Tale of the Setting Sun
Chapter 18: "Day of Departure"
Huff...huff...
His lungs felt like they were on fire and his vision was starting to blur, but the man, gritting his teeth, continued to leap across the tree branches. Dark-toned and dressed in nondescript black clothes, he blended almost perfectly into the darkness of the night. The only thing that gave him away was the frayed scroll clutched in his hands that gleamed white under the stray rays of moonlight that interrupted the shade of the forest canopy. His heart thudding loudly in his chest, as sweat streamed down his face, the man cautiously looked behind him.
He was alone.
Letting out a tiny sigh of relief, the man felt some of the tension leaving his muscles. As the hot blood coursing through his veins began to slow down, he suddenly realized that the wind blowing strongly against his face was cold. At the thought, he slightly lowered his pace, letting himself catch his breath.
The rumors were true, then. Konohagakure's security, once renowned as an impassable steel wall that blocked out all intruders, was no longer what it used to be. The past fifteen years had not been kind to the village after all – their most famous trio, the Sannin, had left the village, and in the invasion of the Nine-Tails, they'd lost their Yondaime Hokage, leaving behind the increasingly decrepit Sandaime to try and rebuild the village.
He looked around – but there was still nothing, besides the occasional rustling of squirrels and birds lower down.
His lips edged up in a triumphant smile. For a man past his prime, the Sandaime hadn't done such a shabby job, but the village's strength was nowhere near what it'd been at its peak. He hadn't even been questioned at the village entrance; the chūnin on gate duty had glanced at him once and then waved him in. Breaking into the Archives had been just as easy, using a simple genjutsu to trick the chūnin at the desk into thinking he'd already left, and then slipping out just as the guards changed shifts.
However, despite how smoothly the operation was going, the man had still grown antsy – he was in a ninja village after all, regardless of how much it'd fallen from its former glory – and almost slipped up when he was leaving the village.
Just as he stepped into line behind several civilians at the exit gate, the entrance gate had creaked open to allow another stream of people in, and then the on-duty chūnin raised a hand in greeting. "Another successful mission? Good job."
"Ah, I didn't do much this time," said a deep voice.
"Sure, sure. Oh – Hokage-sama wants you in his office right away, Kakashi."
"Got it."
At the sound of the infamous name, the man had frozen – could it be the Copy Ninja himself? – and slowly turned his head to see. When he saw the infamous silver hair and hitai-ate draped over the left eye, he swore to himself. He knew the mission had been going far too easily; it'd only been a matter of time for an unexpected setback. But it was just his luck to run into one of Konoha's most famous jōnin right as he was about to leave...
Forcing himself to stay calm, he'd looked away. His eyes landing on a shorter red-headed boy beside the jōnin, his pounding heartbeat had slowly grown steadier. However, the boy must have felt his gaze, for he looked up and locked eyes with him – and for a second, he could have sworn that the boy knew exactly what he was and why he was there. But as the man felt a cold bead of sweat drip from his temple, the boy then looked away. The duo passed by, and the chūnin waved him out – and he was home free.
Despite his success, he'd felt uneasy after seeing the Copy Ninja right under his nose, and he'd booked it as soon as the walls were out of sight. But now, it seemed that truly nobody in the village had noticed his intrusion. And even if they did find out, it was too late now to catch up to him, since he'd taken care even in his haste to cover up his tracks.
The mission had been a success, then.
Jubilantly, the man looked down at the scroll in his hand. It contained some of Konoha's forbidden techniques, an increasingly valuable commodity in the black market if you knew where to look. His target was a group slowly growing in infamy, called the Akatsuki, that'd been buying out all such village forbidden techniques at prices above their competition. If he sold it to them at a good price, he'd be able to settle his debts with enough to spare.
Maybe with the extra money, he'd drop by the hot springs at Yugakure. He'd heard there'd been an incident there a year or two ago, but things had been quiet since then. Surely it'd be safe now? And the food and the service there were always so good. Lots of good-looking women too –
Suddenly, something heavy smashed into the back of the man's neck, and unable to react, he buckled. He'd been mid-jump so he felt his body hang momentarily in the air before it began to limply free-fall to the ground. As everything turned fuzzy and his vision faded into blackness, the last thing he saw was something red streak over him.
Naruto had just turned over the unconscious outsider to the intelligence division, when a triumphant cry rang out from behind him. Turning around, he was greeted with an excited-looking Rai skidding to a stop before him.
As the sight of his teammate, Naruto raised a critical eyebrow. In the two weeks they hadn't seen each other, it looked like the boy had again added at least another inch to his height.
After they passed the exam, Rai, like him, had switched to more standard ninja attire, complete with a flak jacket – and in the other newly-minted chūnin's case, a pair of bladed weapons strapped across his back. However, as the months passed by, the already tall boy had hit yet another growth spurt, and now towered over Naruto, who, despite his best efforts, could still pass for an Academy student playing dress-up.
"I saw Kakashi-sensei just a few minutes ago!" Rai said as a means of greeting, glancing curiously at the chūnin taking away the body. "He told me I'd find you here. We're wanted at the Hokage's office."
Nodding in affirmation, Naruto began to briskly head down the mostly-empty street towards the village centre. Trotting along easily by his side, Rai looked around discretely and then lowered his head.
"So that's another B-rank mission done in record time?" he whispered conspiratorially, a hand raised to cover his mouth.
"I wasn't aware there was a record to be broken," Naruto answered absently, as he took mental inventory of his remaining equipment.
"Oh you don't know?" Pulling back, Rai rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "The younger chūnin keep a running bet on how much time some of the longer missions will take. The general consensus was that it'd take you and Kakashi-sensei at least three weeks to finish that mission with the Fire Lord's treasurer...but I had faith in you guys."
"You put money on us, didn't you?" said Naruto amusedly.
Rai grinned gleefully, and held up two fingers in a victory pose. "I'll need those winnings if I don't want to be cleaned out, what with celebrating Mayu's promotion and all."
"You're still celebrating?" Naruto raised his eyebrows. They'd received news of her passing the chūnin exam just before he had left for his most recent mission.
"We didn't even start. We can't exactly celebrate without the entire team 7, now can we?" Rai waved a hand dismissively.
Naruto felt the corners of his mouth quirk upwards. "That's true."
Smiling came easier to Naruto nowadays. He'd have thought that what with knowing the truth – or at least some of it – his situation would have grown more difficult, but on the contrary, life had proceeded fairly normally afterwards. Or as normal as life could get for a ninja with the Nine-Tails sealed inside him, anyways.
Naruto wasn't winning any popularity contests, and he wasn't surprised that he hadn't known about the chūnin's betting games for most of them tended to keep their distance from him, but both Rai and Mayu's relaxed attitude towards him had helped to ease some of the misgivings their new comrades may have had toward him. Their fellow chūnin didn't include him, but they didn't go out of their way to bother him, and that was all he wanted.
His training sessions with Kakashi were also going, for the most part, as smoothly as one could expect while repeatedly materializing highly dense quantities of chakra on a regular basis. He'd been able to stabilize the Rasengan to the extent that it didn't drain him, and had even begun experimenting with adding his elemental chakra to the mix, something which, according to Kakashi, the Fourth Hokage had never had the time to complete himself.
But there was still an ever-present weight at the back of his mind: While it'd been over a year since Naruto had had his Taboo Seal removed, he had yet to regain any of his memories of the purported incident when he was six. The few memories he'd lost in the chūnin exams had returned, but his sixth birthday was still a huge blank. Nor had he regained any other memories in between, meaning that they were either so insignificant that he hadn't noticed, that nothing had actually happened, or even worse – that they hadn't come back yet. Kakashi had tried to reassure him, confirming that the seal had really been removed, and that the memories would eventually return in the course of time.
Still – it was unsettling, not knowing for sure whether his own memories were complete or not.
Naruto glanced at Rai, who was now silently walking along with his arms crossed behind his head. There was also the matter of his teammates still not knowing about his jinchūriki status. The problem was, he'd never found the time to do so. Ever since he'd been promoted to chūnin, his daily routine had become a never-ending cycle between training and missions. His remaining time was barely enough for him to sleep, eat, and carry out other basic necessities. With Rai also busy with his new chūnin duties and Mayu practicing hard for the next exam, the chance to bring up such a sensitive topic had just never come around.
A small voice whispered to him that if he'd really wanted to, he could always turn down one or two missions and make time, but Naruto quickly quashed it.
When they were let into the Hokage's office, Naruto was not surprised to find the two remaining members of team 7 already waiting for them. Mayu, glowing in her new chūnin attire, and Kakashi, still in his dusty travel clothes, stood beside a pale black-haired chūnin he had never seen before.
"Ah, Naruto, Rai," said the Hokage, lowering a smoking pipe from his wrinkled mouth. "Good, you're all here now."
The two bowed shortly in the elder shinobi's direction.
Raising his head, Rai curiously stared at the strange chūnin. "You wanted us, Hokage-sama?"
"I realize you've just returned from a long mission." As he spoke, the Hokage nodded at Kakashi and Naruto in turn. "However, with tension escalating between nation borders right now, client requests are at a peak and our manpower stretched thin. I've spoken to Kakashi and he's agreed to accepting this next mission. But if you'd like some rest, Naruto, I am willing to let you sit out on this next mission."
"That will be unnecessary, Hokage-sama," said Naruto immediately. The mission had been long but tedious, and he still had plenty of energy leftover. With Kakashi and his teammates gone, he'd have little to do in Konoha by himself, anyways.
At his response, the Hokage leaned back in his chair with a contemplative look on his face. "Very well, then. I've got here an urgent mission that will require you all to start out by early morning tomorrow. Naruto, Mayu and Rai, you three will be teaming up with another chūnin on a B-rank bodyguard mission to Wave country."
"Wait, what about Kakashi-sensei?" Rai cut in, looking put out.
The Hokage passed his smoking pipe to his hand. "Kakashi is being sent on another mission into Earth country. On this mission, Naruto will be your team leader."
A jōnin standing beside the Hokage stepped forward to hand them their mission scrolls. Unfurling his, Naruto quickly scanned the contents. It was short but clear: it was a standard escort mission that had earned B-rank simply due to the fact that the client was a semi-well known merchant. Considering the current smuggling situation with Gatō in Wave country, it wouldn't be unexpected for the client to be targeted by minor bandits and ruffians on the journey. It was nothing any properly trained ninja couldn't handle, but dangerous for civilian travelers on the road – thus warranting the recent rise in demands for bodyguards.
Naruto glanced at the wan-faced chūnin standing beside Kakashi. The boy, dressed in all black with a tantō strapped across his back, looked only one or two years older than him, but Naruto had never seen him in the Academy before.
"Is that the chūnin we'll be teaming up with?"
"Indeed – this is Sai," the Hokage said, with a simple gesture towards the boy, whose face split into a wide smile. Its intended purpose may have been to disarm, but to Naruto, it looked more eerie and offsetting than anything.
"Hiya," said Sai, with a wave. Turning to Mayu, he held out a hand. "So you must be...Mayu, was it?" With a shy nod, Mayu raised her hand. His smile grew even bigger. "Wow you've got a really forgettable face, don't you?"
Mayu froze. Snarling something incomprehensible, Rai took a step forward, but stopped when Naruto firmly grabbed his arm.
"You must be Naruto!" said Sai, turning to him with a look of delight. "Looking forward to working with you, short stuff."
Naruto let go of Rai. After a beat, he stepped forward to grip the other boy's hand. "Likewise."
After receiving a few more mission details from the Hokage, they began to all file out of the room, when the Hokage cleared his throat. "Naruto."
He paused.
Mayu and Rai stopped as well, but the Hokage shook his head. "I'd like to talk to him privately for a minute."
Once the door had clicked shut, Naruto turned to the elder shinobi. "Yes, Hokage-sama?"
"You may be wondering why I'm sending you without a jōnin's supervision." Naruto nodded. "It's only been a year since you became a chūnin, but your name has come up several times for a jōnin appointment. Your skills certainly would match up well. The only thing you're missing is experience in leading missions, as you've always been paired with Kakashi. So I'm putting you in charge of the other three – this should be a good learning experience for you."
"Understood, Hokage-sama." Naruto wasn't surprised, and in fact, welcomed the promotion. Being a jōnin would mean he would get more challenging missions, have higher clearance in the Archives, and best of all, he wouldn't have to report to anyone besides the Hokage.
"Naturally, my council is not pleased with my decision to grant you more autonomy, but they've grudgingly acknowledged your good work this past year. However, they pushed me to add this 'Sai' to your team, and I saw no reason to deny them...but I want you to always be aware that his role is to be their watchdog and to report back to them anything he learns about you. I assume you know what this means."
"Yes, sir." Clearly, the Hokage wanted Naruto to gather information on Sai at the same time he was being observed.
"Lastly, I sent Team Shirakumo to Wave country just yesterday, so if you do run into trouble, you should find friendly faces at a reachable distance. Don't let your pride stop you from taking advantage of that."
"...yes, sir," said Naruto slowly.
With a satisfied nod from the Hokage, he was dismissed. Turning sharply around on his heel, he left the room. Walking down the empty hallway, his thoughts turned to the journey that lay before him.
It would be his first long-distance mission without Kakashi. He wasn't nervous about whether he was up for it, since the jōnin had always preferred to take the backseat and let Naruto handle most of the dirty work. But it was a little strange to realize that this time around, if he somehow mishandled things, his teacher wouldn't be around to clean up after him...
Naruto frowned, clenching his hands tightly. Such a feeble mindset wouldn't do. He'd sworn to get stronger since he'd lost in the final round of the chūnin exams, and now, a year later, this was the first test to truly prove his own mettle to himself. There would be no 'ifs' about it – he would fulfill the mission, period.
As he stepped out of the building, he was surprised to see the rest of his team waiting for him. Seemingly having gotten over the less-than-optimal introduction in the Hokage's office, Rai was grinning widely, and even in the dim lighting, Naruto could make out Mayu's red cheeks.
"About time!" said Rai, pouncing at him. He began to drag Naruto down the street. "C'mon, I'm starving!"
"There's really no need," Mayu protested, Kakashi following languidly behind her.
"What're you talking about? I promised you a meal if you passed the chūnin exams, remember?" Mayu flushed even more, the very tips of her ears turning red. "So? Ramen or tonkatsu? Which will it be?"
"Ramen," said Naruto, raising a hand obediently.
Mayu smiled despite herself. "Ramen sounds good."
"Ramen it is, then," said Kakashi cheerfully.
"Then full steam ahead!" Rai crowed, pumping his fist in the air.
The next morning, having already packed his essentials, Naruto was out the door as soon as he'd eaten his cereal. The wind felt good on his skin as he made his way to the front gate, and a small smile crept unbidden to his lips. Last night's dinner with his team had done him some good: he felt refreshed and ready.
Their client was waiting for them at the gate, and as Naruto took in her appearance, his eyebrows inadvertently rose. Known as the merchant 'Toru,' he'd expected a typically overweight man sporting a ring on each fat finger. In reality however, she was a thin, freckled woman dressed in baggy journeyman clothes who looked like she could be closer to his age than to Kakashi's.
"I asked for bodyguards, and I got a bunch of kids?" she frowned, her foot tapping impatiently on the ground.
"We're all qualified chūnin," said Naruto in what he hoped was a reassuring tone.
But the merchant's frown deepened. "Shouldn't you all be in school or something?"
"Shouldn't you be at your appointment with the plastic med-nin?" Sai returned with a pleasant smile.
Mayu let out a squeak of disbelief, but to Naruto's surprise, the merchant smiled toothily back. "Not so gutless, then. Alright, I'll take you lot." She kicked the bulky knapsack by her side, which made a thunking sound upon contact. "You there with the scar – you can carry this for me."
With a scowl, Rai easily shouldered the bag on top of his own. The merchant clapped her hands together. "So, are you all ready? I'd like to cover a lot of ground before lunch."
Mayu looked around curiously. "Are we going by foot? Aren't you a merchant?"
"It's hardly worth paying the fee to ferry a wagon across the sea to Wave country...and besides, I've got all my goods right here." The merchant gestured towards the bag Rai was now holding.
From the sound it had made when she'd kicked it, it was a wooden box, but the contents were a mystery as far as Naruto was concerned. Not that it mattered – 'Toru' was known to be a supplier of a eclectic variety of goods, ranging from precious jewels to dusty tomes, but all his mission required of him was to take her in one piece to Wave country.
"Come on then, let's get moving!" Taking surprisingly large strides, the merchant began to head toward the opening gates.
Hefting his bag higher on his shoulder, Naruto followed, the others right at his heel.
Idly seated on top of a tree branch, Kakashi put his book down as he watched from afar Naruto and the rest of his team leaving the village. He'd be leaving too, in about half a day, to follow them.
What the Hokage had said about his going on a mission to Earth country had been a nice bit of misdirection – both for Naruto and for Danzō's little spy's sake – but his real mission had been to trail Naruto's team. The Hokage was obviously making a big show out of showing Naruto that he had trust in him and had told Kakashi it was for the sake of observing Naruto's leadership ability, but he knew, and the Hokage knew that he knew, that the reality was that he could not afford to have their jinchūriki running around in unknown territory unsupervised.
Kakashi had agreed because he'd felt uneasy about leaving Naruto alone with a member of Root – but despite himself, he felt a tweak of guilt at the thought of deceiving his student.
All the more reason not to get caught, he supposed.
"It's been a while since we last went to the hot springs like this," Rai remarked, a note of wistfulness evident in his tone as they peered up at the wooden sign.
It'd been a week since they had headed out, and although they had made several stops here and there at various cities, they'd made good time with only a few minor scuffles. They had reached the border of Fire country around noon at the end of the seventh day and since the boats that ferried people to the Land of Waves only operated in the morning, they had turned in early for the day. As a treat, the merchant – who'd turned out to be a shrewd, but mostly friendly sort of person – was letting them stay at a traditional-type inn, complete with yukata and hot springs. It promised to be an experience not unlike that of Yugakure from two years ago – but this time, hopefully without the crazed renegade ninja.
Waving goodbye to Mayu and the merchant, Naruto and the other two boys made their way to the men's section. Stripping down and scrubbing themselves in the bath, they then dipped down in the bubbling water of the hot springs. The only other occupants were a scattered number of elderly men, and a father with his young son in the shallow end. He couldn't completely rule them out as potential assailants, of course, but he didn't think he needed to be on high alert; judging by the looks of it, the pair in the opposite end couldn't have had more than a handful's amount of teeth between the two of them. But more importantly, their hands, which were resting along the wall, looked unscarred and relatively uncallused – they were hardly that of a ninja used to a lifetime of handling weapons.
His soaked towel resting on his head, Naruto relaxed, feeling some of the tension leave his muscles.
Beside him, Rai let out a contented sigh. "Remember when we tried to make Kakashi-sensei take his mask off?" His arms behind his head, Rai leaned back against the stone wall of the tub. "Man, it feels like forever ago. And we never did figure out what he looks like."
"I've seen it," said Naruto casually.
With a splash, Rai's towel fell into the water as he incredulously leaped to his feet. "What? How?!"
"We were on a mission together, and I walked in on him brushing his teeth one morning," he explained to the other boy's astonishment.
"So?" Rai prodded him. "What'd he look like? Did he have a huge scar? Was he ugly?"
"Now you're just talking about yourself," Sai interjected with a placid smile.
Some of the eagerness fading from his face, Rai shot him a nasty look. "I wasn't talking to you, you pasty little – "
"Can you sit down? Your dick's hanging in my face."
Turning red, Rai opened his mouth – but Naruto reached up and gave his arm a warning squeeze. After a pause, looking disgruntled, Rai nevertheless sat back down with a splash.
After a few more minutes of soaking in the hot water, Naruto excused himself (leaving the two boys glaring daggers at each other – or rather, Rai was, while Sai continued to smile amiably at nothing in particular). Changing into a yukata that the inn had provided, he covered his wet hair in a towel and left to take a cursory look around the inn's grounds. It was then that he noticed someone hunched over in front of the wooden fence that separated the men's bath from the women's bath.
It was a large man with shaggy white hair cascading down his back. He was peering through a small crack in between the slats of the fence and laughing delightedly to himself. What caught Naruto's eye, however, was the large scroll strapped to the man's back; he couldn't be sure, but it looked like a summoning scroll.
But before he could decide what to do, the man let out another cackle, and reached into his kimono to pull out a orange book that Naruto immediately recognized as one of Kakashi's favorite reads. As he did so, he noticed Naruto staring at him, and his face immediately turned grave.
Holding up a finger to his mouth, he made a slitting motion across his throat in a clear promise of death. The man then returned his undivided attention to the spectacle that lay beyond the fence.
After a pause, Naruto walked past.
A/N: So this is the start of a new arc which I hope will have something new to offer to you despite it being the Wave country arc. Note: the plot will increasingly diverge from canon from here on. As always, I invite you all to point out any possible mistakes but please keep in mind that some points (especially concerning certain villains) are going to be left out due to the fact that trying to cover the entire scope of the Naruto manga would take me forever.