"Living life knowing that we must die,
Loving until the end,
Choosing hope when all hope has seemed lost,
And believing in the strength of our friends,"
-Choosing Hope, Nobuo Uematsu
The boat in the water was small.
It wasn't wide like the boats in Amegakure, or the long ones in Tsuri. It was dark brown, barely visible through the mist, and had a blue circle with a white slash through it painted on the side.
A blue-skinned, muscled woman stood at the front, staring up at our flag.
It hung from the middle of the ship, gray and square-shaped with the squiggly lines of Kirigakure in red.
Four human-shaped shadows were on the boat behind her. I saw the still outline of oars in the hands of one, and the shape of a rope with a hook at the end in the hands of another.
She barely looked at me as I leaned on the rail, stepping down to sign at someone.
The oars moved soundlessly and the boat glided backwards, disappearing back into the mist.
I heard Hidan behind me but didn't turn around.
He stopped next to me, blood dried down the right side of his chest.
"What the hell did you say to Terumi?" he asked, a laugh in his voice. "That orange-haired bastard tried to be friendly with her earlier and she brushed him off. It was hilarious."
I hummed and said, "I told her that she had to give you someone to kill."
Hidan leaned back on the rail and studied me, picking up something in my tone maybe.
I didn't know what she'd said to the crew to keep them quiet, but she had talked to them, or they'd do more than avoid us or shoot each other tense glances from the other side of the ship.
Hidan kept staring.
I held the rail as a wave crashed against the side of the ship and felt the ship tilt up with it.
He squinted, unmoving as the ship lurched back down and I let go of the rail. "You liked her," he finally said.
The lantern in the middle of the ship tossed circles of yellow light out at the ocean as it swung.
"Why?" he asked.
I wondered the same. Why?
"Why do you like me?" I asked.
"Don't pretend it's the same shit," he said tersely, tilting his head back. "Is it?"
"I liked talking to her. That's what friends do, don't they?"
"Fuck if I know," he said, then, "Why did you tell her about it? You think I can't tell the difference between a spy and a ninja? You should've said you didn't know shit about it. What could those heathens do? Kill me?"
I finally looked at him. "Why do you feel bad?"
He tilted his head at me. "I don't give a shit about you and Terumi. It just doesn't make any sense why you'd—"
"You want me to hide Jashinism from them," I spoke over him. "Maybe, even, to speak badly about it when she confronted you, because if I'd lied she'd want me to be there when she did."
He squinted again. "I didn't say that last blasphemous shit."
"You weren't there," I said, looking out again, "But I think I knew I couldn't be her friend when she asked if a summon was worth more than a person."
He squinted more.
"She talked about sacrifice and it made me wonder, if you give up your friends for peace, when do you stop saying it's for peace? When do you admit it's for war?"
I looked to Hidan for an answer.
"Why are you asking me?" he asked.
I only leaned more on the rail.
He dragged a hand down his face and looked away. "Do you know why the Third war started?"
"No."
"It was those cold bastards in Frost and those wet bastards in Waterfall," he said. "The war before that made the bigger shitheads desperate for allies. Kumogakure took the cold bastards. The wet bastards worked out some deal with Iwagakure. Those small assholes got it in their heads to take back some stolen land from Fire. It was small scale shit."
Hidan dropped his hand. "I helped catch cold-nin during the war. When I interrogated them, they stuck to saying it was for peace. It was all the bastards would say. They never admitted to shit. They believed what they did was for peace, all the way to the end."
"They were loyal," I said, even though it wasn't what I meant.
Sacrificing for a village was different, I mused, but the only way know that was to have friends to sacrifice.
"Would she answer if I asked what future they're fighting for if everyone can be a sacrifice if they need to be?" I asked him.
Hidan tilted his head at me and said, "I wasn't done."
"I already know what people do for loyalty."
He didn't blink.
"Warm water taught you a lot about the war," I mentioned in the silence.
"No they fucking didn't," he said back immediately. He hesitated, then clicked his teeth and said, "But the Academy—that shit wasn't so bad. Didn't know how to read before I went."
"How old were you?"
Hidan looked at me for a long time, then finally said, "Started late."
He didn't want to talk about it, or maybe he didn't want to acknowledge that there'd ever been anything good about Yugakure.
I didn't want to, but I asked, "If it was small scale, how did it become a world war?"
He didn't answer for a second, "Those dumb cold bastards almost won. They only didn't because the tree-huggers did ANBU shit to assassinate their chief in Lightning and their chain of command fell apart. That pulled in Kumogakure."
"And Takigakure?"
"They inspired other, even smaller assholes to fight that were claimed by Fire in the last war. Don't remember who attacked Wind, but the tree-huggers defended them, and that got Wind involved with defending them from Lightning. Someone allied with the tree-huggers tried some revenge shit on some squad from Waterfall in Earth Country, and it became Iwagakure's mess."
I hummed appropriately.
He kept talking.
.
.
.
"Chojuro will be going with you," Ao announced.
Hidan, still leaning on the rail next to me, raised his middle finger at him habitually.
"Why?" I asked, half-turning around.
Ao eyed Hidan, but ignored him as he said, "To put it bluntly, Chojuro has no training in deception. Lady Mei and I will stay on the ship as long as we're able, but it must pass through the Gengetsu Checkpoint before it reaches Byakuren."
"She expects that even if she's able to deceive the guards at the checkpoint, at some point we'll be separated and questioned. In doing so we'll draw Lord Fourth's eyes. He knows her goal, but her status puts him in a difficult position of how to deal with her. He'll try to kill her but it has to be done discreetly where no one, not even ninja, can see it happen, and it must look accidental, and that gives us time. The more you can take him by surprise, the higher chance we have to succeed."
"Did she come up with a plan?" I asked.
"The swordsmen come first," he said. "It's likely they're somewhere in Byakuren where they can be watched. They're his best defense, but they also pose the biggest threat to him. If I can't find their signatures I'll look for their clans in Gengetsu. If there's still no sign of them, we'll assume they died off."
"And if they're in Minakami?"
"Minakami is a place to climb out of. To be from Gengetsu or Byakuren and go there is to admit you've done something you need to hide from," Ao answered. "If they'd become traitors, Gushiken would've known."
I hummed.
"By the time we reach the checkpoint you should've found a hole to hide in until we can get a message to you. If you receive no contact from my bird in a week's time, or the message has no code, assume we've been killed. In that case if you can before you go home, inform Gushiken. He has access to the funds we've saved up to this point. Once he has proof, he'll pay you the worth of an A-rank."
Because mercenaries like us only did anything for something back.
Hidan waved his hand without lifting his arm. "If you want someone to spy on us, just skip the bullshit and say it old man."
Ao's eye flicked to him. "You haven't known Chojuro for long but even so, would you say he could maintain his composure through an interrogation?"
"Both can be true," Hidan lazily answered.
I waited, but he didn't say anything else. I I turned back around, looking for more boats in the water.
But he didn't leave.
"Spit it out, old man."
He didn't.
"If you see the chakra of the puppeteer we don't need Yagura after, so why do you want to save him?" I asked.
If Mei became Mizukage, he knew what kind of Kirigakure she'd make.
He didn't know that about Yagura.
"What's being done to him is killing him," Ao said. "The starvation of his brain is no different to a bleeding wound left untended. The longer it's allowed to continue, the more the injury will worsen."
"So what?" Hidan asked, boredly scratching dried blood from his chest. It looked like a scabbed scratch now instead of a kunai-shaped hole.
I only stared back at Ao, because that wasn't what I asked.
Ao looked away from me, seemingly debating something with himself, and then he shook his head. "You're not Mei," he finally said.
Ao reached into his pocket, pulled out a small, crumpled square box, pulled a short straw-shape out of it, and put the end in his mouth.
"Fuck yeah," Hidan said, holding his hand out. "Give me one."
Ao hesitated but did. Then he put the box away, produced a smaller box of matches, and lit one against the side. He hesitated again when Hidan held the end of his out but lit it for him.
I didn't speak as he did, but Hidan noticed my curiosity.
"It's a cigarette," he said, still lazy. "How have you never seen a cigarette before?"
I held my hand out at Ao, or started to, but Hidan swatted my arm down, holding his cigarette in his mouth.
"Shit's bad for you," he said, looking at me judgmentally.
I stared at him.
"Pride is a dangerous trait in a ninja," Ao said, pretending not to have heard or seen us as he blew dark smoke to the side. "I know my own sins and can recognize them better than most. I don't care for Yagura, per say. I care about the village the same way Mei does. I've spent too many years fighting for it to see it eat itself like this, but I'm a follower, not a leader. I'm not ashamed to admit that."
"And?" I prompted.
"Getting to it," he said, blowing smoke. "I care a little more, and you can call it pride, about other villages meddling in affairs that don't concern them."
"You know who the puppeteer is?"
"I have a theory. I became well acquainted with genjutsu during the second and third war. One of yours even killed a few of my old squad mates through genjutsu back then. He was a cocky bastard."
Ao paused. "It's not my talent, but I can tell when one feels off. I don't know how to describe it. That's why I've been trying to talk to your sensor-nin. My theory would be more concrete if I described what I saw and he could tell me what kind of genjutsu could make it look the way it does."
"Describe it to me, and I'll tell him."
Ao didn't. Instead he said, "It looks normal, or normal for someone at that skill level, but it felt..." he trailed off, pausing. "Familiar? It shouldn't have felt like anything since I'm a visual sensor, but it was somewhat like something I've encountered before. The theory I have, well, I met a shinobi once late in the third war that terrified me. It was the first time I'd felt like that in eight years. To make it more humiliating, he was a child. Shisui Uchiha. I'd have known if it was his chakra, but it still gave me the same sense of needing to flee."
"Your theory is that it's an Uchiha?"
"I have no proof," was all he said. "You don't run to your commander about a feeling you have about something. I've killed Uchiha and nothing about the chakra looks like them. I've looked in every bingo book across the elemental nations and there are no rouge Uchiha in any of them. It's impossible. Even with the village the way it is, all it'd take to unite us is learning that leaf-nin are manipulating the Mizukage. Why would Konohagakure want that?"
"And yet?"
Ao inhaled for a long time, then exhaled smoke. "And one day my pride will be the death of me. If, let's say, some lone Uchiha is using the Sharingan to control the Fourth, it'd still be Konohagakure's fault. Same as if I went rouge I'd always have of Kirigakure by my name."
He dropped the end of the cigarette and crushed it under his foot.
"Their arrogance and our pride are why we're always clashing with them," he said. "I don't appreciate any leaf-nin who thinks they can treat mist-nin like dolls to play with and throw away once they break. It would be different if I didn't know I could do something about it."
I thought I understood.
It was selfish, it didn't help Kirigakure, and it was the same reason Hidan held up his middle finger.
It was the kind of pride that wanted to save someone as a middle finger to someone else, that would toss everything they'd worked for away as long as it meant that leaf-nin didn't win.
And because he'd already run from an Uchiha once, he wouldn't let himself do it again.
Hidan breathed in his cigarette. Immediately after he spun and was bending over the rail, coughing hard.
Ao seemed to notice the soggy state of the end of his cigarette then, and looked faintly surprised. "You've never...?" he trailed off, his look reassessing as Hidan flicked the cigarette at the water.
Looking at the Demon of Hot Water and finding a person.
"This shit burns," Hidan managed to say at me, like I was supposed to feel bad for him.
I blinked. He glared at me.
"You have nothing to say?" Ao asked me.
"I'm not going to tell you how to save Kirigakure," I answered, glancing at him. "If I told you what I did before and after killing Hanzo, I wouldn't do it to hear you tell me I was wrong."
Ao didn't respond for a few seconds. "How you act and speak—even a Kage would find it difficult to determine your character and intentions."
What I wanted to say next probably wouldn't help with that.
"There should be more ninja like Chojuro," I mentioned. "He's—he seems like what someone that age is supposed to be like."
Ao opened his mouth, closed it, then reconsidered before he said, "If he were not the only one in Water found to be compatible with the Hirakemei, or if he was sent to war like most of his peers, his softness would've made him another body in a mass grave. The younger a ninja is exposed to violence the more it helps them stop violence from being done to them later."
"Poison doesn't care how used to violence you are," I countered. "Neither does an ambush or being weaker than the person in front of you. Mass graves are filled with more adults than kids like Chojuro."
"Not all of our mass graves were caused by enemy attacks," was all Ao said.
"If that Uchiha bastard is not-Madara—" Hidan rasped, looking at me. "—he's mine. Lord Jashin has already claimed him."
If it was, I mused, watching water spray up as the ship broke through another wave.
But who else could it be?
If it was, would it be enough? He owed Hidan in blood, so he'd suffer for days or even weeks learning about Jashinism.
"You already know who the puppeteer is?" Ao asked, half-suspicious.
"No," I answered, "We know of a powerful Uchiha who isn't in the bingo books. We don't know everything his eyes can do, but it wouldn't surprise me if they can do this."
"And that part about Madara?"
"He's not, but if you meet him, he'll use that name. We don't know his real one."
Hidan went back to spitting the taste away.
"What makes you so sure it's him?" Ao asked.
"What makes you sure it's an Uchiha?" I asked back.
Ao went silent. "Take care of Chojuro," he eventually said as he turned away, walking across the deck to the stairs.
The smell of smoke lingered in the air.
星
I stood on the water, watching the ship be swallowed up by the mist.
The calmer water near the shore was harder on the ship since it was built for staying steady under churning, thrashing waves.
The ship had slowed near it, swaying and making a loud grinding noise, but couldn't stop
Mei had had to give Chojuro an encouraging push before he followed us down the side.
I stood still until I couldn't see even the ship's outline. Looking up at it from the bottom made it look wide, wider than I thought it was.
The mist was less dense here than in the middle of the ocean, but everything was still hazy outlines.
"Are there a lot of kenjutsu masters in Amegakure?" Chojuro asked hesitantly, stealing glances at the nagamaki. "I heard it was uncommon."
"Ah, it is," Yahiko said. "I'm the only one who specializes in kenjutsu in the village. My master passed his blade to me and his skills with it. He hasn't used kenjutsu since."
Chojuro touched the bandage straps around his chest. "I get that. Once a blade of the Seven Swordsmen is passed onto an apprentice the old user will never wield it again, even if they're still alive. Most give up the title of Seven Swordsman and are forgotten about."
"Most?" Yahiko prompted, adjusting Naga's arm around his shoulder. He was grimacing, his eyes squeezed shut.
Chojuro hesitated, but gave up and said, "There's only been one who hasn't had either happen to him, but he's not like anyone else. He's the old wielder of the Hiramekarei, but he can use all of the swords, and multiple at once. No one would ever say I replaced him, just that I joined."
"You don't have to wait for me," I told Hidan as Yahiko, Chojuro, and Naga moved farther away.
Hidan only repeated me, mockingly, in a higher voice.
I waited for him to finish, then asked Namekuji, "Do you think their plan will work?"
Hidan stuck his tongue.
I didn't try to lower my voice, but Chojuro was too far ahead to listen in.
Namekuji shifted on my shoulder and said, "What purple lips wants sounds nice and easy, but does it ever happen that way?"
I hummed. I pulled a scroll from my pouch, spread it out on top of the water, and unsealed an old ration bar to share with him. "What do you think will happen?"
"You fail without a plan to deal with Hoshigaki," he said easily, leaning down as I held the flavorless bar up to him. "Because they don't have one."
"Or Hozuki," I mused, turning the bar to the non-slimy side to take a bite, watching the mist turn Yahiko into a wavy shadow.
"It was more than a dream to think you long-armed humans would come," Namekuji added. "Seems like they were setting something up on that island. A network. But you answered before they were ready and they can't take it back."
"Mei said as much," I told him, taking another bite.
Hidan came closer and took the bar right out of my hand and said, through a mouthful of crumbs, "If you're going to stand there, I'm going to eat your shit."
I stared at him, hand still held up, but he kept eating it.
"Half, or you'll spend the rest of the mission trying to find new clothes," Namekuji threatened.
Hidan sneered, but broke the bar in half.
.
.
.
I walked over old, rusted cans half buried in the wet dirt that made up the shore, and around pieces of crates so rotted they were completely green.
Broken glass made the ground sparkle like stars.
Chojuro, ahead of me, walked over a dead fish automatically, still talking to Yahiko.
"I hate it here already," Hidan said around a second, also stolen, ration bar. "It stinks."
I hadn't been thinking about it. The smell in the air was of meat that had been left out until it went bad, until it was covered in a thin, yellow film, until only Namekuji could eat it.
Worse than Nankai, because the smell of fish hadn't been rotten. But it was oddly nostalgic.
"Makes everything taste like shit too," Hidan said in irritation, throwing the rest of the ration bar at Namekuji.
"Miss Terumi really is amazing," Chojuro was gushing, "There's supposed to be hunter-nin stationed where the ship stopped—"
"Have you met Hoshigaki before?" I interrupted him.
Chojuro stopped talking and almost hid his tense.
He was wary of me, who went against Mei's ideals, who ordered that someone die and felt nothing for doing it.
Lucky, lucky, lucky.
"No. Yes. I've met him, but it wasn't—" he stopped again, rubbing his knuckles nervously against his bandages. "It's not like you think. I don't have any information. The Seven Swordsman don't know each other. Only normal mentors and students get anywhere close to that, and Hoshigaki killed his."
"Normal ones?" Yahiko asked casually, hands behind his head.
Naga was looking at the line of boulders ahead of us and frowning. Most were sharp and tall and would've made some kind of barrier, if not for the rocks that had person-sized holes blasted through them.
From the war, or defectors?
"My mentor—Hozuki—he wasn't one to me. But it wasn't like he was passing on anything. He gave Hiramekarei to me because I could use it. The way he passed it on felt more like if we went out to eat and he gave me his leftovers because he was already full."
"You didn't learn anything?" Yahiko asked, eyebrow raised.
"He taught me how to hold and activate it. The last thing he told me was that I was a natural, and then he went on the mission that—" he didn't finish, some instinct to hide his village's secrets stealing the air from his throat.
Yahiko didn't pressure him to keep going, but Chojuro did anyway.
"Where five of the swordsmen died," he forced himself to say, focusing on a rock in front of him. "The village could only recover their weapons because Hozuki didn't. That's all I know about him."
"We don't have to worry about who killed them, do we?" Yahiko asked.
"No, it was a leaf-nin. He died in the fighting. We—the village—took his body as revenge, but that didn't change what he'd done," he answered, then added, like an afterthought, "The village is ashamed of it—that it happened. The Seven Ninja Swordsmen are as famous as Konohagakure's sanin. They're not supposed to go down in battle."
Yahiko whistled. "He must've been someone powerful."
Chojuro voice got quieter, "He wasn't. That's what made it so shameful. He was just some guy. A genin."
Yahiko shook his head. "When we took over the village, we had no rank—"
Chojuro's eyes widened at him.
"—and no title like Hanzo the Salamander. I get why ranks exists, I do, but you can never really know what kind of power someone's hiding. If you look at someone's rank and think, easy target, you could be right, but you might die for it too."
Naga was still frowning.
I looked to Namekuji for why.
"He's trying to sense and it's annoying and dull," Namekuji grumbled, "If purple lips really told you this was better for sensor-nin, she lied. This is—it's like how you humans peel fruit to get to the stuff inside, but the fruit is the mist and you don't know where the inside is."
"Mei isn't a sensor-nin—" I started.
"Then she should've kept her guess to herself."
"—but Ao is. He saw through the mist to see Yagura's chakra," I finished, a question there.
"I didn't say we couldn't find the inside. Still annoying."
I hummed. "How long will it take?"
Namekuji grunted. "Don't ask me," he said, and I only faintly registered the chakra in my shoulder being pulled up through my skin and absorbed. "I'm choosing not to be a sensor anymore."
"I thought my chakra tasted awful," I mentioned as Chojuro hesitantly asked Naga what running a village was like.
"It still tastes like extra smelly feet," Namekuji assured me. "But being a sensory type here is worse. At least your chakra isn't making it hard to think."
"Lord Jashin, I pray to die to be spared from all this talking," Hidan said in a monotone, dead voice.
I ignored him, but it made me smile.
A/N: 星 - Stars
Two damaged teenagers attempt to have a normal conversation. png
/
A few comments have inspired me to share character theme songs, if anyone else is into that kind of thing:
Oka: Part 1, Hard to Kill - Beth Crowley; Part 3, The Edge of Dawn - AmaLee, Wayfaring Stranger - Reinaeiry
Yahiko: Part 1, ScaPEGoat - AmaLee; Part 2, Dust Bowl Dance - Mumford and Sons, Saint Bernard - Lincoln
Nagato: Part 2, Beautiful Remains - Beth Crowley; Part 3, creature - half alive
Konan: Ayano's Theory of Happiness - rachie
Maho: Part 1, Never Lost World - Jubyphonic
Hidan: Part 1, A Sadness Runs Through Him - The Hoosiers; Part 2, sister - Eve (from the pov of Hidan and his mom)
Matsu: Part 2, Sinners - Barns Courtney
Enyo: Parts 1&2, Boy in the Bubble - Alec Benjamin