A heavy weight hung over the Naked Jailbird. Noburi was irritated over being pulled away from a rare dissection with Dr Yakushi—Leaf had just acquired a missing-nin with a Bloodline Limit who'd been stupid enough to think Leaf's rough year meant it couldn't patrol its borders, and Orochimaru was uninterested due to having already captured a couple of the woman's relatives during his "training journey" (not that he could be bothered to share the data, or, as Dr Yakushi put it, "the Master feels Leaf's researchers could benefit from the opportunity to practice"). On top of that, etiquette meant he couldn't pull out Yuno's lunchbox in the middle of an inn that served food, and would have to make do with the lunch of mere mortals.
Meanwhile, Akane had been on edge ever since the Haru affair, which they were all reminded of every time they walked through the estate. And Mari, Kei, and Snowflake in the same room… did he even need to explain? The civilian patrons had already fled the inn, sensing a brewing confrontation between angry ninja, and Noburi made a note to remind Hazō to reimburse the place.
"Thank you for coming," Hazō began as the waiter, sweating even though it was midwinter, hurried away after taking their order. "I know I'm pulling you away from all sorts of very important business"—Noburi, Kei, and Snowflake nodded—"but I could really do with some advice."
"Before that," Mari said, "would you mind if I got something out of the way?"
"Sure," Hazō said.
Mari's sweet smile as she played with her chopsticks gave Noburi a very bad feeling.
"How long have you been dating Ami?"
The chain of reactions was as predictable as it was painful.
Kei and Snowflake froze in place. Killing intent began to resonate between them, boosting itself to heights a single Kei could never reach alone.
"Are you kidding?" Noburi asked before he could stop himself. "You told me you wouldn't hit that"—the sisters turned to look at him—"
level of courage if the Sage himself told you to!"
"Hazō," Akane asked evenly, "are you in fact dating Ami?"
"No!" Hazō exclaimed with the panicked urgency of a running sealmaster. "I don't know what she told you, but I swear we called it a draw!"
"A draw?!" everyone, including Mari, exclaimed in unison.
Noburi recognised in Hazō's face the all-too familiar paleness of a man realising he had snatched defeat from the jaws of considerably more bearable defeat.
"It's not what it sounds like!" Hazō added, just in case he wasn't doomed enough already.
"How reassuring," Kei purred with no warmth in her voice whatsoever. "Because it sounds to me as if you used a romantic relationship with my sister as the subject of a competition, an act of vilest disrespect that somehow manages to bring the central sin to extraordinary new lows."
"It doesn't matter," Akane said. "If Hazō says he's not dating Ami, then he's not dating Ami. The details aren't that important, and I really think we should save them for another time. Hazō, what was it you wanted to talk to us about?"
"No, no," Mari said. "I want to hear more about this. Was Ami actually planning to date Hazō depending on how your bet played out? The implications are making my head spin."
Somehow, Kei and Snowflake's expressions grew even darker. "Yes, Hazō. Details, if you please," Snowflake said.
Looking at Hazō, Noburi could tell that the details were only going to make the situation worse. He didn't particularly relish making himself the focus of the sisters' attention, but he still owed Hazō for bailing during the Haru affair (not that even Gōketsu Noburi could have salvaged a screwup that monumental), and sometimes a man had to do what a man had to do.
"Nobody has any idea what Ami is and isn't planning to do," he said with deliberate lightness. "That's half the point of her. What
I want to know is how our resident queen of gossip managed to get the wrong end of the stick. You saying Hazō and Ami are dating is like when Kagome talks about Leaf's experiments to get the Wood Element back by injecting kids with bits of the First Hokage's body."
"All the estate genin are talking about it," Mari said unrepentantly. "Supposedly, Ami turned up at an important KEI meeting wearing her hair in some braid nobody had ever seen before, and when the girls asked about it, she said Lord Gōketsu had braided her hair."
Akane gasped. "Hazō!"
"What?" Hazō asked warily.
"Is this true? Did you braid Ami's hair?"
"Well, yeah," Hazō said. "But it was just a private joke. It wasn't anything… inappropriate."
The energy drained out of Akane in a single burst. "Hazō," she said wearily, "the only time a man braids a woman's hair in Leaf is if he's her father or older brother and she's just got engaged. It's meant to represent him tying off her past with her old family. If someone does it to a woman he's not closely related to… well, nobody has any idea what that means, but it makes total sense for people to interpret it as you 'staking a claim', especially with a reputation like yours. And Ami might know that and be playing a prank, or she might be sending signals and I have no idea what they mean, or she might just not know because she's from Mist and it's an old-fashioned practice you don't see much of these days."
"Actually," Hazō said, "it was my idea. Although I guess she's the one that kept on wearing it. And also, just so we're clear on this, I did not know about this custom, Ami and I are just friends or allies or siblings by the transitive property or
something, but at any rate it's something completely non-romantic, and the rumour mill is just as wrong as when it said I was collecting girlfriends in order to replicate the secret orgy-powered rituals that gave Jiraiya his powers as a hero of legend."
Noburi pre-emptively locked down his mind before it could conjure any images. The others' frowns and winces suggested they were doing the same, except for Mari, who giggled.
"To confirm," Kei said, "you at no point entered a relationship with my sister, nor proposed one, nor intend to do so in the future."
"All of that is correct," Hazō said after a second.
Snakes on a demiplane. They'd navigated the conflict without casualties. (Also, Kei's book of Toad Clan curses was worth its weight in gold.)
"And why not?" Kei demanded.
"I-I beg your pardon?"
"Exactly what is it about my sister that does not satisfy you? Are you claiming that she is insufficiently beautiful? Insufficiently brilliant? Insufficiently creative? How do you, who have already twice seduced your own subordinate across a staggering power gap, accepted the unimaginable risks inherent in dating a mind-reader from a rival clan, and embraced even the inhuman in pursuit of your objectives, justify rejecting this opportunity to enter into a romance with the paragon of womanhood? In what way does she fail to meet your standards?"
Everybody stared at Kei, stunned. Hazō opened his mouth several times, but no words came out. Even Noburi wasn't going to be able to save him this time.
After a few seconds of drinking in Hazō's horror, Kei and Snowflake burst out laughing.
"Ah… my apologies… Hazō," Kei choked out. "I… needed some stress relief… after your latest iniquities. In retrospect…
of course Ami would not consider the likes of you worthy of her affections. The idea that she should allow herself to be tainted by such a lowly being is frankly unimaginable."
Noburi and Hazō exchanged awkward glances. Mari grinned.
"Kei," Noburi said very carefully, "I think your sister is pretty cool, and I wouldn't dream of insulting her, but you do know that she is a very experienced seduction expert?"
"That hardly counts," Kei said dismissively. "Hazō has also been conducting regular routine activities within the framework of his profession—namely, sealing research and exposure to the attendant sealing failures—ever since he began to study under Kagome, yet I do not claim that two years ago he changed his personal relationship with the basic laws governing this plane of existence, or somehow transformed into a transdimensional being. By the same token, a woman of Ami's calibre is capable of pursuing a lifelong career as an I&S specialist without being corrupted in the least, unlike other,
lesser practitioners."
Mari's grin faded. She opened her mouth—
"Oh, no," Noburi said quickly, "my lunch break is almost over, and if I keep Dr Yakushi waiting, he'll keep Orochimaru waiting, and I do not want him coming over for a word. Hazō, hurry up with the actual reason you called us here."
"Right!" Hazō nodded vigorously. "So I was thinking about Yuno…"
-o-
Yuno had an ominous feeling about today. Had it really been an innocent social occasion like Hazō was pretending, would he have made a point of wearing an outfit so in line with the basics of Isanese decency, with the green rosette to acknowledge that he was having a private meal with a married woman (even if having Satsuko as a chaperone simplified matters enormously)? Would the table be set up according to proper etiquette, with the chopsticks exactly a centimetre apart on a white rest and the left shutter on the nearest window half-open while the other remained closed? The more she looked, the more suspicious Yuno grew. Were the mistakes natural or deliberate? The yellow cushion for Satsuko followed the proper forms of a child's seat, but Satsuko was not only older than either of them, but older than Isan itself, having been retrieved from one of Ui's secret caches shortly after the founding of the village.
What did the formality mean? Was he about to banish her, now that her use as a bridge to Isan was over? She'd done her best to be useful to the clan. She went on missions, and she helped people train, and she cooked for full family dinners now that they were too big for Kagome to manage alone. She hadn't even
maimed Mari, even though she was clearly the reason why Kei rarely came by the compound anymore, or Noburi even though his eyes kept wandering. Yuno was prepared to forgive the way his gaze lingered just a little too long on Kei sometimes—the Pangolin Summoner was special; there was nothing to be done about that—but they were married now, and he was still acting like other girls were relevant or worse. He'd gone to a lot of effort, lately, to convince Yuno that she was his one and only, and Yuno believed that he believed that, but she also knew it was only a matter of time.
"Yuno," Hazō said, "thanks for waiting for me. There's something important I need to say to you, and it might be a little difficult to say, so please be patient with me."
Oh, no. Would she and Noburi still be married if she stopped being a Gōketsu? She was sure Kei would accept her in the KEI if worst came to worst, or maybe even put in a good word with the Kei, since adoptions were due to refresh soon, but losing Noburi a second time, because of something that wasn't even his fault... she didn't want to imagine it.
"Before," Hazō said, "you asked me why I would like you despite your flaws. I think I'm ready to answer that question.
"You have amazing strength of character," Hazō said. "You've overcome the kind of adversity most people never get subjected to. Your life has been a worse trial than anything I've faced, and I've been through Hell Week, the Swamp of Death, the Chūnin Exam, multiple killboxes, and having to train with Rock Lee. A lot of ninja numb themselves after going through experiences like that. They silence their souls rather than continuing to face a world that's constantly asking for more than they can give. You haven't done that. When you smile at Noburi, I can see that you still love, without holding back. When you laugh with Akane, I can see that your heart's still open. When the Hagoromo outed Kei and Leaf turned against her, you acted with empathy and compassion even though it must have brought back some terrible memories."
"You're talking as if that's special," Yuno said. "Everybody feels the way they feel. Noburi said the Mizukage thought every ninja should be an emotionless tool, but in Isan we know that people can't live like that. Ui won because he fought with passion. As for me, I've never had anything but my feelings. If I didn't have those, I wouldn't have anything at all.
"Sorry, Satsuko," she nodded to her best friend. "You don't count. You're in your own category."
"You'd be surprised," Hazō said. "You know how ninja often drink to forget? There are plenty of ninja who
live to forget. They build their entire lives around not having to feel anything, from their hobbies to their relationships, because the alternative is more painful than they can handle. You don't run away from your pain like that, and I think that
is special.
"But that's just one of the reasons I like you. Another is that you're brave. Ridiculously brave. You're fearless in combat, even when the odds are against you. You fight fiercely to protect your teammates."
"How do you know that?" Yuno interrupted. "You've never seen me fight, not for real."
Hazō hesitated for a second. "Mission reports," he said. "Anyway, that's not important. What really proves how brave you are is the way you travelled to Leaf after the High Priest deceived everyone in Isan into following him. The rest of us had our own journey through the wilderness, full of chakra beasts, and killer plants, and hostile ninja who'd kill us just because we weren't from the same village, and all kinds of other dangers, with no more equipment or food than we could carry, and precious few ways of getting more. We got through it because we were together, whether it was by planning, or teamwork, or combining our special abilities, or just having numbers when it came to a fight. You did it alone."
"I wasn't alone," Yuno objected. "I had Satsuko. And it wasn't really that bad. I mean, I suppose I did nearly die a lot of times, but that's normal. And I got to fight all sorts of interesting chakra beasts we don't have in Isan, and if people acted uncivil, I could do what I wanted to them without worrying about what Grandfather would say."
"You might not think it's a big deal," Hazō said, "but I think there are very few people who would have willingly gone through what you did, and even fewer who would have kept doing it until they got what they wanted instead of giving up and going back.
"Which leads to another reason I like you. You're loyal. Isan treated you awfully. Even in Mist, people weren't so cruel to each other. If the government decided you were a bad person, you disappeared. They didn't keep you around just so they could exploit you and bully you. But you still loved Isan. Maybe not Isan as it was, but Isan as it could be, or as it was supposed to be, and you went on that hellish journey in order to save it. You risked your life for the sake of people who hated you. If that's not loyalty, I don't know what is."
Yuno shrugged. She didn't know if it was loyalty either. The people of Isan had deserved everything they'd brought on themselves. If they'd had a shred of goodness in them to begin with, they wouldn't have listened to the High Priest when he started telling them to be evil. She should have let them die, in five hundred different ways, instead of abandoning her journey across the continent to hunt down the Pangolin Summoner and beg her to save them. It didn't make sense, and never would.
"Finally, and maybe most importantly," Hazō said, "you're passionate. You love your country—completely apart from how you feel about the people in it—and you love your culture, and you love Noburi, and you do it with obvious zeal that I, frankly, find inspiring. I have one thing about which I can feel so intensely passionate, maybe two, but you bring that kind of intensity to everything you care about. I don't think you appreciate the lengths that many ninja go to in order to avoid making themselves vulnerable. Some close off their hearts completely. You throw yours wide open.
"Your heart's been beaten, bruised, maybe even scarred by everything that's been done to you. And still it loves. Passionately. Vibrantly. It shines with every colour of emotion. Despite everything the world's thrown at you, you stand unbroken. Undefeated.
Stronger after the trials you've faced.
"So when I look at you, I don't see someone strange, or unlikeable, or bad at being a person, or any of those other things you said or meant to say. I see a ninja worthy of respect. No, of admiration. I see Gōketsu Yuno, someone I'm proud to share a name with, and my beloved sister."
"Oh," Yuno said dazedly. "That… That means an awful lot to me, Hazō, but I already asked Noburi, and Leaf doesn't allow double-marriages, and in any case…"
"What?" Hazō exclaimed. "Nonono, Yuno, this isn't a love confession. I'm saying I love you in a platonic fashion, the way somebody loves a friend or a family member—or in this case, both."
"So… you want me as a friend?"
"Yes," Hazō said. "I mean, I originally thought we already were friends, but let's eliminate any confusion about that once and for all. Gōketsu Yuno, will you be my friend?"
Yuno's breath caught. That was probably the first time anyone had ever asked her that. Satsuko was special, and Akane had acted like a friend from the moment they met, and Kei had never used the word—with an ordinary person, Yuno might have wondered if they were embarrassed. But Hazō was asking if she wanted to be her friend, in a formal, unambiguous, and binding way. It was as if he'd given her a bouquet of razor lilies the way she'd always dreamt someone would, only those didn't grow in Leaf, so she'd have to make do with a speech full of things that couldn't possibly be true but were somehow hard to argue against.
"Yes, please!"
Hazō laughed. "We should have done this a long time ago.
"Speaking of marriages," he added, "something I've been wondering about… Your public wedding ceremony was great, and turning the Hagoromo's traps on them was nothing short of hilarious, but what do you think about doing it again but properly? We could have a private ceremony, with just the family, no politics involved, and we could do it in proper Isan style. The alliance talks should be done soon—boy, could Aunt Ren learn from the Isanese—and we can even import some tapirs, assuming that's a thing you have in Isanese weddings."
Yuno gave him the look that speculation merited. How could you even use the word "wedding" without thinking of tapirs?
"As my sister-in-law, my clanswoman, and my friend, you deserve the best of everything, and that includes the best wedding, as close to Isan tradition as possible."
Yuno allowed herself to imagine it for a second. The wedding she'd dreamed of her entire life, with the clay hats, and the caltrops, and the secret pigeon, and yes, the tapirs…
She shook her head sadly. "Even if it made sense for a person to get two weddings, which I don't know if it does, I've been exiled. I'm not a ninja of Isan anymore. No proper priest would ever officiate at my wedding, and even if they did, they wouldn't do it properly because they think I'm a traitor. Besides, I don't think you'd get the tapirs. That would be like Isan trying to import Inuzuka dogs. But thank you for asking."
"Any time," Hazō said. "And Yuno? I know Leaf's been a bit overwhelming for you. Don't forget you're not alone. We're all strangers in a strange land here. Except Akane. And Atomu. And Reo. And Mai. And possibly Snowflake, who's a Fire citizen by birth, minus the citizen part because she's a shadow clone. And Haru.
"But you take my point. We all know Leaf is strange and difficult to get used to. Did you know they knock on wood to ward off bad luck here?"
"What?!" Yuno said. "No wonder things have been going so badly for them!"
Hazō nodded. "Everyone knows that when you knock on wood it's because your ship's sunk and you're begging a passing vessel to let you on board. You don't do it unless you're desperate."
"What? No," Yuno said. "You knock on wood to wake the kami of judgement and call them to witness when someone's committed a crime against you. This is why Mist has such a problem with justice! You never call the kami when you're supposed to!
"I'm going to spend the rest of my life surrounded by barbarians," she muttered.
"It gets worse," Hazō said. "Did you know they use trial by jury here?"
"What's a jury?"
"Chakra catfish. Mostly used in civil cases by rich civilians. If you've heard people say the jury's still out, it means they can't find an impartial judge to read the entrails."
"That's insane! Everybody knows that if you want a fair trial, you take a cat that's already given birth…"
-o-
"…and that's the
proper reason why architects don't plan around chakra adhesion," Yuno concluded. "But I should get going now. Akane and I have a mission."
"What's that?" Hazō asked.
"A chakra beast hunt!" Yuno said, beaming. "I had really high hopes for the recursive gnus after looking at the notes the Amori gave us, but their documentation turned out to be terrible. This one's going to be a lot better. Akane and I are going to pick up an Inuzuka tracker, and then we're heading to northeast Fire to look for some missing patrols. It's going to be my first time leading a mission, since I'm Leaf's biggest chakra beast extermination expert and they were probably eaten by chakra beasts. I'm so excited!"
"You are?" Hazō frowned for some reason.
"Probably," Yuno said. "You guys don't often send your jōnin on chakra beast hunts—if a chakra beast's too dangerous for chūnin to handle, and it's a choice between risking jōnin and sacrificing a village or two, it generally ends up being the latter. Whereas I've been regularly fighting chakra beasts since I was… well, since the day Daddy died. Obviously, I'm still learning my way around the Fire Country—your quislings are way better than our quislings—but that's why I've got a couple of chūnin to back me up. Hopefully I'll get to kill lots of new and interesting things, and who knows, maybe we'll even find some survivors."
"Good luck," Hazō said. "Don't kill anything I wouldn't kill."
"No promises," Yuno said. "Satsuko's getting hungry. Thanks for the lunch!"
-o-
You have received 6 XP.
-o-
You have forwarded your notes on the scrip to the Tower and received a generic thank-you message.
Trade channels with Isan have not yet been established, but ordering supplies has been added to Gaku's to-do carpet. Yuno is pessimistic, however, since it will be obvious whom they are for, and as an exile, she may be ineligible to receive religious texts and the like.
Kagome really appreciates your services as a sounding board for his research. He hasn't said anything, but you can tell he misses the days when you would just sit down, master and apprentice, and talk sealing theory that wasn't urgently needed to save the world, and you'd propose things no sane sealmaster would touch with a ten-foot pole, and he'd scream and rant, and eventually you'd convince him you hadn't been taken over by lupchanzen, and the two of you would calm your nerves with chocolate before starting the whole thing again.
-o-
What do you do?
Voting closes on Saturday 7th of August, 1 p.m. New York time.
