A/N: Intended to be read after chapter 77


"So I'll just play the part,

of the fool with such an open heart,

I already know how this will end,

I know I'll just get hurt again,"

-Play with Dynamite, Amanda Fagan


The Dead Sea was an apt name.

The sea around the village never had a name. Never needed one.

Mamoru hadn't given it a second thought. But the civilians had started calling it that after three bodies washed up on shore, days apart, covered in corals and war wounds.

They'd broken off from a reef, by the look of them.

Mamoru looked out at the sea and thought of the luxury of being able to sit down and name things. They'd stopped sometime around the start of the Second War. A tower was a structure bound to come down, a market was only a field of blood and bodies waiting to happen.

Only one name had survived both wars. Amegakure.

Mamoru didn't stand but turned when he heard two pairs of footsteps maneuvering over the rocks behind him. And Oka, even without her making a sound.

"Who are they?"

Two women. Siblings. Flinty eyes, dark blonde, tanned. The older one, who looked around her early twenties, was missing her thumb and pointer finger on her right hand. The one slightly behind her was missing her hand up to her wrist. Looked around sixteen or seventeen.

Both looked like nasty wounds.

"Your students," Oka said easily, coming to stand next to him.

Mamoru eyed the two again.

"Lord Mamoru," the younger one greeted at a murmur.

The older didn't speak. Her hair was hidden down the back of her high collared shirt in a way that told him it'd been grabbed before.

Oka hadn't said it like a question, or a suggestion.

"They're too old," he said bluntly.

She hummed. "Matsu is good ninja."

"Pest."

She smiled and said, "Always."

Mamoru ignored her. "Names?"

"Taeru," the older one said, eyes flicking to her sister, "She's Saku."

Endure and bloom.

"Should I be expecting you to drop more kids on me?"

Oka shook her head but kept her eyes on the sea as she said, "This is all I could find."

海洋生物

"You got a location for me, old man?"

Hidan was nonplussed by Mamoru's unimpressed stare. He left a trail of sandal prints in the sand.

He heard Maho's sigh as he pulled in his net and found a hole in the middle. Tied bundles of seaweed and ninja wire floated on the water around it.

"The corners were too reinforced. The weight broke the center before any fish came close," Mamoru told him.

Maho laid the remains of the net down and muttered, "Could've been nice to know before I threw it out there."

"You'll learn faster if you keep having to do it again."

Maho paused, then said, "Joji-sensei would've told me exactly how to do it and not helped me after, even when I gave up. He only ever gives advice if I do something that he thinks earns it—"

He gasped as Hidan leaned a foot on his back.

"Hey, don't ignore me, old man."

"You're an asshole," Maho hissed.

Hidan pressed down more as Maho tried to shake him off.

Mamoru gazed coolly at him and said, "You owe Etsu an apology."

Hidan stopped and looked at him. "You're kidding."

"Afraid not."

Hidan leaned back, staring at him as he asked Maho, "What the hell are you doing anyway, cash cow?"

"Get off me and I'll tell you."

"I don't want to know that bad," Hidan said lazily, still looking at him. "Do you know how easy it would've been to give her to Lord Jashin? She was begging to be a sacrifice. She's always so scared."

Mamoru only put his hand in his pocket. "You want my help, you apologize to her."

Hidan stared at him again. "You must think you're hot shit, huh, Mamoru-sensei?"

"Asshole," Maho hissed again.

"I think not killing her was the bare minimum, and that stopped being good enough months ago. Your mistake by sticking around."

Hidan looked at him for a few more seconds. He glanced away first. "After," he ground out.

Mamoru didn't respond.

"What?" Hidan asked, mocking. "You don't trust me, Mamoru-sensei?"

"How often are you and I in the same room?" Mamoru asked back.

"And whose fault is that? I go by that blacksmith all the time."

Mamoru closed his eyes. "Maho goes with you," he finally said.

"Why?" Maho spluttered. "I can't make him—"

"What's the location?"

"If you're facing the sea, southwest of where the shelter was. It's on the beach, close to the shore. The name of it, Motsu, is on the hatch."

Maho made an exasperated sound.

"Fine," Hidan said, moving his foot off Maho's back.

"Joji-sensei said you'd teach me to make a net while he was busy doing Academy stuff," Maho said, half-pleading.

"You'll have time," Mamoru said without sympathy.

Maho poked at the net and didn't look up.

"Do you really want me to make you get up, cash cow?" Hidan asked, leaning down to catch his gaze.

Maho sighed.

.

.

.

Maho barely had time to make out the faded characters before Hidan wrenched the hatch open.

"Are they Root? Hanzo's ninja?" he couldn't help but ask.

Hidan grinned as he stared down the staircase. He pulled a scroll from his pouch, threw it up to unroll it, and caught his scythe with one hand through the smoke.

"Been a long time, old friend," he said, swinging it experimentally in front of him.

"Kumo-nin?" Maho tried.

"If they want to talk about Jashinism, I'll show them Jashinism," was all Hidan said. He leaned his scythe on his shoulder as he sauntered down. "Don't get in my way, cash cow."

Maho watched Hidan walk down into the dark and didn't know why he'd bothered.

If Hidan was dismembered down there he'd deserve it. But then, he'd have to put him back together.

He shook his head and followed him down.

None of the candles were lit, but the inside was the same as the old shelter. He knew, because he could've made it to the main room without any of his senses.

Hidan stood in the doorway at the end of the hallway, bathed in orange light, glancing over the room full of startled civilians.

Maho counted nineteen adults, or close, and three kids, wearing dirty, baggy clothes. They were sitting or laying on thin blankets and had a wall lined with cracked containers of water.

They stared at Hidan with wide, shocked eyes.

Everything about them said, Civilian.

"L-Lord Hidan...?" one of the men asked.

They looked at each other and murmured when he didn't answer.

Non-combatants.

Hidan locked eyes with a girl at the back of the room and his grin widened.

She tried to pull a cap down over her face, but even Maho saw the fright in her eyes.

Deception-nin, his mind automatically labeled them, even though he tried not to.

A woman bundled in a blanket lifted her head and noticed Hidan's look. Her hand clenched around something as Hidan took a step into the room and ninja wire glinted as Hidan tripped it.

Maho stepped back as a kunai bounced off the stone where his foot had been. When he looked up again Hidan was stumbling back, kunai impaled down his front.

Three of the traitors started to stand but stopped when Hidan covered his eyes with his hand.

"They didn't believe you, did they?" he asked. Blood slid down his front.

The girl flinched. Some of the other nin watched him in disbelief.

Hidan peeked at them through his fingers. "You're all terrible sinners." He spun his scythe behind him, carving a chunk out of the wall, and charged into the room.

He didn't seem too concerned that Maho didn't have a quarter of the chakra that Nagato had as a kunai sliced down his back, but it was watching him that made him realize why Hidan had the confidence to walk into a room of at least nineteen ninja and expect to come out alive.

And it wasn't because he couldn't die.

Hidan forced them back or on the walls with a wide swing, let go of the handle, and caught a wrist that tried to stab him in the back. He broke the wrist and caught a woman by the throat with his other hand as his scythe hit the stone.

A short sword passed over his head as he ducked, releasing the two as he shoved his hands in his pockets. Before the two he'd grabbed could stumble back or the kenjutsu-nin could correct himself, all three suddenly jerked back with kunai stabbed into their foreheads.

Hidan was fast. Faster than when they sparred and faster, even, than what he'd heard happened when he and Sasori met.

Hidan was backflipping before their bodies hit the ground, scooping up his scythe's cable on the way. His feet barely hit the back wall before four enraged ninja appeared below him. A fifth was on the ceiling, making the snake sign.

Hidan yanked his hand back and as the cable pulled taut happily said, "I pray you find freedom with Lord Jashin in the afterlife," and Maho—

Instinct had him spinning a kunai into his hand, pressing back against the one suddenly at his throat as he was shoved against the wall. His fingers clenched around the urge to touch whatever he could reach and make them explode—

"Let me go," the shinobi begged. "Let me—" they grimaced at the wet sounds and shouts that came from the room as the scythe hit home.

"You-You attacked me," Maho hissed.

The shinobi leaned closer to him, speaking quickly, "Tell them you-you wounded me. I was forced to retreat. Tell them I didn't-when they capture you tell them I didn't run."

Up close, Maho realized that the shinobi was a kid.

It shouldn't have mattered, but it did, because he knew well the feeling of being thrown into something he didn't really understand until it was too late.

If the shinobi was serious, he'd be dead ten times over.

If he was serious

Hidan couldn't understand. Was it so bad that he'd had enough of taking lives?

"They'll ask," the shinobi insisted. "They'll want to know who survived and—"

"No one is leaving that room alive," Maho said, and the shinobi let up, not understanding.

You have to fight your instincts every time you fight, Nagato had told him once, back when he called him Nagato-sensei. It'll get you killed.

"He's outnumbered," the shinobi said after a second.

"Why would they ask me—?"

Maho's eyes caught on a kunoichi over his shoulder as she fell against the wall just outside, one shredded arm limp at her side, staring at him with malice.

The shinobi spoke again, the hand around the kunai starting to shake, but Maho didn't hear them as the kunoichi snagged the kunai that had missed him.

He's pinning you in place. What'll you do now?

"Get off," Maho said immediately.

"He won't make it. Don't you understand? It's-It's not possible," the shinobi stammered, trying to make him understand.

The kunoichi's eyes seemed to glow as she shuffled towards them.

No Oka to save you. No Nagato, Yahiko, or Joji-sensei. What'll you do?

"Behind you—" Maho realized his mistake as soon as the words left his mouth, as the shinobi turned to look and went silent and stiff.

"Keep him there," she instructed, swaying, "I'll make one of these traitors pay for this if it's the last thing I do."

This is what your peace has given you.

Distantly, he heard Hidan laugh.

The shinobi's hand shook harder but he nodded once, turning back, and Maho snagged the arm that tried to stab a second kunai into his gut.

It's easier to be weak, after all. The strong have to fight.

Maho locked eyes with the shinobi, a silent plea of you don't have to do this, and the shinobi ducked his head and wouldn't look at him as the kunoichi came closer, dripping blood.

If you're known as strong, people expect things from you.

Maho bit his tongue until he tasted blood. He squeezed the shinobi's arm, hand glowing green, and did the one thing Nagato told him to never do.

The shinobi let go of the kunai as he yanked his arm back, but it was already starting to swell.

Nagato's textbook had taught him that tumors happened when something went wrong in the body and a clump of cells couldn't stop dividing. Sometimes, the body was able to wall off the damaged cells. And sometimes it couldn't. And it spread.

Maho barely dodged the kunoichi's vicious swing. It scraped off the wall where he'd been as the shinobi stared at the swollen lumps slowly growing up his arm in wide-eyed terror.

Maho took another step sideways as she stumbled around the shinobi, eyes half-glazed over, but fixated on him as Maho heard Hidan cut more traitors apart.

The shinobi raised his head, staring at him with sudden fear and hate. "Monster," they said.

Maho focused chakra in his hands but forced himself to keep watching the shinobi, committing to memory what happened when he wasn't careful, when medical chakra was poured into the body without something for it to do.

The shinobi leaned against the wall, trembling fingers touching at the lumps spreading up his neck, too fast for even the strongest immune system to react.

Maho glanced at the kunoichi, if only because she was still coming at him, throwing her weight forward with each step. He heard his own loud breathing.

He wanted to run. He was suddenly eleven again and looking at the soot and blood on his hands, wearing the red of Iwa, and fully realizing the destructive potential of Explosion Style.

The kunoichi lunged at him, screaming in rage and grief, and he

All he did was shove her back, away from him.

His hand prints on the front of her baggy shirt glowed yellow-orange.

The shinobi was on his knees, grabbing at his face and crying.

One—

Maho took a step back, and then another as the kunoichi slurred out a curse and dropped her kunai to yank clumsily at her shirt.

Two—

Maho ducked around a corner of the wall and collapsed against it.

Three—

He ducked his head between his legs as the explosion shook the walls and temporarily deafened him, instantly covering him in a layer of smoke and debris.

Sometimes Maho thought that he was born wrong. Even before the training and explosion style, he'd always been mentally unfit to become a shinobi.

He takes everything too hard, Chairotsuchi-sensei had said about him, but he has power.

In another life and if he'd had a choice, he would've been a farmer, or someone who took care of animals.

He barely felt the heat. After half a minute Maho forced himself to stand, swiping water out of his eyes as he avoided looking at the chunk the explosion had taken out of the floor and wall and the blood burned into the stone.

At least the whole thing hadn't come down on top of them.

Hidan was standing at the center of his ritual circle when he got back to the main room. "What the hell was all this for, cash cow?" he asked, waving away smoke.

Other than the girl with the cap, everyone else was dead.

"Did you let that woman go on purpose?" Maho asked quietly.

Hidan stopped. "Careful," he warned. "This holy slaughter was done in the name of Lord Jashin. Whatever happened out there, you think you're more important than that?"

Maho sat against the wall and coughed as he said, "You should've counted them."

The girl shakily stood, holding a thin, dirty knife.

Hidan tilted his head at the sound, then bent his body backwards to look at her upside-down.

Her hand shook so hard she dropped the knife twice.

"I gave your friends a chance, didn't I?" Hidan asked. "Didn't I warn them that if they attacked me, if they were stupid enough to make themselves sacrifices, all bets were off, huh? Are you going to be a dumbass too?"

"They-They did it for village! For what we believe in!" she shouted.

Hidan straightened and ran a hand through his hair. "Oh yeah? Then why the fuck didn't it save them?"

She sniffed and didn't answer.

Maho uselessly pulled his shirt up to cover his mouth and nose. Not that he wanted to watch Hidan's messy kills but— "Why does she get a pass?" he asked tiredly.

"A pass?" Hidan repeated, staring at him. "Is that what you think this is?"

Maho inspected his sleeves. His left sleeve was almost cut in half and dark with blood. The kunoichi had cut him as he shoved her from his armpit to his shoulder and he hadn't noticed.

It was about time he stopped wearing Nagato's hand-me-downs, anyway.

"You must care about Oka's weird boundaries," Maho said without expecting a response. "What else would it be?"

Hidan kept staring at him.

"It's okay to admit it. I care about her too."

He didn't respond.

"What?"

"Stop being a depressing shit, cash cow."

"What?"

Hidan squinted. "It's weird."

Maho blinked. "Because I'm not arguing with you?"

"Look, just give her to someone," Hidan said uncomfortably, waving vaguely at the girl. He walked out of the room without looking at him again.

Maho scrambled up, hesitated with a quick glance at the girl, then went after him.

"I'm supposed to go with you, asshole."


A/N: 海洋生物 - Sea Life

Dulce bellum inexpertis - War is sweet to the unexperienced