Chapter 22 – Some Ill A Brewing
Nimbly maneuvering his feet across the dry cracked earth of what had once been the Dekisui swamp, Shiranui Genma finally admitted to himself that he missed the damn thing. While the Dekisui had emitted a quite horrendous odor and the mud one would undoubtedly get covered in if their mission passed anywhere near the place clung steadfast to clothes while forever retaining the awful stench, it was still better than the current state of said swamp. The Kyubi had passed through here on its way to wherever it was going, and to say it looked different would be a complete understatement.
Where once the ground had been soft, soggy, and damp, grabbing hungrily at anything attempting to walk over it and drag it down for a good soak, it was now completely solid and hard. Cracks and deep fissures in the earth marbled the ground where the Kyubi had made a stand against some local farmers and scorched the ground with its demonic fire. Thousands of gallons of water boiling instantly, along with all the rotting compost, had left a foul smelling fog over the area, leaving Genma to marvel at the power the demon must possess to be able to accomplish something so vast, while at the same time being completely terrified of the beast.
So far life for Recovery Squad A had been going along quite routinely. They woke before sunrise, consumed their ration bars, and marched toward Furi-zu, keeping a constant eye out for any refugees in need of assistance. Lunch consisted of more ration bars, which they ate when the sun reached its highest point in the sky. They stopped travelling two hours after sundown and ate dried eel with rice for dinner, after which they slept so they could start and repeat everything the next day. Genma was bored to tears. Since setting out days ago his squad hadn't encountered anything even remotely interesting.
"This has to be the worst mission we've ever been assigned guys," the orally fixated teenager complained to his squad. "We should have been assigned to the attack squads. Then we'd see some action."
"Yeah? You think we'd see some action?" Oshira Tsubaki, the squad's lone female member asked facetiously. "Because I was thinking we wouldn't see much of anything if we were on the attack squad since we'd be freaking DEAD! There's a reason everyone on the attack teams are jonin, and it's not so they all have matching pants."
"While that may be the case for you my dear little mimizu*, I assure you, it wouldn't be the same for me. Let's be serious, I'm a tokubetsu jonin in name only, everyone knows I'm going to sail through the upcoming exams. Hell, I'm going to do so well they'll probably make me ANBU on the spot."
"If you call me that even one more time I'm going to rip out your tongue and make you eat it," Tsubaki growled as Genma chuckled lightly.
"He only does it because you let it bother you," Ibiki chimed in from behind them. "If you'd get over it he'd have nothing to piss you off about."
"Ibiki! That's blasphemy!" Genma mock shouted. "I'll always have something ready to piss off our little mimizu. Even if she manages to get over the fact that we caught her wriggling on the ground eating dirt, I've already got something waiting in the wings."
"I've told you a million times I was not eating dirt, and I was not caught in an "earthworm" jutsu? Why can't you let it go?"
"Than what pray tell were you doing mimizu? Because as far as I could tell you were eating dirt. And if you weren't eating dirt what were you doing with it in your mouth?"
"For the last damn time, I was not eating dirt or acting like a worm, that bastard Cloud ninja had just spun me around in the air and dropped me on my the ground. I was still spinning when my face hit the dirt, which is why I had dirt in my mouth. And if the two of you hadn't been so fucking drunk in the first place I wouldn't have had to fight him at all."
"She has a point Genma," Ibiki agreed. "If you hadn't told that ugly guy the reason we sent Hyuga's to kick his ass was that they could do it without actually having to see his ugly mug, he wouldn't have knocked your drunken ass out. And I wouldn't have jumped in heroically to save you, only to slip in that spilled beer and crack my head open on the bar stool. Which would mean Tsubaki wouldn't have had to step up to kick his ass into the ground, only to be spun into the dirt by the bastard's sneaky friend."
"Alright, alright," Genma waved his hands in defeat. "I'll never mention that again. Besides I overheard something way better the other day at the onsen while listening to the women gossiping on the other side of the fence."
Tsubaki's porcelain-like skin reddened instantly as she realized exactly what he'd heard at the hot spring. Generally a bit of a blustery hot head, the ebony tressed kunoichi embarrassed easily and clammed up at any mention of her personal or dating life, and she knew that's what this was about. She'd known when she let it slip to Suzume during their physicals that it would eventually get back to her team, but she'd honestly thought it would take longer to do so. Cursing her rotten luck, Tsubaki attempted to feign indifference.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
"Bullshit!" Genma guffawed. "You know exactly what and who I'm talking about."
"Well what the hell is it? Because I sure as shit don't know," Ibiki shouted, knowing from the look on Tsubaki's face that whatever it was, it was pretty much true.
"Well Ibiki, it seems that while you've been off pining for little Miss Stick-up-her-butt Shizune, our sweet little Tsubaki-chan has been carousing with boys. More specifically she's been spending quite a bit of time following that young guy, Kinjo Mizuki, around."
"Mizuki?" Ibiki stood stunned with his mouth hanging open. "Really Tsubaki? That dude is such a prick. He thinks he's so friggin awesome he probably won't notice you're even into him anyway. Don't waste your time on that pretty boy."
"He's right Tsubaki-chan," Genma added. "A man should not be thought of as pretty. He's too good looking for the ninja life; he must spend all his time grooming himself instead of training."
"You two did not just go there, right?" The dark haired girl fumed. "I've been on your team for years and if anyone can be called pretty boys it's the two of you. I seem to remember just last year Genma proclaiming, 'all the ladies love cool Genma, so call me L.L. Cool G,' and if I'm not mistaken Ibiki, it was you the genin kunoichi Spirit Team was following around trying to get a shirtless picture of for their bishi calendar. So don't you dare call him a pretty boy."
"It's not just that he's pretty, Tsu," Ibiki spoke from the heart. "It's that he's stuck up and self centered. He's not going to even notice you're interested in him, and you're going to get hurt. The guy is oblivious."
"Oh I wouldn't say that," Genma added with a cocky grin, and Tsubaki's face fell; she'd held hope that he'd only heard about her interest in the boy but it seemed he'd heard all of it. "I'm pretty sure the mouth she put on his dick was pretty hard to ignore."
"Ack! What?" Ibiki sputtered. "I'll kill him. He's dead. He shouldn't be touching you!"
"I'm pretty sure it was her doing the touching," Genma cackled in amusement, completely hysterical over the situation.
Tsubaki hated him and desperately wanted to punch him in the face. In fact she was just about to do so when she noticed a small smoking pile of debris in the distance that seemed to be moving.
"Guys!" she called out, interrupting their laughter. "Something's over there."
"It sure is," Genma whistled. "Looks like we finally found some survivors kids. This trip might finally get interesting."
XoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoX
Konoha's fourth and arguably most beloved hokage sat holed up in the tower vault where he'd been for five days with no idea when he'd actually be able to get out. He'd been meticulously going over every bit of information the village had collected on the nine tails and had yet to find any viable solution to the problem. He'd read that the Kyubi was a chaos demon with an affinity for fire, an she showed up every once in a while when called from her demon dimension, but that was nothing he hadn't already known, and he was still pretty much clueless as to how to kill the damn thing, if such a thing could even be done.
He'd searched archive after archive of jutsu and seals and still he was pretty much up shit creek without a paddle. He had come across a seal that could supposedly house another soul in someone else's body, pretty much rendering the housed soul useless, but he was unsure if it would be effective on a demon. He'd also come across a self sacrificing summoning jutsu that would call forth a shinigami who would kill your target, but at the cost of your own life. Minato had no problem giving his life for the village if it would save Konoha, but he couldn't be sure it would work and if he died without killing the demon, Konoha would actually be worse off than it was now.
Sighing loudly and blowing a strand of hair out of his eyes Minato wiped a bead of sweat off the end of his nose. All this research was getting him nowhere. The Kyubi still raged across Fire country, he wasn't spending nearly enough time with his newborn son, a new Kage was looking for recognition by means of destroying Konoha, his team was incarcerated, and Anko remained comatose in a hospital bed waiting on help that he was beginning to think would never come. Being hokage was nothing like he'd thought it would be and he wished, not for the first time, that the third hadn't chosen him. Unfortunately, wishing did little to remedy the situation and he had to find a solution where none could be found.
Minato shook his head in frustration. He could spend years looking through all this carp and he still wouldn't find anything because nobody had ever been able to do it. Well damn it all to hell than, he thought, I'll just do it myself. Sure he could keep paging through these useless pages and hope he found something usable, but Minato was a man of action and he figured he had a much better chance of creating his own way to do it than if he relied on everyone else. Screw that stupid demon; he was going to save Konoha.
XoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoX
Scowling for all he was worth Baki wiped gently at baby Kankuro's face. The two year olds face was covered with red, green, and black scribbles. Red circles marred his cheeks and looped around his mouth in a cruel mockery of rosy cheeks and lipstick, crooked black lines reached haphazardly from below his lips down his neck and all the way to his chest in a pseudo-beard, and green surrounded his eyes completely, stretching from his eyelids to his forehead. Temari had stood proudly by her brother's side when she'd shown off her "bootiful wittle baby sisser."
Baki had to admit she'd been very sneaky; one day she'd be an excellent kunoichi. He hadn't even noticed she wasn't in her own bed where the two of them were to be taking a nap. After her big reveal he'd looked at her bed to see she'd stuffed her pillows beneath the blanket to resemble her sleeping form, before creeping into her brother's crib and covering his face with permanent marker. He was having a hell of a time getting it off the usually bubbly and smiley baby, who was now cranky and testy from lack of sleep and the irritation Baki's scrubbing was causing to his baby soft skin. To add insult to injury, the whole time spent washing the baby's face Temari provided ear piercing screeches and intermittent blubbering as a soundtrack.
"Baki NO!" the small girl screamed at him while stomping her feet. "I wanna sisser! NO BOYS! Put it back!"
"Temari sit down, do your coloring on your pad, and stop yelling," Baki replied calmly. He'd learned from experience that yelling at her never actually go her to do what you wanted, in fact it was sure to make her do the exact opposite.
"Baki NO!" she yelled again, though this time a little less forcefully. "I say no!"
Sighing heavily he was about to put Kankuro back in his crib temporarily to deal with the boy's sister when the kitchen door swung in wildly and the kazekage stood before him wearing a crazed expression. For the life of him Baki couldn't figure out if it was a look of rage or sheer joy, then the man's face contorted in disgust and he thought it had probably been the latter.
"What the hell is going on here?" his leader shouted over the still screaming four year old.
"Temari made a mess of Kankuro while they were supposed to be napping, so I'm cleaning him up."
So infrequent were her father's visits that they young Temari was pretty much unaware of his actual relationship to her, and certainly had no idea of his powerful position. As such she continued screeching through his visit and glowered at him when he told him to be quiet. Still it wasn't going too badly Baki thought, until his kazekage tried to tell him what his unannounced visit was for and the toddler screamed at the top of her lungs in an attempt to get her caregivers attention.
"Temari! Shut your mouth now!" her father bellowed in her small face, trying to scare her into submission. Baki winced, knowing this would not end well. The tiny girl was completely unimpressed by his loud mouth and show of bravado, she was used to listening only to Baki and he would never talk to her in that manner.
"NO!" she howled right back in his face and kicked him roughly in the shin.
"Shit," Baki cursed under his breath as her father smacked the little girl across the face hard enough to knock her off her feet. She now lay on the ground sobbing for Baki and shooting her kazekage an evil death glare.
"That is it!" the kazekage roared. "This experiment is over! You are a ninja, not a nursemaid and it is more than obvious that you are not cut out to raise children, and certainly not MY children. There are rumors that the nine tailed demon fox is attacking Fire country, tomorrow you will go verify its true. My children will be taken care of by actual nannies. Say your goodbyes to them tonight!"
"Hai, Kazekage-sama," he answered through gritted teeth and his leader slammed his way out of the house. Temari stuck her tongue out at him as he left and jumped into Baki's arms for a hug. Looking at her tear stained face and big watery eyes, he thought of the promise he'd made to a dying woman and he knew he couldn't leave her or her brother, and he'd sworn he'd take care of the other one as well.
With that in mind, Baki made preparations to leave at first light. He just had to figure out how he was going to get the littlest sibling out of that lunatic Yashamaru's clutches by morning.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Please review. Reviews make my day and really encourage me to get the lead out on the next chapter.
*earthworm