of a sort all the same. It seemed to a prerequisite for being an older family member. His mother certainly fit the bill… Sasuke resolved to trash that thought so it never ever came out of his mouth. Kaasan would not be amused.

Various other bullies had come and gone, Mizuki and various storeowners among them. All in all, the loser had to have "victim" written all over him in some ink that Sasuke couldn't quite see. Tazuna and Keji could make out the characters though.

Their clients were unfortunately becoming very adept at pushing all of Naruto's buttons. He could feel Naruto's fury from six metres away and he could feel Sakura's killing intent (on Naruto's behalf, oddly enough) starting boil over beside him. Instead of picking sides this early in the morning, Sasuke adjusted the length of the straps of his backpack for the sixth time in twenty minutes, making certain that they were exactly even, and glared up the main road, looking for any sign of their tardy sensei.

"You don't look like a ninja that could become Hokage," Tazuna said nastily in response to Naruto's usual claim. "I mean, for one, you're way too short, both in stature and in temper. Besides, look at you. What sort of ninja is a loudmouth like you? The very set of your face screams idiot and attention seeker. I mean, who paints whiskers on their face?"

Sasuke suppressed the urge to jump when, wonder of wonders, Kakashi's hand shot out to stop Naruto from lunging at Tazuna and flattening him with Rasengan. Maybe Kakashi's internal clock that timed his appearances to when his arrival would prevent bloodshed.

Rubbing the back of his head, Kakashi raised his voice to be heard over the insults Naruto began screaming at Tazuna. "Shall we get going then?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes, pulled his pack up on his shoulders, and checked his headband to make sure that the slobber his sister had put on it as a going away present had dried before falling in behind Naruto.

Their first stop was a village quite a ways southwest of Konoha on foot. On the maps that had been provided with their mission scroll, this regular town was barely a finger's width from Konoha, but Sasuke had never put much faith in maps. No map could tell him exactly what he needed to know: where that man was and how safe that made his family. That finger's width turned out to be a two-day journey. The only satisfactory thing about this was that their grumpy clients got hardly any sleep and complained about aches the following day from sleeping on the ground.

It was hard to keep the smugness off his face when Keji insisted that they find a hotel before finding out where the permit office was. Apparently, this bridge project had been given the go-ahead by the Daimyo and the local feudal lord quite a while ago, but suddenly, inexplicably, that permit had been rescinded. Keji and Tazuna had only ventured this far into Fire territory in order to argue for a renewal since all of the closer government outposts had refused to hear their case.

This explanation made Sasuke frown. Naruto didn't seem troubled by it all that much, but the loser had never been what Sasuke would have called "quick." Sakura though, she looked a little puzzled now too. Their sensei was as blank as ever, infuriatingly so. Naruto was left to keep an eye on the clients while Sasuke and Sakura were sent to set up an appointment at the permit office and find some provisions.

"If you want, I can go find the food," Sakura offered, glancing at him from under her lashes.

Clueless as to why she had made such a strange offer, he shook his head. His frown deepened when he spotted a rather well armed pair of unsavoury types prowling down the street. Their eyes darted from side to side, seeking something.

The shorter member of the pair met his eyes for a moment, and Sasuke had the unpleasant experience of being on the receiving end of being marked as a target. There was almost something like recognition in those cold grey eyes as they flicked over his form, assessing him. Something in him clenched and froze at the same time when Sakura was also appraised. The gaze had lingered longer on the two of them. Something about it stuck with Sasuke as he scouted out the town while Sakura dealt with the infuriating officials.

He didn't like dealing with government even though it had been thoroughly trained into him by this point. Akio-ojiisan, despite his own snide demeanour, hadn't tolerated it from him. His mother had agreed. According to her, "Hn," was not the same as "Yes, of course, sir." Sakura was good at buttering up authority figures anyway and actually seemed to have the patience for it.

When Sasuke was confident that he had gotten his bearings when it came to the main streets, he slipped into an alley and leaped up onto a roof to begin scouting from a more obscure angle. From his perch, he could watch the flow of the crowd and begin to get a feeling for the mood of this small town that fed off traffic going east and west along the trade route that looped south of Konoha's mountains and swamps, keeping Hidden Leaf's presence concealed.

The slat roofs were only a little moist from the last rainstorm that had passed through this area beneath the fingers he used to maintain balance as he crouched to peer down into an alley where a group of unsavoury sorts were meeting. Their clothes were mismatched: some farmer garb, some richer garments from the bourgeoisie, and hardy leather pieces made for the deep woods. These men didn't seem to belong to any one class. What was worse was that they were obviously armed: clubs, staves, daggers, and the rare katana hung from belts and baldrics and hid in pockets, bracers, pouches, and boot sheathes. Too well armed to be peaceful, so Sasuke kept silent and watched.

The possibility that this was just an insignificant meeting disappeared when the pair from earlier joined the group.

"Did any of you see any traces?"

"Even if I did," a cocky one said, "why would I tell you? That bounty is as good as mine if I keep my mouth shut."

"Fool that you are, I doubt you could even get within ten kilometres of the target without drawing the attention of the ninja," said a bearded man who was testing the edge of a utilitarian dagger.

"Ninja?" sputtered the fool. "I wasn't told anything about ninja. Two targets, unarmed, untrained, no threat—that was what I was told when I was recruited to 'cooperate' with you lot."

"The situation has changed," the bearded one said. Sasuke had the feeling that this man was the leader, if this ragtag group had a leader at all. All of them quieted down when he spoke, and they considered his words. No one questioned the assertions, merely the old orders. "They came in from the west only a couple hours ago. There were four ninja walking with them then."

"Four!" squawked another thin man with a nose worthy of ploughing a field. "Four ninja? He only offers eighty thousand ryou for his head and another fifty for his companion's. A pittance for too much effort, that's what I say. There are easier targets."

"That stinks of cowardice," Beard noted quietly when likeminded grumbles followed the stick's announcement.

"What good is money when the ninja are going to string you up by your guts? An old man and a boatman are hardly worth this effort. The boss can find his own cutthroats to go against these odds. I saw some notices in the south side tavern. Good luck, fools!" The stickman gathered up his gear and left without trouble. A couple others wavered for a few moments before skittering out of the alley to find easier work.

"Now that the wimps are gone, what sort of ninja were these ones?" asked a squat man.

"Three children, one older man."

"Children!" The bear-like fool laughed. "Those chickens ran from child ninja!"

"Children that walk with purpose," said the one Sasuke recognized. His voice was just as cold and derisive as his gaze. "Children held Kumo-nin back eight years ago. I saw a skirmish once. I was lucky to escape with my head from that 'child.' He summoned flame from nowhere and burned men alive without remorse. I could swear that the boy I saw today is one of his kin. Same dark eyes, same pale skin, same 'bug me and I'll roast you' look."

Sasuke froze as the past crept up on him. Several young Uchiha had won renown during the last war, Shisui and others among them, but Sasuke knew that that man was the one in the story. He had been a genin during that war. He had fought on the front lines and had lost his team and his mentor, delaying his entrance to the chuunin trials. Gritting his teeth, Sasuke forced himself not to slink away to pretend that this hadn't happened. Every reference was a punch in the face of his attempt to deny the traitor's existence.

"So you saw them closer than I did." Beard met the cold one's eyes.

The latter nodded.

"What else did you see?"

"There was the boy, as I said, a petulant little brat with a cold stare. Spry, focused—he might be skilled. The girl—pink hair, red target—she shouldn't be as much of a challenge. She's the nervous type, maybe brainy, but not a lot of will in her. She couldn't meet my eyes for long."

"What about the other two?" another man asked hoarsely, following his question with a bout of coughing.

Beard fielded this one. "The other wears shoot-me orange—a blonde with tattooed lines on his cheeks and a goofy look. He doesn't look competent enough to tie his own shoes, but we'll see. The man, now there's one we won't last long against conventionally. He's a veteran; you can tell. He could be in his fifties; he's got the haunted look and the grey hair to match it, but I don't think so—maybe thirty, maybe younger. He saw me."

"Well," said the fool jovially, "I've heard enough. I'm off." He scooped up his club and jammed it into a loop on his belt.

Glances were traded until Beard sighed and shrugged. "That's enough for today in any case. We'd never win here, not now." He sheathed his plain dagger, though his weathered hand didn't leave the hilt. "Until the next time we meet up." As soon as he was gone too, the meeting broke up.

Sasuke wavered for a long moment, debating over whether he should follow one of the members or report. Cold Eyes and his partner were still around, so Sasuke crept in their wake, hopping silently from rooftop to rooftop in the deepening twilight. Dissatisfied murmurs were traded between them as they wound casually through the streets, their voices pitched too low for Sasuke's ears to interpret the drone. When the other broke away at last, grumbling about slivers and cheap sandals, Sasuke kept on his target as he wound his way through sections of town Sasuke had only looked at from a good height earlier in the day. He slunk from roof to roof, worried that inhabitants of his path would give him away if they heard him clatter on their shingles.

In the end, it was in vain. A misstep, one actually not his fault, cost him.

A slight breeze had most unfortunate timing. A pebble on the edge of a chimney clattered down the slope of the shingles.

"Little boys shouldn't be out of bed at this hour," the man said in his general direction, pale eyes fixed on a roof two houses to the left of the one Sasuke was pressed flat against, "Especially not when a man is only off to get an honest drink and some supper. Someone might take offence at how the boy just 'dropped in'."

Stymied, Sasuke waited until the man walked on before heading back towards the hotel. He slipped onto the window ledge of their suite and slipped out a thin strip of metal to manipulate the lock.

Out of nowhere, orange assaulted his vision and the metal strip was nearly yanked from his grip. Shooting an impatient look at Naruto's toothy grin, Sasuke grunted loud enough that the loser could hear him and attempted to yank his metal strip back, but the idiot was in one of his difficult moods.

"Why, if it isn't a cold fish out of water!" The blonde chuckled until his face was slammed into the thick glass, his features contorting grotesquely as they were squished against the pane.

As he crumpled, Sakura in all her short-lived fury appeared behind him and opened the window as Naruto recovered himself and snarled at her behind her back.

Sasuke nodded thanks to her. "Where's Kakashi?"

"Where are our groceries?" she asked in return, frowning at him. "I thought you were going to get them while I went to the office. And you"—she rounded on Naruto—"were being unprofessional, not letting him in! Something here gives me the creeps. What if he was being pursued?"

Naruto pouted.

"I was scouting and doing perimeter checks." Sasuke crossed his arms.

"Well, Kaka-sensei's picking up some essential supplies, like our dinner," Naruto said. "The old farts' stomachs are grumbling loud enough that I can hear it from here. That was your job, bastard. What's your excuse?"

When Kakashi set aside his empty plate quite a while later, his eating having gone unnoticed as usual in the face of Sasuke's report and Naruto's questions about why Sasuke hadn't barged in a knocked some mercenary heads together, he eye-smiled grimly. "I'd say that was a pretty good excuse, Sasuke, almost as good as having to double back because you forgot your wallet and our grocery list."

His attempt at humour wasn't appreciated by his team.

By morning, no trace remained of the mercenaries. Sasuke wished he had stayed on the man's trail, cold eyes or no.

"How does one stop ninja?" grumbled Kan as he set his empty glass aside and wished that he had enough money to buy brandy, but the imported stuff was beyond his means and he was getting sick of sake.

Grumbling, he glanced at the bearded Masujiro, who was as collected as ever. Kan wished he had enough followers to club the scut and take over this useless little band of thugs, but unfortunately, Masujiro was good at what he did. The man was quiet and knew how to plan things out. Masujiro's flaw was that he didn't know how to get people going in a good direction. Oh, he could jabber on and on about it and they would listen, but when it came down to it, they wouldn't do anything.

Kan was a man of action; he knew how to get things going, but they all thought him a fool. In this particular instance, there was a grain of truth in their thoughts. He was too foolish to know a good way to get through those ninja protectors their quarry had hired. Impatience getting the better of him, he slammed his glass down on the counter, cracking it into three pieces and cutting up his palm as he repeated his question as though it was a curse.

"With ninja of course," said a voice to his left.

He looked past the three mercenaries beside him and his eyes widened as he realized that it wasn't a mummy in the corner, but a living man with an impossibly large sword propped up against his thigh. The delicate looking girl next to him and the two partly masked lackeys in the nearby booth convinced Kan that he had finally hit gold.

"And how would I find ninja?"

The mummy's eyes narrowed, assessing him with more force than even Fein Cold Stare could manage. "By asking the right questions and offering the right price."

After finally finding a receptive audience in this permit officer (Tazuna's permit had been rescinded because the man holding a trade and transportation monopoly over Wave had felt threatened, so he had made up all sorts of false accusations and bribed Fire officials) and Kaka-sensei and Sakura helping the poor man hand copy the documents because the office was understaffed, Tazuna and Keji were in a rush to be on their way. So here they were, enjoying a forced march, trying not to be edgy for no apparent reason.

"No wonder Ryuuka's tough as nails, bastard!" Naruto hollered as he raced ahead to take up point position. "She has to be after being forced to deal with you every day."

"Shut it, Moron."

"What kind of lame comeback is that? Come on, Bastard! You can do better than that!"

"Hn."

"There it is! I knew that it would show up eventually! Whenever the going gets tough, Sasuke's vocabulary gets going."

"Shut up, Naruto!"

Thud!

"Ow! Sakura-chan!"

"All right, settle down," their sensei said as their clients grumbled. "Instead of bickering, what useful things could you be doing?"

"Finding out where those sell swords went," Sasuke said.

Now that did worry Naruto even though these guys weren't ninja, so they wouldn't be any trouble. The details that Sasuke had given them, sometimes unwillingly, about the event had made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, especially that bit about the war with Kumo. From the way the bastard had talked about it, it was obvious that he thought it was Itachi. It had been there in his voice and in the furious clenching of his fingers.

"A good thought, Sasuke, but unlikely at this point. The mission forces us to stay with the clients rather than hunting down the whereabouts of possible threats."

"Why are they hunting Tazuna and Keji though?" asked Sakura, glancing at their clients, who kept staring straight ahead at the road. The three genin traded looks before Naruto trotted right up in front of the silent pair.

"Hey, Sakura-chan asked you guys a question! Aren't you gonna answer her? I mean, we've got blokes with knives and blunt instruments chasing after us. Don't you think we should know why?"

"Mind your own business, brat," said Keji, lengthening his stride and outstripping Naruto's backwards trot. Tazuna took the heat in stony silence.

"If you're not gonna tell us that, you can at least tell us where we're going," Naruto said, scowling something fierce. His attempt at drawing even this simple bit of information out was thwarted when he tripped over a tree root that had been unearthed in the middle of the path. Sakura and Sasuke snickered at his dirt-covered back.

Kaka-sensei shook his head sadly at Naruto's lack of spatial awareness. "How you manage kage bunshin when you can't even keep yourself from tripping all over your own feet is a mystery."

Naruto, horribly red, crossed his arms and went back to pouting. A noise that wasn't quite right reached his ears. Straightening up, he ran forwards a bit, trying to catch the sound again. His attempt was cut off when a dark brown blur shot out of the bushes well ahead of them, darting towards Keji with terrible speed.

Horrified, Sakura gasped and fumbled for a kunai. Narrow-eyed, Sasuke shot forward with all the speed Kakashi and his mother had trained into him over the last few months. Gaping, Naruto barrelled forward, sputtering curses and obscenities, also snatching kunai from his hip pouch.

All three of them were far too late.

Fortunately for them, Kakashi was a jounin.

One moment he was behind them, and the next he had pinned the brown and green man to the path and was holding a kunai to the attacker's neck. Keji had fallen flat on his butt, white as rice under the travel dirt and gasping. Sasuke arrived at Keji's side a moment after he had fallen, interposing himself between the attacker and his client, kunai primed for action. Naruto spun around and herded Tazuna within range of his sensei with Sakura's help. By the time they got there, the strange assassin was already bound to a tree.

"Which of you was aware of him and when?" Kakashi asked his team.

The tree genin traded anxious looks.

"Ten minutes ago," Sasuke offered sullenly, "he made a noise that Naruto's blathering didn't cover. It was when I told Naruto to shut up."

Naruto scowled, cursing himself for a fool.

"Sakura?"

The girl in question blushed darkly and stared at her feet. "Two minutes ago; I saw something move through the trees when I was asking Tazuna-san and Keji-san questions."

"Naruto?"

"I heard him a couple seconds ago."

Embarrassed silence reigned as the trio waited for their teacher to pass judgement on them.

"He's been following us since midmorning."

They all winced. Four hours, this civilian had eluded them for four hours. This was bad.

"Sasuke, do you recognize him?"

Naruto watched his friend peer into the dirty face. Sasuke nodded. "He's the one that said he could find easier targets before walking out on the meeting; the stickman."

"What sort of fighter did you think he was?"

"Tantō; his build suggested he would be good with short blades: speedy, thin and tall, good for darting in and striking at close range."

Kakashi nodded with something like approval, looking down his masked nose at the prisoner. Naruto wrinkled his: there was a strange smell around the guy, something pungent and foul that he vaguely recognized from the slums of the tourist town and the smoky dens that Snake had made him walk past on that night so long ago. Drugs, he thought. Maybe this guy was an addict.

"Name?" asked Kakashi.

The guy spat on the ground and sneered.

"I didn't think so. Tsuba it is then."

Tsuba looked rather offended, but Naruto had to snicker. "Spit" was so fitting.

"Who hired you?"

The man continued sneering.

"Very well then, we'll do this the hard way."

Naruto's initial enthusiasm began to recede. Even he had a vague idea about what "the hard way" involved. Apparently, Tsuba did too because the sneer fell off his face and an obstinate and frightened look replaced it. Naruto gulped a little when his sensei pulled out a pair of kunai and began rotating them out of sync around his pointer finger by the rings. The casualness of the motion made Naruto glance away. The rotation halted suddenly when his sensei somehow clasped both kunai in his fist and arced the blades towards Tsuba.

"Wait!" stuttered Tazuna, looking rather grey.

Kaka-sensei glanced back at the client with complete innocence. Naruto almost believed it. Kaka-sensei was nothing if not sneaky. "Perhaps you'd like to elaborate on what you gave my Hokage?"

Tazuna and Keji exchanged wary looks before the former sighed. "It started a couple years ago. Maybe you heard a storm destroyed more than half of Wave Country's useful boats, making it hard for us to transport goods to and from the mainland and between our islands. Keji here thinks that was when Gatou decided to start taking over. At the time, his shipping fleet was a godsend. How could we repair our boats with no materials? He brought them to us. How would we keep up trade while we worked to repair our fleet? His people handled all transport for us while we got back to work. Going through his company was easy and his prices were so low that all competition went out of business. We didn't worry. He seemed like a philanthropist to us; what other man would set up outposts of his huge company in a decimated area and cater to the needs of the people at a price they could afford to pay?" Tazuna shook his head, as though mocking himself.

"We quickly found out how wrong we were the moment he was the only one left. Once every other possible shipping company had either gone bankrupt or been bought out by him, he started raising prices at a crippling rate. Within four months, most everyone was in debt to him. What could we do? Our boats weren't ours anymore; they were his. If we protested, shipments of essential supplies were cut off. Wave was never rich, but our land isn't suited to farms. Most of our food is shipped in. When he cut us off, it was only a matter of time before we caved."

"Gatou-san's company is not the only one in the world," Sakura said suspiciously. "Why didn't another come in to compete with him?"

"Maybe because Wave isn't what you would call a good profit base, or maybe out of fear," Keji said, scowling at the ground. "We found out pretty quickly that Gatou has ties to the black market. Drug dealing and illegal weapon trading aren't unfamiliar markets to him. Drugs were cheaper than food on some of the islands. When you're hungry and hopeless, what do you turn to? When your spirit is beaten down too much to support dreams, where do you go to escape? Lots of people went down that road. It only helped him subdue us faster."

"Why didn't you fight him?" Naruto asked, clenching his fists. "Don't you have an army or something?"

"Our daimyo, well, he was in Gatou's pocket before he even realized it as far as we know. He was never very powerful or wealthy to begin with, but Gatou's got him on a shorter leash now. How can he hire soldiers he can't pay to arm or feed? As for the rest of us, what good are we against hired thugs like him?" Tazuna asked, gesturing at Tsuba. "With drugs or money, Gatou had more than enough thugs at his beck and call. They're more than willing to keep us in line."

"Why didn't Konoha do something?" Naruto demanded, glaring at Kakashi.

"Wave Country is not within Konoha's jurisdiction," Kakashi reminded him. "Konoha cannot interfere unless we have been contracted. Fire's Daimyo didn't send us in, so Konoha didn't act. It wasn't any of our business. Other countries might have protested if the Sandaime had decided by himself to go in and sort things out. Ninja are a contracted service, not a body that can enforce whatever idea of order it likes wherever it likes."

Embarrassed at how his sensei had quoted old Academy definitions at him, Naruto scowled at the ground.

"What about your bridge?" Sasuke asked. "How are you building it when it threatens Gatou?"

Now Tazuna smiled. "My bridge will help my people take control of their destiny again when it's finished. Building it has been a long battle. It is impossible to find someone with enough money to fund a small construction project in Wave aside from Gatou, so I had to leave. My project is anything but small after all. That was a task; Keji and I managed to slip away in his little boat under the cover of fog one evening. Keeping out of sight of Gatou's patrols was hard even then.

"Finding someone with enough money to get me started was a task and a half. Not a lot of people saw profit in it for them, so we were turned down a lot before we found Jun-sama in Waterfall. He's one of Gatou's competitors in Earth and Lighting and he was looking for a way to keep Gatou's focus away from those places. The bridge project seemed perfect to him, so he signed up with us. He's been keeping us out of the red ever since.

"Hiring people to work on a project that goes against Gatou in Wave was impossible at the time, so we had to start our bridge in Fire. Gatou thwarted us however he could without interfering outright so he wouldn't upset any of Fire's feudal lords: he deprived my people, used extortion on my workers and suppliers and drove them off in droves, and even vandalized what progress we did make.

"A month ago, he started trying to get my construction permit invalidated. It wasn't very hard for him to bribe or threaten the right people because our permit disappeared and all our workers cleared off. He must have really considered us a threat to actually step up from simply making our project difficult. I think he thought we were a joke until he could see my bridge from shore even in the fog. We hired you on our way to the permit office because we began to fear his thugs would brave Fire Country justice."

"Is that it?"

Tazuna nodded firmly and their sensei didn't press him further.

"So it wasn't much more than you said," Kakashi said cheerfully. "Good, it complicates things when missions are underrated. We can deal with thugs. It would have been better if you had told us just how likely you were to be targeted though. We can plan accordingly now." He favoured his trio with an appraising look that made them cringe.

"What about him?" Sasuke asked, jerking his chin at their captive, who was attempting to cut his bonds.

"We have a couple options," Kakashi said. "We can kill him, leave him here to be eaten by animals, or take him with us. Setting him free isn't really a workable option. If we do take him with us, someone will always have to watch him."

Despite what Tsuba had tried to do, Naruto wasn't keen on any of those options, though leaving him for the animals sounded the most just to him.

"There's a town about a day down the road," Sakura reminded Kaka-sensei. "Can't we leave him at the jail there?"

Kakashi nodded, eye-smiling at her suggestion. "Okay then, which of you is going to carry him?"

None of them had a good answer to this: all fingers pointed to different people. Unfortunately, Naruto found out that Sasuke and Tazuna had more in common than he was comfortable with; both of them were pointing at him. When Kakashi acknowledged the clear majority, Naruto decided that even if Rasengan wasn't as useful as tact, Kage Bunshin no Jutsu was. His clones weren't so certain though. Tact might have saved them a burden that made them curse the stupidity and annoying tendencies of the original. The boss was not a popular person that day.