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Title: New Wind Nation: Alliance

Chapter 2: Lair of the Snake ~ To Wind and Waves (part 1)

Notes: Thank you for all your reviews! Now, for an unexpected character appearance...

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Naruto was rather nervous, actually. In a way, this was his first mission as team leader. Admittedly, that team consisted mostly of himself, and somewhat the strange jonin who had been assigned to basically spy on him, the so-called "Kaze," but it was still a big step forward from being an extra, generally unnecessary genin on a team with Gaara and Baki.

When Naruto thought about it, he wondered if maybe that jonin Kaze hadn't agreed to follow him a little too easily. Naruto hadn't even explained anything, just taken off across the desert. They had already traveled for one day and camped overnight, but Kaze hadn't asked any questions, only watching Naruto with a lack of expression that Naruto's Gaara-trained senses identified as something like bemusement.

Then again, it wasn't like Kaze really cared about their success. He was just reporting to the Kazekage, who wanted Naruto to fail anyway. The jonin was probably happy to think that Naruto was just running around like a headless chicken.

"I have a plan, you know!" Naruto burst out without warning, pointing at Kaze dramatically without breaking stride. "It's a good one!"

Kaze shot him a cool, scornful look that made Naruto's teeth grind. "I'm looking forward to it," he said, in a tone that strongly implied he really wasn't. Kankuro talked like that sometimes, when he was feeling particularly annoying.

"Good!" Naruto shot back. Turning away in a huff, he didn't try talking to the man again.

~.~.~

Their destination was a city in the very northeast corner of the Land of Wind, where travelers and caravans curved their path around the Land of Rain — most preferred to go through Land of Grass, when traveling between the Land of Fire and Land of Earth, but no matter what, no one wanted to tread through Hanzo the Salamander's domain.

The settlements in that part of the country were some of the most lively and populous, matched only by those on the southern sea shore. If you wanted to get good gossip or meet someone from abroad, that was the place to go.

Naruto had a very specific destination in mind. He had looked it up after seeing Orochimaru's entry in the Bingo Book, and fortunately there was something going on at just the right time, right there in the Land of Wind.

Kaze… was not impressed.

"This is your plan?" he said, dubiously. "To do what? Buy porn?"

He glared at the bookstore in front of them as if trying to will it out of existence. The bright stand out front announced a very special event — a book signing by the author of Icha Icha himself.

"Of course not!" Naruto protested. "Mom told me to never, ever, ever read those books. I just want to talk to the author."

The author — Jiraiya of the Leaf's Sannin. One the three legendary ninjas who had been taught by the Third Hokage. A spymaster of some renown. A super pervert. Which of those was considered the most important remained a matter of debate.

As Naruto started toward the bookstore, a heavy hand on his shoulder pulled him back. "Revealing the Kazekage's plans is treason," Kaze said quietly, leaning down to ensure only Naruto would hear him.

The genin turned to look up at him, eyes widening in surprise, before narrowing in anger. "What?! Who do you take me for?!" Naruto hissed. His hand, curled into a fist, twitched as if itching to punch the jonin. "I would never betray our village!"

Jerking away, he jogged to join the line to the book signing — all the while muttering unflattering things under his breath. Kaze watched him for a moment, but apparently satisfied with his honesty, slowly followed.

"Hmm?" Jiraiya drew out as the two of them finally made it to the author's table. If there was a hesitation in his reaction, it was too short for Naruto to notice. "I welcome all fans, but aren't you a little young for my books? Or was it some father-son bonding?" He waggled his eyebrows, looking between Naruto and Kaze.

Naruto mimed gagging. "No way!" he declared, holding his arms up in an X-shape. "I'm a fan! But not of these books! And this guy's not my dad." As Jiraiya nodded agreeably, Naruto continued, "I just came here to meet you. I have two things I wanted to ask you. First, do you have a copy of your first book? I gave mine to a friend, but I'd love to have another. And an autograph on that would be really cool."

"My first book? You mean, Tale of the Gutsy Ninja?" Jiraiya repeated in surprise. "Sorry, kid, but I don't think they even print that thing anymore. It wasn't popular at all."

"What? But it's so good! It's a great book!" Naruto insisted earnestly.

"Yes, well…" Jiraiya smiled wryly. His expression was strange — maybe oddly fond and also melancholy - as his eyes lingered on Naruto's forehead protector and the marks on his cheeks. "When you're a little older, why don't you try one of these? I'll give you a free copy!"

"Mom said not to," Naruto repeated dutifully, again missing the way Jiraiya expression twitched faintly.

'So he knew that woman,' Kaze noted, standing unobtrusively back. That wasn't the reason for Jiraiya's reaction, given that he only knew Kushina in passing, but there were some secrets she had managed to keep from the world at large, including the exact connection between her and the toad sage.

"Anyway, there is a second thing I wanted to ask you," Naruto said. "And it's about your teammate. Do you know where I can find him?"

There was a moment of stunned silence, both from Kaze and from Jiraiya.

'How… how can he just walk up to a foreign shinobi and ask for that kind of intelligence?!' Kaze wondered. 'And for that matter, what is he thinking, giving away his hand this much?!'

Of course, Naruto wasn't much for secrecy, and he didn't care if the entire world knew he was looking for Orochimaru. All the better — maybe the missing-nin would come to find him then.

The humor and lightheartedness vanished from Jiraiya's expression. Teammate? Him? He couldn't even pretend the kid was looking for Tsunade.

"And why," Jiraiya said slowly, grimly, shifting to lean forward in his seat, "are you looking for that snake?"

Naruto seemed undeterred by the suddenly heavy atmosphere. "It's a secret," he said importantly, crossing his arms and puffing up. "I gotta talk to him about something."

Jiraiya's eyes narrowed, drifting again up to Naruto's headband, then toward Kaze for the first time since Naruto had caught his attention. But whatever he suspected, Jiraiya simply snorted and said, "That guy's someone you should stay away from, no matter what. So just get lost, kid. Go back to your village."

"I won't!" Naruto yelled, slamming his hands down on the table. "I'm not leaving until you tell me! And don't even try to ditch me! I'll follow you! I won't give up!" More quietly, he added, "This isn't something I can give up on."

The two matched glares, both leaning in until they were practically nose to nose. Each contorted their expression in effort to convey how serious they were. All in all, it looked quite ridiculous, especially Jiraiya's exaggerated scowl — like something straight out of a kabuki woodprint.

Nonetheless, Jiraiya was the one to finally give in. With a gusting sigh and a groan of frustration, he threw himself back in his chair. He waved one hand dismissively. "Fine, whatever. You're ruining my sales, so I'll tell you," he said, in a transparent effort to cover up his "loss." Jiraiya sighed again, his lips thinning. "You've got to already know that he left the village. I don't know exactly where he is. That guy's good at covering his tracks, so there aren't a lot of leads left either."

He paused, thinking on all the dead ends he had chased. And even those had dried up over time.

"But I'll tell you one," Jiraiya continued. "It just came up recently and I haven't had a chance to look into it. I heard... he has a base in a small country called the Land of the Sea."

~.~.~

"You realize, he most likely just said something to get rid of you," Kaze snapped, finally losing his patience. "Land of the Sea is just a few worthless islands. It has no value to speak of. There's nothing there!"

Naruto turned to look at him with an annoyingly dismissive frown. "All the better for you and the Kazekage, right?" he said back waspishly. "And anyway, it's a lead! Besides, if it's such a boring place where no one would look, it's great for hiding out."

"Do you even know where the Land of the Sea is?" Kaze asked, gritting his teeth in frustration.

"Well, it's got to be in the sea, so I guess we'll take a boat there," Naruto reasoned. "That's why we're heading south to the shore."

The fact that his plan was actually correct and entirely workable just made it worse, somehow. Kaze wasn't even wrong. Jiraiya didn't expect that lead to pan out, which was why he had not bothered investigating it and why he had been willing to tell Naruto about it. And even if there had been something there… that lead was from ten years before.

Naruto stubbornly refused to be deterred by little details like that.

"Do you have any plan for what you'll do, even if you find Orochimaru?" Kaze asked instead.

Naruto shrugged, looking forward again as the two of them continued their quick-paced journey toward the sea. If nothing else, Naruto had impressive stamina, and they were able to keep traveling almost non-stop the entire day through.

"Maybe he'll do the villain monologue and tell me all about how he's planning to betray us," Naruto said, without a hint of humor. "He'll try to kill me afterwards, I guess, but I'll work out that part later."

'That's not a plan,' Kaze thought, in something approaching wonder at Naruto's sheer thick-headedness.

"Come on! It'll be fine! He really seems like the gloating type," Naruto insisted, by now able to sense when someone was doubting him loudly. Kankuro certainly did it often enough.

Come to think of it, this Kaze guy reminded Naruto of Kankuro in lots of ways. There was even a resemblance… maybe, under all that facepaint.

"Hey, hey," Naruto said, glancing back at his companion. "Are you and Kankuro related? You're kind of alike!"

"...At this rate, even if he tells you he's going to betray us, it'll be at least before a week before you figure it out," Kaze muttered. This, the man began to realize, might have been a complete waste of time.

"That's fine," Naruto said easily. "Cause you'll get it right away!"

~.~.~

Land of the Sea consisted of four major islands and a myriad small ones. The main four were Mother Island, Jiro Island, Taro Island and Demon Island. The entire country was not only small, but also utterly unimportant, to the point that it was not even included on most maps, like the far west reaches of the Land of Wind.

It had no hidden village, and while it paid regular tribute to the Land of Water and its Hidden Mist Village, the Land of the Sea and its residents had not requested a shinobi mission in many, many years.

Thus, it was only natural that the sight of a man in the uniform of a Hidden Leaf jonin, his headband askew over one eye but clearly visible, would draw shocked stares and whispers from the simple fishermen who congregated at the main port.

If he was aware of the attention — and he must have been — the man gave no indication. Instead, he turned to beam down, as much as his mask allowed, at the boy walking two steps behind him.

"Isn't this such a nice place? Wonderful for a vacation," he said.

The boy scowled. "We're on a mission, not a vacation," he said coldly. "A real one, not like those D-rank chores. This is serious, Kakashi." He purposefully left off any title or suffix. Even if he hadn't been already deeply annoyed, he just knew that within the next three sentences, the jonin would say something infuriating.

"Maa, maa," Kakashi drawled, "you should relax a little, Sasuke. A little C-rank like this is basically like a vacation to an elite jonin like me, and the whole point of having students is to make them do all the work. After all, how else are you going to learn?"

Sasuke's glare sharpened. "So basically the only reason you agreed to take me as an apprentice was so you wouldn't have to worry about getting sent out on real mission and have more time to read those books or yours," he surmised.

"Hmm? Oh, of course not. I'm going to pass on my knowledge to the next generation, entrust you with my will, and all that," Kakashi said absently, burying his nose in one of the aforementioned books. It was clear he was just mouthing the words without meaning.

Sasuke bit back a sigh and struggled not to roll his eyes. "Why are we even here? What's our mission objective?" he asked, gritting his teeth.

"I didn't tell you?" Kakashi wondered, his single visible eyes drooping in surprise. "Oops. Well, I suppose you can think of this as special training. Your goal is to become a hunter-nin, isn't it? So you'll be doing lots of missions like this in the future… This is an investigation mission. There is a report of a missing-nin operating in this area. We're going to be looking for evidence to back that up — tracks, sightings, there might even be a base of operations."

That actually sounded like a very interesting and useful mission. There had to be a catch, Sasuke thought, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Of course, the lead is from ten years ago," Kakashi continue blithely. "So the chances of that missing-nin still being there are nil, and we probably won't find anything. But don't let that stop you from trying." He waved one hand dismissively. "This kind of hopeless work is just right for a genin…"

His face contorting into a scowl, Sasuke prayed for patience. "...Can you at least tell me about this lead?" he said slowly and with great care. Otherwise, he might have started cursing, and he still needed to learn a lot from Kakashi.

Kakashi sighed in a put upon way. "I guess I better," he muttered, turning a page. "The missing-nin is Orochimaru, one of the Legendary Sannin. I know you've read about him. He conducted many human experiments before he was finally driven out of the village ten years ago. One of those experiments was using his own apprentice, who is currently a special jonin. Her memory was wiped, so she couldn't reveal anything about him. But recently, she remembered something — that just before the incident, they had traveled to this country."

'No wonder they gave it such low priority,' Sasuke thought. 'That's not even a long shot. It's basically a goose-chase…'

Still, after a moment of internal grumbling, Sasuke took a deep breath and straightened. At least he was out of the village, in the field, and on a C-rank. With Kakashi's careless, lazy attitude, he had almost been afraid it would take another year before they took a real mission. This was still a good chance to get experience.

Sasuke continued to repeat this to himself, as Kakashi ambled down the street, humming cheerfully.

Yes, a good opportunity….

"Oh, look, there's our hotel," Kakashi said brightly. "I'm gonna take a nap. How about you?"

~.~.~

"The disappearances ten years ago?" the shopkeeper drew out. "We don't like to speak of that…"

Sasuke had heard that quite often, since he had set out to ask around for any possible leads. So far, all he had been able to learn was that many people had disappeared ten years ago — at the same time as Orochimaru was supposedly in the Land of the Sea.

He didn't believe in coincidences.

"But you know, you're the second person to ask about that today," the woman commented.

...That was new.

"Who was the other one?" Sasuke asked quickly, frowning. "Why were they asking?"

"It was a boy your age. He had a headband like that too," the shopkeeper replied, thinking. Not Kakashi, then. Not that Sasuke expected his lazy jonin teacher to actually do any investigating. "He's been talking to everyone around the island."

That was all she could tell him, despite Sasuke's persistent questions. In the end, he could only thank her and continue on his way, deep in thought.

He quickly discarded the idea of someone else from Hidden Leaf being sent. Double-bookings were rare, and it wasn't like anyone would forget Kakashi being sent to some backwater on a wild goose chase. The idea of it being done on purpose was also farfetched.

Well, Sasuke admitted to himself, Kakashi could think of something so twisted. He had pretty ridiculous methods of "teaching."

Still, the more likely option was foreign shinobi, perhaps even missing-nin.

Whatever the case may be, he needed to find out who was interested in Orochimaru and why. No one would seek information on the rogue Sannin or his experiments with good intentions. And in the shinobi world, information was power. Keeping it from spreading was also one of his duties as a Leaf-nin.

But where would he find this person? Where to look? It wasn't like they'd just…

"Old man, tell me about the disappearances ten years ago!"

...run into each other on the street.

Sasuke turned slowly in the direction the loud demand had come from. There stood a boy his age, with a shock of bright blond hair, trying to loom over an elderly stall keeper and mostly failing due to his short height. Tied on his forehead was a headband, and on his leg was a kunai holster.

Feeling Sasuke's gaze on him, the other boy glanced over his shoulder. The symbol on his headband was of an hourglass — Hidden Sand Village. Sasuke's eyes narrowed.

"What're you looking at?" the other boy demanded.

"Aren't you a little far from home?" Sasuke shot back. "What's your business in the Land of the Sea?"

"What's it to you?" the blond replied.

The two of them matched glares stubbornly, their hands inching toward their weapons. But, thinking of the alliance, both hesitated to draw.

"Why are you asking about the disappearances ten years ago?" Sasuke continued his attempts at interrogation.

"Why do you care?"

Exchanging questions was getting them nowhere. "That information pertains to an investigation being conducted by the Hidden Leaf Village," Sasuke stated firmly, trying to sound as official as possible. Hidden Leaf and Hidden Sand were nominally allies, so they at least pretended to respect each other's claims and boundaries. Claiming purview might be enough to make them back off, Sasuke thought.

"We're conducting an investigation too," the other boy shot back. "And ours is super important."

"This is a Hidden Leaf matter," Sasuke insisted.

"Yeah, well, this is a Hidden Sand matter too!"

"What does Hidden Sand want with-" Sasuke started to say, only to cut himself off. If Hidden Sand wasn't actually seeking Orochimaru, it wouldn't do to give away his involvement.

"Whatever," the Sand-nin snapped. "Just don't get in my way! I'll find out what's going on here in no time!"

'Not,' Sasuke thought, his eyes narrowing as he watched the other boy stalk off, 'if I find out first.'

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Q&A

Does Jiraiya know who Naruto is? Yes. Jiraiya recognizes Naruto pretty quickly, since he kept tabs on Kushina after she left Hidden Leaf. But he's also an old, experienced ninja, so he's not going to let it interfere with his duties. ...Much. However, the Kazekage doesn't know about Naruto's father, and neither does most of the world.

Why didn't Kushina go back to Leaf? If there is a plot hole, it's this. The answer is basically grief. Like Tsunade, in a way, Kushina saw Hidden Leaf as the village that took Minato from her. And it seems like she didn't really have any close friends left (given that not one of them canonically so much as dropped by to see Naruto). To her, there was nothing good left there. Maybe she could have taken Naruto there instead of to Hidden Sand, but she subconsciously distrusted Hidden Leaf and chose to go to their ally instead.

Sasuke is Kakashi's apprentice? Yeah. He doesn't have a team. It's just the two of them. The how and why will be explained later, such as it is, but mostly it's because his class had a weird number of graduates. Sasuke is specifically training to track missing-nins (you know why), so Kakashi got them this mission as practice.

What's been going on with the rest of the Leaf rookies? We'll see some of them later, but I will be honest - most of them, along with the rest of Hidden Leaf, don't appear in this season, and not until, like, NWN Shippuden. In particular, I don't think Team Asuma ever appears at all. I'm sorry to the fans of those characters, but I don't have the patience and motivation to work out the fates of every single character (there are a lot).

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