Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto in any way and make no claim on its copyright or any characters from the series. Original characters are my own property.
Author's Notes: Time for ninja economics! Well not really, but there are some weird questions involving money in this chapter. I hope my rendition seems suitable. There's some important background stuff here as well.
Thanks to reviewers, and hopes for more!
Other Gifts Continues
Prior to becoming a chunin, Suzumebachi had a teammate who was constantly getting hurt, partly through clumsiness, partly due to a bone condition that eventually caused him to be scrubbed from the ninja ranks. Before that occurred he'd once given his teammate a strange piece of advice. "The world only has one kind of hospital room, so you can always know when you wake up in one."
The wasp ninja hadn't made a practice of receiving serious injuries, but now, waking up in the middle of the afternoon, she could certainly recognize her location. White predominated, the sterile color all up and down the walls and floors, even the sheets. The room was small, and consisted only of the bed where Suzumebachi laid, a single white chair, an extension table, and several pieces of medical equipment.
For the second time today, strange, unusual feelings coursed through Suzumebachi upon waking. She did not feel ill as before, but all of her body tingled and squeezed tight, especially her arms and legs. She examined her body, but aside from bandages on the various places Harvestman's kukris had scored, there was nothing to notice. In fact, there was very little residual pain from those strikes, they felt almost healed already. Then she felt another strong, overpowering urge. She was ravenously hungry.
A meal tray had been left on the table beside the bed, and Suzumebachi dug in eagerly. The food was bland and uninteresting, as it seemed hospital food always was. She recalled her former teammate had believed the over-stressed doctors kept all the good rations for themselves. Additionally, it lacked the sweetness she preferred in food, Suzumebachi commonly added honey to almost everything she ate, there was no way to use all of it up otherwise, and she refused to waste the stuff. Hunger overwhelmed those hesitations completely, however, far more than simply not eating breakfast and emptying the contents of her stomach once ought to have. She had not been this hungry since she woke up after cracking her skull from that horrible induced fall off her summoned bee, and as she recalled she had not eaten for almost five days then. It was very puzzling.
There was no time for Suzumebachi to consider the mystery. Almost immediately following her finishing off the lousy hospital rations the door was opened and a white-coated medic walked into the room.
He was not someone familiar to Suzumebachi, but she did not know all the village medics. The man noticed she was awake, but did not say anything for a long moment. Suzumebachi wondered if he was staring at her forehead, and stared back at him, to dissuade him if that was the case. "Ah, well," the man stammered. "It's good that you're awake. You're feeling alright?"
"Fine," Suzumebachi answered, not entirely certain of the statement, but she did not think the medics could do anything they had not already done.
"That's good," the medic replied, though there was little spirit in it. "Your injuries were mostly minor anyway, though there sure were a lot of them. You need to be more cautious when sparring; if any of those strikes had gone deeper you could have been in serious trouble."
Sparring. Suzumebachi wanted to laugh. She couldn't imagine applying any word having to do with practice or control to Harvestman. Yet she recognized that his words had been the truth, he had held many opportunities to kill her, and had not. It was embarrassing, to recognize that, and the wasp ninja swore silently that he would never embarrass her so thoroughly again. "It's not your concern," she told the medic, daring him to challenge her.
As expected, he didn't. "Well, don't say you weren't warned, they're your medical expenses not mine. Anyway, I'll go get you your clothes, we had to wash and patch them in a few places. Oh, and the Tsuchikage said he wanted to see you about something, so you're to go to headquarters as soon as you can."
"Understood," Suzumebachi told him.
The man left, leaving Suzumebachi to seethe for a moment about having to pay for this visit to the hospital. A ninja's medical costs were paid out of the village funds only when they occurred during a mission, otherwise the ninja was on her own, but Suzumebachi could not believe that her fight with Harvestman was being classified as a training exercise. It made her angry, and not just at the indignity. Ninja medicine was expensive, since medical ninja were so rare, and Suzumebachi was not rich. She would have to dip heavily into her meager savings to pay these bills, leaving her only one further difficulty away from begging her parents for money. She'd left that portion of her family, un-ambitious, downtrodden failures all of them, behind the day she made chunin, knowing she couldn't save her family while her parents held her back, taking no risks at all. They hadn't gotten along for a long time before that in any case, and Suzumebachi did not think she could bear the shame of crawling back for support.
The medic returned her clothes, and Suzumebachi changed back into them from the white hospital smock she had been wearing. Examining the rips and cuts she noted fine workmanship in the patching, so the hospital had not skimped out there. Nodding with satisfaction at this, for she would need to wear these repaired garments a while longer, Suzumebachi walked down to the reception desk to settle her bill. As expected, it was heinous; she was decidedly not carrying enough with her, and had to make a deduction from her account. When the receptionist, who must have been having a bad day, asked why Suzumebachi had just gotten such an expensive tattoo if she was in financial trouble it took all the wasp ninja's control to avoid strangling the woman. She took some solace in the possibility of retribution if she ever saw this woman walking about outside. Control of bees had wondrous uses for petty vengeance.
Walking across the village to the headquarters building and the Tsuchikage's office Suzumebachi discovered she was hungry again. That wasn't expected. She had just eaten a full, nutritious, if not particularly appetizing, meal, and should not be hungry again, but the hunger was there, and with it the strange tense, tingling, though less than before. What was going on?
The combination of hunger and sour reflection on her new, nearly impoverished, status did little to put Suzumebachi in a good mood when she walked into the Tsuchikage's office. She wasn't feeling particularly charitable to the old man in any case, considering what she'd just been through, but she had to deliberately take several deep breaths before opening the door to calm herself. Thankfully she was good at that, a consequence of working around excitable stinging creatures. Suzumebachi was not naturally an overly angry person, during normal events, but the past two days did not at all fit her definition of normal.
The Tsuchikage was seated at his desk, reading reports. He looked up from his report by the slightest shift of the eyes when she entered, then simply finished reading the page before further acknowledging her existence.
Only when he put the paper down did Suzumebachi speak. "You wanted to see me Tsuchikage-sama?"
"I did," the old man returned in his gravelly voice. "Come here," he pointed to directly in front of his desk.
Stiffly, Suzumebachi walked over to stand before the old ninja.
"Here," he passed her a slip of paper.
"What's this?" Suzumebachi asked.
"Your wages."
She looked at it again, recognizing the slip as a record of an addition to her account. Her eyes went wide when she read the number. "Um…thank you…Tsuchikage-sama," she stammered. "But what is this for?"
"That is the standard pay grade for a solitary A-rank mission," he replied as if it was of no consequence at all.
"A-rank?" Suzumebachi didn't get it at all. "But I haven't served on a mission since…" she trailed off, recognizing what had occurred.
With a thin smile lingering on his creased and wrinkled face the Tsuchikage looked up at her. "You fought Harvestmen," the old man appeared to find the situation deeply hilarious.
"What was the mission completion condition?" Suzumebachi asked.
"Survival," the cold, thin smile lingered.
"I understand," she managed, feeling suddenly much better. "I appreciate the recognition."
"Good," The Tsuchikage told her. "Of course, you are going to have to use most of that money very soon."
"Huh?" Suzumebachi was confused, certainly she had no intention of spending such a sum quickly, she knew how to be thrifty, and it really wasn't that much, over the long term.
"Have you forgotten?" the hinted smile was gone from the Tsuchikage's face now. "You promised to make Chul'To a weapon. Given that you have no training in such enterprises and no access to a forge you will have to commission both instruction and facilities. It will not be cheap."
Suzumebachi's heart sank, though she kept her expression even. She hadn't even thought about that problem. At least the Tsuchikage's money would hopefully pay for it, she could get by on the rest, and without what he had given her she would have been ruined. "I see," she managed.
The Tsuchikage nodded. "I suspect you have many questions," he told her. "Don't bother to ask them, I will tell you some things you need to know for now, for the rest you must be patient." He bent down slightly to the right, picking up something from the floor behind his desk.
Suzumebachi recognized the familiar black and yellow cylinder he gave to her. "I kept this for the afternoon so the medics would not see it, but it is yours now," he said firmly. "Keep it safe, learn what it contains, and do not teach its techniques to anyone else. Understood?"
"I understand Tsuchkiage-sama," for Suzumebachi did indeed recognize the firmness of that order. "But why should I not let my kin know some of these techniques?"
"There are very dangerous things written on that scroll, Kamizuru Suzumebachi," The Tsuchikage's voice was low. "Things that were perhaps not meant to be part of our world. You wish to redeem your clan do you not? Very well, you are the experiment, prove the worth of what your grandfather unlocked, prove it can be used and controlled."
Suzumebachi nodded, understanding the ninja master, and not a little fearful. She wondered just what had been done to her, and once more resisted fingering the tattoo on her forehead.
"You will not have any missions for a while," The Tsuchikage informed her. "For now your assignments are to craft a suitable weapon, master the Insect Invocation, and beginning training with the Vesp. You will be put on the stipend given to ninja undergoing prolonged advanced training, and I will personally check your progress at intervals. Understood?"
She nodded again.
"Good," he handed her another slender slip of paper. "Tomorrow go speak to Otomo Katai, he can instruct you in weapon-crafting."
Suzumebachi nodded a third time, secreting the two pieces of paper carefully in one of the inner pouches of her robe.
"Those are the procedural matters," The Tsuchikage remarked slowly, almost speaking to himself. "Of course, there is something else."
Recognizing that she was not intended to interrupt, Suzumebachi said nothing.
"Harvestman," The Tsuchikage spoke the word slowly, deliberately. "You saw him today, or at least I assume you saw him, since you came out of there alive. That puts you into a very small group little wasp, very small. I could count on one hand the number in our village who have seen him and lived, at least of those who are alive today," the Tsuchkiage almost sighed. "Such a strange man. Or perhaps a strange creature. I do not know his origins, no one does, and you need not know all I do of his history."
Suzumebachi suspected the Tsuchikage knew a great deal more than he said here, for the man she had seen, Harvestman, had surely not been over fifty years old, so the Tsuchikage would have known when he came to Stone. Yet she did not press, she was uncertain she even wanted the answer.
"Harvestman is a subterranean creature; he lives below ground almost constantly. I do not know how, but his emergence today will likely be the only time he sees the sky for months. It is his madness, and his great power. As you might expect, no one else can adapt to that below-ground realm as he can, so he is considered invincible there," The Tsuchikage was no longer speaking directly to Suzumebachi, but simply to the air before him, his aged eyes staring well past her, thinking on his own words deeply, seeing things she could not. "As might be guessed, such unmatched and unanticipated prowess has great use. Sometimes Harvestman finds things in the depths, as he did that scroll, and they appear here, useful to us. Other times, he presents himself more openly, and offers his services, always when it seems they are most needed."
"Do you remember the war with the Leaf little wasp?" The Tsuchikage asked suddenly, breaking up his recitation.
"Only snatches," Suzumebachi answered, for that was all in her recollection, she had only been three years old at the time.
"Not surprising, you would have been too young," He shook his head slowly, and Suzumebachi saw for the first time the tremendous weight of this man's great age. "Still, you have learned the history. How did that war begin?"
The war between stone and leaf, thirteen years ago now, was the most studied ninja conflict in Hidden Stone, and Suzumebachi had been grilled on it in detail. "We launched a surprise attack," she answered. "A strike team snuck into grass country and took down their entire village council and most of the jounin in a single night, so we could invade easily."
"Yes, so history says," The Tsuchikage replied. "And it is accurate, in all aspects save one. Not a strike team, a single man."
"Harvestman…" Suzumebachi breathed, recalling the blackened face, with its goggles and hideous breathing device, the merciless grip holding her under the water, fully prepared to kill her if she did not struggle hard enough to suit him. She had no trouble believing it.
"Indeed, only the jounin know the truth here, and they don't speak of it, no one speaks of Harvestman in anything other than whispers," The Tsuchikage crossed his hands together. "His name is known even in other countries though, terrible legends and stories, things told to frighten genin in the night, but I believe many of those tales are true. It is not that we truly fear him though, that we do not speak of him, fearsome as he might be." The Tsuchikage bent his head and stared straight up at Suzumebachi, his eyes auguring deep into him. "It is that we do not control him. Harvestman is no Stone ninja, though he serves the desires of this village and no other. I believe it is only because we possess the best craftsmen, so he can name his price in exquisite blades and strange equipment."
"Harvestman's strange abilities give him great power, but his lack of assurance limits his use. Now, you are to harness strange abilities of your own young wasp. Remember always that you are a ninja of this village. Ninja of Stone must be loyal as stone to the mountain. I do not need another Harvestman, I will not have another Harvestman," His eyes burned with fires deathly cold. "Do you understand this?"
"Yes, Tsuchikage-sama," Suzumebachi replied without hesitation. "But what do I do if I encounter Harvestman again?"
"We shall then see the limits of your judgment," The Tsuchikage responded, a tired note in his voice. "Now, that should be all, you are dismissed. The rest of the day is yours; you can wait to start your work till tomorrow."
"Yes, Tsuchikage-sama," Suzumebachi bowed to her leader, since he was still sitting, and left.
- About Harvestman's Name: Harvestman's name is Harvestman, in so far as there's nothing else to call him. Also, it's not a symbolic reference, but a type of creature. In Japanese it would be Mekuragumo. There's a reason for this, but it won't be revealed yet.