Chapter 215: Concatenation
Another beautiful afternoon of training. Never had being pelted with metallic projectiles intended to painfully incapacitate her felt so good. In truth, Kei had errands she should have been running this afternoon, and would in any case see Tenten at the gaming night, but after the trauma of yesterday's dinner, she needed to recharge before facing all those people. And, in some bizarre way that made no sense whatsoever, being with Tenten was no more socially draining than being alone. Thus, Kei spent the hours immersing herself in exhausting, violent relaxation. Praise be to Tenten for accommodating her whims.
It was, as ever, painful to part with her girlfriend(?), even in the knowledge that they would meet again a matter of hours hence. On impulse, instead of her usual goodbye nod, she pressed two fingers to her lips. An echo of their previous encounter, more intimate and less vulgar than a blown kiss, and the closest they could get to a real one.
Tenten's eyes shone as she returned the gesture. Then, before Kei could turn around and leave, she spoke hesitantly.
"Are you… free tomorrow?"
Kei reluctantly shook her head. "I have been scheduled for an instance of two individuals spending a day together in order to facilitate greater mutual knowledge and familiarity, arranged in anticipation of a potential long-term relationship." It practically rolled off the tongue at this point.
Tenten stared. "A date?!"
Kei waved her hands in front of her as if to ward off the horror. "No! Why does everyone keep assuming that? I will merely be spending time with my presumptive fiancé."
Her brain caught up with her mouth. Had she ever actually… told Tenten?
In answer, the blood drained out of Tenten's face.
"I—I'm sorry," Tenten whispered. "I misunderstood."
"No, I—"
But Tenten was a blur, disappearing faster than Kei's pathetically slow brain could find appropriate words of reassurance. Faster than she could comprehend what she had just destroyed.
-o-
"Kagome, where is she?"
Desperate times called for desperate measures, and no time had ever been more desperate. Only the prodigious power of Mari-sensei had any chance of finding a way to undo what Kei had done, even if it meant admitting the nature of her relationship with Tenten to another living being.
"Where is she?" Kei demanded again when Kagome failed to offer an instantaneous reply.
Kagome shrugged as if this wasn't an emergency. "Dunno. Haven't seen her all day. She wasn't at breakfast, so I reckon maybe last night's dinner disagreed with her. Hey, where are you—"
-o-
It was fortunate that Mari-sensei was so beautiful and so distinctive. There was no shortage of people in the streets who remembered seeing her, hurrying on her way to some unknown destination. A destination that, when Kei finally reached it, would almost have been better off remaining unknown.
"What a delight to see our most frequent customer, Lady Gōketsu. Welcome back to the Yabai Café!"
The waiter bowed unctuously.
"I regret to inform you, however, that your mother has already booked out our establishment for the day, and also left a warning that anyone who so much as approaches the function room while she is working will meet with instant death."
Despite the urgency of her mission, Kei could not help raising an eyebrow.
"A discounted full-scale booking is a service we are happy to provide during less busy periods."
"Not that. You have a function room?"
"I never said it saw frequent use," the waiter said with a touch of petulance.
"I am wasting time," Kei said. "I assume the function room is upstairs?"
"My most humble apologies," the waiter bowed again, "but your mother's instructions were very specific."
"Stand aside," Kei hissed.
"I have no wish to offend, Lady Gōketsu, but—"
"That was not a request." She met the waiter's eyes. "You are aware of my status as the Hokage's daughter, and as a Leaf shinobi in good standing with the full backing of the government. You may be aware that I am the Pangolin Summoner. Rest assured that I, the fourteen-year-old girl in front of you, require none of those things to make you wish that you were never born."
"R-Right this way."
Contrary to the warnings, Kei did not meet with instant death as she walked through the door. No, what she encountered was much more terrifying.
In a room with closed curtains and no lighting, in one corner, Mari-sensei sobbed.
"Mari-sensei?!"
Mari-sensei looked up. "Keiko, no! You mustn't be here…"
Kei immediately dropped any possibility of explaining the reasons for her presence. What meaning could her personal disaster have in the face of this?
"Go away, Keiko. Please."
"Mari-sensei, what's wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong," Mari-sensei said hoarsely. "Everything's finally in its place. She made me admit the truth. I was just lying to myself. To everyone…"
"What are you talking about?"
"Go away. I don't deserve someone like you."
"That is a lie. You deserve…" Different kinds of love, both current and remembered, stirred within Kei's breast. "You deserve all that is best in the world."
Mari-sensei looked up with what could have been anger, if anger were a limp and lifeless thing. "Don't you understand, Keiko? I've been lying to you. I've been using you all this time."
"I do not understand at all."
"Keiko…" Mari-sensei drew in a ragged breath. "I was never the woman you took me for. I am the one who chose you. All of you. I am the one who put you on Shikigami's list and took away your lives. It was all me."
Despite the gravity of the situation, Kei couldn't help rolling her eyes.
"Well, obviously."
"...What?" The shock was powerful enough to silence Mari-sensei's sobs.
"Was I to believe that Shikigami, who needed to identify candidates with backgrounds that fit his suicide mission cover story, would take the risk of recruiting an extra jōnin into his conspiracy and then not use her speciality of gathering information in a social context? That the only man who knew enough about the Swamp of Death to plan travel, logistics and long-term strategy would not delegate human resources work to a loyal expert? You even told us, so very long ago, that you had researched every one of us in order to prepare blackmail material. As if the petty secrets of young genin merited that level of effort."
"Then… you always knew?"
"I never knew. Eventually, I suspected." As with Minami, the distinction was important. Vitally important.
Mari-sensei collapsed in on herself. "Then you understand. This is the kind of woman I've been all along."
"I always knew you were in some way complicit, Mari-sensei. That does not negate your actions afterward. Nor the bonds we've forged. I cannot claim to fully understand the kind of woman you have been all along—I cannot claim to fully understand anyone—but I believe she is too complex to be reduced to a single point of failure."
"She really isn't," Mari-sensei said bitterly. "Did you know I used to be friends with Hazō's jōnin instructor? My habit of ruffling his hair came from those days. It didn't stop me signing him up to die. Me saving you kids? Keeping you alive? Bonding with you? All lies. When she said it, I had nothing to say back. I was lying to everyone, even myself. Exploiting you for my own benefit. From the beginning and until the end.
"Please go, Keiko. For your own good. It's not too late for you to walk away."
"No."
Mari-sensei gave her a wild-eyed look. "Don't you understand? Ever since we met, I have been using you as a tool!"
"Well, obviously."
Mari-sensei couldn't even speak.
"You saved my life, Mari-sensei. It belonged to you after that. Besides, it wasn't as if I had a better use for it.
"Nor any expectations. Mori are tools. That is what we are, what it means to have no initiative of our own. My inadequacy as a tool was the beginning of the cataclysmic chain reaction that made me the self-loathing creature I am now. For me to be genuinely useful to someone like you was above my aspirations. You taught me. You guided me. You made me better. You have even, at times, encouraged me to express my preferences and develop my agency, for all that my attempts at independence have only added misery to the world.
"The scale of your accomplishments cannot be denied. Look how far we have come from our starting point. Look how far I have come from who I was when you first saw me at the edge of the water. And no matter what you may believe, treating someone as a tool is not incompatible with a familial bond—this, too, is something that I learned from my Mori family.
"I trust you, Mari-sensei. I… I love you. I have never had any regrets about being your tool. If you, one of the people I love most, can truly use me to find happiness, and if I can continue to grow through your use of me, is that not as much of a parent-child relationship as anyone can ask for?"
Would those words be enough? Kei, lacking Mari-sensei's talent for healing others, had nothing more to offer than her own feelings.
Mari-sensei stared at her like a woman seeing the end of the world. "What have I done?" she whispered. "What have I
done?"
Kei felt a terrible fear snaking through her. "I don't understand."
But Mari-sensei said nothing more.
Kei was helpless, unable to so much as guess at what was happening. Even her best attempts to help had somehow made things worse. What could she possibly do if everything she touched turned to ash?
No. There was one thing.
The timing made it plain. "'She made me admit the truth', you said. Mari-sensei, did you speak with Hana again after the rest of us were gone?"
A fractional nod was all she needed.
"I love you, Mari-sensei," she repeated. "I will never abandon you." It needed to be said, because the very next thing Kei did was march out of the room with murder in her eyes.
"You." She caught a waiter—the same luckless waiter—on her way out. "Mari-sensei's business here is private. If you permit a single person within hearing range of that room, or if you confirm her presence in this building to a single soul, then after she is done killing those directly responsible, I will return and call forth giant summon beasts to wipe this café and everyone involved with it off the face of the earth."
The waiter bowed silently, and had not unbowed by the time she left.
-o-
Kei strode through the crowds. She had no illusions of being anything but a young teenager desperately waiting for her next growth spurt, but this afternoon, none who beheld her dared to impede her progress. Which was just as well, since if she slowed down, she might remember that she intended to face Kurosawa Hana without a plan, and that it was not possible for her to create any such plan, and then she would be paralysed.
Mari-sensei's confession—the first confession, which she had forced herself to set aside—ran like venom through her veins. She drew on that fury, redirected it. Her feelings might be in flux, but her loyalties were not.
"I am here to speak with the special envoy," she said at the door to the guest quarters. Her lack of plan extended to the guards, who were unlikely to be as easily intimidated as some hapless civilian. Fortunately, they did not attempt to bar her path.
One last thought caught her as she was about to enter. What if Hazō was inside, working to rebuild
his relationship with
his mother? What if Keiko, with her legendary gift for subtlety, was a sledgehammer about to descend upon that uncertain bond?
The question slowed her, but it did not stop her. Hazō had his battles to fight. She had hers.
"Keiko?" Hazō asked in puzzlement as she entered. "I didn't realise you were coming."
"Do come in," Hana said pleasantly. "We've just finished another batch of cookies."
Kei was about to bring the day of wrath to a long-separated mother and child baking cookies together. Thank you, universe.
"Wait,
Keiko?" Hazō asked with an expression of dawning horror. "No. Nonononono."
He turned to Hana. "Mum, whatever she's going to tell you about my past, it's lies. All lies. Especially the bit about tying her up in the middle of the night in the Mist barracks."
He turned back to Kei. "Keiko, whatever she's going to tell you about my past, it's lies. All lies. Especially the bit about my first crush and the haiku."
"Hazō," Hana said gently. "I think we're done baking for today. Why don't you go home and start setting up for the gaming night? I'll bring the cookies with me."
She began to usher him out.
"But Mum!" he cried desperately, looking at Kei and Hana as if watching somebody carry a lit torch into a coal mine saturated with firedamp. He could well be right, if for the wrong reasons.
"Later, cricket." Hana watched until she was certain he was gone, then closed the door.
"Now," she said to Kei, "I would guess that you're here for a reason."
"Whatever it is you did to Mari-sensei," Kei said without preamble, "undo it. Now."
"What happens between me and that woman is our own private business," Hana said, not unkindly. "It is not something for third parties to stumble into."
"Privacy is irrelevant when one's loved ones are under threat," Kei snapped. "Or would you hesitate to invade mine if you judged me dangerous to Hazō?"
"Not for an instant," Hana agreed. "But if you're willing to go that far, you must believe that you can do a better job of handling that relationship than either of us. Do you think you can understand my feelings better than an experienced, specially-trained adult? Or hers?"
Kei's conviction wavered. How
was she supposed to prevail against Hana if Mari-sensei could not?
But to retreat would be to leave Mari-sensei in that dark room.
"I made no such claim," she said, holding tightly onto that image. If she could not have courage, she could at least have the strength of a cornered animal. "But my capabilities are irrelevant. You are hurting someone I love. Whatever 'truth' you've told her, I do not believe it, and I will not allow a liar into my home."
Hana's eyebrows rose.
"Do you know what she is, Keiko? How much has she told you? Do you know that she caused all this? The woman who chose to take my son from me, and who chose to take Mori Ami—yes, Ren gave me the dossier—from you?"
The venom burned inside Kei. "I know. And now that I know, there will be a reckoning. But it will be when both she and I are ready, not when an outsider attempts to intervene. You want me to respect your relationship with Mari-sensei? Then respect hers and mine."
Hana smiled.
"I like you, Keiko. And I do respect you, especially now you've shown me how far you will go to protect your loved ones. I'm not here to turn you against her, however much she might deserve it. I'm here to restore a family, not to break one. But some things cannot be forgiven. I understand that, and so does she, and someday so will you."
"I do not care whether you forgive her," Kei said bluntly. "That much is your own business. Your feelings are opaque to me, and I do not care to guess at the depth of pain you felt when you lost the only person you loved in the world. Mine is quite enough for me."
She kept imagining Mari-sensei in the dark room. It was the way she could sustain herself in the face of a woman who felt both stronger and wiser than her, and the purity of whose motivations she could not deny. The only way she could withstand any Kurosawa powers Hana might be using, which she could not recognise, and certainly not repel.
"But that pain is no justification to lash out blindly," Kei said. "You could not spend one night in Leaf without discarding tolerance in favour of hostility. Is that how we are supposed to live now? Must we be at war because you do not have the self-control to avoid turning your feelings into action?"
"You do make this difficult, child," Hana said regretfully. "She forced the confrontation. I did not ask for it. She presented me with self-serving lies and I could not go so far against my nature as to accept them. But I came here to be with my son. I didn't ask her to throw herself against me when she was fragile and I wasn't, and she knew full well what I'd been trying to hold back all night.
"Do you feel better now that you've succeeded in invading our private business? Now that you realise the extent to which she did this to herself? You can't fix her, Keiko. I couldn't even if I wanted to. And even if our relationship starts to become more positive in spite of my every expectation, there is no place for you in that process. I didn't want to throw your powerlessness in your face, but there it is.
"Focus on Hazō. He's going to need a friend with your courage when it hits him how hard it is to make the world he wants. Let the adults sort out their own mess."
It was compelling. So painfully compelling. Kei finally understood the terror of the diplomat clan. Hana was presenting a reasonable narrative, one in which everything that happened was both natural and inevitable, and yet that somehow led to "Mari-sensei brought it on herself" and "There is nothing you can do".
What was Kei's narrative? She did not have one. She did not even have a plan. All she had was her anger, and a naïve desire to protect.
She hated this, how her supposedly great intellect invariably failed her in times of crisis, forcing her to grope blindly in the dark against overwhelming odds. Hated herself for being so weak.
That narrative was eternal and unchanging.
Kei should just surrender. She had overreached. She had thrown a tantrum and an adult had patiently explained why she was wrong. She had somehow allowed herself to believe that throwing down the gauntlet was the only thing necessary to succeed, after having learned no more than the mere basics of the art of intimidation. She had failed Mari-sensei, both as a pupil and as a rescuer. She would focus on Hazō and let the adults sort out their own mess.
Hana's narrative was the only narrative. She had no choice to accept it. But, the thought came to her like one sudden beam of light through the storm clouds, did that necessarily mean defeat?
"Are
you focusing on Hazō, Hana?"
Hana blinked. "Of course I am. He's all that matters."
"And Mari-sensei is…" it took Kei a second to make herself say it, "a terrible human being unworthy to be called his parent for innumerable reasons."
"Charitably put, yes."
"Then why are you in competition with her?"
Hana's eyes flared. It was the shattering of a mask that Kei had not even realised was there. "I am not in competition with that woman! I am
his mother!"
"I," Kei said, "spent the entirety of last night being a DMZ because you two could not share Hazō, an experience I assure you I am not eager to repeat. When I, who have the social perceptiveness of a myopic trout, am able to recognise a concealed power struggle, you know you have reached the limits of your vaunted adulthood."
"It was a compromise! Would you rather we'd fought in front of my child?"
"That is exactly what you did," Kei said. "And I cannot imagine how hurt he must have been at the idea that you might force him to make a choice."
There was silence for a few seconds.
"There could never be a choice," Hana said quietly. "I am his mother. After what she's done, she has no right to call herself his anything."
"He disagrees."
"Then he's wrong. It's that simple."
It was remarkable how much easier Hana was to deal with without the mask.
"Why should that matter?" Kei asked. "Hazō is regularly wrong, often in spectacular and unforgettable ways. None of us are exempt from living with the consequences of his errors. Why should you be any different?"
"Are you telling me to tolerate her, Keiko? To let that viper keep poisoning my child's mind just because he doesn't know any better?"
Use Hana's narrative. Draw on its strength since you have none of your own.
"Is Mari-sensei's influence over him greater than yours? You with the truth on your side and her with self-serving lies?"
Hana looked as if she had bitten into an acerbic tomato.
"And how would that be different from the power struggle you claim we're in?"
"Because you would not be lashing out against each other," Kei said simply. "Because you would not be attempting to force Hazō to sever ties with somebody he loves. You should not be threatened by a person you consider incapable of being his mother. On her part, Mari-sensei, or your vision of her, should know that tools can be shared as well as fought over.
"If I have learned anything over two years of bonding with strange people in the wilderness, it is that in a tight-knit group, each member is constantly influencing the personalities of the others. If you wish to join our tight-knit group, then you must accept that you will not be the only influence on Hazō, and that you will be influenced in return."
"Yes," Hana muttered to herself. "Please beat the career diplomat with arguments from human social behaviour."
She reached for a cookie and consumed it in three huge bites. Then another. Something about her relaxed, though of course Kei lacked the competence to determine what.
"You call that woman your sensei, right?"
"…Yes?"
"Then by the power that would be vested in me by the Mizukage if I really insisted, I hereby retroactively pronounce you a social-spec in training. I
refuse to be out-argued by an amateur."
After Kei was done choking, she forced out, "That cannot
possibly be valid by Leaf law."
"If I have the measure of the Hokage after that afterparty, he'll ratify it because he thinks it's funny."
Damn.
"Now shoo. I have a great deal of thinking to do thanks to you,
and I have to prepare for tonight, and I am expected to defend the honour of the Kurosawa at the gaming table—not that the bastards deserve it, and you never heard me say that—despite having only just heard of this Strategic Dominance.
And I have to somehow not eat all the cookies despite craving sugar after that trial of a conversation."
Suddenly, despite being prepared to murder her an hour earlier, Kei felt as if she and Hana could become friends after all—or what passed for friends when one person was thrice the other's age and very indirectly their stepmother, while the other was so incompetent at friendship that post-Uplift scholars would doubtless write entire treatises analysing it.
The younger Lady Gōketsu allowed herself to be shooed, though not before pilfering a cookie for herself.
Nothing was over. She still could not begin to imagine how to lift Mari-sensei from the abyss Hana had plunged her into, nor how to reconcile that unforgivable act with the sympathetic humanity Hana had revealed. Kei had radically intervened in Hazō's life in a fashion that would result in a massacre were anyone to even dream of doing it to her own, and she did not have a moral code sufficiently developed to process the hypocrisy. She had allowed her anger to cast her into a confrontation that could have ended in countless different flavours of disaster, both for herself and for her loved ones, and on some level it frightened her that this destructive instinct was becoming her default response to social conflict.
But for all that, in this place, at this time, she had won. She had defeated a social-spec stronger than Mari-sensei, on her home ground and without a plan. She did not know how long this wave of euphoria would last before she returned to drowning in familiar darkness, but she intended to savour every drop of it while it did.
And there was one more matter to address, while she still felt as if she could do anything. A young woman needed to know that she would always be Kei's partner, at gaming nights and everywhere else.
