CHAPTER 22

8:59 AM

Samurai Bridge

Iron Country

The journey through the Kaska Valley to Iron Country from Little Whirlpool took the caravan three and a half hours, including breaks. Leaving the valley, the first sight they encountered was a real Iron Country guard post manned immediately outside of the valley by five weary samurai, who eyed them and their Long Hairs cautiously and flagged them on to a border post further in; the guard post was to make sure bandits didn't seep out of the valley and infiltrate the country.

At the border post, the caravan was subjected to a more thorough inspection.

That particular border post didn't see much traffic, given the Kaska Valley's reputation, so the samurai took their time searching the caravans and perusing the merchant's papers.

Five samurai, under the watchful eye of the caravan guards, rummaged through the merchants' wares, searching for contraband and patting down the merchants for illegal materials. The guards stayed in case an overzealous samurai tried planting something incriminating in their belongings.

The lead driver was inside the border post, accompanied by another guard, showing the Head of the Post the caravan's travelling papers, permitting them to journey from Snow Country to Iron Country, stamped and signed by Iron's ambassador to Snow.

That was something Whisper Group didn't counterfeit, since the Snow Daimyo and his family, and the Snow government were essentially on good terms with the organisation, and organising papers, permits, and licences were easy to get. The Snow Daimyo was so cooperative that he insisted on putting his seal on any Whisper Group immigration document to add more backing to their travels, but Naruto declined. The more ordinary their merchants looked, the better. Naruto, in exchange, promised limited favours for the Daimyo; anything that didn't compromise Whisper Group was off the table, everything else was free game.

The Border officers would look for anything amiss but they wouldn't find anything. The merchants weren't bringing anything illegal into Iron Country. They were Little Whirlpool textile merchants who wanted to expand the clothing company's outreach to Iron and make some profit as a result. Nothing nefarious there.

The purpose of One's mission teetered in the grey area.

Satisfied that there wasn't any contraband in the caravan, the samurai took the people aside and asked for their identification, starting from the guards, while the merchants folded and organised their scattered wares once again in the meantime.

Renegade ninjas and samurai who had defected from their homes were banned from being considered mercenaries. A mercenary was essentially a ninja or a samurai who either dropped out of school, resigned from service, or had been trained privately outside of a military school. If a person fell into one of those categories but still engaged in activities typical of ninjas or samurai, they could be considered mercenaries. However, mercenaries needed to be registered. If not, they were considered missing ninjas, regardless of where or how they acquired their skills.

For example, all mercenaries who came from or entered Snow Country needed to be registered. Stabbing missing ninjas and asking questions later was a knee-jerk response for the samurai. Registering to be a mercenary was a tedious and expensive process, involving thousands of ryo in processing fees, red tape, rigorous physical examinations, intelligence tests, and chakra assessments. It was the same across the continent. That was one big reason why there were far more missing ninjas than mercenaries; even though travelling would be dangerous for missing ninjas, it was less expensive and less restrictive.

There was also the condition that mercenaries, though technically ninjas or samurai dropouts, were mandated to serve in the military of the country where they registered, if and when necessary. It was a roundabout way of gathering a reserve military force.

Any certified mercenary was either deeply connected with the government in some way or had infinite patience for navigating the red tape. The plus side to all the tediousness was that mercenaries could operate openly without the risk of being hunted down as criminals, they had access to "legitimate" jobs that included contracts with organisations and even governments, they had the support of the government in defendable cases of when mercenaries overstep their boundaries, and lastly, mercenaries had a more stable stream of income, especially when they were contracted to "legitimate" organisations.

The rates for good and reputable mercenaries, however, were famously expensive. Which was why some "legitimate" organisations secretly used missing ninjas and ronin. Although there had been mercenaries in existence for decades, certifying mercenaries and attaching them to countries was a recent development for many nations.

In One's case, registering her didn't take Naruto one hour to register her; he sent out a representative to the Snow's Immigrations Office, as well as the Iron and Kumo Embassies, and got her papers signed, stamped, and ready for collection because of his organisation's ties with the government. So much so that One now had fresh and valid identification papers by the time the hideout was evacuated that same day the representative was sent out. One didn't even need to go for any medical checkup, physical exam, IQ test, or anything like that.

The samurai that approached One was an older man with a grey goatee and a head covered in a white bandanna. He wore a grey kimono with white trimmings, marked on the right chest with Iron Country's symbol, carrying his katana on the left side of his hip. His black boots crushed the hard snow underfoot. The girl wordlessly handed her identification papers to one of the samurai and crossed her arms. Her stance was rigid and guarded, unaware of the extent Naruto went through to ensure that his people were certified. More so his sister.

Her details on the first page read:

Name (Last Name first): Tsukino, Ichika

Date of Birth: 1/12*

Place of Birth: Shinden, Kumogakure, Lightning Country

Home Address: Izu-Ken, Snow Country

Blood Type: B

Genotype: AS

Affiliation: Little Whirlpool Style, Izu-Ken

Issuing Authority: Snow Country Immigration Office

Date of Issue: 23/9*

Special Permissions: International travel, owning a weapon, protection of affiliates using lethal force when justifiable

These Mercenary Identification Papers are valid for five years only

The samurai hummed. "Take off the hood."

One, chewing on her tongue, did as she was told, not wanting to make a fuss and compromise the job. She pulled her hood back and tugged down her scarf till it only covered her neck.

The samurai squinted his eyes at the black and white passport on the first page of the girl's identification paper, flipping to the next page and eying the written description of the girl, turning to the next page and glancing up at her again.

"Next of kin?"

"Tsukino Momo. She's my half-sister." One gave the man her best smile, even though she felt a tick on her brow. On the third page of One's identification papers was a photocopy of Lio's work identity card, showing a face under a genjutsu that made her look in her twenties, looking into the camera with vacant eyes. Momo was Lio's alias. She didn't agree with that addition, being Lio's sister, even if it was only on paper, but Naruto didn't want to leave a paper trail with his name on it.

"Says here that she's from Kumo," the samurai remarked. "She works in…waste disposal?"

One smirked, nodding. "Yup."

The man folded the girl's papers. He tapped it on his palm. "You're quite young to be a mercenary." He waved the folded papers. "Says here you're sixteen. Currently contracted to Little Whirlpool Style, a clothing company in Snow."

"Yup. It's a family business."

"For how long?"

"How long for what?"

"How long have you been contracted?"

"Since yesterday."

"Till?"

"Till they don't need me."

The man shook his head. He frowned. "Your caravan went through Kaska."

One suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at the obvious question. "Yes."

"It's a treacherous path. Just yesterday we heard news of bandits in the area."

"We can handle it," One responded with a shrug, glancing to her right at the other guards as the samurai finished up with them quickly. She made it a point to look at her wrist, vacant of a watch, hinting that she was already bored of the conversation.

"You didn't encounter them?" The samurai raised an eyebrow, not approving the girl's flippant attitude.

"They didn't show up. They must have been having breakfast."

The samurai didn't take well to the girl's exasperated humour, and he asked the question that had been burning at the back of his mind. "Explain to me how you became a mercenary at sixteen. Did you have any shinobi training?" he eyed the katana on her hip. It was well-made, if the purple and black woven handle was any indication, and her posture with the blade on her side was impeccable. "Samurai training…?"

"I don't see why that information is relevant." One's brows furrowed as if she was genuinely confused at the direction the interrogation was taking. She kept her hands at her sides, away from her weapons, and she scuffed her heels into the snowy ground. Her rude dismissal told the man that she was not, in fact, a samurai. "Is there anything wrong with my papers?"

"Frankly, no."

"Then?"

The samurai's frown deepened. He chewed on something in his mouth, muttering as he looked to his colleagues, who busily checked the papers of the other merchants and guards, "You shinobi are all the same."

"Excuse me?" One slowly raised an eyebrow, surprised at the outburst.

The man looked down at her, nearly sneering. "No respect. No sense of decency."

One fought the frown pushing down her lips, but she didn't respond, only shrugging.

"I'm asking out of some concern on how a child," he gestured to One dismissively, saying spitefully, "could be dragged into this way of life. A mercenary ninja." It said on her papers that she was sixteen but she didn't look any older than thirteen. He scoffed incredulously, looking again to his busy comrades for support, but seeing that they were still occupied. "A terrible, pitiful existence."

A tight smile curled up on One's face, raising her right hand and holding it out with her palm up. "May I please have my papers?"

The man harshly slapped the papers into the girl's hands and moved on, waving her away.

One watched his back, her hand still raised with her slightly crumpled papers in her palm. Her large glasses slid down to the tip of her nose and her purple eyes stared at the departing man, hard. A moment later she inhaled a long, deep breath through her nose and dropped her hand, tucking her papers into a pouch on her lower back.

"Dick." She spat on the ground and went to the caravan.

Just then, the lead merchant and his guard left the border patrol house, exchanging handshakes with the head of the post. The driver made a motion with his hands and the others clambered into their caravans. The guard he came with sat inside the caravan. One sat down beside the driver, much to his surprise, and clicked his teeth for the horses to proceed.

"Did you have any problems?"

The man shrugged. "No. They asked where we got our horses, but other than that it was routine."

"Routine…" One echoed under her breath. They passed through the border post and went down a wide road, which joined with another road a short distance down the line, converging on Samurai Bridge; the other road came from Fire Country and was sparsely used that early morning. A woman riding a trimmed, white Long Hair leisurely treads the road, sitting upright with a composed expression, a sword dangling on her hip, and an ornate bow slung across her torso. The quiver of arrows hung from the saddle. She was an exceptional beauty with black hair that reached her lower back with bangs swept to both sides of her forehead. She wore light pink eyeshadow and a similar shade as lip gloss, dressed in a short white and grey dress with thick riding pants and winter black boots.

Her skin was pale and she didn't show any signs of being cold. Rather, she looked as if the cold emanated from her being.

Trotting after her was another horse, this one brown, was an older woman in a maid outfit. She waved politely to the caravan, but the regal woman ignored them, riding at the side of the road as the caravan passed.

One looked at her as they passed. The driver waved back to the maid.

She knew who this was. CORE had an extensive record of the Snow Daimyo's family. This was Yukio Kazahana, First Princess of Snow Country. She was the widow of the previous Daimyo, who had been killed in a coup by Doton Kazahana. Yukio and her child had been exiled from Snow following the murder of her husband, and they lived in Iron Country. Her twelve-year-old daughter, Koyuki Kazahana, was an aspiring child actor and had seen some meagre fame, mostly locally in Iron Country and several places in Fire Country.

One and Naruto's brother, Fifty, had seen all of the girl's movies. He was too shy to admit he had a crush on her. He was so enthralled by Koyuki that he made it a point to study Iron Country culture and model his style into that of a samurai, in line with the kind of movies the girl featured in, following the Bushido to the letter; Koyuki Kazahana was a child celebrity in Iron Country. He did it in hopes of impressing her on the off-chance they ever met.

The siblings found it cute.

It was an unspoken agreement between all of Fifty's ninety-nine siblings that anyone who went on a mission into Iron Country should bring back a Koyuki-themed souvenir, much to the boy's embarrassment. Their master didn't oppose, in this case, since Fifty's bloodline gelled well with his samurai fighting style.

One sank at the memory; she missed her family.

She missed the noise. She missed them bothering her while she tried to read. She missed them poking fun at her for not liking to eat fish. She missed quarrelling with them. She missed the inevitable resolution since they could never stay mad at each other for very long.

She missed everyone…

The caravan treads over the Samurai Bridge and reached the other side, where One hopped off.

"Good luck." The driver waved to her and One nodded absentmindedly, stepping back as the caravan trudged ahead, followed closely behind by the two other caravans. She moved aside again when the princess and the maid rode past. The princess watched her cautiously, scoffing and facing ahead when One didn't offer her any greeting.

The maid came after her. She faltered for a moment, looking down at One with a concerned crease on her brow. "Are you—"

"I'm fine." One turned away, bringing out her book from inside her kimono and ignoring her.

The maid sniffed and left the girl.

One clicked her tongue and tucked the book away, glancing up at the sky to tell the time. "Where are they?" Naruto said that they would be waiting for her at the bridge, but they were nowhere to be found.

The cold wasn't as bad as in Kaska, but it wasn't tolerable either. The girl hugged her arms and tapped her foot impatiently, looking around.

That was when she saw someone approach from her left side. Three people. Two young women and one man. They wore simple clothes; a white shirt and pants with winter boots that gave them a firm foothold in the gravel road, with thick white parkas with the hoods thrown over their heads. The man wore a scarf around his neck, barely covering the five o'clock shadow on his chin, but the women didn't have any scarves, with their long hair pouring down their shoulders from the hood and reaching their chests.

To One's dismay, they didn't look like fighters.

They looked like civilian professionals.

She could fight alone, but protecting three civilians by herself was still an inconvenient task.

Getting closer, she noticed that the man was greying. The hood of his parka was pulled back just enough to show the male pattern baldness on his scalp. He looked like he had lived a long and difficult life, but so did many civilian professionals in Naruto's organisation.

The women, on the other hand, were vibrant and came forward with offered hands.

"Nice to meet you," they chimed, seizing One's hand and somehow both shaking it at the same time. Their overly peppy voices made One wince. The women, twins and extremely in sync, pointed at each other, "This is Shina. I'm Satoru." One looked at them, bewildered at who was who hands. The twins spoke at the same time, their voices just about merging, albeit one had a marginally deeper voice than the other. One didn't know which. "We're so glad you came. Right on time too. It's reassuring to have a guard around. Not that we're in any danger, per se. This village is really safe—"

"Quit it," the older man snapped, thumping their heads with his fists. The women winced and retreated, pouting and rubbing their sore heads. The man cleared his throat and nodded to the girl, wearing a wry but hopeful smile. "Nice to meet you, my name is Yusuke. I'm a Venture Capitalist for Whisper Group." One hummed and crossed her arms, bobbing her head and darting her eyes to the twins, then back at the man. The man jumped a little as if remembering something. He pointed at the woman on the right. "Shina is studying Accountancy at Kumo's Civilian Academy. She's interning in Kumo." He didn't expand any further, instead gesturing to the woman on Shina's left. "Same thing for Satoru, except she's interning in a real estate company in Kumo." It didn't need to be said that both companies the twins interned in were owned, controlled, and managed by Whisper Group. The man clasped his hands together. "It's great to have you, Ichika."

"One," the girl corrected him.

The man winced, feigning discomfort. "The big boss says you should go by your alias while on the job. 'One' isn't exactly a mundane name, you see."

One shrugged. "Whatever." It was the name she knew all her life. Calling her Ichika would take some getting used to. She saw the bright-eyed looks the twins were giving her from around Yusuke, leaning out from both sides of the man and biting their bottom lip. Curiosity swam in their brown eyes. "What?"

"You don't look like our boss. No resemblance at all," they said in unison. "Are you really his sister."

One's brow twitched. She was already getting tired of their behaviour. She ignored them and said to Yusuke, "What's the job?"

He nodded to the path they had come from and started walking. One caught up with him, walking at his side with one hand on the handle of her sword. Shina and Satoru came up at the rear, walking with their hand at their back and nosily peering at the girl with scrutinising stares.

"You're aware that the big boss is expanding our group every day, right? Investing in small businesses and funding their operations. That sort of thing. You saw what he's doing in Little Whirlpool."

One nodded. It was an oversimplification but that was the general plan for the organisation.

"The big boss is looking into the blacksmithing business," Yusuke said in a low voice. "Swords, kunai, arrows, war hammers, pots and pans, kitchen knives, all that stuff. He wants to invest in a blacksmithing business. That way, he can maximise the output by pushing funds into it and get some profit from sales."

One got the gist; Naruto wasn't looking for a weapons manufacturer for his organisation, seeing as attaining weapons through underworld dealings was simple enough, but he wanted to spread his organisation's influence through legitimate means, possibly getting a government contract to supply weapons to armies. It was yet another money laundering scheme. She just had one question. "Why not just buy the business? Brother has the money."

"That'll leave a bothersome paper trail." Yusuke made a flippant gesture. "If we invest just enough to have a significant portion of the business without the business changing its ownership, we stay under the radar." He smiled mischievously. "Why do you think we've got such a strong presence in Lightning and Snow?"

One couldn't disagree.

Naruto owned such a large portion of Lightning and Snow's industries, but the Raikage and the Daimyos didn't know.

Investment returns were yet another revenue stream for Whisper Group.

In the beginning, after acquiring Hidden Chill from Kumo, Naruto started small. Recruiting people and feeding some money into businesses, then having some returns as a result plus protection money. He reinvested into more businesses, acquiring more recruits that recruited more recruits—homeless people and street urchins—and rolled it over for the past three years. He had to do it gradually so as not to draw any attention, but it worked. It was a tidal wave of end products; investing in a business meant more recruits, more available jobs for his people (particularly civilian professionals and students), more money for the organisation, and increased territory.

They walked for a kilometre to the nearest village.

A wooden sign read:

Welcome to Higashiyama Village

Population: 301

Motto: "Where Metal Meets Hard Work"

Yusuke and the twins led One into the village, taking them to their host's house. It was a fair distance from the village entrance, passing by a medium-sized forge that bellowed with heat and fire. Two men were inside the forge.

Higashiyama was a small, rustic place made up of sixty or so bamboo and thatch houses, partitioned neatly on the snowy landscape by thin roads that had been swept clean of snow. Inside each house were small stone-carved hearths that burned with fires, emanating warmth inside the bamboo homes. The hearths didn't risk the houses from burning down. There were only single-room homes, decorated with beds woven from bamboo strips, thick layers of straw and a thin mattress spread on the straw. Five mats and camp beds were arranged in a corner, and travelling bags were also organised in the same corner.

A child slept on the bed, roughly one or two years old, swaddled in a thick layer of blankets and peacefully exhaled.

One observed the walls, walking around and checking for any hidden seals. The civilians watched her with rapt curiosity; the walls were decorated with family photographs, of a large man with thick red hair and beard and purple eyes, a woman with dark eyes and black hair, and four small children that mostly shared the same features as their mother. Aside from one of the boys that had purple eyes and a troublesome grin.

On the frame of the door, the only door was several markings. Starting from two feet from the ground and reaching six feet tall, nearly the top of the doorframe.

Satisfied that there were no seals inside the hut, One stepped outside and inspected the surrounding area, always keeping one hand on her sword.

Their host's house, like every other house in the village, didn't have an indoor bathroom or kitchen. Anyone who wanted to bathe first needed to boil water for themselves and head to the communal bathhouse, or else they would pay a fee for boiled water there. Needless to say, bathing wasn't an everyday ordeal for the people.

One's face scrunched up at the smell.

The kitchen was outside as well, though each house had an outdoor kitchen; a ramshackle shed where cooking utensils too large and too heavy to be stored in the home were kept. There was a campfire burning at the back of the house, a few paces from the shed, and on the campfire bubbled a large pot of red stew. The boy with the troublesome grin in the picture was slouched low, tending to the fire. He looked much older than the picture, roughly in his late teens.

He looked up at the girl and sat back on a stump, leaning on his knee. He watched her cautiously, brow furrowed and a serious expression on his face. "You the girl they were waiting for?"

One pursed her lips and briefly surveyed the cooking area; there were condiments near the fire, several wooden bowls and spoons, a tray with a sharp knife on it that had a few pieces of onion and pepper still on the blade, and yam peels in a pile on a piece of paper. The teenager wore dull, brown clothing with a white animal's pelt over his shoulders.

"I suppose so…" One answered slowly, content that there wasn't any immediate threat in the vicinity. She did keep a careful note of the knife though.

The serious look in his eyes evaporated instantly and the same playful smile she saw in the picture sprang onto his face. "You a samurai?"

"Does it matter?"

He shrugged. "I suppose not." He picked the ladle inside the stew and stirred, carefully. "Nice having you here, stranger."

"One—I mean…" the girl coughed into her fist. "Call me Ichika."

"I'm junior." He didn't catch her small mistake. He eased the ladle out of the stew, pouring any remnants of the broth into the pot and tapped the ladle on his palm. He tasted the stew and hummed, closing his eyes. "Perfection." He opened his eyes and held the ladle to the girl. "Want a taste?"

"Maybe later." She waved away his gesture. "I'm not hungry."

"Well, that's fine." He returned the ladle to the stew.

Yusuke came around to the back. "The meeting is just about to start."

One's eyebrows furrowed, but she didn't say anything. She followed Yusuke, messily waving over her shoulder when Junior waved her goodbye. They walked away from the hut, the twins nowhere to be seen, and trudged to the forge. A few inquisitive villages stood on the road and marvelled at their dressing; they weren't dressed too dissimilarly from Junior, though some wore fur coats instead of rough animal pelts.

"For the most part, this village is safe," Yusuke whispered to his guard. "They don't get many visitors."

One didn't respond, cautiously still keeping a hand on her blade.

They got to the forge but didn't enter. Shina and Satoru were outside, talking to the same larger-than-life man that One had seen in the picture. Standing there and seeing him in person, he was unmistakably an Uzumaki. Some thousand or so Uzumaki managed to escape the massacre several years ago, and he was doubtlessly one of them.

A few grey streaks ran down his shaggy red hair and beard, and the corners of his eyes were crinkled by time. He wore the same dull clothes as the villages, albeit standing three times as wide and at close to seven feet tall, with arms the size of pythons perched at his hips and fists that could easily crush cannonballs. He was a giant of a man and heavily muscled. The simple act of crossing his arms made him even more imposing.

One had to crane her neck back to get a good look at him.

His eyes twinkled on seeing her, but his hard expression didn't change.

One couldn't help but beam up at him. Fixing her glasses.

Inside the forge, a hammer relentlessly smacked down on an anvil.

"Didn't think I'd ever meet another Uzumaki," the man said. His voice rumbled so deep it almost felt like the ground was shaking; his tone was like an avalanche. However, there was no hostility in his words. "Who are your parents?"

"I never knew my parents…" One breathed out, self-consciously crossing her arms, mirroring her distant relative.

The man's lips twitched down a little, compassionate. "I'm sorry to hear that."

Yusuke looked between them, the taller man and the small girl. His brow was quirked up. "Do you know each other?"

One smiled cheekily. "I've never seen this man before in my life." Her cheeks coloured when the man stifled a laugh. His chest heaved at the sound of the man's agreement, shaking his head. The girl held out a hand to him. "I'm…" she frowned, hesitating, "Ichika. Can I call you uncle?"

The man stooped a little and took her hand, enclosing her whole hand and wrist. "Yes. Uncle Genji is fine. How are you, Ichika?"

"I'm doing great. You?" she chirped pleasantly, a complete change in her attitude since working with her colleagues. Yusuke and the twins were baffled by how nice she seemed, expressive too. One shook her new uncle's hand with both of hers, beaming.

"I'm fine." He didn't smile openly but the timbre of his voice was more amicable. He looked away from his niece and nodded to Yusuke. "I'd be doing much better if your friends tell me their big idea."

Yusuke clapped his hands together, smiling politely. "Exactly. Let's find somewhere private so we can talk."

Authors note

I was trying something new with the dialogue. How was it?

Also, what do you think of this chapter and the story so far?

Tell me your thoughts!

See you when I see you :)

Foy.