Happy Birthday (to me) Here is chapter eight.
"To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it. -Mother Teresa
"Okay, lazy, you're up," Jiraiya says, pointing at me. It's been six weeks at this point, and the man still hasn't once called me by my name. I'm worried to ask if he even knows it.
Earlier this morning we managed to complete three more D-rank missions, all we've really been doing so far. Instead of rewarding our hard work with an afternoon off however Jiraiya decided to host yet another training session. I swear, I never would have done this to my men before, I'm being worked to death here.
I slowly stand up and walk over to stand in front of the man. At least today all we're doing is a couple rounds of sparring, which while it might be more intense while it's taking place, it does leave more room for rest breaks than other forms of training.
"You can act a little more lively than that kid," Jiraiya says.
I simply let out a long breath as I lift my hands up and get into a ready stance. "Just hurry up and come at me so I can get this over with," I reply.
I see his eyebrow twitch, before he quickly takes me up on my statement and launches a punch aimed right at my forehead. Expecting it though, I easily dodge by ducking down and kick out my leg to sweep at his ankles. He evades it by jumping high into the air, much higher than my standing height.
I can tell what he's about to do, judging by the way he's spreading out his arms and legs, and I quickly jump out of the way before he attacks the ground I was standing on.
Before the small amount of dust that was kicked up settles, I run up at him, jumping up and aiming a side kick at his ribs. He catches my foot however and using my leg, flings me over his head and to the ground on the opposite side of him. Luckily, I was able to bring my arms up to break my fall.
I then see his foot flying down at me in an axe kick, and bring my legs up to block my body with my shins. Man am I happy I started wearing those shin guards a couple weeks ago, they sure are a lifesaver.
I then try and sweep one of my legs around to knock the leg Jiraiya's standing on over. The attack misses, but I'm then able to swing both my legs over my body and stand up, returning to my original fighting position.
But I see he must be making this a speedy sparring session today, for Jiraiya doesn't give me even a second's rest before he launches another punch at me. I bring my arms up to block the punch from landing in my face, but I don't see the kick he throws at me immediately afterwards, and before I'm able to do anything like block, dodge, or counterattack, I find myself flying back towards the trees, my body slamming hard into a trunk.
Man, this hurts, I have to stop having our fights end like this.
"Well, it looks like I've beat all three of you today!" Jiraiya says from the center of the field as I slowly get up and walk over to join the other three.
"Like usual," I hear Mikoto mumble dejected.
I know that Jiraiya is supposed to be one of the strongest shinobi out there, even at this point in the timeline, but still, he couldn't give us at least one win?
As I walk back to the group, Jiraiya turns and faces me. "Do you ever realize you focus a lot on kicking, brat?" Jiraiya asks, once I reach them.
"Not really, do I?" I ask, taking large mouthfuls of air, who thought that a short sparring session against a Jounin level shinobi would leave me so winded.
"You do," Jiraiya continues. "Try and think about incorporating some , Blondy, you're next!"
Punches huh? The idea makes me internally cringe.
In my Last Life I grew up doing Taekwondo and wrestling. The first sport has very little striking, the second sport is ninety percent kicks, ten percent a mix of shoves and punches. Punches were really only used to create distance between you and your opponent. The second, well, has no striking.
Even after years of learning the Nara Clan's and Academy martial arts and sparring techniques, the idea of attacking with punches still takes me for a loop.
Should I probably focus on punching in practice? Maybe,
But it's as they say, it's better to be perfect in a couple techniques, than only semi-competent in many. I figure if someone is able to get past my shadow techniques, I can probably hold them off with some well placed kicks, it's worked pretty well for me so far.
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"You mean we're actually going to leave the village?" Minato asks, voice full of excitement, after Jiraiya's announcement.
It seems after nearly three months of completing solely D-rank missions, we are finally going on a C-rank, and thus leaving the village. I wonder how much begging Jiraiya had to do with his old sensei to get this.
"Yes, little blondie," Jiraiya continues. "Our next mission is taking us to the Capital City. There we will meet a small group of traders who want help with traveling back to their village."
"Help as in protection, right?" I ask.
"Ah, how smart of you, little Nara, you would be correct there," Jiraiya says, bopping me on my head. He's gotten in the habit recently of doing that to me. I don't like it. "They need us to defend them on their way, from bandits, animals, any and all of the above."
"How likely are we to run into bandits?" I ask. Hey, we were never actually told just what it's like traveling outside of the village, and now that I think about it, I don't think any of the three of us have left the village gates.
I figure that the route from the Capital City to Konoha is pretty well traveled given that they are two of the largest cities in the Land of Fire, the roads immediately surrounding them are similar, so it's not like bandits can really hide and attack.
But there's also no permanent security presence on the routes, hence the need for traveling groups to pay shinobi to protect them.
"Not too likely, but there's always a chance," Jiraiya continues. "But don't worry you three. I've seen what you can handle in training, you'll be able to handle whoever we run into."
Jiraiya then hands the three of us a slip of paper. "Here's the packing list for our short little trip. You have an hour to run back to your houses, get the stuff on that list, and get to the village gates. Starting…now," Jiraiya says, right before he shushins off to who knows where.
"Only an hour to find all this stuff," I hear Mikoto squawk as she gazes at the list.
I look down at it as well, and it's surprisingly pretty long. Do I really need all this stuff for a mission that's supposed to take a week at the most and is mostly camping? I mean an empty wine bottle… really?
"Yep," I say as I start to make my way to my house. "See you in an hour." Luckily for me, the meeting place we grouped up this morning is right down the street from the Nara compound, and only a four minute walk to my house. It would be one if I ran, but I don't feel like that now.
Walking up to my house however, I see a girl, about Shikaku's age standing outside looking around. She has long black hair, could almost pass for a Nara, but looks different enough from everyone in our family that she doesn't. I haven't seen her before, but she obviously has to have a reason for being here.
"Are you lost? Looking for something?" I ask her.
"Oh! Um…" She turns to look at me. She looks lost. "Sorry to interrupt you, but do you know where I could find Shikaku-kun?"
"Shikaku?" I repeat. "Oh you mean Kaku-nii. What do you need him for?" Now that she says she's looking for my brother, I'm actually curious as to why she's here. If I'm late to the front gates, oh well. I've met all of Shikaku's teammates, and most of the people he's currently working with as a Chunin. I've never seen her before, and Shikaku has never said anything about a girl.
"Kaku-nii? Oh! you must be his younger brother he told me about," she says, and wait, has Shikaku been talking about me to people I don't know? The answer is probably, and I should have assumed he was, I still feel slightly betrayed though. "Shikaku told me I can meet him here. He wanted to show me something. This is your house right?"
Shikaku wanted to show her something? Just what did he want to show her? And who is she?
"Yeah, this is our house," I say as I walk up to the front door. "He's probably home right now, he has the day off, what was your name again?" I ask before I go inside.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I should have introduced myself," the girl says and introduces herself. "My name is Yoshino, Kawasaki Yoshino."
And oh… that answers a lot of my questions about just who she is and why she is here. Now I know why Shikaku never mentioned her. He probably didn't want to introduce us until their 'relationship' is more official.
"Hey Shikaku! There's a girl here asking for you!" I yell into the house as I open the door. I quickly spot him sleeping on the back porch, and push on his shoulder, waking him up.
"Huh, What is it Ko?" he says.
I point my thumb back at the front door. "I said there's a girl at the door. She's looking for you."
"A girl?" he asks, sitting up and eyes growing wide. "What girl?"
"Said her name's Yoshino or something," I say.
"Yoshino?" he repeats, then he shoots up from where he's lying down and rushes to the front door. I hear the two of them talk for a couple seconds at the doorway, before Shikaku leads the girl into the house.
Shikaku looks slightly bewildered. Is this the first time he's bringing her here? Maybe it's because he didn't expect me to be here right now? Either way, I'm not going to pass on this opportunity to mess with him.
"Kaku-nii, is that your… girlfriend?" I ask, teasing tone at the end.
"What?!" He says, face growing pink. "What are you talking about, Kotaro?"
"What?!" Yoshino squwalks out next to him.
"I mean, why else would you be acting like this about a friend visiting you? You're never like this when Chouza or Inoichi come over," I say, a small smile appearing on my face.
"Just… get back to whatever it is you were doing," Shikaku says, annoyed. "Why are you here anyway? Didn't your team have something planned today?"
"Oh, yeah," I say as I dig the list Jiraiya gave me out of my pocket. "We're going on our first C-rank out of the village today. I was told I need to pack all this stuff. Do you know where I can find it?"
Shikaku takes the piece of paper out of my hand and glances at it. "What do you need a portable vacuum cleaner for?" he asks.
"How should I know," I shrug as I go through the storage closet in the hallway looking for a bag to stuff my things in. I find a large backpack. Looking at it, it's probably going to be big on my small eleven year old frame, but it will work.
"It's probably one of the things that I'm just not going to pack," I say.
"What? Will your sensei be okay with you just missing items?" Yoshino comes up and says.
Man is she going to be in for a shock when she joins this family and realizes just how lazy we can be. "Eh, If he really wanted us to have everything he would've given us more than an hour to pack," I say as I walk to my room and start packing actual useful stuff.
I can tell by Yoshino's reaction that she is surprised by my answer, probably in awe by how little I care to follow my superior's instructions, but well… Lets just say this will be a teaching experience for Jiraiya, if you want your people to have everything, make sure you give them a packing list more than an hour beforehand.
I'm able to stuff everything that I think I'll need into the bag, two complete changes of clothes, a sleeping bag, rain poncho, small first aid kit, a kunai pouch and two extra shuriken pouches. I also throw in some snacks in the remaining open spots in the bag. Looking at the clock, it looks like I have ten minutes to reach the front gate.
Wow, that was faster than expected.
I walk up to the front gate seconds before the one hour mark, and behind me I see both Mikoto and Minato running up. "What took you guys so long? I expected you to be here waiting for me" I ask.
They both have large overflowing bags on their back. Oh, they must have actually tried to pack everything on Jiraiya's list. "How did you manage to pack everything into that small bag?" Mikoto asks me.
"Oh, I didn't," I say simply. "I only packed the stuff I think I'll actually use."
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The trip from Konoha to the Capital City is surprisingly pretty short. Of course I have seen many maps of this world and the Land of Fire. This is my first time leaving Konoha to go to another city, and looking at maps only gives you so much insight into how long it takes to travel from point A to B, or what conditions the routes are in.
But it's shorter than I expected.
Walking into the city however…
I don't know how long I stare up at the towering buildings around me, I just find it fascinating. They're all the old traditional style of Japanese architecture, with the sloped pagoda roofs and brightly painted tiles. They're what, three… four… five stories tall. Very rarely do you see buildings this tall in Konoha. Maybe the Hokage Tower and a few other buildings, but most of the buildings and houses in Konoha are one or two stories tall.
Even despite the height, most of the buildings in Konoha aren't built in such a traditional style of Japanese architecture, but rather a mashup of both Asian and western architecture, with Japanese style roof tops but wood or stone and stucco walls.
My nerdy civil engineer brain is knocked out of its awe and wonder as I feel Mikoto run into my back. "Watch where you're going, Kotaro. Quit looking around," she says harshly.
"Sorry pushy," I grunt back as I stick my elbow into her ribs. "Maybe you should take the time to appreciate architecture from time to time. This city is apparently famous for it, after all."
"You can look at all the boring buildings when we don't have a mission to do," she says as she pushes against me again, glaring down at me.
"Hey you two brats! Get a move on!" we hear Jiraiya call back to us from about fifty yards up ahead. Luckily the streets aren't too busy at this time of day, or we would have probably lost him and Minato in a crowd.
Eventually though we are able to make it to our meeting place with the traders, a small shop near the outskirts of the city. The entire time we've been walking around I've remained in awe though, it just looks so cool how the entire city has been built using the same design scheme. I'm a total nerd for cities that look like this. I would love to be able to explore more of it. But we barely spend an hour in the city before meeting our clients and within the next hour we find ourselves leaving.
The walk to the town where our mission will end is significantly less… exciting.
The group we're defending is small enough that we're able to do our jobs with only the standard formation. Minato is taking point up ahead of the group, Mikoto is on the left while I'm keeping watch on the right, and Jiraiya is pulling up the rear behind everyone.
I guess all in all it's not too eventful or noteworthy, if you don't count just how terrible the roads outside of the route from Konoha to the Capital are.
So many dips in the road, grass and weeds growing throughout it, anytime we pass by a stream the road turns to mud. It's basically a glorified dirt path. I've seen hiking paths that are in better positions than this. According to the initial mission plan, it should only take us two days to reach the town these people are going to, but with having to stop every two hours because one of their carts breaks a wheel or gets stuck in the mud, it will probably take us at least a week to get there.
This reminds me of an old story I read in my iLast Life/i, shortly after the First World War, the future great General Eisenhower (at that point a lowly Lieutenant) was assigned to a mission sending an Army unit across the continental United States. The objective of the mission was to determine just exactly the state of the American roads and how conductive they were to cross-continental travel. The results and conclusions of that mission were much like I'm seeing now: the country's roads were terrible and it took way longer (almost a year in that case) to travel from one coast to the other.
It was that experience that led Eisenhower to push so hard for the Interstate Highway System when he became president, but that's really a story for another time.
Maybe that's why I was sent here after my last death. Fix the Land of Fire's road system. Yeah, it's funny, but I doubt it. Although I guess if someone asks me my life's goal I can say that.
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After four days of traveling, twice as long as we were supposed to take, we arrive at the village the travelers wanted us to take them to. Overall, it was a pretty simple mission. We ran into one group of bandits, who ran off as soon as they saw the group was being defended by actual shinobi. The most dangerous things we encountered on our route would probably be the animals that approached the group at night, looking for whatever scraps of food they might be able to find. Those things were… feisty.
It was actually pretty easy and simple to get rid of them during my night watches. A simple shadow possession on one sends the rest of them running.
Once at the village, we spend the night there before heading back to Konoha the next morning. Now all that's left is the long trek home.
It will take us about three days of travel from the small village back to Konoha. We decide to go alongside the roads, since that's the most direct route.
Sometime during our second day of traveling, the questions running through my mind get the better of me, so I ask Jiraiya. "Are all the roads outside of Konoha and the Capital like this? Falling apart?"
"The roads?" He repeats.
"Yeah," I nod. "Just think about it, they're falling apart and in terrible condition in most places. If they weren't so bad the travelers wouldn't have had to stop so often. It would have cut our mission time in half."
"Well how do you suggest we fix it, kid?" he asks.
"We're shinobi, there's probably a ton of different Earth-Style jutsu out there, why can't we build roads for travelers?" I ask.
"Why would shinobi spend our time doing that?" Mikoto asks. "Our job is to fight, not build things."
That statement alone, a seemingly innocent and naive one from a ten year old girl, made me stop and reflect. Because she has a good point, both on the surface and deep down.
On the surface, you wouldn't usually think that it would be the military's job to build and maintain roads. That is until you realize how much supplies and logistics are actually needed to keep an army fighting. There's a reason the Romans had such an extensive road system, and it's no coincidence that the United States built the Interstate Highway System in the same decades as it rose to a military powerhouse.
But those are two militaries that didn't use things such as chakra and ninjutsu. With the way the armies move in this world, you can seal large amounts of supplies into scrolls if you know enough about sealmaking, and for transportation shinobi can move pretty fast just by jumping through the trees.
In this world, the roads between towns and villages are used mainly by civilians, and the occasional shinobi if they're not in a rush or if the mission calls for it.
It still perplexes me just how bad the roads are here though. It's not just the military that relies on them, but the economy as well. There's no way regular merchants are using any type of seal making or tree runs to go from place to place. If they were, there would be no need for this mission.
Although even if shinobi were placed in charge of fixing the roads, I doubt they would last that long.
That's the tricky thing about building roads. Even the best built roads can't just be left alone and be expected to stay in the same condition. They wear down over time. Due to their use, the elements, nature, you name it.
Sure, there are probably many Earth-Style jutsu that can make a road. But from what I've seen structures made from jutsu wear down significantly faster than those made manually. Then again, that might have something to do with the jutsu casters not knowing which properties they actually have to give their structures to make them stronger in the long term. Even surfaces such as a simple sidewalk have a lot of thought into what type of rock and concrete are used to make them.
At the end of the day, I still question just why it hasn't occurred to anyone in this country's levels of government to do anything about it. So much for 'The job of the government is to build roads.' I guess that rule doesn't apply here.