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. "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. "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 scrubbed a hand through his hair. "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 decided.

"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 the right way," 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 bothered.

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

Maho 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 screamed, civilian.

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

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

Non-combatants, Maho's mind told him.

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.

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

Maho jumped 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.

How long had they been down here? How many food and supplies had they gotten by acting helpless?

Three of the traitors started to stand but stopped when Hidan covered his eyes with his hand and peeked at them through his fingers.

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

The girl flinched.

Some of the others watched him in disbelief, and some stared at them both like this was all their fault, with an intensity that made Maho take a step back.

They didn't know him, but they hated him.

"You're all terrible sinners," Hidan said. He spun his scythe behind him and charged into the room.

He didn't seem too concerned that Maho didn't have half the chakra Nagato had as a kunai sliced down his back, carving out a deep red line, but it was watching him move that made Maho see 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 to scramble back or stick to the walls with a wide swing, let go of the handle, and spun to catch a wrist that tried to stab him in the back, having dropped from the ceiling.

Hidan broke the wrist and caught a man by the throat with his other hand as his scythe clattered onto 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 recover, or the ninja with the scarf hiding his or her face could fully turn around, 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 as 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, leaping up to him. A fifth was standing at the back, making the snake sign.

Hidan yanked his hand back hard and as the cable pulled taut, his scythe whipping up in a deadly arc, he 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 an old 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 screams 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. You forced me to retreat and then you were captured and—just, when they interrogate you, tell them I didn't run. I fought. I-I tried. I would've died if I didn't go, okay?"

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.

Of wanting an out and only getting more blood and soot on his hands.

If the kid 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, trying to make him understand, rambling and nonsensical. "They'll want to know details—"

"No one is leaving that room alive," Maho finally managed to say, and the pressure let up as the enemy ninja stared at him.

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 enemy said after a second, like Maho was the delusional one.

"Why would they ask me about you—?"

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.

Even though he hadn't been there when they fought Hanzo, or when Hanzo died.

He hadn't been there for any of it, but he was Akatsuki, so that meant he deserved to die.

The shinobi spoke again, not noticing her, the hand around the kunai starting to shake as he tried to tell him what to say again, but Maho didn't hear him as the kunoichi grabbed the kunai on the floor 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 not possible," the shinobi stammered, trying to make him understand.

The kunoichi's eyes seemed to glow with rage 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, but the kunai in his hand still trembled.

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

Distantly, Maho heard Hidan laugh.

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

It's easier to be weak. 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, trailing blood.

If you're known as strong, people expect things from you. They expect you to protect them when you can't even protect yourself.

Maho bit his tongue hard, tasting blood. He squeezed the enemy ninja's arm, hand glowing green, and did the one thing Nagato told him to never do to another person.

The shinobi dropped the kunai as he yanked his arm back, but it was too late. It was already starting to swell.

Nagato's medical textbook taught him that tumors happened when something malfunctioned 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 his head was as the shinobi stared at the swollen lumps slowly growing up his arm in wide-eyed terror.

Nagato's textbook called them cancer cells. Medical chakra was supposed to be inserted into another person's body slowly, or with extreme precision if it had to be done quickly, to prevent the chances of uncontrolled cell division as the body over-healed itself.

Maho had briefly felt the pulse as the chakra rippled throughout the enemy ninja's body, forcing his cells into healing without there being a wound.

Maho took another step sideways as she stumbled around the shinobi, eyes half-glazed over, half-dead, but fixated on Maho.

Lumps crept up the enemy ninja's face, his body forced to overreact, to grow new tissue that he didn't need.

"Monster," the enemy ninja called him.

They called him Black Hands Maho in his bingo book page.

Maho focused chakra in his hands but forced himself to keep watching the enemy ninja, committing to memory the awful thing he'd done.

The enemy ninja fell against the wall, trembling, swollen fingers touching at the lumps spreading down his neck.

Maho could've stopped it, if he had the time. Nagato had removed tumors before, had taught him how to cut out the problem areas while encouraging the growth of healthy tissue.

The kunoichi was still coming at him, throwing her upper body forward to drag her feet along. Her breaths rattled in her chest, but she wouldn't stop. There was a bright, crazed light in her eyes.

Getting a revenge that Maho was only barely part of.

He was suddenly eleven again, wearing the red of Iwa on the battlefield and tasting ash in the air, the grass burnt and charred all around him.

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, dirty shirt glowed yellow-orange.

The enemy ninja was grabbing at his face and crying.

One—

Maho took a step back, and then turned and ran as the kunoichi slurred out a curse and grasped weakly at her shirt. She tried to follow him and her legs buckled and she fell.

Two—

Maho ducked around a corner and collapsed against the wall.

Three—

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

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

He takes everything too hard, Chairotsuchi-sensei had said about him once, behind a closed door, but he has power.

If he'd ever had a choice, he would've been a farmer, or someone who took care of animals. He would've liked that.

But he was born with a rare kekkei genkai, and that was that.

Maho barely felt the heat through his shivering. He was back there, in the rain, picking up a blackened hand and feeling it crumble through his fingers. Wanting to bury whoever they'd been and getting his hands black instead.

It had been more than taking care of the dead for his team, more than being pushed around and treated as weaker. The worst parts of it had been before the dead were dead, when he had to protect himself, because if he didn't he'd die.

Maho didn't know how long he sat there, breathing in the taste of his nightmares, before he stood, scrubbing water out of his eyes and making them burn and hurt. 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 him.

Hidan was standing at the center of his ritual circle when he stumbled back into the main room. "What the hell was all that for, cash cow?" he asked, waving away thick trails of black smoke.

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

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

Hidan went still. "Careful," he warned, his voice low. "This holy slaughter was done in the name of Lord Jashin. Whatever happened out there, you think you're more important than Him?"

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

The girl shakily stood, holding a kunai she'd pulled out of the hands of someone dead.

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 kunai twice.

"I gave your friends a chance, didn't I?" Hidan asked, as if he'd done her a great favor. "Didn't I warn them that if they attacked me, if they were stupid enough to make themselves sacrifices, I'd gladly send them to Lord Jashin? Are you going to be a dumbass too?"

"They-They did it for village! For what we believe in!" she said firmly, trembling hard.

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

She didn't answer.

Maho uselessly pulled his shirt up to cover his mouth and nose. Not that he wanted to watch Hidan kill someone half their age but— "Why does she get a pass?"

"A pass?" Hidan repeated, turning to stare 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. It started at his armpit and ended at the top of his shoulder and he hadn't noticed, but it was starting to sting.

He breathed in cloth and his own body sweat, and the taste of ash on his tongue started to fade.

Maho tugged absently at the tear. It was about time he stopped wearing Nagato's hand-me-downs, anyway.

Maho was taller than him now. Only his old shirts fit reasonably anymore.

"You must care about Oka's weird boundaries," Maho said without expecting a response, tired-sounding. "Why else would you give them a chance?"

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 at him, looking uncomfortable. "It's weird."

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

"Look, just give her to someone," Hidan said awkwardly, waving vaguely at the girl. He turned and 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