Wherein Everyone is Imperiled, Though Not Necessarily Aware
016. Horror
The day after Hozokawa Narihiro met Uzumaki Naruto, he received a letter. The two things weren't in any way related - not causally related, anyway. They were a meaningful coincidence; synchronity, his father had once called this kind of thing. Horror was coursing through his veins, ice-cold and stringy like syrup.
Political expediency; he had heard enough of that to last him a life time during the last few months, but he really hadn't expected this of his nephew. He wasn't... the man was a pretty good daimyo, all things considered, and Narihiro knew intimately the pressure his uncle had been under lately. But being a good daimyo and a good father weren't necessarily the same thing and this was so much beyond pale he was left staring at the brush strokes on the thin, fine paper, trying to make some sense of them as the ink lines jumped up and down in his eyes. The paper rustled and he realized that his hands were trembling. His nephew hadn't even had the decency to send a letter to him, no, Narihiro had to hear of this from his chambermaid. A chambermaid whose name he couldn't connect to any face right that moment, but the moment he returned to the capital, he was promoting her.
He thought back to little Chiyoko who had hair as dark as ink and eyes as deep as the ocean, running around in geta and kimono, falling down and getting her expensive clothes dirty. Little Chiyoko who had always stared at other people's desserts like a cat staring at a bird at knew it couldn't catch, and of course he had folded like a house of cards and handed his own over to her. Little Chiyoko who was eleven going on twelve and wanted to wear her hair like the big girls. Little Chiyoko with her face round with the last remains of baby fat and pasty pale because her nannies didn't think that running around in sunshine was lady-like.
"Nari-nii-kun?" she had asked, "Why do we have toes?" She used to ask weird things like that when she was a toddler. Narihiro hadn't known tha answer because he had been a child himself - not that he knew the answer now. So he didn't answer, but she didn't insist and he had thought that he had dodged that arrow.
"Nari-nii-kun?" she had asked, just as he had relaxed,"Why are there gaps between them?" She had wiggled her own toes, out of sandals and out of socks. Her nannies had despaired with her and Narihiro had gleefullty cheered her on.
"What do you mean?" he had asked, befuddled with the question. Chiyoko had looked at him imploringly like the fate of the nation, or her next dessert, depended on the answer.
"Why are they all separated into little pointy bits that look weird?"
"Because we haven fingers too. It's all about the symmetry, all right?"
"What is symmetry?"
So maybe she had grown a little since those days, she was still entirely too young. But what was he supposed to do now that he had the information? He couldn't overrule the daimyo, he couldn't contact the hidden village without alerting the daimyo...
He couldn't contact his own hidden village, anyhow, and contacting another would take too much time. But Uzumaki Naruto was right here and he had seemed amiable so far. He knew that was he was contemplating, no what he had already decided to do would be a controversial decision at best and might count as treason at worst. He didn't care a whit, a bit, zilch, anything at all. Little Chiyoko who had always been a sister to him for all that she was technically speaking his niece. He was ready to beg, he was ready to give entirely too much if Uzumaki-san just saw her safe.
017. Acceptance
Naruto put ginger root, garlic, green onions and salted pork into a bowl of water. His instant emergency ramen was always good, of course, but the broth on those was always thin and he liked to make his own when he had time and an actual kitchen. Karin loved ramen too and she was boiling the eggs and cutting the green onions with him. Every now and then their elbows would bump and Naruto would grin like an idiot. He had a sister to cook with!
Well, technically Karin-nee was a distant cousin, but Naruto had always thought that counting by blood and percentages and lines on the family tree only made for sad people. Just look at the way Neji used to treat Hinata-chan, just look what that rat bastard Itachi had done to Sasuke, just look how Gaara's father had treated him - and his mother! He had killed his wife for power and for all Suna might have been in a bad spot, that wasn't something Gaara could ever forgive and neither could Naruto.
So Karin was his family and he was cooking with her for the first time ever and he was so happy he couldn't have asked for more. Okay, so she was a Sasuke fan-girl, but no-one was perfect and he loved Sasuke too, as a teammate, for all he was going to deny doing so to his dying day. Iruka-sensei always claimed that actions spoke louder than words, but in Naruto's experience people were dreadfully action-deaf nine times out of ten.
Naruto was in the kitchen cooking lunch with his new nee-chan and this was the cozy family picture Hozokawa Narihiro swooped into. The last time Naruto had seen the boy, he had been a picture of sophisticated dignity even in his moment of weakness, as Narihiro had called it. Now locks of hair were escaping their bun and his face was so red that Naruto didn't for a second doubt that he had run all the way to the clinic.
"I would like to, ahahh, hire you," he panted, leaning his arms against his thighs. "Please help my niece."
"And people just keep barging in," Doctor Fujiki complained mildly, but the gray-bearded man handed his own tea cup over to Narihiro so Naruto didn't figure he minded too much. He would have made a great med nin if he had only been born in a hidden village.
"What's happened to Chiyoko-chan?" he asked, remembering the pretty girl in the picture Narihiro had shown him. Maybe it was because Karin was standing right there, but he felt even worse than he normally would have when he heard that a little girl was in danger.
"There is going to be marriage, my hono- my nephew wrote to me." There was a little defiance, a little something that told Naruto to expect bad things because while he called Tsunade baa-chan and two out of his three sensei perverts, Narihiro really didn't seem like that kind of a person to him. "It's won't be a marriage before there is a pregnancy, not really, and Ishibashi Nobuyuki has sworn he won't, not before she is sixteen, but there are bad kind of rumours about him..."
"And how old, precisely, is this Ciyoko-chan?" Karin asked with a voice than made all the muscles in Naruto's upper body tighten. Usually when he heard that tone someone tried to hit him.
"Chiyoko is just a little child who should be running with kites and playing home with dolls, and Ishibashi is only third generation noble, but he is is also very rich and influential," he started and Naruto swallowed a groan. He didn't personally think that being a new noble, for any value of new being number three had, was bad. But it was whenever someone said "rich" and "influential" in a conversation like this, it was always bad news.
"Chiyoko is eleven years old," Narihiro forced between his teeth; a a reproof, a shame, a plea. Karin's knife went through the onion, the cutting board and the table with a single crash and the pot in Naruto's hands cracked.
"Should I call for your sensei?" Doctor Fujiki asked with an indulgent, unfazed half-tilt of his head and turned towards the back door of the clinic without waiting for an answere. Yeah, there was that, there was a responsible adult in the house, for all he was technically speaking out of the hourse at the moment, helping Hinata-chan with her ninjutsu. Yamato-sensei would probably have issues with getting involved with the Grass Country inner matters because sovereignty and politics were a thing and Yamato-sensei wasn't Tsubaki-neechan. It usually took a little more exposure to him than this or at least a little more danger to life and limb for people to see things his way.
They would have to convince Yamato and that would be that. This request would be accepted.
18. Sympathy
This was the gist of it, coaxed out of Narihiro over apple dumplings and ramen and many, many cups of tea, the explanation coming slower and more reluctant as the frail flesh couldn't sustain the initial levels of terror anymore, couldn't hold up the adrenaline levels and the ingrained dread of losing face begun to take hold. In the Grass Country the marriage custom was that the groom moved in with the bride, usually - unless the husband was rich and influential enough to demand otherwise - but only after the birth of the first child there would be a marriage ceremony. It was a little unusual, that having what was in effect pre-marital sex wasn't considered a problem, but then, an engagement alone was unbreachable enough that only infertility, infidelity or a severe breach of the marriage contract would have been enough justification to call off the marriage.
And Ishibashi probably wasn't a pedophile - at least as far as Narihiro knew, at least as far as lusting after children went - but he was a fairly vile individual; Narihiro stated this with his best, prim, proper manner, his knuckles white. His chakra, civillian and weak, undeveloped and yet so revealing, it was as cold as the trickle of a melting river before the spring truly warmed.
"He is influential right now, but he also has many enemies and he has engaged in some risky dealing in the past years. He debases himself like a merchant." The word was as though a swear word to Narihiro, some kind of shame. In some other situation Naruto might have been insulted because if the young man though like that of merchants, how did he think of the ninja anyway? But right now he couldn't, he just couldn't.
"He will misstep soon, anyone taking risks like those is bound to. His window of opportunity to marry into the royal family is a short one. If there is a baby, that is, if there is a baby. There will be a marriage or an illegitimate child."
Yeah, that was something that people outside the hidden villages cared about a lot, virginity and wedding and children and what happened in what order; Naruto wasn't stupid, he had figured that out even before Makimura and saving Miwa-chan from that low-life that thought not-virgin meant yes-please. He just couldn't figure out why people thought getting that invested other people's sex lives was anything other than a form of perversion - and he travelled with the self-declared Great Pervert, he should know.
"Just what kind of sick individual thinks that marrying a little kid off to a rapist is a better option than skinning the bastard alive, I don't know," Karin snarled. Her killing intent was like a thousand needles against Naruto's skin, but it was his face that Narihiro was looking at and looking sickly at that and Naruto wasn't sure why, but he didn't much care either. He just really, really wanted to kill this Ishibasha and, huh, maybe he was just a little stupid at times. He forced his own killing intent down and while Narihiro's skin still looked kind of pasty, his pupils were tiny and kind of frozen and sweat was trickling down his temples, he didn't look like was was about to fall down in dead faint anymore.
"He promised he would wait until she was sixteen. I have my doubts." Because if there was no child in the way, little Chiyoko could be taken from him and given as a bride to someone else. This was what every ninja knew: trusting a client with an agreement not yet binding was like trusting the sure ambush. The nobility liked to preach honor and ideals, but realpolitik was realpolitik and sometimes unbreachable enough engagement wasn't quite unbreachable enough.
"I have heard we have a situation here," a dry voice called from the door and Naruto turned to look at a bruised, dirty Yamato and equally bruised, slightly less dirty Hinata.
"You got him really good, Hinata-chan!" Naruto told her appreciatively. There were no Jyuuken points in those places, or at least no points that Neji had hit when they had fought, but it looked like it had really hurt. Hinata-chan blushed at first and twiddled her thumbs, but then she lifted her chin, looking him straight into the eye.
"Thank you, Naruto-kun." Her voice was strong and determined like it had been a difficult thing to do, some kind of victory. She sounded triumphant.
"I can't help but notice that you didn't answer my question," Yamato pointed out. Now Naruto looked him into the eye and didn't look away.
"Narihiro-Uncle-sama's niece is eleven years old and her bastard of a nephew is marrying him off in that funny Grass Country way to some noble who really promises he won't do anything until she is sixteen, but he needs children right now or it could be called off later and he apparently doesn't mind becoming a widow." Kyuubi red flashed across his eyes again and Naruto blinked his eyes against it, shaking his head like trying to shake water out of his ears. It was getting so difficult to just sit there and talk when he could run to the palace and do something.
"I will do anything and everything in my power to implicate whoever you want implicated for this. I will pay anything. Please help me." Narihiro's voice was barely audible over the rush of blood in his ears, but it was enough; the red disappeared like morning mist the sun had dyed red.
"Kabuto told me, and you should know what it feels like to be a helpless child in the hands of an unscrupulous adult. Wouldn't you have wanted for someone to come and save you - wait, someone did, right?" Karin asked with that extra-special scary voice only girls and women could pull off. Her eyes looked very dark, almost inky in their blackness. Naruto had the sinking feeling that those eyes had been staring at helplessness a lot before Sasuke had come along and that was why he could, almost, palate her interest in Sasuke.
Because Sasuke might be grumpy and snooty and nowhere near as good a fighter as Naruto, thank you very much, but he had helped Karin run from Orochimaru. Well, had given Karin a reason to run from Orochimaru, but that was what counted in the end, maybe even more than if Kabuto had dragged them both along because like this it had been her decision.
"You are manipulating me and very transparently at that," Yamato drawled and his face did something that made cold shivers run up and down Naruto's back. But it wasn't a no. He wasn't Tsubaki-neechan, but it wasn't a no.
"Is it working?" Karin asked with casual arrogance, throwing her long, red hair over her shoulder.
"...it isn't not working," Yamato admitted and Naruto smiled.
19. Holding
Hinata was glad beyond what words could express that she had failed her first chuunin exam, that the paperwork for that field promotion was stuck in the bureaucratic limbo; it was why she was here now, with Naruto-kun. It was why she could at least stand by him even if he rejected her in the end, why he could now be part of this rescue mission now. This was such a mission that every bright-eyed kunoichi-hopeful in the Academy dreamed of and all too few ever got to take.
In the real life, if you lived in a fortunate time you protected travellers from bandits more often than anything else. If you didn't you fought a war. If you made a jounin, there were the secret wars and the missing-nins to contend with. Rescuing princesses was the childhood dream all genin had and the teeny-tiny fraction that made a jounin might even do once if they got very lucky. Naruto had saved the princess of the Snow Country, now the Daimyo, and he had according to some rumours he had also saved the Land of Birds' princess-come-Daimyo Toki. The mission office, of course, refused to confirm unless the inquirer had a need to know.
"Did you want to cut the onions or are you just staring at them?" Karin asked with words intertwined with reddish glow. The word tomato was the darkest, almost black, and staring was as sharp as the sheen of a kunai. The eyes were what made her family so mighty, but at that moment the words were more vivid to her than the little kitchen with its constraining walls and the wooden cutting board.
"I-I'm sorry," she intoned. Neji-niisan had said that apologizing for no good reason was a bad habit, but it wasn't a habit that she had been able to break yet. It seemed so wrong to not say sorry at times.
"Come with me while Naruto works his magic on Yamato, I want to talk with you about something," Karin demanded with a strange kind of susurration to her voice that made Hinata see yellow and black sawlines - a sound-based genjutsu, she realized, something to keep Naruto-kun and Yamato-sensei from figuring out what Karin was saying. Was she a traitor after all, here on behalf of Orochimaru? But Hinata had seen her giving Sasuke the same looks she sometimes saw reflected from the shop windows when she trailed after Naruto and so she followed the red-haired girl out of the house, just a little wary.
"First thing first," Karin said as she pressed the door shut behind her back. The sun was't quite setting yet, but it inched towards the western horizon and the wind had already calmed for the night. "We are going to be in some hot water soon. How good fighter are you? And remember, being too modest is only marginally better than being a braggart when you are evaluating for a mission."
"I know. I'm strong for a new chuunin - I'm certain I will make a chuunin, unless there are jounin-level plants among the candidates to weed us out. My strongest points are taijutsu and breaking genjutsu." No reason to tell Karin this was because even the best genjutsu masters generally failed to replicate the effects of synesthesia; she didn't trust her quite so much. "Most of my jutsu are either genjutsu or kekkei genkai collaboration techniques with my taijutsu, but I know a few B-class fire and lightning ninjutsu techniques - I merely rarely use them. Weapons are my weakest point." The Hyuuga didn't use weapons. Only the weaklings who couldn't win a fight with their bare hands used weapons, was the clan's official stance on the matter and so she had never learned beyond basic Academy kunai throwing.
"Good to know. And now tell me, on scale from one to ten, how much trouble is your clan going to be if you marry off and your children have the Byakugan?" the former Oto nin asked as casually as she might have commented on the weather. Hinata could only stare at Karin for a moment, the flush of excitement and mortification raising to her cheeks. Children, her and Naruto-kun's children... And Karin just asked like it was nothing!
"For my father, about two. He would be happy if I married out, to tell the truth, because either I or Hanabi must be sealed once we are both chunin at the last, but the Hyuuga can only inflict that upon clan members. The current clan elders, eleven. But they are old and once an elder dies, the clan head is the one to appoint a new one." That was in truth her father's long-running gambit to do away with the Caged Bird seal, at least in its current incarnation. It was his dream to abolish it and create a new one that would only prevent the Hyuuga's eyes being taken, nothing more, and it would be given to all equally as a security measure. The current clan elders made this impossible and they held a lot of power, but no-one held power over old age. It was a waiting game her father was winning, the question was whether he would win it in time to save her or Hanabi from being put to the branch family in the interim.
"Good, you are still on my list then, but I'm holding out on making any matchmaking moves until I have seen Temari - and possibly this Fuu."
Wait, what?
"And even Sakura would do in a pinch, I guess, because then she would leave my Sasuke-kun alone, but I would rather not call her my sister."
Wait, what?
"There is no way I'm handing my Naruto-kun over to some random foreigner and I'm certainly not handing him over to Sakura; she's had her chances, she didn't take them, her pity!" The sheer forcefulness of her own voice shocked Hinata. Her whole life she had been taught that a kunoichi was like a foxglove flower, demure and deadly in equal measure. But Naruto-kun had pined over Sakura for as long as Hinata could remember and while she didn't have anything against her comrade, really, just seeing the medic nin practice their Hokage's signature technique and blowing up old oaks could drop a block of ice to the bottom of her stomach. Sakura was beautiful and deadly, but that wasn't a reason to give up. The old Hinata might have, but she was stronger now and it wasn't over before it was over.
"Good, hold on to Naruto like that and you might have a chance," Karin laughed and ruffled her hair. Hinata glared at the belittling gesture just in right time to catch a tree branch moving behind Karin. It was maybe a steps from them, a safe distance, and it might have been nothing more than wind except that the wind had already calmed for the night.
"Byakugan," she whispered and the world around her shifted, gained a new dimension now that she could see the brightness that all living things emitted against the suddenly blackened backdrop of the space, the intricately compressed fold-space of Karin's chakra system - and one another, quite developed with resources that spoke of much practice at jutsu, before it flickered and disappeared only appear again at the limits of her range. Karin had twisted around almost faster than eye could follow, but it was too late already.
"It-it seems that the one Naruto-kun called Bandage Lady has not given up yet," Hinata whispered.
"And I must wonder who she is after at this point. Those Grass nin might be able to tell her where Fuu is, but Naruto is right here under her gaze," Karin mused with an almost lazy sort of anger seeping into her voice and Hinata felt her hands balling into fists without conscious thought. She trusted Naruto-kun to protect himself of course, but that was no reason to not standby his side.
20. Defeated
The sun was setting in the Rain Country, tough it couldn't be seen through the thick rain clouds. It was the kind of rain that washed all the colours away from the walls and all the clay away from the river benches and clung to the air even inside where it was actually nice and dry. The country was a miserable, wet hellhole Deidara very much wanted to escape, yesterday, but he hadn't killed Uchiha Itachi yet; the wounds that had resulted from his latest attempt till stung under the bandages. He didn't give the bastard the pleasure of seeing how much it affected him to stand by his side now, but simply looked at their illustrious leader into the eye - one set of eyes, at least. This body had once been the corpse of an unlucky Taki shinobi and the ability to yank the soul out of the body that it granted him made it one of the creepiest Pein had in his opinion.
There was a gorgeous gold leaf-plated folding screen with a mountain landscape painting behind Pein's back and another that depicted a shamisen-playing courtesan on the left wall. He was very certain Konan had been the one to select them both because Pein had no eye for art at all, the philistine.
"I have received intel that the Jinchuuriki no Kyuubi will take part in the chunin exams in Suna this year. We will take this chance to take him and the Jinchuuriki no Ichibi both." Pein sat behind his desk, his back as straight as a steel railroad spike, and Konan stood at his back, giving him inscrutable looks. They'd had more and more disagreements lately, if one wished to grace them with such name. Mostly the deal seemed to involve Konan passive-aggressively giving Pein sad glances and fulfilling his orders to the letter and Pein getting the tenser, the longer it went on. Sometimes Deidara could almost pity the man. Tomomi hadn't done any such crap, if she was angry she said it out loud and let him make his point.
Of course, if it hadn't annoyed him so much he would have punched her had she been a little less better fighter, he might have had to pity Konan first for being shackled to that kind of ball and chain for no better reason than some kind of sad past and emotional fragility. Deidara firmly ignored any dawning epiphanies that he might have had - but didn't have - about how she maybe resembled more him than Tomomi. His life was what it was and it would be just fine after he finally offed the eye-cheat standing beside him.
"So we are going to do a rehash of the Chuunin Exam Siege? Copy isn't true art, you know?" he asked with a smirk, taking pleasure at being able to needle someone.
"Deidara, please," Sasori-danna sighed by his side. It would have been an exaggeration to say he liked Sasori-danna - he had never liked many people and certainly no-one in Akatsuki - but he respected the man as a fellow artist and that was rare enough that he more often than not gave in. He did so now as well, shrugging in a way that probably didn't really look apologetic in the least.
"Four people don't make an invasion, un," he only pointed out. It was mild for him and only the cold, hard truth. As dangerous as he, Sasori-danna, Kisame and Itachi were, there was something to be said for strength in numbers. Suna might be the weakest of the Big Five, but if the Hokage didn't attend the third part he was going to eat his own clay and there might be other kages as well, given the whole Narutoism deal that he was certain was a joke people were taking entirely too seriously.
"This is why I shall attend as well, along with Konan," Pein said, and fine; four people would not an invasion make, but Pein by his six-some just might. "And for this to come to pass with no unnecessary complications, no more infighting. I am speaking to you, Uchiha, Deidara." Pein gave them both a stern glance between the orange fringe hanging over his face and Deidara felt his jaw gritting just for a fraction of a second, before relaxing again. He was surprised Pein hadn't said something sooner to tell the truth, but that didn't make the order any more palatable.
"Understood, Pein-sama," Itachi said with perfect form and, Deidara would have been willing to bet, not an ounce of real respect.
Kisame was muttering about feeding some freak in a green jumpsuit to Samehade should he make an appearance at Suna, some old grudge over an old defeat Deidara wasn't very interested in because he immediately honed in on Itachi as the door of Pein's office slammed shut behind them.
"Why haven't you ended it long ago?" he asked, as much as it galled him to admit out loud that Itachi could kill him; with less ease now than when they fought for the first time, mind, but it still amounted to the same in the end. "You know I hate you, un."
You know I hate the Akatsuki, he didn't say, but he knew that Itachi heard it regardless. He couldn't hate Sasori-danna and hating Konan would have felt like kicking the most dangerous puppy on the Elementary Continent, but the rest of them? If one of them gave up the ghost, he would buy celebratory sake.
"I know," Itachi said and Deidara was left staring after him in disbelief. It would have seemed dismissing to anyone else, patronizing and uncaring, but no-one looked at Itachi like he did, picking every word and gesture apart to find some hidden weakness. No-one knew Uchiha Itachi's tells like Deidara did and if the Uchiha had been aware just how well someone had figured him out, he just might have killed Deidara after all.
Because that had been an exceptionally satisfied I know.
AN: Grass Country marriage is based on real marriage custom that was practiced in the Arita region of Wakayama prefecture back in the day.