CHAPTER 14
A week later
Some distance from Little Whirlpool
Whisper Group Auction hideout
There was something about the purr of money counters that soothed Naruto.
Roughly thirty people, clothed in simple white and pocketless uniforms, sat along ten well-spaced wooden tables that were bolted to the ground, attentively arranging stacks of bills and organising them into the money counters, tapping a few buttons and letting their personally assigned machines noisily whirr.
The room was solemnly silent, with the group members focused on the task at hand of counting all of the money regularly pouring in from the door, as other suited group members came in with briefcases of cash. The money was dropped on the left side of the money counter.
The money was counted and arranged into bands of cash, piled on the right side. In regular rotations, the piles of cash on the right side of the money counters were arranged into nondescript duffle bags and promptly moved out of the room.
Whisper Group ran a brisk business.
Everyone had a role.
Everyone had a purpose.
With that purpose, everyone had individual importance.
Naruto inhaled, swelling up his chest and allowing himself to slump back into the corner he wedged himself into, exhaling slowly from his mouth.
He casually watched as four new group members in the same white uniform trooped into the room and tapped on the shoulders of four group members already seated behind money counters. Those already seated bobbed their heads and finished the stack of bills they were attending to, standing up and switching places with the newcomers.
There were easily two hundred million ryu passing through this very room at a single time, but none of that money stayed longer than five minutes.
The way it worked was that cash came in from the storage room of the auction, where payments were made from the buyer of the auctioned product to the Whisper Group cashier. The physical cash was then moved to the money counters, and after that, it was dispersed to group members in Snow, Lightning, and Water Country.
Wire transfer confirmations were more tedious, involving multiple accountants outside of the auction hideout confirming the money being sent before the auctioned product was passed onto the buyer.
There were also smaller shops inside the hideout, where items that were too cheap for the auction were sold, like dresses, children's toys, and a few weapons. The money from there also moved to the money counter and was soon spread across to group members outside, growing their black-market empire.
Another rotation of money counters rose from their seats and new counters replaced them, picking up the pace.
The purr of cash running through the money machines dulled Naruto's mind.
Naruto wouldn't say he liked money very much; he liked the value money brought.
He scoffed and thought sarcastically, Isn't that the same thing?
Money, like everything else, was a means to an end.
One of the money counters close to him sent furtive looks towards his boss, mumbling something under his breath.
Naruto raised an eyebrow.
The young man visibly steeled himself, squaring his shoulders and sitting back as the pile of money on his right-hand side was neatly stuffed into a duffle bag. He turned his seat to Naruto and got up, grabbing his chair. He said with a polite mutter and a bow, "Please sit, sir."
A few other counters cast quick looks to their boss and the counter that had offered his chair.
Naruto smiled, perfectly fine while sitting on the floor, and waved dismissively. He ushered the man back into his seat with sweeping gestures with his hands, crossing his legs comfortably and setting his hands on his knees.
The counter gulped, debating under his breath how to proceed from that point. His eyes lit up and he asked with another bow, "Do you need anything? Food? Water?"
Naruto smiled with a soundless laugh. He placed his hand on his mouth and gestured to the young man, "Thank you." He mimed tipping a glass of water into his mouth. "Water."
The man jerked upright, saluting and sprinting out of the room to get his boss water.
Naruto's genial expression steadily slipped from his face, and he settled back into the corner, thinking.
He hadn't bathed or changed clothes in the last seven days, resembling a smelling, homeless waif than a criminal boss. He saw the respectfully averted looks from some money counters, trying their best to not scrunch up their noses at the unwashed stench wafting from Naruto.
Since his "chat" with One and the revelations that came with it, he hadn't felt the strength to take care of himself.
He might as well be decomposing right before their very eyes.
Many of his people were not comfortable with the casual way Naruto did his things; he was fine sitting on the ground while the other group members worked, he could joke around with them, and he was perfectly ok with sitting with his chauffeur and taking the reins of the horse.
He mainly did this for Lio's benefit.
He didn't want her to see other group members the same way he did.
As tools.
A means to an end.
Naruto's eyes darkened with self-reflection.
Whisper Group, with all of its many members and millions of ryu in resources, were one complex tool for Naruto to counter Danzo's ROOT when the day of reckoning finally arrived. The primary function of the group was to steadily dismantle ROOT from the outside, isolating Danzo from the rest of the continent.
The secondary functions; taking over the continent's criminal underworld, gathering a countless mass of loyal members, amassing immeasurable wealth, and gaining an unmatched infamy, were long-term goals towards their primary function.
In that regard, Naruto hatefully compared himself to Danzo.
ROOT was Danzo's tool, as was Whisper Group for Naruto. Albeit, one was made to remould Konoha into a totalitarian image and the other was a patient countermeasure—
Naruto shook his head. I'm nothing like Danzo.
The young man came back with a glass of water and a small bowl of sweets, which made Naruto smile again.
Even though he wasn't sure if the man knew sign language, Naruto signed to him, "You're too kind. Thank you."
Mild confusion passed through the man's bright gaze. He bent down onto his knees and presented the water and sweets to his boss, lowering his eyes respectfully. Naruto took the water and sweets, bobbing his head in thanks again. He took a sip of the water and set it beside him, alongside the bowl of sweets.
The money counter went back to work, diligently attending to the growing pile of uncounted bills waiting for him at his station.
Once again, Lio crossed Naruto's mind.
Byakugan,he called in his head and his eyes activated with a pulse of chakra.
Sitting there, he swept his eyes across the wide expanse of the hideout, peering into every shady nook and every dimly lit cranny, to every open space and every illuminated shop. He witnessed every shady handshake between guests of the auction, reading their lips and understanding that they were conducting private agreements under the cover of secrecy.
Naruto didn't bother much, since their agreement didn't concern his group directly.
And besides, he caught sight of three group members casually loitering about, warily looking on to the rigorous handshakes. They had it handled.
Naruto's all-seeing eyes pushed further and flicked to the right, observing as a group member slammed a woman into a hard, rock wall, while another group member searched the woman, retrieving a small bag of white powder from inside her coat. A third group member loomed over an old man sitting on the ground with his back to the wall; it looked like the group members had intercepted a drug deal.
That was strictly prohibited on group territory.
One of the two group members with the drug dealer punched the side of the dealer, jabbing a second harsh blow into the woman's kidney. The first roared furiously at her, loud and harsh enough for spittle to fly from her mouth at how angry she was. The dealer crumpled to the ground and covered her head, cowering away from the hard stomps raining on her from the irate female group member and her partner, a male Naruto vividly remembered was recovering from his addiction to Copper Pot.
Naruto remembered every face he encountered, and that counted for ninety-five per cent of Whisper Group members.
He smirked, satisfied, when his people stopped dropping stomps on the battered drug dealer. The female group member gave the dealer a parting kick in the ribs, sending the woman into the wall and crashing back onto the ground, and the man grabbed the dealer by the scruff of her neck and leapt away with her.
The consequence of dealing drugs on group territory, especially in the hideout, was to be stripped of all of their possessions and booted out from the hideout to suffer in the cold outside.
The third group member with the old man, the buyer, yanked the man up to his feet and dragged him away by his shirt. He was going to suffer the same punishment as the dealer.
Naruto looked away, his eyes passing down the row of accommodations; they were two-bedroom living spaces with indoor bathrooms, fully connected plumbing and stable electricity. The gravel roads were clean of waste and green bins regularly dotted corners of the accommodations area. Naruto's people had to do extensive maintenance before they were liveable, and many more accommodations needed to be carved out of the stone as well.
He didn't care to look inside; else he saw something he'd rather not see.
Rather, he trusted the group members patrolling the area to oversee everything.
Looking further, he saw a spikey head of grey hair. He pulled back a little and observed the back of the person's head for a long while.
The person had all five chakra natures, as well as Yin and Yang chakra. His chakra reserves were immense and powerful.
The largest reserves Naruto had ever seen were Kushina Uzumaki's, and this man's reserves made Kushina's look like a puddle on a dirt road.
Not only was his well of chakra massive but how his chakra twisted and roiled internally, mixing and separating, made Naruto aware that the old man he was looking at was unimaginably powerful.
The man's shoulders tensed, and Naruto's jaw clenched.
The man slightly turned his head to the side, barely glancing over his shoulder and looking directly at Naruto with a plain black eye.
A chill passed through Naruto at the look, but it wasn't fear.
Naruto prided himself on being intimately knowledgeable of ROOT's extensive archives, having a near photographic memory of every book and every image to that very second in his life, and there was only one other person in the entire world who had what this man had.
True Spatial Awareness.
It was a theory in the ROOTs archive and has been widely discussed by Fire Country researchers but has not been proven, therefore no person was named specifically as ever having this ability.
It was the ability to have in-depth knowledge and awareness of everything around them, from people to as small as dust molecules, and likely smaller. It went further and deeper than simply sensing a person.
It was knowing existence itself at a molecular level.
It was having a constant map of existence in their heads, knowing and feeling the smallest twitch of a muscle.
Lio had this ability too.
She could know and feel existence itself within a twenty-mile range, and this was second nature to her. Her range was growing. No one could sneak up on her, and anyone who tried would be in for a rude awakening.
While her ability could be because she wasn't from Earth, to begin with, Naruto had no idea if it was the same with the man.
The man Naruto was staring at scoffed and turned back, fixing his eyes on the auction as they brought out a set of samurai armour on a mannequin and a golden sword.
Naruto wrenched his eyes off the man and kept looking for Lio.
He found her hovering by the restroom, standing a short distance outside the men's stall with her eyes pointedly averted from the stall.
Her pink gaze flicked to Naruto the second his eyes landed on her.
Naruto smirked.
Lio cheekily waggled her eyebrows, mouthing, "Hey."
Forgetting where he was, he signed back with a broad grin, "Waiting for someone?"
"Jealous?" she shot back with a daring look. She tucked her hands behind her back, and a shallow tinge of red touched her cheeks.
"Don't tease me," he answered, sticking out his tongue with joking distaste, "or I just might get jealous."
She beamed, scuffing her heel on the ground. "Spoiled sport." Her eyes glanced down, noticing the bowl of sweets. She looked back at Naruto, her eyebrows raised. "It's seven in the morning. Have you even had breakfast?"
Naruto exaggeratedly signed, "Yes, mom."
Lio rolled her eyes, pouting her lips and scuffing her foot on the ground again.
She wanted to say something, but she stopped herself, so Naruto asked, "What's the problem? Are you hungry?"
She chuckled lightly, sending a harmlessly scathing look at her friend. "I'm fine. Just that…your sister—"
"Let's not worry about her." He waved away Lio's concern.
"You're not sleeping at all, Naruto," she said a bit more audibly, pressing hard on her point. "I'm worried about you." She held up her hands and frustratedly dropped them. "She keeps asking for you. Every time. I'm getting tired of this."
"I'm sorry you had to get in the middle of our mess…"
"I don't care about that," Lio said, rubbing her tired eyes and saying in no uncertain words, "I'm tired of her always getting on my back because of you. As if I have to explain myself to her, or-or-or why you chose me to be your friend, meanwhile she barely sees your back on a good day." She delved into a muttering rant. "It's not my fault she doesn't have her priorities straight."
Naruto snapped his fingers, getting Lio's attention again. He sheepishly waved for the money counters to return to work, as he wasn't addressing them. He settled down and gathered his thoughts. "I'll handle her when I'm ready."
She observed him. Her attentive pink eyes scoured his face and immersed in his pale stare before she averted her eyes with a blush. "You're going somewhere."
Naruto pursed his lips. He withdrew further into himself and shrugged.
Lio shut her eyes and her shoulders wilted. "Talk to me, Naruto."
She wasn't irritated with his tight-lipped attitude. Her face was sad, and it touched Naruto's heart, feeling her disappointment that he no longer wanted to share his thoughts with her.
"What's wrong?"
Naruto didn't know what he would do without her.
For the last seven days, she had held back the urge to cling to him and gave him his space. She supported him from a distance, as odd as the scene between them was. He saw every time they spoke how much she wanted to jump into his arms and wriggle herself into his embrace.
But she stayed back until he was ready.
It was a maturity that surprised Naruto, someone who was also astonishingly mature.
His mouth cracked open a little, sullenly signing, "…Minato still hasn't found Kakashi."
As much as Lio detested Minato, she forced open her suddenly clenched teeth and tried to say in her calmest tone, "He will eventually. I know it."
Naruto's hands limply set on his knees, opening and closing. He gestured with his weak hands, "They had to institutionalise Kakashi, Lio. Because of me—"
"It's not your fault, Naruto," Lio interrupted him. A slow, kind smile touched the corners of her lips, and Naruto closed his eyes, still able to see his friend but hiding the prickle of emotion in his eyes. "The mission just got to him. One and Sandy are more at fault than you."
"I promised Kakashi…" his signed words tapered to a stop and he shook his head. "Before I had anything, I had Kakashi. He was my first family."
Lio's warm look didn't falter. "He's just lost. I'm sure of it."
Naruto lowered his eyes and gripped his knees, hard.
For one week straight, he had been feeling panic and agitation.
It was the very same instinct he had when Kakashi was in danger.
…And Naruto ignored it.
He pushed it down and screwed a lid on that feeling.
"I don't want to face him, Lio…" he looked at his hands and shook his head again. "I can't face him."
The duality of the scene Lio saw was jarring; her boss, the strongest, smartest and most charismatic person she knew, sitting on the ground in a corner of the room where hundreds of millions of ryu were being counted and shipped off across the continent to further expand the group. He had hundreds of loyal group members who gave up their lives for him and his cause, hundreds of dependent families who confessed their unending gratitude to Naruto, and an expanding network of businesses that relied on Whisper Group protection and investment.
And yet, his family was in pieces, but not completely.
"I'm your family, Naruto," Lio declared with a bright look, and Naruto glanced up at her with a weary smile.
"I'm your family, Lio," he signed back to her.
"You can do this," she said firmly, clenching her fists and giving him strength.
Naruto exhaled from his mouth, lifting his shoulders. "I can do this."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"No…I need you here. Ok?"
She nodded affirmatively.
She watched as he took out a hiraishin kunai from his vest.
He stabbed it into the ground and quickly pulled his hand back when a plume of white smoke popped at the top of the impaled kunai. The smoke dissipates gradually to reveal a greenish-blue, hand-sized toad wearing an orange sash and having a complex seal written on its head.
Naruto wasn't nearly advanced enough in fuinjutsu to know what the seal read.
"You ready?"the toad croaked throatily. Naruto nodded. The small toad croaked, hopping off the blade and onto Naruto's head. "Finally. We've been waiting."
Naruto winked at Lio.
Lio smiled and waved goodbye.
"I'll be right back," he signed to her, deactivating his byakugan.
He grabbed hold of the kunai and promptly flickered away in a burst of smoke.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Much to Naruto's terror, Naruto suddenly found himself falling from the sky.
His eyes widened with manic surprise and he immediately opened his arms and legs, trying to slow down his plummeting descent.
He just barely managed to keep the hiraishin kunai in his grip, baring his teeth as the harsh wind lashed at his face, looking down at Konoha as he fell.
He then cursed, seeing a translucent shell of chakra thrum over the village; the seal barrier was activating in response to him. The boy covered his face, bracing for impact and cursing Minato for reverse summoning him there.
"You're alright, kid!" the toad on Naruto's head yelled, gripping the boy's blonde hair and holding on for dear life. The seal on the toad's temple glowed blue and a small gap opened on the barrier.
Naruto pulled his arms and legs together, tucking himself into a tight ball and shooting through the gap. The barrier mended as soon as he entered Konoha's airspace, spreading himself open again and screaming a soundless curse at Minato.
The boy forced his byakugan to activate and shut his eyes, unable to keep them open for any longer.
He beheld Konoha, different but still almost how he remembered it.
Buildings made from brown clay and red bricks, tall and imposing, unwavering to the elements, populated the majority of the village. Most of those buildings were painted dull colours, distinguishing themselves from the concrete roads, and the thin rock pathways. Thick forests surrounded the historic village, and Naruto's eyes traced all of the training grounds located on the outer reaches of the village, within the walls but outside of easy civilian accessibility.
It was early in the morning and the people were waking up; a café worker was sweeping out the store while another was bringing tables and chairs outside, propping them up and using a rag to clean them of dust. A young girl was riding a bicycle down an upper-class residential district and throwing newspapers onto doorsteps, reaching forward into her basket and tossing more newspapers without missing a beat. Two joggers, a man and a woman, were coolly walking towards the redlight district, rubbing their hands together and blowing heated breaths into their cupped palms. A troop of ninjas scrambled from rooftop to rooftop, sprinting to the Hokage's tower.
Naruto's eyes lit up in realisation when a toddler in a haggard-looking man's arms pointed to the sky, spotting him, little more than a growing speck falling from the heavens.
The boy's fingers melded together and he flicked through a blizzard of hand seals.
Hiding Camouflage Technique!
"Nicely done!" the toad applauded, and Naruto snapped his teeth, wishing he could verbally unload the poison simmering in his gut at that toad. "You weren't chipper back in Snow! We need your head in the game!"
Is he threatening me?!
"Minato speaks so well about you, kid! At least pretend you want to be here!"
Naruto frowned. He responded in the privacy of his mind, muttering, But I don't want to be here…
"I might not know the whole story, but you're here to help with the search…. It means a lot to Minato! Kushina and Rin too!"
Naruto's closed eyes dipped and he was solemnly calm.
"When we get to the ground…promise you won't kill me—"
Naruto scoffed, sputtering with a small laugh.
"I'm serious! I only did this so you'd be wide-eyed and ready for anything!"
The boy rolled his closed eyes, sighing with exasperation. He reached up and took the toad from his head, turning around midair and falling with his back to the ground. He held the perspiring toad in both of his hands and looked at it, the veins spreading out from his eyes to his ears thrummed with energy.
Even as Naruto's eyes were closed, and his byakugan was activated, his voiceless stare spoke volumes of understanding.
He mouthed, trying to keep his yammering heart calm, "I appreciate your concern…"
"Gamahiro!"
Naruto nodded and the toad, visibly calmer at the realisation that it wasn't going to be stepped on the second they reached the ground, clapped its hands together. The seal on its temple glowed and they vanished again.
In an instant, the two were brought to the ground in a flicker of movement.
Naruto, holding Gamahiro in his left hand and close to his body, and gripping the hiraishin blade with his right hand, grunted at the swiftness of the teleportation. He hastily deactivated his byakugan and keeled over on his hands and knees, discarding the toad and the tri-pronged kunai as he was slammed hard with dizziness.
The camouflage technique shimmered off his body.
Naruto wasn't sure if this was due to the hiraishin teleportation or the toad reverse summoning him two times in ten minutes. He was leaning towards the latter.
He wheezed dryly and coughed, clenching his eyes closed to keep himself centred. He didn't know where in Konoha Gamahiro had taken them, and that fleeting worry of being discovered vanished as he dry heaved again.
He had lied to Lio before; he hadn't had breakfast.
A shadow loomed over him, and he nearly wept with frustration.
He wasn't exactly ready to fight for his life just at that moment—
"It helps if you lie on your side," the person said. Firm and feminine her soft hands gently ushered the boy to his side. Naruto readily complied, glad for the help. She slowly tilted Naruto's neck back. "I have no idea how Minato does this every two seconds."
Twenty seconds later, Naruto's swirling eyes cracked open and he looked up at the person helping him, meeting a pair of kind purple eyes and a wide smile.
"Better?"
He grunted affirmatively.
She bobbed her head, cocking her head to the side and scrutinising him with narrowed eyes. There was a warning look in her eyes, as if not believing that he was starting to feel better. "Do you know where you are?"
He grunted again in the affirmative.
"Do you remember me?" he nodded once, slowly. "What's my name?"
His hands, laid on the ground, moved a little as he spelt her name. "Kushina."
"Good. Your brain's still working." She smirked at the boy's scoffing smirk. She helped him sit up. "It takes me longer to recover. Can't be too careful, y'know."
Naruto's eyes surveyed his surroundings; he was in a residential backyard. A tall, white fence surrounded the backyard, with tulips and daisies decorating the bottom of the fences. The lawn was manicured and neatly short, shimmering a nice shade of green.
Naruto almost expected a doghouse and a toolshed, given how domestically picturesque the backyard was.
He barely paid attention as Gamahiro hopped back onto his head, sitting in the boy's yellow hair. He noticed, though, a hiraishin kunai impaled in the ground between him and Kushina; this meant that the toad had reverse summoned him from Snow and to Konoha's airspace, then hirashin teleporting him from the sky to the hiraishin seal tag on the ground.
Naruto let his growing ire trickle from his pores.
The toad was right; he needed to focus.
The boy then cautiously eyed Kushina, slowly getting to his feet as she did as well; she wore a long green dress over high-collared-sleeved white and grey shinobi sandals. Her stance was open, but he didn't let himself get comfortable.
Kushina showed him her hands. "I'm unarmed."
"Doesn't mean much coming from you," he retorted. She could just as easily and quickly wrap him in chakra chains if she so wanted; he stayed ready in case she tried. He was confident he could move before her chains could close around him, like their first encounter when Kushina and Yoshino Nara went to capture him some years ago, but who's to say she hadn't learned a better way of using her chains?
"Who do you take me for?" she snapped, taking an intimidating step forward. Naruto took two steps back and she stopped, reeling her temper in. "I get it…. I ambushed you while you were out with your friend. That was rude of me. I'm sorry."
Naruto sniffed. His lips screwed a little down.
"Speaking of your friend; she couldn't make it?"
Naruto looked at her incredulously, and the woman winced.
"Again… I took her wings out of self-defence—"
"Give them back. Now." He held out his hand. "…Please."
"If I give them back, can we just start over again?" she sounded pleading, sighing heavily. "You're someone important to Minato. That makes you important to me, so I don't want us to hate ourselves going forward."
She strode to him and rummaged in her dress pockets. He stood his ground. She brought out a scroll and held it to Naruto, which he took with a gratefully relieved look. He studied the highly advanced chakra storage seal on the scroll, pressing his right pointer finger on the seal.
Warm chakra lapped at his fingertip, too familiar to be mistaken.
The anomaly that was Lio's chakra was both impossibly dense yet extremely thin, heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, safe and dangerous. It was nothing and everything at the same time.
To Naruto, the chakra clung to his finger with a loving familiarity.
Even as advanced chakra storage seals were airtight in containing chakra, Lio's chakra leaked invisibly from the seal. He wondered what would happen to someone if they were in prolonged exposure to Lio's strange chakra.
He wasn't at all worried about himself, as neither Lio nor her chakra had a single desire to harm him, but he couldn't be sure about anyone else exposed to her pure chakra.
He looked at Kushina's presented hand, following the hand up to the woman's sincere expression.
"Friends?"
He hoped Kushina wouldn't suffer any adverse effects from being exposed to Lio's chakra.
He truly did.
For Minato's sake, and Kushina's sake too.
He rolled up the scroll and sealed it into a storage seal on his left wrist. His friend's chakra didn't so much as leak from the seal, willingly letting itself be contained inside for however long he wanted.
He took her hand and shook it fervently, nodding with an easy smile.
He meant it too.
The woman sagged with relief, almost not releasing his hand.
He signed to her, brutally honest, "I can't speak for Lio—"
"I know you can't. I won't blame her for holding a grudge," she said insistently, holding up her hands and earnestly saying, "Maybe someday, me and her can properly get along."
Naruto was inclined to warn his new friend, "She doesn't respond well to anger."
Kushina chuckled, and a large sweatdrop slid down the side of her head. "I swear I can be patient. Believe it."
Naruto waved away her awkwardness. "I'll get started looking for Kakashi."
The woman's brow creased. "You don't want to see your room?" she jabbed a thumb to the house, where the see-through sliding screen doors were open to show a mundane dining room. "I can whip up some breakfast for you." She eyed him. "You haven't eaten yet. I can tell." She sniffed and recoiled, covering her nose. Naruto flushed in embarrassment. "Are you dying? You smell horrible!"
She gagged, blinking her watery eyes.
"Heavens, I'm going to be sick…"
"I really can't—"
"Kakashi's trail has gone cold days ago, but I'm sure you'll somehow pick up his scent. Somehow." Kushina harrumphed, grabbing the boy by his wrist before he could leap away. Naruto was morbidly glad Kushina was giving him some credit, as humiliating as his position was. She pinched her nose with her other hand. She clicked her tongue and said in a sarcastic tone, "You're showering, Naruto. Breakfast after that. That's final."
Naruto flailed, uselessly fighting against her stronghold on him. He quickly found out that Kushina's word was law in the Namikaze-Uzumaki household.
She made a sound of finality and dragged the boy into the house, sliding the screen shut after them.
Authors note
That's it for this chapter.
Minato isn't yet the Fourth Hokage, hence he and Kushina are staying in a humble little residential home.
See you when I see you.
Foy.