Previously: Tsubasa shares a heartfelt word with Suzu; Suzu spends a glad moment among friends; Daisuke Sarutobi makes another appearance.
It was only three weeks later that I found myself meeting Jiraiya again.
"Suzu. I need you."
I looked up from my calligraphy practice to see him in the doorway of the sitting room. Over his shoulder I could see Auntie Reiko standing in the opposite doorway at the threshold of the kitchen. She was drying her hands in her apron and eyeing the back of his head worriedly. Uncle Souhei, sitting with a book in hand and Kouji on his knee, looked up as well.
"Jiraiya-sama," he said, surprised. I was surprised, too, as I set my brush down. I'd been focused enough that I hadn't heard him coming. Neither had Uncle, apparently.
"Namikaze," Jiraiya returned a little stiffly. Uncle looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I, having a good idea about why Jiraiya would be coming to me here as a guest at the House instead of in an official capacity, flicked a finger downwards.
"Welcome," Uncle Souhei, seeing this, greeted and turned his eyes back to his book. "Did Reiko offer you tea yet?"
"...Yeah, she did." Jiraiya looked uncertain in the face of this placidity but gathered himself and cleared his throat soon enough. "No time, though. Suzu?" he said again.
"I'll be right there, Jiraiya-sama." I set down my brush and quickly began tidying up. Kouji's eyes lit up and he scrambled down from Uncle's knee to help me clean the table. I smiled at him.
When my calligraphy kit had been packed up I stood and made my way to stand before Jiraiya. I'd had a short mission that morning standing guard at the gate and had not yet removed the underlayers of my gear, so I was still dressed in my blues. He eyed me and then said, "Bring your kit, but leave the rest of your gear. We need to move quickly." In sign language—not standard Leaf sign, but the sign he'd taught me on the retrieval mission—he flashed his hands at me and said, Mission time critical. His fingers twisted in a new sign, one he'd made solely as shorthand for referencing my foreknowledge secret: bad story.
My eyebrows lifted. "All right. Give me a moment." I flickered upstairs to grab my mission gear, but as requested I left my flak jacket behind. The bedroom was empty except for Nodoka, who had come back from an out-of village mission in the small hours of the morning and was still currently dead to the world on her futon, sleeping like a rock.
"Good. Let's go," Jiraiya said when I came back down with my holster on my thigh and my belt, with all its pouches, around my hips.
Uncle was standing by the doorway with his arms crossed when we made it to the genkan. Jiraiya tensed again—and I was getting increasingly concerned, because it was not often that he was so overtly on edge—but Uncle Souhei just bent forward towards me.
"Take care," he bade as leaned in to kiss me on the forehead. As he drew back he breathed out in English, "Foreknowledge?"
"Yes," I exhaled in reply as I threw an arm around his middle.
"Be safe," he said at normal volume when I released him. "Don't be rash."
Jiraiya threw him a sharp look. And he would, wouldn't he? Uncle Souhei just met his gaze evenly.
"If you need her, take her," he said. "But don't be reckless with her."
For a moment it looked as if the Toad Sage would clap back with something sharp, but the lack of venom in Uncle's voice seemed to hold him back. Maybe the paternal weight in his words came out instead.
"Yeah," Jiraiya finally replied. "I won't."
My uncle nodded once, sharply, and then opened the door for us.
"Is Minato asking for us?" I asked once we had made it outside and onto the rooftops. Jiraiya drew a hand across his face.
"No. I've been handling this bit on my own. He's busy, and it's been easier to move around since we've kept things on the down-low."
My eyebrows rose again. He led the way across the village and up the Hokage Mountain, and then to his house by the hidden crevice leading to the ANBU Base. He opened the door and waved me inside.
"Here, these should fit you. Change quickly and come find me in the armory when you're done." All of a sudden a bundle of black cloth came flying at me from down the hall. I caught it and then jerked to the side to catch the gray vest and sandals that came soaring, too.
"This is…" I stared down with shock as I realized what I was holding. An ANBU uniform.
"Put it on!" Jiraiya hollered as if he could see me hesitating from across the house.
"I am not joining ANBU," I yelled back flatly. "How many times do I have to tell you people?"
"Yeah, it figures SpecFor people were trying to recruit you after the hospital incident," Jiraiya said as he reappeared in the doorway to chuck a cloak at me as well. "You're not becoming an ANBU, you're just impersonating one. Now put it on."
So that was why he told me to leave my gear behind? "Impersonating a member of the Special Forces is punishable by death," I informed him.
"It is if you do it without permission. But I'm giving you permission, so just do it," he ordered, and then came forward and pressed something else in my hand as well. I peered down at it and saw a small rectangular object.
"An omamori?" I asked, surprised. Something like a protection charm was far too sentimental for someone like Jiraiya.
"No. Guess you've never seen one," he said musingly as he waved a hand and exited again. "It's a clearance token. Give it your chakra."
Curious, I fed it a drop of chakra and watched as black squiggles appeared on its dark blue surface. They coalesced into legible characters—my name, Misuzu Namikaze, and…
"S-rank?" I yelped. S-rank meant access to everything the village had on offer besides Kage-level information. I'd never even applied for clearance, let alone clearance that high.
"I put in an app for you pretty much as soon as I determined your scroll was real," Jiraiya's voice floated through the doorway. "Was obvious you'd need one, you know everything already anyway. Anyhow, you're I&E, so you know how it goes. You're a high-clearance operative now. Follow the rules and don't be stupid."
I stared down at it with a conflicted look. S-rank clearance came with a lot. A lot of privileges, certainly, but a lot of rules, and a lot of restrictions, too. If I ever died in the field without likelihood of retrieval, for example, I was now obligated to destroy my own body, lest it be used by enemies to access the secrets of Konoha. That was certainly something to chew on.
After stashing the token in a safe place, I reluctantly changed out of my clothes and into the uniform. Jiraiya had had the foresight to offer me a shirt with quarter sleeves rather than a sleeveless one, which hid the fact that I did not have an ANBU tattoo. As I swapped my sandals and put on the vest, I also took my hair out of my somewhat-iconic side ponytail, braided it, and tied it into a loop with my wire cord, resulting in a sort of simplified Meiji-era magareito hairstyle. That was another strategy of disguise—taking on a distinctive characteristic to distract from one's usual persona, with the idea being to make others think "surely I would've remembered someone who looked like that." No one in this world knew what the Meiji era even was, and I'd never seen this sort of hair on anyone else, so if my hood came off and my distinctive blond hair become visible, hopefully "imouto-sama Misuzu Namikaze" would not be the first thing to jump to mind.
After donning the cloak and familiarizing myself with its openings in case I needed my weapons quickly—there were slits in the sides and the back for easy access of belt pouches and holster—I pulled in my chakra with tight blending, silenced my step, and practiced gliding down the hall in total silence like I imagined a real ANBU would move.
As promised, Jiraiya was in his armory. He appeared to be fiddling with a short straight sword and he turned when I flared my chakra to let him know I was ghosting up behind him.
"Nice," he said with an approving nod for my suitably sneaky Cat's Foot technique. He held out the sword to me. "Here. Gauntlets, too."
I pushed my cloak sleeves back to equip the arm guards and then put the sword on my back, where I expected it was going to stay sheathed for the rest of the mission. I had no skill in kenjutsu whatsoever.
"Never thought I'd be infiltrating in my own village," I commented as I pulled on gloves. Jiraiya, for the finishing touch, held out two masks to me before indicating that I should seal the other into a pocket. The one he had me wear was painted with black and purple and looked vaguely primate-like. "Mm. Right. An ape, very funny."
"Didn't you do plenty of in-village infiltration practice with I&E?" Jiraiya questioned.
"Ah yes, how could I have forgotten? We hit the ANBU Base just before breaching the Tower. Silly me," I muttered as I put it on. It was surprisingly breathable. Stable, too, and secure-feeling enough that it wouldn't just fall off. A strange echo of chakra seemed to ring in my ear as I donned it. "Is that—oh?"
As soon as it went on my voice came out sounding muffled. Still distinctly feminine, but not so young-sounding, or as easily identified as my particular voice. Jiraiya extended a hand and put the tip of his index finger on the mask's right cheek, where I heard a quiet chime.
"Voice modulating seal. It'd be good if you signed as much as possible, but for when you have to speak, this'll help you keep your cover."
"Wait, that sign language you taught me—" I paused. "You taught me ANBU sign?"
"One of them. It's an older dialect—it cycled out right around the time I finished my own ANBU stint. They won't think it's weird that you use it; they know I prefer it over the one in rotation now. They won't care about the security risk, either, since we're in-village. Everyone who'll see you already knows it."
Huh. So the Special Forces had multiple sign languages used in rotation to mitigate security risks. It made sense that other villages would try to crack foreign shinobi's signs with enough frequency to necessitate that. I never thought—
"Wait. They?" I froze as I processed his words. "There are going to be ANBU there? Real ones?"
"Keep your cool. They won't think you're suspicious if you're with me," he waved a hand dismissively. "Even if they don't know you, they do know how to mind their own business. ANBU's not the kind of organization where it's unusual to find yourself working with strangers you never learn the names of, you know."
He said that, but I could feel the color rapidly draining from my face regardless. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" I asked weakly.
"Better than bringing you with your real face for all and sundry to see," he replied and then raised his eyebrows. "Unless you want it getting back to Danzou that my 'mysterious informant,' with whose intel I have been tearing up all his plans, is you."
I could only stare with speechless horror in response to that. Jiraiya smiled grimly. "Thought so. If we do it this way, you can still come along—plus pretending to be someone else's agent will throw him off the trail. Just stay by me, answer my questions succinctly, and keep as quiet as you can. You'll make it if you keep a low profile."
To think the day would come when I would be impersonating an ANBU for my own safety. Impersonating an ANBU for safety! What an absurd sentence.
"What do you need me for?" I asked quietly as I put my hands at my sides and then tried folding them behind my back, contemplating what bearing to use while in this character. Nothing too overconfident; if we came across combat I most certainly would have to hang back to avoid giving myself away. But at the same time, I couldn't look too timid. I ran the scenario in my head. I was an ANBU. I was conveying highly classified information on behalf of my master to the Toad Sage Jiraiya of the Sannin. I had a serious duty to accomplish.
"That's good," Jiraiya pointed as I adjusted my posture. "Yeah, that looks good. Go with that."
"Very well. Please tell me how I may be of assistance to you, Jiraiya-sama." I widened my stance a bit and then tried out some honorific speech.
"Well, well," Jiraiya replied, impressed by this. "Now that you're less of a midget you kind of really look like the real deal."
I smiled at him from behind my mask, but I carefully kept my composure and waited attentively for a reply to my question. Jiraiya, sobering, straightened and got into character, too.
"After careful investigation of the intelligence you provided to us, it has been confirmed that Orochimaru of the Sannin has been abducting and experimenting upon citizens of the Leaf," he murmured softly. "Today, we have assembled a task force for his arrest."
The smile dropped right off my face. Orochimaru. That was why Jiraiya had been so on-edge. Had he been investigating this whole time? I hadn't realized. But then again, I thought, I'd been totally out of the picture for the past six months. That would have been plenty of time to dig up dirt on Orochimaru and then some.
"Taking into account how his arrest originally panned out, we've vastly expanded the mission roster to include several skilled shinobi," Jiraiya continued. "Several shinobi from both the Special and General Forces will be present to assist in his detainment. Your role in this is to provide whatever intel you can on his base and his abilities, beyond what was available in your initial report. Can you do this?"
"Yes, sir," I snapped my heels together. Then there was a long silence. Jiraiya eyed me knowingly.
"You have something to say?" he inquired.
"Sir. Do you intend…" I paused. "Orochimaru will almost certainly flee the village when he realizes he is caught. Do you intend on asking him to remain?"
He'd never shared his feelings about Orochimaru's betrayal. There'd been too much to take care of immediately following the hand-off, and after the Obito encounter we hadn't met again until the Tsunade mission—though I suspected that he'd been busy enough in that time that he wouldn't have been able to meet with me much anyway. Either way, I had no idea if he still wanted to try and turn Orochimaru back to Konoha's side, as he had in the original series.
"Whether or not I intend to do so is immaterial. Our objective is to prevent him from deserting and to take him into custody."
The bite of that cold reply was enough to make me shut my mouth, and I winced behind the cover of the mask. I probably should have known better than to ask so baldly. "I understand."
"Good, then. Follow me." Jiraiya jerked his chin over his shoulder.
We exited his home and went to the entrance to the hidden crevice. He held one hand up in a half-tiger seal, dispelling the illusion laid over the rocks and revealing a set of stone steps leading downwards. I followed after him silently, double- and triple-checking my shielding as we went.
The stairs led into a dark sloping tunnel that branched in many directions, but Jiraiya seemed to know the way by heart and navigated with silent ease, turning right and then left and going straight for a long ways before arriving in a courtyard. Careful not to crane my neck and give away the fact that I had never seen the ANBU Base before, I swept my eyes over the landscape in front of me.
Hidden in the valley between the Hokage Mountain and its neighboring peak, a tiny sliver of Konoha was nestled here on the crags, standing on sloping terraces and wooden scaffolds. It did not actually look very different from the village proper—all of the buildings and facilities seemed to be made of the same materials used in the rest of Konoha. To my right appeared to be an infirmary, and beside that, a building that looked quite similar to the administrative wing of the Academy. The courtyard we were standing on had two paths: one led to the right and branched off to meet those two structures while the other led over a small bridge and out towards what looked like a set of basic training fields. Farther beyond that I could make out what looked a lot like a compound, and I realized that those ANBU who did not have homes in the inner village lived here on the base. That was a residential sector.
"For this assignment, take the name Tooru," Jiraiya told me quietly. As I replied with an affirmative he swept his eyes over the gaggle of shinobi standing in the courtyard. None of them were cloaked except for the beige-clad captain standing in the midst of this crowd. He seemed to be calling roll.
"Team Chi," he said. A quartet of shinobi appeared to receive instructions. One of them had a large brown dog at his side. "Sector 3. Coordinate with Team Mu. The straightest route to the border goes through your area of responsibility. Make extra preparations."
"Sir," the squad replied in unison and then vanished in flawlessly silent shunshins.
"That's the last of them taken care of…" the captain murmured, examining his clipboard, before straightening at Jiraiya's approach. "Jiraiya-sama."
"How goes it?" Jiraiya asked. I came to a stop behind and slightly to his right at his four o'clock position. Beyond a cursory glance the roll call captain didn't seem to pay me any mind.
"The last of the chase teams, should the target go beyond the village walls, should be in position within the next half-hour," the captain reported. "These two remaining squads, Team Ya and Team Ko, will accompany you as part of the penetration team."
"Jiraiya-sama," the leader of Team Ya bowed and introduced herself before pointing out the members of her team and their roles. As she was doing this, she was joined shortly by the leader of Team Ko, a man of medium build and brown hair. I found myself squinting at him. Then I tilted my head, because, in the very faintest echoes of chakra song, he sounded vaguely familiar. It was faint—he too was cloaking his signature quite competently—but when I strained my ears…
My mouth popped right open. Lucky indeed that Jiraiya had given me a mask, because that, I knew straightaway, was the ANBU captain who had called himself Susumu.
"Kamoku, Jiraiya-sama. I lead Team Ko," Susumu—Kamoku—introduced, and then waved his squad forward. "My senior field member, Shou." he said, pointing to a rather slim man with a fox mask and deep black hair. "That is our field medic, Noru—" a woman in a bird mask, also black-haired, stepped forward. "—and this is our greehorn, Rengoku."
My heart just about stopped as a teenager with bright yellow hair stepped up beside Noru. He wore a familiar cat-like mask painted in red, green, and black, and—and he was tall. Really quite a lot taller. His limbs had the long, gangly look of a young person who had recently hit a massive growth spurt. I swallowed thickly at the sight of it. It seemed I wasn't the only one who had sprung up in the past half-year.
"A greenhorn on a mission like this?" Jiraiya eyed Akihiko doubtfully. It seemed he didn't recognize him. Him or Kamoku, for that matter.
"He recently completed a three-year apprenticeship," Kamoku replied easily as he clapped a hand to Akihiko's shoulder. His left arm, which I had seen to be barren after Obito had managed to tear the front of his cloak off, now bore the iconic spiral tattoo. "He's a capable member. We've had him with us the whole time; he knows how the group works."
"Hm. All right," Jiraiya said. He made to walk past, paused, and then glanced over his shoulder when he realized I was no longer at his side and gestured to catch my attention. Snapping back into focus, I hurried forward. Kamoku and the Team Ya leader looked at me as if waiting for me to introduce myself, but I remained silent, so they shot inquisitive looks at Jiraiya. Or, well, they were probably inquisitive looks. They were looking at him, anyway. Jiraiya pretended not to notice.
"...Sandaime-sama and Tsunade-sama should be arriving shortly," Kamoku said after a beat. My eyebrows shot up. Were they leaving it at that? Well. It seemed that Jiraiya hadn't been lying. If he didn't tell them, they wouldn't ask.
"Right. We'll sortie once they get here. Have we got scouts looking in on Root territory?"
"Yes, sir," the roll call captain from earlier replied. "Stationed by their tunnels, too. We asked Subcommander Sashiba to place a few of his people at the Web in case they try to get out through the other end of the network. They don't know the details, but they'll notify us if anyone from their side passes through."
"Good," Jiraiya nodded. "Then for now, we wait."