Hey
How's your day going?
A super spicy shout-out to my beta reader, DoctorNiklaus.
Enjoy…
CHAPTER 9
In Ame
"Good news. Lab says that the poison only works when ingested, and even then, it was good you washed yourself as soon as you did. The bad news is that," said Hana, lifting a trash bag tied at the mouth with neon yellow tape, half smiling, "we'll have to dispose of your sandals, just to be safe."
Minato groaned quietly, palming his face. "Those are my favourite pair, Hana."
"I don't know what to tell you," the medic shrugged, accurately tossing the trash bag into a biohazard waste bin. The head of her white hazmat suit was tossed back, further confirming that the poison that killed Ame wasn't airborne, but Minato couldn't help but notice the muck caked under and around the disposable black boots of her suit. "For your sake–and everyone in Konoha–it's a sacrifice you have to make."
That didn't stop Minato from grunting foully, collecting the new pair Hana passed him.
Hana contemplated giving the man a comforting pat on his shoulders, thinking otherwise when she remembered that Minato Namikaze was still her Hokage, and that, just because they could speak so casually, that didn't mean they were rank-mates.
The Kurama in her wanted her to comfort the Hokage, but the Inuzuka part of her scolded her for entertaining that thought.
She wasn't exactly a family friend, per se; she was in the Hokage's private medical team and that made her more often than not work alongside the Hokage–when she wasn't working as an animal vet, that is–but that was all.
Sure, she was acquainted with her girlfriend's best friend—the Hokage's son—, though that was neither here nor there. She earned her spot in the Hokage's confidence, not through friendships or her mother, but through hard work and determination.
They were in a medical tent located outside of Ame, close to the main gate. There wasn't much to the interior, aside from having a somewhat wide space where the thick, rainproof plastic of the walls also covered the ground. The mud Hana had tracked in was ignorable, since these medical tents weren't made to be reused.
Minato got up from his chair and collected a scroll from Hana, unsealing his hazmat suit.
"You can't be too careful."
She pulled on the head of her hazmat suit and stepped out, giving her Hokage privacy to dress. She inhaled and exhaled through the gas mask of her suit, outside of the tent. For a brief moment, she wondered where her ninken were, only to remember that she told them to stay back in Konoha, given the nature of the mission.
A quarter of Konoha medics and civilian lab technicians were called out to Ame, and a sizable number of other shinobi as well to help carry and dispose of the corpses.
Standing there, she watched a fellow clanmate and medic fast-walk past her with a clipboard, identifying and marking off another few bodies; identifying the people involved, Minato's shinobi searched through Ame for citizen records. Following behind her on the wet, muddy ground were two other ninjas hoisting a stretcher with the body of a man dearly hugging a toddler in his arms.
The Hokage had wanted all of the bodies treated with respect, even as they were all set to be cremated. Each body was assigned a grave marker in a newly marked hectare of land that was to serve as Hidden Rain's graveyard. The corpses had to be positively identified inside one of the five dozen other medical tents spotted around the entirety of Rain country, noted down to be sent to the rotation of ninjas in charge of carving names on gravestones.
By Hana's count, they had already burnt over one hundred and fifty bodies, and more were on their way.
It was a tragic sight.
In all of the twenty years she had been alive, the nine years she had been a medic, and the two years she had been a Jounin, she hadn't ever seen this many dead bodies.
Minato called out to her, and Hana reentered the tent.
The Hokage was now wearing his hazmat suit, his first ever time wearing one, so, understandably, he wanted one of his best medics to check that he had worn it properly. Hana did so, pulling down the chin of his gas mask, nodding that there weren't any gaps underneath, patting the wrists and going behind Minato, patting the back of his neck for any gaps, and doing the same for his boots. She came back around, her deep brown eyes seeing the dark look in her Hokage's blue eyes.
"Looks okay, sir." She stepped aside and Minato walked past her, pushing open the tent and walking outside. She went after him, carefully walking on the mud as the Hokage entered Ame's gates. He didn't ask for the official count of the dead, not yet, and since Hana was the Hokage's most trusted field medic, it fell on her to tell him when he requested it.
She did, saying, "Lab says that the poison has never been seen before. Colorless, odorless, tasteless, and chakra-less. Fatal for humans and animals."
Minato slowed down to hear the report, giving her his ear as his medic jogged to his side. Since Konoha's alliance with Suna, the Leaf's medical system and laboratories had become more effective; in just twenty-four hours they had been able to break down and study the nerve agent that had eliminated an entire country.
"It was infused into the water. Kakashi found a dead snake in a water treatment center in Ame and another snake in a village two miles due south of Hidden Rain. Kakashi's with a team looking for more."
The two of them reached the same assumption, and Minato voiced it. "Orochimaru was involved in this carnage…"
Even as the crippled Sannin was imprisoned underneath Konoha, losing his sanity in the darkness and being eaten alive by rats, the man was still wearing on Minato's nerves.
As they spoke, ANBU Operative Crow and some of the other black operatives were partnering with Konoha's non-ANBU and the former Sound Four to dismantle Hidden Sound. It was painstaking and couldn't be rushed, since the Sannin's network ran too deep into the core of the continent.
Back to the matter at hand, Hana nodded to the Hokage's assumption. "I think so, too. My theory is that the snakes introduced the poison into the water system, and people across the country drank from this water, cooked with it, and bathed with it. Part of the water was recycled to maintain the rain, and more people inadvertently ingested the poison."
Minato nodded to Hana's deduction. The two entered Ame's gates, and Minato went straight toward the Amekage tower, asking, "What else did the lab report?"
"That it takes the poison exactly five days to work, taking into account not everyone would be exposed to the same amount of poison and that some immune systems proved stronger than others. Either way, we're classifying this poison as a fatal nerve agent. The lab's working towards making a cure."
Minato grunted, nodding again.
Hana continued. "The progression of the nerve agent is thinning of the blood, eliminating white blood cells and platelets, drastically increased heartbeats, gradual erosion of the lungs and liver, swelling of the heart and brain, psychosis, paralysis of the muscles, and then death."
"Kami," Minato swore, ducking into the Amekage tower and turning to the medic. "Such cruelty…."
Hana nodded. "I'd expect this from Orochimaru."
"But why would Yagura do this? 'Til now, we haven't heard anything about him. Then, all of a sudden, this happens."
That statement wasn't exactly a lie, but, fortunately, Hana didn't catch onto his half-truth.
She shrugged lamely. "I think I heard that the Six Tails was stolen from Water country two weeks ago by Kisame Hoshigaki. There could be a link there." She snapped her fingers, recalling something else at her mention of the Six Tails. "Lab analysis of the nerve agent says that seventy percent of it is a match for the Six Tails chakra we have archived in the village's Chakra Archive, a good twenty percent is a match for the poisons and toxins on Orochimaru's Kusanagi sword, and ten percent is an unknown element that dampened the Six Tails chakra so that it wouldn't be sensed."
Minato hummed.
The Chakra Archive was an old storage facility for every notable sample of chakra on the continent, from samples of the First Hokage's chakra to samples of chakra from both Kirabi of Kumo and the Eight-Tailed beast. It was an extensive and ancient collection of chakra.
The facility was one of Konoha's best-kept secrets.
"Assuming that Yagura wanted retaliation for the Six Tails Jinchuriki being taken, killing the whole country is overkill," Hana remarked, shaking her head as a body was carried out from the underground level of the tower.
Deidara's.
Bound in a straitjacket, wearing a mouthpiece like a feral dog, and having his chakra restrained, Hidan was wheeled out of the building. His fate was unknown to Hana, but she said, "Regardless of the other casualties."
"For now, since we don't know the whole story, we can only assume the worst." He trusted Naruto and Rin to acquire all the necessary information from Kiri, especially when they linked up with Crow's Feet. No doubt Minato's spymaster would have plenty of information on Yagura and the situation inside Kiri.
As for why Orochimaru didn't just poison Konoha as Yagura did to Ame, Minato could only guess that the mad snake wanted to ruin him with his own hands.
"Aside from the cleanup here, our top priority is making sure that our water systems, and those of our allies, are clean from Yagura's poison." He lowered his voice and Hana's ears perked up. "I trust no one outside of yourself, Team Tiger, and I know Yagura's involvement in this mess." Hana nodded jerkily, quick to confirm this. "Let me be the one to notify the Council. You'll be in charge of checking the village's water supply. I'll be sending out Asuma Sarutobi and Ebisu to warn our allies to do the same. Discreetly," he emphasized, stressing the weight of the situation with narrowed eyes and a small dip of his chin. "I don't want Yagura to know that I'm onto him."
"Yes, sir." Hana bobbed her head. The fewer people that knew of Yagura, the fewer leaks that needed to be traced. "You're not going to tell the Council the whole truth?"
Minato's lips screwed the side and he crossed his arms, looking up. "Not all of them. I don't trust the civilian council members to not stir up panic and," he brought his voice down again and this time Hana needed to take a half-step closer to hear him, frowning when the man whispered coded words to his medic.
It took her a few moments to understand his meaning.
Hana's face fell, grim at the message, and she flicked her eyes up to her Hokage. Her ears pricked up again, listening hard for any person hiding in their midst, eavesdropping on their conversation.
There was no one, outside of the occasional duo of shinobi that trooped out, carrying dead bodies, not paying the Hokage and the medic much attention outside of a polite nod of their heads.
Minato's cerulean gaze reflected down to her through the visors of his hazmat suit, nodding secretively. Hana left him, leaving Rain country to perform the mission the Hokage assigned her, but his coded words remained in her head, echoing a secret she wholeheartedly swore to never breathe aloud, whether alone or amid company.
The Hokage wouldn't have told her if she didn't need to know.
"Council elders have been compromised."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Valley of the End
There was a dead body slumped over Rin Noharu's casket.
The person had discarded his Tobi façade, throwing his orange, one-eyed mask aside when he had teleported before the great stone door set before Madara Uchiha's hideout.
Some penitent part of himself wanted to be found, so he pressed his bloodied hand onto the stone and diffused his chakra through the blood, setting alight a bonfire handprint before stumbling inside the hidden area when the worst of the poison burning his insides alive locked up his jaws shut.
The last thing his eye saw was Rin, through the panel of glass viewing into the casket, laying, pristine and immaculate, in a neat black dress.
Foaming blood through gnashed teeth, Obito Uchiha wept.
A shroud of trees covered him as the light left his right eye.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Purple Hearts Inn
Zyouki city
Hot Water Country
Mikoto yawned out of her room, bleary-eyed and scratching her lower back. She stood at the open door of her and Yugao's assigned room, momentarily confused about where she was and why she was there until the memory of her team's long search for their target slipped back into her mind. She groaned.
She had been awake past her normal bedtime of eleven in the night, and even when Yugao had called off the search at one in the morning, Mikoto had been unable to find the pain medication for her arm when the last one wore off and the stabbing pain in her broken right arm returned with a fiery vengeance. Then when she had found the meds and the effect dulled the pain, she had been unable to sleep because she was wary there were cameras or spy seals in the room.
It took Yugao half an hour to reassure her that she had personally checked the room for spyware, but by the time Mikoto allowed herself to sleep, it was three in the morning.
She groused at how late she was waking up, poking her head back into the bedroom and spotting the wall close.
8:40 am.
"Ugh," she grumbled, closing her eyes and lingering on the numbness of her right arm. "Kami, I hate this."
For the sake of convenience, she had to change the clothes she normally wore on missions to something simpler to wear; a short-sleeved black shirt, black tights, blue shinobi sandals, and a light grey apron shirt. It took some effort combing and dressing her long hair into a ponytail, and the result was still somewhat slanted to the left side of her head. Her backpack and weapon were with Yugao.
Her stubbornness didn't permit Yugao to help her more than that, bathing and dressing with only one hand.
Mikoto groaned again, tired of her predicament. "Damn you, Sasuke," she breathed, meaning but not meaning her curse.
She ambled down the stairs of the quaint inn, her steps heavy with tiredness, until she got to the common area, finding a long table stretched out on one side of the room and a spread of breakfast dishes carefully laid out on it.
The family-run inn she and the rest of her team were staying in served a breakfast buffet every 8:00 am-9:00 am, she reminded her sleepy self.
She waved slightly to Yugao on the other side of the room from the buffet table. Yugao smiled a little, sympathetic to Mikoto's pain, and waved back.
Mikoto made it a point to ignore Sai, who rolled his eyes at his teammate's act. Yugao's breakfast was cereal and milk, and Sai chose a morning meal of eggs and bread, sipping a cup of orange juice to wash it all down.
He smacked his lips at Mikoto, approaching their table.
"I didn't think you wanted me to help you get breakfast," Yugao smirked, recalling in vivid colors Mikoto's stubbornness that morning. Yugao, having gone through a few broken bones in her time, could understand shrugging off help and trying to be independent so as not to be a bother to others, but that didn't mean she didn't enjoy teasing Mikoto with her own words. "Go ahead and serve yourself." And before Mikoto could leave, she said, "No sweets."
"Hn," Mikoto grunted, shoulders slumped, visibly offended at how flawlessly rested Yugao looked.
Yugao wanted to remark that Mikoto's grunt sounded awfully similar to most of her Uchiha cousins', further proof that the Namikaze and the Uchiha were brother clans, but she went back to her cereal, not too eager to get into an argument with the obstinate girl.
"Morning, Washboard," Sai piped up, brimming with an enthusiasm that annoyed Mikoto.
"Save it, Smiley," she warned him with a low growl when she saw that he wanted to raise the matter of her disheveled appearance. "I'm not in the mood."
Sai hummed, smiling a little too much as he sipped his juice.
Mikoto was about to throw all self-restraint to the wind and attack Sai, the infuriating asshole, but she stopped when Yugao casually said, "You better hurry. The food's running out."
Growling, Mikoto missed Sai as he sent her a finger-wiggling wave, turning to the table to get herself some breakfast.
Over the buffet table was a sign.
We ask our dear guests to please respect the table
Thank you
Some part of her wondered if the family that ran the inn were in any distant way related to the Akimichi clan.
On the left side of the table, she picked up a bowl and spoon in her left hand, sliding straight to the bowl of oatmeal at the middle section of the buffet and scooping herself the very last two ladles of thick, creamy oatmeal. Oddly for a girl that had endless energy, Mikoto wasn't one for sugar in the morning, so she stepped away from the diminishing dish of sugar close to the oatmeal.
About to leave the buffet table, Mikoto spotted the tray containing two strips of bacon.
Her stomach grumbled, and she shrugged.
She placed her bowl on the table and reached for the bacon with her left hand, intending to chew on them on the way to their table, until she and someone else's hands met.
She looked up the length of the arm and met a pair of black eyes, heavy with lack of sleep. The woman, flicking those eyes to Mikoto's sling, became apologetic.
"It's fine. You can have it."
Mikoto wanted to bristle at the woman's pity, but the sincerity of her eyes forced a weary sign from her lips. She picked up her bowl and began to turn around. "Don't worry about it, lady."
"I-It's fine. Really," the woman insisted, stuttering a little when she realized the young girl would see her act as pity.
Mikoto shrugged, a trying smile on her lips to tell the woman that she shouldn't think much of it, turning again toward her table.
The woman joked, "Between you and me, I'm supposed to be a vegetarian. My pet pig, Tonton, will hate me if she smells bacon on me."
Mikoto's chin slumped to her collar, tired of this but still wanting to be respectful. She looked at the woman, blue eyes scanning the woman up and down, then back up again. She pulled her lips back into a smile, exaggerating the expression. "Really–"
"Wait…" the woman said abruptly, her dark eyes narrowing at Mikoto. "You look…familiar."
"I guess I have one of those faces," Mikoto tried at a joke, her inflated smile falling to something more genuine.
"By any chance…are you related to Minato Namikaze? Does the name Naruto ring any bells?"
Mikoto's brows raced up, an elated smile lifting her expression more. "Matter of fact, yeah. My dad and my big bro."
The cobwebs of tiredness slowly fell as the gears in her head turned.
She needed a few more seconds to realize who she was talking to.
"Hold on," she said, squinting at the black-haired, black-eyed woman, who just so happened to own a pet pig. "I think I know you, too. Are you…Shizune Kato?"
"Mikoto…?" The bags under Shizune's eyes lifted and she gushed, holding back from drawing the girl into a hug, or else risk pouring the oatmeal on both of them. "Last time I saw you, you were this little speck of a baby." She swiftly collected Mikoto's oatmeal and began pulling her to another table. "Come on, Shisho's going to love to meet you."
Yugao pulled Sai back down onto his seat, observing Shizune as she guided Mikoto to their target, Tsunade Senju.
Nursing a hangover and wearing a pair of dark shades, Tsunade blearily looked up from her cup of coffee at the person her assistant was so eagerly bringing.
She sniffed, gruff and snapping impatiently, "And who the hell are you supposed to be? A Minato cosplayer?"
Right away, Mikoto didn't like Tsunade.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
8:59 am
Water Country
A well-executed bonfire could be considered invisible to outsiders, but when enough of them were grouped close together at a time, there was a visible blip of chakra that sensors could locate.
This was why Uchiha that wanted to be found widely spaced out their bonfires.
There was a small buzz at the back of a butcher's shop and summarily burst of misty red chakra, followed by a trailing pop of yellow lights. The two ninjas dropped into a crouch and expertly slid to the other side of the open back door, ears twitching for a change in the tempo of the conversation going on inside the butcher's shop.
There was none. The hammering of cleavers down on meat and bone continued, and the noise of casual conversation concerning the recent dip in tourism on the island continued.
The Angel of Konoha bound over the door and soundlessly landed on the other side, keeping her eyes peeled and her ears open for any patrolling ninja, all the while carefully taking into account the weight of the bandaged bundle strapped to her back. Samehada bubbled in anticipation of action, and the girl carrying him just barely contained those same emotions inside herself, squatting low for the fingers of her right hand to graze the floor, stretching her senses around.
The back area of the butcher's shop was painfully small, being shared with the back of a carpenter's shack that was mostly inactive since the end of the war. The dumpster was closed, though the twins endured the putrid smells of rancid waste from carved-up meat. The back of the shop was somewhat hidden from open view, since the only way to access it was by entering an alley and turning the left corner into the small space.
Rin perched at the corner of the alley, shaded by shadows and fingers touching the floor.
Naruto, using his Sharingan, searched the back of the shop, eyes flicking to each brick on the wall, focusing on his task while his sister watched their back.
He found something, a faint line of bluish fire underneath the dumpster, drawn with blood from right to left, where the invisible fire gradually increased in brightness from right to left.
Lying almost prone on the floor, Naruto turned his eyes in the direction of the brighter side of the bonfire, meeting the shut door of the carpenter's workshop.
He got off the floor, rubbed the dirt off his hands, and flicked his head to his sister, sending a wordless call for her attention.
He replaced her position, having to weightlessly bound over the open door of the butcher's shop and remain low at the corner of the alley. Naruto didn't touch the floor–not a touch-sensor like his sister–though his natural senses roved the surroundings.
Their light steps didn't leave footprints on the ground.
Rin leaped over the door and knelt by the locked door of the inactive carpenter's workshop. It took some self-awareness to adjust her position while having Samehada on her back, but she was able to do it, reaching into the kunai pouch on her right thigh and drawing out two senbon.
Her tongue poked out from the corner of her mouth, working on the lock of the door.
She had a lockpicking set sealed in a storage seal inside her kunai pouch, but she thought better of it; the quick blip of chakra that would burst from unsealing the lockpicking set could alert nearby sensors.
For all they knew, the butchers inside were retired ninjas.
Rin hissed a mute curse, twisting instead of pushing, having to start again.
She gave her brother a wordless eye-roll when he glanced at her, a twinkle in his eyes.
Then the twins cursed and vanished.
Two seconds later, a young girl wearing a bloodied apron, lugged a trash bag out of the shop, her freckled cheeks puffed with effort. Her facemask was pulled down to her chin, and she immediately regretted not covering her nose when she recalled the ghastly smells awaiting her inside the dumpster.
Facing away, she inhaled and exhaled twice, dragging a large gulp of air into her lungs and throwing open the large bin. She wasn't a small girl, being in her mid-teens and having experienced a growth spurt in height some months ago, so opening the bin wasn't an issue.
The smell got to her and she gasped, throwing her face away and covering her nose with the crook of her right elbow. She wheezed, "Oof."
A cluster of angry flies buzzed free from the bin.
She was a lanky girl, tall but thin, so it was understandable for her hesitation in lifting the bag of waste with her into the bin.
She took a step back and threw her head up.
Out of her field of vision, Naruto skittered on the wall to the right.
"Huh?" she looked to her right, staring for a moment at one particular spot. Then she shook her head, wiping the beads of perspiration over her brow with the back of her hand. "Kami, I'm hearing things now."
Tugging her facemask over her nose, the girl prepared herself; she did two squats, standing up and twisting her hips to the right, and then left. She stopped, looking with deep focus at the locked door of their former workshop neighbour. It didn't look out of place in any visible way, but she sighed, missing her friends.
Gloomier and not dwelling on the smell from the dumpster, the girl heaved her trash bag up and over into the large bin, slamming the lid shut. Spinning on her heel back to the butcher's shop, she called, "Dad! We need the trash gone! It's full!"
The man inside yelled back, "Remind me tomorrow! Now, get your ass to school! You're already late!"
The girl groused, shoulders slumped, bumbling back into the shop. "But dad!"
Saying that she was late to school was like saying that the sun was bright, but that was neither Naruto nor Rin's problem.
Naruto slid back to the alley and Rin eased the Chameleon Wallpaper off her face; if the girl had been a Chunin, she would have noticed that the backdoor of the carpenter's workshop had a barely noticeable bulge. Chameleon Wallpaper could hide people, trusting the user to suppress their chakra, but there was always still a human-shaped protrusion if a skilled enough person squinted hard at the area.
Rin sighed, peeling the rest of the wallpaper off her body and skirting to the backdoor of the butcher's shop, scrunching her face to listen for any suspicious break in the conversation going inside.
Nothing like that.
The teenager yelled to her father that she was going upstairs to bathe, and the man screamed for her to hurry up.
Rin sighed again, sliding back to the workshop's backdoor and hastening up.
The lock of the door popped and Rin caught it before it could creak open.
On cue, Naruto landed beside her and his Sharingan spun clockwise, checking the building for human life and nodding his head when he sensed someone.
The person they were looking for.
Crow's Feet.
The man was sitting on a wooden crate, near the long unused worktable and surrounded by wooden chips, not swept away in the last three weeks.
Rin quietly closed the door after she and Naruto proceeded inside.
The workshop had a front room and a backroom; the former was where the carpenters displayed their wooden crafts, and up till today the wooden rowboats and wooden horses were still there, a haunting reminder of the mass roundup of bloodline holders that had taken place on their small island three weeks ago. The backroom was a private space for the carpenters, containing two worktables, a tool rack that encompassed half of the wall adjacent to the backdoor, sharp but dusty from disuse, and last were the unfinished wooden items the carpenters had been working on.
Toy soldiers and boat oars and disassembled parts of a bedframe, and an assorted backlog of other things.
If the three of them listened hard enough, they could still hear the ghosts of the carpenters working hard on their next project.
Naruto frowned, picking up a crate and setting it on the floor, gruffly sitting down. Rin decided not to sit–instead, she leaned on the closed backdoor.
Naruto and Crow's Feet deactivated their Sharingan.
There was silence among the three.
Naruto and Rin studied Shisui, and Shisui studied them, his lone right eye examining the twins.
He was sitting heavily on his crate, wearing a black and brown heap of tattered cloaks, masking his face behind a one-eyed white mask with three markings at the corner of the sole right eye. His left foot tapped the floor, and he chortled, smiling at the same time as Naruto.
"It's good to see you too, Crow's Feet."
Shisui chuckled. "Please, Crow's Feet was my father's name, call me Mister Feet." He looked around his friend, sending an eye-smile through his mask to his friend's sister. "Hey, you."
Rin smirked widely, nodding back. "Hey, Mister Feet."
When their eyes lingered for five seconds too long, Naruto snapped his fingers in front of Shisui's face. "Hey. Eyes on me."
Shisui chuckled lightly, his hands raised harmlessly. "Hey man, I was just saying hi." He blubbered incoherently when his friend narrowed his eyes at a glare. Shisui placed a playfully indignant hand on his chest. "I would never–"
Feeling a tick pulsing on his brow, Naruto pushed past Shisui's obvious flirting with his sister. "You're aware of the tracker seal on your chakra, right?"
Here, Shisui grunted, shifting his weight. "Yeah, I figured that's what she put on me."
Rin's brow knit. "Who?"
"Mei Terumi. Rebel leader," Shisui supplied, motioning to himself. "She burned me. Literally and metaphorically."
Naruto winced, almost voicing his apologetic words until he stopped himself, remembering that Shisui Uchiha wasn't one for pity. Still, getting burned by a Lava Release user was as serious as getting your head removed. The twins wondered how Shisui was still alive, as utterly messed up as they assumed his body currently was.
"I'm being helped by this sweet lady. She makes me burn lotion, the occasional pain med, food, and she's letting me sleep in her house. I'd introduce her to you but–"
Rin shook her hand, gesturing with one hand for him not to bother. "It's better the less she knows about us."
"My thoughts exactly." Shisui bobbed his head, his voice muffled behind his mask.
Naruto sat forward with his elbows on his thighs. "And the tracker seal?"
Shisui snapped his fingers. "Right. As long as I don't use my chakra, the tracker won't be able to find me."
"That's inconvenient," Naruto frowned.
"My last three years have been inconvenient. Getting burned and having my chakra tracked is the least of my problems. Believe me." Shisui shrugged, cringing a little at the pain he felt. "I make do."
The twins were privy to the Hokage's thoughts, so they knew Shisui's story.
The three of them–Naruto, Rin and Minato–were still investigating Danzo and the other elders.
Shisui waved his hand, bringing their attention back before they all began to dwell on bad memories.
"I trust Lord Hokage with my life. He'll nail that old man to the fucking wall." Shisui pulled back into himself, tightening hold of his emotions when he realized he allowed a sliver of his pent-up rage to slip past his guard. He was going to trust the process, the twins and their father digging behind the elders' backs and compiling proof until they had enough to make an arrest.
Admittedly, they were getting more and more on Koharu and Homura, but Danzo was a blank slate. They were all even inclined to think that the old man had fallen from the sky, if not for the clear record of his birth and his parentage, hidden within the Shimura clan's dusty archives.
Naruto and Rin shared the exact thought.
'He'll slip up eventually.'
Rin reached into a pocket of her Jounin vest and took out the scroll the Hokage had wanted them to show his spymaster as soon as they found him. She tossed it and it sailed over Naruto's head into Shisui's ready hand.
He unfurled the blank scroll with his right hand and activated his Sharingan, holding it up away from himself. Next, he took out a lighter from one of the layers of his cloak and lit it, holding it behind the scroll and finding the hidden message.
The Hokage's Seal expanded from the center of the page. It was a special seal created by Mito Uzumaki herself that couldn't be replicated or forged, and Shisui could easily discern a real one from a fake. Looking under the authentic seal, he found a storage seal.
As a spy, he was used to living off the land and surviving on his own in a foreign country without aid from his home, but he could still appreciate the three months' worth of food, clean water, medical supplies, and money the Hokage sent him through the twins.
And, knowing the Hokage, Minato would have sealed some books too.
Shisui smiled, the expression unintentionally tight and aching; he could start paying back Ami for her kindness.
He rolled up the scroll and stored it inside the ruffles of his robe, smirking. "Lord Hokage sure knows how to spoil a guy, huh."
"Alright," Naruto said, lacing his hands together, wholly attentive to the spymaster. "Give us your report so far on Kiri."
"You should probably sit down too, Rin," Shisui exhaled, shaking his head with a grim dip of his eye. "This whole situation is messed up."
At his prompting, Rin found herself a block of wood and, after checking for potential splinters, sat down, forming a rough triangle with the two boys.
"Well," Shisui began, deciding not to fold his arms or else he'd aggravate the burns on his right arm. He breathed out. "For starters, the first Crow's Feet—my old man—didn't know about Yagura's ties to Orochimaru. To their credit, I only found out about it all in the last month, but I guess by that point it was already too late."
Shisui frowned at his and his late father's mistake. "For the past three years of the civil war, Yagura's been using chemical hypnosis and chakra restraining seals on the rebels. No one knew. My old man didn't suspect anything. I didn't suspect anything…until Yagura got to Mei."
He gave a sweeping motion to his masked face and his cloaked form, detailing to Naruto a comprehensive report on the last twenty years of the war. It was an updated combination of his and his father's report on Kiri, after Shisui uncovered Orochimaru's involvement with Yagura, and found more information on Yagura's hatred for bloodlines.
"The results speak for themselves," Shisui said, too ashamed to show his gnarly face. "Konoha's going to burn."
Authors note
What do you think of this chapter?
What do you think of the story so far?
Let me know what you think, would you so kindly? Stay happy and stay safe, wherever you are in the world, and I will see you when I see you.
Foy.