Princess of the Leaves
Chapter Seven
Naruto stared at the blood on his hands. Not his. Not his enemy's. Hers. Zelda lay bleeding on the ground, and her blood was running out.
She's dying.
Shut up.
They killed her.
Shut up!
They killed her!
Naruto grit his teeth as his hands began to shake.
KILL THEM BACK!
"Focus!"
He clenched his eyes shut. He couldn't get distracted. He couldn't be (afraid) angry. Zelda was hurt, Kakashi was down, and that just left him and Sasuke.
"The wound's clean, we applied the ointment, now we wrap it," Sasuke said, reaching for one of the rolls of bandages. They each brought one in their first aid kits, and it looked like they were going to go through all four. "We want it tight, but not too tight."
He thought back to his academy days, long lectures he could never focus on, textbook diagrams that never made much sense, but it all spilled out of his mind like water between his fingers. "How much is too tight?"
"I don't know!" Sasuke snapped. He never had to do this before either. For all his seeming genius, he had no more experience putting together torn open friends than Naruto did. "No slack, but no pressure."
That sounded close enough to right, and that was the best they had. But if he could go back and do it all again, he'd ... No. Focus. Naruto held her body off the ground and rolled up her shirt as Sasuke wrapped the bandage around her waist and layered it upward. Soon they went high enough to make it awkward. Strange to feel weird about seeing too much skin when he was pretty sure he could see the red, protruding bone of her spine, but he looked away all the same. Better to keep an eye on things, just in case.
Zabuza, the boss bad guy, was dead. It had taken everything Kakashi had to beat him, and he had collapsed after that masked hunter-nin had carried off the body. Bastard. The guy had watched the entire fight without helping out, and if Zelda died because of that .. but he had tossed them a vial of antidote before he left. The Demon Brothers use poisoned claws.
The other one was still alive, vanishing with his brother's body after Zelda had taken him down.
You better run. Naruto had five clones keeping watch, three around him and two more around Kakashi, but spotting hidden enemies had never been his specialty. It was Zelda's.
His eyes fell on Tazuna, his face pale in the starlight, and the old man turned away looking ashamed. Why? Because he couldn't fight? Any other time Naruto might have reassured him, but not now. He wished he could reassure himself.
Sasuke finished wrapping her wounds and pulled her shirt back down. Naruto could see white cloth through the stained tears, and it was already turning red.
"Is she going to be alright?" the bridge builder asked. He turned away. "Damn it, this is all my fault."
"She'll make it," Naruto said. She had to. Anyone but her.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Sasuke said, standing up. "What do you mean, it's your fault?"
His eyes widened, then he winced. "I mean ... I mean that I've made enemies."
"They were after you?" Sasuke asked, incredulous. "What did you do?"
He took a deep breath. "There's a shipping magnate, Gatoh. He bought up every trade ship in the Land of Waves and is starving my country day by day. If I built a bridge to the mainland I could break his monopoly, but ... but I knew he would kill me if I tried."
Naruto's mind latched onto a single word, and he turned away from Zelda's (not dead) body. "You knew?" He wanted to be angry, he wanted to rage and scream at someone, and there was no one left but the bridge builder. "You knew someone was after you, and you didn't tell us?"
"I didn't have a choice! I couldn't afford an A rank mission, and if I had told you, you would have ..."
"Left you to die?" Sasuke asked, his voice cold.
Kill him.
"Yes!" he said.
"And because of you, she might die."
Naruto looked back at her. He couldn't protect her. He might not be able to save her. He held onto the boiling pool of anger in his gut, because underneath it all he just felt sick.
"It's not my fa—" Tazuna stopped himself and hung his head. "I'm sorry." He fell to his knees. "It was for my ... I'm sorry."
Naruto grit his teeth and squeezed his head between his hands, feeling his forehead protector. His first real mission. Zelda's hurt, Kakashi's down, home is a week away, and some rich asshole is sending missing-nin after us.
"What do we do now?" He looked at Sasuke hoping that he could come up with something. "Zelda won't get better in a tent." And Konoha was a week away.
"My home isn't far," Tazuna said. "We should be close to the border, and the Land of Waves is just a short boat ride. We could be there before dawn."
"The mission's over," Sasuke spat. "You're lucky we don't kill you ourselves after what you pulled."
"My house is warm, dry, and has clean bandages and a spare room," he said, still on his knees. "Also, my daughter knows how to sew."
"Why would we need—" Naruto started. Stitches. "Oh."
Sasuke looked to him before deciding, which meant Sasuke was as lost as he was. "Alright," he said at last. "But we're not your bodyguards anymore. If we run into another group of hired thugs, we're giving them your head on a plate, got it?"
The bridge builder took a deep breath and nodded. "I understand."
"Good. Lead the way."
WWW
"Fool."
Ash fell from the sky, and smoke choked her lungs. In the distance she heard screams and cries over the crackling flames, but she saw little. There was no light in a world where his power darkened the sun.
"For all your vaunted wisdom, you should have seen this coming, Princess. You cannot run. You cannot hide. You have bought nothing but a few years of time, and you have purchased that with blood."
The blood of her friends. The ashes of what had become, despite her efforts, a second home. The forces of Konoha had done well against his monsters, but they could do nothing against the King of Evil.
"But I have no complaints." Ganondorf grinned, his teeth sharp and mouth wide. "I do so enjoy the hunt." He grabbed her head in one hand that could crush a kingdom or a village just as easily as it could crush her skull, and he began to squeeze. "Now for slaughter."
She screamed and thrashed, but she couldn't fight back, she couldn't get away, he held her down and—
"Would you calm down and stop being crazy?" Sasuke demanded. "You're going to tear your stitches open."
"It's okay, Zelda," Naruto said. "We're here. You're safe. Everything's fine." He adjusted his forehead protector. "Also you nearly clawed my eye out. You might want to cut your fingernails or something."
She blinked and panted for breath. Sasuke held her pinned to her bed, and only after she stilled herself did he release her. She stared around the room, seeing the wood floor and bare walls, but comprehending little. "Where are we? What happened?"
"We're at the bridge builder's house," Sasuke said.
"And no one died," Naruto added. "Well, Zabuza died, and that guy with the claws died, but you were there for that one. None of us died."
She breathed. In. Out. In. Out. She closed her eyes, and opened them again.
"I suppose you want the full rundown," Sasuke said. "Naruto, give her the summary, and you might as well make sure she didn't tear anything open while you're at it. I'll drag Kakashi back here. We need to figure out what we're doing next."
"Okay." Naruto turned to her as soon as Sasuke left. "First, I'm going to need you to take your shirt off."
Zelda stared at him.
"For medical reasons only. Trust me, I'm a doctor."
She blinked.
"Impromptu doctor. Amateur field medic. In training. Okay, roll over on your stomach and pull your shirt up a bit."
She did so, feeling sore and tender with each movement. She probably didn't need to feel shy. She felt bandages cover her from her shoulders to her hips, but it still felt odd.
"Well," he said, examining her, "it looks alright. You're not bleeding through the bandages or anything, but I guess that's what they're for. You have a lot of blood, you know that? I didn't know people had that much, but it just kept on pouring out and out."
Zelda wasn't sure how she felt about that. She had never considered herself to be afraid of dying, but her life was not her own to lose, and to have it nearly taken from her like that, with no warning ...
But there had been warnings. Warnings, signs, and dreams in abundance. She had noticed them, marched blithely on, and nearly got herself killed.
"Don't ... don't do that again, okay?" His voice was soft, and his touch gentle. "Don't get hurt again."
My life is not my own, she thought again, but that offered small comfort. None to her, and it would provide him little. She always had some words of wisdom to share when needed, but at that moment, she just felt tired.
Kakashi came in through the door. "Hey kids. You're not playing doctor in here, are you?"
"I'm not playing," Naruto protested. "I'm a real doctor, doing real doctoring."
"Right. Learned a medical ninjutsu or two while I was out, did you?"
His eyes widened. "Ooh, that sounds awesome! Can you teach me one?"
"Maybe later," Kakashi said, in a tone that scheduled that lesson for some point after the end of time. Zelda looked his way as she pulled her shirt back down over her bandages, and found him on crutches.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing," he said. "Chakra exhaustion. I'll be fine in a week. You?"
She took a breath. "I don't know." She had never been injured this badly. She hadn't even seen her injury yet, but she remembered it being ... grievous that night.
"Well, if you need a pair of crutches ... I have the only set. But I think I saw a cane somewhere."
"I'll manage," she said. "I still don't know what's going on."
"You didn't brief her yet?" Sasuke asked Naruto.
"I was getting there!" He turned to her and held up his hands dramatically.
"Okay, it was a dark and stormy night."
"It wasn't stormy," Sasuke said. "She was there, remember?"
"Hey! Who's doing the debriefing? Me or you? Anyway, it was a dark and clear night, because Sasuke wants to be a dick. Out of Zabuza's two henchmen, you took out one, and the other escaped justice, leaving only ..." He stopped and turned to Kakashi. "Hey, did that Zabuza guy have any cool nicknames or anything?"
Kakashi paused to consider that. "Momochi Zabuza, Demon of the Hidden Mist."
"Nice, I can work with that."
"Was he a real demon?" Zelda asked. What was it that the missing-nin who called himself a Demon Brother had said? He had only met one.
"No, it's just a gimmick," Kakashi said. "He's from the Hidden Mist village, and his signature move is to create a mist too thick to see through. Then he tracks his enemies by sound and kills them silently."
Naruto stared at him. "That sounds so cool! Can you teach me that?"
"Maybe later."
"He didn't use that technique in your fight," Sasuke said.
"Nope. I'm sure you can figure out why."
Sasuke frowned. "We weren't camping near water. He would have had to create the mist out of his own chakra instead of just gathering it. That would have blinded his teammates as well, and it might have alerted us. He wanted to hit us hard and fast, not pick us off one by one."
"That wasn't a question," Kakashi said, "but yeah."
"Anyway," Naruto said, "it was all down to the Demon of the Hidden Mist against ... hey, Kakashi, you got any cool nicknames?"
He shrugged. "Some people call me sensei."
"Huh. Sure. Against Kakashi-sensei. Zabuza attacked first, swinging his mega-sword. Swoosh, swoosh, and Kakashi was all, 'Ha ha, missed me!" Then he did this mole attack where reaches up out of the ground and grabs you, but splash! It was a water clone, which is like a normal clone only made out of water! And Zabuza made the trees explode—there were splinters and bark everywhere, and he made a freakin' water dragon out of tree sap! It was all, 'Rawr, rawr,' but Kakashi—"
"Long story short, Kakashi won," Sasuke said.
Naruto turned on him, his face a mixture of horror, pain, and disgust. "Uchiha freakin' Sasuke! You do not spoil the ending when I'm telling the story! I was almost at the part with the—"
"You were taking forever. The important thing is that the bridge builder screwed us over. Apparently he's building his bridge to break a shipping monopoly, and the guy running the monopoly wants him dead for it. He couldn't afford an A rank mission, so he hired us and hoped for the best."
"I ... I see," Zelda said. She remembered speaking to the bridge builder during their journey, and something had seemed off about him, a secret he kept that she had been too subtle to confront. Her caution had proven dangerous. "So what happens now?"
"That," Kakashi said, setting down his crutches and sitting down on the floor, "is up to you."
A look of disgust crossed Sasuke's face. "Are you kidding? Our client's been lying to us the whole time. We don't owe him a thing."
"Yeah, Kakashi!" Naruto said. "Are we going to keep going after Zelda nearly died? Didn't you give us that whole object lesson about teamwork and stuff?"
"I did," Kakashi said. "If you stay, the decision will have to be unanimous, and if you leave, no one will hold it against you."
"Then why stay?" Sasuke asked.
He took a breath. "Because we're not mercenaries trading blood for money. We're ninjas, and if we are strong, we have a duty to protect the weak. That is my ninja way."
Naruto blinked. "It is?"
"Hmm? Oh no, I was just quoting something the previous Hokage used to say."
His eyes widened. "The Fourth Hokage said that?"
Kakashi nodded. "All the time. It was basically his catch phrase."
"It was?"
He shrugged. "My point is, this is an important decision, and not one I can make for you. Mercantile blockades and economics might not be flashy, but the people here are in just as much trouble as if a powerful warrior took over. You might just be genin, but you're strong enough to make a difference for a lot of people, not just the bridge builder. If you walk away, you'll remember that."
"We'd be risking our lives," Zelda said.
"Yes," Kakashi said. "We could easily die and accomplish nothing." Zelda waited for him to add a silver lining to that statement, but none came.
Sasuke frowned thoughtfully. "I can handle a little risk. Zabuza's team has been cut down to next to nothing, and it won't take Tazuna forever to finish his bridge. What kind of muscle could Gatoh hire in that time?"
Kakashi tilted his head. "Common street toughs at most. Locals willing to beat someone up for a free meal. The sort of threat you'd be expected to handle for a C rank mission. Missing-nin like Zabuza are hard to come by, so he might just wait for him to get better."
"Get better?" Naruto asked. "From being dead?"
"If he really was dead," Kakashi said, "which I'm starting to doubt."
"You checked his pulse," Sasuke said, then he hesitated. "Before the hunter-nin carried him off."
"What hunter-nin?" Zelda asked.
"What, you don't remember?" Naruto asked. "Oh, right, of course you don't, because somebody interrupted me when I was telling you everything."
Sasuke shook his head. "Fine. Back to bad theater, then."
"Bad-ass theater," Naruto said.
"Ass theater. Whatever."
Naruto rolled his eyes and turned back to Zelda. "Anyway, where was I? Did I tell you about the sap dragon? The mole attack? Oh well. Kakashi came out on top, but just as he was about to finish him off, thwip, thwip! A mysterious newcomer appears out of nowhere and kills him dead! A handful of needles, straight to the neck! He was a hunter-nin from the Hidden Mist, and he ..." He hesitated. "You know what hunter-nin are, right?"
"I do." They were much like the ANBU corps, except they did their work outside the village walls instead of within. She didn't know much about the Hidden Mist's version, but she assumed they were similar.
"Huh. Okay, just checking. But yeah, that was about it. The end. It might have been a better story if he didn't steal Kakashi's kill at the last second, so I might cut him out next time, but he gave us a little antidote bottle for you, so that was nice I guess." He turned to the others. "What does he have to do with Zabuza being alive again?"
"Because," Kakashi said, "if I were to take a needle and stab it through your neck here, and here, and maybe another one here, it would put enough pressure on your arteries and a few key nerves to knock you out. You'd stop breathing, and your pulse would be so faint no one could feel it. And if I were good, I'd be able to do that from thirty feet away." He looked around the room. "Didn't they teach you how to do that at the academy?"
Naruto blinked. "Did they?"
"Then there was the way he carried off the body," Sasuke mused. "He should have just taken the head. It doesn't matter how strong you are, you're not going to run around with an extra two-hundred pounds of dead weight unless you have to." He turned to Kakashi. "So you're thinking he was the fourth member of their team, to pull Zabuza out if things went south. If we stay here, we'll be facing them again."
Kakashi shrugged. "Seems like it. Zabuza strikes me as the sort who would shoot for a rematch."
Sasuke nodded, and he seemed more interested in staying than he had before.
"Wait!" Naruto said. "Hold on a second." He pointed at her. "She's alive!"
Sasuke gave him a flat look. "Really? Yeah, we know, dumbass."
"Shut up. You're the dumbass. The mask guy gave us that antidote for her, remember? What, do you think she got better because we knew what we were doing? No, it worked! If he was a bad guy, why would he help us?"
Sasuke hesitated. "To get on our good side? So we wouldn't suspect anything?"
"Bull. Crap. Kakashi took a dirt nap two seconds afterwards and the two of us weren't going to do anything. Hell, why did he fake-kill Zabuza when he could have real-killed Kakashi? He could have! None of us even knew he was there! It doesn't make sense."
A silence fell over the room until Kakashi spoke. "No," he admitted. "It doesn't. Life doesn't make sense. People don't make sense. All you can do is come up with a theory that makes the most sense, and hope it's more than half nonsense."
Naruto blinked. "Wait, say that again?"
"We won last time," Sasuke said. He glanced at her as if to add, barely. "We can beat them again."
"And we'd be heroes," Naruto said. "We'd save a whole country."
"It's hopeless," Zelda said. The others turned to her. "Zabuza is the threat, but he's not our enemy. He's the hired sword. You said his employer's name was Gatoh? If we defeat Zabuza's team, he'll hire another, and another."
"Then we'll beat them too," Naruto said. "He's got to run out eventually."
"Not if he only pays them after they succeed. The best we can hope for is to protect Tazuna until he completes the bridge."
"Which was our mission in the first place," Sasuke said.
"Then after we return home, Gatoh can hire a saboteur, and the bridge will collapse into the sea." She shook her head. "This will not end until Gatoh ends."
"Then let's end him!" Naruto said. "We can go knock on his door and beat him up!"
Kakashi winced, but didn't respond. "Assaulting a civilian comes with its own slew of problems," Zelda said. "Attacking Gatoh would not be obvious self defense, and it would quickly become a legal matter. Have either of you studied law?"
Naruto blinked. "Did they teach us that at the academy?"
Zelda shook her head. "As I said, a slew of problems. The fact that he is a foreigner complicates things further. Have either of you studied international politics ... no, of course not." She turned to her sensei. "I don't suppose this man is a citizen of the Land of Fire or the Land of Waves?"
He shook his head. "I haven't checked, but my best bet is Water."
She nodded. That was the worst case scenario, but the most likely one for a merchant of the seas. "If we harm a citizen of the Land of Water, they will want to try us under their laws in their country by one of their magistrates. I would not expect a fair trial. I would expect them to make an example of us to deter other foreign ninjas from assaulting their citizens, whether they deserve it or not."
"Well, good luck with that," Naruto said. "After this mission, we're going home."
"And by so doing, we would strain international relations. I doubt to the point of starting a war, but depending on how valuable Gatoh is to his country, we could end up branded as missing-nin."
That wasn't a certain fate for them, but a possible one, and one they could not ignore. The life of a missing-nin was treacherous for even the strongest of ninjas, and they were all, besides Kakashi, genin.
"He hired missing-nin," Sasuke said. "He broke the law too. Can we use that?"
"Perhaps. If we had proof. Regardless, the Land of Water would want him tried by their laws, and they would favor their own citizens over any of us. Ideally any country's laws would pursue justice, but in practice I expect little more than self interest."
Naruto looked down at the floor. "Man, vigilante justice isn't all it's cracked up to be."
Kakashi let out a laugh. "You said it, kid." He turned to her. "So that's your decision? Give up and go home?"
Despite his choice of words, there was no pressure in his tone. They had already done their duty. Anything else would be going above and beyond. Or behaving as renegade ninjas, depending on how things went.
"I honestly do not see a way to complete the mission. Returning home seems best."
She expected disappointment from her sensei, but instead as he pushed himself to his feet, she caught a slight twinkle in his eye.
It was gone before he addressed the team. "Then that's that. Of course, I'm in no shape to travel, and neither is Zelda, so we'll be staying here for a bit. For the rest of you, you can have the week off. Stay out of trouble."
They left, one by one. It was a subdued departure, and one she understood. Retreating before a challenge was unsatisfying, even when it was prudent.
She felt tired after they were gone, but she could not sleep. Her mind turned and turned, mulling over the events that had brought her here. She thought of her first real fight, her first brush with death, the first time she had risked everything that depended on her. She thought of the false hunter-nin whom she had never seen nor spoken to, but who had offered aid to an enemy.
Most of all, she thought of the bridge builder. He had traveled to Konoha for protection, as had she. He could not afford what he needed and had lied about the danger that hounded him, as did she. If the King of Evil ever tracked her through the Lost Woods to the Hidden Leaf as she had dreamed, would her friends be as understanding with her as they had been with him?
That wasn't a question she could answer. She hoped she wouldn't have to.
She focused on the bridge builder. Logically they should evacuate him and help him build a new life for himself and for his family somewhere safe. But ... but people were not logical. They were not only minds, but hearts, and there was no acceptable life he could lead with his heart abandoned in the Land of Waves, just as she could not truly live if she abandoned Hyrule.
And yet ... her heart told her to stay and fight, even when she knew she could not risk dying for any cause. Could she fight Zabuza safely? No. Unless Naruto had been exaggerating, he and Kakashi had been throwing dragons at each other, and she did not wish to be anywhere close to that kind of danger. And Gatoh, wrapped in legal protections as he was, was not someone she could fight, and he wasn't even a fighter.
But, come to think of it, neither was she. She could run, she could hide, she could set traps and lead people into them, but her previous fight had been a mad, frantic mess and she knew that was not where her strength lay. Zelda was content with that. She had one true enemy, and she would never be able to match him in might. But she had exiled herself to this distant land in the hope that if she was wise, she could ... she could ...
She could defeat a foe she could not fight.
She just needed to figure out how.
WWW
A/n It's been a long time since the last chapter, and this one has gone through way more rewrites than I thought it would. The biggest change from canon was the focus on international politics and the legal protections Gatoh might enjoy, which could merit some explanation.
I've read a few fanfics where the team goes after Gatoh because the problems in the Land of Waves aren't going to go away until he does, but no one in canon ever even suggested that. Why not? For one, Naruto is an action show, and a showdown against an elderly businessman and his nameless goons isn't really compelling, but that's a Doylist explanation. The only thing that made sense in universe is that murder is, surprisingly, against the law. Missing-nin, who made up most of the series' antagonists, are fair game. Self defense is fine too. If a ninja gets sent on an assassination mission, then that means his village is supporting him and accepts the consequences.
But a civilian? That's complicated. A wealthy, influential civilian? Even more complicated. And if he's backed by a powerful, corrupt country, those consequences could be dire. A village might still decide to assassinate him, but they're not going to be thrilled with ninja teams making those decisions on the fly. To use a real world example, if James Bond shot an American billionaire, then the president and the prime minister would have a very uncomfortable conversation, and it would be pretty easy for the prime minister to throw Bond to the wolves, especially if he was acting on his own.
Anyway, thanks to everyone for waiting this long, and thank you to my Patrons, Exiled, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Kelsey Bull, Hubris Prime, Janember, Yotam Bonneh, Svistka, Lord of Edges, LordXamon, Victoria Carey, Kurkistan, Bernie McGuire, Christopher Harris, Luminant, Jan, and Jamie Hayes. See you next time!