And now, this.
"Is this...what I was so worried about?" Yahiko muttered. "It's not even Fuinjutsu."
"...It's just a normal scroll," Nodded Nagato. "Looks like another language, though not written with Niisan's usual neatness."
Hoshi's eye twitched, not having expected such less-than-stellar reactions.
Konan muffled a giggle behind her hand. Even if she had not disclosed what Hoshi, and sometimes she got up to in the village, Yahiko and Nagato had caught on.
"You guys knew about it?" Hoshi was slightly aware his mouth was open and shut it with a click.
"Well, yeah. There is just one room here," Yahiko waved his hand about the snug hideout. "If it wasn't for Jiraya-sensei, we'd have read it, but he was all for a man having his privacy."
"O...kay," Hoshi drawled. "So, allow me to decode this for you. This symbol here, A, is read as Aa, and..."
It took only a little time to elaborate the sounds made by the Latin alphabet, the rest was easy because Hoshi had written what he wanted to using Romanji, instead of actual English.
"Let's see," Nagato cleared his throat, memorizing the alphabet in a flash (whether from his natural brainpower or the Rinnegan, Hoshi knew not). "Raw materials and Food sources available to the Worker, the Educated, the Rich; may be subject to change due to fluctuations. That is one long heading, Niisan."
"And not even an important one, but keep scrolling." Hoshi nodded. The heading was based on gossip alone, because God did people love to talk about sources of income and how much a person made in Ame.
Nagato smiled briefly at the pun, before unfurling the scroll further, showing a map. In the corner was a plus with the letters N, E, S, W clockwise. In the centre of the map, structures were drawn with a lighter touch, labelled as 'Creative Visualization'.
"It's a map of Ame!" Yahiko said at once. "Though why did you draw it? We already know where everything is."
"Well, have you ever seen a map of Ame before?" Hoshi challenged, a small smirk on his face as the other boy realised that no, he had never.
"He withholds information thinks of himself as your master in his heart, is what Jiraya-sensei used to say." Nagato said, not taking his eyes off the map.
Konan coughed into her hand. "Hoshi thinks he can take down Hanzo."
"You what-?!" The other two boys whirled on the boy from another world, looking at him, for all intents and purposes, as if he was not from this earth.
"Hey! Give me a few years!" The white-haired lad held up his hands in placation, which did not soothe his friends at all. After minutes of bickering, Yahiko slammed his hand on the table.
"The hell man, I thought we'd go out and start helping people, not killing people we think should not be in charge!" Yahiko tried come off as angry, but the way he shivered belied his concern.
"Niisan, be reasonable." Nagato would have appeared much calmer, if not for the fact his hair had whipped out of his face and both his eyes were showing. "If we start small and make a relief effort in places people cannot have things or do stuff we can easily acquire with ninjutsu, away from the battles-" and Hanzo "we'll never have to do something stupid like this ever."
"Now now-" Hoshi began but was interrupted swiftly.
"You're stupid, are you Niisan?"
"...It's a ten year plan anyway that begins with relief efforts." Hoshi fired off rapidly.
"He's not denying being stupid." Konan muttered quite audibly and the boy's eye twitched. As if she hadn't planned to deliver his 'hidden' motives in a way to throw him under the bus most efficiently.
"Look here Hoshi," Yahiko started and dictated each point with a finger, "Hanzo is a S-Rank ninja; his security around inner Ame makes sure nothing happens without him knowing it; we'll likely have to be bound to more dangerous places in the village where it will take daily efforts to help people and lastly, there are a lot of people who need a hand."
"I know, I know," Hoshi glared at Konan. "And so does she that I need at least a decade to bring Hanzo and his allies down."
He didn't really take Konan for a teasing kind, especially after, but judging the day they met, when she had recently become an orphan, any first impression was not worth considering.
"Then let's think about Hanzo a decade from now." Yahiko proposed firmly. "There is much work for us to do. Missions," and a small smile made its way to his face, "our first step on the journey of a hundred million feet."
A gust of wind splattered raindrops against the walls on the outside, providing a beat before the air let up.
"You need to work on your speeches." Konan piped up.
"Shut up! Let's go get breakfast first!"
As they gathered their gear, Yahiko trying to cover his blush, Nagato shooting glances at him from time to time (Hoshi making sure he smiled in return each time), Konan trying to poke more fun at Yahiko, it occurred to him that these would be the only ninjas enthusiastic about tasks that were essentially D-Ranks.
One man's garbage is another man's treasure...how people lose sight of what they have for their own sufferings demand attention elsewhere.
Hoshi paused amidst counting his shuriken and flexed his hands, internally marvelling at how his mere thoughts controlled the movement of his fingers. Forget chakra, he would have loved to be just healthy...
"Let's go, young tadpoles." Hoshi spoke, dispersing the atmosphere with nostalgia as he turned his hop-in plank to display 'Out'.
They leapt out together, heading for the village (more like city, corrected Hoshi internally). The slippery landscape stretched into lines within his vision, and he never forgot marvel at the fact that with his chakra-enhanced speed he outpaced even Usain Bolt.
Brimming with confidence and caution alike, they paused when Ame came into view, before crossing the bridge over a rivulet with only a few leaps. No one wanted Hoshi to ruin the epic moment by falling into the water by crossing directly over it, slim as the chance was.
"So," Yahiko began as they interspersed with the people on the streets in the bazaar they used to frequent years back, "what do you say to paying back what we used to steal?"
"If you can remember it all, and are willing to tell people who we used to be, sure." Hoshi drawled and Yahiko nearly rolled his eyes.
"What do take me for? Of course we won't tell them if they can't remember."
"I wonder if Hana-san remembers us." Konan said with such nonchalance that Hoshi stopped, his chakra flaring alongside his temper and sticking his feet to the ground.
While Hoshi had not revealed anything specific to the other two the day she stalked him a year ago or so, Konan did not refrain from teasing him, a vengeful streak within her that she picked on him more than Yahiko, who the blue-haired girl had come to respect more than him somehow.
"You, biscuit woman!" He hissed, touching a nerve.
Konan's ears turned red. "We agreed to never speak of that!" Her chakra control analogy was something Hoshi would never let her live down, for try as she might, it still caused her embarrassment.
"Who's Hana-san? And what biscuits?" Nagato quipped innocently. As one, two head turned towards him and the redhead raised his hands, a placating smile on his face.
Hoshi's hand shot forward and he clicked Nagato's jaw upward. "I can't be mad with you around."
Konan nodded, as if it was a universal truth. What was it with the Uzumaki and their unnatural cognitive dissonance on others?
"Niisan, stop doing that! It's annoying!"
"Never let your guard down, foolish little brother."
"Again with 'foolish little brother'," A resigned sigh. "You really love using that phrase."
Of course, Hoshi wouldn't ever let Nagato weasel out of that one.
"Right," Yahiko clapped his hands. "See that house?" He pointed towards a brick and cement structure that was leaning forward, incongruent with the perpendicular buildings around it. "Seems like someone got swindled, because I think that was made last year and should be nowhere near that state."
Hoshi inspected it. It was tilted at an acute angle and had two stories, which sent all kinds of warning signs through his head. Mainly, what looked like living quarters weren't meant to follow the lead of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Snapping out of his reverie, he found himself being looked at by three pairs of eyes.
For the love of cats, am I an engineer? "What?"
"You look like you have a solution." Yahiko declared with a triumphant smile. Sadly, it was not cute like Nagato and Hoshi had to stop himself from punching him for expecting to do something clearly out of his reach.
"I have an idea." He drawled. "But I doubt they'd let us use an earth jutsu in the middle of the population."
"Oh right, we can use an earth jutsu to build supports from the ground itself." Yahiko said and Hoshi snorted. The one who lived in a world surrounded by ninjutsu since birth forgot about it.
"The question is, who is going to go and ask permission?"
"What permission?" Konan asked dryly, seeing Nagato weaving through some handseals and Yahiko whispering in his ears. The sound of the ground rising blocked out the one made by Hoshi's palm as it met his brow.
"Let's get out of here."
It was quite a while before Hoshi realized that the other three had a cute little conspiracy going on. Sitting around their hideout munching on fish onigiri, the white-haired boy faked a cough.
"Mind telling me why you never let me help anyone?" Black eyes shifted to the Rinnegan, to blue hair, to an excitable face. "We were clearly not going for subtlety."
Konan quirked a brow. "We were trying to protect you."
Something clicked inside Hoshi's head, for he looked at her with sheer surprise. "You told them! You told them about, about-"
"Hanzo, yes," Yahiko spoke, steel in his voice. "Considering whatever your plans will lead us to, we thought it fit to not do things your way if possible."
Hoshi let his palm meet his forehead. "Damn it, what do you think will happen if we just randomly start helping everyone in sight? Next thing you know, anyone who gets help from us gets taught a, a lesson about thinking so little of Hanzo to approach ones who have not shed a single drop of blood for the village and could be trying to divert loyalties for all they know."
Stunned silence, before Nagato broke it with more a croak than a whisper. "What."
"Just assuming we are an organisation, even if there are only four of us, but considering we can use chakra..." Hoshi trailed off. "We'd find ourselves acting as guards of an area of no interest to Hanzo, preferably far away from his influence until we can find more members."
He remembered from the anime, how the original Akatsuki barely amounted to a dozen and a half members, and they didn't arrive until the three orphans were nowhere near central Ame.
But since they were shinobi, chakra-users, Hanzo had brought down the might of his personal forces along with an allied shinobi village to take them down.
And that was when three orphans were trying to be philanthropic in a war-torn world, compared to his own approach of a multi-pronged resistance with roots in the various classes of Ame, so that Hanzo could not afford to take out all of their allies at once, compared to how he had been able to deal with Yahiko's group in the anime.
"You're thinking too much!" Said leader of the current group nervously consoled them, but it did not take a Rinnegan to see the sweat that had broken along his brow.
Teenagers, all of them. Hoshi sighed, before berating himself for thinking low of them.
They hadn't lived through a Low War before, or plotted each day on how to retaliate against their enemies with the aid of countless knowledge from books and the internet.
"I wish Jiraya-sensei was here." Konan mumbled.
"Niisan, what will we do?" Nagato asked, face grim.
"Why, we simply make such moves inconvenient against us." The boy smirked. "We can simply go out searching for people to help randomly, or..."
"So, you the guys who fix anything for money?" A haggard man asked, setting down a broken umbrella in front of Hoshi.
"Yes sir!" The white-haired boy grinned. Across the street in a baker shop, Yahiko had taken his last hour's earning, a few hundred Zen, Ame's currency, as payment for food they had stolen about a year ago.
Setting to work on some oddly bent wooden ribs of the umbrella, he took out a bit of thread he had hardened with soap and bits of concrete to tie them securely back into place.
"Hey, is that even gonna hold?" The man leaned into his face, glaring. Tossing a small his thread specifically prepared for such questioning without a pause, Hoshi only flicked his eyes to show he wasn't intimidated.
"Bite through that, and I fix this for free, uncle."
"Sure thing." The man gloated, before proceeding to gnash his teeth and cut the edge of his mouth over the chemically hardened string. "The fuck is this made of?!"
"Trade secret. Here, it's done. One-Fifty zen, uncle." Still gripping the fixed umbrella, Hoshi held out his hand, the message clear. Pay his dues or forget his umbrella.
"Fifty for the special thread, fifty for knowing how to fix it, fifty for doing in under five minutes."
"The last two are the same things. Here's hundred!" Which was what Hoshi had been originally going for, but still made a face to act as if he was being cheated but couldn't help it.
And the man didn't even argue much, like the previous customers who had come with shoes or pots, or simply to get their knives sharpened, and dropped two bronze coins into his palm before reclaiming his item.
Closer to the central district, where Nagato was secretly keeping watch, Konan had set up an origami stand (more of a cardboard mat upon which she sat), selling from paper toads to roses to weird birds Hoshi called 'aero-planes' that came in lots of different shapes, and flew unlike any other origami bird.
'Seriously,' She thought, as another bunch of boys walked to buy the planes. 'Where does he come up with these things?'
The elaborate ones, Konan had secured with glue so they couldn't be taken apart without being torn. It was common business sense.
And she doubted everyone could fuse papers together, or smooth them out like she could with her chakra to make the bigger ones.
Back in the outer districts, Yahiko returned to Hoshi empty-handed.
"That hag nearly tore me a new one." He huffed to Hoshi, who was sitting with his back to a weathered wall.
"Don't be discouraged."
"Easy for you to say. You didn't even let yourself in her sight." The bigger boy elbowed his friend, tilting his head to see if he could see the bakery from their vantage at all.
Hoshi elbowed him back. "I held her husband in front of a Kunai once, so forgive me." He said dryly.
Yahiko blinked, searched his memories before conceding. "Huh, you're right."
"I always am."
"No, you're on my left."
Hoshi bit down a groan as an old lady walked into their view with a steel tub full of dirty utensils and plates. Yahiko hurried to assist her in putting them down.
"There's quite a lot in here..." Hoshi muttered, struggling to count them without getting his hands dirty.
"Five hundred Zen for them all." The hawk-eyed woman said, as if daring them to deny her wage after she smacked down a box of washing powder.
Hoshi took another look at the dishes. "Obasan, we're young, not dumb. It's not even like five zen per dish. Make it eight hundred and we'll even carry them back for you." Piece of cake if you had chakra.
"I wasn't born yesterday brat. Two zen for each plate, I'm giving you. And twenty for all the spoons and knives. Do I look like I'm made of money?"
"Well, my old man was a healer. Make it eight hundred and I'll even massage those rusty shoulders of yours." Hoshi shot back, wanting more money.
Where Yahiko might have stepped down in sympathy, Hoshi gave no quarter and demanded their salt's worth.
"Ho, I'll think about it after your massage." The lady grinned a crooked grin, to which Hoshi responded by cracking his knuckles while Yahiko gave him a noticeable look, his expression asking multiple questions, before rushing off with a pot from the dirty cutlery to get some water for washing.
In the end, the old lady's arrogance was no match for Hoshi's skill gained from hours of spending time at a physiotherapists' clinic, seeing all the different patients being treated, the ways in which their muscles needed to be handled, or the exercises they needed.
The tough customer had let out more than one satisfactory groan when soothed a captured muscle, or released tension from tired joints.
"You've been working your right side too much," Hoshi observed. "I'd say you carry heavy weights on your head, but you probably don't have anyone to place them there in the first place, if you're lugging them all by yourself. What do you, run an inn?"
"Yea I do." The old lady acknowledged, getting up as Yahiko finished scrubbing the last tin plate clean. "Since you're going to be carrying them for me on the way back, you can see it. You're gonna pay if you want anything."
The old lady took out eight hundred zen, which Hoshi swiftly pocketed. Although the taijutsu specialist had greater physical endurance, it was Yahiko who carried the dishes mainly because he was taller.
They dropped her off after half an hour, and despite her icy old demeanour, a small bowl of spicy fish-bone soup they shared and swore not to tell Nagato or Konan about.
"So, what are we going to do with all the money you're collecting?" Yahiko asked. "I get the whole we need assets and organization, but we are taking capable of taking care of ourselves without money."
Hoshi did not even pause before he answered. "You guys think I'm starting up a charity? We need power."
"We are powerful." Yahiko stepped over a puddle, looking at Hoshi like he was an idiot. The smaller responded with a deadpan.
"We want prestige, to be precise." Hoshi pointed out.
"And we need money for that, of all things?" Yahiko retorted. "This is a poor man's country! Everyone hates the rich, especially those who live in Central. I think people will likes us more if they see us as one of them, than some Central brats."
Reaching their original location back, Hoshi sat down and leaned against a wall. Looking the taller boy dead in the eye, the traveller from another world spoke.
"They will never see me- see us, as one of them and you know it. Don't pretend otherwise." Hoshi snapped his neck sideways. "Don't tell you think we'll be able to make friends of all things, without them wanting to use us."
Perhaps that was a bit harsh on his part, considering how Yahiko seemed to freeze, but it was necessary to say. Their childhoods were forfeit, and so were the innocence they could have expected from friends at their age.
"So? What are we waiting for?" Yahiko grumbled, running his eyes over Konan who was now sitting plain view, no crowded kids around her.
"What are we waiting for?" Hoshi phrased innocently. "Why, trouble of course. We're not going to be friendly helpers, or ninjas who happen to be on the scene with a grim sense of justice."
Yahiko had a wary look on his face, and it was truly deserved. "Please don't say anything idiotic."
Hoshi grinned, not a smidge apologetic. "We're going to pretend to be pretending to be heroes."
A groan was his answer.
If anyone is confused, feel free to ask questions via reviews. Short chapter again, but I couldn't drag it out. And I hadn't updated in a while so I thought, why not cut it here?
