Heavily recommend re-reading the first scene of Chapter 51 if you don't remember who was sent to Kusagakure.
"Oh Mr. Bones won't you come out
come out and play,
The skeletons in my closet
like to whisper to me,
They like to show me
all the things that I don't wanna see,"
-Mr. Bones, kroh
He dropped his basket as he fell in the snow.
It was so cold his fingers were numb through his gloves. He curled up and saw the basket on its side, snow pushing through the straw holes, bamboo stalks covered in white.
He closed his eyes. He heard the footsteps ahead of him stop, and then the crunch as they casually turned back.
He felt a foot nudge his stomach.
"I can't do it anymore," he whined. "Go on without me."
The foot nudged him again. "You go back and tell Zosui to tell Fujiwara you're not doing your share of the work then."
His name was Tora.
He rolled onto his back, watching his breath form a cloud above him. "It never snowed in Amegakure."
Haya shifted back, considering the sky as she held out a hand to catch snow. Her right hand didn't have a middle finger, and the knuckle was permanently purple-black.
When she'd told the story, she'd said that every time her captors asked her something she'd responded with her middle finger, until they cut it off and cauterized the wound so she wouldn't bleed out before they were done with her.
"Weather'll get worse," she said, her own basket tucked against her hip. "I'd hate to have to be out here at night. Chakra can only keep you so warm."
Tora felt the icy chill of snow melting on his cheek. He begrudgingly sat up and shook snow out of his hair as he pulled his basket into his lap. "Wish we got sent to Earth instead," he said, scratching snow out from between the knots. "Can't be this cold there, can it?"
Haya only snorted. It was her you're in for a rude awakening noise.
Satisfied that he wouldn't flop back into the snow, she left, maneuvering through the bamboo forest as she went.
Tora restacked his shoots into neat piles, watching her until she was a brown shape in the distance.
He headed the opposite way but couldn't find any bamboo tagged with string.
The untagged bamboo were babies, between two and five years old. The bamboo tagged with brown string were middle aged, and the ones tagged with black were over ten.
Only the black-tagged ones were to be cut. Some had stopped making leaves, others had started to show signs of stunted growth, and others still were starting to die inside.
They all looked the same to him, hence, well, the strings.
Zosui had split them up, then told him and Haya (when he'd questioned bamboo cutting not being what they were told they'd be doing), rather snarkily, that they'd been expecting to finally get ninja with earth-style, and explained that their civilians were overworked filling the hole left by their, er, conscripted forces.
Some had even died, he'd told them, and their meager hospital had been overcapacity ever since the war ended.
Tora shifted his basket to one hand as he untied a black string and added it to the pile in his pouch. He knelt and cleared the snow around the base, putting his basket down as he unsheathed a long knife and sawed at the lowest ring until the stalk started to tip and break under its own weight.
Once he maneuvered it to land between the other stalks, he cut the shafts into smaller sections and packed them in his basket.
He repeated this with two more stalks, walking until his basket was full and he didn't see black or brown strings. He looked ahead and saw the hard line where the bamboo ended and a forest of trees began, tall and thick and a sign that he'd wandered too far, that he was too close to the Land of Fire.
Tora kept walking, passing the short, bushy bamboo leaves slathered in snow, and then the thick, wide leaves of trees heavy and drooping with it.
The forest around here was small, if only because—
Tora stepped out from the shade and found himself at the end of a destroyed bridge.
—the explosion that had taken out the bridge had carved out a chunk of the forest too.
"What are you doing?" Haya asked when she eventually found him, exasperated. "I swear, you'd get distracted by your own hands if we left you alone long enough."
Tora looked at the other end of the bridge. "This is Kannabi isn't it?" he asked, turning back to her. "Where the Yellow Flash dealt the final blow to Iwagakure, right?"
Haya glanced at the bridge in disinterest. "Sure, why?"
"It's practically famous," Tora said like she didn't speak. "I didn't know we were this close, but I've always wanted to see it."
The Land of Earth was to the west, across the ravine where the bridge used to be.
"Uh-huh," Haya said.
Tora stepped onto it, old, small rocks tumbling down, and—
And Haya firmly gripped the back of his coat and started dragging him backwards.
"Hey," he protested.
"Ask for a book if you're so interested in history," Haya said dismissively.
"Hey," he said again, but she was holding him in a way that wouldn't let him turn around.
He crossed his arms but let her pull him through the snow.
おや
Tora inspected the small, oval-shaped seed in his palm. It was covered in tinier dark green patches. They felt dry and hard under his thumb.
"Don't scratch that off," Fuji admonished, a row over, using a hose to re-soak part of the field.
Tora looked up at a few farmers planting rice saplings in rows, ahead of where he was crouched. He felt the awareness of a kunoichi at the lower end of the field, wary of them, but trusting in the judgement of her superiors enough to keep her back to them.
"Wasn't gonna," he finally said, glancing at Fuji. "But what is it?"
"Mold," Fuji said, not taking his eyes off the mud. He was partially deaf in one ear and lacked the top half of the other.
He'd never told them that story, but Tora suspected that one had caused the other. The slice distracting him from an explosion, or an explosion that let him be cut.
Tora's eyebrows pulled together. "Mold?"
Fuji didn't answer for a few seconds, but that was just how he was. Sometimes Tora had to repeat what he'd asked, and sometimes Fuji just fell silent and wouldn't talk.
"A different kind. Not the nasty, natural stuff back home," Fuji eventually answered. "It was made in a lab during the war. Something about so much of the land being turned to farmland that they had a pest problem and had to solve it quick."
He paused again and Tora waited, tossing the seed up and catching it.
"They slather the roots with it," he said, nodding towards the farmers. "Anything that digs them up to take a bite doesn't live very long. I was told that the seeds were an experiment, seeing how they grow. That's why they called you to help me handle them."
"Huh," Tora caught the seed and flakes came off in his palm. "Isn't that dangerous to eat?"
"I don't eat the rice here," Fuji said immediately. "But no. Between the picking, washing, and organizing, not enough stays around to not be safe. Or so they said."
Tora looked at the seed and the bits of mold. "If this grows wrong it could become a weapon."
Fuji glanced over at him. "It's not what we're here to get involved in," he said warningly. "It's not our business to tell Kusa-nin what they can and can't do with their plants."
Tora clenched his fist around the seed. "What if it does and they use it against Amegakure?"
Fuji went silent again. "It's not up to us to decide to do something about it."
Tora didn't respond. He tossed the seed back into a bag at his feet and leaned back on his hands, staining his pants with mud.
Fuji moved onto the next row.
"It's so hot," Tora complained, sweat tickling his nose. He wiped his forehead with his arm and left a little mud behind, then made it worse trying to clean it with his shirt.
"You act like a child," Fuji said.
Tora stopped, and then he dropped his hands in his lap, looking at Fuji. "I don't think I ever got to be one," he mused.
Fuji didn't say anything, but no one ever seemed to know how to react when he said that.
Tora waited anyway, but Fuji didn't look up.
He watched the farmers for a little while, and Fuji didn't acknowledge that he hadn't started on his row. His attention was only pulled away from them by shouting, down near the bottom of the fields.
He saw a farmer yelling at two Kusa-nin for standing on fragile ground and waving her arms to shoo them off, but neither listened to her.
Tora caught sight of red-hair and a toddler dangling by the back of her shirt, in the grip of the Kusa-nin with long, dark hair, crying loudly as the two screamed at each other.
The kunoichi was looking at the three but didn't intervene. She didn't do anything as the farmer threw up her hands and left.
Tora stood and wandered over, taking the long way between fields.
Fuji paused briefly, but didn't stop him.
The shorter-haired Kusa-nin with a line of white paint down his nose made a grab at the toddler, and the other yanked her back, making her scream.
"—need her more," the shorter-haired man said angrily, eyes flicking between the toddler and the other man. He wore an armband with a symbol that looked like a seed. "My people will die if I don't get her to them right now. That bastard Fujiwara—he tells me the hospital's full, there's nothing he can do, and here you are, flower bitch, wanting her for nothing."
"My sister is dying," the long-haired man said calmly. He wore a darker armband with a plant that looked like sagebrush. "Traditional medicine won't work on her."
"Your sister's been dying," the other man shouted, getting in his face. "My people came back from a mission. Know what that means, jackass? They're hurt in ways that they can actually recover from."
The long-haired man remained impassive, but still moved to keep the toddler out of reach when the shorter-haired man tried to shift around him. "If this is the only chance she has, then I won't let you take it."
The shorter-haired man glared at him. "You flower bastards are all the same. While we're out there fighting for a better village, one that doesn't constantly get shit on, you're in your untouched homes preaching about peace and diplomacy."
"Why don't you just ask her mother?" the kunoichi finally asked.
"I would, if it were possible," the long-haired man answered, ignorant to the other's rage. "The hospital has her permanently indisposed, and she couldn't, regardless, without Lord Fujiwara's permission."
"So, you just kidnap her kid instead," the kunoichi said, crossing her arms. "What about the father?"
"Bleeding himself dry for Fujiwara somewhere," the short-haired man said, then made another grab at the toddler. "The hypocrite. Oh, let's parade for nonviolence while one our own cuts himself open whenever anyone has a scrape."
The long-haired man quirked an eyebrow. "And you're better wanting his daughter?"
"I'm not going to kill her," the short-haired man growled. "But her father? With the state he's in it's no wonder his wife stepped up."
Tora stopped close to them, but not on the field itself.
"Fuck this," the shorter-haired man said before anyone else could respond. He dragged a hand down his face. "I don't have time for you and your petty bullshit. Give her to me."
The other man didn't respond, gazing above him, at the long blade in Tora's hand.
"Put her down," Tora told him.
The short-haired man stopped, then spun around to stare at him, incredulous.
Tora listened to the toddler sob in the silence, rubbing her chubby fists uselessly at her eyes. He still hated the sound of children crying.
She made him think of a room. A small one with gray walls and gray floors and nothing, nothing but the sound of crying. All night. All day.
His. Others. He didn't know, even now, but he couldn't—he couldn't think.
He'd been made an example—
"Who are you?" the short-haired man asked, then shook his head and held a hand up at him. "No, forget it," he said, turning back to the other man. "If my people die because you think the kid can somehow perform a miracle, I'll cut you open, flower bitch—"
Tora heard an echo of his blade clashing against a kunai, and the force pushing back against him drew him back into the present, where the kunoichi had stopped him from cutting the long-haired man.
He'd aimed to surprise, not to kill, but the thought came later, after he looked into her narrowed eyes and realized that his body had moved on its own.
He'd only wanted the long-haired man to put her down.
The short-haired man stumbled back in the quiet, having been pushed by the kunoichi.
"Ame-nin," the long-haired man eventually said, distastefully. He hadn't moved.
Tora looked at him in surprise, and the memory of crying ran like wet paint.
The kunoichi let out a testy breath. "Drop the kid," she ordered, but never looked away from Tora.
The long-haired man paused, gaze moving to her back. His fingers tightened on the toddler's collar and Tora looked at his own hand, at the blade in his grip, and took a quick step back.
"I'm not putting my ass on the line because this one wants to cause trouble," the kunoichi said, lowering her voice. "I'm not going to be the one to lose us an alliance over an Ame-nin getting a complex over a situation he knows nothing about."
"But—"
"I'm pulling rank," she continued. "That still means something to you two, doesn't it? Deal with what you've got going on without the kid, or fume about it for all I care, but she's coming with me."
The kunoichi didn't lower her kunai, even as Tora slid his blade back in his leg sheathe.
Both were silent for a few seconds, and then the short-haired one dropped his hands on his head and turned away, cursing under his breath.
The long-haired man looked pale, but he lowered the toddler, slowly, like it pained him, until she was in a sobbing heap on the mud.
"I—I just—" the short-haired man started, only to be interrupted.
"Leave the area," the kunoichi spoke, and put her kunai away as she scooped up the toddler.
Tora watched the toddler cling to her, tiny nails digging into her flak-jacket.
The long-haired man turned and bowed in the direction of the farmers, though all they did was glare at him. "I apologize for the inconvenience," he said.
Tora blinked at the kunoichi's glare, but she didn't wait for the two to listen to her before she disappeared.
The shorter-haired man bit down hard on his lip, even when blood trickled down his chin.
The long-haired man turned and walked away without looking at either of them.
Tora heard the white noise of rain in his head. He went back up to Fuji.
When his shirt was grabbed, when he looked up into Fuji's wide, furious eyes and heard him hiss out through his teeth, what were you thinking? Tora had no answers for him.
氏
Tora looked down at Haya, Fuji, and Chizue, swinging his legs, watching them sift through the wreckage of an orphanage.
There'd been no one inside when paper bombs were stuck to the walls, but that was on purpose, like it was that an armband with a seed symbol had been left in the dirt outside.
He felt something rough and small bump against his hand, and glanced at the toad next to him on the roof. It was dull orange and a small, folded piece of paper stuck halfway out of its mouth. He pinched the end between two fingers, let his chakra trail along the paper until it brushed over the toad, and the toad released the rest of it.
It was covered in slime as he unfolded it, but the message was unaffected.
a leaf falls in the wind and makes no sound.
It wasn't written in Lord Danzo's uniform scrawl, or Master Jiraya's near-illegible scratches, but still, the toad meant they'd been in contact. That both were too busy to write it themselves.
Tora refolded the note and held it out, not looking at the toad, waiting until he felt a slimy mouth around his fingers before he let go.
He heard something like a rock ping off the wall beneath him.
"Hey!" Haya called up to him, a hand on her hip. "You were supposed to come straight to us when you made it here."
Tora paused, then picked the toad up before it could hop away and held it up for them to see. It wiggled its legs, croaking at him, but he kept his gaze on Haya. "I found a frog!"
Haya looked unimpressed. "Of course."
Fuji, in the middle of sorting through still-usable toys, didn't glance up.
Chizue sat in the shade near the rubble, his shirt sticking to him. He was bald, the widest, and looked up at him in disdain. "Not a frog."
Haya pointed to a corner of the wreckage, voice flat, "Go look for bodies over there. Chizue did earlier but Fuji found some blood, so we've all been ordered to search the area again for bodies.
Tora looked at the toad. "What do I do with it?"
"Don't care," Haya said. "As long as you stay busy."
Tora put the toad down and climbed down. He hopped the last few feet and rolled up his sleeves, maneuvering around bricks and glass to where charred strips of wood stuck up out of the rubble.
"I should've kept it," Tora mentioned, tugging gently at a long piece that might've been the door. The top of the pile above him shook ominously, so he stopped.
"You'll manage to find another one," Haya said with a snort.
Tora pulled at a smaller piece with the same result. He saw why Chizue left it. "But not that one," he said back. "I thought Zosui was supposed to be supervising us."
"He went to do another headcount," Fuji answered. "It wasn't enough blood to mean anything, and I told him that, but he didn't listen."
Tora brushed his fingers over part of the wall still standing. "Hey, Chizue, what's with the armbands people wear around here?"
"Why?" Chizue asked gruffly. "And why ask me about it?"
"Saw some of them. A week ago, right, Fuji?" Tora asked.
Fuji tossed a stuffed rabbit at a pile behind him and didn't answer.
"The seed guy said they wanted to make Kusagakure better," he went on. "How would this do that?"
Chizue leaned back and gazed up at what was left of the building.
Tora could count the number of times he'd seen Chizue smile on half of one hand.
"And," Tora said, dragging out the word. "Haya would just tell me to get back to work, and Fuji would say it's not our business."
Haya scoffed. "Since you left him out, Zosui should be back soon. Ask him and see how well that turns out."
Chizue scowled at her, and then at him. "It's no different than it was at home, just that the group we stuck behind won," he said. "They sprung up during the war. The second one. The third made them louder. No one likes being under the thumb of someone who treats them as less than human. The only difference between the groups is that they have different ideas of making sure it doesn't happen again."
"But Iwagakure can't do that again. It's peacetime," Tora mentioned.
"Like that means anything," Haya snorted.
"This was protest," Chizue said over them. "Getting attention. Probably means something that's going over my head. But every group like this has at least one person who thinks that violence is the answer and becomes too noisy, too fast. All I know is that this won't do them any favors, no matter the message they were trying to send."
Tora blinked at Chizue in surprise. "You really explained it."
Chizue scowled harder. "If you're going to be a smartass, don't ask."
"We should all visit a bar one day," Tora said, shading his eyes from the sun. "Having comrades is nice."
"You say something?" Chizue asked, despite hearing him just fine.
Tora moved closer to him, until Chizue was in his shadow. "I said we should all go to a bar, chi-zee."
Chizue shoved him to the side, glaring at him. "That stupid nickname again."
"Chi-zee-sensei," Tora sang.
Chizue stood fast and left him there as he walked away.
Tora did smile then.
A/N: おや - Oh, 氏 - Mr, 骨 - Bones
Karin's backstory here is anime-canon. This part of it anyway.