Chapter 28: Synthesizing Temperance
Sasuke was relieved when they got going on solid ground again. Sitting on a little boat in the middle of the wide inlet and watching the jagged cliffs and the misty fenlands pass by on either side had not been good for his peace of mind. He had spent hours figuring out how each bit of the scenery that Sakura had started enjoying could be used to put a halt to their journey. The glacier-hewn cliffs that she had prompted the first mate to wax poetic about only made him think about aerial attacks and barrages of kunai or even hefty stones. Paranoia seemed to be infectious. Sasuke blamed the initial carrier for his case: Kakashi.
Ever since the night that Naruto had howled bloody murder, his sensei had been more alert than ever. He didn't look it, but Sasuke had glimpsed the dog assessing too many of the same geographical features for comfort. Tazuna and Keji had lain about, oblivious, but Naruto had cringed or flinched exaggeratedly a couple times. Sasuke figured that more of the loser's clones had met some sticky end at the hands of Tazuna's hunters. According to his count, Naruto had four more clones to go before their diversion was destroyed. Those numbers made Sasuke grimace: it had been hoped that those bunshin would be able to keep the chaos going for at least another three weeks, not just three days. The moron was going to have to figure out some way of keeping those that remained intact.
They were doomed.
Sasuke forcibly pushed his gloomy thoughts away. It went against the grain to have to rely on Naruto to come up with a way to save their asses.
The catamaran stayed at the pier, gathering supplies to sail back to Kagiana. Their group of six left it far behind as they slipped through the town based around the harbour. Sakura tried to restock on provisions, but she came back mostly empty handed with a disturbed look on her face. "They barely have anything here," she told them, glancing sadly over her shoulder at the gaunt woman leaving the store with a mostly empty basket hung on her bony arm.
She had the look of a person who had lost a lot of weight in a very short period: her skin hung loose on her bones, lacking the fat deposits that had been there before. She was dirty besides and wore an expression that suggested she was so used to her poverty that it failed to rouse indignation in her any more. She had given up. The despair that hung around this place made Sasuke more leery than he had even been when the bandits had been about to waylay them. The insidious aura could seep into them and steal away all the fight in them.
They struck out along the road heading southwest, breathing easier as the oppressive poverty of that tiny town fell behind them. The forest at least was constant no matter what tribulations humanity was being made to face.
"How far from here?" Naruto asked, dropping the dog henge with relief the moment they were ten kilometres from any human habitation. It was intensely odd to see the blonde spikes after days of horns or dog's ears. Naruto seemed to feel the same way because he winced when he caught his reflection in a nearby pool of rainwater and ran his hand through his hair worriedly. "Where are we gonna stay anyway while Tazuna's working on the bridge?"
"I have a house—" Tazuna started, but Kakashi cut him off.
"That should be a last resort if possible. It will only be too easy to figure out who you are if you stay there."
"You mean that we have to keep hiding like this?" Keji asked incredulously, making his hound dog henge seem even more ridiculous. Who had ever heard of a whiny hound? "We're paying you to protect us, not shelter us behind a bunch of tricks and nonsense!"
"Ninja tactics are always tricks and nonsense. Whether we hid you under a henge or not, you would be guarded by a frail screen of ninja competence with trickery and clever tactics. The problem is that you commissioned us to deal with thugs, bandits, and normal trouble. Your enemy has apparently gone beyond that and enlisted the help of people that are not included in the parameters of this mission: ninja." Tazuna and Keji didn't have a good answer for that. "My team has only been taking missions for a couple months. While able to handle other fighters, they aren't ready to take on other ninja by themselves."
"But you're here," said Tazuna.
"Yes, but I am only one."
"We managed when the Oto-nin attacked Tsunade," Sasuke protested, but Kakashi shook his head.
"Those were chuunin that weren't interested in starting a war by killing you. Oto is too new on the scene to risk making enemies with Konoha by killing their genin just yet. Smaller villages need powerful backers before they can start killing off opponents without fear of overwhelming retaliation. Oto doesn't have a backer, so they're keeping their options open until there's no choice. Hidden Mist has no such problem. You weren't fighting on your own either. Whenever things went beyond what you could handle, Jiraiya-sama, Tsunade-sama, Shizune-san, or I stepped in to make sure that nothing happened. That may not be possible here if there are multiple opponents as Naruto's reconnaissance suggests."
"What did you find, Loser?"
"Well," the idiot began, rubbing his hair one last time before creating a new henge, human this time.
Changing their apparent numbers would keep people from connecting them with the group that had just arrived from Kagiana, so Sasuke assumed the appearance of a younger man, swarthy and foreboding with a sense of mercenary about him. Sakura quickly did the same, making her henge slightly taller than her previous persona and with a slighter build. In fact, she looked quite a bit like the Tsuba that was mouldering away in a jail cell because of them.
Kakashi nodded approvingly at them, switching up his appearance as well to a wolfhound as he modified the henge over Tazuna and Keji so they appeared to be nondescript old labourers that somehow looked nothing like themselves despite how they fit their true description now. Five humans and one dog were quite a change from two traders with four dogs and an even bigger jump from one uncouth scut with four goats and a sheepdog. No one was likely to make the connection between the groups now.
"Well what?" Sasuke scowled at the black-haired woman walking beside him that looked too much like his mother for comfort. "Drop that one, idiot, unless you want a kunai in your eye."
"What?" The loser batted his eyelashes as he nimbly flipped out of range. Hearing the moron's whiny voice coming from his mother's lips was disturbing. "Don't you miss your mom?"
Sasuke punched his arm and glared menacingly. "Moron, I mean it. Pick something else."
"Fine, how about this?"
When the smoke cleared, Sasuke grimaced, but admitted that it was an improvement. It looked uncannily like a feminine version of his father, or a grownup version of Ryuuka. He hoped she didn't turn out looking like that.
"Well, Bastard, there's at least two blokes trying to rip Tazuna to shreds at the moment: Kiri-nin too. They've knocked me out three times in the past couple days. I got killed by another guy, but I was dead before I saw who did it. He had a huge ass sword though—chopped my head off with it and everything!"
These details subdued Keji and Tazuna's indignation. They only passed a couple of people on the last leg: a pair of old men that had regarded them with unveiled suspicion and a delicate young woman with a hesitant smile to go with dark hair, snowy skin, and innocent brown eyes.
It turned out that all of their fretting about Kohan and the rest of the recruits was unnecessary. Kohan poled out of the mangroves that bordered the stream the road followed into town and glanced at them suspiciously before continuing on his way upstream. Naruto almost ran after him to keep him from skewering innocent frogs when he saw the spear in the bough of the dugout canoe, but Kakashi was trotting at his side, keeping him in line.
"Say nothing until we know more." He hung his head at a better angle to detect scents lingering on the road ahead of them.
"But we have to get in contact with them so the work can start," Tazuna said.
Sasuke shook his head at the man, his dusky face contorted into a scowl. "They might be watching him. Besides, there might not even be a bridge for you to finish."
That possibility put both clients on edge, granting the ninja a measure of peace. Where they were staying and how to keep from breaking their cover with their clients unused to deception of this level was a challenge Naruto didn't really have many ideas for conquering. He was all for just winging things and taking down problems as they appeared, but the bastard and Sakura didn't seem to agree because every once in a while they would mutter a suggestion only for it to be shot down by Kaka-sensei, who wasn't willing to make any firm decisions until they had more info. The possibility of ninja hanging around to lop off their heads had definitely put everyone on edge.
In town, they were given a wide berth. Something about their appearance frightened people. For Naruto, it was the oddest thing he had ever experienced. In Konoha, people did their best to harass him. Here, they stayed away out of fear. He wasn't quite sure which was worse: the hostility or the suspicion.
As they raided the grocery store with little hope of finding enough food to last the week, Kakashi disappeared into the roiling mass of people, an impressive feat for a huge wolfhound. Naruto was a little more nervous without Kaka-sensei around to make sure everything went smoothly, but the jounin was undoubtedly off to gather badly needed info. Naruto only hoped that one of the unidentified enemies didn't decide to show up and pick them all off when it was just the three of them guarding.
When their meagre foodstuffs for the week were safely packed away in their knapsacks, they let Tazuna and Keji show them the sights, getting a feel for the main streets of the city as they waited for Kakashi to catch up with them.
"Where is your place anyway?" Naruto asked as he glanced around at the same sort of houses on stilts in this district that had been in Kohan's tiny village. Just how rundown these buildings were was making him wary of stepping on the boardwalks too heavily. The gaps where boards had already broken were not reassuring him at all and the wet creak of weathered wood that was well on its way to rotting wasn't helping.
"Quite a ways out of town actually," Tazuna said as they passed a group of ragged children, who ran away the moment they were abreast of them. Naruto had to wonder just how scary they looked if punks older than he were terrified of them. "It's out in the suburbs off the river. Getting to the bridge is quite a walk from there. You can see my work from here." Tazuna stood at the edge of the boardwalk and pointed out into the bay, where the massive concrete structure was just visible through the edge of the rain that was headed their way.
"Wow," said Naruto. "You built that?"
"With help. We've still got a lot of work to do."
"How come it's still standing if Gatou hates it so much?"
"Jun-san has people guarding it. He's enough of a threat that if he took Gatou to court over the death of his employees, the bastard would feel the hurt," Keji said with a smug edge to his voice. "Any threat to the bridge would incur Jun-san's wrath as well since he's invested so much in it. He's got it covered. He knows how to cover his ass."
"One less thing we have to worry about," said Sasuke caustically as a grey shadow crept up behind them only to meet the bastard's fierce black gaze. The pickpocket slunk away, stymied.
Kaka-sensei padded out of the shadows between two buildings and sat on his haunches as he inspected the reason for all of this trouble. "We'll go to your place. There's trouble in town, so we're better off out there. Besides, that's near where Kohan ended up taking all of the recruits. Watching over them will be easier if they're close. Your daughter and your grandson are probably very worried about you by now."
Tazuna did a double take, and Naruto hid a snicker. Kaka-sensei was good. Tazuna had probably forgotten all about how he had mentioned his family during his spiels about how his bridge would help Wave Country, but Kaka-sensei hadn't.
They left town in the most roundabout manner possible to lose any pursuit. Kakashi dropped behind them at one point to really check if someone was tracking them and only re-joined them when he was positive that things were safe. They hightailed out of town after that with their meagre supplies. Tazuna took the lead once they were in the cover of the forest again.
An estuary appeared before them, dotted with houses and boardwalks. Tazuna led them through the maze, Keji close on his heels as they headed towards the coast in the most roundabout way possible. Both of them seemed more comfortable with their surroundings: they were almost relaxed. Naruto wanted to emulate them, but it was impossible with the huge wolfhound of a sensei nearly treading on his heels, reminding him that things were not as safe as their clients believed.
"Eh, Sensei?" Naruto whispered as they rounded a corner and cut through a stand of trees.
"Hmm?"
"How's his daughter gonna recognize him if he's under a henge?" When Kakashi didn't answer, Naruto grumbled under his breath about teachers that didn't know how to string two words together and how suiting it was that Sasuke-bastard was Kakashi's student. He got pinned with three glares for his efforts; Sakura's was by far the scariest because she currently looked like a man that would kill him as soon as take a leak.
Tazuna's house was pretty dang big. Naruto was glad: it would have been cramped otherwise. The old tradesman knocked on the door and smiled down at the little boy that opened it. "Hello, Inari. It's good to see how big you've gotten in the last couple years."
The boy stared at them from under the brim of his hat. Naruto had never seen a little kid look so impassive. This Inari could have given Snake's mask a run for its money. "Who are you?" the boy asked, putting the door between him and them, ready to close it at the slightest provocation.
"Inari, it's me."
The brat remained unmoved.
"It's Grandpa."
The kid remained suspicious. "Grandpa? You don't look anything like my grandpa."
"Inari, who's there?" called a woman from inside.
"Some guy's saying he's Grandpa." Inari shouted back. Hurried footsteps approached and a dark-haired woman shoved the child behind the door, blocking their view of the interior of the home with her body.
"I don't know who you are, but I want you to leave now. Tazuna has not been in contact with us for years. He has forgotten all about us."
"Tsunami, it's all right. I'm really here." She shook her head ferociously at them, but Tazuna wasn't finished. "You let Kohan-san stay near here, didn't you? He told you that he'd seen me."
Her expression didn't change much, but the slightest glimmer of doubt was there. The door didn't shut any farther, so Naruto guessed that she must have wanted to believe them.
"Hey, can you drop this thing?" asked Tazuna.
Naruto glanced down at Kakashi, who was casually scratching his ear, the picture of doggy innocence.
"Come on, Master Ninja; there's no way I'm going to sit at home wrapped up in your illusions."
Kakashi stopped scratching and cocked his head curiously at the man. Naruto snickered behind his feminine hand, working very hard not to break into full-bellied laughs. Women didn't do that very often for some silly reason. It was one of the cons of not being very good at using Henge no Jutsu to become a man.
"We're here now," said Keji. "What's the point of continuing to hide who we are? People are going to notice when we start making progress on the bridge; besides, I'm sick to death of being seen as something I'm not. First, it was goats, then dogs, and now this beefy bloke. Honestly, who's gonna try to off me?"
When the illusion covering Keji dissolved, Naruto pouted. "Aw dang, now we're gonna have to work even harder because this guy can't keep his face off the map! What's it matter to you if your ugly mug isn't everywhere?"
"If you didn't look like my niece, I'd hit you, gaki," Keji growled, clenching his fist as Tazuna's daughter gaped.
"Keji-san?" she whispered as Naruto stuck out his tongue. He had always known that there were pros to balance out the cons. "Keji… But you and Father left."
"Good riddance," Keji muttered, rubbing at his oily hair and scratching at the bug bites he had acquired during their journey. Naruto figured he had lice too. "I never thought I'd be glad to have that bump on my nose back. You ninja, I don't know how you stand it."
"It's a lot of fun," Naruto said.
"Pfft. Hardly. You're telling me you enjoyed being kicked around as a goat?"
Naruto was just about to put in his two cents when the woman lost it. "Hey! Is he my father or not, Keji-san? You can't just stand here outside my door and bicker about ridiculous things when my father, who hasn't sent word to us in years, is claiming to be on my doorstep!" She stalked forward, almost as though she was going to smack Keji. Naruto hoped that she would, but Tazuna, still concealed beneath Kaka-sensei's henge, intercepted her.
"Would Keji really travel here without me to keep you from hitting him?" he asked, and she flinched away from his touch.
"You left," she snarled at last, her son peeking out from behind the door with wide eyes. "You ran off and left us here! Do you have any idea how many times we have been made to suffer because of what you did? I ought to…!" She stalked back into the house, dragging Inari behind her and slamming the door.
"That went well," Sakura said, sounding a little too much like a man for comfort.
They spent the night on the porch, camping ninja style: no fire, no comfort, and lots of watches. As usual, Sasuke and Naruto got into a hissing fit over who was going to take the middle watch and have the broken sleep. Sasuke-kun was still far better at taijutsu, so a sodden and muddy Naruto sat on the roof during the midnight watch after Sakura went to bed. The terrace was wide, but not very clean. Pebbles and other little annoyances kept poking her through her blanket, not letting her have any rest. She was still wide-awake when Naruto attempted to wake Sasuke-kun up with a long string of drool in his ear. Fortunately for Sasuke, he was so used to these annoyances that he managed to bash Naruto in the head without getting slimed.
Their hissed insult war put her to sleep simply because it was so common to hear them toss "teme," "dobe," "baka," and "bastard" back and forth as though those four words were a strange language. The not so affectionate names were replaced by the wailing cry of some depressed bird early in the morning. Sasuke was still perched on the roof, staring out into the woods, which were just starting to be drenched with sunlight. Naruto was sprawled some two metres away from his blanket, spread out on the bare boards. She cringed when he let the world know that his intestinal tract was in perfect working order and the bacteria were quite happy to help him pass food along. To escape the smell, she scrambled out of her blankets and scaled the house.
Sasuke glanced at her in greeting. She had to sigh a little; he still wouldn't let her get too close. How was she supposed to make any progress if he kept her at arm's length? Still, pushing too much would make him angry with her, so she crouched down as close to him as she dared and stared out at the mesmerising ocean.
Inside the house, she could hear the echoes of doors opening and closing and soft conversation. She wondered whether Tsunami-san would ever forgive Tazuna-san. It would be much better for them if she did; Sakura wanted to sleep inside for once, dammit!
"Anything?" asked their sensei, appearing in his true form behind them without warning, probably a good thing since the chances of a wolfhound getting on the roof were slim. It was so odd; she had almost forgotten what he looked like.
"No," Sasuke said, "not unless you count the loser's salutation to the sun."
Sakura snickered at that.
The front door of the house slammed open. Sakura lay flat on the roof and hung her head over the edge to better see what was going on. Naruto woke up with a start, glancing around as though some bomb had gone off. Tsunami-san stood in the doorway, her face a torrent of so many emotions that Sakura couldn't decide which was dominant. The still disguised Tazuna obviously understood what was going on though because he elbowed Keji-san in the side and gestured that he should make a run for it while he could. Keji-san was quick to obey.
Sakura's spying attempt was interrupted when her sensei tapped her on the shoulder and gestured that she should follow Keji. She glanced forlornly at Sasuke for backup, but he didn't even look her way. Naruto was bugging him, hogging his attention. Narrowing her eyes and clenching her teeth until the ache eclipsed the one in her chest, she jumped off the roof and ran after Keji, who was on his way to the partially obscured worker encampment.
Not surprisingly, Kohan-san was already up, roasting frogs and fish over the fire with his usual sunny attitude. He was so glad to see them that he almost knocked half of his catch into the fire, though he required a little time to get used to the fact that the thin assassin was the oddly pink-haired girl. His confusion reassured Sakura about the effectiveness of her henge. Maybe Kaka-sensei was right about her hair making her easily recognizable in this nation where most had dull hair colours like black and brown. She was not happy to admit to this though; she loved her hair.
"We had no idea when you'd find us," Kohan said, grinning winningly at them in his simple way. "Some of the others wondered if you'd been killed. You should have heard the rumours! Some people said that you'd been kidnapped by the ninja! Others insisted that Gatou's men got you and strung you all up off some cliff that I've never heard of before. Apparently, he did that to some rebels on Sentan once. It's a pretty famous story; I can tell it to you if you want."
"Some other time," said Keji, spinning one of the skewered fish so it would roast evenly. "We've got to get to work while we can. Tazuna wants to start this morning as soon as he's done talking with his daughter. We need a boat to get out to the bridge."
"Jun-san's men have actually come ashore to buy supplies every couple days or so. We could flag them down and borrow their boat, right?" Kohan had to speak loudly to be heard over Tsunami's screamed accusations.
"That so, eh? That'll work. Better than spending money hiring a boat when there's one we don't have to pay for that we can definitely trust."
The same principle was applied to their lodgings later: Tsunami-san whaled on her father for almost an hour before she broke down and let them into the house. Keji-san settled into a room across from Inari-kun's for the day, claiming weariness as his excuse for not wanting to go back near town now that he was bare to the world, but Tazuna-san only wasted half an hour getting back into his grandson's good graces before he filled his pack with what he would need for the day, grabbed a worn hardhat, and headed out the door with Naruto and Sasuke on his heels.
Sakura had been assigned to Keji-san, so she was stuck here for the day. Kakashi-sensei went with Sasuke and Naruto, but she had the feeling that he wouldn't be staying with them long. Dogs always got their cold noses into everything.
Kakashi sent them out one by one the next night to map the area, insisting that maps were important pieces of tactical information that all good ninja needed. Even Sasuke-kun allowed himself to be conned into going out during what would have been his watch and returned with a sketch in hand. Kakashi spent the next morning cheerfully pointing out all of the flaws in their drawings. Hers received the least criticism, something that pleased her immensely, but Sasuke scowled darkly when Kakashi pointed out each error in scale and design against the jounin's mental map, which was apparently so flawless that it actually made her wary. Just what details he could have picked up about her without her knowledge made her edgy.
With maps done, Kakashi encouraged them to go through a list of traps that might be useful in the event of an attack. "Even if all ninja know to look for traps, not all of them will. Common thugs will be the first to fall into these of course, but catching even one ninja evens the odds in our favour." He supervised their setup and had them mark down the location of traps on their maps, which was a very good idea if they didn't want to become victims as well. Besides, they would need to disable all of these when the mission was over; anyone could be caught in tripwires or log traps. Having a list would keep them from forgetting any.
He also assigned them the task of picking out all of Gatou's thugs in town, but that was going to be a long-term project done while out on duty.
So began the most boring of ninja duties: stationary guarding with small chance of attack for the moment.
Naruto sat on the railing of the bridge, swinging his sandaled feet back and forth. Far below him, the waves devoured each other, white foam and froth capping their battles from time to time. Tempting gravity to pull him to his doom was a lot more profitable than his recent efforts to keep his last clone kicking wherever it was.
He could only feel one link tugging at the back of his mind, like a call from downstairs, but failing to get through spectacularly. Naruto could "emit" stuff according to the scroll, but he couldn't receive unless the clone went poof. This was unfortunate because the clone could have told him tons of useful stuff. The guy was still alive, so he must have been doing something right.
The problem was that Naruto needed more clones out on those eastern islands to keep the focus away from the bridge. Sakura, Sasuke, hell, even Kaka-sensei had explained that to him enough times that it echoed through his head as he slept. The thing was that the clone couldn't regenerate chakra the way he could. It was stuck with one ninth of his usual reserve. When that chakra ran out, which could be any minute now if the clone was stupid, the clone would be a little cloud of smoke and a whole bunch of memories hitting Naruto over the head like a plank of wood. If the clone got killed—got injured too much for chakra to sustain its shape—then Naruto would be pole-axed by the memories of that death with a little more useful information. Either way, there would be no more decoys out there to sow confusion.
As he saw it, there were two options. He could have new clones run back to the eastern islands, but they would eventually run out of chakra too and would leave a trail back here. The other option was to attempt to figure out a way to channel chakra into his existing clone and have it make more bunshin. The latter was his best chance, but the physical distances involved—the clone was somewhere way out on the other side of Wave—made him dizzy. How was he supposed to get chakra—something contained within his chakra network—all the way out there? It wasn't as if there was a conduit…
"Sakura-chan?" he called, waving her over from where she was watching the concrete mixer churn the gravel, cement, and water up. She shot him an annoyed look, but she came over. "Can you answer a question for me?"
"What is it?" She leaned against the railing, the thin face of her henge looking especially cutting today.
"What sorts of things are just one thing, but in many places? You know, like strawberries; they have little offshoots—aren't they called rhizomes or runners or something?—and they spread all over the place, but they're really just one really big plant?"
She cocked an eyebrow at him, looking rather confused.
"It's like ramen: a ramen noodle can be all tangled up in the others, but you can grab it from anywhere and get the whole noodle, you know?"
She shook her head at him and sighed. "You really need to get some other hobbies. It's always plants and ramen with you."
"At least I'm not all about Sasuke," he said.
"You keep talking like that and I won't help you," she snarled, narrowing her henge's eyes.
"I'm just calling it like I see it. You're so violent when Sasuke-bastard ignores you. Geez… I'm asking 'cause it'll help me keep the mission going. I need to get chakra to my clone."
"That's impossible. Only a god or some sort of all-powerful being can do something like that. They're immaterial, so they can be everywhere at once and nowhere."
He blinked, paused, and blinked again. Of all the unholy…
"Say that again."
She scowled at him, probably figuring that he hadn't been paying attention, and repeated herself.
He blinked again. What luck! So, this fox was good for something after all! "Sakura-chan, you are the smartest girl in the whole world." His excitement catching up with him now, he hugged her tightly. He took this golden opportunity to grime up her hair so she wouldn't get too used to this sort of grovelling and then jumped out of retaliation range. He clambered up on top of a pile of wood used to make forms for pouring concrete near the massive stacks of rebar and watched a cart full of gravel slowly move past from Fire Country.
As far as he understood things, Kyuubi "lived" in his navel. When he made a clone, his clone got the seal too, but Kyuubi couldn't be in two places at once, not really. However, the seal still bound the fox, even though he was still in the original Naruto's navel. That meant that Kyuubi connected all of the clones, which made Kyuubi the channel he needed. Working hard to concentrate now, he began to reverse the flow through part of his inner coil, or at least he tried to. Chakra didn't seem to want to flow the other way into the seal.
