"Raven hair like the night, riding the wind underneath,

We watch the dreary scenery,

Even standing here I couldn't understand a thing,

I couldn't even really properly come to grieve."

- Häagen-Dazs Ika no Sappuukei, JubyPhonic

In front of me, a dirt path was covered with twisted bits of metal, pieces of concrete, and lots of shattered glass. Yesterday it had been a place for people to hide in with nowhere else to go. Yahiko had called it a skyscraper.

But War didn't care about that. It only care about its desire to ruin and ruin until there was nothing good left. There were people there, digging through the rubble with red-stained hands and ragged clothes, searching for anything they could salvage.

"Just wait," I said quietly, pulling my scarf down around my neck. The war would continue to take and destroy, but only until we were older. When we were stronger and Yahiko was finally, finally a god of peace...

I looked up at the sky, staring at the gray clouds. "We'll start with the rain."

I turned away. There were only a few places that survived the battle yesterday. Some buildings had entire walls missing, while others were only the foundations of structures that had their tops destroyed. I peeked around a wall—the side walls were intact, but the front and door were gone—but it was filled with rainwater. A person in a beige flak-jacket floated in the middle, facedown, their weapons pouch and shoes stolen.

I picked wrong. I backed away and peeked into the building beside it. Holes peppered the walls, some smaller than my pinky, and others were big enough to climb through. Pockets of dim light shone on the floor, but couldn't penetrate the darkness in the corners of the room. I stepped up and inside, cupping my hands around my mouth.

"Hello?" I called.

The answer came in the form of a kunai, the point digging between my shoulder blades. I didn't move. "You're either a really brave kid, or a really stupid one," a gruff voice said behind me. "Now, tell my why you're here. Lie, and you won't like where this kunai ends up."

I thought of what Konan would do. I thought of what Yahiko would do. And I thought of Namekuji, who had a tiny piece of himself hidden beneath my scarf. It was too long, and even wrapped around my neck a few times the ends still fell down my back.

Protect her. Promise me, Naga had said, as Namekuji wedged himself deeply between the folds. I couldn't feel him at all.

"Because there's someone I need to help," I answered.

He paused. "That doesn't answer my question."

"That's why," I said, lifting my shoulders.

He shifted around to crouch in front of me, never moving the kunai away from my back. His eyes were slate-gray, flicking back and forth as he searched my gaze. "Who do you need to help?"

"Can't tell you," I said.

He stared and stared. Then he shook his head. "You're a shinobi," he guessed. "No civilian would talk that way to someone holding a kunai against their back."

I thought of the people I saw digging through the rubble. The hands, some smaller than mine, pushing aside pieces of metal with practiced ease and expertly patting down the dead. The tiny feet, stepping over and around crushed people without blinking. "You're wrong," I said, meeting his eyes. I might know how to use chakra and how to fight, but that wasn't why I wasn't scared.

I'd done this before. The explosive tag that killed Chibi and scarred Naga. The field, full of the wounded and the dead. The people the salamander swallowed alive, begging and screaming to live the whole way down. Being scared that Yahiko wouldn't come back, the pain I felt for Chibi, Mama, and Papa. So much fear, too much hurt.

I was in a different place and the threat was much closer, but I'd felt like this before. Powerless as I watched the vendors drag my brother away. Terrified as Naga got sicker and sicker and there was nothing I could do to help him. And that—it was before chakra. Before Tsunade and Jiraya. It was back when all I could do was sit back and watch, a pebble dropped into the ocean that was war.

I was still scared, I think. Scared that War would take Naga, Konan, and Yahiko away from me. Scared of the salamander. Scared to tell Naga that I didn't remember what Papa looked like anymore. I didn't have any fear leftover for this.

"You're wrong," I said again, because none of the little kids outside knew how to use chakra. They stained their hands and broke their bodies looking for anything they could use to survive. They wouldn't be afraid either.

"Am I?" he asked. A dark, ragged scar dragged up from the right side of his neck to the bottom of his chin. It was faded, but still stark against his pale skin. "About which part? Because only a shinobi would have shoes like yours."

I looked down. The sandals were too small now. My heels poked out of the back and my toes hung off the front, but they were the only shoes I had. "Anyone who lived this long wouldn't be scared," I answered.

He studied me. "You might talk big, but you had plenty of chances to attack me by now if you were an assassin," he said after a few seconds, then shook his head. "Then again, Hanzo would send a kid, the bastard," he added, almost to himself.

I tilted my head. "Hanzo?"

He squinted. "How old are you?"

"Dunno."

He squinted harder. "War orphan?"

I shrugged.

He hummed. Slowly, he moved his hand away from my back, holding the kunai up for me to see. After a second, he opened his palm. The kunai fell and clattered into a puddle at his feet. I blinked at it, then him.

He hummed again. "That was a test," he explained. "Either you're a really bad assassin, or a really good one—" He stopped suddenly, eyes bulging. I was drawn to a place over his shoulder. The walls were shifting, peeling like someone had sliced off the top layer with a knife.

The layer faded before it hit the ground and it reminded me of—

He phased through the gunbai like a ghost.

"Kai," I said immediately, twisting my fingers into the dispelling seal. But by then, the illusion had already broken down on its down.

The man in front of me was gone. I heard heavy, labored breathing coming from the back corner of the room and looked over. The man was slumped against the wall, his left hand held up in the rat seal. He winced and dropped it a moment later, his hand hitting the floor with a thud.

Blood soaked his flak-jacket and left dry marks on the ground around him. A torn piece of clothing was tied tightly around his right shoulder. I looked down, at the empty space where his right arm was supposed to be.

"It's a hell of a thing, genjustu," he panted. "But it drains chakra like nothing else." There was a diagonal cut in the middle of his face, right between his eyebrows.

The cloth was completely red. He was paler than before, covered in sweat and dust. Even this didn't compare to what I'd already seen. I sat, crossing my legs. "I'm Oka," I said, friendly. "What's your name?"

He closed his eyes. "I'm going to die here, anyway," he muttered. He opened them. "Call me Mamoru, strange little girl."

"I'm not strange," I sniffed.

Mamoru gazed at me. "You know, if I were anyone else, you'd be dead by now. At least three times over."

"Sorry mister Mamoru," Namekuji wriggled out from my scarf. "But you're wrong about that too."

Namekuji crawled up my cheek—ignoring my sputtering—and settled on top of my head. Mamoru stiffened, his eyes alert in a way they hadn't been before.

"Is your summoner the same person Oka wouldn't tell me about before?" Mamoru asked carefully.

"No," Namekuji answered.

"It's me."

Mamoru's hand went for the pouch strapped to his side. Pain seized his expression as he leaned forward, clutching his shoulder. He groaned.

Above him, in the opposite corner, Konan sat in a hole in the wall, swinging her feet. "Just kidding," she chimed. "I'd want a bird summon. Those are way cooler."

I shuddered as I wiped slime off my cheek. "I told you to stop doing that."

"You did," Namekuji agreed.

Mamoru grimaced deeply. He eyed Konan. "Any more surprises I should know about?" he asked, glancing back at me.

I smiled and held up two fingers. "Just two."

Yahiko dropped down first, appearing neatly beside me from a hole in the ceiling. Naga ducked through the hole I used to get in, Namekuji's main body peeking up from his back. He was half the length of my arm and heavy, but Naga didn't think so.

I waved as he came closer. His eyes were still worried as he knelt in front of me. "I'm fine," I insisted, before he could speak. I held my arms up and flapped them. "See?"

Naga's smile was a small one. Before he could say anything, Mamoru chuckled. "Just make it quick."

"We're not here for that," Yahiko said, lacing his hands behind his head. "We're here because I want you to be our sensei."

Mamoru stared at him. Then he laughed so hard he choked. "Look, kid, I don't know what you thought would happen here but," he gestured to his missing arm. "Clearly, I'm not in the state to be anyone's sensei."

Yahiko looked at said arm as if noticing it for the first time. He nodded. "We can fix that. We have a medic-nin," he said. "His name is Nagato. He'll fix you up and then you can be our sensei." He looked over and Mamoru followed his gaze to Naga.

Mamoru blinked. "After I'm gone," he began. "Do me a favor and destroy my body. I don't care how you do it, but it shouldn't be too hard between the four of you."

Yahiko smiled faintly. "Let's make a deal," he said. "If Nagato saves you, you have to teach us everything you know."

Mamoru eyed Naga again. "What do I have to lose?" he asked himself, shaking his head. He smiled without humor. "But, when he fails, you have to get rid of me. That's my end of the deal."

"Deal," Yahiko said.

Naga swallowed. He straightened and grabbed Yahiko by the shoulder. "I don't know if I can," he said quietly, sneaking a glance at Mamoru. "I've never tried to heal a person before—"

"'Course you can," Yahiko cut him off. "I wouldn't have made that deal if I thought, even a little, that you couldn't do this. I know you can."

Naga's eyes widened.

"I believe in you too," Konan spoke. She grinned.

"Me three," I chirped.

Naga looked between us. After a second he smiled, shaking his head. "I'm going to do this," he said firmly.

"Go, Nagato!" Konan cheered.

Naga dropped his hand and strode forward, crouching on Mamoru's right side. "Try and stay still," he instructed. There was a determined glint in his eye as he pulled off the makeshift bandage, even as Mamoru squeezed his eyes shut. Nagato's fingers were stained red as the last of it hit the ground.

"Need help?" Namekuji asked.

"Can you numb the nerves around here?" Naga asked. "It's going to hurt a lot."

As Namekuji slithered off Naga's shoulder and onto Mamoru's, I stood. "Is it dangerous to bring him back to the hideout?" I asked Yahiko.

"A little," he admitted. "But living with Jiraya-sensei and Tsunade was way more dangerous."

Naga's hand's glowed green. Disbelief flashed in Mamoru's eyes.

"Because they were from somewhere else?" I asked.

Yahiko made a noncommittal noise. "Kind of," he said. "It was more because they didn't have permission to be here. They were supposed to leave right after the leader here let them go."

I hummed. "Who's the leader here?"

"Hanzo," he answered. "But everyone calls him Hanzo the Salamander."

Did that mean that the salamander from before belonged to Hanzo? Was it a summon like Namekuji? "Mamoru called him a bastard," I informed him.

Yahiko tapped his chin, nodding. "Huh."

Before I could ask him more about Hanzo the bastard and his salamander, Konan hopped down and landed in front of us. "Don't teach her to use words like that."

"I didn't!"

"Maybe, but you didn't stop her," she said, hands on her hips. "You enabled her."

Yahiko shook his head. "I bet you don't even know what that means."

Konan turned red. "I do too!"

"Right."

"It means that you're letting her do stuff she's not supposed to do," Konan huffed.

"That's not what it means."

"That is so what it means."

While they bickered, I pulled the small segment of Namekuji off my head. I could feel the slime in my hair. "Need something, Oka?" he asked, twisting his tentacles to look at me. A purple stripe ran down his back, though there were two, side-by-side, on his main body.

"I'm giving you back," I said, going over to Naga—his eyes were closed, and he spoke quietly to Namekuji. Mamoru wasn't moving, his head hanging limp. I held the tiny piece of Namekuji over his main body. He slipped through my fingers and fell into his main body like a drop of water falling into a pool.

I blinked at the thought, frowning at the sticky feeling on my hands. What was a pool? My brow furrowed.

The lake came to mind first, but that didn't feel right.

"Thanks for that," Namekuji said. The thought slipped away as I looked up. "Now shoo. We need to concentrate."

I shook slime onto the floor. "Mean," I sniffed.

"Yeah, yeah," Namekuji said dismissively. "I'll steal an apple for you later to make it up to you."

I stuck out my tongue in disgust. By steal, he meant absorb one into his body while the vendors were distracted. The apples he stole were always soggy and rotten. Even Yahiko wouldn't eat those.

"I'll have Nagato steal one," he amended. "Now go over there and make those two shut up already."

Sufficiently bribed, I left him and Naga alone.

先生

"I knew you could do it," Yahiko praised.

He had one hand around Naga's shoulder, the other wrapped around his side. Naga sagged in his grip, his hair falling in his face. Yahiko patted him. "I think you deserve something after that. What do you want? Fish stew? A promotion?"

Naga groaned at him.

Konan raised an eyebrow. "You already gave him a promotion. I thought he was equal to us now."

"I was trying to give him something to look forward to."

Konan looked unimpressed. "You know, if you promote him again, you'll be his employee."

Yahiko glanced at Naga, reconsidering. "Fish stew it is."

Konan covered her mouth but couldn't completely hide her smile.

I took Naga's limp hand and squeezed, but he didn't respond. "Would keeping Namekuji have helped or hurt Naga?" I asked.

A little after he started fixing Mamoru, I fell asleep. When I woke up, Namekuji was gone. Naga used up almost all his chakra and didn't have any left over to keep Namekuji here.

It was dark now, and only tiny slivers of light came in through the holes. "Hurt," Yahiko answered.

"Helped," Konan said a second after.

"How would—"

"For emotional support," she added before Yahiko could finish.

Mamoru groaned. I looked back and he was sitting up, staring at us. Dark circles lined his eyes and he was drenched in sweat, but he was still alive. Naga had wrapped the cloth back around Mamoru's shoulder once he was done, but he wasn't bleeding anymore.

"Why?" he asked, voice rough and raspy. "You tracked me here and wouldn't let me die—for what?" He shifted, closing his eyes as drops of rain hit his face. "All this because you wanted a Sensei? I'm not anyone special. I don't have some secret technique, or a bloodline limit, or whatever else you think—"

"That's not it," Yahiko said. His voice was different. Gone was the playful edge he held with Konan. This was Yahiko, the boy who would become a god. He lowered Naga to sit against the wall and took a step forward, crouching in front of Mamoru. "All I needed to know was that you were a shinobi. You weren't the first person we asked, or the second, or the third. But you were the first to pay attention to Oka."

"You treated her like a shinobi from the start. All the others ignored her, wrote her and us off as stupid kids before we could even talk to them," Yahiko went on. Mamoru stared at him. "You put a genjutsu over this place so you could hide, right? You didn't have to show yourself, but you did."

"I couldn't take the chance," Mamoru said back. "Any assassin worth their salt would check for a genjutsu first."

"But she didn't," Yahiko replied, holding his gaze. "You didn't think she was an assassin, or you would've attacked her."

Mamoru shook his head. "I had to be sure. I don't go around killing kids for fun."

"Still," he insisted. "You could've told her to leave you alone or to go away, but you didn't. You let her stay. You told her your name. The second you let her go, I knew you would be our sensei."

Mamoru closed his eyes again. "Would she have gone, if I told her to?"

"Yes," Yahiko said without hesitation.

"And what would've happened if I didn't let her go? You did all this—risked her life, on a gamble?"

"We would've stopped you."

"Oh?" Mamoru asked, giving him a cool look. "You're sure about that?"

"I know how we look," Yahiko said after a moment. "Just another group of war orphans with dirty clothes too small for us and no one to care about us. We look like we're nothing. But we're not." He hooked a thumb at himself. "I'm a shinobi of Amegakure. My friends are shinobi. We didn't come here on a whim, and we didn't do it without a plan."

Mamoru's gaze slid to Naga, slumped against the wall. "A 'shinobi of Amegakure', huh?" He refocused on Yahiko. "Weirdly talented kids or not, I think you might be underestimating me a little."

"I'm not," Yahiko said. "You can tell who's dangerous around here just by looking at them. I don't send Oka to talk to them. You were hurt badly and low on chakra. That's how I know that if we had to fight, I would've won."

Mamoru blinked. "You saw through the genjutsu?" he asked, incredulous.

Yahiko shook his head. "Nagato and Konan did. Nagato found your chakra, and Konan saw that you had used almost all of it all up."

Konan stepped up behind Yahiko and Mamoru gazed up at her, eyes slightly wide. "Nagato's better at finding people over a big area," she explained with a smile. "But he's not so precise. We couldn't see you because of the genjutsu, but we knew you were here."

Mamoru continued to stare at her with the same disbelief he'd regarded Naga with.

Yahiko pressed a thumb hard against his own chest. "I'm going to be a god one day," he said, with all the confidence of someone who had absolute certainty they would. "I'll be a god of peace and I'm going to end the war. I'll make it so no one will ever be hurt because of it again. No more suffering, and no more death." He dropped his hand, looking up at the rain. "This place is always crying because of the war. That's why I'll make it stop. When I'm a god, I'll bring back the sun."

Mamoru slowly shook his head.

"But I'm not strong enough. Not yet," Yahiko admitted. "That's why I want you to help us. That's why it doesn't matter what kind of shinobi you are. I know you're strong, because you're still alive. That's all we need."

Mamoru glanced at his injured shoulder. "I must be getting old," he said after a few seconds. He shook his head again. "Why do I believe you?"

"Because we're going to do it," Yahiko said firmly. "We're going to bring peace back to the world."

"'Peace'," he repeated, quietly. "Why do you make it sound so easy?"

"It's not," Konan spoke. Mamoru tilted his head at her. "Or it won't be," she amended. "If it was as easy as making everyone stop fighting, someone would have done it already. But—But it doesn't matter if it'll be hard. Yahiko's going to become a god and we'll help him do it because he says so! Because he believes it, more than anything else in the world," she paused.

"Because it's my dream too and I believe in it more than he does! I believe that I'll be able to stand in the middle of Amegakure one day and see people smiling and unafraid. The people of this village will finally be able to be kind and happy. When that day comes, the war won't be able to take people away anymore, because we'll have stopped it." Konan took a step back, looking surprised at herself.

Even Yahiko was staring at her. Konan shook her head, her surprise turning to determination. "That's why it'll happen," she said, staring Mamoru head on. "Because we believe it will. And that's all we need."

"Okay, okay," Mamoru said, holding up his hand. "I was never going to back out of our deal, if that's what you thought. I owe the four of you my life," he admitted. "And... now I'm curious to see how you turn out in the end."

Konan beamed. Yahiko stood. "We should head back," he said. He pulled Naga's arm back over his shoulder and dragged him up. "The shinobi who did that to Mamoru-sensei will come back to finish the job. We can't be here when they do."

"Where are we heading back to?" Mamoru asked casually.

"Secret," Konan chirped.

"Of course," he said with a shake of his head. He tried to push himself up, only to fall back with a grimace. Yahiko glanced at Konan and she nodded. She strode over to Mamoru and bent down, guiding his arm over her shoulder.

"You can lean against me, okay?" she said, helping him stand.

"Thanks," he grunted. "What happened to your old sensei?"

Konan paused. Her eyes darkened, just a little.

I stood and patted myself off. "They left," I answered.

"We don't like to talk about it," Konan added, forcing a smile.

"Oka? You're our lookout," Yahiko said. "Stay close."

"I knoooow," I drawled.

Yahiko hummed. "You do, huh? What if you see someone following us?"

I tapped my chin, deeply considering the question, "Throw mud at you."

Yahiko did not look amused. "Do you know how hard it is to wash out mud?" he asked. "No, you don't, because no one has ever thrown mud at you."

Konan giggled. "The first time was an accident, Yahiko."

"'The first time'," he repeated blandly.

"I'm sure the second time was an accident too. Right, Oka?"

"It gets everywhere," Yahiko complained. "I think I washed it all off, but no, more mud."

"Right, Oka?" Konan asked again, with an edge this time.

I smiled. "Yep," I chirped. "The second throw was supposed to hit you, not Yahiko."

"What," Konan sputtered as Yahiko continued to lament about the mud he still believed was hiding in his hair.

I laughed and focused chakra to my palms and soles, scrambling up the wall before Konan could decide whether she wanted to chase after me or not.

A/N: 先生 - Teacher

This chapter was like a wild animal being wrangled by animal control. It punched me in the face a few times, but I managed to capture it in the end.

I'm terrible about responding to reviews, but I read each and every one of them. Pls review. I beg. They give me life.

Stay safe!