Chapter Six, Fear Loathing

-Alright then, keep your secrets-

For the sake of simplicity, 1 Ryō is equivalent to 1 US Dollar

At some point during the night, Tora had woken up and started on his way home. The air is still, cold and quiet except for the crunching of his footsteps under the freezing ground, a serenity that only the night can bring.

A voice echoes in his head. "Tora?"

He brushes it off as a tired hallucination, yawning away his exhaustion. Maintaining that clone had drained a good chunk of his energy and now he wants nothing more than to get home.

"Tora?"

He recognizes the voice and weaves the snake seal. "Naruto? What's up, why are you up?"

A groggy voice responds. "I can't sleep."

"I'll be there in a few."

—

Tora lays next to Naruto on the pullout mattress, hands clasped on his chest. He'd taken off his armor, stored it in his room and put on black pajamas lined with white. The two of them sit in silence as they lay awake, unable to think of anything to talk about.

Naruto breaks the silence. "How come you don't want me to join the ANBU? You never really gave me a reason."

Tora sighs, closing his eyes. "Mitsuba."

"Who?"

"Mitsuba. He means a lot to me. He was in the ANBU and was against me joining, said it was a…refuge for the broken."

Naruto looks over at him, slightly concerned.

Tora takes a deep breath and continues. "He died three years into the second war. Cut himself open with his sword that I had made for him. Guess that's just more blood on my hands, huh?." His voice wavers and he draws a sharp, painful breath.

There's a silence as Naruto takes in the information and Tora molds the chakra in his eyes to stop his tears.

"I killed people, still do. Every good shinobi does, but the ANBU are the best at it. I've been in it since I was thirteen, learned a lot of things, loved some, hated many. Sometimes I had nightmares of the things I did. The screams, the crying, the begs for mercy. Young, old, shinobi and civilians." He chuckles bitterly. "And all that was before the wars."

"You fought in the war? Did you know my parents?"

"I knew your dad. We never really agreed on anything, ya know?" He pauses. "Iwa shinobi are notoriously stubborn, those are the types you just get rid of, not worth keeping as hostages. Seriously, those assholes are durable. This one time I was facing, what, a couple hundred?"

"More like a couple dozen." Naruto laughs, trying to lighten the mood.

Tora chuckles. "So I was up against these couple thousand Shinobi, right? There was, I wanna say, yeah just me against around 700. These guys were armed to the teeth; chakra swords, they had archers for some reason, they had ninjutsu specialists somewhere in the middle…"

"Wait, how do you know all this?" Naruto asks.

"Hold on, I haven't gotten there yet. So, yeah, we were gonna be destroyed, especially since we were in a flat field, the trees that were there cut down or burned away, so it was mostly flat, ya know? Mostly earth, Iwa-nin use earth jutsu. But there's the thing about jutsu, it takes hand seals and hand seals take time. But, there are ways of minimizing that, using strong jutsu with just one or two seals."

"How do you do that?"

"Well, you can train with your jutsu, but even then, it'll take more than one seal. You could always be a sage…"

Naruto sits up. "A sage, what's a sage?"

Tora smiles weakly, trying to fight off his exhaustion. "Don't worry about it."

Naruto eventually falls back asleep, hugging his pillow.

—

Morning arrives. Tora leaves Naruto a note with a *few hundred Ryō and Naruto makes his way to the Missions Office with the rest of his team. Their first mission is to rescue the cat of the Fire Daimyō's wife, much to their collective disappointment. Although unsatisfied by the trivial pursuit, they promise to do their mission dutifully as they leave.

Hiruzen looks over the scrolls sitting at his desk, reading over a C rank mission. He reads the summary; 'Group of twelve required to clean Tetsuyama Castle, 10,000 Ryō per worker.' He looks up to see Might Guy and his team walk in. 'Just the people I wanted to see.', he thinks.

—

Tetsuyama Castle, a massive complex sitting in a clearing in one of Konoha's many forests. Team Kurenai, Team Asuma and Team Gai are assigned to clean the place, not realizing or somewhat underestimating the sheer size of it. The three teams make their way through a stone path, coming across a trail of fallen trees decorated with red and white ribbons marking the way. The three teams are met by a young woman with straight red shoulder length hair and green eyes in a dark blue kimono and white obi. Her daisho consists of a light blue katana with a gold circular tsuba and yellow wakizashi with a square blue tsuba. She smiles sweetly, bowing and turning to lead them further into the complex.

The thirteen of them make their way into a semicircular clearing marked by a large gatehouse surrounded on both sides by tall trees. The gatehouse is made entirely of stone with a large arch acting as its doorway. Two women's voices are heard from inside the building.

"Oh, I'm sorry, your highness. I didn't realize you did most of the cleaning around here."

"Watch your tone. Do I need to remind you who pays your salary?"

"You sure as hell don't." She whispers angrily.

The two of them come into view. The woman on the left stands a bit shorter than the other, brown hair in two ponytails held by a pair of red rings. She wears a red kimono and a yellow obi holding a solid black daisho. The other woman is a Hyuga with shoulder length black hair with blue tint. She wears a light purple shirt covered by a black jacket, a fingerless chainmail underneath. A gray chokuto is tied to her waist, golden belt wrapped around her black capris pants with chainmail leggings under, stopping just above the ankles. The red haired woman rushes to the side of the shorter one.

The Hyuga woman looks over the group, hands on her hips and face unimpressed.

"I am Lady Tokage and you will address me as such."

She gestures to the shorter woman. "This is Asuka. You can call her Sanada-san if you ever feel the need to address her."

She gestures to the red haired woman, as if presenting her. "And over there is Hitsuji-chan. Asuka will tell you what needs to be done. If there's an emergency that Asuka can't deal with, I'll be in the main house." With that she turns, weaves a short series of seals and flickers away.

Asuka sighs. "Let's get inside." She takes Hitsuji's hand and leads the twelve of them into the gatehouse. It's dark in the gatehouse, with barely any light from outside making it in.

Shikamaru decides to pipe up. "What a drag."

Asuma replies, smoking half a cigarette and gazing off into the darkness of the gatehouse. "With the money from this job, you can buy a thousand bags of chips, eh Choji?"

"Lunch is at twelve." Asuka announces flatly. "Hitsuji, you ready?"

Hitsuji nods but it's barely visible. The two stand at either side of the stone tower and there's a series of metallic squeaks as the sky roof at the top of the tower opens, letting in light in through two metal plates. "Gotta reoil this thing." She mutters.

Kiba and Akamaru cover their ears while everyone else is mildly annoyed, squinting at the sudden burst of light. The plates stop with a heavy thud and Asuka and Hitsuji tie their respective ropes into large eye bolts jutting from the walls. Hinata looks curiously as Hitsuji holds the snake seal, concentrating on something.

Asuka turns to face the group, keeping her face as neutral as possible, but she's still visibly agitated. "The twelve of you will be split into groups of three. Each group will be assigned to a different tower. There'll be dust, bugs and other shit but I'm sure you can handle that."

The platform starts to move upward as Asuka continues. "If you see any rats, come get me, I'll deal with them. If you see any snakes, avoid them. Don't kill them, don't hurt them, just back off and find me or Hitsu-san. Hopefully we've come to an understanding. Welcome to Tetsuyama."