Chapter 22

Sora, Naruto, Hinata and Shivani sat in the barred wagon that the Kaze were using to haul them back to the House of the Kaze. It was unclear if Shivani was there as a guard, or being guarded herself. She kept her head down, eyes gazing at the floor, clearly torn between being excited and ashamed.

Naruto reached up and knocked on the wooden walls of the box/carriage/prison they were traveling in. "You know we could bust out of this thing pretty easily. We could always just knock 'em all out and leave."

"It's sealed," Shivani said quietly.

"I thought that the Kaze didn't use jutsu," Hinata said.

Shivani shrugged. "The Reifujin decided that we could seal them without being corrupted as long as we didn't do it ourselves."

Naruto sighed. Sora reached out and poked him with the toe of her boot. "Come on, don't you want the chance to take down the entire clan? This way we have the chance to bring down the house."

Naruto grinned briefly, before he started to wiggle around. "I just don't like sitting here like this." Hinata reached out and rubbed his arm to try and sooth him.

Shivani looked between Sora and Naruto. "Are you too really brother and sister?" she asked.

Sora shrugged. "Basically."

"Wow, that's amazing! There were never even any hints that you had family in any of the stories. I thought that you were an orphan who traveled around with Nanashi. That was the most plausible of the rumors, at least in my mind."

Sora sighed. "Kid, don't listen to all of the rumors you hear. Chances are they're wrong."

"Huh? But that one's right!" Naruto protested.

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, but most of them aren't. Naruto there are people who think I've become a nun. Me. A nun."

"So wait, if you were an orphan when you were traveling around with Nanashi, how is he your brother?" Shivani looked back and forth between them, confused.

"He's my brother. It doesn't matter how, and it doesn't matter if the timeline doesn't add up. It just matters that he's my brother. Got it?" Sora asked. The girl ducked her head and nodded.

Hinata shook her head. She had forgotten just how prickly Sora had been when they first left the Leaf with her. Now that she was dealing with Shivani, who had apparently been following the rumors about her, she was mimicking her former bitchiness. She must be reverting back to what she was like when they were in the west.

Naruto noticed as well, although his analysis of the situation was not quite as refined as Hinata's. "Oye, stop being so bitchy," Naruto said, shoving Sora with his foot.

She pushed right back. "Knock it off. She's being nosy."

"That doesn't mean you get to be rude!"

"Oh, like you're some expert on being polite."

Hinata sighed as the banter escalated into a full out foot war, both of them bracing their backs against the wall, trying to poke the other in the stomach with their feet. If Shivani had any doubts they were siblings, they were being dispelled right then. They certainly had the bickering part down.

Sudden the carriage stopped and a few seconds later, the doors swung open to reveal four new Kaze guards.

"Out of there," one of them said.

The four of them exited the carriage as gracefully as possible, moving to stand just outside the doors. There were in some sort of huge reception chamber, several stories tall, with one large center column from which sprouted half a dozen or so arches that provided the main form of the room. On one side they could see the huge arch they had just come in through, now covered by an iron grate. In the mezzanine around the second story there were guards posted at small windows, looking out into the night.

Shivani was immediately hauled aside by another member of the Kaze in a red sash with a large gold pin going through the knot. They were standing too far away to hear, but Naruto could tell that she was getting yelled at. The man grabbed her wrist and hauled her off through a doorway.

"Come on," said the guard, indicating that they should go through the large doorway opposite the gate. Shooting a glare at them, Sora began to move off in the direction of the door.

"Where are they taking us?" Naruto whispered in eastern.

"To see the imposter most likely," Sora whispered back.

"Hey be quiet!" one of the guards yelled. Sora just rolled her eyes.

When the doors at the end of the room were opened, they could see the flickering of torches and the twinkling of stars in the night sky. As they left the entry hall they found themselves in an enormous courtyard, four or five times the size of that of Sora's house. It was full of Kaze warriors, some in black, some in white, sashes flying as they dipped and spun in practice.

Naruto looked at them and then up at the moon. Nearly midnight; they would just be starting. It was too hot here to really train during the day. He watched as a group of students, about the age of ten, stood in neat rows of five, dressed in white with white sashes tied at their hips. An instructor stood in front of them with the drum the Kaze used to keep everyone in step during the sets. In another part of the courtyard a group of students were setting up for sparring, and in yet another a group of twelve were setting up to run a drill. Scattered throughout the courtyard were students working one on one with instructors.

They all stopped what they were doing to turn and stare as the threesome was escorted down the middle of the courtyard by the Kaze guards. Eyes were wide and jaws dropped. A collective hush had fallen.

It was Sora, Naruto realized. The Kaze didn't really care about him or Hinata; they were just random faces. But Sora had left them and become…what exactly had she become? Suddenly he realized that the only real glimpses he had into who his sister had been before she was his sister were the stories that she and Yasu used to tell. Most of these were humorous anecdotes about life as a mercenary, or almost fairy accounts of battles won. He had always thought that Sora had been stretching the truth a little in her stories, making them sound better and more exciting than they actually were.

But if what he had assumed was correct, then why were the people so awed? And why was there so much hope in the air?

And why the hell were they so scared?

Sora just kept her head up and continued walking, looking straight ahead, as if she could not be bothered with those around her.

Unconsciously, Hinata reached out to take Naruto's hand. He grasped it and squeezed.

They were lead up a huge flight of stairs to a pair of large, heavy, wooden doors where yet more guards were posted. It took three of them on each of the large round iron handles to pull the doors open.

Naruto gulped and Hinata tightened her grip on his hand. Sora squared her shoulders and walked into the building.

The room was five or six stories tall at least, with the ceiling arching up above them and the floor dropping below their feet. The door opened onto a raised path that snaked its way to a large platform in the center of the room. There were no railings; one wrong step off of the stone pathway would send you crashing down onto the stone floor below. Hinata imagined that for someone without training, it must be an intimidating sight; death a few steps away and the Kaze guards calmly perched on the edges of the paths. Huge iron lanterns hung from the ceiling by large chains, and moonlight streamed in from large, slender windows.

And in the center of the dais, surrounded by torches and guards, sat the Reifujin of the Wind.

There must have been a day when she was beautiful, and it was clear that she had desperately tried to hang onto that. Her skin was smooth and unwrinkled, but it pulled in unnatural ways that made one think that perhaps it hadn't always been so. She wore too much make up, to the point where it almost looked caked on her skin. Dark eyes glared out at them from under even darker lashes and she reached up to adjust the fall of the saree that was draped around her head. The material was blood red and encrusted with gold embroidery. Rings seemed to drip off of her fingers and the toes of her bare feet. There was a large red ruby suspended by a gold chain resting on her forehead.

Sora calmly sauntered up the path to the stand in front of the Reifujin, Naruto and Hinata following close behind.

The woman sneered, a gesture that just made her look older and pettier. "Sora," she hissed.

Sora tilted her head to one side, and "hmm"ed as if the was contemplating something. "You know, if you would just use jutsu, you could look whatever age you wanted."

Anger flashed in the woman's eyes. "Shut up!" she yelled.

Sora continued as if the Reifujin had said nothing. "Really, we have a friend that does it all the time. She's what, over fifty now?" Sora turned over one shoulder to look at Naruto and Hinata.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, yeah, but she covers it up so you can't tell." He shrugged. "She's really vain."

"But that's nothing compared to her gambling problem. Honestly, sometimes I worry about her."

Hinata watched the Reifujin of the Wind begin to seethe as Naruto and Sora continued to carry on a conversation about Tsunade as if nothing was going on. She looked as if she was about to hemorrhage or something. The Reifujin whipped a kunai out of her saree and threw it at Sora's head.

She turned around and caught it. She rested one hand on her hip as she spun the weapon around on the index finger of the opposite hand. "Now, now, there's no reason to get testy."

The woman snarled. "Do not think that you can come in here and mock me and what I have built with your disrespectful manner."

Sora's face was suddenly serious. "I see nothing in what you have built that deserves respect. You have been the downfall of this clan."

"I have made this clan!" the woman hissed.

"Made them into what? Bullies who pull knives on small children? Warriors who can't even do the things they are famous for? It took me less then fifteen minutes to take down a partnered pair."

"You are a vile wretch who left the Kaze and uses jutsu to dishonorably subdue fine warriors-"

"That's not the point and you know it," Sora interrupted. "Eleven years ago I would have never been able to beat them so easily."

Naruto was starting to get pumped and into it as well. He knew just enough to feel like he could really rip into the Reifujin. He pointed at her and started yelling. "Your warriors had to resort to taking hostages to get us in here! That takes no skill. That's nothing more than being a bully!"

The Reifujin stood up, layers of fabric billowing out around her. "I saved the Kaze! It was the Reifujin before me who started to bring us down."

Sora shook her head. "The Reifujin realized that without modernization, the Kaze would never survive. I can understand how some people wouldn't agree, I can understand how they would view it as the downfall of the Kaze, although it wasn't. What I don't understand is how they thought you were going to be a better leader."

"Because I was going to return the purity and the strength of the Kaze. I have brought us back to our glory days."

"Eh? This is what the glory days were like?" Naruto questioned.

"Nope. The supposed glory days were over a hundred years ago. Back then, using chakra was just starting to develop as a powerful tool and the Kaze were the most powerful clan around. They were the best taijutsu users in the West as well as one of the most intellectually respected clans in the world."

Hinata sighed. Everyone in the room already knew all this. Sora hadn't had them studying history for a year and a half without them picking up most of the history of the Kaze. She was doing all of this for dramatic effect. Yasu had warned about how Sora would do this, but she had never actually seen it for herself. Worse, it looked like Naruto was going to be more than happy to play along

"But then," Sora continued, "As things started to fall more and more apart in the West and the weapons got more and more powerful, the Kaze decided that they were going to keep doing just taijutsu and not learn ninjutsu."

"Why's that?" Naruto asked. Hinata suppressed a moan. He already knew why.

"Because they saw all of these clans who were grasping at the new power and using it to do all sorts of horrible things. The power of the Kaze came largely from their character; people respected them because they were controlled and just, whereas other clans were wild and violent. It was thought that perhaps with the addition of ninjutsu, there was too much power to keep people from becoming corrupt. So for years the Kaze only learned taijutsu."

"And we kept pure, and we were not corrupted," the Reifujin said. "Until the wretch who was Reifujin before me corrupted us."

"She decided that the problem was not the amount of power they were given, but the original strength of character of those who were using the jutsu. She had faith in the Kaze's ability to use jutsu without corrupting the clan."

"She was wrong."

"She was the victim of a coup too soon to figure out whether she would be right or not. You barely gave her six months."

"Her time had ended and my time had arisen. There is no reason for me to continue to listen to this. Guards! Take them out into the practice yards and execute them!"

Hinata gulped. A dozen they could handle, but all the people in that courtyard?! There was easily over a hundred fighters out there. Even if all they were trying to do was escape, it was going to be next to impossible to get past all of them. She looked at Naruto and realized that he was all for a fight.

Fortunately, that wasn't Sora's plan. She grinned. "I call immunity for me, my brother and my apprentice."

"Immunity? On what grounds?!"

"I'm still a daughter of the Kaze."

"You left the Kaze! You are nothing but a traitor!"

"Ah, but I cannot be a traitor unless I moved against the Kaze. I just left and traveled around. I might have expressed displeasure in the way the Kaze was being run, but I never fought against them."

"You fought those I sent after you!"

"Only after they threatened my wards."

"You left with the son of the woman who was almost our downfall!"

"And left him almost immediately after to study under a ninja from the East." Her grin widened. "See, I wasn't out betraying the clan, I was learning new things to bring back and assist. I was on ahsaas."

"You expect me to believe that for eleven years you have been on ahsaas?! That you had been taking part in one of the oldest Kaze traditions?!"

"No. But I expect you to follow the rule of the law."

"Don't be ridiculous! Guards!"

"My lady," a soft voice said.

Everyone turned to look at the guard who had spoken. He was tall and handsome, and while he in fact was still wearing the white sash of a lower ranked guard, he carried a quiet authority about him.

"My lady, she does have a point. According to the law, she is still a daughter of the Kaze and her status is extended to her family and those whom she is training."

"But she is lying, she has no brother."

"Of course I have a brother. I have that brother," she said, pointing to Naruto.

"But he is not your brother by our laws."

"Of course he is. The Reifujin of the Kaze brought me into the Kaze under the clause that Nanshi was my mother."

The Reifujin's eyes went wide. "But that would make him…"

Naruto looked the Reifujin dead in the eye and took a deep breath. "I'm Nanashi's son." It felt strange, but right to say it.

Hatred filled the woman's eyes. "The bitch had no children."

Naruto nearly lost it. "How dare you-" he started to run towards her, only to have Sora and Hinata yank him back.

"Cool it, kid. We're not going to get anywhere attacking her directly," Sora said in eastern. She turned back to the Reifujin. "Tell me, my lady, do you intend to turn your back on centuries worth of law and the old tradition of ahsaas?"

The woman glared at her. "You've been using jutsu."

"Which was allowed under your predecessor, under whose reign I began my journey. Her laws were the ones who applied to me."

Sora stood before the throne and smiled. She had the woman cornered and they both knew it. The rights of warriors, including the right to journey without the Kaze in the form of ahsaas, were some of the clearest laws the Kaze had. Looking around at the guards she could tell that she had convinced some of them, and raised questions in the minds of most.

It almost worried her. If they were so easily swayed, what was the state of affairs inside the Kaze?

"My lady, do you wish for us to summon the council?" the same guard asked.

The Reifujin offered one more glare to Sora, seething with anger, before admitting partial defeat and turning to sit once again on her throne.

"Assemble the council. Take them to the dungeon and lock them up!" she yelled, gesturing to the trio with a flick of her hand.

Sora smiled. They had lost round one, but they had won round two.

Original Author's Notes: If you didn't get the note, I have a wonderful new beta! Thank you so much Time Shifter!

I got a note from someone asking very politely if this was a story about Naruto or my original characters. Frankly, I'm surprised that I hadn't gotten that question before, as I have had a lot of OCs in this fic (TS [TimeShifter - true dat!). However, most of them are there to teach Naruto and Hinata how to deal with things back in Leaf. Hence all the political bogginess in this chapter. It's the baseline for the two of them to start becoming a little more politically savvy. (TS - YAY for political savvyness) Most OCs won't be reappearing much in the two sequels. Except for Sora. Sora's kinda here to stay.