They were about halfway back to Konoha, crossing the border into fire country and taking a break when Haruhi dropped her hair clip into a lake they were crossing over. She swore. It was hard to find high quality hair accessories in Konoha, a place that had just hit the industrial revolution not two generations ago, and it was even harder to find hair clips for thick, kinky hair like hers. That was more Kumo's angle.
"I'll get you another one." Kakashi said sympathetically. He helped her with her hair sometimes, so he knew why she was so upset.
She frowned as she watched it sink to the bottom of the clear lake, the bejeweled sides glinting in the afternoon sun. Sasuke came over from where he had been mastering chidori, and Naruto brought up the rear, hands nearly forming a perfect rasengan. Jiraiya ambled after them.
"That's sucks." Naruto said.
"Kakashi sensei can get you a new one." Sasuke commented.
"I have extra hairbands for you if you'd like." Tsunade said, Coming over with Shizune and Tenten. After finding out Tsunade was an expert with medical seals, especially with seals that covered the skin and interacted with the chakra system, Tenten had warmed up to her very quickly.
Tsunade was very thorough with her explanation, and after warning Tenten not to try this at home, she launched into a lecture, Tenten taking notes. Tsunade seemed happy at the chance to fix her standing with Tenten, and was clearly charmed by her.
Not long after that, Haruhi had pepper sprayed Jiraiya after he kept gawking at women passing by. Shizune had asked to see the pepper spray and Haruhi saw no reason to deny her.
Shizune was still holding onto Haruhi's pepper spray, amazed at the idea of using peppers to create a non-lethal weapon. Haruhi had suddenly been reminded that Shizune was a poison mistress, second only to a handful of people worldwide. She had been very interested in the mechanics of the spray container, and how the Caspian was extracted in the first place. Haruhi had mentioned Kasumi's brother for the creation of the container, and then Haku, Sakura, and Ino about the extraction process and distillation. Haruhi would have to introduce them when they got back to Konoha.
Ino was another thing they brought up. When they mentioned her facial injuries, Tsunade seemed befuddled that they couldn't heal her face. But as Tsunade knew, the face was full of delicate nerves, muscles, and chakra systems. That combined with the one-tails extremely corrosive, destructive bijuu chakra embedded in those systems, made navigating medical chakra and rebuilding her face impossible for anyone except Tsunade.
It was similar to how the bijuu chakra fighting in the wars had destroyed entire small villages and farmland. Their chakra had leached into the land, destroying crops of the present and future, poisoned waterways, and killed those civilians in close proximity. The civilians that survived had mutated chakra coils and DNA, their children often died at higher frequencies, and they suffered more diseases as a whole.
They had walked past a couple of those villages on the way back to Konoha. The barren landscape was surreal in comparison to Konoha's normal scenery, bursting with green.
Haruhi could understand, then, why so many feared and reviled the jinjuriki.
She had learned in her history lessons with Kasumi about those villages.
Burn villages, they were called.
But then Kasumi has dropped another truth on them. Not all of those burn villages were a result of the tailed-beasts. Konoha shinobi would purposefully burn villages to the ground with fire style, or if a wind, earth, or water user Konoha shinobi was available, use them to frame other hidden ninja villages for the attack.
The third Hokage, who had mastered all five elements, was particularly good at that. It was one of the reasons he had been promoted to hokage. He had single-handedly wiped out an entire enthnic group residing in several of the villages he destroyed. The Daimyo had been pleased, as he had disliked those people. And since the Daimyo funded the villages, they got to decide who became hokage.
Other villages would do this too, of course, but it had been primarily Konoha's strategy, as a centralized village with the most diverse pool of shinobi.
'Pretty fucked up' Haruhi thought as she stared at her lost clip 15 feet under..
A wave of determination washed over her. That was her clip, and she wanted it back. She shrugged off her T-shirt to reveal her sports bra, and kicked off her sandals.
"Haruhi-" Kakashi began, but he was cut off as Haruhi executed a perfect dive into the clear lake. Perhaps a lack of industrialization was a good thing, solely for the lack of pollution. But then again, it seems this world had its own form of pollution.
Haruhi had forgotten how amazing it felt to swim. The coolness on her body, twisting through the water like a mermaid, she loved it. She hadn't really gotten the chance to swim since Wave and training with Kakashi, but even then, he had almost immediately scooped her out of the bucket.
She had learned to swim from a young age from her mother. Her mother's side of the family had very few people who could swim in it, and as a result, two of her mother's cousin had drowned at a family cookout on the side of Lake Michigan. It had traumatized her to the point where her mother sucked up her fear of water and learned how to swim, and taught her daughter how to swim as well. Haruhi was even on her highschools swim team, and was a lifeguard at the public swimming pool over the summer during her teen years.
She heard their muffled squeaking from above and wondered what all the fuss was about as she grabbed her hair clip and kicked off the bottom.
Silt shot up in a cloud around her as she did broad strokes upwards, feet moving under her. She breached the surface, and her ears were assaulted by yelling as Kakashi pulled her into his arms and onto the bridge.
"Are you okay?"
"Haruhi-sensei did you drown-"
"You can swim?" Tsunade asked.
Haruhi blinked, gathering her wet hair and pulling it up into the clip. They seemed surprised she would swim.
"What, like it's hard?"
Tsunade gave her a look, considering, and almost hungry, and Haruh almost blushed.
"Not many people know how to swim." Jiraiya commented.
"Really?"
"Yes." Kakashi confirmed. "Fire country may not be landlocked, but most civilians don't have access to large bodies of water. Most ninja Chunin and up just water walk instead of swim, and Genin don't normally need to swim anyway. I think the only exception is water country, where all academy students are required to learn, and civilians are taught by their parents as tradition. The hots springs are too shallow for swimming as well."
Haruhi felt a spark of ambition at his words. That was...interesting. Her mind spun with ideas as she recalled the swimming classes of her youth.
"So, does anyone in Konoha know how to swim?" She asked, wringing out her shorts. The three kids formed barrier between her and Jiraiya, glaring at him.
"Yes. Konoha has four swimming pools. Three are privately owned. The fourth is public, but can only be used with permission and a fee."
Haruhi hummed.
"So, do you think people would want to learn how to swim, if they could?"
Kakashi gave her a sharp look, before smiling as he caught on.
"I do think some out there would like to."
Her mind spun with plans and ideas. Could she somehow gain access to these pools? Could she teach lessons to civilians or anyone who wanted to learn? Maybe charge a small fee in order to afford the pool and supplies. She could she put out another message in the Konoha newspaper to get people to come. Like she had before with Rikki.
This would be a huge undertaking. Haruhi recalled the immigrant meetings she went to with Inari and Ami. They both came from places in Water country. Haruhi knew they both knew how to swim as they had talked about learning how from their families growing up. Could Haruhi use them to help her with her classes? It could be a chance to give Ami a way out of the Shinobi life-style like Inari and her job as a waiter. Genin past a certain point could semi-retire. The problem was having skills outside of ninja ones in order to get hired, and since there was a stigma against shinobi, even if they knew workable skills, they often weren't hired. Here, Haruhi could help them out. She could pay them with the fee she would collect from the swimming hopefuls.
"Hey you guys," Haruhi directed towards the three kids. "How would you like to learn how to swim?"
They shouted their approval. Naruto started to wriggle out of his shirt when Kakashi put his hand up.
"Not right now, Naruto-" His good humored expression cut off, face going sharp. Jiraiya, Tsunade and Shizune also tensed.
Haruhi stayed silent, pulling the three kids towards her as the adults gathered around them.
"Someone's coming." Said Tsunade, brow furrowed as she threw out her senses. "One-no, two of them. Powerful."
Haruhi's gut sank. Two powerful shinobi, inbound and making a bee-line towards them. It could only be one thing. But shouldn't they avoid shinobi as powerful as Tsunade and Jiraiya? They tried to last time.
As the two shinobi thudded onto the other end of the bridge, Haruhi gasped in surprise and horror, pulling Naruto behind her.
The Akatsuki had arrived.
MERRY CHRYSLER! HABBY HANUKKAH ! JOYOUS HOLLYDAYS!
Writing this chapter was: worldbuilding. worldbuilding. Character building. Worldbuilding. Relationship building. Future plot point building. Worldbuilding. PLOT TWIST!
Who do you think the Akatsuki members are? Itachi and Kisame? Or another pair?
Question of the chapter: What do you think of Haruhis plan? What do you think of Tenten getting sealing information from Jiraiya and Tsunade for Neji and the rest of the branch family?