A storm whipped up in Senfuku a few days after the Hokage's office proposed a strategic delay to Lord Hayashi. He had at first been reluctant to accept the delay, eager to maintain momentum and crush the enemy, but the head of the Aoyagi clan told a story about being dashed against the rocks during a winter storm in his youth that cooled the passions of everyone in the room. A few days later, Lord Hayashi could not see Senfuku's port through the rain that blew past his balcony, and so decided that invading the island nation of Wave would have to be delayed until next spring.
The news was sent out to the shinobi that day. Chunin and genin who could assist in surveillance and counter-sabotage operations would be remaining in Senfuku, and several genin teams would even be arriving in Senfuku to train in SCS ops. The rest would be sent back to Konoha for now, partly for rest and recovery but mostly because the Hokage wanted them training to support the landings in the spring.
Nobody was leaving immediately, of course, in order to give the local commanders time to rearrange schedules appropriately. Hinata considered this fortunate, because Haku was executed three days before she left for Konoha.
Hinata had not attended the execution. It was not an affair she had the stomach for, she didn't think, and besides there were too many questions that would be asked about the Hyuuga heir attending the execution of a criminal. However, she had been told by Team Minami that Haku had been given an execution befitting the retainer of a samurai, as he had chosen to follow his master in death rather than live disgracefully.
Haku's remains had been buried on the side of a hill half an hour's walk from the castle. Hinata brought Naruto with her to visit the evening after Haku's death. There was no headstone, just a wooden board with his name that had been driven into the ground next to the mound of dirt that covered Haku's urn. The grave was shallow, but at least it was there, and, here on the hill, the urn would not be uncovered by accident.
Hinata crouched down to place a cedar box in front of the grave. Inside was a small charcoal tablet that she lit with the campfire technique they learned in the Academy. The coal slowly burned, ash accumulating around the edges as she waited quietly for the flame to catch.
The wind tugging at the trees around Hinata and Naruto made a rustle and a rattle that heralded rain again that evening. Hinata did not mind, her thoughts tumultuous to match the branches in their motion. In the copse where Haku was buried, however, the air was still, the wind blocked by the surrounding foliage and the hill itself.
It was a pointless death. Haku had not needed to die, not after being captured, the mission finished and the fighting complete. But he had died anyway, because Konoha could not trust him and Haku could not trust Konoha.
The leaves rustled and Hinata checked the coal. It was ready. She took a small bag of incense powder out of her pocket and poured it into the cedar box, where it began to smoulder. The charcoal was high quality and thick, burning hot and keeping its heat after the incense was added. Sweet smoke soon began to rise in twining strands from beneath the powder.
"I wonder how much they got paid," Naruto said quietly.
Hinata twisted her fingers together.
"You gotta figure, to kill a princess, it probably ought to be a lot," Naruto said, "but I bet Gato shorted them. Or, like, pretended he was going to pay them a lot and then was going to just not pay and figured he had enough guards to keep it from happening. He sounds like that kind of guy."
Hinata didn't have anything to say. It was true, Gato sounded like a liar and a cheat, but he also had a lot of power and nobody gained power without being trustworthy, some way or another.
"I wish Gato had screwed up and hadn't paid them enough," Naruto said. "This is a stupid way to die."
Hinata took a breath. "S-sensei said it was the only w-way to p-protect the future," she said.
Naruto scowled and scuffed the ground with his foot. "I guess," he said. "Just like how we couldn't do anything about Gato until now, right?"
"M-maybe."
"Tch."
The smoke rising from the incense thickened as it burned more heavily. Hinata and Naruto stood silently, thinking their own thoughts as the wind blew and the smoke rose upwards until it left the still air of the clearing to be carried away.
"D-do you think that it w-will ever stop?" Hinata asked.
Naruto frowned and looked at the ground. "I dunno. I hope so. I don't—" He stopped and swallowed. Most of the people he had killed weren't innocent, but they weren't that evil either. He bet that if they had a second chance, they could have been better. He wondered how many were like Haku, not really different from Naruto but just coincidentally on the opposite side. "I don't like killing people very much, Hinata-chan. It'd be nice if all the fighting stopped and I didn't need to."
"I d-don't think s-sensei thinks it can."
Naruto bit his lip. "I… I want him to be wrong. But I don't know."
In the past, Naruto might have said something about how he would become Hokage to make sure that people didn't die for stupid reasons. But he wasn't sure anymore that the Hokage could make that happen.
"Let's head back," Naruto said. "Sensei wants us back before sunset."
Hinata nodded. "Alright. L-let's go."
The genin returned from Senfuku in the last week of September. Team Seven found out soon after returning that they were now considered capable of running missions without their jounin sensei. Easy ones—C-ranks or low-risk B-ranks—but missions without Kakashi all the same. They found this out when Kakashi told them so.
"The Hokage wants me to teach some chunin a few water ninjutsu and different ways to counter them," Kakashi sighed. It was supposedly an honor, but Team Seven thought their sensei mostly looked anticipatorily tired. "Normally, you would be considered too young, but Team Seven did an exceptional job in Senfuku."
Sayaka glanced at her teammates. Neither Hinata nor Naruto appeared entirely happy to hear any of that. Both she and Kakashi knew they had been badly affected by the events in Senfuku, but neither had really any idea what more to do about it. Neither Naruto nor Hinata had seemed to want to talk about it with her. Sayaka did her best, and Kakashi tried to make sure they talked to someone, but…
Well. It was their first battle. Fighting Zabuza, the things they had gone through were different. It would take time, and everyone processed it differently.
Sayaka wasn't sure if she was excited or nervous at the news. Probably both. It was good to be recognized, and they had basically been independent in Senfuku, but it was still technically a new level of responsibility and trust. But then again, there were plenty of experienced chunin and jounin who could supervise, so it probably wouldn't be too different than before.
"For now, you'll be running missions on your own," Kakashi continued. "I wanted you to join in, but Hokage-sama wants you to help offset some chunin who need the training first.
There was no chance that the landings would go unopposed. Gato's forces had ninja available. Even if Gato was a total moron and didn't bother sending his ninja out to watch the beaches, those ninja would be able to respond to the landings very quickly. Konoha needed as many ninja as it could get trained in new skills and new tactics to help hold the beachhead and push inland.
"Once the first round is done, you'll probably get cycled in," Kakashi finished. "Now in principle, the Hokage wants genin to be on a lighter schedule, but in practice that won't really be possible. There's not really that much time before the offensive, and we're going to be fighting ninja who will know we're coming. I've drawn up some training plans for you guys, so let's go over them."
Indeed, training took up almost all the time that they didn't spend on mission. Sayaka and Naruto had their visits to their psychiatrists as well, but that was almost the same as training and was hardly relaxing besides. The missions Team Seven were assigned to had given them too much to think about and the visits just brought all of it to the surface.
Kagami, Sayaka's psychiatrist, claimed that this was healthier than the alternative. Sayaka thought they must be mad to think talking through it was anything but torture.
It was, admittedly, productive torture. Sayaka did learn things about herself that were important for her combat performance, and they had started developing coping strategies for her reaction to being entrapped. The sessions, held outdoors in an extremely isolated grove with seal-generated barriers enforcing privacy, were more like training than they were sitting in a chair discussing her "feelings". Sayaka almost enjoyed it. Not as much as incinerating scarecrows, but she would take what she could get.
Fire Country's autumn torrents loomed, though. It was getting noticeably colder now, and there was talk of it being a rain moon for the fourth year in a row. Not exactly the most auspicious of portents, but well, if it was what the gods decreed, then it would be so. Nothing they could do about it.
The weather, then, was both cold and humid when Sayaka met Kiba for a training date a week or so after they got back from Senfuku. He had said he'd teach her about scent masking, after all, and they were both finally back in the village. She met him at the Inuzuka clan compound for their first lesson.
To Sayaka's dismay, scent masking apparently involved first learning about scent tracking, which had then led to a short tutorial on cycling chakra through your nose, which she failed entirely.
"I think Kurenai-sensei can do it though, so I bet there's a trick," Kiba said bracingly. "I bet Kakashi-sensei will teach you some time."
"Uh huh," Sayaka said. She sniffed and rubbed at her nose. The exercise hadn't succeeded at doing anything except making her sneeze. Akamaru, sitting on the ground between them, had appeared highly amused at Sayaka's failure.
"Uhh, so, I guess I dunno, do you want to just hang out?" Kiba asked. "Gonna be hard to teach you about scent masking if you don't know how to find someone with your nose."
"Didn't you say that you could identify me from my sweat?" Sayaka asked. She folded her arms, peeved. "Isn't there a way to keep you from smelling that?"
"There's definitely a way, but I don't know what it is," said Kiba. He shrugged and put his hands in his jacket pockets. "Come on, you really want to do this? Let's do something fun."
Sayaka frowned at him. "Training is important."
"You train all the time, Sayaka," Kiba said. "You gotta have fun sometimes right?"
Sayaka folded her arms more tightly. "I guess."
"Oh come on Sayaka-chan," Kiba said with a roll of his eyes. "Are we dating or not? Training dates don't count, you know."
"They definitely count," Sayaka replied. She tapped her foot in irritation—she had been looking forward to learning about scent blocking today.
"No, they don't, unless, like, punching me counts as flirting."
Sayaka blinked. "W-what? No, that's not—training is so I—we—can get better."
Kiba huffed. "Well, the only person who's gonna know that enhanced scent trick for non-clan is probably my mom and she's busy, so unless you want to play hide and seek we're pretty screwed."
Sayaka made an exasperated and frustrated noise, then gave up. She definitely didn't want to play hide and seek, especially if it involved getting tackled by Kiba. "Ugh, fine. We'll just… hang out. Or whatever."
Kiba grinned widely. "Cool. C'mon, we can hang out at the training hall. Nobody's using it this time of day, and Akamaru thinks it'll rain soon."
Sayaka looked up at a sky that, while overcast, did not portend rain in the slightest. "Really?"
"Yeah, he says it's going to be one of those storms that rolls in real sudden," Kiba said. He took Sayaka by the hand and tugged as Akamaru hopped to his feet to follow. "Come on, let's go."
Sayaka felt herself smile at Kiba's energy. "Alright, jeez."
The Inuzuka compound was honestly not all that different from any other clan compound. It still had gardens with carefully maintained paths and fish wandering around pools of clear water. If there was a difference, it was in the multitude of wide, flat regions of grass. These seemed to be general use areas, with some members of the clan using them for light training and others finding a patch under a tree to relax. Young children ran around playing with the dogs while older clan members supervised from the sidelines. It was idyllic.
Sayaka felt a pang shoot through her chest as she watched. She could barely remember now ever playing with other children her age, back then. Her memories had faded with time, with only the most precious moments retaining any clarity in her mind. If only…
She huffed and tried to push the thoughts from her mind. No point focusing too much on it.
"Something on your mind?" Kiba asked.
Sayaka shook her head. "How do you talk to Akamaru?"
"Huh? Oh, it's not really like that," said Kiba. "We just grow up around dogs you know? It's like if you grew up using Konoha standard sign."
"Ah," said Sayaka. "That makes sense."
Akamaru made a noise. "Ah, but Kuromaru can speak human languages," Kiba translated. "We never asked him what the deal was did we?"
Akamaru made another sound and rolled his eyes.
"Heh, yeah that's probably true."
"What is?"
"Oh, Akamaru said it's probably some secret clan technique they don't teach anyone for no good reason," Kiba said. "It'd be way easier working with other ninja you know?"
Sayaka pursed her lips. "I wonder if it's permanent."
"That'd be weird."
"But it would explain why."
Kiba pursed his lips. "Yeah I dunno, that sounds like it could be bad."
Sayaka activated her Sharingan as Akamaru replied with a series of yips and a complicated series of ear and tail twitches.
"Akamaru says he probably wouldn't if it was permanent, it sounds like a hassle," said Kiba. "He'd probably have to learn how to talk all over again."
"Definitely a pain," Sayaka said, and turned her Sharingan off again. It was hard to pick out complex ideas like that, even with the Sharingan making it easier to pick out what Akamaru was doing, but she could kind of see what he meant. She could see the outline of some kind of language there.
"Anyway, here's the training hall," said Kiba. He let go of Sayaka's hand so that he could sit down at the threshold to take his shoes off and scoot them under the overhang. "Come on, I'll show you around. I bet you'll like it."
The training hall was built in the traditional fashion, lifted off the ground on stone pillars and with a floor made of sturdy, finely-sanded wooden planks. The walls were wood as well, though plastered and whitewashed on the outside to keep out the weather. The roof was tiled with dark ceramic and steeply vaulted, overhanging the outer walkway by a wide margin. Sayaka could see barn swallow nests in the gaps between the exposed rafters.
Sayaka took her own shoes off, scooting them under the overhang next to Kiba's and swinging her legs up onto the smooth wood. Just inside the threshold was a little area to wash your feet, where Kiba was already sockless and ladling water into a large basin. The water came from a very large, thick-walled terracotta jar. Next to the jar was a stand for ladles and the jar's wooden lid, along with several buckets that were intended, apparently, for refilling the jar if the water was low.
"The path here can get kinda muddy if it rains," Kiba explained as Sayaka stepped inside and Akamaru hopped up with a thump. "Don't wanna track mud everywhere, you know?"
Ah. That made sense. "Do you have towels?"
"Yeah, I already grabbed one. It's cool if we share right?"
Um. "Sure."
Sayaka sat down on the bench across from Kiba and placed her feet next to his in the basin. It was made of copper and cold to the touch.
"We don't really use the training hall in the winter much," Kiba said as he poured in more water. "The basin gets really cold."
"Hn," Sayaka said, rubbing her feet against the bottom. It was hammered copper, not cast, and rippled underneath her toes. "Heat the water?"
"Do you have that much firewood lying around?"
"Don't need it," Sayaka said, feeling just a little smug. She breathed out a tendril of flame at Kiba.
There was a pause while Kiba stared at where the fire had coiled between them in the air, then looked at Sayaka with a very strange expression.
"…well, in that case, I'm inviting you over more this winter," Kiba said as he turned back to the water barrel and kept ladling.
"Sounds good," said Sayaka.
Akamaru barked something smug-sounding at Kiba that earned the puppy a glare before Akamaru stepped into the basin. He swished his paws around briefly, leaving behind trails of dust, before stepping out to sit next to them.
"There's a few other spots to hang out that I wanted to show you," Kiba said as he hung the ladle up on its hook and pulled his feet out of the basin as well. He dried off his feet and handed the towel to Sayaka. "With the rains it'll be hard, but maybe when it starts snowing? The ground will firm up, so…"
"That could be good," said Sayaka as she dried her own feet. "What do we do with the water?"
"Ah, we'll dump it out when we leave," said Kiba. He put the lid back onto the water jar. "Toss the towel into the hamper over there."
They made their way into the training hall. Tatami mats covered the floor under a high ceiling that gave enough room to jump around and swing one of the staffs that stood in racks along the walls. Small windows let in enough light to see and fight by. It was a nice enough training hall, but Sayaka couldn't see what was so interesting about it.
"Over here," Kiba said. He led Sayaka into the corner, where a cord hung from the ceiling. "We store a lot of training stuff we don't use that often up in the second level."
He tugged on the cord to pull open a panel in the ceiling. A ladder unfolded from the panel, granting access to the yawning space above.
Sayaka looked up into the open panel, unimpressed. "If you try to kiss me, I'll sock you."
Kiba rolled his eyes. "This isn't a shoujo manga, Sayaka."
"Sure looks like one," said Sayaka, hands on her hips as she looked skeptically at Kiba.
"Oh shove off and go up already," Kiba said, swatting at her.
"Fine, fine."
The space over the main training hall had, at some point, clearly been intended as a second training level, so that more people could practice at the same time. The tatami-covered floor was cluttered with chests and weapon racks, wherein lay spoils hauled from the battlefield and stood antiques from wars past. A thin film of dust lay over the oldest members of the collection, while others had clearly seen use very recently. Sayaka's eyes skipped across gilt blades and lacquered armors while Kiba climbed up behind her with Akamaru stuffed down the front of his jacket.
"Pretty cool right?" Kiba asked. "It takes a few D-ranks every year to keep the damp out and make sure nothing starts rusting, but it's totally worth it. I used to play up here when I was a kid."
"You try and swing some of the swords and pretend you were Hokage or something?" Sayaka asked.
"Yep."
"Heh. Pretty cute."
Kiba flushed and coughed. "Here, lemme show you some of my favorites."
Sayaka followed Kiba through the cluttered maze of katanas in sheathes, carefully maintained armor, spears in racks, and even an antique hand cannon made of bronze that had a long crack running down the side.
"Mom says that Great-grandma Sumiko used this in the Second War to kill a samurai general," Kiba explained. "I'm not sure if she shot him or if she used it like a club, but either way it's pretty cool. They say the only way they could identify him after she was done was with his eye."
"His eye?"
"Yeah, apparently he was blind in the one eye, right? Because he got cut across the face once when he was younger, so there's this big scar going right through the pupil."
Sayaka shivered. Losing an eye that way was genuinely one of her worst nightmares. "Uh huh."
"So Great-grandma Sumiko smashed his head in right, and she ended up having to pick his eyeball out of the gore," Kiba finished. He gestured at the crack in the cannon. "They say that's why the cannon's cracked—you can see where it's dented right here."
Sayaka squinted at a small blemish on the surface of the cannon, right in the middle of where the crack ran down the barrel. "Interesting."
"For real though, Great-grandma Sumiko got really good at using cannons with the Inuzuka style," Kiba said with a sigh. "Man, it's really too bad she never wrote anything down, it'd be so cool to learn how to do what she could do."
Sayaka frowned down at the hand cannon. It was far more primitive than modern arquebuses, no more than a barrel at the end of a long metal stick. "Nobody uses these weapons anymore."
"That's true," said Kiba, but he shrugged and smiled anyway. "Still, can you imagine how cool it would be? I'd do it if I could, but it'd be really hard…"
"I could help," Sayaka said. She paused, realizing what she said, but continued. "I- I mean, you know, if you wanted."
Kiba blinked at her before grinning. "I'd like that. We should ask Grandma if she remembers anything."
"That sounds good," said Sayaka. "It'll, uh, be another date I guess?"
"I guess, yeah," said Kiba. He rubbed his nose, flushing a little. "I—thanks. It's cool that you'd offer."
Sayaka looked away, flushing as well. "…well if you… if you're going to help me kill my brother, I…"
Akamaru made a noise that sounded an awful lot like he was saying that the both of them were being melodramatic about it all.
"Shut up Akamaru," Sayaka and Kiba said simultaneously. They blinked at each other, before laughing.
"See, you're learning already," said Kiba as he scratched Akamaru behind the ears.
Sayaka shrugged. "It just seemed like that's what he meant."
"That's how it starts," Kiba said, posing with faux wisdom and a grin. "Embrace it Sayaka-chan. Become one with the dog."
Sayaka smiled and looked down at the floor. It probably wasn't quite proper, but she appreciated the sentiment. "I'll do my best. Were there any other weapons you wanted to show me?"
"Nah, I mean, we've kind of seen my favorites," Kiba said with a shrug. "There's a nook up near the ceiling where I like to hang out if I don't want to train. It's kind of cold, this time of year, but…"
"I'd like to see."
"Sure."
Kiba's nook was a tiny maintenance space tucked underneath a ledge in the architecture. Reaching it required climbing up a ladder and shimmying along a catwalk that forced Sayaka to lean out into thin air in order to make her way around a support beam. The nook was just large enough that both of them could squeeze in tightly if Sayaka sat with her knees drawn up to her chest. It was just…
"Enclosed spaces," Kiba muttered as Sayaka hesitated outside the nook. "Right, right, crap. Sorry."
"It's fine," Sayaka said quickly. "We can just—"
"Wait here," Kiba said, ducking under the ledge and rustling around out of view. "Honestly, I've been thinking about finding a new hideout. I guess it was a lot bigger when I was smaller."
"When did you find it anyway?" Sayaka asked.
"I think I was like nine?" Kiba said. He grunted and pushed himself backwards out of the nook with his arms full of manga. "The clan's great, but it is a little rowdy sometimes. Having your own hideout is important, and, well, that beam's easier to get around when you're small."
Sayaka picked a volume off the top of Kiba's stack. It was printed in incredibly bright pastel colors. "So this is the sort of thing you read huh?"
"Please, I'm a man of culture," Kiba said haughtily.
Akamaru barked at him.
"Look not everything you buy is going to work out," Kiba replied. "We all make mistakes, it's fine."
Sayaka took a few more volumes, glancing over the covers as she went. They were mostly what she expected out of a boy, Karuido was definitely a repeat favorite judging by the wear on the pages, but there were a few surprises.
"Clash of the Seven Emperors, huh," Sayaka said, flipping through the pages with one hand. "Is it any good? I've read the book version."
"Ehh… it's not bad," Kiba hedged before handing her three more volumes and nudging her to make Sayaka go back the way they'd come. "It's a little… I guess they wanted to make it more romantic for some reason?"
Sayaka rolled her eyes and ducked under the support beam again. "Of course."
"I mean if you like that kind of stuff I guess it's fine, but the original version's way better," Kiba continued. He shrugged. "The politics was kind of boring but it's way better than an entire volume of Jin and Sakae making eyes at each other."
Sayaka resisted the urge to make a retching noise before jumping down from the catwalk next to the ladder. "That's terrible."
"Right? Jin and Sakae are like, total ass-kickers," Kiba said. He landed next to Sayaka looking peeved. "Instead the manga has like three volumes devoted to them being on a romantic boat trip."
Akamaru barked again from behind the stacks of books that Kiba was carrying. It was hard to tell what he said with his face obscured, but it seemed like he was objecting to Kiba's opinion.
"Akamaru, I love you, but your taste in manga is terrible," Kiba said flatly. He set off for the ladder going back down to the main training hall.
"What kind of manga does Akamaru like?" Sayaka asked.
"Trash," Kiba said at the same time that Akamaru barked. Kiba made a put-upon face as Akamaru barked again. "Akamaru says that his taste is far more nuanced and cultured than mine and that I should acknowledge its depth and breadth."
Sayaka snorted and hopped down through the hole, landing back on the tatami in the main hall. "I'm sure. What's his favorite manga?"
"I Never Thought I Would Roll Around In the Trash Lovingly Before I Was Reborn As a Tanuki."
"…doesn't he already roll in the trash though?"
Akamaru let off a tirade of barking that Sayaka carefully hid her smile from.
"Akamaru says that rolling in trash has a long tradition dating back generations and is a well-established technique for scent masking," Kiba relayed as Akamaru ranted. "If you want to be part of this family you should make sure to learn more about—okay Akamaru that's not nice, you should take that back."
Akamaru huffed grumpily but yipped, suitably chastened.
"It's okay Akamaru," Sayaka said. She tipped forward in a small bow at the puppy. "I am sure there is much that I can learn in the future. Why don't you tell me more about your favorite manga?"
Kiba shot her a look of deep dismay as Akamaru barked and hopped out of where he had been riding in Kiba's jacket to run circles around Sayaka's feet in excitement, yipping madly. It was hard to follow, but he seemed to be saying something about a human and a tanuki who had… switched places? Or something?
"Now you've done it," Kiba said. "He'll never shut up."
"It's fine," Sayaka said. "I want to learn more about both of you."
Kiba grinned back at her. "Keep talking like that and you'll turn into a romantic, Sayaka-chan. What's next, gooshy romance manga?"
Sayaka hit him with her shoulder and grinned back. "I'll read it out loud to you," she threatened. "I'll use the Sharingan to force you to listen to every word."
"Oh gods, please, no!" Kiba laughed as he stumbled sideways to keep a hold of his manga stack. "Help, abuse!"
Sayaka found herself laughing along as they put the books down to pull on their sandals and set out for the main house. For a few minutes, Sayaka didn't worry very much about family or duty or anything like that. She just smiled and laughed along with Kiba and Akamaru and spent a little time in the light that still shone before the coming rain.
Calling Konoha "sprawling" was probably an exaggeration. It wasn't anything like the capital, which was large enough that each district was starting to seem like its own town, but there were still plenty of ways to hide in plain sight from the casual observer. Less casual observers could be deterred with seals, purchased or custom, but only the old clans had the hoarded knowledge and wealth to keep out a truly determined shinobi intent on infiltration.
The Shimura clan were one of Konoha's founding members, so it was a matter of course that they had an estate on the outskirts of Konoha. It was no sprawling palace, nothing that stood out among the other clans—major and minor—that had made homes there, but still spacious and comfortable to live in. Naruto would know—he had been training there with Danzo ever since he'd been let back out into the field with Team Seven and had spent the night more than once.
It was weird. There were no servants and nobody to take care of the grounds or the gardens. The bedrooms always had clean futons and the kitchens were always stocked, so clearly someone came around when Naruto wasn't, but still, didn't Hinata-chan have servants around all the time for everything?
Weird.
The smallest entrance was in an alleyway between several other buildings and stuck almost-permanently in their shadow except for that one moment in the day when the sun came directly overhead. The door was painted dark red and creaked as Naruto pulled it back shut after arriving there for early-morning training. The latch clicked and then glowed as the security seals activated.
Naruto's shoes crunched across the gravel path leading to the garden that he usually trained in. Weeds and grass were starting to creep in from the edges, and the ivy on the storage shed was starting to get overgrown. He rounded the corner into the main garden, ducking under a wisteria branch that wet his hair with last night's rain, sprinkled from its seed pods.
Naruto absorbed his surroundings as he entered. The garden was wrapped in its autumn robes. Crimson maple leaves spread out like hands while the trees' scarlet seeds peeked out from behind. The mulberry trees had already lost their fruits, but lent their shimmering gold leaves in place of more traditional ginkgo, whose fruits were too smelly to bear in the small garden. Plum trees too, though their fruits had already been harvested, shone vermillion against emerald pines and jade bamboo. Other plants Naruto couldn't identify, some fruiting or seeding and some already wilted and bare, stood around and below the branches among the stone and moss of the garden.
But more important to Naruto were the pear and persimmon trees that hung heavy with orange and dusky bronze orbs. Danzo had said that Naruto could take home whatever he could carry. He'd had plenty of persimmons fresh already, and long strings of drying persimmons hung from the kitchen ceiling both here at the Shimura estate and in Naruto's apartment.
Naruto shook the water out of his hair and examined the pears, twisting one around to see if it broke off. It did, with remarkable ease, and Naruto grinned as he scrubbed it clean against his shirt. A quick fruit break before training, and then afterwards he'd start collecting the fruit to take home.
It looked like today he would be training alone. Danzo would be here already if he was planning on showing up, but the grouchy old ninja had been absent a lot after the campaign had started in Senfuku. Naruto assumed it had to do with all the prep that Kakashi-sensei was helping with. It was fine though—Naruto wanted to get better and didn't need supervision for a lot of the exercises these days. That said, Danzo always left a scroll if he wasn't able to be there in person. The center of the garden was dominated by a tall, mossy rock formation with an incense burner sheltered within one of its nooks. Danzo's scroll was usually inside the incense burner, along with a bottle of sake as an offering to the Kyuubi.
Pear in one hand and scroll in the other, Naruto settled onto a rock and began to read. The morning's tasks were predictable—rake back the fallen leaves, tend to the paths, and the ivy on the storehouse that Naruto had noticed was to be trimmed. After that was the usual stone stacking exercises and the fire meditation. Nothing crazy, if maybe a little boring.
Naruto sighed and bit into his pear. The whole cultivation-of-the-inner-self thing wasn't as bad as he'd feared when Danzo had introduced him to it, but at the same time it could be interminably dull. Which, probably, was the point, something about patience or whatever, but man. D-ranks were almost preferable—they didn't leave Naruto alone with his thoughts the way this training did. Sometimes it was nice, but other times the silence of the garden, broken only by the snip of pruning shears or the shuffling of dead leaves, made Naruto's mind spin as it bounced from dark thought to dark thought.
Naruto grimaced and took another, vigorous bite of his pear. Those were the worst days.
Well whatever. Naruto hurriedly finished eating, tossing the pear core into the compost heap before rinsing his hands with rainwater from the wisterias. The scroll was put back into the incense burner and then Naruto got to work.
That morning was not one of the bad days, and Naruto found an easy rhythm as he worked. Raking took the most time, but Naruto liked it best of all the chores. It was strangely difficult and the least boring because of it. Not tearing up the ground as he raked took way more concentration than he had ever given it credit for. The first time he had tried, with Danzo supervising, he'd left deep furrows from the tines of the rake. Danzo had swiftly corrected him, demonstrating how he needed to let the weight of the rake do just enough of the work while holding it high enough off the ground to keep from doing too much damage. Figuring it all out had been a process—Naruto had definitely hated it at first, and some days the careful motions made him want to scream—but now that he did know what he was doing, it was… well, he wasn't sure how to put it. It was something he could focus on without getting totally bored, so, when he wasn't stuck in a dark rut, his head always felt clearer afterwards, like after a good successful day's training, only without the muscle pain.
Also, Danzo had shown him how it was good for his chakra control, and man Naruto could make such a better illusion clone now. It was great.
But soon there was no more raking and only boring chores to do instead, which was a little annoying but whatever. Such was training—sometimes nice, sometimes boring, but good for you in the end, right? And then, even though it wasn't on his chores list Naruto took a little time to pick a few weeds in the moss under the trees, because that would end up being a chore soon and it was incredibly boring and Danzo had never said he couldn't make his future life easier by doing some work ahead of time. A few shadow clones picked off the ripest persimmons and pears and took them to the estate's kitchen. The sun had been up for hours now, and it occurred to Naruto that it was past ten in the morning. When had he started being okay with getting up so early?
Mm. Well, it was probably a good thing. The fighting in Senfuku had started way before sun-up, and he could expect more missions like that in his future.
Naruto laced his fingers together and raised them over his head, stretching and thinking about lunch, before turning to the incense burner. The sake bottle inside hadn't been opened before, which apparently was part of the Kyuubi's demands for offerings. Naruto cracked the seal and took a sniff—sweet, kind of fruity—then glanced around before taking a quick swig.
Ugh. Honestly, he couldn't say he liked it, but nobody let kids drink sake and Naruto had never really been much interested in following rules. He was curious—anybody would be right?—and Naruto hadn't seen this bottle before, and it was just a taste so why not? That said, he thought he was probably getting used to it, and well, he'd seen enough drunk ninja at the bars at night to know that he wasn't too sure that was a good thing.
Well, whatever. It wasn't like that was what the sake was for anyway. Naruto put the open bottle back inside the incense burner and closed the gate, then stood back and closed his eyes. He breathed in—jeez he could still smell the sake—and reached for the ball of viscous fire that was the Kyuubi's power. Naruto breathed out, and the fire rushed out too, snapping out to grab at the sake bottle. The incense burner sizzled as the leavings of the morning dew, still clinging on in the shadow of the rock formation, evaporated in the fire of the Nine-tailed Fox. Soon, the entire burner was glowing hot, and yet the bottle remained whole, the liquid inside still.
Naruto opened his eyes and breathed in again. The fire rushed back to him, dissolving the bottle into wisps of chakra—how did that even work—as the flames wrapped around Naruto like a cloak. The world glazed red in the eyes of the fox, but that was fine. Naruto was used to it by now, along with that ravenous hunger that came with activating the fox's fire.
Naruto breathed out and the fire leaped, spitting sparks onto the gravel. He winced and focused on the rocks scattered across the gravel. Moving gingerly, Naruto reached out with the thinnest tendril he could to pick up a long, flat rock that he liked, lifting it in the air and pulling it towards him. Then he picked up another rock and placed it on top of the first. The third one was less flat, rounded on the bottom, and it wobbled when he put it down a little too quickly.
The fourth was flat once more, thankfully, but small. Naruto very carefully stopped himself from biting his lip and instead searched for that feeling of raking leaves. He moved the rock over and held it over the top of the rock formation, then gently began to balance it on top. Slowly now, no rushing. The point was to take as long as he needed.
A ripe pear, missed by the shadow clones, fell from the tree and thudded against the ground. Naruto flinched, and the rock formation toppled.
He sighed. Well, that was training. Naruto sat himself down in the gravel and took another deep breath, then started again.
