Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

They didn't talk again until they were safely away from the clearing and back at their temporary base. Kagome-sensei went off to check the perimeter and Kei and Snowflake to gather the portion of their supplies they'd set aside for Tenten's use (and to silently reintegrate Fujisawa's), leaving Hazō momentarily alone with Tenten.

Hazō remembered his first time going missing. Even years since, he remembered his first and simultaneously endless footfalls down a one-way path, with murderous hunter-nin snapping at the squad's heels and no hope of return even if he did everything right. He remembered the constant, acute awareness that he was now the village's number one enemy; that through no fault of his own, he was now hated, hunted, and doomed to kill or die if he ever ran into his old comrades. How long had it taken him to accept his new way of life? How long before he was able to look beyond pure survival and find the new purpose that he'd eventually name Uplift? Could he have done it on strength of will alone, without constant support from Mari, who'd taken being a missing-nin in stride exactly as if she'd been planning for it from the start, and normalised what would otherwise have been a constant state of heart-rending abandonment and betrayal?

Hazō was the leader now. It was his responsibility to manage the transition for the people in his care, and none more than Tenten, who would actually have been betrayed by her village and forced to flee for her life, only she'd run in advance, making her the betrayer.

"Tenten," he said, putting all the warmth into his voice that he could, "thank you. Really. I've been where you are, more or less, and I get what it must have cost you to leave Leaf with nothing to go on but Kei's words on a piece of paper."

"I was prepared," Tenten said, with gentle denial.

Hazō blinked. "You… were? Kei can't have warned you about the mission. If she knew why we might have to run, then she knew OPSEC would make the difference between life and death."

Tenten shook her head.

"Kei talks about you all the time," she said. "I listen. One day, you'd make her choose between you and Leaf. I needed to choose too."

"Oh," Hazō said after a moment to absorb this. He found himself intensely curious to know what kind of things Kei said about him, especially if they'd led an uninvolved third party to reach that conclusion, but this wasn't the time–and besides, he doubted Tenten was in any hurry to have an extended verbal conversation (even if she'd apparently made stunning progress under Kei's tutelage).

"Still," he said, "it's enormous that you made that choice, no matter how long you had to think. I never got a choice, and I'm almost glad for it when I think about how difficult it must have been for you."

"I learned from the Nara," Tenten said with a small smile. "Kei on one side. Then Snowflake too. Everything else on the other. It…"

She paused to find the right words.

"It hurt, but… it wasn't hard. You choose the side that weighs more."

Huh.

Yeah, it was kind of like that, wasn't it? Hazō had left Ino back in Leaf, even knowing that he'd probably broken her heart, and he might not be able to reverse that just by eventually proving he'd had a good reason. (He'd managed to win Akane back once just by fixing his mistakes, but Akane was Akane, and miracles like her didn't happen twice.) He'd left behind Gaku, Atomu, Honoka, Sasha, and a dozen other Gōketsu who meant something to him when he remembered they existed. He'd left behind hundreds of civilians who'd placed their lives in his hands. He'd left behind projects, aspirations, and ambitions. He'd left behind a torn but apparently salvageable bond with Shikamaru and a potential friendship with Naruto that kept failing to click. He could keep listing people and things he'd lost all day and never run out.

He also didn't question for a second whether he'd made the right decision.

If Hazō ever turned out to be wrong, it was because there had been a more efficient, more reliable option for accomplishing his goals and he'd been too tunnel-visioned to see it. The notion that he'd chosen the wrong goals to begin with was abstract, meaningless, something for future historians to argue about when they had nothing better to do.

Apparently, Tenten was like that too, only her goal was Kei–and once she decided Kei outweighed everything else, it didn't matter that the everything else was also precious and worth giving up her life for.

"The rest of us will make sure we're worthy of your trust," Hazō said. "I promise you that. We won't let you regret your decision.

"I don't think there's much I can add right now. Welcome to Team Uplift, Tenten. Now, I've got a bunch of new seals to scribe, so I'll let Kei take point on helping you customise your loadout, and then there are…" he trailed off when he realised Tenten wasn't listening.

"Tenten?"

Kei appeared beside her. "Ah," she said sheepishly, "this is embarrassing. Hazō, I suspect that over the course of our relationship, I may have given Tenten the impression that, my bond with her aside, there is nothing more"–she looked away for a moment–"nothing more important to my existence than Team Uplift and my place within it. The notion of being included in this most crucial part of my life, from which she was naturally barred as an outsider and expected to be so forever, is perhaps a touch overwhelming."

"..." Tenten added, her face somehow conveying the most exotic mixture of shock, joy, more shock, unease, disorientation, hope, and some extra shock in case anyone missed it the first and second times round.

"You may need to work on the banter," Hazō said with deadpan seriousness, "but you've already checked off the treason, family loyalty, Uplift compatibility, complicated love life, and 'being prepared for me to cause trouble' requirements. All you need now is a distinctive special interest and–"

Tenten tapped her shuriken holster meaningfully.

"–welcome aboard," Hazō concluded.

Kei hugged Tenten, Tenten recovered enough to hug her back, and with that, a fragment of guilt that Hazō hadn't even known he had suddenly melted away.


"That's a problem," Hazō said.

"It's a problem, yep," Kagome-sensei agreed. "But hey, the rift is closed!"

At least that was true. Years ago, the bladehorrors, Hazō-imitating monstrosities of razor-sharp steel, had sprung from a rift that looked like a shimmering piece of dark metal in this spot. Now, there was no sign of that metal hovering in the air. That was good.

Unfortunately, Hazō could see the rift's former site. Granite rubble surrounded the old foundations of the box, which varied between a couple inches and a couple feet, all connected by the smooth cuts of a razor edge rather than the jagged fractures of intense force. That was bad.

"So, the bladehorrors got out of the box, and then did… what?" Hazō asked.

Kagome-sensei shrugged. "Doesn't matter. Probably terrorized the nearby everything. It's been years, so the rift closed up, and if the critters are still running around, they're gonna be so spread out that we won't get swarmed. Someone else's problem. Probably."

"It was a good thing we moved camp immediately, then," Hazō said. "I hope everyone remembers where this is."

"That was a good idea you had," Kagome-sensei said. "Checking the team for genjutsu from that cheating-eyeball stinker. Hope they don't get annoyed at needing to run four more hours to meet us."

"It should work out," Hazō said. "I'll run back tomorrow and drop Canvass off to greet them. If she smells followers, she'll dispel and I'll know immediately. Otherwise, she can lead them along my trail."

"Can the stinker genjutsu Canvass?"

"I… I don't think so. Itachi probably wouldn't know how to replicate her sense of smell exactly, and she'd probably notice the slightest mistake, right? She's smelled most of those people before. But…" Hazou hesitated. "I can't say for sure when the Sharingan is involved."

Kagome-sensei scowled and muttered something threatening about the eyeball cheaters. Hazō decided to let his sensei stew. Within a couple hours, he'd probably come up with a half-dozen potential improvements to their contact plan to keep the team safe. Instead, Hazō started the slow process of erecting walls and creating Substitution target chains so he could approach the rift to inspect it.


"I told you, boy, I don't have any interest in swearing any oaths at my age, least of all to you!" Fukasaku said. "And even if I did tie my soul into a knot for a squirming tadpole of a human, I damn well wouldn't be promising absolute secrecy for something you haven't even told me yet!"

"It's important," Hazō said. "Really, truly important. Not just for my safety and for Noburi's, which are both true, but for the fate of the world."

"And I don't give a flying flea! I'd sooner take an oath to tell everyone. I'll keep it quiet if I want, but I won't be swearing a thing."

Hazō swore (as in, profanely) internally. He really needed the Toad Sages to make the oath so that Akatsuki wouldn't somehow be able to cut through the Toads to get at Hazō and his team, but they were too obstinate. Fukasaku was, at least, and Shima was apparently out and about running errands.

"Fine," Hazō said. "But I'll want you to swear that you'll keep it a secret after I tell you."
"Fat chance, boy."

Hazō grit his teeth. "You'll see. So, this is about the rift on O'uzu-"

"I knew it!" Fukasaku said. "Skip all the bullshit, I don't want you explaining it all to me a third time."

"Well, Akatsuki finally came by Leaf asking about me, and I can't let them find me and discover runecrafting. I'm going missing from Leaf so that I can keep developing runes to oppose them, to try to stop them from gaining control over the rift and resurrecting Pain."

"Hmph. Leaf seemed like a nice place. That Hiruzen fellow was quite polite. You could learn a thing or two from him."

"He's dead, sir," Hazō said. "Though not for long, if all goes well."

Fukasaku scowled. "Right. Your damn rift. If these other schmucks are taking it seriously, then maybe there's something to it."

"Exactly. Plus, I'm not betraying Leaf, you know. I'm not breaking any of my oaths. This is really in Leaf's best interests. Here, take a look at this," Hazō said, handing over Naruto's carefully written letter instructing Hazō to go missing.

Fukasaku took the letter and frowned, then brandished it back at Hazō.

"Bah! I hate reading your ugly human script," Fukasaku said. "It's fine when there's an elegant poet or a genius ninjutsu designer penning beautiful scrolls, but the rest of the time it's nastier than pondscum in August. Well, I don't care about your damned letters any more than I care about the damned oaths you think I should take. Any polite visitor would speak their demands to my face, instead of foisting off the responsibility to ink and paper."

"Right, sir, I'm sorry," Hazō said, the Iron Nerve keeping any irritation at the Toad Sage's frankly unreasonable outburst off his face. "The letter…"

The letter revealed a critical secret – that Hazō was going missing at Naruto's request. Hazō going missing could damn his family in Leaf, his clan, to Akatsuki's torture, but this secret was bigger. If Akatsuki knew that Naruto had ordered this, they could burn Leaf to the ground.

And Itachi or Kisame might come visit the Toad Sages to ask about Hazō and Noburi, both of whom had been known to interact with the Toad Sages. And the Toad Sages wouldn't take any oaths on Hazō's behalf. The Toad Sages were strong, and they wouldn't be as easy for Itachi to coerce as Naruto had been (and for all Kei's words, Hazō was still irritated with the boy Hokage who apparently had all the willpower of a particularly recalcitrant peanut), but if they leaked word to Akatsuki that Hazō's plan was anything less than a total betrayal of Leaf, it could spell the village's end.

Besides, Fukasaku didn't seem to particularly mind that he'd betrayed Leaf anyway. The Toad Sage liked Leaf, but he'd only had one truly loyal summoner in Jiraiya. He'd get over it.

"The letter wasn't very important," Hazō said, finally. "I'm sorry for wasting your time, sir."

"Don't just say it. Act like it by leaving me alone," Fukasaku said. "Is there something important happening, or are you finally going to take your dogs and get out of here?"

"Uchiha Itachi," Hazō said. "He's a Sharingan user and extremely skilled with genjutsu, to the point that he can outright puppeteer people. He was the one to visit Leaf, and might have suspected that I'd go missing. If so, he might have hit Noburi with a genjutsu to make him think that he wasn't being monitored, then followed after him to find me. When Noburi reverse summons to Gamadai, can you check him over for genjutsu, and if he's clear, tell him to meet us by the bladehorror rift?"

Fukasaku thought about it for a second. "Sure. 'Bladehorror rift,' huh? It's a little annoying to head down to Gamadai, but we can do it once. And if there's one thing me and Ma know forwards and backwards, it's genjutsu. Can't let the Crow Summoner be fooling our clan's summoner when he's on important business. Now, if that's all, get out of here."


Hazō heard the team coming before he saw Canvass' mottled gray-brown coat break out of the forest's thorny underbrush – mostly through the occasional sound of a branch snapping as the much larger Noburi struggled to follow the dog and the pair of jōnin he'd found himself with.

Canvass hadn't dispelled herself, so she hadn't noticed anything amiss, right? Hazō waved to Mari, Yuno, and Noburi from behind the walls of Kagome's improvised fortress while his Earth Clone went out to ask them for recognition codes. If they were careful, Canvass should have smelled any ground-based pursuer, and what sort of aerial pursuer would have followed Noburi's team for so long? Any Leaf patrol would long since have attacked, and even Akatsuki… well, the Toad Sages apparently hadn't noticed anything wrong with Noburi. So they were safe. There was no one following them.

The earth clone raised its orange flag ("Use orange and blue, so in case the stinker uses a genjutsu on the earth clone, he won't know which one is the good one," Kagome-sensei had said), and Hazō wasted no time leaping over the walls and following the safe path out to meet the team, Kagome, Kei, and the newly-Uplift Tenten close on his heels.

He reached the edge of the trap perimeter and opened his mouth to call out, only to have the breath taken out of him as Mari accelerated in a streak of red to grab him in a hug.

After a moment, he closed his arms around her back and felt that knot of uncertainty in the back of his mind finally relax.

"I'm glad you're safe," she said, breaking the hug and stepping away from him. Hazō looked, but her eyes were dry.

"I should be saying the same thing," Hazō said. "We've just been waiting in seal fortresses in anonymous parts of the wilderness. That's the safest thing ever. You're the one that had to flee the village of Hyuuga and Inuzuka."

And then Mari was behind him, kicking his knee forward to bend him over so she could ruffle his hair.

"Also, dammit Hazō! I was having Yumenori prepare me a hundred different perfumed baths, all sealed up at exactly the perfect temperature, but you called right before she finished and now I don't have any perfumed baths at all!"

"That's what you're worried about?" Hazō said, bending lower to get her hands off his hair and ducking away. "I'm sure we can heat some water with some nice plants in it for you, Mari."

Mari barely quirked her lips and glanced at Noburi and Yuno for an instant. Right. Mari was trying to lighten the mood, but Noburi and Yuno had both had deep social connections in Leaf, futures that they were looking forward to, and that Hazō had now yanked away from them (for very good reasons!). Noburi trusted Hazō, but Yuno… Well, for better or worse, Hazō's strongest connection with her was their shared religion, and he wasn't sure if he should leverage it to win her approval or forgiveness.

"Well," she said, as Noburi and Yuno came into earshot, "Noburi has already given us the run-down, so we can skip the whole 'What the hell, Hazō?' part of this reunion."

"What!?" Noburi exclaimed. "Why would we skip that? It's the best part! What the hell, Hazō?"

"What the hell, Hazō?" Mari agreed.

"What the hell, Hazō?" Hazō heard Kei say from behind him.

"I thought it was pretty reasonable," Kagome-sensei said. "Gotta get away from the Akatsuki stinkers."

"What the hell, Hazō?" Tenten said.

Yuno looked back and forth between everyone, confused.

Noburi took a step to her side and reached around her shoulder with one arm, gesturing at Hazō.

Yuno hesitated. "What the hell, Hazō?" she finally said, slowly.

Mari and Noburi cheered, Tenten smiled, and Hazō sighed.

"A fascinating pack tradition, summoner," Canvass said, looking back and forth between the various parties. "Try to get me something good to track next time, okay? If that's all…" the bloodhound disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"Seriously though, I think it's not as bad as last time," Hazō said. "Materially, we have far more resources."

"True," Mari said. "It'll be pretty much impossible for hunter-nin to find us if we play it smart. Still, we also know the mission you're set on, and I, for one, will be planning for failure. Even if Akatsuki doesn't kill us, it's probably the woods for the rest of our lives.

"But!" she quickly said, realizing how morose her words had turned the mood in an instant, "on the flip side, we're free of all the expectations and bullshit that came from being in the village. I for one am looking forward to never seeing a metal-bearded asshole again except in a context where I can kill him."

"Speaking of which," Hazō said, "I have some ideas of things we can do now that we're freed from the village's rules. But first, let's get some distance away from this place that we haven't exactly kept secret."


"You want to what!?" Noburi exclaimed.

Hazō heard Tenten making some vaguely-choking-like sound behind him. This wasn't exactly the reaction he'd expected.

"I want to teach everyone shadow clone," Hazō said. "We're missing-nin anyway, and it's the single most powerful technique we have, except maybe the Summoning Technique. It's non-elemental, so everyone can and should learn it."

He glanced at Tenten, who looked vaguely horrified. She didn't say anything, but she was apparently still too loyal of a Leaf ninja to grab a free albeit treasonous power-up. Whatever, she'd come around.

"I want to learn it!" Kagome-sensei said. "Teach me!"

"Absolutely," Hazō said. "In fact, I can teach everyone who wants to now. It'll just take a couple-"

"Hold on," Noburi said, pulling his barrel off his back and holding it out towards Kagome. "Kagome, dip your hand in my barrel for a second."

Kagome blinked, then stepped over and dipped his hand in the barrel.

"You don't have enough chakra," Noburi said instantly. "I think you have less than when Hazō learned the technique, and even that was low enough that Lord Seventh barely felt comfortable teaching him. The technique is supposed to kill you if you don't have enough chakra, so you should really train your reserves before you try."

"It will in fact instantly kill you if you don't have the chakra to form the number of clones you try to make," Hazō said, holding back a grimace as he saw Kagome-sensei's face fall. He should have thought of this – Kagome-sensei was a sealmaster and a trapmaker, not a ninjutsu specialist. "Don't worry, Kagome-sensei. Train your reserves for a few weeks or months, then I'll teach you as soon as Noburi says it's okay."

"Fine," Kagome said.

"Will you be learning it, Yuno?" Hazō asked.

The axemistress considered, then nodded. "I think it would be wise. My chakra reserves are larger than yours. There is no downside to knowing the technique, is there?"

In fact, Snowflake had raised a number of philosophical objections to spreading the technique widely (and increasing the risk that it got spread even wider, if ever the group was separated or captured), but she'd ultimately been overruled. Shadow clones were really too valuable to pass up.

"Not really. And you, Noburi?"

"You know I want to," Noburi said immediately. "But I don't know if it's safe yet with my bloodline, I never got a straight answer out of Kabuto, and I never bothered asking Tsunade. Now I guess I never will."

"If you want to learn it, you need to make the choice," Hazō said. "No more relying on anyone. It's up to you."

Noburi thought about it.

"Not yet," he said finally. "Working with Tsunade taught me a lot about how bloodline research works, and I think I could try to figure out for myself if it's safe or not. I probably won't be able to tell for sure, but I'll at least be able to take a pretty good guess. And like you said, the Shadow Clone Technique is worth it. If gaining the technique means I can skip risking my death at some other point in the future, then it's worth a little risk now, right?"

"Computing which side of the tradeoff is favorable requires more detailed information on probabilities and frequencies of risks," Kei said. "In general principle, I would recommend against attempting the technique unless you are absolutely certain you can cast it safely."

"No such thing as absolute certainty, sis," Noburi said. "Not when working with bodies and bloodlines. But I'll see how close I can get."

Hazō turned to Tenten, raising an eyebrow.

She shook her head.

Hazō sighed. "Just you then, Yuno?"

"I do not know when I will get the time to train the technique," Yuno said, "not when there are other more immediately compelling ninjutsu to train, such as the Strength of the Storm technique you acquired from Orochimaru. Still, it is probably better that I learn the basics sooner than later."

"So be it," Hazō said. "Let's find a nice place to sit, and we can go through the basics."


"Hey, is that what I think it is?" Noburi asked.

Yuno pivoted to focus her telescope down at where her husband was pointing. After a couple of seconds, she locked onto what he was pointing at.

"That does look like a zigzag streak of red in the wall," she said. Immediately, she started scanning her telescope back and forth. "And look, I think I see a square shape in that pile of stones there. That must be the building foundation that Hazō mentioned."

Noburi followed her gaze, then took a step to snake his hand around her waist. "Good eye! I love how observant you are."

Somehow, despite the fact that they were spending all day out on skywalkers underneath the blazing summer sun, Yuno managed to turn a shade redder.

Yuno turned to Noburi. "Shall we-" she stopped as he leaned in for a kiss. She leaned back for a second, realized there wasn't a single living thing for miles, then relaxed to accept his kiss.

"Shall we go report to Hazō that we found Orochimaru's chakra-enhancing cave?" she said, once Noburi released her.

"Let's," Noburi said. "And let's get some of the ice out of the storage scrolls to beat the desert heat. At least we'll be able to come here after nightfall now."

"I wonder what we'll find in there," Yuno said as they turned to head back to the skybase.

"I don't know, but I'm looking forward to exploring it with you."

---

Many thanks to @Velorien for the initial Tenten scene!

Kei has taken charge of reading Tenten into Team Uplift's handtalk, combat codes, strategies, etc. Tenten already has Flame Aura, but doesn't train or use it much, as she believes it is too dangerous to be worth it for a ranged-weapons user.

Noburi will work with a few summons to set up an information-isolated enclave on the Seventh Path, but the Toads are far less cooperative than the Dogs or Arachnids, so Noburi will probably only be able to maintain one such site. Still, he expects Gamabunta will be willing to spread the message to Akatsuki, if only to piss off Jiraiya's killers.

Hazō preps the four rift runes as described by Orochimaru via Naruto. Setting aside Orochimaru's uncharacteristic generosity in sharing this information with Naruto for basically no reason or benefit, Hazō gets the following difficulty results:

• Rift-opening rune: Hazō thinks this rune is well within his capabilities.
• Rift-unanchoring rune: Hazō thinks he could maybe do this rune.
• Rift-kicking rune: Hazō thinks he could maybe do this rune.
• Rift-attractor rune: Hazō thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.

As a result of studying the bladehorror rift, Hazō is confident that he could develop runes that would work with either the bladehorror or the O'uzu rifts by using the bladehorror rift as a testing site for his research.

This update covered 7 days: 1 day studying the rift, 1 day after reuniting with the team for them to rest off their intense long-distance run, 3 days to run to the mountains in western Wind Country where Orochimaru's magic-chakra-water-cave-place is marked on your map, then 2 days of aerial + telescope searching to find the landmarks and eventually the cave mouth.

XP Award: 28 + 7 (brevity) XP

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Jul 27, 2024 at 1:00 PM .