A.N.:
Only the first part of this has been betaed, unforunately, and even that is only partial. I've lost touch with my beta for this story... and I feel the loss intensely. His work remains my gold-standard for beta-work to this day.
That said, please enjoy the beginning of Of Gentile Sunlight and the Sahara... and leave a review. Reviews are good. For whatever reason, people here tend to pick out stories to read based on the number of reviews they've gotten -- meaning that reviews attract readers... which in turn means that they attract more reviews. That means that even a generic "Good story! Update soon!" review will improve my odds of getting decent C&C... which I'd practically kill for at the moment.
--
After a decent night's rest I woke up to the sounds of Thyme-chan preparing breakfast. I supposed that it was a good thing that she liked to cook, but I never could convince her to stop adding bits of herself to her meals. That wasn't too bad overall, but it would be nice if she could actually cook... although her food probably tasted pretty good to plants since she insisted on tasting everything herself.
It was fine, really. I supposed that even sentient plants needed a hobby.
After getting up and making a small breakfast for myself (and sampling Thyme-chan's latest preparation before feeding it to my flourishing herb garden), I went through the remainder of my morning routine in a somewhat rushed state -- I wanted to be early in case my two non-hospitalized students were; the sooner I finished with them and got to visit Sasuke, the better.
With that in mind I fished a few items from my desk, popped a few aspirin in the hope that they would help with my steadily worsening headache, and headed out, ignoring the poison coating my usual exit. I was immune to it, after all.
--
Appreciation,
A Naruto Fanfiction,
By Aleh
Chapter Five: Of Gentle Sunlight and the Sahara, Part One
--
Disclaimer:
I do not own any of the series used or referenced in this story. Said series are the properties of their creators and/or publishers.
--
As it happened, both of my healthy students were early, a blessing that I briefly considered sacrificing a talking pork chop in thanks for. I didn't think about doing so for long, mind -- the only talking pork chop I had would probably annoy the kami instead of pleasing them.
Regardless, I arrived just in time to see Naruto briefly glance at Sakura before he turned away, sporting a pronounced blush. Sakura didn't notice, as she was too busy staring at the ground. I wasn't in any condition to take Sakura's body language into account, but the talk we'd had the previous day was enough to fully account for Naruto's behavior.
I would later come to think that some more thought or consideration in regard to Sakura's actions would have probably been a good idea, but my headache was throwing me off my usual game. Regardless, I pushed my observations from my mind and approached my students, walking up to them instead of using shunshin in order to avoid startling them.
It didn't work, of course -- they were too wrapped up in their respective thoughts to notice my presence. When I audibly cleared my throat however, both of them did notice -- and practically jumped out of their skins. It would have been amusing under other circumstances, but... well, their startled noises didn't exactly help with my head pounding the way it was.
Rubbing my temple through my headband with one hand and gesturing for them to calm down with the other, I decided to speak up. "Please be a bit quieter," I gently chided. "I used a kinjutsu pretty recently, and it tends to give the user a rather massive headache."
Naruto blinked before asking a question in exaggeratedly hushed tones that did nothing to disguise his curiosity. "What kind of kinjutsu?"
I shrugged, still rubbing my temple. "Nothing too spectacular," I answered, "just a technique that lets you quickly refill your stores of chakra if you've nearly exhausted them. Comes at the cost of temporarily slowed recovery and rather massive headaches in the morning for a few days afterward, though."
Yuri once speculated that there was a personality shift as well, based on the fact that I tended to be somewhat more short-tempered and showed less restraint than usual while recovering. I knew better -- the headaches could get downright nasty, especially if I had to use the technique more than once. I had developed alternatives, of course, but the ancient principle of TANSTAAFL applied. Regardless, both Sakura and Naruto seemed to understand.
"Anyway," I continued, "we might as well start since Sasuke-kun won't be joining us. I'd like to finish as quickly as possible so that I can go visit him in the hospital."
My students' rather vocal expressions of shock did nothing to help my headache... and I couldn't summon the concentration to paralyze their vocal chords.
"Please," I whispered. "Keep it down."
To their credit, both of them promptly shut up. "Sensei?" Sakura quietly asked after a moment. "Will you be alright?"
"Yeah," I confirmed. "This isn't the first time I've used the technique so I'm familiar with the effects. The sensitivity to sound should be gone in a few minutes, and the headache should start to fade a while after that. I'll be back to my normal self by lunch. It'll come back tomorrow, but it won't be nearly as bad."
Sakura nodded in understanding, not vocalizing her comprehension much to my relief. I wasn't really aware of Naruto's reaction -- it was hard enough to pay attention to one of my students at a time.
"Now, as I said, Sasuke-kun is in the hospital, so we'll be doing things a bit differently today so that I can go visit him," I explained, momentarily wincing as a particularly strong lance of pain surged through my skull. "That means no missions, but I have an alternate exercise to substitute. Since I'll mostly be back to normal by lunchtime, this shouldn't impact our training much after that, although Sasuke may or may not participate depending on his condition."
"Recca-sensei?" Naruto inquired in a cautious near-whisper, "What happened to Sasuke?"
I frowned. "I don't know the details; the report I got was rather limited, and he wasn't in any condition to talk when it was written," I responded. "That being said, it looked like he decided to do something rather spectacularly stupid and ignored the instructions I gave him yesterday and just swallowed the whole bottle of medicine after he got home instead of taking a single pill with breakfast. His symptoms were consistent with an overdose, and the bottle had a month's worth of pills."
"Will he be OK?" Sakura asked, still keeping her voice down. I summoned the focus to analyze her behavior -- while she was obviously concerned, it didn't seem like she was returning to her old crush-influenced patterns of behavior, and concern for a teammate was something that I wanted to encourage.
I slowly shook my head before wincing and rubbing my temples with both hands. "I don't know," I answered after a moment. "There could be lasting side effects or he could make a complete recovery in time to join us for training in the afternoon. Prozac overdoses are funny that way. If we're lucky, he vomited some of the medicine back up... that would help minimize the effects, and he wasn't showing any signs of kidney damage so he should survive, at least... what I'm really concerned about is possible brain damage or effects on his eyesight. Like I said, Prozac overdoses are rather unpredictable."
"Shouldn't we all visit him?" Naruto questioned.
"Maybe later," I replied. "I want to talk to him when he wakes up, and I'm hoping to keep too many people from knowing about this incident. The Hokage knows, as do a good portion of the hospital staff, but Sasuke's family had enemies, and if they find out that he's vulnerable..."
Both of my students winced at that.
"Right," I confirmed, wincing myself as another lance of pain stabbed through my head. "It shouldn't be that bad, but if there are permanent side-effects linked to the incident, I don't want them to get out. Sasuke-kun is like me in that he's a fairly high-profile ninja; anonymity really isn't an option for him. As such his enemies will seek to memorize his weaknesses. By keeping this relatively quiet, we interfere with their efforts to do so."
"But why let it get out this far?" Sakura responded. "Couldn't you classify the incident or something?"
I shrugged, glad that the gesture didn't send metaphorical knives lancing through my head. "The effort involved in doing so would call attention to the fact that we have something to hide," I countered. "We'll just ensure that Sasuke-kun is seen in the village later, unharmed, and most people will dismiss the incident as unimportant. We should know more by then, and we can plan out what to do when we have more information to do it with. If we make a big deal of it now we'll have a problem if the effort is unjustified. If we just camouflage it and go about our business, we can quietly classify the records later and I can alter the memories of the hospital personnel if I think it's really needed."
That got a reaction... in the form of a giant exclamation of "What?!" from both of my students.
I nearly fell down as my head felt like an undead chipmunk had succeeded in biting through my skull and started to eat my brains. Fortunately, I'd never experienced that, but it wasn't for a lack of trying on the parts of Vampikitty's minions.
Recovering took me a few seconds. I was no stranger to pain, of course; no experienced ninja was... but familiarity did nothing to lessen the pain. When I was finally able to focus on my students, both of them were staring at me with concern.
"Sorry, Sensei," Sakura apologized as Naruto contributed his own, albeit somewhat less formal, apology.
I just attempted to respond with a reassuring smile, although a sudden stab of pain made it look more like a grimace than anything. "I'll be fine," I told them. "Just try to keep it down, alright?"
Both of my healthy students nodded.
"Anyway," I explained, "yes, I can alter people's memories, although it's not easy. Memories change all the time as a result of natural processes, and there's a great deal of stuff written on how to trick someone into believing that something happened slightly differently than it actually did. If you add genjutsu to the process, things become a great deal simpler." I shrugged. "Put simply, people misremember things all the time -- I just know how to assist in that process and how to guide it to a desired result. Part of the reason that I'm treating this incident the way that I am is that altering a memory becomes a lot harder if someone regards the memory in question as important or out of the ordinary... and becomes a lot easier if the false memory is reinforced by external stimuli. If I were to alter the hospital records to show that Sasuke came in with a fever and was kept overnight for observation before being released the next morning, that would make the staff more likely to accept a false memory that agreed with that alteration. Similarly, if people see Sasuke walking around later, it will help me convince anyone who needs convincing that Sasuke was released in time to do so."
Sakura nodded in fascinated understanding.
"I don't really get it," Naruto softly protested.
I slowly shook my head. "Don't worry about it," I reassured him. "I'll explain in detail later, when I'm in less pain. That being said, I think it's important that I point out that I haven't used that sort of technique on either of you, and have no intention to do so. I don't think that using something like that on a student or a loyal teammate is ethically acceptable, even if it is as non-invasive as it could possibly be since it's really just convincing someone that they misremembered a few details and tricking them into adding the 'correct' details to the memory." I shuddered at a nasty thought before grabbing my temples again. "If it was an invasive process -- directly altering your memories, in other words -- I wouldn't find it ethically acceptable at all, so you don't have to worry about that sort of thing... and I can't do that, anyway."
I frowned. That was more than I wanted to reveal quite yet, but my headache was eroding my control; I was letting things slip that I wouldn't normally.
"In any case," I continued, "contrary to what some other people may say, I can't control your emotions, rewrite your memories on a whim, or make you believe anything. I can manipulate your emotions somewhat -- but so can anyone who knows what buttons to press or who has access to certain substances or plants. I can try to make you think that you've misremembered something, but so can anyone else. I can try to convince you that something's true... but that ability is hardly unique."
The only real difference was that I knew how to be subtle about it and how not to be obvious about what I was doing. I didn't have any pretensions that I was terribly good at either, of course, but at least I made the effort.
Naruto blinked. "Why would people say that?"
I sighed. "Because I've encouraged them to think that," I softly answered, trying to keep the volume down. "As long as people don't know my limitations, they can't exploit them. You, on the other hand, are my students and my teammates. There's a chance that I will be teaching you those techniques, and overestimating a teammate's abilities in that sort of thing can be fatal. To use an old cliché, the information is need-to-know... and I think that you do, although this is a bit earlier than I was planning to tell you. I don't think that those limitations will become terribly important before I need to use them on a mission, and that sort of means actually having one. I was planning to teach you about how those techniques work before our first C-rank mission since the odds of needing them on a D-rank are... pathetic."
Naruto frowned. "Why?"
"Because the typical D-rank is something like weeding a garden, painting a fence, or finding someone's lost cat. While the cat missions can be surprisingly dangerous from time to time, they almost never involve those sorts of psychological tactics."
Armies of brain-eating undead chipmunks were another matter, however... not to mention Kitty of Borg's drones or Vampikitty's 'brides'. I couldn't figure out how they kept coming back from the dead; I'd even... err... exorcised... one of them once. The Hokage had, admittedly, given me a rather firm reprimand for the collateral damage, but I just pointed out that I'd actually shown quite a bit of restraint in my choice of attacks using a series of calm, rational arguments and extensive comparisons to the other methods that I could have used.
Naruto spoke up again. "No," he quietly corrected. "Why were you planning to wait?"
That question gave me a bit of pause. "Because there are other things that we should be concentrating on," I answered after a moment. "The details are a rather long discussion, and I wanted to focus on your training."
"I see."
I gave him a gentile smile, although the moment was ruined by another stab of pain. "Anyway, we're getting really off-topic," I continued, focusing through my pain despite the fact that my face was twisted into a rather sickly grimace. "That's not what I wanted to talk to you about."
"But, Sensei," Sakura delicately objected, "you're hurt. At least take something for the pain..."
"I already did," I softly but firmly retorted. "And the more you learn, the better. Every little bit of preparation makes you that much more likely to survive. Being a ninja is a dangerous job... I should know..."
"But, ojisan," Naruto delicately chimed in, moving to steady me as I started to lose my balance after a particularly vicious spike of pain, "it's not worth it."
"Yeah," Sakura agreed. "If you ignore your own condition and don't rest, you won't be able to-"
I slashed a hand horizontally. "Enough," I stated, beginning to collapse. "It's not enough. It's never enough. I won't fail... not again..."
And with that I fell into Naruto's arms as I started to black out.
--
When I awoke the first thing I noticed was that my headache had died down quite a bit... and had faded into a constant ache instead of the fluctuating levels and periodic lances that had made it so hard to ignore earlier. The second thing that I noticed was that I was still at our meeting site, lying on the ground. As my awareness faded back into existence I saw Sakura staring at me with a look of concern... but I didn't see Naruto anywhere. Knowing that it couldn't be helped, I decided to ask the obvious question.
"How long was I out for?"
Sakura's look deepened. "Not long," she concisely answered. "Only a few minutes. Naruto went to go get help."
I sighed at that. "He didn't at least leave a kage bunshin or two?"
My pink-haired student shook her head. "Why would he do that?" she asked.
"In case anything changed here. Remember that a kage bunshin transfers its memories to the original when it's dispelled. Actually, it sends them to any other active kage bunshin of the user as well, so it might have been better for him to send a kage bunshin to get help so that he could constantly monitor things here and create additional bunshin to send status updates as needed."
"Ah," Sakura replied, still making an effort to keep her voice down. "I see."
I chuckled, knowing that it wouldn't hurt my headache in my current state. "If he'd done that, I'd have told him to come back. I'm fairly certain that I know what happened, and it's not really anything to worry about. Besides, even if I'm wrong I was planning to visit the hospital after this anyway."
Sakura blinked. "What do you mean?"
"What do you know about the keirakutei and the hachimon?"
Sakura shook her head. "Not much," she admitted. "Isn't the keirakutei what carries chakra through the body?"
"Yeah," I affirmed. "It's basically the circulatory system for chakra. It collects physical energy from throughout the body and brings it to the heart to be mixed with the mental energy that it gathers from the brain and then carries the chakra back throughout the body."
Sakura nodded in understanding. "As for the hachimon, aren't they some sort of limiters?"
I shook my head sadly. "I suppose you could call them that," I admitted. "They do serve that function, although that's not all they do. Still... that's all they told you in the Academy?"
"They really didn't say much," Sakura admitted. "I only know about them because Iruka-sensei would occasionally mention them."
I sighed at that. "And to think that they have their own chapter in Principles of Ninjutsu. I'll have to get you a copy sometime."
Sakura's eyes widened. "But... isn't that illegal? I mean I've heard of that book, but..."
"It's only illegal for genin and below to buy a copy," I pointed out, "and, personally, I think that rule's rather stupid since it was originally intended as an Academy textbook."
"Oh," Sakura remarked, sitting down. Before I could speak up, however, her eyes widened as she turned to stare at me. "That book was intended as an Academy textbook? Iruka-sensei said that he still uses it as a reference and rereads it from time to time!"
I shrugged. "His mother was one of the authors, so I suspect that there's more involved in his case than just the book's value as a reference."
Sakura got a rather sad look on her face as she digested that statement.
"Anyway, yes, it was intended as an Academy-level textbook. It's considered the definitive text on its subject, but that's not entirely because of how comprehensive it is. The authors made extensive efforts to make it easy to understand; that's what truly makes it unique."
Many writings on the subject were, in fact, deliberately written in the opposite direction, hiding truths in riddles and bizarre koans. Both Minato and I had always considered that to be stupid. Combining our knowledge into a coherent system, organizing it, and making it easy to read, with occasional commentaries or illustrations... literally no one -- or at least no one who knew anything worthwhile -- had done that before. Sure, I knew the reasons why people kept what they knew of chakra manipulation secret, but I thought it was a particularly moronic form of paranoid idiocy anyway... especially given what that tendency did to reinforce the more persistent remnants of the Divine Emperor's manifold stupidities. It was like keeping your knowledge of theoretical physics beyond the high-school level secret from your own people to hinder your enemy's R&D efforts during a war.
Sakura's eyes widened in realization as she nodded in understanding. She was apparently familiar with at least some of those writings. I wasn't surprised; with her connection to the Outa family, access to such... err... literature... was assured.
"To get back to what I was saying, the hachimon do, among other things, act as limiters. The simplest of them to explain is kaimon. The human body is only designed to make active use of a small portion of its muscles' theoretical maximum output. For every bundle of muscle fiber that's active at any given moment, several more are resting. After a while an active fiber will need to rest and another will take over for it. Under extreme circumstances, however, people can sometimes use their muscles' full output, but it comes with a price. In addition to the problem of drastically increased fatigue, the human frame simply can't take the stresses that doing so produces. Muscles strain and snap, and even bones can't always take the stress. Kaimon acts as a limiter to prevent this from happening.
"The remainder of the hachimon serve similar functions. Kyuumon, the second of the hachimon, is notable in that it acts as a limiter on the body's chakra production. The kinjutsu I used takes advantage of that fact; by forcing kyuumon open for a few moments, I can completely refill my reserves of chakra. Unfortunately, however, this comes at a cost. For one thing, it slows my recovery for a few days. The other... well, opening kyuumon produces stress as well. Unlike with kaimon, however, the stress isn't focused on the muscles; it's primarily mental in nature."
"So the headache was due to the mental stress?" Sakura asked, confirming that she understood.
I smiled. "You could say that," I confirmed, "although psychological stress might be more accurate. I've used that technique before, so I thought I knew what to expect, but there was an element this time that wasn't present during my previous uses of the jutsu."
Sakura frowned. "What was that?"
"In the past I've been on missions when using it. Such situations don't exactly encourage positive emotions... and yesterday was something of an emotional roller-coaster ride for me."
Sakura blinked. "So the technique makes you allergic to warm and fuzzy feelings?"
I shrugged. "Looks like it," I confirmed.
The kunoichi stared at me in horror. "It's just temporary, right?"
I gave her a rather gentile smile in thanks for the concern. "It would have to be. My guess is it'll disappear when the headaches do."
"I see," she replied.
Smiling gently, I removed a scroll from my vest and opened it to a certain point. "Tea?" I asked.
My student looked at me strangely, presumably wondering what it was about.
"Drinking fluids can help with a headache, as can just about anything that relaxes you. Unsealing something from these scrolls really doesn't take that much chakra, and until Naruto returns we don't have much to do other than sit and talk since I want to avoid sudden motions for a bit."
Suddenly understanding, Sakura's expression melted into a smile. "Thanks," she replied.
I proceeded to unseal a pair of cups and handed one to her. "I hope you don't mind houjicha; I don't think it would be a good idea for me to drink something with a lot of caffeine right now."
Sakura frowned in apparent confusion. "Caffeine?"
"A stimulant that's present in tea. There's considerably less of it in houjicha than most other types."
"Ah."
For a while we drank our tea in relative peace before I decided to bring up another topic. "I need to apologize," I began. "Yesterday, after we left, I found out that something that I told you wasn't entirely accurate."
Sakura looked at me desperately, her eyes betraying a sudden hope.
"Do you remember when I said that Naruto-kun had never had a friend his own age and that no one other than the Third Hokage and the people at Ichiraku had treated Naruto-kun kindly during the period between his second birthday and his entrance to the Academy?"
The desperate hope in my pink-haired student's eyes seemed to glow even brighter as she nodded in affirmation.
"Apparently the son of a visiting merchant invited Naruto-kun to play with him when Naruto-kun was seven."
With that the flames of hope were suddenly and savagely quenched... and in such a way as to make her revisit my earlier comment, fully knowing of Naruto's parentage and Minato's final request. Sure, it was a less than ideal method, obviously improvised in a moment of personal vulnerability. Still, the obvious lack of planning would only make it more effective in this case.
"There's more to the story, of course," I continued, ignoring Sakura's sudden emotional vulnerability, "but it's not mine to tell. What really bothers me about it, though, is the fact that it was left out of the reports."
Sakura gave me a sharp glance. "Reports?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "After... oh, the third assassination attempt after Naruto-kun's second birthday," I began, ignoring my student's look of horror, "the Hokage left orders for at least one member of the ANBU to watch over Naruto-kun at all times. His guards were to stay out of sight, but they were also supposed to report on certain matters, including his interactions with other people."
Sakura had again paled as she seemed at a loss for words. I idly wondered whether or not her frequent losses of color over the past few days would have a permanent impact on her skin-tone.
"But... who... why?"
"If you're referring to the assassination attempts, it wasn't foreign shinobi, if that's what you're thinking," I answered. "Several were Danzou's minions, of course, but most of the attempts were little more than clumsy efforts by local civilians."
"Oh," Sakura whispered.
"And Naruto-kun still wants to protect them," I commented, forcing my vocal tone to show a sort of wistful amusement that I certainly didn't feel. Oh, I regretted the circumstances enough... but my reaction to the thoughts leaned more towards anger than humor. "He's easily the most forgiving person I know -- certainly more so than I am. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd be willing to forgive a friend for deliberately shoving their hand through his chest... the friendship would be far more important to him than something as minor as an attempt on his life."
Sakura started staring at her feet.
"Anyway," I continued, changing the subject somewhat, "there's more to the story, but it's not really my place to tell... and I've already resigned myself to never really knowing whether the bandits that wiped out that caravan were hired to do so anyway."
Just when I thought that Sakura couldn't grow any paler, I was proven wrong as her look of horror only deepened at that revelation.
"What really concerns me is the fact that it wasn't mentioned in the report; the ANBU watching over him had specific orders to take note of anything of that nature."
"Why?" Sakura demanded, looking up and spearing me with a harsh stare.
I gave her a soft smile. "Because while I might have been forbidden from contacting Naruto-kun, there was nothing to prevent me from helping his friends."
Her gaze softened at that.
"In any case, the fact that that incident was not included means one of three things: that the report was edited, that the guard deliberately neglected to report it, or that Naruto-kun's minder had deliberately decided to abandon his duty or otherwise slack off... and the Hokage personally gave me the reports."
There was a decent lull in our conversation following that. "Why are you telling me this?" my pink-haired student hauntedly asked, breaking the pause.
"Because you're my back-up plan," I elaborated. "If anything happens to me..."
"I see," Sakura softly answered.
I shook my head, noting that the headache was quickly dying down. "I'm not sure that you do," I replied. "Tell me, did you notice the loopholes in that contract?"
She blinked. "What loopholes?"
"Other than being able to tell Naruto-kun about his parents as long as we don't tell him who they were? Danzou knew that he had to leave some openings to get me to agree to the contract. There are several that I'm pretty sure were deliberate on his part... but there's one that I'm almost certain was accidental."
Sakura looked up in interest at that.
"Basically," I elaborated, "it's an artifact of the language he used; it's readily apparent that he had several legal experts help him draft the thing. To summarize, though... there's a condition which, if met, will make the entire contract effectively null and void."
"What would that be?"
"My death."
"Oh," Sakura replied, sitting down in a somewhat boneless posture.
"Of course," I continued, "that's not the only loophole, and I fully intend to take advantage of as many of them as I can."
"You intend to die just so..."
I shook my head. "Don't misinterpret what I said," I chided. "That being said, it's quite possible -- even probable -- that I will one day either be killed or find myself in a position where the only way to protect someone important to me is to sacrifice my life. If that happens..."
"I'll tell him," my pink-haired student promised.
"Good," I responded, "but more than that... I want you to look after your teammates. If I'm not there, the three of you will have to rely on each other."
"I will," Sakura assured me.
I gave her a bright smile in reply. "Good."
That didn't really leave much else to say, and we sat there in companionable silence for a while as we waited for Naruto to return. On a related note, the tea was quite tasty, although Sakura didn't really seem to enjoy it.
--
After a few minutes of waiting Naruto made a rather noisy entrance as he literally dragged a medic-nin into the clearing. He wasn't a ninja who I was personally familiar with, fortunately, although I had seen him around the hospital. Convincing the medic that I could be left alone was troublesome, but he finally acquiesced when I mentioned that I was already planning to head to the hospital after our meeting.
"Alright," I began after the medic had left, "the main thing I wanted to do today was to address something that Naruto-kun brought up last night, when he asked a question that tied into a rather important philosophical debate amongst shinobi."
While Sakura seemed to understand, Naruto seemed confused.
"Something that not all ninja agree on," I explained to him. "The 'philosophical' part just means that it's something very fundamental -- very basic, if you will."
Naruto gave me a relieved smile and nodded his head.
"Anyway, the question is this: is it possible for a shinobi to be betrayed by his village? My own belief on the matter is that yes, it is, but the vast majority of ninja hold the opposite position for a variety of reasons."
"What do you mean, sensei?" Sakura asked.
I shrugged. "Perhaps a concrete example?"
Sakura nodded. "That might be a good idea."
"Alright. A few years after I first arrived in Konoha, the political situation was rather distinctly different from what it is now. We were in something of a friendly truce with Kumogakure; that would later change, but we weren't enemies at the time. As such, Kumo sent several ninja to participate in Konoha's chuunin exams. At the time I wasn't a ninja, but I was interested in the various countries since I was still trying to find out about the world that I'd rather abruptly found myself in."
Naruto seemed to take that last bit in stride but Sakura gasped at the revelation.
"I was summoned here," I explained to her. "I'll tell you the story some other time, but that's why I didn't know a lot of important things at the time."
Seeing Sakura's look of understanding, I decided to move on. "In any event, I struck up a conversation with one of the Kumo genin, a boy around the age Naruto is now. He was a bit cautious at first, but it quickly became apparent that I wasn't looking for classified information and he'd already heard of me anyway; a summoning of the type that brought me here is rare enough to be worthy of a good bit of comment throughout the ninja villages."
After all, it's not every day that someone is summoned from the Overworld. Word of what had happened had quickly spread throughout the capitols and the countryside as well, despite efforts to contain the information. Considering that many of my predecessors were still worshipped as gods, my presence in Konoha had been Big News. I just wished that the ninja who brought me here had managed to properly recreate the technique; I really could have used many of the abilities that my predecessors had possessed.
"Anyway, once he realized who I was he opened up quite a bit more. He was an orphan named Koshi Hikari who had fairly recently become a ninja. He hadn't had much of a family, but a distant cousin -- named Sasa Nishiki -- had taken care of him as best she could. As a result of this, Hikari-kun thought of her as a beloved older sister."
I'd laughed out loud when I'd learned their names. Hikari had been somewhat disturbed, but quieted down after I explained what was funny. Seriously, though, I had been wondering what would come next -- a teacher named Akita Otome or Hitome Bore? The rice-based name puns apparently ran rather strong in his family... and I'd laughed even harder when he mentioned that his mother's birth name had been Mochi Gome.
"He was a nice kid, both friendly and cheerful despite his choice in occupation. I learned a lot from talking to him, too -- not anything sensitive, mind, but the little things that many people take for granted, like what someone could do for fun on a Friday night or what kinds of food were popular in Kumo. We even traded recipes for a bit after I found out that his cousin had taught him how to cook."
I still used his recipe for okonomiyaki, although after what had happened to him, I didn't make it very often, even if my love of the stuff had at one point rivaled Naruto's love of ramen.
"After a bit I wondered about his personality, as he didn't come from a notable ninja clan, and he didn't really seem to be the type to want the sort of life that most shinobi live. He just looked me in the eyes and told me that he would gladly sacrifice his life to protect Kumogakure. When I asked him why, he clarified that statement -- he would do anything to protect his home... for the simple reason that his adoptive sister lived there. It was the desire to protect her that led him to become a ninja."
While Naruto was following the story with interest, Sakura seemed to have several thoroughly justified reservations... especially considering the topic that had led to this story. "Something happened to her, didn't it?" she asked.
I gave her a confirming nod. "Yes," I answered. "One of Kumogakure's ninja, in a set of experiments fully authorized by Kumo's government, attempted to develop a way to forcibly expand a shinobi's keirakutei, thereby increasing their chakra reserves. Like most medical kinjutsu, however, testing this method required experimental subjects. He decided not to use shinobi, as they were 'too valuable'. He also decided not to use volunteers, since he'd never get people to agree, especially since he estimated that there was a good chance that his subjects would die. Even worse, his method was also sacrificial in nature -- he would essentially kill someone in order to make someone else stronger. One of his experimental sacrifices was a young woman named Sasa Nishiki."
Both of my students looked quite sick at that revelation.
"In any case," I continued, "Hikari left Kumo after that, becoming a missing-nin. My own position on those events is that he was right to do so, and that the betrayal was on the part of his village. His chief mistake, as I see it, was in not asking me for help; if he had, I would have provided it. My dislike of traitors, however, was well known even then, and he later told me that he didn't seek me out because of that. He simply couldn't understand how I could view him as the betrayed party."
"But...," Sakura abortively began before trailing off.
"Many people believe that shinobi are merely tools," I explained, "and that is one view of the matter, one espoused by many, even here in Konoha. If this is accepted as true, a necessary corollary is that it is not possible for a shinobi's village or master to betray him. Personally, I believe that this is a purely self-serving view perpetuated by those in power over ninja. After all, if your ninja are merely tools, you don't have to worry about their feelings or feel guilt about sacrificing them to help further your ends. It would be no worse than sacrificing a kunai, after all."
Naruto looked confused at that. "Espoused? Corollary? Perpetuated?"
I shrugged. "To espouse an ideal is to accept it as your own. A corollary is something that follows from a statement; in this case, I meant that if you accept that shinobi are merely tools, you must also accept that their village cannot betray them any more than you can betray a kunai or shuriken. To perpetuate an ideal is to help it survive."
Naruto eagerly nodded for a moment before thinking over what I just said and suddenly looking quite ill.
"But," Sakura objected, "surely you're not the only one who..."
I smiled. "Of course not," I answered. "There are four notable positions on the matter, and that was just one of them -- the so-called traditional view. The most notable person in Konoha who holds that belief is Danzou. None of the Hokage have held that position."
Sakura sighed in relief.
"To apply that to this story, however, very few of the traditionalists truly understand my opinion of that matter, or why I, to this day, will defend Koshi Hikari's honor. To them, he was simply an ordinary traitor. While many of them can see how people could sympathize with his case, I am not aware of any who understand how my dislike of traitors and my sympathy for Hikari-kun's story are fully compatible; most of them view the two as contradictory elements of my personality."
Again, Naruto looked confused. "Contradictory?"
"They don't see how they go together. As they see it, I hate traitors, so why didn't I hate Hikari? They don't understand that I don't view Hikari as a traitor, but, rather as the person who was betrayed."
"I see."
"The second major position is that shinobi are tools, but are still human -- they can love, bleed, and hate... and that they should be human, that they should remain as such, not try to become emotionless killing machines. That is the position of the Third Hokage. What follows from this is that he believes that a leader should treat the shinobi who follow him with respect for their lives and that the sign of a good leader is in how he treats his or her subordinates. To him Hikari was still a traitor, but his actions were somewhat understandable. He doesn't view Kumo as having betrayed Hikari, but believes that the experiments that led to Sasa Nishiki's death were inhumane and were proof that Kumo's leadership was not worthy of their positions."
Sakura seemed to understand, fortunately.
"Sakura-kun?" I inquired.
"Yes, Sensei?"
"I need to hurry to the hospital, but Naruto-kun seems to be a bit confused by some of this. Could you talk about it with him after I leave?"
Sakura smiled at me and nodded her head.
"Good," I responded. "Anyway, the third major position is the one held by the Fourth Hokage. He believed that shinobi were people who chose to follow a cause or a leader, and that their superiors therefore have responsibilities to those who choose to follow them. He would have agreed that Kumogakure did not betray Hikari, but his reasoning would have been quite different from the Third's. His position was that it was impossible for a shinobi's village to betray him for the simple reason that a village is a place. According to this view a ninja can be betrayed by the leaders of his village or by the people of his village, but not by the village itself. As such, Hikari was the betrayed party."
Sakura nodded again. "And you?" she asked.
"That leads us to the fourth major position, the one which I hold. I agree with the Fourth for the most part, but go on to say that when you describe a village doing something, you're typically talking about the people who make up its population, not the physical village itself. Therefore, you're describing the actions of an organization, and it is therefore quite possible for a ninja's village to betray him."
"But isn't that just a matter of semantics?"
I smiled gently. "It does seem that way, doesn't it? It has implications, however, in terms of how you ascribe guilt. I'm far more likely to view people who were not personally involved in the betrayal as being responsible than the Fourth was."
"Ah."
"Anyway, that's what I wanted to bring up. I'd like it if you were to talk it over between yourselves after I leave, but... for now, do either of you have any questions?"
Seeing that my team's pink-haired kunoichi had raised her hand I gave her a nod of acknowledgement.
"Sensei? What happened to Koshi-san?"
I sighed. That was not a pleasant memory. "After leaving Kumo he managed to dodge the hunter-nins for a while but his efforts left him desperate and he fell in with... the wrong sort, seeking safety in numbers. When I next met up with him he was part of a group of bandits attacking a caravan that my team was assigned to guard." I grimaced as I remembered that encounter, the horror I had felt when I realized just who I was fighting, the desperate crossfire (in more than one sense of the word) as I tried to convince him to stand down... "He was the first person I ever killed."
In retrospect it was that mission which truly awakened me to what it really meant to be a ninja... and to the benefits of the judicious use of C4. After all, the use of explosives meant that you weren't left staring at the broken corpses of people who you once considered to be friends, and killing someone in one blow meant that you didn't have to slit their throats as a mercy killing after you mortally wounded them.
"Oh." Sakura didn't seem very happy at that; to be honest, I didn't blame her. Naruto didn't look too well, either.
"Anything else?"
My students mutely shook their heads.
"Now I want you to talk this over for a bit to make sure you understand what I'm trying to say, and when you're done I have another exercise for you to try; think of it as a training mission."
Seeing that they understood, I decided to continue.
"This is Hyuuga Hinata," I said, pulling out a photo. "As you may have noticed in class, she's rather shy."
"Sensei, why are you telling us this?"
"I'll get to that in a second. Now, she has a rather strong crush on one of your classmates, but is too shy to approach him. Your objective is to find out who and to get her to tell him about her feelings."
Sakura blinked. "How is that training?"
"Infiltration, for one thing, not to mention information gathering. I have several reasons for giving you two this specific assignment, not the least of which are that it's a good opportunity to make a friend and that I believe that this will benefit her. You are not, under any circumstances, to harm her. Remember that she's a comrade and an ally, not a member of an enemy force. As ninja there will be times when we need to learn things about our friends as well as our enemies; this is a good chance to practice that."
Naruto gave me a strange look at that. "Why would we need to know things about our friends? Couldn't we just ask?"
"Perhaps, but ninja often deal in secrets, and while I might not lie as a matter of policy, most shinobi do so on a regular basis. When coupled with the frequency with which betrayals occur in the ninja world, we often need to keep an eye on our comrades as well as our enemies. For instance, what would you do if an enemy acted on or knew information about you that you'd only told one of your closest friends? There would be several possible ways he could have obtained that information, such as having eavesdropped on your conversation, but the simplest way would be if the person you'd told had relayed it to your enemy. On the other hand, you probably wouldn't want to accuse your friend of betraying you, but you couldn't ask him if he had since if he was a spy he'd deny it... not to mention the damage the question could do to your friendship if he wasn't."
Naruto blinked and had a somewhat stunned expression on his face.
"Of course spying on your friend could do even more damage, so you have to find another way to gather information. It's a surprisingly common dilemma among ninja... and in the end people usually resort to some form of confrontation. In this case, I'm setting you up with a fairly benign version of the dilemma. All you have to do is to get her to talk to you about the subject, and she already knows both of you, anyway."
"Oh," Naruto replied.
"Actually, this should do you some good. I think you'll understand a bit more after you're done, but... just remember that Hinata-chan is the closest thing I have to a daughter, okay?"
Naruto smiled at me. "Don't worry, sensei!"
"Good... and don't worry; the assignment should be pretty easy. Now, like I said earlier, I want you two to talk about what I said. I'm heading to the hospital, so I won't be available to answer any questions Sakura can't answer for you, but please make note of them; I really want you to understand this."
That being said, I removed a book from my equipment pouch and handed it to Sakura. "The Way of the Ninja: Issues of Philosophy and Meaning," she read, looking at the book.
"Yeah," I confirmed. "Chapter Four is dedicated to what we talked about earlier; it may not be as good as having me here, but it should at least help."
Sakura cradled the small volume almost reverently. "Sensei, how did you get a copy of this?"
I frowned; I hadn't realized that it had become so rare. "I wrote it."
Sakura blinked, processing the information, before her eyes widened and she stared at me in what appeared to be awe.
"I wasn't aware that it had become so famous."
Sakura frowned. "Not so much famous as rare," she clarified. "It's pretty controversial in certain circles, but they stopped printing it years ago."
Ah. So that was it. I didn't need to ask why she'd know about rare books, given her mother's family. Mai might not have been in the rare book trade, but she certainly had enough relatives who were. "Yeah. I actually wrote a second edition, but I was prohibited from having it published. They stopped printing the first when I finished the manuscript, and they have the set plates for the second, but..." I shrugged.
"Oh. I see." Sakura paused for a second. "Wait a moment. Why would they stop..."
I shook my head, not sure how to explain why the Third Hokage had done what he did. I'd written the second edition in the aftermath of the Kyuubi's attack, after all, and many of the examples had been... less than complimentary... to Konoha. "Let's just say that not everyone was entirely happy with some of the things I said," I eventually explained. "Some of the examples I used were supposed to be secret, and others were... well, various people could have suffered severe blows to their reputation."
"I see," Sakura answered in a tone that indicated that she probably didn't.
"Is there anything else, or should I get going?" I asked, deliberately ignoring Sakura's lack of complete comprehension, as much as it offended my professional sensibilities.
Both of my students shook their heads.
"Well, feel free to ask me any questions you might have when we see each other this afternoon, OK?" I paused for a moment, not quite sure how to finish, before deciding on the direct approach. "Well, be seeing you then."
With that I disappeared in a sudden flurry of leaves.
--
The trip to the hospital didn't take long, and I made reasonably good time. Explaining what had happened at my meeting and my suspicions as to why (in a great deal more technical detail than I'd given Sakura) to a medic-nin who I actually trusted nearly as far as Sakura could throw him (I could throw him quite a bit further than Sakura could, after all) took longer, but most of that time was spent locating a medic-nin who fit that description. The various tests and procedures took even longer, but in the end we managed to confirm that there was nothing to worry about.
That taken care of, I headed to Sasuke's room, grabbed his medical chart, sat down by his bed, and started to read. Oddly enough, there were no problems with this; as Sasuke's instructor I was authorized to read his records, even if the permission seemed really... odd... to my American sensibilities. Oh, I understood the logic, of course -- the information could help me do my job, but... Konoha had no real notion of "privacy" or "confidentiality" as I understood them. There were similar concepts, of course, and several that overlapped... but, in a medical context, they were mostly concerned with the preservation of various secrets. Of course, what really got me was the total lack of equivalents of the Hippocratic Oath and licensing requirements.
Regardless of that, the file was a somewhat interesting read. They hadn't been able to find anything too severe physically wrong with my idiot-student, but they hadn't been able to check for certain types of brain damage or damage to the sharingan. The latter was especially worrying since while Sasuke's eyes had been seen to flash red, there was no mention of tomoe. In short, the sharingan had activated but it had activated abnormally.
In the best case scenario the activation would "count" and Sasuke would be able to use an undamaged sharingan. More realistically, this was just a fluke, and my sickeningly angst-ridden student was back where he started. Worst case, he had managed to completely burn out his kekkei genkai.
Damn.
As I was contemplating the report my attention was grabbed by some motion from the emo's bed. Just as I thought it would turn out to be nothing, however, I hear a low moan. As quickly as I could I put down Sasuke's chart and signaled the medics.
The next few minutes were a flurry of activity as a ninja and a few nurses examined the hopefully-intact avenger while my student tried to get his bearings. If it hadn't been for the seriousness of the situation it would have been quite humorous.
Fortunately, the chaos died down after a while and I was left alone with my rather bewildered and disoriented pupil. "So," I languidly drawled, "you're probably wondering just what is going on." Pausing for a moment, I noticed that Sasuke seemed to understand, at least, and apparently agreed. "Well," I explained, "the short version is that you're in the hospital." I continued, picking up steam as I went. "You were brought in last night, actually, suffering from an overdose of fluoxetine hydrochloride -- or, as it's more commonly known, Prozac. How is that possible? Well, you apparently decided to ignore the dosing instructions I gave you. Let me guess, you thought that if one pill with breakfast would help you grow stronger, taking the whole bottle would help even more?" I didn't even pause to take note of Sasuke's reaction because of how caught up I was in my little rant. "I gave you the instructions I did for a reason. Any substance, if taken in a large enough amount, can become a poison. Well, congratulations; you just managed to do just that with Prozac, of all things. Hopefully, you haven't suffered any brain damage or permanently burned out your ability to use the Sharingan, but we'll have to see, won't we? At least you managed to avoid killing yourself!"
I paused and visibly deflated. "Damnit, Sasuke," I cursed, "I had a plan. I was going to help you activate the Sharingan after you managed the tree-walking exercise... with a little luck, you'd have been able to take out Itachi within a year or two... and the medical reports seem to indicate that your little 'experiment' caused your sharingan to activate abnormally. I hope there isn't any permanent damage to it, not to mention that Prozac overdoses have been known to cause some pretty nasty brain damage..."
Sasuke winced at that, which looked rather strange given his generally shell-shocked and pensive expression.
"Oh, don't worry too much about that," I told him. "Anything really major would have shown up with the examinations of your chakra. The most you have to worry about is a minor personality shift or comparatively minor tardive dyskinesia... maybe even some akathisia... and none of those should impair your combat ability too much."
"Somehow, that's not much of a comfort," he whispered. "What..."
"Are those? Well, a personality shift is exactly what it sounds like. Tardive dyskinesia, in this context, essentially means chemically-induced motor tics -- minor, involuntary movements that you won't be able to stop. Looking at you, I can rule out the more severe forms of it, anyway. As for akathisia, it's the inability to sit still."
"Like Naruto?"
"No, he's just hyperactive. Akathisia is chemically-induced."
Sasuke slowly nodded.
"Looking at you, I think we can eliminate those two possibilities as well, although if your tongue feels bloated or swollen in the next few days, please tell me. The personality shift thing... well, it'll take a while to find out."
It would also probably be an improvement if it happened.
"You have to understand that power always comes at a price... and that the price isn't always worth it."
Sasuke snorted. "To kill him... any price is worth it."
I shook my head. "Even if paying that price makes you weaker than you could have been? There are many shortcuts to power that give you an immediate payoff, but at the price of crippling your long-term growth. If you want to kill Itachi, you can't afford to repeat his mistakes."
Sasuke blinked. "What do you mean?"
"Do you remember when I called the mangekyou sharingan Itachi's most obvious weakness?"
Sasuke frowned. "Hn."
"Well, there are several reasons, but... the most obvious part of it is the fact that the powers of the mangekyou sharingan use extremely large amounts of chakra. Whenever he uses it, he depletes a very large portion of his reserves; I doubt that he can use tsukiyomi more than two or three times a day without totally exhausting himself... and amaterasu is almost as bad."
Sasuke blinked at that, visibly taken aback.
"So you know, I don't know what the other powers, if any, of the mangekyou sharingan are, but tsukiyomi is the jutsu that Itachi used to torture you after he killed your family and amaterasu is a technique which generates extremely hot black flames which will eat through nearly anything and which persist for at least a little while without a fuel source."
"How?" he incredulously asked. "How do you know that?! The mangekyou sharingan is one of the Uchiha clan's most guarded secrets... how did you find out?"
I gave my vengeance-obsessed student a sad smile. "I've got my own secrets to keep," I confessed, "but if you're thinking that Itachi was careless... he wasn't. I've known that much about the mangekyou since before I was summoned to Konoha."
Sasuke's eyes widened as he started to sit up, but stopped as I raised my hand.
"Take it easy," I warned him. "If you want to sit up, go ahead, but do it slowly. I don't know about overdoses, but normal doses of Prozac make some people get rather dizzy when they try to do that too quickly. I was going to monitor you for that, but..."
Sasuke nodded and continued, moving much more slowly this time.
"You were summoned to Konoha?" he inquired.
I nodded. "Yeah," I confirmed. "I'm originally from another world... and what I've just told you about the mangekyou sharingan was... well, not exactly common knowledge, but it wasn't overly rare, either."
Sasuke's motion froze as he stared at me with wide eyes. The fact that I was from another world was news, certainly, but not that big of a deal. The existence of other universes was well known in Konoha, after all, as was the existence of summoning techniques. As an Uchiha, Sasuke was no doubt well educated in the theory involved... but that was underworld summoning. The existence of the Overworld was another thing he likely knew of... but Overworld summoning was a lost art. The end result of that was that Sasuke was likely to think that I was from an underworld or even a side-world mirror of Konoha... something that was unusual, certainly, but hardly something to be all that shocked over given some of the things that were routine in the ninja world. No, it was far more likely that Sasuke was surprised at my knowledge of the mangekyou. Still, though... there was no way I was telling him about the manga or anime.
"Is that why you said that you never liked my family?" he asked after a moment. "Something that happened on your world?"
I shook my head. "No," I disagreed. "There were no Uchiha there... no ninja as we know them, either."
Sasuke blinked as he paused. "But... then, how could you know that?"
I smiled. "Stories, among other things... and I'm not the first person to be summoned from my world to this one."
Sasuke gave me a strange look at that. "So... you heard from one of the others?"
I shook my head again. "No. I've never met any of them. Like I told you before, that knowledge isn't very rare in my world. I found out through... another source."
Sasuke frowned.
"By the way, the details of that source are classified by the order of the Fourth Hokage. Other than myself, only five other people have known that secret, and three of them are dead."
Of course, the details of that were simply Minato's telling me not to tell anyone unless I trusted them implicitly and advising me that we couldn't let that information be leaked. Minato had known, of course, and Hotaru had found out after listening into one of our conversations. Umino Seiuchi had also known, but Ashika, as far as I knew, had never found out, despite being married to him... and Seiuchi hadn't known much at all about the contents of the manga or anime, just that they existed. As for those still living... only Hinata and Sarutobi knew of it, and neither knew a lot about its contents.
"Understood," Sasuke replied.
"Good." I sighed. "I suppose that the only thing to do now is to check to see what happened with your eyes, ne?"
"Yeah."
"Try focusing a bit of chakra to your eyes, to begin with. Focus as little as you can and follow the pattern the chakra naturally wants to flow in -- if you've managed to activate the sharingan, it'll have burned those paths in somewhat. If you start to feel pain, you're using too much."
Sasuke gave me a brief nod after a moment, although his eyes still didn't change.
"Now concentrate on the nature of that chakra -- you want it to be fire-natured. The sharingan is, after all, based on internal fire-style chakra manipulation."
Sasuke nearly did a spit-take as I felt his chakra surge.
"Surprised I know that?" I asked. "That's why your family focused so much on katon ninjutsu of the sort that they did -- a certain level of mastery of it is a requirement to activate your kekkei genkai. If you can use gokakyuu no jutsu, that should be enough... and I know for a fact that you are able to use that technique."
"And I suppose that you can't tell me how you knew that, either?"
I shook my head. "Actually, I can," I replied. "It's hardly a secret. Before the kyuubi's attack, I was working on a... project... for the Fourth Hokage. The details involve several classified items, so I can't tell you too much, but I believed that the First Hokage's abilities with mokuton could hold the key to the project. As such, I developed these."
Reaching into a pocket and pulling out a few seal-tags, I continued my explanation. "If you place one of these into contact with someone's skin and activate the tag, they'll record every aspect of that person's chakra usage for a limited time. In theory, the data that they give is enough to fully recreate any ninjutsu."
Sasuke looked interested, but frowned after a moment. "In theory?" he inquired.
I nodded. "In theory," I confirmed. "I originally designed those tags to investigate the process by which water and earth chakra were melded into wood chakra-"
Sasuke spoke up, interrupting me. "But wouldn't that require a mokuton-user?"
I smirked. "Fortunately, I had one available," I explained. "He was nowhere near the level of the First Hokage, and was understandably skittish about scientific experimentation that involved living subjects, but he was willing to help after I explained the difference between what a real scientist does and the kind of unethical crap that passes as 'science' nowadays."
Sasuke blinked, something that was understandable considering the amount of genuine anger that I had allowed to creep into my voice tone towards the end of that explanation. Under other circumstances, that comment would have been followed by a rant about the steps of the scientific method, the benefits of non-experimental research methods, the application of ethical standards in experimentation, the idea of informed consent, and the concept of an IRB, among other things... all of which seemed to have disappeared sometime in the past ten thousand years.
"Back to the point, however, I needed a non-invasive way to investigate that. My purpose wasn't to recreate his jutsu myself, but rather to produce a seal array to mix chakra in the manner he did. As such, the tag produces a great deal of information, most of which is useless when it comes to attempting to recreate a normal jutsu and very little of which is... well, human-readable, to put it bluntly. Practicality speaking, they're more useful as a medical diagnostic tool or a training aid than as a means to attempt to recreate your enemy's techniques."
From time to time, I toyed around with the idea of creating a version that was better for my current purposes, but the design of the tags had taken me nearly three months of work and focusing on human-readable output would make the new tags even more complex than the ones I was currently using. Between everything else, I simply hadn't had the time to redesign them.
Sasuke frowned. "Why haven't I heard of these before?"
"Like I told you, they're my own design, produced for my own work. Do you really think that I, as a shinobi, would go around telling people my secrets? Most of the people who have seen me use these things don't know what they do or think they're more standard analysis tools."
Sasuke nodded in understanding.
"To get back to the point, however, I've used these on members of your family before. As such, I have the recorded pattern for the activation of the sharingan in both its fully-mastered form and an incomplete version. I even have a record from a ninja named Hatake Kakashi who received a sharingan by means of an organ transplant."
While Sasuke's eyes widened, he didn't otherwise respond, something which I took as an invitation to continue.
"Between that, some bragging on the parts of your relatives, old mission reports and various stories, I know how both the requirements for the initial activation of the sharingan and the means by which later activations are accomplished. Thanks to my analysis of the tags' data and my knowledge of the functioning of the human mind and brain, I also know quite a bit about the mechanics of how the sharingan works. It's thanks to the latter that I know things that the Uchiha clan didn't about the sharingan, by the way, and this incident has already been quite informative, despite the potential problems that you may have caused yourself."
"What do you mean?"
I shrugged. "Prozac's primary purpose is to inhibit the reuptake of a neurotransmitter called 'serotonin', thus increasing the levels of it in your system. Despite this, however, it also has effects on norepinephrine and dopamine. I've long since suspected that the sharingan's function was connected to the dopamine system; the fact that you managed to activate the sharingan -- even if in an abnormal manner -- due to a Prozac overdose acts as a fairly strong piece of evidence to support that idea."
Sasuke blinked.
"I'll explain in detail later, alright? For now, we need to focus on what happened to you."
"Yeah. But... if you thought that the sharingan was related to this 'dopamine', why did you give me something that worked on 'serotonin'?"
"Because my reasons for giving it to you had nothing to do with the sharingan. As for why I didn't give you something that works on dopamine as well, anything that affects that system has some pretty serious side effects. Too little dopamine produces something called Parkinson's syndrome, which is characterized by involuntary muscle movements and difficulty moving, among other things. Too much dopamine produces... well, let's just say that one of the most effective ancient treatments for what is commonly referred to as insanity involved medications designed to reduce the level of dopamine in the patient's system."
Sasuke shuddered. "So what made you think that about the sharingan?"
"Well, it's a bit off-topic, but... well, dopamine is also involved in the neurological systems responsible for perception and movement. For instance, if I were to give you one of the anti-psychotic medications I mentioned earlier, you'd find that you'd feel like your thoughts had 'slowed down', so to speak... and given what I know of your family's medical history, I believe that many of the problems could be explained by action on the dopamine system coupled with an overdeveloped or overstimulated amygdala."
Judging by his expression, I had managed to lose him. "Don't worry about it too much," I instructed my perpetually brooding student. "I'll explain a bit more when we start planning out how you're going to take Itachi down. There was one other thing I was going to warn you about, however -- dopamine is also connected to the parts of the brain responsible for pleasure. Anything that increases dopamine levels can easily become addictive, and there's evidence that the same is true of the sharingan."
Sasuke's eyes widened slightly as I mentioned that. "You mean..."
I nodded in confirmation. "Those of your family who managed to activate the sharingan almost always kept it activated far more than was necessary. They became reliant on it... dependant on it. Instead of becoming a great strength, it became an exploitable weakness. On several occasions, I managed to defeat members of your family by taking advantage of that."
Sasuke was frowning as I finished my explanation. "How is that possible?"
"Any strength can become a weakness if you exploit it correctly. Enhanced senses, for instance, can make you vulnerable to sensory overload... and I speak from experience when I say that is extremely unpleasant. To give you an example, the first time I faced an Uchiha in the preliminaries of the Chuunin exam, I simply closed my eyes and set off a magnesium flare."
Sasuke paused for a moment, not knowing what a magnesium flare was, but getting the general idea. "Wouldn't your opponent have looked away?"
"That's what the spotlights were for," I retorted. Of course, some people later argued that only one of the ten million candlepower lights would have been enough, but I had no way to be certain which way he'd look. No... I really had no choice but to use all one hundred and twelve of them.
Sasuke blinked, quite taken aback. "Okay," he replied after a bit of hesitation, "I can see how you could exploit enhanced vision, but that's hardly the sharingan's only power."
"That was an example," I answered, mentally rolling my eyes as I wondered whether we'd ever get to see what had happened with Sasuke's eyes. "I won several other fights by exploiting your relatives' use of the sharingan's predictive abilities, its copy ability, and its genjutsu abilities."
"How?"
"Well, the copy ability was actually the easiest. I created a jutsu that created blasts of wind mixed with small amounts of poison... and that formed them in contact with the body. While I was immune to the poison in question thanks to my kekkei genkai, your cousin was not. As such, when he copied my technique..."
"He poisoned himself," Sasuke finished for me.
"Exactly."
Sasuke's eyes again widened slightly. It was hardly unexpected; I had just called into question what was probably one of his most fundamental beliefs. "What about the predictive ability?"
"Well," I confessed, "I didn't so much exploit the ability itself as much as the belief that it was infallible. I simply used a move that caused the sharingan to predict an entirely different outcome."
Seeing that Sasuke didn't understand, I shook my head and pulled out one of my... modified... kunai. "I'm one of Konoha's most skilled masters of summoning techniques," I began, deciding to just repeat the explanation I gave Naruto. "Relating to that, I have a lot of kunai like this one, and they're a bit... special. If you focus a bit of chakra and throw one of them, it will summon a cow about ten to twenty feet above where it hits. They come in two varieties: exploding and non-exploding."
"Err, sensei? Why bother summoning a cow above your target if the kunai's going to explode?"
"Who said anything about the kunai exploding?"
Sasuke seemed confused for a moment before he realized what I meant and gave me a distinctly odd look. "Exploding cows?" he incredulously asked.
I gave the brat a confirming nod.
"You dropped a cow on one of my cousins?"
I shrugged. "I used several kunai, actually; the sharingan can't tell what they do and your cousin had no idea that shifted-focus summoning was even possible. He later told his teacher that he mistook the chakra use for a much more common jutsu that enhances the sharpness of a thrown weapon."
"How is it possible to make that kind of mistake?"
"The sharingan can't read engraved seals when they're covered by something, and the seals responsible for summoning are actually layered into the metal. Additionally, I designed these with the sharingan's abilities in mind. The outermost layer actually is a sharpness enhancement jutsu."
"I... see."
"Good. After that, it was just a matter of maneuvering your cousin underneath an exploding cow." I chuckled. "You have no idea how much I laughed after that battle -- or, for that matter, how much fun it was to taunt your father about how I'd defeated the sharingan that time. It wasn't the first and it wasn't the last, but it certainly was the most entertaining."
At that, Sasuke got an expression on his face that I couldn't really interpret. "Why did you dislike my family so much?"
I frowned. "There were several reasons but the largest one, I suppose, would be the fact that they were, by and large, arrogant beyond belief. They believed -- or acted like they believed -- that the sharingan somehow made them better than other people... and that, accordingly, others were something to look down on. You can only stand being treated like the scum that you scrape off of the bottom of your shoe for so long before it starts to get to you, after all."
"Was my family really that bad?"
I shook my head. "Worse, really, in some ways... but it's never that simple, is it? My opinion of the Uchiha clan is largely based on how those members who I knew acted around and towards me. When I was summoned to Konoha, I was an untrained civilian. I was totally lost... between being stuck in an unfamiliar culture that spoke a language that I didn't really understand and knowing almost nothing of this world, I don't know what I would have done if it wasn't for the fact that one of Konoha's jounin decided to help me get settled in and make a place here. Your father... well, he thought that my friend was wasting his time with me and wasn't exactly shy about expressing his opinion."
"Oh," Sasuke softly responded.
"Later," I continued, glad that the topic of the conversation had shifted away from how I had used the sharingan's genjutsu abilities to win a fight, "when we found out that the process that summoned me here had given me what amounts to a rather powerful kekkei genkai, your father changed his opinion somewhat... rather being totally worthless, he came to regard me as potential breeding stock. When the medics concluded that my kekkei genkai would merge with and strengthen the mother's in any child I were to have with a woman who also possessed one, several of the women of your clan tried to seduce me. I still have... issues... because of what they did... and it's not nearly as easy for me to trust people anymore.
"It wasn't until I became a shinobi, however, that things came to something of a head. I was over thirty years old at the time, and I'd had no training in ninjutsu until well after my twenty-fifth birthday. Because of that, my reserves of chakra were far smaller than those of someone who'd been training since childhood and the fine control required for many higher techniques was beyond anything that I could learn. When I started down the path of a ninja, your father flat-out told me that I was wasting my time, that I'd never equal a 'common' ninja, much less even the weakest of the Uchiha.
"If I'd restricted myself to conventional methods, your father would have been right... but I found ways around my limitations... but no matter how strong I became, your family treated me with utter contempt. By the end of my first Chuunin exam, I had acquired a reputation for not only defeating but utterly humiliating any Uchiha who I fought against... and the dislike had turned quite mutual."
Sasuke seemed disturbed by this point. Unusually enough, I couldn't blame him. "The important things to remember," I continued, trying to reassure him, "are that I only know the way they acted around me and that I only knew a fairly small number of your kin. The existence of the side of your family that I saw doesn't change the aspects of it that you were familiar with. In fact, I even knew one Uchiha who I actually liked, although I will admit that he was something of an outcast within your family."
"Who?" my student asked, somewhat curiously.
"Uchiha Obito, one of the Fourth Hokage's students. He was, admittedly, almost perpetually late and had a tendency to put his foot in his mouth, but he had a decent sense of humor and could always be counted on to help his friends out in a pinch. He died on a mission in Tsuchi no Kuni when he sacrificed his life to save one of his teammates."
"Why do you say that he was something of an outcast?"
"He awakened his sharingan during that mission. Before that... well, he once told me that he was tired of how the clan treated members who couldn't use the family's kekkei genkai like second-class citizens."
"Oh," Sasuke answered, seeming like he was trying to withdraw into the back of the bed.
"Do you have any other questions before we go back to seeing what happened with your eyes?"
"Yeah. Do you know why you were assigned as my teacher if you disliked the Uchiha clan so much? I mean, giving you the last loyal member of the family as a student..."
I frowned. He should have known the answer from my earlier explanation. "Isn't the person you're trying to kill also an Uchiha?" I rhetorically asked. "Who better to teach you to do so? Besides, I already told you that I want him dead and don't particularly care how he dies."
Sasuke nodded. "I see. Were there any other reasons why you disliked my family?"
I sighed. "In your father's case, yes," I confessed, pulling a paper from my vest and handing it to Sasuke. "It ties into the arrogance bit, but... well, this is a copy of a letter that I gave to your father shortly after Shisui-san's death. After what happened, the original was found unopened and tied to a rather singed training post in your back yard; the investigators told me that it looked like someone had been practicing katon jutsu on it. I doubt that it would have survived if it wasn't for the fact that I used a rather... special... sort of paper."
"Fugaku-san," Sasuke read out loud, his face becoming increasingly incredulous as the letter went on. "I know that you don't like me, and I assure you that the feeling is quite mutual, but there are rather important matters that I feel you should know about. Your son, Itachi, recently murdered Uchiha Shisui in order to obtain the highest level of your family's doujutsu and plans to use it to..." Sasuke trailed off at that. "You knew?"
"Yes," I confirmed. "I even went through the trouble of warning your family... and that letter wasn't the only attempt I made. My warnings, however, were ignored... despite the fact that it's common knowledge among the shinobi of Konoha that I never lie."
Sasuke looked sick.
"The fact that your father died because he ignored my warnings was bad enough in a way, but... well, the fact that he let his hubris and his dislike for me cloud his judgment when not only his own life, but the lives of his entire family were at stake doesn't exactly raise my estimation of his character."
I idly noticed tears in my student's eyes as he spoke up. "How do I know that you're not just..."
"Toying with you? Lying? What purpose would that serve? Besides, do you have any idea what the consequences would be if I tried that? I've spent the last twenty years cultivating a reputation as someone who does not lie. Feel free to ask around if you want to verify that, by the way. I can be wrong just as easily as anyone else, of course, but at least I honestly believe what I'm saying, and I've tried to make it clear that I was just telling you about how I saw your family and why I didn't like them. I'm pretty sure that they had positive traits as well, and if you want to honor their memory, I advise you to keep those in mind." Seeing that Sasuke didn't seem to understand, I sighed as I decided to make a calculated gamble and forcibly softened my facial expression. "I know this is hard for you to really understand, but a normal part of growing up for any child is to come to grips with the fact that their parents are or were just as human as they are -- that the parents they idolized aren't or weren't perfect, that they had their fair share of flaws, that they make and made mistakes. It's harder for people like you or me, though, because we not only have to come to grips with our parents' imperfections but also with what they have cost us..."
Coming from a shinobi, that sort of admission was practically unheard of. Oh, sure, people would tell the story of something, but to do so in an emotion-laden manner designed to admit vulnerability? The awkward silence that followed was actually to be expected.
"Of course," I continued when I realized that Sasuke wasn't about to say anything, "the details are completely different. I lost my family because of a particularly moronic ninja, not because of a failure on any of my relatives' part... I merely lost my innocence and suffered through several months of senseless torture because of my parents' willingness to break a promise. I don't claim to know what it feels like to lose your family to their own arrogance and a brother's betrayal... only to know what it's like to have to come to grips with your parents' flaws. Well, that and what it feels like to be torn away from everything you ever knew... what it feels like to have a giant nine-tailed fox slaughter your closest friends... and, of course, what it feels like to try to pick up the pieces only to be forced to watch helplessly as someone that you care for like a son is tortured for slightly under twelve years because of the betrayal of someone you trusted."
Sasuke winced at that list. "The three times you lost everything?"
"There's more involved in each of those cases, of course," I replied after giving my student a nod of confirmation. "The fox didn't technically slaughter all of my friends, for instance -- one of them died in childbirth because of a triage decision that was made in an attempt to save several of the wounded. Even if I have reason to suspect foul play, the fox's rampage merely created the opportunity for what happened; she didn't die because of the fox itself. There's more to the story in all of the other cases as well... but that's life, isn't it? I don't know what you found under that shrine, either, beyond the fact that Uchiha Madara was involved and that it had something to do with the purpose of the sharingan, but the fact that there's more to the story than what most people know doesn't lessen what you lost."
Sasuke gaped. "How..."
"Do I know about that? Same way I know what Itachi did to you before he left, really. Tell me, have you ever heard the story of a woman named Cassandra?"
"Kassandora?" Sasuke sounded out, trying to pronounce the unfamiliar name.
"Close enough," I allowed. "Her story is part of an ancient legend, one that dates back... oh, at least fifteen thousand years or so. According to the legend, she was cursed with the ability to see the future."
"Cursed? How is that a curse?"
"Cursed to know what was to come, but to be unable to change it," I elaborated. "She foresaw her own parents' deaths and the destruction of her home city, among other things, but was powerless to prevent any of it."
Sasuke blinked. "I see. What does that have anything to do with..."
"Your question?" I finished for him. "Take a look at the third paragraph of that letter."
"Following this," he read, "Itachi plans to direct Sasuke to seek out the scrolls you have hidden..." Sasuke trailed off again before losing his composure. "What the fuck?"
I shrugged my shoulders for the third time in the conversation. "Do you understand now?"
Sasuke blinked.
"It's all in there, you know... how Itachi tortured you, his parting advice, even the method by which the mangekyou sharingan is obtained."
"And my father ignored this?"
"As far as I can tell, he didn't even read it," I corrected, revisiting my suspicions of brain damage. "Remember, the letter was found unopened."
Sasuke slumped back in his seat, a pained expression on his face.
"Now that the conversation has become rather thoroughly morbid," I asked, "would you like to change the topic?"
Sasuke nodded his head in confirmation. "Perhaps... did you know my mother?"
"Yes."
"Was she also that... arrogant?"
"No... she had her fair share of flaws, but arrogance wasn't one of them... well, as far as I know anyway."
Sasuke frowned. "You didn't like her, either?"
"Not really," I agreed. "I found her somewhat more tolerable than your father, but that wasn't really saying much."
Sasuke blinked. "Why?" he frustratedly asked. "Mom was one of the sweetest most kind people I knew! She was practically a mother to my entire generation of the clan!"
I frowned, reflexively wondering how to break this news to my student without permanently damaging his sanity, before I decided that I just didn't care. "We're talking about the same Uchiha Mikoto, right? The one who introduced herself by walking up to me, sticking her hand down my pants, and telling me to give her my sperm?"
For the second time in our conversation, Sasuke froze. "What?" he managed to croak out after a moment.
I firmly met my student's gaze. "Remember what I told you about your clan's attempts to seduce me?"
"Even Mom?"
I gave him a brief nod of my head to signal my agreement. "Yes, even your mother. I'll freely admit that I was more than a little creeped out by her approach, especially since it was in front of several of Konoha's more prominent political figures," I said, ignoring the choking noises that came from Sasuke at that last revelation, "but a friend of mine talked to me about it, and we managed to figure out what probably happened. I can't tell you for sure -- the only people who could are dead -- but as near as we could tell, your father thought that I might either be the type to be turned on by the thought of sleeping with someone else's wife or just have a MILF fetish."
"Merufu fetish?" he my student enquired, his tone indicating that he probably knew that he didn't want to know the answer.
I smirked. The acronym was unnecessarily vulgar, but... "A... err... 'thing' for the motherly type," I clarified.
"Oh."
"To continue, we suspected that your father ordered your mother to make an attempt... but that your mother was... well, less than happy with the order. Being a dutiful wife, she obeyed but did so in a way calculated to cause your father as much embarrassment as possible."
Sasuke seemed almost relieved at that explanation.
"When we figured that out, I'll admit that she started to spook me quite a bit less, but I really didn't appreciate being used as part of your family's domestic disputes... especially since she did that in front of several dignitaries who I later needed favors from. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get someone to help you out when they only remember you for getting molested at a party?"
Sasuke's left eyebrow was twitching rather rapidly as he shook his head in lieu of a vocal response.
"Let's just say that it's not easy. Even if I was more than famous enough for them to know who I was before the incident, first impressions are rather important and I still haven't lived that incident down."
As Sasuke looked like he was readying himself to say something, we were interrupted by one of the medics entering the room.
"Ah, Recca-san," he greeted. "No problems?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "Just trying to convince my student that the road that appears the shortest isn't always the best -- or even the quickest."
The medic-nin nodded in understanding. "And Uchiha-san's condition?"
"No signs of anything serious," I replied. "I've kept an eye out for any tics, but haven't seen any."
He blinked. "What about the eyebrow?"
"Oh, that," I dismissed. "He asked me about his mother."
"Ah. I take it you mentioned the incident at the daimyou's wedding?"
"Well, I didn't tell him where it happened..." I paused, noticing that my student's eyebrow's twitching had reached dangerous proportions. "Anyway, do you have any localized temporary paralysis jutsu?"
As things turned out, I didn't get to find out what had happened with Sasuke's sharingan. I eventually decided to come back later in the day, preferably after his emotions had settled somewhat.
--
Omake by Akun
The Real Reason Why Recca Was Team 7's Jonin-Sensei
Sarutobi sighed, "I'm sorry, Recca, but even if you've managed to make a deal, the teacher selection is already done. Kakashi Hatake is the new teacher of Team 7."
Recca didn't glare. He didn't shout. He didn't bellow, roar, throw things, or even threaten to blow anything up. He simply nodded, turned and left.
Sarutobi quickly reached for his migraine medication. The last time Recca quietly accepted something...
Sarutobi shuddered, still recalling the stuttering disbelief of the ANBU when they calculated how much C4 had been used and where it had likely been crammed into the victims.
Six minutes later, Kakashi burst into Sarutobi's office with a very odd mixture of anger and terror.
"I'm going on a year long vacation. I resign my post as jonin-sensei. Here's a doctor's note. I'm quite stressed. Goodbye."
Kakashi dashed out of the room, leaving the letter to flutter to the floor. An ANBU quietly picked up the note and delivered it to Sarutobi.
Before he could read it, though, Recca stepped into the room, "I just heard Kakashi took a long vacation. Well, I guess there's nothing for it."
Sarutobi glanced at the note. It was by an actual medic nin, but it was a prescription for allergy medication. An allergy medication used to treat those allergic to dogs. And it wasn't even prescribed for Kakashi.
Sarutobi nodded, "Fine, you are now the jonin-sensei of Team 7."
The Sandaime managed to keep his depressed sigh restrained until he knew Recca was out of ear shot.
Kakashi's weakness, his Icha Icha Paradise collection, was too easily exploited by a man who know how to make twenty C4 Bunshin and didn't mind having them do kamikaze runs at Hatake's house.
--
Omake by Finbar
"Fate has dictated that I will win this match!" Neji declared pompously, his perfect hair swept back.
Hinata sighed and face-palmed for a moment. "Neji, you whiny little bitch. You know, If I win this match, I'm going to do grappling practice with Naruto-kun and he wont be wearing a shirt."
Up in the stands, Naruto blinked. "Huh? since when?"
"So, I'm sure no one will object if I finish this quickly." Her hands flickered into a seal. "Hand-gun no Jutsu."
The pair of large guns in her hands gave silent evidence that she had been studying under Recca. "Now, dance bitch!"
