Chapter 10: Preparations
In his official capacity as the leader of Otogakure, Orochimaru had diplomatic lodging in Konoha. His village was new, to the point that Konoha had very little information and no spies in his network. As far as he knew, his hotel room was bugged and his every move watched. From the safety of a confidential letter, he had informed the Hokage that he couldn't come, but a representative of his would take his place on the panel of judges. That was why Kimimaro was currently resting in his bed.
His real base of operations was a quiet house in the suburbs, whose normal occupants he had bound and gagged in his basement. Orochimaru created a mud clone, and the two of them now masqueraded as Mebuki and Kizashi Haruno. He created a third mud clone, one who prepared the basement for future use and fed the Haruno family, while another managed his contacts in the ANBU.
The front door opened, and a man and woman badly disguised as Yoshino and Shikaku Nara walked in.
"The moon was full tonight, honey!" Tayuya said sultrily, letting go of Sakon's hand and waltzing in. Sakon let his own henge drop, revealing the androgynous leader of the Sound Four. He bowed deeply to Orochimaru, then went upstairs.
"I enjoyed the dawn," Orochimaru said distractedly. "Tayuya, go out and fetch me a whore."
Tayuya stopped abruptly and turned beet red. "I, uh, my Lord, if there's anything you desire, I can—"
"I desire to sacrifice a human soul to the death god," Orochimaru interrupted. "Unless you are offering yourself, I prefer to painfully kill those who do not contribute to society. Also, I believe Hiruzen outlawed prostitution some years ago, so we will be doing a civil service."
Tayuya's expression turned cruel. "Got it, Lord Orochimaru," she said nastily. Snapping her fingers, his pink-haired servant assumed the guise of a middle-aged man with a paunch and a lustful gleam in his eye. She left, chuckling nastily.
"Why is Jirōbō not here yet?" Orochimaru called upstairs.
"We had to leave him at the northern laboratory," Ukon replied, emerging briefly from his brother's body. "Jūgo had a fit, and we decided to have them intercept Kabuto on his mission after he calmed down."
The snake sannin considered that course of action. "Very well," he judged. "I applaud you for thinking for yourself. Some shinobi can't do that, it seems."
Sakon snickered.
.:.
Two days after the fiasco that was the third round, Might Guy called an emergency meeting of Team Guy. They met in their usual training ground, which was festooned with weapon racks and training dummies. Guy looked unusually solemn, which didn't reassure any of his students.
"Lee, can you tell me what you did wrong?" he asked seriously. Lee considered the question.
"I lost," he answered carefully.
"Why did you lose?" Guy pressed. "When did Tsuchi first inject you with the poison?"
"When I shook her hand," Lee said, realizing where Guy was going with the topic. "I... should not have?"
"That was a real fight, meant to approximate war. You remained close enough to shake hands, yet you did not press when the kunoichi moved back to gain space. You should have remained close, but you gave her the advantage. The poison slowed you, made you careless. YOU CANNOT LET YOUR FIRES OF YOUTH BE DIMINISHED!"
"YES, GUY-SENSEI!"
"RUN FIVE HUNDRED LAPS AROUND KONOHA IN PENANCE, LEE!"
"I WILL DO ONE THOUSAND!"
At the words 'one thousand', Tenten winced. Lee sprinted off so fast he left an afterimage, and again she felt awe at the monsters she had for teammates. A thousand laps probably didn't even faze him anymore. Guy turned his attention to her, and she gulped.
"What did you do wrong?" he asked again.
"I stopped fighting when I hurt the real Naruto," she said, analyzing herself. "I was worried... about him, like maybe I killed him by accident."
"You have killed before, and in more or less the same way," Neji pointed out.
"But Naruto is a fellow shinobi of Konoha!" Tenten said angrily. "I couldn't just cut his damn leg off for a promotion!"
Guy was faced with a dilemma. His original point had been to never hesitate, but had Naruto not been a jinchūriki, the match would've been over the instant she stabbed him. Of course, he couldn't tell her he was the Kyūbi's vessel, so any lesson he tried to make would undermine itself. In the end, he took a middle ground.
"Naruto is a special case," Guy told them. "Uzumaki have unusually long lifespans and recover quickly, so I wouldn't be surprised if he has been discharged already."
Neji and Tenten both looked shocked.
"Also, you have most likely won a psychological victory. Every death you visited on a shadow clone was returned to his memories, so it is possible he may not return to being a ninja anyways. Recovering from that kind of trauma might be impossible, even for him."
"I—"
"Five hundred laps, Tenten."
As Tenten ran off, grumbling about insane ninja training regimens, Guy turned back to his lone successful student. As Gaara's opponent, Neji could easily win against the Ichibi's jinchūriki with the Gentle Fist, either by closing the tenketsu around the seal or forcing as many open as possible, to drain all of Gaara's chakra. Sadly, as a short-range fighter, Neji was at a serious disadvantage in the face of Shukaku's sand.
The Hakkeshō Kaiten, a Main Branch technique Guy knew Neji had successfully reverse-engineered by watching his uncle spar, would certainly help. His mastery of a 'perfect defence' to match Gaara's was a good start, but perhaps not enough. After all, how do you break through a wall of animate sand as hard as steel?
"Put these on," the taijutsu master told his student, holding out a pair of Lee's leg weights. Neji raised an eyebrow, but put them on anyways.
"Consider this training for the eventuality of encountering someone immune to the Gentle Fist," Guy said. "A samurai, for example, wears armour, and you cannot access their tenketsu. Furthermore, individuals with a certain amount of chakra can simply expel large amounts to reopen closed chakra nodes. You will need an alternate weapon, and this is that weapon."
"What might that be?" asked Neji, suddenly feeling rather nervous.
"PREPARE TO BE INVIGORATED BY THE FIRES OF YOUTH! STRONG FIST-STYLE DYNAMIC ENTRY!"
.:.
Naruto awoke in the hospital a few days later to Sakura, who was sitting in a chair by the bed. He blinked, the room swimming into view. There was a ferocious burning sensation in his leg, but he ignored it.
"Good, you're awake!" she said. "I'll go get the nurses."
"S-Stop," he choked, waving for her to stay there. "W-What happened?"
"Well, you won the fight," Sakura said. "If you impress the judges enough in the final rounds, they'll promote you to chūnin. Your first opponent is Temari."
"Who?"
"The blonde girl with the giant fan."
"Oh."
Sakura smiled and stood up. "You have a month, so train hard!"
Naruto nodded happily, but his expression became confused. "How are you here? Didn't you get hit with an explosive tag?"
"I'm not here," she explained. "This is just a clone. The real me is being treated for some severe burns on my arm and chest."
The bunshin sauntered away, leaving Naruto alone with his thoughts. He had a month to train for Temari, a powerful kunoichi from Suna. From what he'd seen of her match with Dosu Kinuta, she had a wide array of wind jutsu to draw on, and the vacuum trick suggested that her shape transformation was highly versatile. The most obvious strategy was to destroy the fan, but she probably dealt with that on a regular basis. Naruto had a sinking feeling that she was far from powerless without it.
He made a list of all the things he knew about her. She was intelligent. Older than him. She had better taijutsu than him, and was physically stronger too. A keen strategist, considering how quickly she mentally dissected and countered Dosu's weapon. Adaptable.
A ninja.
How could he possibly compete with her? She was so far out of his league, he might as well challenge the Hokage for all the good it would do.
"What can I do?" he moaned.
"Get the hell out of bed and come with me," a voice replied. "I'll see you become chūnin if it's the last thing I do."
"Kakashi-sensei?"
The masked Copy Ninja sat in the window frame, perched precariously on the sill. His one eye looked unusually sombre as he watched Naruto, waiting for him to obey.
"The important part of this tournament isn't winning, it's impressing the judges," he said. "The Hokage and Kazekage both need to see that you are worthy of being selected, and there are representatives from Otogakure, Takigakure, Kusagakure and Amegakure here to weigh in as well. Unfortunately, you were caught cheating once in the first test. Your solution for an insurmountable obstacle was ingenious, but now you must beat Temari."
"How do I do that?" Naruto muttered dejectedly. "She beat that guy without even breaking a sweat, and she'll be training hard for the next month too!"
"You have something she doesn't have," Kakashi pointed out. "You have me. I have over a thousand jutsu I can teach you, and many of them are specifically for countering fūton users."
At the words 'one thousand', Naruto winced. "What about Sasuke?"
At this, Kakashi looked absurdly smug. "I'm training both of you. Eventually, if I've done my job right, you'll have to fight each other, and that's what Sasuke is counting on. So, rather than train you to fight each other, I'll be giving each of you a specific jutsu to defeat the opponents you'll face on the way."
"What's Sakura supposed to do for the next month?" Naruto asked. Kakashi responded with another smug look.
"I've hired someone to look after her," he said. "She ought to be out of here in only a few days, assuming she gets looked at by a medic."
"That reminds me, she just had a clone go and get a nurse," Naruto said thoughtfully. "Think I can get discharged today?"
There were footsteps in the hallway, growing louder by the second, and Kakashi froze. He tentatively grasped Naruto by the wrist, and just before the door opened, they were gone.
.:.
Hiashi Hyūga found himself in a position he did not see often: a situation beyond his control. It had taken an embarrassingly long time for his clan to realize the heiress was missing, and now that they did it was far too late. Tsume Inuzuka and Kuromaru were tracing her scent, but from what he could gather from the dog-woman was that it was gone. Not faded, as smells are wont to do over time, but simply nonexistant. It was as though some strange being had abducted Hinata where she stood and left nothing in their wake.
Hanabi was safely tucked away in the household, and the rest of the Main Branch was competent enough to take care of themselves. Hinata's incompetence made him seethe. Now he had an entire clan sweeping the streets with byakugan, searching endlessly for something they would never find. The Inuzuka clan was hunting too, aware that Hinata represented a potential suitor for Kiba. Some other individuals had volunteered as well, those with hunting summons or tracker instincts.
She was gone, though. Hiashi knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was no longer in Konoha. Hinata was one of only two female Hyūga he couldn't kill with a word and a sign, suggesting that her abduction was a planned affair. How could agents of some foreign power get pat ANBU? He knew the answer to that too: ANBU wasn't a replacement for the Police Force. Fugaku was a righteous bastard, but this would have never happened if he were still alive. Hiashi wished desperately that he could have intervened, but there was no use pondering what-if.
Now, Hinata was doomed to be used as breeding stock. Her babies would give the byakugan to some other village, and if that village wasn't one of the Five, then the first to discover it would crush them and take the byakugan for their own. His pride was ruined, his power distributed and his family torn apart. The only solution he could see was the path he was about to undertake.
He knocked on the door of the ANBU commander's office, where Agent Boar was conversing with someone he couldn't see. For the sake of politeness, Hiashi had left his byakugan off.
"...we've also received reports of a missing civilian, and Anko Mitarashi is still off our radar," said Agent Boar. "We recommend additional support from Root in locating and potentially neutralizing the threat."
"Granted," came the voice of Danzō Shimura. "Agent Hyō and Agent Terai will accompany you and assign you aid from the barracks. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to speak with Lord Hyūga.
Agent Boar left, the white-clad operative bristling beneath his cloak, and Hiashi stepped into the office. Danzō's official role was advisor to the position of Hokage, but even in the corps he was still recognized as the head of Root.
"My daughter is missing," he said, his voice unwavering.
"Rest assured, law and order in Konoha is working at its best to locate Hinata and bring her kidnappers to justice," Danzō said emotionlessly. "Good day, Hiashi."
"Are you searching the other hidden villages? Have patrols found leads outside the Land of Fire?"
"You are hopefully aware that we only have jurisdiction within Fire Country," Danzō countered. "Unless you wish to destabilize international diplomacy, we cannot do that."
"You do that on a regular basis," Hiashi said. "Help me find Hinata."
"The abduction or defection of Mitarashi represents a far greater threat to this village. Make it worth my while," Danzō said bluntly.
Hiashi knew exactly what Danzō was talking about. Several years ago, he had recruited members of the major clans into Root. Torune Aburame, Fū Yamanaka, Hyō Inuzuka and Tera Namikaze were all indoctrinated at a young age, and with the Hokage's assent. Hiashi had righteously refused to allow Hinata to be taken and used as a weapon of Konoha's paramilitary group, and it seemed Danzō resented that. There was still one Hyūga of eligible age...
Now, he had to make an impossible decision. Faced with two disgusting options, Hiashi said the only thing he could. "I have to think about it."
He left the office feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders, and his clan's prized eyes were blind to Danzō's triumphant smile.
I am indeed talking about Hanabi. She would make an excellent emotionless psychopath, don't you think?
When Orochimaru says 'sacrificing a soul to the death god', he's being facetious... right? Right?