"Look inside my heart and find a perilous ravine,
Carved within the beauty,
The darkness in between,
Standing in the balance of complete and incomplete,"
-creature, half•alive
I glanced at a cluster of swamp lilies growing between the roots of a bloated tree. Another cluster looked like it was drowning in the muddy water, leading back to the beach where Naga planted the first one.
I wondered how old Etsudo's son would be if he'd lived.
"Hey, Hidan, what do you know about River country?" Yahiko asked, strained, holding a one-handed handstand in the water, his other hand behind his back.
"Still a shit ninja," Hidan said, sitting on a root as he took another bite of a cooked fish.
"Yeah, yeah, I know." Yahiko lowered himself until his hair touched the water, his teal shirt tucked in his pants and dark with sweat, then pushed himself back up.
Hidan eyed him as he tore off a raw piece and held it over the fire. "The whole country doesn't matter," he finally said. "But Tanigakure has ninja. Weak ones, because they were nothing but another place to occupy during the war. They have gold mines and make weapons for fire country nobles or some shit."
I un-wedged a branch from between two rocks and held it over my shoulder, letting Namekuji have the head, eyes, and mouth.
"Tsuri is some town on the coast that used to be held by Sunagakure."
Naga laid on a patch of thick moss, and Kuu used Yahiko's cloak as a pillow next to him.
"Any chance they'll leave us alone?" Yahiko asked, spitting out a shirt button.
Hidan threw the piece in his mouth. "Would you leave you alone?"
"Had to ask."
"You should play dead when you fight," I said, peeling meat from the rest of the fish.
Hidan looked at me.
"Even if you don't like strategy—"
Naga made a sign at us. It was one word, in a sign language that I'd forgotten most of, because I hadn't needed it since Jiraiya left.
Track.
We were being tracked. And if he was using that sign, he didn't think it was Root.
I peeled off another layer of meat. Namekuji climbed higher up on my shoulder. "Nine, to the west," he said. "And give me more of that."
I tore off the tail and gave it to him. Fire country was to the west, and past that, lightning country. I ate more meat.
No one had taught Hidan standard Konohagakure sign, but he seemed to pick up on why Naga sat up, or why Yahiko dropped down.
He stood and stretched his arms above his head. "Praise Lord Jashin, for He has brought me a good sacrifice to honor His name."
Metal glinted through the gaps in the hanging moss.
The campsite cleared in an instant. Kunai reflected where we'd been as I stood upside-down from a twisted branch, watching white vests and the symbol of clouds on headbands.
Namekuji spat an acid ball at the fire and a short sword spun in the way, corroding near instantly as the acid hit and splashed on the roots around it.
It told me they didn't have a sensor-nin.
Naga slid as he landed, putting his back to a tree so Kuu could leap from his shoulder and climb up. Three cloud-nin with darker skin surrounded him.
Take out the sensor first.
Yahiko's cloak was where he left it, and the nagamaki's sheathe. He was clashing blades with a cloud-nin. Another cloud-nin with only slightly lighter skin was in the trees above her.
I fed Namekuji the rest of the fish as the dark-skinned cloud-nin who'd sacrificed his blade leapt at me, steely-eyed with a scarred nose.
I threw the stick like a kunai and he jerked his head to the side, never taking his eyes off me as I shoved off the branch.
My leg hit his arm as he protected his face, as he pulled a second short sword from his back and twisted it to stab through me.
"You're fast," I complimented, in the same instant that gravity seemed to turn against him, as he noticed my right hand, as he rocketed backwards and hit the ground hard enough to douse the swamp lilies in mud and water.
I watched his blade tumble away from him and stick in the mud as I landed across from him.
"Have either of you heard of the Way of Jashin?" Hidan asked, sauntering towards the two standing defensively, looking warily at his scythe. "No? You will."
The cloud-nin rolled away from my kunai, breathing hard, mud filling the hole where he'd been.
Hidan leapt and hit the ground scythe-first, laughing.
The cloud-nin in front of me flicked his gaze to the left, then the right, looking for help.
Namekuji shot a stream of acid to my left. Another cloud-nin stood in the way, using a water wall to slow and absorb the acid before it could hit the cloud-nin facing Yahiko in the back.
The water wall splashed down suddenly and she stumbled, gasping as a wind bullet tore a hole through her side. Namekuji stopped as she fell into the acid water and Naga leapt off the tree he'd been crouched on as the cloud-nin tried to attack him.
"Was that your partner?" I asked.
The cloud-nin tch'ed. He forced himself up, tested his leg, and disappeared. He appeared in a flicker next to his blade and it vanished with him. He didn't make a sound.
I dropped down as it sliced over my head. "I take it back. You're not fast at all."
He hastily switched places with his partner's body as Namekuji doused it in acid.
I started to stand and stopped, staring at the white-blue current surging through the water around my feet. Lightning chakra felt like I thought a thunderstorm might look.
Patternless and chaotic and splitting into smaller branches through my chakra points. But it didn't hurt.
The cloud-nin was on one knee, struggling to hold himself up. He'd substituted to save himself, then landed in the acid water anyway.
"You would've died faster if you hadn't substituted," I mentioned. His partner's body sizzled behind me.
White-blue light brightened the sky as a jutsu was thrown at Naga.
"How are you...? You know... lightning-style?"
His hands slid in the muddy, bloody water before I could answer and he collapsed.
I heard an explosion, a horrified yell, and the echo of Hidan's wild laugh. "Now what'd you go and do that for? I pray some shit god has mercy on him because you didn't!"
"Stop! All of you Ame-nin, stop!"
I looked to the right and my eyes widened at the cloud-nin with her arm inside a water sphere with Yahiko suspended in it. His eyes were closed.
"Ten," Namekuji corrected.
The head of the cloud-nin he'd been fighting was in the mud beside her body. The other was crouched next to the water prison, holding his shoulder.
"How'd you miss her?" I asked.
"One of the spies in the village is a sensor-nin," was all Namekuji said.
They knew what Naga would focus on if distracted, to stay out of his range until Namekuji was paying attention to someone else.
Her eyes flicked to me, behind me, and back. "We're going to do an exchange. The rest of my squad for your companion."
I hummed. "And why would I do that?"
The other cloud-nin pointed his kunai at the water prison. "Because if you don't, we'll end him right here and now.
I shrugged. "You won't, because if you don't have him, what's stopping me from killing you?"
He looked at the other cloud-nin. Her eyes narrowed, but she didn't answer.
"It was a desperate plan," Naga acknowledged, somewhere above me. "Your mission had to be to kill the three of us at once, or you wouldn't have captured him. Doing it this way is the only way you might get them out of here alive."
Yahiko breathed a stream of bubbles out through his nose.
I glanced at the two cloud-nin on branches below him. The trees around them were scorched. The third cloud-nin had been impaled on a branch and left to hang.
"If it worked and you didn't leave signs of lightning-style, the village would blame Konohagakure. The Raikage must know our reputation, and know that the only truth is what people want to believe. What would Kumogakure get from a war between Amegakure and Konohagakure?"
The water slowly started to boil around Yahiko. He breathed out more heat and bubbles.
"He has to know that if he killed one of us and who was left alive went missing-nin, they'd head for Kumogakure," Naga said relentlessly.
"Don't act like you know everything!" the cloud-nin shouted, grimacing as he stood.
I started walking towards them.
Yahiko's fingers closed around the nagamaki.
"Keep your distance, Ame-nin," she said quickly. "Or I'll—"
"Or what?"
She swiped sweat off her forehead as she stared at me, then froze, looking at her hand.
"Or what?"
Her eyes jerked to the water prison as it started to lose its shape. Water splattered the mud. Yahiko shouted heat at her. "How—? You can't—!"
The nagamaki cleaved a steaming line through her neck. Her hands dropped limply to her sides and her knees hit the mud.
The other cloud-nin turned to confront him, then stopped, turning back to me. "Shit."
Yahiko fell to his hands and knees, steam wafting from his body. "Thanks for the distraction," he panted, collapsing on his side.
The cloud-nin crouched, listening to Naga fight his teammates, hand clenched so tight around his kunai that blood dripped through his fingers.
I smiled, because he knew he was about to die.
.
.
.
"I'm surprised you didn't leave me with mint breath. Again," Namekuji griped.
I passed a ritual circle on the moss and a small pond of blood that used to be a person. The roots around it were burned, on fire, or splintered into fragments.
"Isn't Enyo with Joji all the time now?"
"Still," he grumbled.
Hidan was at the end of a trail of bloody water, dragging himself towards his scythe, his left arm limp and his left leg missing above the knee.
A cloud-nin was on his knees ahead of him, clutching the hole at his shoulder where his arm should've been. He turned fast to stare at me with wide, terrified eyes.
"How'd you let this happen?" I asked.
"Shut the fuck up," Hidan said. "I didn't—" he broke off with a breathy laugh. "Bastard rigged his arm with explosives. Can you believe that shit? I stepped on it and—fuck, this hurts."
I looked at the cloud-nin's intact arm, his legs, and hummed.
Risking everything, even themselves, to try and take down Hidan.
The cloud-nin pulled a kunai wrapped in an explosive tag from his pouch, turned to throw it, and stopped when he saw my raised hand.
I lifted my chin, daring him to do it.
"Don't touch him," Hidan managed. His hand closed around his scythe's cable and he tugged it close enough to lick the blood off the shortest blade.
The cloud-nin's hand shook. His eyes flicked to Hidan as he flipped over and used his blood to draw in the mud, then back at me. I watched him clench his teeth, scramble up and stumble into a run.
"Heathens always think they can get out of range," Hidan said. He dragged his heel in a half-circle to complete it, pressed a hand over his face, and sighed in relief as Jashin's marks covered his body. "That's better."
I walked closer, watching the cloud-nin. I spun a kunai into my hand, crouched, and stabbed Hidan's leg. The cloud-nin stumbled, but still pushed himself away as Hidan jerked and stared at me with wide eyes.
"What?"
Hidan said nothing. His eyes slid away. He swatted my hand and ignored me as he managed to stand, calling out to the cloud-nin like I wasn't there.
I stood as he went on about the Way of Jashin, the right way, the way not to fear pain, and saw Naga a safe distance behind me, and Yahiko leaning on his shoulder, gesturing at us as he talked.
Naga had blood on his sleeves and mud on his pants, but whatever Yahiko said made him laugh.
They only came closer after Hidan stabbed himself in the chest hard enough that he fell, sitting at the center of the triangle. He tilted his head back as the cloud-nin hit the water.
"May He judge the sacrifice as worthy," he said quietly, reverently.
"How does it stay solid in the water?" I asked.
Hidan blinked, eyes darkening. He leaned forward, pulled the kunai out of his chest, and raised his middle finger. Jashin's marks soaked back into his skin.
"Let's keep moving," Naga suggested. Kuu hung over his shoulder. "We should be close to the border. We can fish there, probably."
"That's one way to get the attention of valley-nin—"
Naga elbowed him hard without looking. "I don't have time to heal you, Hidan, not if we're going to clean this up before someone comes to see what happened, so I—"
"I'll carry you," Yahiko said over him.
"Fuck no you won't."
Yahiko waved off Naga's glance and said airily, "It's good training."
"Fuck you."
"And I'm the only one tall enough," Yahiko added, hands behind his head.
"Not if Naga carries him from the front—"
"Like a human baby," Namekuji happily added.
"Fuck you," Hidan said incredulously.
"If you don't agree," I began. "You can wake up somewhere else."
Hidan dragged his hand down his face. "Fuck off," he spat, but hooked his arm around Yahiko's neck when offered his back. His leg hung down, but Yahiko didn't move to hook it around him.
着用
"Too soft," I mentioned, pushing lightly on the bed.
Yahiko rubbed his shoulder as he dropped Hidan on it. "You never realize how heavy a person is until you carry them around for a day and a half."
He stepped around Hidan's kick without looking. Hidan's left leg had re-grown up to the shin.
"Only one?" I asked.
"Wish we could've saved more by getting a room with no beds," Yahiko lamented. He tossed a pouch and Kuu leapt to snag it in his teeth. It clinked noisily as Kuu worked it into his mouth and swallowed it.
"Could still," I said. "He was scared. He'd do anything you asked."
"Don't know about you, but I'd rather not spend the night in a closet."
"Might be a nice closet."
Kuu jumped noiselessly on the bed and looked expectantly at Hidan until he tsked and scratched his side.
Yahiko pulled two scrolls from his pouch and sighed dramatically, "I was trying to wait for a good time for this, but there hasn't been one." He tossed one at me, and the other landed next to Hidan.
Hidan eyed it as I unrolled the scroll on the bed, touched the seal in the middle, and stopped when a forehead protector appeared over it.
I looked at it for a second, then turned it to look at the engraved cloud in the middle. It didn't bend when I squeezed it and the cloth tie felt like it wouldn't be easy to rip.
The cloth had frayed off Maho's. He only had the metal left.
Hidan grabbed his by the cloth and held it at eye level, staring at the cloud.
He pressed it to his forehead, closed his eyes, and I turned away.
"I meant to give them out before we left, but then things happened," Yahiko explained, hands behind his head.
I blinked as water splashed the back of my hand and noticed the dark circles on the cloth. I touched my chin and looked at the wetness on my fingers.
I could never tell when I was crying.
Yahiko grinned. He didn't look at either of us as he talked about convincing Yuta to meet Etsudo, of needing to play mediator because they were both stubborn and used to working alone, filling the silence in the only way he knew how.
I moved my hair to tie it around my neck, half-watching Hidan.
He'd disappeared the scroll and gone back to scratching Kuu like nothing happened.
.
.
.
I watched the orange glow from a candle behind me as Naga held my hair against the middle of my back and cut long strands under that with a kunai.
Hidan's outline was on the bed and Yahiko was on the floor with Namekuji.
"You should've asked me before we left," Naga said quietly.
I hummed.
There was still dirt under his nails. He'd washed and gotten the blood out of his robe-shirt after he'd dragged the kumo-nin into a pile so I could bury them in the swamp, but his nails had stayed murky brown.
Maybe that was why I'd asked. To give him something to do with his hands.
He moved onto another section and quietly asked, "Will you let me braid it?"
"No."
I watched Hidan swat at Kuu and mutter as he rolled over on the bed and pulled the only pillow over his face.
"It's weird, missing someone, isn't it?" I asked idly. "You think you stopped, tell yourself you did, and then you do something they used to do, and you miss them again."
Like having someone cut my hair.
"Yeah," Naga said, even quieter.
Had we ever talked about Konan? I'd talked to Yahiko about Konan. About how he felt, after. I'd talked around Kota. About how I felt, after.
Talks about struggling for weeks, months, a year or two after.
But had we talked about how they were, before?
I hummed.
"Konan tied my hands to the sink once," I said. "I kept trying to bite her, I think."
Naga paused, then sawed off more hair. "She scolded me a few times for that, like I had anything to do with why you used to bite."
Had we talked about anything but pain?
"Yahiko is awake," I said, watching his back stiffen. "Doing a bad job of pretending to sleep, too."
Yahiko sat up and leaned back against the wall, scratching his hair. "You know, she scolded me for that too, until once I—"
"—kissed her," he finished, like he hadn't stopped. "She went so red she shoved me into a puddle when I laughed at her."
"It was always easy to embarrass her," Naga said dryly.
"Was that the week she avoided you?" I asked.
"One of them," Yahiko said airily. "Good times."
I smiled a little and asked, "Kota covered herself in mud once when she was left with Konan, didn't she?"
"Konan tried to cut her hair," Naga murmured. "She thought because Kota had warmed up to her—she would—" he broke off, trying not to laugh.
"She was almost as much of a terror as you were," Yahiko said wistfully.
"Could you teach me to lockpick?" I asked.
Yahiko leaned his chin on his hand as Namekuji crawled up his back and muttered about moving heaters. "Doesn't really seem your style."
"It's something to learn that you're both good at," I mused. Something other than killing.
"I'll teach you," Naga said easily.
"And pickpocketing."
"I don't think I like the things you're implying about us, little sister."
粘土
"What rank would you say the chakra you sensed yesterday was?"
Hidan begrudgingly held onto him. He still didn't have toes.
"Around jonin," Naga said, leading us. Namekuji was asleep on his shoulder.
It was almost morning.
Old buildings were built everywhere around the hills in tight rows and bunched up in a line at the edge of the water across from wooden docks. We followed a narrow path between them.
Small boats gently bobbed in the water, one tied to a post at each dock.
I stopped to look down at a boat with rolled up nets and empty cages covered in green moss. Another had a bucket of hooks between the seats and spears tied to the sides.
I hummed.
"A fishing village," I said, almost to myself, looking at the reflection of the sunrise on the water. "But no one is fishing."
"So what?" Hidan asked.
Yahiko closed his eyes and smiled when I glanced at him.
"It's quiet, don't you think?" he asked airily. "And not the quiet of Hyozan. A lazy, peaceful kind of quiet. It's nice."
Hidan glanced at me, at him, and looked annoyed.
I looked at the boats again. We hadn't seen anyone since we left the inn.
A lazy, peaceful kind of quiet.
Hyozan had been smaller, but there'd been people everywhere, even though only people who didn't know better would visit in that heat.
If river country was so weak, why could they be lazy?
Naga waited ahead, in front of a building with a door that might've been yellow once.
"Where are they?" Yahiko asked.
"Back left corner. There are other people, too—"
"Watch your head," Yahiko said lightly as he opened the door.
Hidan's fuck you faded inside as Naga sighed.
"I'm missing something," I mused.
He shook his head and said, "Me too."
It was smaller inside than it looked outside.
People sat on buckets around triangle tables lining the walls. The air was hazy with smoke. They talked in low voices, looking at us, drinking from bottles or stamping out rolled bits of paper in overfilled trays.
"It smells," Namekuji complained.
Yahiko stood at the front, next to a brown-skinned woman slumped over the bar.
"A boat? To the Land of Water?" she asked slowly, pushing herself back to lean against the wall. She blew brown strands out of her mouth as she waved a bottle at him. She had freckles. "Whatever you're drinking, I want some."
"I have good reason to think that you can make it happen," he said.
She hiccupped. "Oh yeah? I'm flattered."
"Sometimes, when you get away with something for so long, it makes everyone involved complacent," he told her. "I bet you don't get many foreign-nin coming here. Why would you? There's nothing past here but the ocean."
She stared at him. And then she started laughing. "You sure they didn't slip you something up at the inn?"
"Not a lot of people would know how much you can make harboring missing-nin," he continued without pause. He waved a hand back towards the door. "I bet taking them where they want to go makes more."
"S-Stop," she gasped, slapping the table. "You're giving me a headache."
"You're either from Tanigakure, or they're helping you," he reasoned. "I'd imagine the hills make farming impossible, and you stopped pretending to fish, so they must be giving you supplies."
"That was a good laugh but I'd really like to drink in peace now," she said, wiping her eyes as she faced the bar again. "Ayumu over there loves talking." She pointed vaguely at an older, gruff man sitting on a bucket.
Yahiko nodded and turned around. Hidan had fallen asleep.
"I get it," he drawled. "But I wonder how much Konohagakure or Sunagakure would pay to know about a route defectors take—"
The bucket scraped as Ayumu stood. The woman closed her eyes and tch'ed.
A smaller masked figure appeared on the bar, dressed like a civilian, and more buckets rattled as more people stood.
"Took you long enough," Yahiko said.
"Valley-nin," she spat, throwing the bottle down. She said something in another language that sounded like a curse. "I was handling it."
"You weren't. But we would've intervened, regardless, to seek out their identities," the Tani-nin on the bar said, muffled by the mask. "Even if it is playing into their hands, the slightest chance that a third party will be alerted cannot be overlooked."
"Gilipollas," she said again, dragging a hand down her face.
"We're taking over this discussion—"
"I refuse," Yahiko said.
"This is beyond Tsuri. You have no choice—"
"Missing-nin would walk all over you," I said. "She'd be the one meeting them, because you wouldn't threaten them."
The Tani-nin went silent.
"Big talk," Ayumu said, crossing his arms.
"My brother is a sensor-nin," I dismissed, half-turning to face him. He looked suddenly uncertain. His eyes flicked over my head as Naga waved. "He didn't say you were ninja. You're only here to look the part. So, what choice do we have again?"
Ayumu didn't answer.
The woman turned around again and sounded annoyed as she asked, "Where in the Land of Water?"
"We'll tell you more when we're close," Naga answered.
"It's out of the way. Way, way out of the way," she said, then shook her head at herself. "Like I have a choice. It'll take at least a week. A little more if the Land of Water tightened patrols again. More importantly, how do I know our secret will stay secret when, if you come back?"
"We chose river country because we were less likely to be attacked this way than going through Fire country," Yahiko answered. "It's in our best interest if Leaf-nin don't find out what we're doing either."
"Good enough," she said, standing. "Stay here. Gotta pack. Buena suerte, Kiyo."
The Tani-nin on the bar, Kiyo, watched her leave.
A/N: 着用 - Worn, 粘土 - Clay
Caffeine withdrawal is no joke. Neck issues too.
The difference between the leaf and cloud is that the leaf wants to keep rain's power at a manageable level. Cloud wants to cut the head off the snake and hand the knife to someone else.
Here's your bi-yearly reminder that a companion story to this one exists called Tilt. Chapter 13 has recently been rewritten.