Sept 20, 11 AK

We were a fair distance away from the village, particularly since Tsunade still didn't feel a pressing need to pick up the pace, but it gave me an opportunity to pick up a few more things. Enough that she eventually gave a small sniff of acknowledgment and announced my medical skills 'adequate, barely'.

Story of my life, I thought, sighing resignedly as we passed a lone traveler coming in the opposite direction along the dusty road. Seriously, haven't they ever heard of paving these things? Speeds up transport a lot, even if you're still only using ox drawn carts or-

Fast.

Reflexes honed by time in ANBU triggered before I needed to consciously process input. My eyes activated automatically beneath my hood, dim red glittering in the permanent shadows of the Genjutsu as I bent over nearly backwards to avoid the sweep of the sword, the tip just barely catching my cheek and sending a few drops of blood flying. I tutted quietly at the sting and the nuisance of pulling the threads out of the injury later.

"Sharingan? Weren't you all extinct?"

My eyes narrowed as I flickered around the sneering interloper, clones left in my wake till the ninja was encircled. He had seen the eyes. He had to die.

"What do you want?"

My voices was quite pleasant and even. You can always enrage them later, but it's important to keep them talking, if they're talking a portion of their concentration is occupied on something other than you, talking can be used to incite emotions, can be used to gain insight into their patterns, can-

"You killed my brother, Hiroki."

I quirked an eye, Sharingan still spinning as I continuously updated my model of his body language.

"Oh? I'm sorry about that. When was this, exactly?"

He snarled and charged, katana whipping forward at ridiculous speed, generating a thin line of flame that surged towards my real body, almost too fast for me to dodge. Clever. Hmm, Fire?

"Oh, was he that guy working for the Yakuza? Or whatever they were, I don't remember. So many faces, so many morons, so many corpses rendered for parts…"

I caught the down swipe on a kunai, deadening a little of the energy before Flickering behind the angry ninja. He caught the attempted stab at his kidney with the edge of his sword, turning the action into a spin that whipped out a much larger wave of flame.

Not bad, clever with his sword, good battlefield awareness, probably pretty decent reserves too, if he feels comfortable throwing it away on jutsu like that. I caught his eye for a moment and launched an obvious but pervasive Genjutsu, turning the ground to a clinging mud which began to suck him down. He scowled and triggered a small pulse of chakra, sneering at my 'failed' attempt to trap him. I widened my eyes in feigned surprise as I triggered three more illusions in the wake of the initial disruption.

If he was willing to throw huge jutsu around then he was one of those ninja, the flashy ninja that rely on big techniques and long drawn out battles to win, something I could never hope to match with my modest reserves. Little trips like turning the nearby pothole invisible wouldn't even occur to him, especially faced with the Sharingan and that one big Genjutsu he had already brushed off, and one of the weaker illusions was designed to do nothing but reinforce that assumption. The Vicious Whisper.

Believe it, believe the lie, believe the weakness, believe in your inevitability-

The volley of senbon went slightly wide in my hasty retaliatory throw, the few on target callously knocked aside by the faintly glowing sword.

"Tricks and cowardice; my brother should never have fallen to such as you."

I made my mouth go tight with tension, eyes darting around as if searching for an exit. I let my gaze linger in one particular direction for an extra fraction second before switching my focus in the opposite direction and disappearing in a Body Flicker. Traceable, if you were paying attention to a particular location, like say, the one your target had just bluffed right at your face. He dashed towards the first site, foot slipping ever so slightly on the little hole in the road, causing his eyes to trace down for just a second. My second movement was less trackable, a rapid blink courtesy of the lamented cousin's eye, putting me directly behind the target as he brought his gaze back up to the clone, its mouth opening in horrified surprise as he smiled viciously, and my senbon hit every single nerve in his back.

He went down with a scream, limbs twitching as the neurotoxin did its work, before gritting his teeth and standing back up, eyes wild and teeth bared.

"Clever. But I won't fall for that again!"

The last layer of illusion, slowing his internal clock by just a tiny accumulating fraction of a second over the course of the fight, dispelled, the afterimage of dead light fading as his brain finally caught up to the reality where I was already standing directly in front of him, eyes spinning languidly and my hand buried to the wrist in his diaphragm, kunai sliding tenderly upward to puncture his heart.

"No, I suppose you won't. Goodbye."

I blinked away, and the explosive tag wrapped around the handle of the kunai detonated. One can never be too careful, after all.

I grimaced with distaste at all the blood on my hands, turning away from where Tsunade was still nearly rigid with horror before blanching at what my brief glimpse had shown. Well, I suppose it was lucky she hadn't interfered, but on the other hand I wanted to punch myself for allowing the few drops of blood from my clumsy dodge of the initial attack to land on her face. Such a failing was unlikely to impress her.

I pulled a small washbasin out of a scroll and filled it with a tiny spit of water jutsu. Get the blood off the hands, quickly, quickly, quickly, make sure the Primary is alright, hurry. I wiped the last bit of pink stained water off with a quick pulse of fire chakra and blinked to the Slug Princess's side.

"I am terribly sorry for the egregious lapse Tsunade-hime. Please, I must- I need to- what can I do?! I have cleaning supplies, if you just sit down for a moment I can- don't look, please. I can fix this!"

Shizune had moved from her defensive position to start rubbing little circles in Tsunade's back, the older woman eventually coming out of her little trance to wave off her apprentice's fussing, her calm exterior betrayed by the hair fine tremble in her hands.

"I'm fine, honestly, you two, I'm not made of glass."

I stood, hands clenching and unclenching awkwardly as I nearly trembled with suppressed tension. It had been a near thing getting her to come along with me, a tenuous link and a few jokes and bluffing and nothing, and I needed this to work, it was my Purpose.

Tsunade blanched a little as she looked up at me, eyes tracking something on my face. Shit!

I spun around hurriedly, eyes looking out for any more possible threats and a hand digging for a cloth to wipe away the bloody tears making tracks down my face.

"I'm sorry Tsunade-hime. I forgot about… that techniques puts a strain on the eyes."

I dabbed the blood away with firm, rapid strokes, before I felt a hand on my shoulder spinning me back around. I closed my eyes reflexively to try and prevent any more blood from emerging and further disturbing her equilibrium, only to feel cool fingers pressing against my temples, and the familiar tingle of medical chakra.

"Oh- no, please, Tsunade-hime, it's fine, I just need a moment to-"

"Slapdash work on the transplants. And excessive pressure on the vessels, some damage to the retina… Strain my magnificent butt, you're going to go blind if you keep pulling that kind of chicanery."

I sighed uncomfortably at the attention and desperately wished for the time when I was still able to relieve stress with errant fidgeting.

"Thank you for the concern, but your welfare, physical and psychological, is my concern. I should have been paying closer attention; you should not have been placed in such an unfavorable position. Service is Purpose, and I have failed in my purpose."

She slapped the back of my head hard enough that I blinked in surprise and stumbled forward.

"Show more respect to your future maybe-Hokage! I recognize that… guy." She waved at the rather large splatter on the road with her eyes averted. "Made it into the Bingo Book, not some nobody. Probably has a decent bounty on his head from somewhere or other. I suppose you'd better tidy him up as much as possible, no doubt someone in Konoha will be interested."

I still wasn't totally comfortable and the Sannin could sense that.

"Hey, if you failed this time, do better next time, alright? Jeez, gonna drive me crazy you keep stressing out like this…"

I smiled tentatively back at the Sannin.

"Maybe Hokage huh? At least wait until they buy you a drink first."

. . .

February 3, 12 AK

I let my head sink into Anko's warm lap, revelling in the quiet contentment of aftercare. Say what you like about dating shinobi but they are very conscientious, and working i had given my dear Anko-chan an exceptional understanding of the tolerances of a human body.

Her hands ruffled through my hair gently, her soft, tuneless humming pervading the warm air of her apartment. It was nice to just… drowze a little, to destress after a long day, and my mind began to wander slightly in thought. She must have sensed my contemplative mood, for her fingers dug a little more firmly into my scalp, nails lightly scratching to keep me from floating into the sea of dreams.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Hmm. Just things. Sometimes I wonder… I try pretty hard, you know? Because it seems like so much hangs in the balance. If I fail this job, will the village be forced to go to war? If I don't master this technique, will my team get wiped out on the next mission? So I push, I push as hard as I can, and… things generally work out."

She hummed a little in acknowledgement.

"That's good right?"

"...Yeah, I suppose. But… sometimes it seems like I don't actually matter that much. I don't mean in the little things, which, yeah, they're important, but… What if nothing I do really matters? Imagine you were thrown back in time to the Warring Clans Period, and you tried to get Konoha off the ground faster; brokering peace deals, encouraging Hashirama-sama and… him, to be more friendly, saving a few lives so that there were less hard feelings… but the only thing that really changed was that the Valley of the End became the Lake of the End, or something like that. Konoha was the Village hidden in the Bark, or… something. Details shifting, but nothing important. Like pebbles thrown in a river, the ripples disappearing after a while even if they appeared large in the moment."

Anko's head fell back against the couch as she replied, voice falling in a languid ripple as her eyes closed for a moment. Her tone was flavoured by the small, wry smile teasing the edges of her lips.

"That's how it is for everyone, Roki-kun. You do the best you can and hope everything works out."

I sighed and let my eyes slip closed.

"That's just relying on luck though. I tried, you know, with Danzo, to make things better, and… I think it worked, mostly. But I don't see anything… It doesn't seem like a big change, yet. It seemed so straightforward, you know, but all that's changed is that Tsunade-hime came to the village a little earlier, and it makes me wonder... What if I messed up? What if, while trying to make things better, I accidentally make things worse? Wouldn't it be better to just… not do anything? Not try so hard, not push so much, just… let things happen as they were meant to."

Her fingers were tracing soothing patterns over the edges of the bandages on my skin, soft curls and swirls giving me little shivers in their wake.

"...I think, what matters most is how you feel about it. You can't know the future, not really, not even with those dreams of yours. You just have to ask yourself: would I feel better, or worse, if I did nothing? Just like everybody else."

I sighed out a soft laugh, very quietly, as I let myself slip a little closer towards sleep.

"Just like everybody else."

"Yeah. It's all just people in the end. What's that thing you say? Strength is Life, Service is Purpose? But purpose isn't the same thing as meaning, it's not the same as caring about something. Function without feeling. It's the people you care about that make it all worthwhile. Even trying and failing."

My muscles relaxed as I let sleep take me, my last words coming out in a near silent murmur through my faint smile.

"Strength is Life, Service is Purpose, Friendship is Magic."

. . .

A/N: Hiroki might act kind of flippant with Tsunade initially, but that really is mostly an act. He is still very much obsessed with completing orders, and he really didn't feel particularly confident about his ability to persuade her to do anything, so the possibility that he might have actually failed a mission at the last second makes him freak out a little.

Some time with Anko! She's a very good Dom. Very sweet. The final version of Hiroki's motto, after a bit of more serious thought, will be Strength is Life, Service is Purpose, Family is Meaning.
Remember, Family is what you choose it to be; Thicker is the Blood of the Covenant than the Water of the Womb.