Published: 4/1/2021
Previously: Suzu takes her business to the Hokage; Souhei shares a story about Tsunade; Kushina, Jiraiya, and Suzu set out on a mission.
"So Naruto's really all right without you?" I asked.
"For the time being he has to be," Kushina replied. "I'm not happy about it, but Minato wasn't lying. We should have been out looking for Tsunade-sama months ago. The sooner we can help Rin-chan get better, well, the better. You know?"
Dattebane, I thought. Until now she hadn't been saying it and I found myself suddenly fighting back a smile. In a way it made things feel like she was opening up and showing us her true personality—not filtered for mainstream consumption, but Kushina Uzumaki as she really was.
"The Council's in a big twist," Jiraiya said absently as he checked the position of the sun and scanned the horizon searchingly. "Every day Obito sits in prison with his head still attached is a massive security threat as far as Danzou and his crowd are concerned. Minato's doing his best to hold them off, but there's been friction with the Military Police lately. Anti-Uchiha sentiment seems to be climbing in the upper brass," he added meaningfully.
A twofold problem. Minato obviously would do what he could to keep Obito safe, but Obito was a massive problem whether he was dead or alive. Alive, he could break out and finish the deed he'd come to do; dead, he could be a major accelerant for the Uchiha coup d'etat. There was very little that could be done in this situation by anyone who was not Obito himself. And not only was the path out from here a narrow one, but without Rin Obito was highly unlikely to even step foot on it.
I sighed. These were not unexpected developments, but nevertheless it was the first I was hearing of any of it, and I was reminded of just how thoroughly I'd been locked out of the loop I'd set out to help create. I couldn't do anything to help this situation even if I wanted to—nothing beyond pestering Jiraiya, anyway.
A familiar silence settled over the group as we continued to sit on the forest floor and stare up into the trees, waiting. That was quickly shaping up to be the greatest lesson of this mission—waiting. Even Kushina was better at it than me. That was vaguely surprising, but at the same time maybe it shouldn't have been. A fiery temper did not necessarily equate to an impatient personality, after all.
I was getting better at it spending my time intelligently, though. Having spent the last half-year without any sort of practice whatsoever, this excess of downtime had been very conducive to regaining extra-fine chakra control. The various blending and layering techniques were still accessible to me but it took some work to figure out signature erasure again. I spent several days closing specific tenketsu around my center—leaving a different portion open each time to prevent any accidents—before I tentatively began trying to shut them all enough to erase my chakra presence. Kushina didn't appear to have any passive sensing abilities so she never noticed, but Jiraiya seemed to find it unsettling.
"It's so creepy when you do that," he complained. "It feels like you've dropped dead or something. Like someone snuck up from behind and just assassinated you while I wasn't looking."
"I snuck up on Minato the other day," I bragged off-handedly. "Before we left Konoha."
Jiraiya's eyebrows rose. "That must have ended well."
"Not really. But at least he lifted my mission ban."
There was an awkward beat. Jiraiya frowned thoughtfully, but it was Kushina who spoke first.
"Hey, Suzu," she said.
"What's up?" I asked warily. I was well aware that this thing was rapidly evolving from a feud into an estrangement and I had no desire to engineer any situation that would involve taking sides. I liked Kushina quite a lot. She didn't deserve that—and I doubted I would like the result of it, either.
Kushina gave me a knowing look. Then she came over and sat down next to me on my log.
"I didn't get the chance to say this to you when it happened," she began quietly, "but thank you for saving Minato's life."
I blinked, taken aback, because that had not been what I'd been expecting.
"I know you did," she added. "Minato didn't say anything about it, but Jiraiya-sensei told me. Minato would've bled out from that arm injury. He only survived long enough for the ANBU reinforcement to come because you had his back. And because Minato lived," she took a breath, "I lived. My son didn't become a jinchuuriki. And our village was spared."
I looked at my hands. When she said it like that I sounded unambiguously heroic, but the truth wasn't that simple. Not that I could tell her, I thought as Jiraiya subtly shook his head at me. She wasn't in the know.
"I—" I shook my head.
"No, hear me out," Kushina insisted. "Listen, okay? My husband is a good man and an incredible ninja but sometimes he's also an idiot. I know that. He's a human being. He's not perfect and I've spent a lot of time trying to tell him that it doesn't matter, but he doesn't believe it, and because of that he does even more stupid stuff. You," she put a hand on my shoulder and leaned forward to look me in the eye, "broke the rules and disobeyed orders, true, and that warranted a censure. But he didn't censure you for that and we all know it—two months of half pay would have been plenty for all that. He censured you for seeing his mistake. He repaid your help with punishment and that's why you're fighting."
"Kushina-nee, I—"
"And you deserve to fight with him," she plowed on determinedly. "He should be fought with. People always indulge his maladaptive nonsense but someday he needs to learn that there are consequences for pushing away his problems and rejecting everything that reminds him of his failures."
I—had said I hadn't wanted her to pick any sides, but was she—?
"I love you both," she told me firmly as she wrapped her arms around me in another hug. "I'm not picking sides. I'm telling you to fight with him for his own good, too, because you can help him grow in a way that I can't."
"She has the right of it," Jiraiya said quietly when we were on the road again later. "In your case he abused his power. Not even the Nidaime punished active members of the Forces like that—if he really thought you deserved it, he just kicked you out and let you loose to live your life. And though Minato can do what he did because he's the Hokage, that doesn't mean there shouldn't be consequences for it. That's not the kind of village we are."
"She made it sound like he was punishing me just to save face. Like it was only because I'd seen him in a bad spot," I shook my head. "But she doesn't know about how I withheld—"
"It doesn't change anything. He's still using his power as Hokage for his own motivations, not the village's." He waved a hand. "Besides, kid, do you think he can hold your foreknowledge over your head like that? You saved his life. You saved his family and you gave him the means to rescue his student from a half-dead madman bent on destroying the world with genjutsu. He's an ingrate, but he's not an idiot."
"But—"
"Suzu," Jiraiya said, exasperated, as he stopped walking so he could flick me in the forehead. "Look. Kid, we're glad enough that you spoke up. You did good and you mean good for all of us. It's enough. Could you have done differently? Maybe. Can you change it now? No. Look at what you can do in the future instead. Move on. Don't fall into the same trap that he does."
There was a moment of silence. My lip began to wobble as I looked up at him. Jiraiya took on a look of alarm when water began to gather in my eyes.
"Uh, hey, Kushina, can you—" he called, eyeing me like I was some sort of pipe bomb. I burst into tears and threw my arms in a hug around his waist. "Oh, no, no. Don't do that. It's fine, kid, you're fine, don't—ugh, Kushina!"
On the thirty-second day, we found a lead.
"Oh? Tell me more." Jiraiya grinned delightedly, leaned forward, and held his cup out.
"Sorry, stranger, but our guys get first dibs on marks. Outsiders wait a week for info."
"Don't be like that," Jiraiya wheedled as his drink was refilled. "There's plenty of work to go around. I'm not even asking about the whole board—just the one job in particular…"
Kushina and I exchanged glances as Jiraiya persisted in his cajolery, looking in from the outside. Sauntering into what amounted to a hitman's guild—hidden, of course, in a tavern—with a pretty lady and a teenage girl in tow would bring more attention than was strictly helpful. A lone man looking for work was a far more ordinary and inconspicuous scenario. As inconspicuous as a man of Jiraiya's massive height could be, anyway.
"What're they saying?" Kushina whispered as she craned her neck and tried to peek through the window. "I can't read their lips from this angle."
"I'll tell you in a second," I shushed. Eavesdropping techniques were only as good as the focus one gave them.
The tip that Tsunade had been in an altercation with a small-time yakuza enforcer had come in several days ago. In that time Jiraiya had begun hitting every known association of bounty hunters and hitmen that he could find. It was an admirable strategy; not only was he gathering primary intelligence himself by obtaining information from the various wanted persons boards, he also had the opportunity to flag other bounty hunters who made progress in locating her.
"Okay, okay… look, I'll tell you, if only because the week's almost up and no one's found her yet." The bartender sighed, beleaguered. "The request comes from the Golden Vine House. She lost big at the tables and skipped town before paying her dues, and when they sent out a collector she just about knocked the man's face in. She skipped town again after that and headed west. Reports say she has a traveling companion, though no word on whether or not they both can fight. As it is, she's probably several days past the Naka River, and she's likely to continue beating off any pursuers." The bartender took a long drag on his pipe and blew out a plume of smoke in Jiraiya's direction. "Honestly, if you're looking for a quick mark, this probably ain't it. This job's been through two towns before mine and no one's nabbed her yet—seems like she might have some sort of ninja training, she knows how to hide a trail. None of the regular crowd's been able to keep an eye on her for longer than a day."
Despite this pessimistic assessment Jiraiya looked to be seconds away from a merry cackle. "Thanks, man," he smirked instead as he dropped his payment on the counter. "I appreciate it. You've been a great help."
I ducked back down and reported the contents of the conversation to Kushina as Jiraiya withdrew and circled around the building to regroup with us.
"Catch that, brat?" he asked.
"Yeah," I replied. "Looks like we're heading west?"
"Looks like we're heading west."
We departed an hour later after resupplying. Though I was without a doubt the physically weakest of all of us, a month of training on the road had done wonders for helping me regain my stamina, and I felt no strain in keeping pace with my companions even when we ran at full speed. We flew past the Naka River's southern ford and angled towards the closest city with a casino.
It wasn't as easy as all that, though. We spent three days there scoping out the inns and the various gambling establishments before writing this particular town off as a bust. The next one over did not produce results either. We began to feel disheartened as we continued to roam along the river, wondering if we had been too slow to catch her after all. We checked into an inn in a nearby town in discouraged gloom.
And then, on the forty-seventh day of the search, we found Tsunade.
More specifically we found the teenage boy kneeling at her door. He had his forehead pressed to the hardwood floor and was pleading to a closed door, "Lady Tsunade, I beg of you, please take me as your student."
We halted. I exchanged looks with Kushina; Kushina turned to look at Jiraiya. Jiraya, for his part, was stepping over the boy and rapping on the door before anyone else had the time to react.
"I—" the boy immediately straightened and looked up at Jiraiya, but Jiraiya just ignored him and continued knocking insistently. Kushina and I came over to stand nearby.
Several moments passed without answer, but Jiraiya set his jaw determinedly and persisted in his knocking. Several heads poked out from other doors in the hall, grumbling about noise, and I shifted awkwardly, but he was unbothered. And then, finally, she answered.
"I told you," came the growling voice, "I am not taking you as a student—"
"Hey, Tsunade," Jiraiya replied.
Tsunade stopped short. There was a long pause. Then the crack in the door widened and I saw her face peering out from within, suspicion in her eyes.
"...What are you doing here?" she asked, guarded. She looked as if she might slam the door shut again at a moment's notice.
"What, it's the first time we see each other in ages and that's all you have to say to me?" Jiraiya asked. "I'm hurt."
"You never bring anything but trouble. What do you want? And who are these two?" Her hazel eyes shifted to peer narrowly at Kushina and me.
"Tsunade-sama, it's an honor to meet you." Kushina stepped up and bowed at the waist so deeply that her long braid fell over her shoulder and reached for the floor. "My name is Kushina Uzumaki. My husband Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage—"
"I'm not interested," Tsunade immediately cut her off, moving to shut the door. Jiraiya's arm shot out and held it in place. She scowled up at him, but he just responded by stepping forward, forcing the door open as he did.
"...What's the matter with you?" Tsunade asked guardedly as Jiraiya stared down at her. His face had shed all pretense of levity. I hadn't seen him so serious since he'd mistaken me for a foreign agent and assaulted me in an empty alleyway.
"We wouldn't be here if there were any other option," he said. "You know I don't bother you unless there's no other choice."
"I do know," Tsunade grumbled. "That's why I hate seeing you."
Kushina and I shared a wince but Jiraiya took this in stride, too. He was made of tough stuff in every sense of the word.
"Let us in, Tsunade," he said. "At least hear what we have to say."
"Why should I?" she snapped back. She spread her feet and locked herself in that stance, defiant. The two Sannin immediately descended into a battle of wills.
Several moments went by. Then a minute, then two. Kushina and I exchanged glances. The boy on the floor looked up at us, bewildered.
"Umm," I finally said after it was clear that this would go on until someone put a stop to it. I thought about something that could break the tension. "Tsunade-sama, you're really pretty. Could you show me how to get my hair like yours?"
Jiraiya and Tsunade broke off their staring contest to give me incredulous looks. I held up my hands. After a moment Jiraiya began to laugh.
Tsunade regarded me with a flat stare. I gave her my most polished I&E smile in reply, squinting and sweet and as disarming as can be. She let out a noise of faint disgust.
"You brought one of them with you?" she asked Jiraiya. "What's an Intel brat doing here?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Jiraiya replied, aloof. "Misuzu Namikaze is a skilled member of the general platoons, formerly of the Fourth Hokage's own four-man-cell. She is not a representative of the Intelligence Division."
But he did not, I noted with amusement, deny that I had ties to the Intel Division. Well, that was probably for the best.
"Now you just make it sound like she's undercover," Tsunade commented. Then she sighed and put a hand on her forehead as she kicked the door open the whole way. "Ugh. Get in, oaf."
A/N: I'm contemplating shorter chapter sizes, which might make it easier to post more often. This is probably the length I'll be shooting for from now on. Does it feel all right?