Chapter 34 - Dull Scissors

"Here he comes, th'whirlwind master, he's our answer for disaster…"

"Fuzan."

"Flash 'o orange, he outta sight, he super tight, turns day t'night…"

"Fuzan."

"Who else he gonna be, 'dis Uz-u-ma-ki… Na-Na-Na, somethin' somethin'…"

"Fuzan! You even listening?"

The captain was saying something, Fuzan finally noticed, so he tilted his head sideways and said, "Yeah, what?"

"Again with the rhymes…? You have to pay better attention."

"I was payin' attention," Fuzan said.

The captain, Omoi, wasn't terribly old, but he had deep creases beneath his eyes from his constant worrying. He gave Fuzan a tired look. "Then tell me what I was just saying."

Fuzan couldn't. "…sorry, Captain," he said, lowering his head.

Captain Omoi sighed. "It's okay now, Fuzan, but suppose I was issuing orders, and you didn't hear me, so you went in the wrong direction and got captured by an enemy? And then-"

"I know, I know, m'sorry, okay?" Fuzan said, before his captain could continue. He crossed his arms, avoiding the stares he was certainly getting. "…so what were you sayin'?"

"We were just going over our roles for this mission. You remember when it begins, don't you?"

"Oh-one-hundred hours, I r'member that," Fuzan said, nodding. "I'm on th'team that's capturing the target, right?" he added, smiling and looking up a little, recalling vague words from before they had left Kumogakure.

"…no, you're on surveillance, Fuzan," said Captain Omoi, "with the rest of your team. Sairi and I will be doin' the actual extraction."

Fuzan stayed silent, looking down again, and decidedly away from his team. Captain Omoi took out a small layout diagram of the complex and began pointing at it as he spoke, holding a flashlight above it. The light was red, to keep from drawing attention.

"You're gonna be posted at the north wall; Akari an' Kurai from your team are gonna be at the east and west; Namakura from Sairi's team is gonna take the south entrance an' monitoring the activities of the guards. Kanji's our eye in the sky, he's gonna stay up here and keep tabs on the situation, give us a heads up if anyone unexpected turns up. An' Sairi and I are gonna be infiltrating the complex together. If you need help, that's where we'll all be."

"I won't need help if m'just posted on surveillance…" Fuzan said, quietly.

"Well, y'never know," said Captain Omoi, folding up the diagram. "What if your radio shorts out an' you're unable to contact us and you don't know where someone is, so you go running around wildly through the complex and you get caught and-"

"Okay, okay, Captain, I get it!" said Fuzan. "I'll remember where everyone is. Not like the mission's gonna take very long, anyways…"

"Nope. Should be quick and easy," Sairi said. She had her hands on her hips and her lip-glossed smile was confident; small earrings like fish scales flashed from the sides of her face. "It's the negotiations that come afterwards that're gonna be difficult. But we'll leave that for the Captain an' Raikage."

"Sairi's right. Should be a routine extraction. So, then…"

"…extraction, reaction, transaction…" Fuzan mumbled to himself. The word had been said several times already, but there was something in the rhythm of how Omoi had said it just then that clicked in his brain and set him off, practicing rhymes. It was a technique he had learned to help with freestyling, and he did it everywhere, where most people would just daydream. "Class-action, corr-action… Pfft, correction..."

"…in a half-hour. Is that clear?" Captain Omoi said. He turned off his flashlight.

"Yeah," Fuzan said, with everyone else. And he huddled together with his team in the hills above the compound as the waiting began again.

It was very dark. The seven of them had been waiting for several hours already, however, since arriving in the hills above the Taki complex in the early afternoon. The Hakaza clan had left their complex quite a few days earlier, and they had been followed the entire way by Sairi's team, who sent word back via messenger hawk that they had made it. Captain Omoi and Fuzan's team came later, to execute the plan.

It had been known for a while that the Hakaza clan was planning on meeting with their brother-clan over a marriage or a union of some sort. And while plans were drafted to have an ambush occur while they were traveling, it was decided that it would be far safer to attack while in the home of the other clan. They'd have a false sense of security, there, most likely; more guards, yes, but with looser standards than those held at their main house. There would be confusion over layouts to exploit, and miscommunication as well. Lots of good things—for Cloud, not for the Hakaza clan, at least.

But the Hakaza clan had been causing a lot of grief in the Land of Lightning, lately. The Cloud nin were pissed off by them, and the daimyo was certainly irked by the amount of counterfeit and illicit goods that were passing through his land, and all of them were doing as much as they could to stop it. The post-war small-time crooks that had sprung up here and there could be dealt with easily enough, but it was the long-established clans that had managed to survive—and even grow larger, in some areas—that were proving to be the most difficult to deal with.

Particularly the Hakaza clan. Something had to be done about them.

It was a lucky thing that there had been a new Raikage for several years now; had A the One-Armed been in charge of the operation he would have likely called for a bloodbath to end Cloud's troubles.

But Rotsuki, the new Raikage, was a different man. He was laid-back, almost lazy in his speech and voice, but it hid a keen mind with a sharp intellect. He knew very well that long-standing clans like the Hakaza couldn't be fully eradicated. They had allies that would most-likely come to their aid if needed, or avenge them if they were destroyed or harmed too badly.

"So we'll negotiate," he had said, when putting the plan together. "We'll get their attention, first, and then we'll negotiate."

And that was exactly what they had come there to do. Get their attention, and clear the path for negotiations of some sort.

As for how they were going to get the Hakaza clan's attention, well.

The ninja of Kumogakure had a long and illustrious tradition of kidnapping people and holding them hostage. Particularly girls, or the children of the influential.

The Taki clan, who were hosting the Hakaza clan, did have a daughter. And while it would have been convenient—and people certainly had a way of panicking when girls were kidnapped, as opposed to boys, which is why they were almost always the norm—it was unlikely that her abduction would have the clout that they were looking for.

So they were going to kidnap Hakaza Shin's son, Kou.

Funnily enough, according to initial research, Kou was a quiet, effeminate, sensitive boy, and would most likely not put up much of a fight, especially if all went as planned and he was still mostly asleep upon first strike. So the small fears that the younger students, Akari and Kurai, had were quelled and lessened quite a bit.

Fuzan, of course, was not afraid so much of Kou fighting back, but of him just messing up in general. But that was nothing new. Much as he wished he wasn't, Fuzan was undeniably underwhelming and unskilled, and not much of a presence as a person. When people weren't calling him "browless wonder" and "fanboy" they were calling him Fuzai no Fuzan; "Not-There Fuzan." Because, really, the way he acted sometimes, it was like his brain really was missing.

Besides, he was just a slow learner. He had to admit it. He'd started his ninja training at 13, after all. Extremely late.

It hadn't really been his fault. He was a country boy, raised miles away from Kumogakure. His early years were filled with learning how to drive cattle and plow wheat fields, not on how to throw shuriken or use chakra. And, in all honesty, he'd probably still be there.

If it hadn't been for the comic books.

Fuzan had first encountered them when he was young, after finding a mid-issue of Choujin-man left behind in the classroom, without an owner. He kept it in his bag when he couldn't find the initial owner, since most of the other kids had gone home, and read it, alone, in his room. It was confusing, at first, but he found himself reading it a second, a third, a fourth time. Choujin-man, Fuzan eventually figured, was a great ninja hero, a courageous and brave warrior from the moon, unallied with any nation, as strong as ten men all put together.

Fuzan couldn't quite explain why he was so drawn to the concept of Choujin-man. Trying to put his thoughts into words always led to the distillation of his thoughts into a single exclamation: "He's just so cool!"

(Though it serves to be said that there was a small amount of unconscious attraction in how Fuzan saw his past lining up with the ninja hero's. Choujin-man had been found as a child by simple farming folk. The same thing had happened to Fuzan, who'd been taken in by the farmers who were now his parents when a baby had been found on the steps of the town center with a note that had his name and a plea for him to be cared for.)

(It would be foolish to assume that there wasn't even the slightest bit of a changeling fantasy at work in Fuzan's mind, some part of him wishing that he'd develop superpowers at the age of thirteen, and learn how to breathe frost and fire.)

(Unfortunately for Fuzan, that didn't happen.)

It was all he could talk about at school the next day—and it was then that he discovered the owner of the book, a kid named Ken, who had been looking for the issue and was glad that Fuzan brought it back.

"It's just so cool, man!" Fuzan had said, his smile wide. "You got more?"

Ken had more. And he invited Fuzan to his house, since he seemed so keen on reading them. "Choujin-man is cool, I guess," Ken had said, on the way there, "but Kakuidori? He's really cool."

"…who's that?" Fuzan had asked.

When they got to Ken's house, he learned.

It was the start of an obsession. Ken got an allowance from his parents, like most kids, and he bought his comics from the general store that was about a half-hour's walk from his and Fuzan's houses. He'd been collecting the comics for a year or two, when Fuzan met him, and had amassed a sizeable library that he kept in boxes in his room.

"I always get Kakuidori, an' Shonen Gumo, for sure. Choujin-man if I read it an' it's good," Ken had explained, spreading them out for Fuzan to see. "The Magnificent Four is okay too, I guess, but it got kinda boring after a while."

"What's that about?" Fuzan had asked.

"Stuff," Ken replied. "C'mon, lemme tell you about Kakuidori." He set down another stack of comics, grinning. "Kakuidori never kills. But he always gets th'job done."

Ken was right. Kakuidori was cool. But it was Choujin-man that stuck with Fuzan the most. He couldn't quite explain why, but there was just something about him that appealed to Fuzan more than the wise-cracking Shonen Gumo, the dark justice of Kakuidori.

Eventually, Ken just packed up all of his issues of Choujin-man and gave them to Fuzan. "You borrow them so much already, it's only fair," he said. "Dunno why you like him so much, but whatever."

Fuzan was incredibly grateful. And he soon began adding to his borrowed collection, making the trek down to the general store every month to pay the 10 ryou that it cost to buy his issues, and maybe a chocolate bar to go with them.

His interests began to spread out further than Ken's collection; there was more to read than the clever, witty dialogues that Ken preferred, Fuzan found.

Fuzan liked the clear-cut, the triumph of good over evil. He liked knowing that the good guy was always gonna beat the bad guy. He liked knowing that it was possible.

Now, Fuzan didn't have a bad life, not by any accounts. The worst that things ever got were when ruffians came through the town to stir up trouble, but they were usually chased off with pitchforks and Old Man Kamaji, who had a thing for riding bulls.

And, well, there was also that guy with the huge sword strapped to his back that came into town about once a month to do nothing but drink as much water as he could, ask around for work, and leave. He didn't cause much trouble, but you couldn't really trust a guy that carried around a blade that was bigger than he was.

But Fuzan's parents had a radio and he heard about troubles in other countries, and it worried him. Not because it was happening to him in particular, but because it was happening in the first place.

It was Choujin-man that inspired Fuzan to become a ninja. Well, him, and the sister of a girl named Hinagiku, who came home from Kumogakure unexpectedly to celebrate the New Year with her family. Fuzan had never heard of her—well, he knew that Hinagiku, a classmate one year his junior, had a sister, and that she was away, but that was where the knowledge ended—but her arrival back into the main town caused an enormous stir. She wore a white sort of vest over her winter coat, and a triumphant sort of smile on her face.

"Where was your sister, anyways?" Fuzan asked Hinagiku, when he saw her in the hallway the next day—the holiday wasn't to start for a few more days, as far as the school was concerned.

"Oh, she's a chuunin in Kumogakure. She sends money home," Hinagiku replied, casually. She walked quickly, her honey-colored pigtails flapping behind her. "She left home to train when she was my age an' now she's off doing this."

Fuzan gasped. "What's a chuunin?" he said, his voice hushed.

Hinagiku smirked at him. "A ninja, you idiot."

"A ninja? Like Choujin-man?" he asked, much more loudly.

Her laugh was very dry, and she began moving away. "Whatever, nerd." And she was gone without another word, into her classroom.

Fuzan asked around, with his usual over-enthusiasm, after that. And he learned that, yes, you could become a ninja, if you went to Kumogakure.

"But not like Choujin-man, he's just a comic character," Ken had told him. Ken had been leaning towards darker stories in the years that had passed, no longer impressed by the squeaky clean world presented in heroes like him. "Real ninjas can't do all the stuff he can. They're not as cool."

"Yeah, so? It's still really awesome," Fuzan replied, indignantly, crossing his arms.

"What-ever, Fuzan," Ken had replied, rolling his eyes and returning to his notebook of scribbles.

Of course, Fuzan didn't act on these dreams immediately. He was eleven when Hinagiku's sister came home, and he was thirteen when he finally left home for Kumogakure on his own.

(Unfortunately—or, perhaps, fortunately—Fuzan did not develop any powers upon his thirteenth birthday. But he wasn't terribly disappointed at that point.)

His parents had wanted him to think on it. "Fuzan, being a ninja… is a serious job," his father had told him, when they sat down to talk about it after dinner, once. "It takes a lot of hard work."

"I can handle hard work."

"You might get hurt, Fuzan," his mother had said.

"I can handle that too! C'mon, mom, pops, it's what I really wanna do…" He pulled the skin that was his lack of eyebrows together in the most pathetic look he could muster.

His father had sighed, shaking his head. He was a lean man, and his face was dotted with freckles. "Fuzan, why do you really want to do this?"

Fuzan found he couldn't really answer. "…be… cause it's… cool?" he said, quietly, trying not to look at his father.

Another sigh. "Fuzan, if you're really serious about doing something like this, y'have to have a good reason for leaving, okay?" He managed a sort of comforting smile that failed to comfort Fuzan in any way whatsoever. "Come up with that and then we'll talk."

His mother, brown hands still wrinkled from the washing, her wavy hair tied behind her, gave Fuzan a gentle pat on the back when he started sniffing in frustration. "There, there, it's nothing to get upset about. Your father has a point," she said. "We're just worried about you, baby. We don't want you going off and making decisions without thinking about them."

"S'not that," Fuzan admitted.

"Then what is it that's got you so upset?"

"S'cos I couldn't think of a good enough reason…"

"Oh, baby, it's okay…" his mother said, pulling him towards her with one arm. "If this is something you really wanna do then you'll find your reason."

Fuzan didn't find his reason immediately. It discouraged him, certainly—wasn't "it was cool" a good enough reason as any? Because Fuzan wanted to be cool. He was un-cool, a nerd, and he knew it. He was scrawny and funny-looking, and that wasn't going to change any time soon.

…but that wasn't a good enough reason in his dad's eyes, he figured. And no matter how much he thought, he couldn't really think of anything beyond that wanting to be cool, that want for… not respect, but acknowledgement.

Months went by. Winter melted into spring, spring burned into summer. School ended, and everyone went back to working the fields—things ran differently in the country, where the school year began in September and ended in May. Fuzan still went to the general store every month, but he found himself just reading the comics instead of buying them, no longer really enjoying them. They were cool—but cool wasn't a good enough reason for liking them—wanting to be like them—wasn't it?

One issue changed that. Choujin-man, issue number 184. August. Years later, and Fuzan would still remembered the specifics.

Story-wise, it was nothing too spectacular. Typical plot: Choujin-man speeding in to save the day from a villainous defective ninja that sought to do harm to the common people. It was clean-cut, over and done in twenty pages.

But one page changed everything. The villain, a hollow-cheeked greaseball with a pointed nose, had been tied up and was being carried away by Choujin-man, who was going to have him brought to the proper authorities, his fellow ninja.

"I don't get it!" he had screeched—and Fuzan could tell that he was screeching, because the speech bubbles were jagged, agitated—"Why do you persist, Choujin-man? You know that stopping me won't help anything! There will always be another out there causing trouble!"

"I know," Choujin-man had replied, his square jaw set, face unchanged.

"So why do you even try, when you know it's no use?"

"Because if I don't, who will? The world needs protecting, or else it will fall into chaos."

The villain had scoffed there, slung over Choujin-man's broad shoulders, still daring to show contempt while in such a humiliating state. "And what if you should fall?"

And Choujin-man had smiled over his shoulder there. "Because I know that there will always be people out there who will do what must be done. And I am one of them," he had said. "But I want to ensure that they live happily and don't have to carry my burden."

Fuzan bought the issue, and read it a dozen times over when he got home in slight awe.

Nowhere in his vast collection was there any indication of such intentions. So far as Fuzan knew, Choujin-man had to fight the bad guys because that was just what he did. Because he was who he was. He was Choujin-man!

But here he was, saying why he fought the bad guys. Because he had to, yes, but also because otherwise, other people would get hurt trying to do what he could do.

It was more than cool. It was… beautiful, awe-inspiring, noble to Fuzan. Now that was a reason.

…the question was, could Fuzan use it?

…he doubted it. He was a farm kid, and hardy, but stringy. He could run fast, but not far. He didn't feel that he could really protect people, much less help them much. He could help his parents, but every kid helped their parents; that was nothing special.

(And underneath it all, "being cool" was still his chief motivation, above all others.)

It was depressing, in a way. Finding this reason but nowhere closer to justifying his dream.

…was that what it was? A dream? Fuzan had never really had any other ambitions—he had pretty much accepted that he'd stay, working the farm, for the rest of his life, getting married—though he had no idea to whom, but he supposed he'd have to—having kids and supporting his parents when they got old. He'd never wanted to escape, he saw no need to.

So, then, what else could it be? Why was he so caught on that concept? Not because it was 'cool,' no, because it was…

…noble.

That was what he told his parents, after thinking it over for many nights, during a summer dinner. "I'm serious about this. I want to help people. I can't do much now, but I think… I'll be able to," he said. He found his throat closing up a little, to his surprise—he didn't expect to be getting that emotional. He was twelve, for heaven's sake. He wasn't supposed to cry.

But his father was smiling, and he put a freckled arm on his son's shoulder. "If you really want to go, I'll send a letter out so we can learn more about getting you in the ninja academy in Kumo. You're paying for your trip over, so start saving up!"

Fuzan was twelve years old and he wasn't supposed to cry, but he did anyways, out of happiness and relief.