Chapter 49
Gaara* (approximate time: 3:30 PM)
Sasuke's eyes were the same. Gaara noticed it early on, when they first met, but he didn't know what to say to it. The void of hunger for blood behind his eyes, as if it would satiate a desire for revenge.
Gaara had sealed his Sunagakure assassins up into scrolls. Naruto had wanted to remove their masks, but Gaara had stopped him. Their chakra signatures were vaguely familiar to him, but learning their faces or their names for the purpose of being angry at them in the end, would serve no purpose. Beneath the masks, his assassins were still people. And when they were ready, Gaara resolved to meet them—as people.
He had decided some time ago that Yashamaru's attempted assassination of him—whether it be by his father's orders or not—that it did not outweigh all of the times he was cared for by the latter. Gaara didn't know the circumstances of the assassins now, but he told himself he would give them the same respect.
"Oh yeah—! Get ready to get your butts kicked!" Naruto yelled, busting through the door of the bandit hold they had to clear out. Sasuke and Sakura followed behind, beginning to engage the bandits.
Gaara used the same jutsu he used on his assassins—unnamed at the moment—before switching to his easier to navigate sand tendrils. His two teammates, still armed with nothing more than clubs and a few kunai, stuck close to him for defense.
…
"Haha! That was a quick one—I told you we didn't need an ambush—believe it!" Naruto cheered after it was over, celebrating with Gaara's two teammates a few meters from him after the skirmish was over.
Sasuke grunted in acknowledgement from where he was next to Gaara. Gaara gave him a look. "I never apologized for the harm I caused you during the Chunin Exams," Gaara told him. "I am sorry."
"Tch, whatever," was Sasuke's response. "Weren't you the one screaming after I punched you with my Chidori?"
Gaara blinked unharmedly to the statement. "I was but—"
"—Eh? What're you guys chatting about?" Naruto asked, apparently done celebrating and taking interest in Gaara and Sasuke conversing.
"None of your business, dobe. Go away," Sasuke told Naruto.
—But—a memory of Gaara explaining the pain in his chest to Yashamaru flicked through his mind—I am afraid, from your eyes, that you are the same as I was. And that I have made the pain in your chest worse.
Naruto shot Sasuke a glare. "Watch it, teme," Naruto bantered back, though decidedly more out of a chest-puffing pride for himself than aggression.
"Now, now, take it easy, will you? We're all friends here," Kakashi said to his team before Naruto and Sasuke devolved into an on-the-floor hog roll.
Friends.
"Yeah, I guess we'd really be seeing more of each other now that Suna and Konoha's alliance has been renewed, huh, sensei," Sakura piped up. "We ought to be more polite to each other."
"Yeah, Sasuke," Naruto said pointedly. It was Sasuke's turn to glare.
Kakashi breathed a sigh at the interaction.
"As you said, Kakashi," Gaara told him, "The more we face together, the stronger our bonds will become. I'm glad to have completed this mission alongside your team."
Kakashi nodded his head. "I'm sure if something comes up, we'll be in contact?"
Gaara tilted his head downwards. "This mission was put in place by the Council. I'm not sure how willing they are to contact Konoha, with the circumstances that eroded our alliance originally and its only recent revival."
"Well in that case, you can still contact us. Personal messenger hawks are largely unregulated, and there's always the shinobi post system," Kakashi replied with a wave of his hand, decidedly unconcerned.
"You mean like pen pals, Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura asked.
"Exactly," Kakashi said, casually drawing out the first syllable of the word.
"Yeah!" Naruto cheered.
"What are you yeah-ing about? You sure you even know how to read, Naruto?" Sasuke asked rhetorically.
"Can to, believe it! Here—!" Naruto exclaimed, pulling out a pencil and paper and scribbling something on it. Naruto handed it to Gaara. It appeared to be a mailing address. "See?! If I can write, you betcha I can read! I bet I read more than you do—looking over all of Pervy Sage's weird novels for him!"
"Oh yeah? What was the book about, then?" Sasuke asked.
"Uh—uhh…" Naruto broke off before laughing nervously.
"Oh… here, let me add mine," Sakura said to Gaara almost reluctantly, taking the paper and ignoring the boys in the background. "Don't get any ideas, okay? This is just for general communication for the sake of our alliance," she told him.
"Ooh, yeah!" "Wait—here's ours!" Yaoki and Korobi chimed in at the same time, exchanging their own mailing addresses on a separate piece of paper for Sakura.
Sakura cringed, as if the back of her mind was exclaiming her regrets about sharing her address. Gaara didn't quite understand what could be regretful about sharing a mailing address though, hearing once that most shinobi had post boxes in civilian mail offices for security and privacy reasons.
"… Sasuke, what about you?" Gaara asked, noticing the aforementioned was only watching the exchange.
"Hn, pass," Sasuke replied. "I don't want another distraction to my training," he said.
Gaara bowed his head nearly imperceptibly in a mix of disappointment and understanding.
Kakashi coughed into his hand politely. "The beauty of shinobi-class messenger hawks is that they locate recipients based on chakra signature, not address… But if we're done here, I think we best be off. If we wait any longer, our prisoners might revolt out of hunger," he attempted to joke.
Author's Note
"Teme" is just the rude form of "you" in Japanese and "dobe" means "dead last" or "idiot". All characters express vulgarities in Japanese except for one main character, hence why I didn't use the translated versions of the terms like I do for some honorifics, though.
Gaara* (approximate time: 4:00 PM)
"Tell me again," Gaara told his subordinates as the Konoha team left. Though it was phrased as a demand, there was no force behind it. Social norms were still something Gaara had yet to grasp.
"Huh?"
"Tell me… what you said back then, once more?" he tried.
"'We're sorry we ran off without you'," Yaoki repeated, rubbing his head.
"… Not that."
"Huh?"
"No… what you said before that."
Understanding dawned on his subordinates' eyes, finally figuring it out. "We're your friends!"
Gaara met the eyes of his teammates, smiling. There was that word again, "friends". As he travelled home, Gaara recalled Naruto saying how they saved one from oneself. He found in himself that he would be willing to be friends with others to save others from themselves as well. His mind flicked to Sasuke. And then Katiya. Shukaku's yells seemed more distant, muted, when his friends were around. Or when he was thinking of them and the joy they shared.
He wondered what had happened to her.
Kankuro (approximate time: 8:35 PM)
"Gaara! You're back!" Kankuro exclaimed, jumping off his seated perch on the Sunagakure border wall and landing. Gaara had come perhaps a day or so later than Kankuro was expecting, but it was of little consequence to him—few missions coming in those days.
"Puppeteer Kankuro, sir!" Gaara's two teammates saluted.
Kankuro waved the salutes off. "Everything go alright?" Kankuro asked.
"Yes sir!" one of them—one we know as "Yaoki" exclaimed. "The mission went off without a hitch!"
"Without a hitch thanks to Lord Gaara," the other one—Korobi—corrected. "He saved our lives when assassins came after us out of nowhere! He was so cool!"
Kankuro swallowed, turning his head to Gaara. "Ah? And… did you—are they—?"
Gaara shook his head. "After dropping off my mission report, I intend on turning over the assassins to the Council."
Ah? Kankuro mentally startled. "Uh… huh. Ayy, how 'bout I walk with you to drop them off, talk a bit and catch up?"
…
Yaoki and Korobi stuck close to each other and went off to do their own things after delivering their mission reports. Kankuro had been brought up to speed about the mission happenings by their accounts—and Gaara's—as they walked there. Once they were gone, though, Kankuro internally relaxed a bit and raised the concerns that had come up after Gaara said he was dropping off his prisoners to the Council.
"Gaara, you sure that's a good idea? I've… got reason to believe it was the Council that ordered the assassination attempt—not just the normal batch of—"
"I know."
"Eh—?"
"I recognize the chakra signatures as people that had been close to Father, though I don't recognize them personally. I just didn't want to kill them because they were Suna-nin… and I have… already killed too many under Shukaku's guidance. I hope by bringing them before the Suna Council, they can see… I…" Gaara trailed off.
"…That you've changed," Kankuro completed for his brother.
Gaara nodded.
Kankuro averted his eyes from Gaara's. "I'm just worried that it wouldn't exactly work out the way you want it to. There's a high chance they'd just get a slap on the wrist and go back to what they were doing—or that the Council would disavow the shinobi as rogues… They're pretty high-up ANBU."
"Father had me kill off the shinobi that had sold off Sunagakure's information. There are Council members that might do the same before allowing upper ranks of ANBU to go rogue." Gaara paused. "And there isn't much we can do otherwise. There aren't many facilities that can hold ANBU-level shinobi besides the Council or the ANBU themselves."
"Hmm," Kankuro hummed thoughtfully, "Actually, there might. You ever hear of the Land of Grass prison 'Hozuki Castle'? It's ally-controlled, not Council controlled. I think it might just do," Kankuro told him.
Gaara tilted his head, considering it.
Kankuro (approximate time: 11:00 PM)
They waited until nightfall to go. It was late, but shinobi were trained to work twenty-four hours—all shinobi divisions structured to be able to respond to or receive intelligence of foreign or domestic affairs. It would be a reduced-staff night shift, but Kankuro knew that'd just mean he'd be able to get what Gaara needed with less of a fuss.
"There is something I would like to bring up with the Council," Gaara told the Kazekage office attendant. "When is the next available time I can meet with them?" he asked.
"Uh… let's see… three, four… five? Months from now?" the attendant sweated, "I won't contest your status as a potential heir to the Kazekage position, but really, the Council doesn't accept meeting requests like this unless—"
"It's urgent," Kankuro told the attendant. "We've got Suna ANBU members sealed up into Storage Scrolls that're probably going to end up dead in a few days or so unless we let them out. I'd say that's pretty urgent, wouldn't you, punk?"
The attendant startled. "Ehh—?"
"Unless you wanna try explaining that to the Council?"
"Lord Kankuro, sir, even if I really wanted—err—didn't want to—I—the Council's really booked—I can't help it—I—"
Kankuro tilted his head to look over the attendant's desk. The attendant shifted nervously, covering the datebook of the Council's meeting schedule. Kankuro reached over the attendant's desk and pulled out the datebook nonchalantly.
"Hey—I—!" The attendant verbally protested, but made only a slight move to physically grab the book back.
"Hmm… Oh look—a two hour slot… three days from now. That sound good, Gaara?" Kankuro asked conversationally.
Gaara bowed his head.
"Lemme just fill that slot for you, since you missed it earlier. There. Now I think you're full for the next… month or so," Kankuro grinned at the attendant, keeping his conversational tone. "Come on, Gaara, I think we're done here. Unless there's anything else, punk?"
The office attendant stuttered. "N-no, you're done."
Kankuro grinned and the pair turned to leave, Gaara walking behind his brother. The attendant slowly sat back down into the seat behind, muttering about how to explain the situation to the Council.
"I'll have—my shishou—try to get a sealing team to refresh the jutsu you used on the shinobi in there," Kankuro told Gaara while referring to the scroll the ANBU were sealed in. "I really don't think you're supposed to leave people in there for more than a few days at most—but I guess if they come out a bit scruffy, we wouldn't be the ones to complain," he said as they turned the corner and left.
Kabuto (two days later, approximate time: 5:00 PM)
It was a quiet day and he had just arrived back to hand in his mission report, intelligence gathered from his allies about the recent coronation of Lady Tsunade as Konoha's Hokage… and his master's assassination of the previous Hokage, Lord Hiruzen…
… And then the whereabouts of Sasuke Uchiha.
"My lord, the mission in the Land of Tea has concluded. Any day now, Sasuke Uchiha will be going back to Konoha for an overnight check up on his curse mark… My lord, it's time," he told Lord Orochimaru.
The flickering candles of the chamber they were in threw grotesque shadows across the walls. But grotesque as they were, they helped to hide the true conditions of Kabuto's master, the extent of the damage inflicted onto Lord Orochimaru's current body kept under wraps to those who didn't need to know. His arms were still limp and continuously deteriorating, as they were after the somewhat botched attack on Konohagakure and the Death Reaper Sealing Jutsu used by Lord Hiruzen before his death. They were bandaged, but there was not much they could do to stop the jutsu's rotting onset—but all of that could change with the arrival of a new vessel.
Lord Orochimaru gave his subordinate a look out of the corner of his eye, nodding his head with a serpent-like lick of his lips. "Good," Lord Orochimaru replied. "Dispatch the Sound Four."
If only his lord can wait that long. By Kabuto's own analysis, the chakra deterioration was perhaps swifter than anyone would like to advertise. He shuffled out of the room.
…
"You had Dosu killed off," Katsu said to him after re-entering Oto and handing her mission report in.
He looked her over. There was no surprise or even anger with her last statement. Glad her curiosity was not piqued by sensitive information, he didn't find it necessary to deny it. "I did," he told her.
And then Katsu only nodded her head before moving off. Kabuto knew then—somehow, somewhere—there was something off in the conversation.
Katiya (time: 20:02:56, hr/min/sec)
She headed to the fight rooms. She took a deep breath as she entered the arena floor, relaxedly assuming an attack stance and gesturing for those there to try and attack her.
She didn't feel it. Any connection to Dosu or her learning of the true nature of his death. She supposed it was a mercy to him, to have died a swift and noble death to a cause greater than himself, rather than a long and drawn out suffering living a life of meaninglessness. It was what she told herself lately, giving the people the mercy she could when she no longer had the means to heal them. Or the motivation to, not when it ceased to matter.
She spun and danced gracefully, her face in deep concentration as blows landed and things scattered and fell in their paces. She had too much worth construed to the idea of victory to ever throw a fight. But the fights she had that day felt… especially calming. She found herself feeling like she was smiling… by the end of it.
Kabuto (approximate time: 10:50 PM)
Kabuto waited for Katsu, outside the fight room. "Done for the day?" he asked.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you openly stalking someone's a little creepy?" Katsu asked as a response, sounding more bored than creeped out.
Kabuto narrowed his eyes. "You should tell that one to the ANBU," he replied. "Sounds like you forgot it's a shinobi's business to watch over everything for 'safety and security'."
Katsu was silent for a beat. "What do you want?"
"Your input on Kimimaro," he told her. There was no one around besides those behind the closed door of the fight room, but it wasn't exactly news that Kimimaro had taken ill. Nor was privacy really a priority in Otogakure. "There's not enough genetic material for me to analyze what would be normal for his kekkei genkai… but I'm thinking 'heteroplastic osteoma'."
"Cancer," Katsu summed up blandly. "You think he's dying of bone cancer. His entire kekkei genkai rests on the conscious control of bone formation and destruction—it would literally be impossible for that to happen—he could just stop the bone growth, in that case. Heck, even a regular medic-nin like you or me could—forget about him being of a special bloodline—" she went on in a monotone.
"—Come look at the results with me," he told her.
Katiya (time: 22:47:06, hr/min/sec)
If it wasn't heteroplastic osteoma, it was fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva—bone tumors growing on non-bone… or non-bone tissue being replaced by bone.
"How?" Katiya asked, staring at the results. She broke off muttering to herself. "His kekkei genkai—his chakra—should have been enough to keep the… whatever this is… in check… unless something is preventing that from happening…"
But what—
She flicked her eyes back over the results earlier, back when they first realized something was wrong with Kimimaro. "Do we have any results of Kimimaro, from before he had his curse mark put on?" she asked.
Kabuto's reply was negative, stating that Kimimaro was not ever frequently ill. Katiya breathed shallowly. The way a curse mark worked, it was an implant of Orochimaru's own chakra and perhaps bit of genetic make-up. In the initial stages, it would overwrite the recipient's normal chakra flow until it was stabilized, at which point it would halt… with Orochimaru's chakra already implanted. But if that process was ever impeded for any reason, before it was stabilized completely, or one's normal chakra flow was a vital process to a person's life…
"Why are you showing me this?" Katiya asked, not facing him, her eyes still blown wide open and trained on Kimimaro's test results.
Kabuto tilted his head. "I needed a second opinion."
"Don't give me that bullshit. You're a better healer than me, and damn quick at connecting dots, so don't give me that bullshit." She turned her head now. "Why are you showing me this?"
Kabuto met Katiya's eyes, silent. He simply watched as Katiya took a breath and looked upwards to the ceiling to think. "Have you told Orochimaru yet?" she asked, hearing no response to her previous question.
"No," Kabuto replied.
"How many people know?"
"Only us two. Not even Kimimaro himself knows at this point."
"Why?"
Kabuto paused before answering. "In order to have any chance at life, he would need to have his curse mark removed or at least sealed. He just isn't the sort of person who would have that done," he told her in what one of us might find an oddly casual tone of voice.
It wasn't what Katiya was after when she asked "why" but she ran with it. "He already can't serve as Orochimaru's vessel. By sealing the curse mark, we'd at least be sparing a shinobi," she countered. "So why wouldn't he?"
"… Because Lord Orochimaru tends to only accept willing hosts," finally answering her initial question.
The response gave Katiya pause. It'd make it easier on him, and giving it the highest chance of success, the transfer leaving him in a vulnerable state. Katiya frowned, not understanding the relevance. But…
What does that have to do with why you're telling me?
