AN: Where have I been? Working, working, and working. I didn't even have weekends for a while there. That kind of exhaustion just saps all creativity out of me. As soon as I finished dinner, I would pass out.
So this chapter was terribly delayed because of that.
Yuji, out of paranoia, took the stairs to the top of the tallest building he could find in the area near the top of the slope in South Port. He didn't actually walk up the stairs; once he was certain that the stairwell was totally empty, he bounced himself to the top with chakra. He did not want to attract the wrong sort of attention though. Konoha maintained a fairly large outpost here, since it was a large, very active city and not within easy distance of Konoha. East Port's outpost had been smaller, since that city had just started recovering from the economic slump of the years of war with all the vast majority of territories it provided easy access to, and the Red City's outpost was tiny since it was within a few hours sprint of Konoha.
Once he reached the roof, he clambered onto the ledge surrounding it and swept his gaze over the familiar city. He had been back here twice, but he hadn't lingered either time and had mostly stayed out of the city: once with the Yellowfin and once on his way to the Red City only a little over a week ago. It still hadn't really changed in all the years since his family had been smashed to pieces here. He felt like it should have, that something key had to have changed about the place, but he knew that it was just the way he saw things: before that terrible day, South Port had been his favourite family vacation spot; they had come a couple times a year after he had been big enough. So many wonderful things had happened here with his family.
It just took one terrible one to poison all that.
What's your sense of this city?
Kurama grunted. You actually want my input this time? I'm allowed to talk again?
Your snarking about Dana and Nariko was distracting and peevish, dude. The backtalk was not helpful.
They are spineless. Cultural power! Kurama snorted.
You seriously haven't seen anything to back up what they believe in all your long years accumulating so much wisdom?
Kurama grumbled deep in his throat, but he didn't reply.
I think you just don't like how passive they are and how they're so weak. You hate ninja, but you hate how weak they are too. Civilians like Dana and Nariko haven't ever perverted your precious chakra, but you don't like them anyway. Because they're not ginormous beasts? Because they're not assholes? Wait… he mocked, it can't be that because you didn't like your enormous siblings either. Is the Sage the only person you actually like? Because that's just sad, Ku-man. That means you've hated everyone you've ever met for thousands of years. And that… That's really sad. And lonely. Seriously, why didn't you like them?
Kurama was silent for a long time, probably fuming.
Yuji held his peace, prepared to wait for a while. To pass the time, he studied the mass of the city: the clusters of moderately tall towers (none more than fifteen stories tall), the twisting streets, the thick spread of green from the trees encouraged to grow along every sidewalk that the city cared about. He had to admit that he still admired this place. It was far more beautiful than Port Mure or the Red City, as far as cities went. Inakara hadn't been bad either, but it hadn't been beautiful to him: he wasn't a fan of those bulbous buildings that Lightning and apparently Suna favoured. Silicon City was too modern looking, too sleek and polished, especially in the downtown areas, and lacking green, unsurprisingly.
He just wasn't a fan of big cities in general. Sure, there was more energy, but there was more determined ignorance. People didn't care about their neighbours in cities the way they did in villages like Kirigishi.
Actually, that was what had been bothering him about Dana's compound in the Red City. He had stayed with them for the night and had paid attention as they had eaten dinner and then breakfast on Dana's interior balcony, and everyone in the building knew each other by name and stopped to chat in the gardens or on the stairs, just like in his village. The whole building was basically a tiny village inside the monstrosity of the Red City.
I do not like them because I do not think they can really help us. I suspect they will be a disappointment. Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with them. They were clean, almost unnaturally so.
Yuji allowed a small smile to curve his lips. You are sooo contrary, Ku-man. But I get you. It sucks to be disappointed again and again. But I don't have a plan, so let's go meet Nariko-neesan's parents.
… Fine.
Yuji glanced down at the street directly below him, sighed, and headed back for the stairs.
Fugaku tried to swallow down his uncertainty. It wasn't possible to trust Mikoto, they had both agreed upon that before they were married, but it was his job to keep her grounded. Things could go terribly terribly wrong if he failed.
But he knew that Mikoto was smarter than he was. He knew that she understood the wretched mire that was Konoha politics.
He trusted her understanding on that front. That had never been in question.
But when it came to her ordering actions, that was where trust had to end. He had to stop trusting and start evaluating, second guessing.
Even after all these years, it was hard for him to truly grasp. To part of Mikoto, a part he helped her keep buried with everything he had, people just weren't people. They were just things. Playthings. Everyone. Everything.
It always made him so cold. He could see that distance in her eyes in his memories, just before he had finally, finally convinced her to leave ANBU. It had taken months of work, popping in and working on her persistently when that distance (he hated calling it contempt because that implied emotions, and there weren't any but vague amusement when she was like that) hadn't been quite so strong.
He had been determined to keep her. He couldn't bear losing Uchiha Mikoto to the thing that was eating away at her humanity. She was better than that, precious. It didn't matter to him that she had been godlike in her skill. He just wanted her to be okay, to be more than some distant god watching all her little puppets on their strings. She could have been distantly satisfied with that, maybe, but she wouldn't have been happy, and that was all he really wanted for her.
(Some very guilty part of him, the clan head part, wondered if maybe leaving her be might have prevented this whole Uchiha mess, that she could have made everyone dance along, leaving the Uchiha respected instead of reviled and oppressed. That part constantly wanted to just let her free to solve all this, but couldn't.)
Fortunately, motherhood had somehow smothered that distance. Itachi and Sasuke were the only strings he was certain had a hold on her humanity. She would do anything for them.
Unfortunately, she would do anything for them, including loosen the grounding he had tried to keep solid for so many years.
He hadn't seen that slimy bitch, that evil ANBU assassin senpai of hers, but he knew that vile creature that specialized in faking suicides had been around. Snake–28 was a despicable creature; though he didn't know all the details, he did know that she somehow crumbled the foundation holding Mikoto's humanity in place. She encouraged that distant godliness in Mikoto.
It would have been so much easier if Sarutobi, damn him, had managed to enforce justice upon both that creature and Orochimaru. The old man's pity and guilt-fuelled hesitance had always been his greatest weakness. So much suffering had resulted from both of the Sandaime's decisions to stay his hand.
"Father?"
Fugaku shook off those miserable thoughts and glanced down at his son. Sasuke looked at him, slightly bewildered, holding that damn box. Fugaku stared at the box and struggled again with his decision. He had made it, but every time he stared at that box and realized again just what they were doing with Shisui's eyes, he had to fight towards the decision all over again.
Why couldn't he just make up his mind and have it stay made? Gods, he wished he could trust Mikoto. He was so tired of that wedge sitting between them. He hated having to remind her, to see the resentment flare in her beautiful dark eyes. The distrust they both knew and agreed he needed tore at both of them.
"As the heir, Sasuke, what do you think of what we are doing today?"
His son blinked at him, off balance because of the question. He probably thought it was a test, but Fugaku meant it earnestly. He just couldn't tell anymore which way he was biassed: against or for Mikoto's plans. Maybe Sasuke was just as biassed, maybe in the opposite way, but maybe it would reassure him, settle the decision in his mind.
Sasuke deliberately looked around the main street just beyond the gates of the Uchiha compound, pointing out just how not alone they were. Fugaku considered. "Let's go to your usual training ground."
Sasuke's eyes widened, but he followed along, bounding over the roofs beside him without complaint. When they arrived at the memorial stone, Fugaku leaned on one of those three wooden posts. With a slight flush, Sasuke perched on another, perhaps recalling something. "Your honest thoughts, Son?"
Sasuke studied the ground as he ordered what he wanted to say. "I think Mother's plan is risky. I know I haven't been told everything."
Fugaku couldn't bring himself to tell his son that he wasn't alone. He knew that Mikoto had a complicated web around this plan she hadn't quite bothered explaining.
"Bait makes sense, I suppose. But how will we know that we've managed to get the right target with our bait? I think Mother wants to get someone very specific, but there are a lot of people who want Shisui's eyes. I think some of our clan members might try for them now that they're not directly under your protection. And if someone from the clan kills village ninja guarding the eyes…"
Fugaku nodded. "Yes, that would be another strike. But someone from our own clan who disobeys our directive like that is no longer under our protection. We would force him to face the village's justice."
Sasuke grimaced and nodded. "And if someone succeeds and it's someone important to the rest of the village…"
It was Fugaku's turn to grimace. "Yes. That will be unpleasant. A test of just how much justice we can expect."
"We're not even making it a public handoff, so it won't even show how we trust Konoha. Not that that's what we're doing here, since we're hoping Konoha fails."
"And what if someone dies guarding them," Fugaku added. "Whether or not we succeed in finding the attacker, we will have directly contributed to that death."
"And how are we supposed to get them back when Brother does go blind?" Sasuke whispered.
"Your brother may not even be able to take them then. Your mother says it would ensure he would never become Hokage." He sort of understood, but it still caused him dissonance. Wasn't the strongest ninja supposed to be Hokage? Shouldn't they be happy that Itachi would be able to change any enemy's mind with just a glance?
"True."
On the one hand, Fugaku was glad Sasuke seemed to grasp the reasons there, but he was a little jealous that both of his sons were apparently more politically savvy than he was. "And what of losing the opportunity to award them to another Uchiha?"
"Are there others with the Mangekyou?"
"There might be."
Sasuke narrowed his eyes. "But not now, so there will be soon?"
"It will be a tempting goal now that the possibility of a guiltless transition to eyes without the weakness will remain. Especially since they're Shisui's eyes."
Sasuke looked very uncomfortable. "Shisui lost his sister. Itachi lost Shisui. How can people start seeking pain like that?" He paused and swallowed. "When I got my first tomoe… It was so painful. So terrifying. I was so helpless, and suddenly I stretched to try to fill in the cracks, to do better, to make up for what I couldn't prevent…"
He had never heard Sasuke talk about just how he had managed to activate his Sharingan. He had known from the mission report and educated guesses, but to actually speak of it… Most Uchiha just didn't. It was always private and humiliating. The Uchiha advanced their eyes to attempt to make up for their inadequacies.
It almost made it easier if Uchiha genin weren't too skilled. That was probably why the number of Sharingan activations was down: the pride of the clan meant that their children were trained thoroughly to preserve that reputation, which made them less likely to suffer the ultimate sorrow, rage, and humiliation necessary to begin the cycle of Sharingan advancement.
An ironic problem for another time.
He sighed. "Greed is everywhere, Sasuke. There are unfortunate and inaccurate ideas that our clan heads have been unable to stamp out ever since Madara and Izuna started them. The wording of that damn stone doesn't help. It's misleading. If the Sage really did write it, he wasn't the man the stories paint him as."
His son didn't seem to know what to make of that. At last, he reverted to the original question. "I do think this is a good way to protect Itachi though. If Shisui's eyes are the bait, it means Brother's won't be the target. Or Kakashi-sensei's."
"And if someone succeeds in getting them and implanting them?"
Sasuke looked a little green at the idea. "The Sharingan grants us immunity—"
Fugaku shook his head. "No, Son. It gives us some resistance, but only if we notice and actively fight against it. Shisui was dangerous to everyone, no exceptions. We tested it very carefully when Shisui first unlocked the ability and finally figured out what his eyes did."
Frowning, Sasuke studied the box in his hands for a while. "A risk, but I trust Mother." There it was, the bias. "She knows something. Something about the Elders."
That was new. "Why do you think it's the Elders?"
"Because she's been very careful to teach me about all of them and their attitudes. She's been talking about ANBU and Danzou in particular lately. I get the feeling she's trying to warn me without saying anything too obvious just in case I decide to be stupid." Fugaku spotted a suppressed eye roll at that bit of paranoia.
Oh. She had talked about Danzou, but she hadn't said…
She was doing exactly the same thing with him. That made him scowl. Danzou had been the one to advocate for that initial push to move the Uchiha to the sidelines, but the Elder hadn't spoken again; other voices had carried the proposals forward, one after another. Did Mikoto think that Danzou-sama had been behind the entire thing? No, it couldn't be, could it? To push for ANBU, his favourites, over the Uchiha was one thing, but to attack Shisui and to be the one they were leaving bait for?
This was beginning to stink. He hated politics and the sneaky aspects of being a ninja. At least a coup was straightforward, a straight fight.
But they were stuck with sneaky tactics and a staring contest, waiting for an old bastard with one eye left to blink. Wonderful.
"Very well then."
Tsunade-sama narrowed her eyes at them when they entered her office, her gaze latching onto the box warily as Sasuke held it forward. She seemed both resigned and slightly gleeful when he finished explaining in formal terms exactly what the box contained and how the clan was entrusting it to Konoha as a gesture of good faith and a desire for a higher power to hold the eyes in trust until a proper bearer was selected. She played her part with proper gravitas and decorum, receiving the box with the same solemnity of those samurai receiving their katanas.
She shattered that impression by saying, "Tell Mikoto-chan thanks for me," just as they headed to the door.
Oh gods, they were collaborating. Fugaku just barely managed to contain the need to rub his temples in a futile attempt to soothe his sudden headache until he was out of the building.
This was not going to end well.
The small village called Kaijin was a long run south. It was actually a little north of the village on the border with Tea Country Jiraiya had taken him to to learn how to be Katsuo's ethnicity all those years ago. Yuji ended up not sailing south from South Port and restrained the painful urge to make a side trip to Kirigishi just to see his old house. It was a terrible thing, in his opinion, that he was faster on foot than many boats because of Kurama and the ability to lope on water. Upon arriving on the shore near White Cove, he set out along the south road and soon wandered into the valley framed by dormant volcanoes (or he assumed they were dormant). It was a small village, though it was definitely bigger than Kirigishi. Smaller than Konoha for sure though.
He wandered the main street in the gathering twilight, the sun having disappeared behind one of the mountains a while ago. Lanterns were beginning to break up the blue haze with their golden glow. There were still people wandering about, and the first one he asked about the Matsuku compound laughed, said he should have known, and pointed down a side street. "Which one are you visiting?"
Yuji pulled out his letter, not that he really needed it. He had memorized the names long ago. "Matsuku Yasu."
"Ah, the old owl. He's the fifteenth one if you go left at the main gates."
Yuji thanked the gentleman for his help and soon made sense of the odd addendum: the gates led to a meeting hall. Houses circled a central meadow from what he could see in the gloom. He knocked at the fifteenth door. A straight-backed old woman with all the martial presence of a general opened it. "Yes?"
"I'm Yuji. Are you Matsuku Takara?" Her daughter had called her the steel general. He now understood that Nariko-san hadn't been joking or trying to make some weird shogi pun.
"I am. Welcome, Yuji-san. You travel very quickly."
"Chakra makes it much easier to cover large distances," he admitted.
"Are you a monk then? Dana was reluctant to disclose too much over the phone. We know they watch her closely."
"Nope," he said with a laugh. "I'm the son of the Fourth Hokage, if you can believe it. They raised me in a fishing village, trained me as a ninja, and I kind of threw it all back in their faces when it came time to actually be a ninja. I'm an ungrateful little brat."
The woman inspected him dispassionately and cocked a single eyebrow. "I had not heard that Namikaze Minato was suicidal enough to cheat on his wife with a Lightning Country woman."
As Kurama snorted in his head, Yuji chuckled sheepishly. "I don't actually look like this…" He waved a hand at his face. "I mean, I consider this my real face—I wore this face until I was almost thirteen—but underneath it, I'm blond and blue eyed. It's pretty weird for me and I don't like to look like that. It feels wrong. But yeah, I do look like Namikaze and Uzumaki Kushina underneath."
Takara inspected him for a beat, nodded, and snorted as he slipped off his shoes and put on the slippers she provided. "As for being an ungrateful brat, to force you into a life path is hardly reasonable. Goodness knows I would rather my daughter pursue more relevant work than investigative accounting, but there we are. Throwing off the yoke isn't unreasonable."
"The way I did it was, but I guess that's not really why I'm here. I want to know how to force all those other ninja to follow my lead."
Takara nodded and marched him to the back porch. Tobacco smoke greeted him. A wiry old man was reclining with a pipe on the deck. Takara gestured that Yuji seat himself on a deck chair, but he asked her with his eyes if he could use the hammock strung between two of the overhanging roof's pillars instead. With a huff, she nodded and disappeared with the promise of barley tea and other refreshments. The old man sat up with a muffled groan and turned a soft smile on Yuji, his yellowing teeth pale in the dusk. "Welcome, Yuji! I'm Yasu, to put a name to a face."
"Nariko and Dana send their greetings. I've got a letter from both, plus this huge stack of other letters from Nariko."
"Good, good!" He accepted the bundle. "Was it a hard journey?"
"No, I'm from this part of the country, if from the north shore, so it was almost like coming home."
"Almost. Well, hopefully, you'll get all the way there." Yasu puffed a few times. "I know you have come here to hear me talk about some grand plan, but I don't think that's where we need to start. We should become friends first, I think. I like that you chose my hammock, so I count you as a friend, but I understand that someone who was raised to be a ninja and defied everyone needs a bit more than that," he said with playfully raised eyebrows and an easy smile. Apparently, he had heard what Yuji had told Takara. Not surprising: this place was so quiet. "I want to hear your story, and I think you need to tell it. All of it." He must have seen Yuji's alarm, because his smile became so patient. "I cannot expect that level of openness without giving of myself first, so I will start with my story, though I'm sure to you it will seem small and boring."
Yuji blinked and wasn't quite sure what to say to that, but Yasu-san just puffed on his pipe a few times and began.
"Did you hear what happened to Kaijin Village? About how a ninja clan razed it and its defences to the ground?" At Yuji's nod, he continued. "Yes, well, everyone here is told that story, about how the civilians fled once the attack began, throwing themselves on the volcano's mercy, huddling near the lava floes and being poisoned by the fumes until the flames in their village ceased and all had been quiet for two days. It is from long before our time, but it has been burned into the memory of this region. We poison our children with it by the time they are five at least once."
He sighed and shook his head. "So even one as bookish and timid as I was biassed before I was allowed to read the old tomes in the clan library. I remained so for many, many years. So many wars, thankfully not here, but it still pains me that I could do nothing to stop them, nothing to ease the pain of those civilians who fled even this far south to escape the terror. There are four families here that have members from northern Fire, Rain, Frost, and River. An enormous number, if we're speaking of percentages. But there are rumours of my family, and people pursue them. They are inevitably disappointed when they understand that we are not going to magically wipe the ninja out… Yes, they want their revenge, they want it immediately, and they want it without effort. I can understand a little, though I cannot approve of the feeling, not now. Takara is better at it than I am. She is more about action and is not quite so chained by guilt." His smile became wry. "It is good she is here to balance me out or nothing would ever get done."
"Precisely, timid owl!" his wife called from inside.
He and Yuji chuckled. "Anyway, as I said, it is mostly a boring story. No great fights, except with Nariko when it was time to go to bed or do her chores. I am glad for that. Perhaps it makes us soft, but I am thankful to have lived a boring life. And then Nariko and her chain brother, Shiro, came back from the woods one night claiming they saw fairies soaring through the trees. She was ten at the time, but Shiro was sixteen, so it was a little strange how he backed her story faithfully."
Yuji frowned, not understanding where this was going.
Yasu laughed. "You don't see it, do you? Ah, to be so free. There were four fairies. She painted them about six years later, but I'll show you that painting later. I remember her description though: it was quite poetic for her. There was a bright flame; he was the tallest with golden hair. He looked like a radiant king to her, a true leader of the faeries. Next, there was the gentlewoman with brown hair visible at the front of her cloak. The gentlewoman was short, but there was an air of knowledge and kindness from her. The dark one was a faerie knight according to her. Short again. He was trying to win the gentlewoman's favour, his orange eyes full of courage and true wisdom. The last was the Shadow Man. He cared for no one and nothing other than his goal. She used to wake up late at night screaming that he was coming to kill her. She said his eyes are full of ice and that he and the knight would fight someday. Prophetic sounding, hmm?
"But there are no faerie legends in this land; those come from my family's roots in the far western nations. It didn't take me long to figure out what her faeries were."
"A ninja team," Yuji said, feeling silly it had taken him so long.
"Yes. A blond jounin with a genin squad, probably. I actually have some guesses about specifically which team since my cousins in the Red City with long ears helped me research it. Blond hair is not so common, nor is silver hair on small people that are not so old."
Yuji had the strange feeling the old man expected him to have a guess, but he wasn't familiar with that many Konoha nin with blond or silver hair… Except for… No, couldn't be. No way.
Yasu-san just smiled and puffed on his pipe. "It struck me then, and again after my daughter finished her painting, just how magical four ninja were to her in that moment of mistaken identity. Such terrible people were so very beautiful and mystical to her and Shiro. Flying through the canopy in the misty night. Travelling towards some mission to the south, not even knowing that they inspired such emotion, especially that Shadow Man. I remember those nightmares…" He sighed. "It cut me to the core to know that something so beautiful for her was in reality stained with blood and violence. It shouldn't be that way. What ninja and other chakra users can do is magical, and the violence and death stain it."
His voice had become so hard and disappointed. "Those poor children. All those poor children, so brainwashed that they went to fight and die in all those stupid wars, so proud to be allowed." The man actually clenched his fists and was shaking slightly. "One of those children was so hardened that just a glimpse of him made my daughter think he was a bogeyman. I couldn't just be sad for them anymore. I couldn't just be guilty and a little helpful. It wasn't enough. I had to do more, and Takara marches ahead of me, letting me advise her tactics as she makes everyone follow orders.
"So I helped come up with the plans that went so wrong in Water. Dana hinted that she told you about the Marino branch."
Oh. Yuji nodded.
"We thought it would be safest to push there because Water wasn't quite so tied to the continent. We were forcefully taught there were other factors to consider. The ninja have their own internal discrimination, as do the nobles of Water." Yasu-san covered his eyes with a hand. "Hard lessons. Painful lessons. But we learned and have done better in battering down Suna and nibbling at Iwa. Konoha and Kumo are much bigger challenges that have so far stumped me. But now that you are here, maybe there is something new, some new angle, that we can discover.
"Takara and I march on, but Nariko decided years ago not to follow us after seeing what happened to the Marino and what it did to my wife and I. I admit that I am almost happy she found a more fruitful area to fight in. She is safer, a little. It terrifies me that she lives so close to ninja, so close to Dana, who is such an irritant to so many ninja, but there is no safe place, and Nariko has made her choices, so Takara and I must be brave enough to live with them." He sucked on his pipe almost desperately for a moment, this timid old man, before smiling in a slightly rattled way. "I did warn you it was no great tale."
Yuji shrugged, not sure what the proper thing to do or say here was. He'd always been bad at formal politeness. His dad hadn't spent much time with him on it, probably figuring hiding among nobility or the upper class was an oxymoron.
Yasu-san set aside his pipe again, seemingly having regained his equilibrium. "You told me on the phone that you have many names, but that Yuji is the one you always return to. I think you need to tell me about all of your names, even the ones you have only worn once. I think there are few that know you, and I think you need at least one person to know it all. I am an old man that loves a good story and I won't tell anyone." Yasu winked cheekily. "I promise I won't tell the ninja or the monks."
And it just floored Yuji. His breath caught. And then his healthy paranoia caught up with him. How could Yasu use this against him? He chided himself when the old man just kept grinning guilelessly at him. "For real?" he choked out.
"Yes. I want to hear everything. I want your version. Tell me your story. I'm here just to hear it, the good, the bad, and the vile."
And for the life of him, Yuji actually choked up just a little despite how his ninja instincts screamed that this was a terrible idea. No one had ever wanted to hear his side before. They had all wanted to tell him theirs, but any feigned interest in his side was just so they could tell him how wrong he was. Yasu was an awesome listener. He asked questions at just the right moments, prompted Yuji when he faltered, and laughed at parts Yuji had never appreciated the humour of before.
The weirdest part was that when he got to explaining that Kurama wasn't locked in him anymore, Yasu-jijii insisted on having Kurama come out. "To keep him cooped up when there is all the space in the meadow for him to stretch out in and appreciate this beautiful night is too cruel!"
So Yuji pulled off the coral necklace, and Kurama manifested at his usual small-horse size. He regarded old man Yasu with those slitted eyes, mistrustful, but Yasu just puffed on his pipe, made a shallow bow, and asked, "Is there anything my wife and I can get for you to make you more comfortable, Kurama-san? A cushion, perhaps? I don't think my hammock can support your weight, even if we toss Yuji out of it." He gave Yuji the barest wink.
Ku-man blinked. "I prefer the grass. You will speak loudly enough for me to listen as I lounge."
"Of course, Kurama-san. It is only polite."
The fox huffed and padded his way off the porch creaking beneath his bulk and stretched out on the lawn. Takara brought out some flatbread pizza and more drinks and took Kurama's curt refusal of her offer to get him some food or drink with a daunting look down her nose at the oversized fox. "An ill-mannered god, I see," she said stiffly before nodding more politely at Yuji and marching back into the house.
Yuji managed to keep from snorting at Kurama's sullen rumble in his head with difficulty before he went on with the story. He knew he rambled; he didn't have much practice telling stories, not like Kurama did after all the times Yuji had pestered him for stories about the Sage's adventures. But he got through it, even some of the parts that made him cringe with guilt. Some parts he couldn't speak of. He just couldn't, no matter how Yasu-san seemed so genuine. Ninja secrecy and fugitive secrecy had been pounded too deeply into his head. He couldn't speak of those corpses in Lake Eisa or other places.
But he got through to the defeat of Orange Mask and the black creature's containment and finally wrapped up with going to Dana for a lead. Yasu mulled things over for a while, blowing wispy smoke rings and occasionally eyeing Kurama, who was fully sprawled out, though one of his eyes was open enough to stare up at the stars. "He is your brother too, isn't he?"
Yuji blinked at how true those words rang in him, even as Kurama snorted in his head. "You know, you might be right."
"We sometimes meet souls that balance our own. Everyone knows about the romantic version of this, but there are some friends that are just that to us as well. They don't have to be good people—Kurama-san certainly is not always good, for all that he claims to be divine—but they help shape and change us, and we shape and change them in return."
"I don't think anything can change Kurama," Yuji protested.
"Ah, you don't see it. No, Kurama-san did not destroy Konoha. He could have, probably felt he should have. You told me he has the power to. But he just destroyed a statue. An important symbol, yes, but not an entire village. He did not even destroy the Uchiha compound, which is what I would have suspected he would do next. I think, without you, without the way you have softened him with your sympathy, he would have laid waste to Konoha. I think he would have taken your body despite your fight upon the ice."
Kurama scoffed loudly from the grass, raising his head to pin the old man with a baleful gaze, but Yuji felt the truth of that observation.
"I am sorry for your losses, both of your family and home and your innocence. You regret very deeply that you have had to kill."
Yuji froze. He hadn't said—
"I am not as ignorant as ninja believe civilians are. There are things you did not say that spoke very loudly. I am sorry I cannot absolve you."
He grimaced. "A coward could never work up the nerve to ask for absolution."
"A coward would not walk away from the path laid neatly before him to blaze his own, rejecting the judgements of those around him. That is a brave act. Not always a wise act, but it definitely takes more courage than most have. A coward would not set himself such a terrible goal."
"Terrible, huh?"
Yasu heaved a sigh, setting his pipe aside and leaning back to study the stars visible between the broken clouds. "It is terrible to destroy a people's way of life, to force them to accept your values and assimilate into your culture to be acceptable. I acknowledge this. The ninja way of life is terrible, destructive, and wrong according to every fibre of my being, but it is their way. If they would not inflict such harm on the rest of us, those of us without chakra or the desire to use it the way they do, I would be tempted to leave them be.
"But their way of life is terrible, and they have inflicted it upon us again and again with their missions and wars, so I will do what I must. I do not have a plan, Yuji-san. I have the beginnings of one, fragments, wisps of ideas, some from the story you've told me. I will give you what I have, and you give me what you think you have, and together perhaps we will come up with something. When we are done and when you have rested here and are better for your time among us, you must travel to Port Mure. At the compound there, you'll meet many people that I think you can help, two in particular, and who can help you. So much of your life has orbited around that city, futilely according to you, but I think this will be different. I think this is just the place for the three—apologies, Kurama-san, four—of you to begin."
Yuji did end up staying at the Matsuku compound for a few days. Physically, he didn't really need the rest, but it became hard to want to leave. Yasu-jiisan and Takara-obaasan were kind and worked hard to make him feel at home, not treating him like a formal guest at all after setting him up in Nariko's old room with all her paintings. They laid out an extra futon for Kurama, willfully ignoring how the fox could simply stop manifesting at any time. Kurama grumbled, but Yuji could tell that the fox was kind of nonplussed at the expectation that he would stick around and be a second guest.
Takara handled disabusing him of the notion that he was a guest by ordering him to help her with the dishes after breakfast. He probably should have been offended, but it was kind of nice not to feel useless. She stationed him beside her at the sink in her brusque manner and handed him a towel. It ended up being kind of relaxing despite how military the woman was: she wasn't mean or anything, she just wanted things done efficiently and properly. Kurama laughed at his misfortune in his head, but Yasu-jiisan asked Kurama to join him in his library to ask him about his perspective on some things out of lore and history.
Once the last dry dish was put away, Takara gently took the towel and smiled approvingly at him. "Thank you for your help, Yuji-kun. Is there anything you would like to do while you rest here with us?" When he shrugged, she appraised him carefully. "Perhaps when you know more of what your options are you'll be better equipped to make a choice. The pond is not big enough for sailing on, but perhaps you'll find something else. We must get you away from Yasu before he recalls you were trained in seals. He has always been curious about fuuinjutsu as one of the few chakra arts that aren't just for violence. We have no chakra, as I'm sure you know, but he is interested enough that just drawing the patterns would entertain him." She ushered him outside, surprisingly barefoot for someone so proper, but Yuji didn't question it too much. Grass on bare feet was nice.
The meadow was different in the light of day, less sacred seeming. There were trees breaking up the grassy areas and large, carefully tended gardens near several of the houses. Some of the trees were apparently fruit trees: they were laid out in rows, evenly spaced. A bunch of kids were playing a raucous game of tag among the trunks, screaming and squealing. The sound brought back flashes of running with Tori to escape Seiichi-nii, up on the forested cliffs and down on the beach among the logs and boulders during low tide. Nostalgia ached in his chest.
There were so many kids and a pretty wide range of ages. It wasn't like how it had mostly been him and Tori, since they had been closest in age in Kirigishi, and Seiichi most of the time, then Arata, who had been a couple years younger, and Kin only every once in a while; here, there were at least sixteen kids tag teaming and shrieking as one of the older girls gave chase.
Through the window, Yasu watched Okano-chan take in Takara's signal and immediately act upon it, racing to pounce on Yuji-kun and declare that he was it now, but she was thwarted as the young man ducked her reaching hand with blurring speed and an aborted move that might have been a counter.
Troubling, but reflexes from years of being on the run would be very ingrained.
"You have been hunted, I see," he remarked to Kyuubi no Kitsune, who lounged impatiently in his library.
The great beast shot him an unimpressed look. "You heard his tale last night."
"It is one thing to hear what he decides to tell and another to see. Who has hunted you? Who has dared? Yuji spoke of individuals, but I need to know about the factions involved."
"The usual suspects and a group of missing ninja. The latter has been dealt with."
Yasu didn't let himself gloss over that, however much he wanted to. The boy had spoken of this, but he wanted the Kyuubi's take on things. "Dealt with how? A group suggests more organization than is usual for missing ninja; most missing ninja are non conformers and those that don't play well in groups, otherwise, they wouldn't be missing ninja in the first place."
"And it surprises me that you would know that, pacifist and retiring as you are. Akatsuki."
Frowning, he retrieved a binder from his desk drawer and flipped to a section. "Akatsuki is a mercenary band. And they have been made personae non gratae in every one of the Five Nations after the Kage Summit recently. They were hunting the bijuu, I take it. And the usual suspects would be Konoha and the other major villages."
The giant fox smiled unpleasantly. "To an extent, yes. Mostly Konoha though, one faction or another."
Yasu narrowed his eyes. He had known there were factions in the village, but which ones in particular were involved? How much danger would there continue to be? "Can you name them, or were you only guessing?"
Instead of being offended, as Yasu had worried, the fox chuckled darkly. "I am better versed in them than most Konoha nin. The mainstream officials have only hunted us at a distance until recently, and that should be done with now that the bargain has gone through, assuming my brethren do not do anything stupid since the boy took responsibility for their actions." The bijuu's tone made it obvious what he thought of that. "No, the most persistent faction is one I do not think you would be aware of."
"Please enlighten me," he said instead of giving away that he could guess.
"A particular group close to the Nidaime Hokage rose to power after his death, but they do not always act in concert. Hiruzen was a two-faced weakling, not especially politically savvy, but charismatic and vaguely honourable appearing. His two team mates are less two faced and a bit more politically knowledgeable, Utatane more so of the pair. Kagami died. Torifu is a grunt and low in the Akimichi hierarchy. Danzou is a hawk with very particular opinions about how policy should go and what actions should be taken. He has been known to act contrary to the Hokage before."
"Danzou then." Yasu grimaced and steepled his fingers. "We cannot expect him to act along with Tsunade then. His hidden forces were the ones attacking you? And I imagine that they were not peacefully thwarted." This was bad. Danzou would act as he saw fit, and laws and public opinion would not sway him. Yasu wondered if Dana had known, but then it seemed like she hadn't wanted to pry too deeply into the gift horse before sending this duo on to him. Probably wise of her, but it had brought danger to them. The clan was considered mostly a joke by Danzou, so far as Yasu could tell, but putting the clan in contact with Konoha's wayward jinchuuriki might just change his mind.
Too late to regret now. He would have to get word to Grazia-okaasama, wherever she and her retinue were. Tracking them down would be a nightmare.
They would have to move quickly and decisively, and the word would have to be spread so it couldn't be totally wiped out if Danzou did decide to slaughter them all. Terror for his daughter and Dana made his fists clench involuntarily.
"So very weak," Kurama-san mocked him. "So frightened of a pathetic old man and his little army of fanatics. A pathetic old man obsessed with his rivalry, slights against him, and a definition of his role he himself is too terrified and cowardly to actually live. He does not hate, but there is much fearful malice in him and slimy self righteousness. His ill intent steams from him and poisons the surrounding air."
"For a being reputed to hate malice and ill intent, you seem to despise weakness more," Yasu said calmly. "I find that rather telling. From what Yuji said of your goals, you would have humans not fight, or at least not fight with chakra. If you do not want us to fight, how are we to be strong in your eyes?"
"Your species cannot be anything but weak. You are all ants."
Yasu couldn't help himself: he laughed at the bijuu. It wasn't actually very funny and was probably cruel of him, given what the beast had gone through, but it seemed absurd that a being that had been alive for over a thousand years could be so contrary. "Tell me, did you always hold this view or is it more recent?"
The fox sent him a superior look, but Yasu didn't let it pass.
"Yuji's story made it plain that you hold the Sage in high esteem and that you see his two sons as despicable. But he says you collected stories from many sources after the Sage's death: from monks, summon creatures, and so on. Yet these sources are unimportant to you. You say nothing of the monks who took the time to tell you these tales. Yet, it is a personal thing to pass along stories, even those that aren't your own. You must have approached all of your sources and somehow wheedled the story out of them. You must have been at least agreeable enough. Tell me, were you born this size and this mature? Or were you incarnated as a kit and allowed to mature?" Yasu smiled internally when the fox narrowed his eyes at him and then sobered. "So it must have been more than just the disappointment of the Sage's sons."
Rage and spite and offended pride vibrated through the Kyuubi's form. If it were given an outlet, Yasu had no doubt the entire valley would be nothing but rubble and ash.
Yasu trembled, but he forced himself to hum nonchalantly and itched for the pipe he wasn't allowed to smoke in the house. "I am sorry about that then. It is a wonder you did not eschew our company entirely and simply remain in contact with the summon creatures. They appear to have wronged you less."
No answer, but Yasu felt slightly safer.
"Do you list death to be among the weaknesses of the human species?"
That gave the fox pause. "Of course."
"I have been debating it myself as old age claws at me more. Is it not a strength to know that, good or evil, a person cannot last forever?"
"You forget the soul."
"Ah, so you too hold that some fragment of a human is immortal. That changes things. What is death then but a resetting of the soul? The fleshy container is discarded, and then the soul is wiped of context and housed in a new fleshy container to refine itself further. Do evil souls, despite lack of context, continue towards evil every cycle? Can you track a soul through the cycles? I do not include the Sage's sons in this question: as Yuji explained it to me, he does not have Asura's soul, just some of his chakra with the will included."
The beast scoffed. "You are asking questions based on the idea that a soul is somehow unique enough to be identified. Without the context of memory and life, what is a living person? A man without memories entirely is a blank slate. You have been infected by the common idea that life tempers the soul the way a hammer tempers steel. But that implies that something lingers between cycles. I have never seen that happen."
"And yet you have commanded this Uchiha Itachi to seek the destruction of the soul of two people."
Kurama chuckled darkly. "The swing between hammer strokes is a very long time. Plenty of opportunity for something to go very wrong. You humans are ever so fond of creating your own destruction despite the efforts of previous generations to prevent you from doing so. There are enough jutsu and mad geniuses still living that I will not feel safe. I cannot track a soul through the Pure Lands, so I will never know when both those souls have moved on to another life and are safely beyond the reach of vile jutsu."
Yasu nodded thoughtfully. "That makes perfect sense. Have you much hope for Itachi-san's success?"
"Little. But you humans are very fond of proving yourselves even more perverse and capable of anathema beyond even my imagination."
Mikoto was washing the floor while Sasuke polished kunai on the veranda when he gave a yelp and the clatter of metal against wood made her shunshin to his side with a kunai in a reverse grip in either hand.
Snake cackled uproariously as Sasuke, red-faced, regained his balance and brandished his own kunai.
Poor Sasuke. That would teach him for relaxing too much just because he was in Konoha. He intellectually understood that it wasn't safe, that he wasn't safe here, but his scramble now showed just how little he believed it.
"Tonight, I think," Snake trilled before disappearing.