Published: 6/14/2015
Edited: 8/13/2015 for the pre-chapter dialogue.
Age 13: Part 3
"It figures you'd get lost in there, Suzu. I'm not surprised at all."
"I'm sorry you had to see that. It's embarrassing, but I didn't want to trouble the workers to keep up a place no one was using."
"Ah, no, it's fine… Don't worry about it."
"But I can't help but fret anyway. It looked really bad, didn't it? Supposedly, that's where my wife's family should have lived, but…"
For the record, the Tsukimori estate is large enough to get lost in.
I had just run around the corner, not intending to go far, but when I had gathered enough of my wits to look around, I had found that I had arrived in a completely foreign land. The path back had somehow morphed into gray stone, and the stream that would have returned me to the group was nowhere to be found. Instead, I was somewhere at the entrance to a rock garden. It was a solitary place, standing lonesomely alongside an unoccupied building with dust-covered window sills and cobwebbed corners. There was a row of potted plants sitting by the veranda's walkway, but their contents were brown and withered. The pattern of flowers on the paper of the sliding doors was faded and colorless.
Lost. Not the kind of lost where you say, "Jesus Christ, where the hell is that stupid rendezvous point?" or "I swear we put the camp here!" but the kind of lost where you freeze up and panic. The kind of lost that strikes fear in your soul and makes you want to scream for help. My shoulders began trembling with shivers.
I was lost, and it was a kind of lost that I had not felt in a long time. It was a child's kind of lost.
"This is such an unpleasant piece of land, isn't it?"
I almost screamed. How, I immediately demanded of myself, had you not sensed this man coming? The moment I turned and saw him, I realized that he had a center of chakra that burned like a tiny sun. His presence was probably huge enough to be felt half a mile away.
But the answer came to me easily enough. You didn't sense him, it said, because you're out of practice. You haven't meditated in months. You haven't done a single kata, a single jutsu, a single lap, since October. You haven't trained in half a year.
"Maybe you should take a seat, little girl," the stranger said as I promptly burst into hot, bitter tears. He was an old man, white-haired, with a wooden cane and and traditional clothes. His face was wrinkled and his skin was covered in age spots, but he had the battle-tried air of a shinobi as he limped to a nearby stone bench.
"What are you crying about?" he asked as I fell onto the seat next to him and bawled, chest heaving with inelegant sobs. His voice was not gentle, but nor was it harsh. It was only curious.
"Ninjas," was my incomprehensible, blubbering reply. I leaned forward until I was bent in half, burying my face in my knees.
"Ninjas," the old man repeated, leaning his cane against the bench. "I see. Well, you're hardly the first."
I just cried harder in reply. Distantly, I felt alarmed. I had no idea where this sudden fit of hysteria was coming from. In fact, I had thought that this week had been a somewhat excellent one: the kids had finally gotten over their colds, I had finished repairing the tablecloth I'd put off mending for two weeks, Uncle Souhei and I had sorted out a new dynamic. Sure, there had been things I had been distantly troubled over, like the House's building financial deficit and how I was going to deal with Kakashi when he returned next week from his mission, but neither of those things were something to have a breakdown over. If we couldn't make ends meet this month, the clan would do its best to pick up the tab, and I had already fielded several "don't quit" visits from Kakashi. There was no need for me to be crying like this.
"Girl, what is your rank?" the stranger asked, gazing at me contemplatively. Between gasps, I haltingly replied chuunin, and he hummed.
"You've done enough, then," he said, rather ambiguously. "Tell me, why did you become a shinobi in the first place?"
Why? As I tried to control the shaking of my shoulders, I thought about it. Because... it was what I did. What I had always intended to do. I was a child of ninjas in a ninja clan living in a village of ninjas from a universe that had been novel to my eyes simply because of the fact that there were ninjas in it. I was a ninja because I had always been expected to be one, and because, as a regular person, the idea of superpowers had been irresistible. Wasn't that it?
No, I realized. Certainly those had been factors, but that wasn't it. There was something more. Why had I wanted to be a ninja? It was because...
"Welcome home, Minato-niichan!"
It was a chorus of voices that chimed these words. Mine was among them; I was perhaps the leader of this club, a self-styled Wait-By-The-Door-Until-He-Returns President. At this time of the day we were forever crowding the hallway to the genkan, cluttering the space with our toys while we played to pass the time until Minato came home.
Today, however, infinite routine was interrupted by the presence of two—no, three—vested ninjas standing alongside our big brother in the doorway. They were older, adults, and you could tell by the scratches and the wear on their gear that they were seasoned veterans of shinobihood.
"My, can we help you?" Auntie Reiko asked, a bit bemused by their sudden and unexplainable presence. "Shall I go prepare extra portions for dinner—?"
"Ah, there's no need," the lone woman of the group quickly replied. "Pardon our intrusion. We just came by to thank you for raising such an excellent young ninja."
"This whole squad would be a crater in the ground if not for this young man," the oldest of them laughed, smacking his calloused hand repeatedly on Minato's back. "He deserves the rank of jounin more than half of the Jounin Corps combined! We're in your debt!"
"Sakata-san," Minato murmured, the perfect mix of humble, embarrassed, and pleased. He smiled faintly, cheeks tinted just the slightest red.
"You little ones, you can learn a lot from your big brother," our third visitor informed, bending down to look at us children in the eye. "Study him well and strive become good ninja like him. Someday you may have the honor of serving the village at his side."
Someday you may have the honor of serving at his side.
Why had I become a ninja? A cold bolt of lightning struck me as I realized.
To have the honor of serving at his side. To become closer to the hero of my childhood, Minato Namikaze.
"This is his fault," I uttered, feeling my face begin to color. "He's the reason why this is happening. He's why..."
The bite of betrayal I had so thoroughly stifled was suddenly tearing at my ankles again, as though it had never stopped. This time, though, there was an added layer to it, one mixed with dire mortification. How could I have built this man such a pedestal? How had I allowed myself to enter into this state of affairs?
How had I ever let such a liar take hold over my heart?
"Ah, I figured that was the case," the old man said, looking satisfied. "Bereavement begets a different kind of grief than yours—you have the look of someone whose dreams have been crushed. Well, I suppose you'd be at about that point in your career, Miss Chuunin."
I suppose. Said so casually—like "I suppose it will be sunny," or "I suppose I should take in the laundry"—as though it were an afterthought. A thing of little consequence.
"I'm not a chuunin," I hollowly said, looking away. "I'm not a ninja. I don't want to be a ninja..."
Not if being a ninja meant fighting for him. Yes, that was what this was. I knew it now. I wanted to quit being a ninja because Minato had been my reason. I had trained and run missions and strived to improve myself to win his approval. Maybe I had become a shinobi because it had been expected of me, or because of some distant thought for some noble cause like protecting the village, but he had been the reason why I'd worked at it.
If that was what being a ninja was, I didn't want it. I didn't want to devote my life to him in any measure ever again.
The old man snorted. "You're a ninja, kid," he dismissively contradicted, interrupting my building train of resolutions. "Stop lying to yourself."
I slowly rotated my head to look at him, feeling the incredulity rise on my face. Did he not get this, or something? I was making the biggest decision of my life right here. I was deciding to cut away my life as a shinobi forever. How could a man speak so flippantly to a girl whose world was collapsing in crisis?
"Youth has the unfortunate property of blowing things completely out of proportion," the man answered. "A bit of flippancy, I've learned, is sometimes just what you need to show a young teenager how to reconnect with reality."
...
I opened my mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. My traitorous mouth, forever airing my thoughts out to the world.
"Chin up, little ninja." The old man stood, his very bones creaking with the movement. "Get out of the house and get to working again. You're just in a slump; idols get crushed all the time. Be grateful for it, because now you can focus on discovering the real reason to being a shinobi instead of focusing on a made-up fantasy. You don't have to let spoiled dreams stop you; just find a better cause to dedicate yourself to this time."
He gave me a wry smile and reached for his cane.
"Growing up isn't any easier the second time, is it?"
When he turned his back to me, I was able to see the clan crest on his back. My eyes grew wide.
Any citizen of Konoha would know the Sarutobi mon.
"That Daisuke," Uncle Souhei muttered, flipping a page in his book. It was a rare moment of downtime, that half-hour space between dinner and bathtime. "The least he could have done was come see us. I guess he just wanted to be a mysterious man who appears to give opportune advice… he's too old for such theatrics."
"He said I should be happy," I said, looking at my uncle's inverted image from across the carpet. Sitting upside-down on the couch, while not exactly common behavior, was not unusual enough in this household to be particularly noteworthy, so anyone who passed us by only spared a cursory glance. "Said that I can find the real reason for being a shinobi."
"Daisuke's been walking in this world for a while now," Uncle Souhei replied. "No matter where he's from or what he's been doing, he's bound to have some measure of wisdom in him."
The point of that sentence went unsaid: that even though he was an Earthling too, he still had valuable advice about ninja life to give. Perhaps even more valuable than it would have been otherwise, since he knew my situation more intimately than any Narutoverse native could. It was his own situation, too, after all.
"Said I was in a slump and should get out of the house," I muttered, playing with the hem of my shirt. "Told me to work."
"I know you've been a big help in managing the House, and I know Reiko appreciates the help tremendously, but maybe he's right," Uncle Souhei suggested. "When I was your age, I hated being at home. I always wanted to be out of the village, travelling or training. Maybe you're just not meant to stay put and do housework at this point in your life."
"But even if that's true, it's kind of hard to do," I pointed out, frowning now. "Forget running missions, I can't even get a job down the street. If I were a genin, I could take part-time work, but I'm not, so I can't. It's against my contract."
After a few days of stewing on it, I had gradually reopened myself to the prospect of taking missions again. Actually, at this point, I was feeling rather embarrassed. Encountering Daisuke had been just the slap upside the head I'd needed to recognize my own melodrama; however large had Minato loomed in my life, he was only big enough to make me quit if I let him. Maybe he could control my ability to take missions like he was now, but in the end I was the only one who decided whether to hone my skills as a ninja or not. I wasn't going to let him hinder my development more than he already had—not anymore.
Uncle Souhei looked contemplative for a moment; then he sighed. "How troublesome," he muttered, marking his page and shutting his book. "...Maybe it's time to talk to Minato. Half a year is a long time for a suspension without pay, and we could really use your income. I still can't quite believe he's deprived us of it this long… it's very unlike him."
"Maybe it's not." I instantly soured. "Maybe he was just like that all along. Now that he's Hokage, he doesn't have to worry about your approval so much; he can just lap up praise from some other people—the mindless sycophants always trying to brown-nose the village brass, maybe."
Uncle favored me with a disapproving look. "I understand you have reason to be angry with him," he said, "but that does not excuse narrow-minded prejudice. Though your cousin may sometimes be two-faced, he genuinely loves his clan—us here at the House most of all. You can't deny that."
"Hmmpth." I crossed my arms.
"He loves you quite dearly," Auntie Reiko said, appearing in the doorway. "Don't tell the others, but you might just be his favorite. He used to tell me all the time that he found you the best and most endearing of all his younger siblings, you know."
"Lies," I immediately denied. "Actions speak louder than words. How could you call this," I made a vague circular motion, trying to encompass not only my unemployment status but my general emotional strife, "a circumstance crafted through love?"
"People will always make mistakes," Auntie solemnly replied. "And I suspect that this is one of his. I know you've been hurt, Suzu, but at the very least you should try speaking with him. I know you've done things to hurt him too, as anyone in any relationship has, and even if he faked his gallantry when he forgave you, he forgave you all the same. You owe him that much at least."
My first reaction was to to jump on the defense and immediately protest. I owe him no forgiveness, I wanted to say. I've cut my ties with him. I don't want anything to do with him. I want to ignore him for the rest of my life and die satisfied knowing that he will never have my hand in friendship again.
But I didn't. I held my tongue and I stopped and I thought. Then I looked away.
"I'll go ask him to give me a mission tomorrow," I muttered. Even if he couldn't stop me, the fact that missions were essential to growth as a shinobi was undeniable. "But don't expect hugs and rainbows. I'll be civil enough to talk to him. That's it."
Auntie just smiled. "That's enough," she said.
The next morning, when I appeared at the Tower in full uniform, gear and all, I was able to march into the Hokage's office unimpeded. Maybe the purpose in my stride kept them from stopping me, or maybe everyone was still used to Misuzu Namikaze waltzing in and out like she owned the place—probably the latter, despite the months gone by—because not a single secretary even paused to ask me my business. I simply went up to the door and let myself in, unannounced.
"Good morning, Lord Hokage," I said in my stiffest, most formal keigo. Minato, who had been examining a set of papers, slowly raised his head to look at me. As I moved to stand at the center of the room, I noticed that Jiraiya was standing by the window, arms crossed. He gave Minato an inscrutable look; I got the impression he was waiting for something.
"Good morning," Minato replied softly, receiving his teacher's wordless stare with what looked almost like resignation. His shoulders slumped ever so slightly as he put down his work. "What is it?"
"I am requesting a mission," I announced, perhaps a bit curtly. "My family is inconvenienced. I would like to return to work."
I was surprised to see Minato actually flinch. Had he had known all along the House was struggling to make ends meet? I was immediately hit with the urge to punch him in the face. What kind of asshole let a household full of orphaned children go bankrupt?
"I understand," he murmured, surprising me somewhat with his willingness. "I… have something I've been meaning to assign you for a while now, anyway. It's been put off for too long."
My curiosity instantly flared, but I held my tongue. I didn't want him thinking I wanted to make small talk or anything. In fact, I was going to murder any rapport that surfaced between us with a rusty axe.
My trust is not so easily regained, bastard.
Go ahead, call me spiteful. That's exactly what I am.
"Report to the main gate in an hour," Minato told me, oblivious to the fact that I was currently cussing him out in my head. "You'll meet your team there. Prepare for extended travel. It might be a long trip."
Might be a long trip? That was hardly specific. For a second, I wondered if he was being deliberately vague. I considered picking a fight, but that would probably be overreacting; it would probably be uncalled for if I flew off the handle just for that, anyway.
"I understand." I bowed instead. "Thank you, Hokage-sama."
"Suzu—" Minato began as I went to the door, standing up out of his chair.
"I will report to you when I return," I cut him off before he could finish. "Good day."
If I shut the door with a bit more force than necessary, well, I pretended not to notice. In fact, I departed the Tower and roof-hopped all the way home without glancing back even once.
"Success," I declared to the living room once I had I returned to the House. Its inhabitants, my aunt and uncle and even a couple of my agemates, who looked to be on a rare break day or something similar, turned to stare at me.
"Wait," Jinta said, frowning at me. "What does that mean?"
"Mission," I replied, pointing upstairs. "I came back to get travel gear. He's sending me out of the village. May or may not be a long trip, he said."
"What?" Uncle Souhei looked bemused. "I mean, I'm glad he gave you work, but... for your first mission in six months? That's a bit strange."
"He also said it was something that has been put off for too long, if that means anything to you," I offered.
"Doesn't that just mean he's been short of hands?" Akira asked. "Ever since the Kyuubi attack, we've all been crazy busy working on recovering the village. He probably can't spare anyone, not even the ones who have just gotten off suspension."
"Then why did he put me on suspension in the first place?" I grumbled at that. My cousins just shrugged, and Auntie and Uncle sighed. I tamped down on my oncoming mood and went upstairs.
I hadn't done anything remotely ninja in ages, so it took a lot longer than I expected to gather a travel pack. There were clothes, rations, camping gear, weapon maintenance tools, extra kunai and shuriken, hygiene products… I knew I had everything stashed away somewhere, with sealing scrolls to take care of the rest, but I had to tear up the room a bit to find it all. Chiharu probably wasn't going to be pleased to find the mess when she came back, but there was really no helping it—there was no time to clean up. When I glanced at the clock, I found there were only ten more minutes to the meeting time.
"Crap," I muttered, slinging my bag over my shoulder and doing one last frantic pat-down, checking my gear and my clothes before dashing down the stairs.
"Gotta scram," I hollered at the kitchen, running for the door.
"Be careful!" Auntie shouted back. "You haven't taken a mission in ages! Don't push yourself!"
The moment I was out, I was shunshin-ing, pulling myself across the village mid-stride. When my foot met the ground again, it was in front of the gate, and I let out a tiny sigh of relief when I found that, aside from a genin team and their jounin sensei, no one was here yet.
Then I began smoothing my hair down and pulling my sleeves back into order. The months without chakra were definitely already showing; even for my skill level, that Body Flicker had been incredibly sloppy. My level of control had atrophied significantly.
I sighed and looked down at my left hand, remembering the days after it had been crushed and the time I had spent struggling to regain use of it. Well, I consoled myself, at least regaining ninjutsu finesse won't be nearly as difficult as recovering the function of a destroyed appendage. That was something to be thankful for.
I spent the remaining few minutes trying to recalibrate my chakra sense, trying reawaken the ability to passively sense other people. It took a bit of work, but after a few attempts I was ability to faintly feel the surrounding ninja without having to concentrate too hard. Then I realized there were two very bright chakra signatures blazing right in front of me.
"Oh!" I snapped my eyes open. To my bewilderment, one Jiraiya of the Sannin was standing there, Kushina Uzumaki at his side. Both had large packs on their backs, and Kushina was dressed in a jounin uniform, her long red hair plaited into a thick braid. She smiled brightly at me.
"I've always wanted to go on a mission with you, Suzu-chan," she said happily, clapping her hands together. "We've never gotten to know each other half as well as I've wanted."
"We meet again, brat," was Jiraiya's greeting. "Told you we would."
"What…" I trailed blankly. No, really, what?
"We're going to go fetch Tsunade-sama," Kushina informed. "We don't have a mission scroll, though." She lowered her voice and glanced at the gatekeepers and the genin team. "Because it's a sensitive mission. Saving Rin-chan is our only shot at keeping Obito from really losing it, so we're keeping it off the books."
"It's been determined that Rin Nohara's survival is essential for the defense of the village," Jiraiya quietly continued. "She's our only leverage against Obito. We exhaust a lot of resources keeping him imprisoned, so can't keep him like that forever, and we can't leave that jo-chan the way she is, either. Things would work out best for all parties if we can bring Tsunade-hime home."
For a moment, I could only stare at them, processing their words. Then I put my hands together and gasped, "We're going to save Rin?"
My heart began racing. Rin had been pushed out of my mind for ages; I had been guiltily suppressing any thought of her for this past half-year. But now that the possibility of saving her was before me, I found myself feeling like I was about to explode.
Rin had been around for me during one of the roughest periods of this short life, and she deserved to live. I had driven myself half to insanity trying to make it happen. She was the first step I had ever taken irrevocably changing the canon of Naruto.
Was that effort going to meet fruition?
"We will," Kushina replied. She spoke with incredible certainty. It was not a I hope we will or a it's likely we will, but a solid, unwavering, we will. She believed it with all her heart.
My lips parted. Kushina had incredible charisma.
"Is your brat gonna be alright without you?" Jiraiya raised an eyebrow at her. "For that matter, are you alright? It hasn't been that long since… well, you know."
"I've got the body of an ox," Kushina laughed in reply. "I'm an Uzumaki, after all. As for Naruto, he'll be fine. Minato isn't as useless as you might think when it comes to diapers. Besides, if worse comes to worst, Biwako-sama can just confiscate him."
"Hiruzen-sensei's wife, eh?" Jiraiya muttered, rubbing the back of his head like he was remembering a bump there.
I blinked, suddenly remembering a question that I'd never gotten the chance to ask. The Kyuubi had obviously been resealed… but into who?
"After the strain of her seal breaking, putting it back into Kushina would have killed her," Jiraiya answered lowly, seeing the question on my face. Kushina's grin faded a bit. "It's lucky she lived at all as it was. Naruto's the jinchuuriki now."
"Oh," was all I managed to say in reply. That… was honestly exactly what I had expected. Naruto was pretty much destined to have the Kyuubi with him no matter what happened. There was just too many circumstances for it to happen otherwise.
"Anyway," Kushina hastily broke in, "we ought to get going. Tsunade-sama's not going to bring herself home, after all!"
"You can say that again," Jiraiya immediately agreed, dropping the subject like it was a hot potato. As he exaggeratedly rolled his eyes, I decided it would be best for me to do the same.
I had a mission to focus on now, after all.
A/N: You've all probably noticed I've gotten rid of the chapter titles. I was rereading a bit last weekend and I found that I was incredibly annoyed by their presence. They were trite, useless, and they weren't even all the same part of speech, so I just said "screw it" and scratched them. I also got rid of the contradictory chapter numbers (where the prologue used to be chapter one, chapter one used to chapter two, etcetera) for the sake of sanity. It was a lot to work, though, so if you've found that the content has gone whack because I messed up a chapter somewhere, let me know.
Anyway, thoughts on the chapter? Overall impressions of the Earthlings, now that their introduction is done? Daisuke and Suzu's return to service? Suzu/Minato interaction? Kushina and Jiraiya on Tsunade retrieval? Let me know! Your thoughtful critique is what allows me to write well, after all!
Cheers,
Eiruiel