Published: 10/16/2016
Edited: 4/17/2017
Dear Suzu,
Just writing to let you know I'm still alive, as requested. The mission here is stalling a bit, so I wanted to fire off a few letters to change things up anyway.
You said the people of Tea Country were decently friendly, but I must disagree. I've never met more untalkative fellows in my life. Whisperings of a new Hidden Village down here have been circulating all over the place, but no matter how many leads I chase—when I find leads to chase at all—they refuse to say a thing about the source of this info. I've yet to hear anyone breathe a helpful word about their actual physical location, and that's even after I've made friends with street rats in every possible corner of this country. The east, the west, the north and the south, wherever I go, they all just point in the opposite direction and say "Over there."
As you might guess, it's been frustrating. I've wasted a lot of time running after the wind down here. Never fear, though! Jiraiya the Gallant has not given up yet. I still have a few tricks left to try. I'll let you know if I find any success. I'm sure I will.
Wishing you good health. No need to write back. Even if you try and send it with one of Minato's toads, I won't be in one place long enough to receive it.
I'll write again when I get the chance.
Your friend,
Jiraiya
The mission that marked the end of Akihiko's short chuunin career began with a man pretending to be a jounin.
He was very obviously not a jounin. If he'd been one of the jounin, he would've been up at the front of the caravan with the rest of officers, discussing our travel plans and arranging watches and deciding who was scouting first. As it was, he spent the whole time sitting on one of the carts, perched atop a stack of crates and gazing about with hawk-like eyes. Every few minutes he would murmur quietly under his breath into the mic concealed by his vest's collar. He wasn't trying too hard to keep up the pretense—he gave me a remarkably explicit "yes, I see you too, now stop with your conspicuous gawping" look when he caught me staring—so I concluded after a moment of consideration that he had camouflaged himself not for our sakes, but for the sakes of whatever enemy shinobi we might encounter on the journey. Any scouts who looked his way would probably just mistake him for a regular Leaf-nin, which would grant him an element of surprise that would have been otherwise lost if had he been wearing an ANBU uniform.
It was a little surprising to see him, but I supposed that that was just a testament to the scale of the operation. Nearly every nonessential chuunin had been called upon to participate in this mission, and it was shaping up to be one of Konoha's largest logistics operations to date. Three battalions' worth of reinforcements—three hundred shinobi—were heading out to join the battle at the western front, where Iwa was still hammering away at our forces. Accompanying these three battalions would be an entire supply caravan, escorted by a company made up of us and every other spare chuunin in the village. Once the battalions had settled themselves into the campaign, our company would then collect the wounded and the dead and bring them, along with the leftover transport equipment, back home.
If all went according to plan, we wouldn't see combat. If we encountered any enemies on the way, the three battalions would deal with them, and we would be moving quickly enough on the return journey to be a hard target. And even if we did get into a situation we couldn't run from, I was now aware that we had an ANBU squad up our sleeves to deal with it. Odds were we'd be just fine.
A note of Akihiko at the gates behind me quieted my thoughts. If one could equate chakra to sound, that's what I would describe it as: a pitch. In his case, a thing somewhere in the middle octave, maybe something a tenor could sing. Lower than me, but higher than the ANBU man off to my right.
Most people had notes to them. Even civilians did, though I often had a harder time hearing them. And sometimes, if I molded my chakra and concentrated hard, I could pick up other little pitches that made the single notes into intervals and chords. Lately it had occurred to me that this must be what it was like to be a chakra sensor, and that these little notes were me learning to distinguish between different chakra signatures.
Perhaps it was only because he was a childhood friend, but the sound of Akihiko was pleasant and comforting. Its base was a major third, two ascending notes that were filled with the promise of more to come: something deep and dark and energetic. Maybe, if I had to put a name on it, I'd call it a major seventh. Even that wasn't quite the right way to describe it, though. It was a hard thing to put into words.
I turned to watch his approach and noticed with amusement that he was looking at the ANBU man with a slight slant to his eyebrow. Before I could help it, I followed his gaze and found myself staring again. The ANBU swiveled his head around to shoot us both chiding, if not somewhat irritated, glances.
"That's not a jounin," Akihiko muttered to me as I dutifully looked away once more.
"No, definitely not," I agreed. "But I think he'd rather we not be too loud about that."
Akihiko was quiet for a moment, gaze distant with thought. And then, likely having come to the same conclusion I had, he shrugged and turned his face in the other direction. There was beat of silence.
"Um, happy birthday," I said after deciding that now was as good a time as any to give him the present I'd brought. I my hands together and holding out the box I'd been clutching.
A look of utter surprise took over Akihiko's face. His expression was so startled that I wondered if he'd forgotten his own birthday. But then a small, touched smile bloomed on his lips, and my nascent inquiry was silenced with a look of sunny fondness that I suddenly realized I hadn't seen from him in… how long? Too long. Even though he hadn't been looking particularly angry or sour, the effect softened his expression considerably.
"Thanks," he said as he took the box. It was not too big to grip in one hand, so he held it in his left and popped the top off with his right. A red-frosted cupcake with a little "10" decoration was produced.
"It's vanilla," Akihiko observed with some amount of pleasure. People always seemed to assume he was a chocolate sort of guy, but several years of friendship with him had equipped me with the knowledge that he rather disliked it as a cake flavor.
"It'd be a pretty bad present if I gave you something you didn't like," I replied dryly, though I was quietly encouraged by his reaction. "It's bad enough that it's perishable, to be honest. Especially since we're about to go on a mission."
In reply, Akihiko proceeded without preamble to pluck off the plastic topper, peel back the wrapper, and take an enormous bite of the confection, smearing red icing across the tip of his nose in the process. I found myself bursting into startled laughter, suddenly feeling better than I had all week. It was the silliest, most lighthearted, Akihiko-like thing he'd done in months.
"Want some?" he asked through a mouthful of cupcake, holding out a crumbling handful of its bisected remains in offering.
"I'll pass," I replied with an achingly familiar mix of amusement and disgust. Akihiko grinned knowingly, chewed and swallowed hugely, and then crammed the rest of it into his mouth.
Despite all the accoutrements of adulthood that had accumulated on his person—live kunai, a hitai-ate, a chuunin vest that had come to embody everything innocence-shattering about this war—he looked like a kid again. Like a little boy stuffing his face full of sugar.
I laughed again. At the very least, there was still this.
Though the summer had been hot, Konoha had been enjoying very fair weather when we'd left. Mid-September had brought about a pleasant, breezy autumn prelude, so a long travelling mission had not seemed like a terribly bad idea at the time. Despite its name, after all, Fire Country was not a particularly hot territory. It was true that the sun could be rather scorching, but the shade of tall trees was ample, and the wind was always there to stir the air beneath their branches. We had lakes and rivers and water all around, too.
All of that changed when we made it to the border of Grass and Earth. The trees had fallen away into flat prairie some time ago, but the wind had still been blowing nicely. Now it suddenly seemed to die. The grass thinned and gave way to rocky, cracked soil, and a weight of unmoving air seemed suddenly to fall atop us, crushing the whole world with stagnant aridity.
Akihiko and I groaned. Fair-haired, pale-skinned Namikazes as we were, we had donned extra layers to stave off sunburn the moment we reached Kusa territory; Akihiko had put on a thin hooded sweatshirt and I'd equipped myself with large kerchief and a loose long-sleeved shirt. Consequently, we had been relying quite heavily on those pert, cheerful gusts to stay cool. Their sudden absence was noted very acutely, and what had been a week of pleasant walking soon morphed into a sweaty, dusty, miserable march.
Despite their insistence that children who were shinobi were no longer children, ninjas never quite stopped looking after their kids. We were chuunin, technically, and we were expected to be able to push on through our discomfort like proper soldiers, but the man who was steering the cart next to us saw us, looked upon us pityingly, and invited us to sit with him on the driver's bench.
I wasted no time in jumping up next to him. Akihiko hesitated—normally, he would have tried sticking it out, if only to be a little more manly—but he was more practical than he was prideful, and a beat later he was sitting down as well.
"I'm Shouwa," the cart-driver introduced himself, raising a hand in greeting.
"I'm Akihiko," Akihiko replied and leaned forward so he could peer around me. "This is Suzu," he added.
Shouwa was an older man with a faintly lined face and salt-and-pepper hair. His hitai-ate was battered and scratched, and though his middle age indicated that he was a career chuunin, there was no doubting that he had seen his fair share of the battlefield. The long, thin scar running across his jawbone indicated that he'd seen his way out of at least one close call.
"You two with Haneda's group?" he asked us curiously. "I'm shipping out under Morisaki this time, but I heard that he and Haneda like to mix teams on occasion."
Haneda and Morisaki, if I recalled correctly, were two of the three jounin in charge of the battalions. I had the vague impression that the third was an Aburame.
"No, we're in Iki's company," Akihiko shook his head. "We're not staying to fight."
"Oh, I see." Shouwa scratched his head and looked a little surprised. "That's a shame. Too bad, eh? Bet you would've liked the chance to try your hand on the battlefield. My son Kouji—he's probably only a little older than you—has been dying to make himself a name out there. It's all he talks about these days."
Akihiko and I exchanged glances. Maybe, back when we had been the invincible Team 11 of hopes and dreams and limitless potential, the prospect would have excited us. We, too, had played the games of ninja, after all. We'd spent our childhoods pretending to be famous shinobi, Hokages and clan heads and other legendary war heroes. The quest for glory had been present to us since our earliest days. Now, though, the thought of returning to the front lines made me feel just a little sick.
"We'll pass," Akihiko spoke for both of us when he put a hand on his neck and looked away. "Names aren't all that great anyway."
Puzzlement flitted across Shouwa's face. For a moment, he seemed surprised by our lack of enthusiasm. But then he took on a knowing look, and I found myself thinking that he knew exactly what Akihiko meant. He had probably lived it himself. Maybe even multiple times, considering his age. One could lose a lot of friends in the time it took to start growing gray hair.
"I see," he said. And then he grinned in a determined way, like he didn't want to give the moment over to angsty musings. "You two are a cheerful pair, aren't you? And here I was, hoping that you'd make for better conversation than this grump back here."
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the ANBU man. He was still seated upon his throne of crates, as he'd been all week. In a surprise move, though, he let out a sigh and looked down at us.
"I'm in the middle of a job right now," the shinobi informed exasperatedly in the first words I'd heard him utter since the mission began.
He was younger than I'd realized. I thought he'd been something like a mid-thirties man, but upon closer examination, he was probably only twenty or so—maybe Itsuki-sensei's age at the very oldest. His voice was not as deep as I thought it would be, either. He was almost like a teenager.
"We're all in the middle of a job right now," Shouwa retorted. "You can still talk and be combat-ready, you know."
The ANBU rolled his eyes. Then he put his elbows on his knees, leaned forward, and asked, "What do you want to talk about?"
He must have been very bored. It takes a certain amount of effort and a very specific set of circumstances to get an ANBU to speak unnecessarily during a mission. I know this for a fact; I've made friends with a good number of them over the years, and even the most sociable will limit nonessential interactions to slight head-tilts and small gestures. It took a whole slew of painkillers and my most humorous story about a squirrel in the daimyo's throne room to get a bodyguard to even sign the word "laugh" at me.
"Start with your name," Shouwa chided. "Don't you have any manners?"
The ANBU put his cheek on his fist with a look of disapproval. "Nosy," he said, admonishingly.
Shouwa cocked an eyebrow.
"Susumu, then," the ANBU sighed.
Even though we'd tried to play it cool when we'd first seen him, Akihiko and I both couldn't help but stare at him now. Truth be told, neither of us had ever met an ANBU before. Amongst village children they were something like urban legends. He was almost a mythical creature, and now that he was talking, there was no stopping the rush of questions that followed.
"Do you have animal summons?" Akihiko blurted with eyes wide.
The so-called Susumu snorted. "You'll forgive me if I don't disclose that information to you," he said. "Even if we weren't in enemy territory right now, I wouldn't tell you that."
"But do you know any badass jutsu?" my teammate pressed, undeterred.
"A few," Susumu allowed as he let out a quiet huff. "But I won't show them to you."
"Then have you been to Earth Country before?"
"I have."
Akihiko's face brightened. "Do you know any doton?"
"Yes."
Shouwa and I exchanged glances as a back-and-forth volley of inquiry and answer began. Susumu gave off an air of perfect nonchalance with his detached, laconic responses, but the mere fact that he was continuing to engage was rather telling.
"I think he might like him," Shouwa said, sotto voce, with a look of surprise on his face.
"Maybe he's being nice because it was his birthday," I speculated in reply.
Susumu and Akihiko, of course, heard this teasing play loud and clear, and stopped speaking long enough to send us identical glares. I ducked my chin and swallowed a giggle; Shouwa held up his hands with a grin.
The rest of the morning proceeded uneventfully. Much to Akihiko's disappointment, Susumu vanished when we broke for lunch. His mood plummeted abysmally, unhelped by the ever-mounting heat; added to that, we had come up to a large, untraversable canyon, and were now being forced to trek all the way to its edge so we could pass. Morale in general took a bit of a hit at that.
Before Akihiko could spread his bad mood to the rest of us, though, the mysterious man suddenly reappeared in the afternoon, looking like he'd never left. My friend was restored to good spirits, and with much pestering managed to get him to treat us to a short discourse on the Body Flicker technique. Akihiko and I never got the chance to learn how to shunshin from Itsuki-sensei, so I admit that I was not totally inattentive.
He had surprising insights into the technique, and several of the tips he detailed in the chakra-molding process appeared to be novel even to Shouwa. Akihiko and I were learning forward intently, focused on his quiet lecture, when our ANBU suddenly stopped mid-sentence.
"Where?" he asked, and we blinked confusedly until we realized that he was speaking into his mic. Shouwa immediately sharpened to attention.
"No, there's nothing," Susumu replied, looking to the east. "How many did you see?"
There were several seconds of silence. Then Susumu stood up on his crate perch, brow creasing, and stared out over the sea of horses, carts, and shinobi rolling across the wasteland around us. The moment stretched until it seemed like nothing else would be said; eventually, though, his eyes narrowed.
"No, have Shou stay where he is," he said sharply. "If it's bait, I don't want to take it."
There was a pause as he listened to the reply. Then he said, "No, it won't work. There are too many of us for that. If there's an ambush, I'll break it; stopping everyone here would only make us a better target."
Alarm shot through all of us at word "ambush." Shouwa opened his mouth to speak, but Susumu held up a hand, silencing him.
There was a rumble. Our ANBU immediately sank into a ready stance, bending his knees and bringing his arms up, as he readied himself to leap off in any direction. The transformation was a little breathtaking; in a single movement, he sharpened from placid aloofness into raw lethality, one second a curt stranger and the next a naked blade.
The ground began to shake. The rest of the ninjas around us began to murmur with wary looks on their faces as they slowly drew kunai and put hands on sword hilts. Heads began to turn in search for the source of the noise.
I shoved some chakra together and listened hard, wondering if I could perhaps hear our enemies approaching. A buzzing symphony of Leaf-nin filled my ears. I did my best to ignore them, searching for any sounds farther out and away from the caravan, but no matter how hard I concentrated, I could hear nothing that I hadn't heard all week.
My brow furrowed. It could have just been that I wasn't skilled enough to parse out all of the different chakra emissions, but a vague suspicion began to form in my gut. I turned my head and surveyed the landscape. We were right at the edge of the canyon...
I looked down. What I saw then was the last thing any of us wanted to see: cracks spidering out across the ground below us.
"The cliff's going to come down," I said, almost blankly, as I turned my head to look at the chasm beside us. It was a perfect spot for a landslide.
Susumu didn't swear, although nearly everyone else in hearing range did. Instead, he quickly threw out an arm and pointed ahead.
"Move!" he bellowed. "Now!"
Shunshins began to pop in my ears at once, filling the air with the sound of chakra pinging and chiming. It was a strangely dissonant melody; I'd never heard so many chakra signatures flare at once in my life. I spent a moment listening fascinatedly. Then I jerked back to reality as the cart we were on lurched forward.
Several things happened at once. The horses charged forward; shinobi cursed and dodged away before they could be run over; Susumu very nearly fell off his crate tower. The ground beneath us began to come apart. The cracks widened into fissures, and the fissures began to shift.
"Shit," Shouwa said, and then threw his reins to the side and bailed off the cart. Akihiko and I gaped. Then we really panicked, standing up so we could try and get off the cart ourselves.
My ears filled with the sound of roaring as the cliff crumbled away.
It was over nearly as soon as it had begun. Skidding to a stop atop a mound of dust and dirt and boulders, Susumu immediately dumped me and my teammate on the ground before springing away in soundless shunshin. We barely registered it; instead, we groaned disorientedly and began crawling about on our hands and knees in an attempt to gather our bearings.
Once we had righted ourselves, we looked up and found that destruction the landslide had caused was stunning. No words other than "total disaster" could describe it. The horses were a little ways off to our left, half-crushed by boulders and horrifically broken-necked. The splintered remains of the cart were sprinkled everywhere, along with all of the supplies, and a stomach-turning number of bodies were scattered about the debris. Some were half-buried in the rocks, writhing in pain. Some were groaning and clutching their arms or legs or sides. Most of them weren't moving at all.
"Oh my God," I said.
Akihiko, still on his knees beside me, sat up with a look of blank disbelief. For a moment, all we could do was stare at the carnage. It was the first time either of us had ever witnessed the magnitude of the Third War's violence first-hand. The torture in the Iwa bunker and the killing of Yoshiya had been unquestionably savage—and even now I could still slide away into the memory of that last day, lying for hours in a pool of his blood with his corpse still upon my back—but as terrible as it had been, we had only been a few individuals. This was slaughter on a completely different scale.
We were still staring in dazed silence when Susumu reappeared, the arm of an unconscious chuunin slung over his shoulder.
"Get up," he commanded, quietly but forcefully. Blood from the chuunin's leg was smeared all over his side. "There's no time to shell-shocked. Get down there and help the survivors."
His words were enough to snap us out of our stupor. Scrambling to our feet, Akihiko and I slid down the pile toward the nearest cluster of survivors.
The death toll at the outset was seventy-three shinobi—roughly a quarter of the reinforcements, not counting those who belonged to Iki's company. We had many injured, though, and it was likely that number would be higher before the day was up. We needed to reunite with the rest of our forces at once.
Unfortunately, running up the wall of the canyon was impossible. Even if one were to use chakra, there was no way to transport the injured back up. The distance was just too great; we were miles below where we had begun. Not that it mattered, course. I doubted most of us could make that sort of climb anyway. Tree-walking—or in this case, cliff-walking—was a basic skill, but it was not one meant for use across great heights. The muscle strain and the chakra stress was too intensive for anyone but a jounin, or perhaps a high chuunin, to tolerate.
After everyone both dead and alive had been gathered together in one spot, Susumu spent a few frustrated minutes yelling into his headset in attempt to communicate with his squad. Its designated range of use, however, was small, and the high walls of the canyon were interfering with the signal, so his attempts were mostly futile. I doubted radios on Earth would malfunction over something like this, but it was what it was; the technology of the Narutoverse was just not at that level. In the end, he was forced to break out a hawk summon and trade messages with them the old-fashioned way.
Something of a plan began to emerge. While the medically knowledgeable among us began to triage and treat the wounded, those who were able-bodied were charged with venturing deeper into the valley to search out a way back up to the surface. Because Captain Haneda was staying with the injured, along with the shinobi who had training in iryou-ninjutsu, Susumu was put in charge of the rest of us.
The general mood was quite foul. It went without saying that the vast, vast majority of us were feeling positively shitty. It was hot, we were aching, the enemy had just kicked our asses and killed our comrades, and now we were trapped at the bottom of a miles-deep chasm wandering aimlessly in an attempt to find a way out. Who would be anything other than peevish in this situation? Snappish remarks and irritated, under-the-breath insults abounded.
We were all trudging along in irate silence when I heard something odd ahead of us. It was chakra, definitely, but it was no kind of chakra I'd ever encountered before. Something about it differed from what I heard from my comrades: a different timbre, a different key, something made of foreign intervals and distinctly not-Konoha sounds. There was no mistaking that these signatures did not belong to allies. I tugged on Shouwa's sleeve and mumbled at him.
There was a bit of a quarrel over whether or not I ought to be trusted. A group of three men demanded to know if I had ever received formal sensory training, and decided that I was just a dipshit who ought to be ignored when they found out I hadn't. A few others became angry on my behalf and defended my status as a natural sensor despite having no previous knowledge of my abilities at all. I began to feel that everyone was stupid, and regretted opening my mouth to say anything at all.
As we walked farther, though, it became clear that I had spoken the truth: there was a small group of people standing off the distance, milling about in decidedly not-green uniforms. My detractors went quiet, but I was too tetchy and overheated to feel vindicated.
"I can see them," Shouwa said unnecessarily as he shaded his eyes with his hand. "Just ahead. As she said… enemy shinobi. They must have fallen in the landslide, too."
"Get ready for a fight, then," someone behind me muttered and gripped a kunai.
"Did they really get stuck in their own jutsu?" another asked caustically. "Idiots…"
"You're one to talk. You're down here, too."
"Stop bickering," Susumu snapped, and the group immediately fell silent. "They've seen us… it looks like they're sending someone forward. Hold your attack for now, but be ready."
Susumu zipped to the front of the group in a half of a blink of the eye. No one made any move to stop him. Out of all of us, he was probably the most qualified to treat with hostiles; he would be able to react in time if any foul play went on.
"Greetings, Leaf shinobi," the enemy emissary called when he was several hundred yards away. He was not an Iwa-nin as I had thought, but a Kumo-nin. A Kumo jounin, judging by his clothes. How unexpected. What were Cloud shinobi doing here in the aftermath of a classic Iwagakure landslide?
Susumu crossed his arms and gave the man the most unimpressed look of utter contempt I had ever seen. I looked at the blood still caked on his side and thought it was appropriate. There probably was no other face to make, not when facing the people who spilled that blood in the first place.
"Kumo-nin," Susumu said once the jounin had made his over to us, in a voice that cut through bullshit like butter. "Give me one reason not to kill you where you stand."
The Kumo-nin stared. Then, realizing the pointlessness of his overly polite demeanor, he dropped all pretense and shifted a defensive foot back, ready to leap into combat at a moment's notice.
"It wouldn't be to your advantage," he said warily, looking as though he desperately wanted to put his hand on his holster and was refraining only through momentous self-control. "If you let me live, we can help each other."
"Right," Susumu replied flatly. His disbelief was so plain it was almost tangible. "That will definitely happen."
"It should," the Kumo jounin retorted. "Tell me, do you think you can escape this place without a guide? Do you think you can just wander out? This gorge is one of Tsuchi no Kuni's greatest natural defenses. You'll die down here without our assistance."
Susumu gave no reaction to the proclamation of impending doom. Sizing his interlocutor up, he asked instead, "What's in it for you? Just escape yourselves and leave us to our fate, then."
The jounin spread his hands out in a sign of peace before pointing to the heavy packs we were all carrying. Susumu's suspicious gaze seemed to ease a bit with the emergence of a motive, and he made a noise of comprehension.
"Supplies," he murmured and crossed his arms contemplatively. "I'm assuming you don't have any, then."
"Nothing beyond our usual field packs, no," the jounin confirmed. "And it won't be nearly enough. Not for a jaunt through Death Valley, anyway."
I heard a collectively repressed snort surge through the group with surprising synchronism. Death Valley... what an uninspired name.
"How do you plan to see us out of here, then?" Susumu asked critically. "You're no Iwa-nin. How can we trust that you actually know your way around?"
In reply, the Cloud shinobi turned slightly and looked back to his group. There was a bit of shuffling; then a trio of short shinobi found their way to the front of the pack. They looked quite small compared to the people around them.
"Do you see those boys there?" the jounin pointed. "They're a team from Iwa. They know how to get through."
Susumu went silent. For a long moment, he only stood and stared at the Kumo jounin, eyes sharp and expression unreadable. Then, finally, he said, "Let me confer with my allies."
The group burst into the chatter the moment he returned to us. Shouwa said something, only to be drowned out by the angry voices of the three men. Several others began speaking, too.
Susumu held up a hand. "Quiet," he said. "One at a time. Tell me your thoughts."
"It's a trap," the kunoichi behind me immediately said. "There's no doubt. They don't need us. They'll stab us in the back the moment our guards are down, take our supplies, and run."
"I agree," another person declared. "We're a disposable factor in this equation. We should refuse."
"But how will we find our way out otherwise?" a teenaged chuunin objected. "They're right. We can't just stroll around and expect to find an exit."
"We have hawks scouting, don't we? We'll find it eventually."
"But do we have time for that?" Shouwa asked. "We have supplies, but they're limited. We don't have everything we need, either, and we have several wounded comrades behind us. Will they last while we wait for the summons to finish searching?"
Watching the debate in silence, Susumu spent several minutes listening to the group argue before he spoke again. When he did, though, the chatter quickly quieted.
"All right," he said. "I've come to a decision. We will go with them. However," he glared when he saw several mouths open to protest, "I agree with the assessment that we are disposable to them. They don't need us—they need our stuff, and they will be looking to take us out of the picture. Treachery is inevitable."
"So what are we going to do, then?"
"We'll be taking hostages," Susumu replied, unflinching. "We're taking the team from Iwa. It will be a non-negotiable condition."
A low murmur picked up at that. Dauntless, Susumu paid it no mind and turned back to the Kumo jounin.
The jounin's expression became flinty when Susumu laid out his terms, and there was a long, tense staring match. The man put on his most intimidating face—and, to be fair, it was not an ineffective one, especially when matched against Susumu's youthful countenance—but our ANBU's sheer force of personality and grade-A glare eventually won out. After a tiny eternity, the Kumo-nin finally surrendered.
"Fine," he barely refrained from spitting. "We accept. Hayanari and his team will stay with you until we reach the end of the valley. But only until then. They come back to us the moment we're out."
"And no sooner," Susumu said coolly. "Very well. We will cooperate with you until the conditions of this agreement are fulfilled."
The jounin merely scowled and turned to stalk away.
"Beware, Cloud ninja," Susumu said to his back, voice softening dangerously. "The moment you turn your blades on us, escape from this valley will become the least of your concerns. Think carefully before moving in the coming days. We have already lost people to you. Mercy will not be forthcoming."
The Kumo ninja stopped and looked at him over his shoulder, expression unreadable. He was still for a moment; then he walked away.
A/N: I'm so sorry for the wait, guys. I know it's been well over a month. This chapter would have come out much sooner, but I became very ill before I managed to write the last scene. It was a week-long sickness that left me pretty much unable to do anything but sleep and drag myself to the doctor. And after that I had to play a horrific game of catch-up to keep on top of my classes; this is pretty much the first free moment I've had since September ended.
To make up for it, though, the chapter is over six thousand words long—the longest chapter of the rewrite so far. It might be a little bit more disjointed than usual due to its length and the amount of time it took to write it, but I hope it's good enough!
Thank you all for your patience. As always, I apologize for any typos!
Cheers,
Eiruiel
