Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Hazō sipped from the mug and immediately recoiled as sharp alcoholic fumes filled the back of his throat.

"You good there, Hazō?" his host asked. Kōsei was a man comfortably past middle-aged, but Hazō wouldn't call him old. He was balding and gray-bearded with a hunchback, but he walked comfortably and had the thick arms of a laborer.

"I'm fine," Hazō said. "But this… this is a little strong for me."

Kōsei laughed. "You'll get used to it. You said you wanted to learn what life was like after death? Well, drink up and I think you'll learn right quick."

Hazō set the mug down. "I'd rather keep my wits about me, if that's okay."

"Afraid of drinking?" Kōsei asked. "I can bring in some of the villagefolk and show you that it's good fun."

"I… was just a leader, in my past life," Hazō said. He still was a leader, just a temporarily disgraced one, but he couldn't guess how Kōsei would react if he said he'd be returning to life. "I've seen enough drunkards wasting our clan's time and money to know that I'd rather not."

"Ah, it's fine, really," Kōsei said. "We don't use money, and you don't have anything left but time."

Kōsei had been the loudest voice when Hazō had arrived in the village. Thirty or so residents had come out to see the new arrival, and Hazō guessed the population was at least twice that, and they had all clamored to host the newcomer. Still, maybe selecting based on volume hadn't been the wisest approach.

Hazō shook his head, making to stand. "My apologies, Kōsei. I should-"

"Ah, sit down, sit down, kid," Kōsei said hastily. "Come on, I want to hear your story! Okay, here's lesson one for newcomers, just like you asked. You're dead. Things don't really change from here. They don't get much better. They also don't get much worse. Go out and make whatever kind of life you want, because you'll be living like that until you fade away. Want to drink? Have an endless orgy like those freaks down the street? Maybe spend all your time practicing your crafts and making everyone's houses beautiful like Mister Akito? Sure, go for it."

"What's the point?" Hazō asked. "Why does anyone do… anything, here?"

Kōsei laughed. "Drink, boy. I'll entertain your questions, but you'll need to entertain me." Hazō reluctantly took a tiny sip. "Anyways, you do what you want for fun. Your real purpose here is finding peace. That's right, peace. If you're really a ninja, you've probably been through a lot in life, even if you didn't have all that much living under your belt. While you're here, you can come to terms with that.

"Ever wronged someone? Ever been wronged? Ever feel like the thoughts and feelings inside you are like this big tangled ball of black and brown and red that you can't ever get undone because if you try to loosen up one part, six others tighten up and hurt you? Well, this is why we're here instead of in one of the higher realms. You can take the easy way out – and some do – of just forgetting everything. That's fine, but I think the right thing to do is pull the knot apart, figure it out, and actually find that peace."

Hazō frowned and sipped at his drink again. His old habits as a Clan Head were making him drink to buy time to think, and he resisted a flinch at the strength of the booze. Still, he couldn't deny that he appreciated the warmth it provided him.

"And you've found peace?" Hazō asked.

Kōsei shrugged, still smiling. "In a way. I think I've got more time before I'm well and truly ready to move on, the way Daiji was. Thing is, I'm still torn up about my grandkids. My eldest son was a useless bum, and I was taking care of his get, and now I've left them behind, and I can't exactly say I did them right even while I was alive, and… well, I still need to let go." Kōsei knocked back his drink, then grabbed the bottle to refill his mug and top off Hazō's.

Hazō took a moment to look around Kōsei's house. It was surprisingly nice, given the poverty he would have expected for such a small settlement. It was a single room, but the floor was covered in a large, faded rug, the sleeping mat of layered reeds looked adequately comfortable, and even the (currently unlit) fireplace seemed well made, embedded in the floor with a ring of even stones separating it from the room.

"Anyway, I guess I ought to keep myself useful enough that you don't go wandering off," Kōsei said, still grinning. "Huh, what's rule two around here? Okay, well, you're stuck with wherever you were reborn. If you die again while you're here, you'll just go back there. If you see someone in a bad place – maybe they're repeatedly falling off a cliff and dying over and over – it's good form to help them out. If Daiji helped get you out of that sort of situation, try really hard to avoid dying again. You never know when someone will be by next to help you out, and it would suck to spend a couple months dying, you know?"

"I was okay," Hazō said. "I just appeared on the mountainside in a stable location. I only found Daiji a couple hours later."

"Good," Kōsei said. "Well, most people in your situation would just stick around this village. We've all been to some of the other nearby villages, of course. It's not a long road, maybe a dayish. You can go if you want, but it's not so different from here. Maybe there'll be a free house there you like better than one of the free ones here. People sometimes go try to find a big city or something. Some of them die and end back here, while some others never come back. Maybe they found what they were looking for, maybe they didn't. I think a couple people said they heard from someone on the road that there might be some way to change where you go back to when you die, but why would you want to? You're dead, any place is as good as any other."

"Are there other travelers or explorers?" Hazō asked. "I think I'd like to explore this world more." He'd need to, to find a way out.

"Eh," Kōsei said. "Daiji was an explorer of sorts. He was a ninja, you see. Real helpful guy. Guess you're our only ninja now. But I don't think Daiji found anything too interesting, otherwise I imagine he would have remembered and told me and I would have remembered. Keiji and Miki are also explorers. They like nature. They go out into the woods pretty often. Usually they come back without dying, so I guess they know the area pretty well. If you stick to the roads, you'll meet more people, but there's not really any harm to going out into the Wilds either. Not like there's anything out there that can kill you more dead than you already are. Just take care if you do, alright? Keiji once got stuck in a big ravine and had to kill himself to get out. I think there's a big difference between dying to something and killing yourself, and it doesn't sound very fun."

"Well, I ran into some skeleton shapechanger thing that ate one of the shimmers and took on the form of a man," Hazō said.

"Freaky," Kōsei said promptly. "I'd stay away if I were you, but that's really your call."

"Don't know anything about it?" Hazō asked.

"Nope," Kōsei said. "Now, what's the deal with you, Hazō? I told you a bit about myself, a bit about what's holding me back from moving on, but what was your life like? A ninja and a leader at such a young age, I think you must have led a very interesting life."

Hazō sighed, looking down into his drink. Did he really want to explain his life story to this random man he'd probably never meet again?

Well, the man had been generous with his hospitality, and he'd answered Hazō's questions. And the man was right. Hazō needed to get home, but… he wasn't going to do it quickly. It would be weeks or months or years before he figured a way out, and everything he really cared about was going to happen in the next couple of days. Whatever he wanted, he wouldn't be able to influence Mari, or stop Akatsuki from razing Leaf.

That drink was suddenly looking more appealing. Foul as the strong alcohol was, the sweet bitterness of the booze felt like just what he needed. That, and maybe a little companionship.

He'd spent so long keeping secrets, hiding his feelings because if he let them out, they would be exploited. But he'd lost everything. Nothing he said could be used to hurt him in this world. Even if it could, well, these random civilians in a nowhere village couldn't do it.

He took another drink. Some part of his brain, probably Mari's training, was screaming at him for drinking, doubly so while surrounded by people he didn't trust implicitly. But Kōsei was right. What was the worst they could do to him, kill him?

"Well, maybe we should gather up some of the other people," Hazō said, slowly. "I've… I've been wanting to tell my story, and you said we could bring other people here and make this more fun. Do you think they would be interested in hearing what I have to say?"

Kōsei grinned widely, standing up and walking to the door. "Absolutely. If there's one thing it's worth doing here, it's learning each others' stories." He turned to step out into the village. "Just hang on there a bit, alright?"

A few minutes later, on a comfortable chair someone had pulled out into the main street, Hazō began. "Well, maybe it all started with my mom. She was a powerful ninja as well, the heir of one of the most powerful clans in Hidden Mist, but despite what her parents wanted for her, she fell in love with a lowborn ninja, a man below her station, but loving and kind…"


"Tooth-shaped mountains?" Miki asked. She was a woman in her forties, shorter and thinner than Kei, yet somehow seeming sturdier. Which was completely wrong, given that Kei was a ninja that could probably snap Hazō in half if she tried, while Miki had probably been a malnourished farmer in life.

"Never seen no tooth-shaped mountains," Miki said, gesturing. "There's those mountains over there, but they're normal-shaped."

Hazō nodded gingerly, trying not to aggravate his hangover. "Right, that's where I…"

Hazō blinked, making sure he was seeing right. "Where are the mountains?"

Miki looked behind her to the space where the mountains should have been. She laughed. "Guess they're hiding today. Can never guess their moods, no I can't. Don't worry about it, they're still there. Just gotta get a bit closer before they pop up. Look, if you're looking for strange mountains, I can show you some. Me 'n Keiji'll go out soon, and we can show you around. There's a nice path through the woods that'll take you to the fingerlands, and then just past that are these infinite mountains."

"Infinite?"

"Yeah," Miki said, gesturing with her hands. "They just keep going up and up and up forever. Kinda wish it was a single mountain, but it's a whole range, so you can't really get around it. Don't mean you're stuck in the fingerlands though, you just gotta keep going and eventually you'll make it to the Sphere."

"The Sphere?" Hazō asked. "Hang on, what are the fingerlands?"

"S'what it sounds like. A land where everything is fingers," Miki said. "And the Sphere's a sphere. Big ol' black orb. Unnatural. Fun to look at. Has some kanji on it, but neither me or Keiji can read. We can show you. Just stick around and we'll get you when we're heading out."


"So, who's in charge around here?" Hazō asked Yuika, a grandmotherly woman who seemed to sit in a rocking chair all day as she watched life in the small settlement pass by around her.

"No one, little one," she said, croaking out in a dry voice. "Why would we need leaders?"

"For laws," Hazō said after a second.

"What laws?" Yuika asked. "We live fine on our own. Rarely, one comes who is… truly horrendous. But what harm can they really do? Anything they do wrong can be erased and forgotten. We just exile them."

"Then, maybe a leader would lead. To step up and do what must be done for the good of the town, or to keep knowledge in case of crisis," Hazō said.

"There's precious few things this town needs," the elderly woman said. "Precious few. As for knowledge, knowledge is a slippery thing. The more you learn, the more you forget. I've been here for ages, son, but I know less than when I died!" She let loose a short, rasping laugh.

"Isn't there some way of stopping the memories getting taken from you?" Hazō asked. "You can make new memories, after all."

She shook her head. "Never. You can learn, but you'll always lose more than you gain. You can choose what gets taken, but eventually, everything goes."

"How do you choose what gets taken?"

She shrugged. "It's not hard. Just… keep it in your mind, but don't hold onto it. Imagine the memory like a box that you look into to relive it. Keep the box closed, then throw it up in the air. If you're still attached to it, you'll pull it back, but if you truly let go… it'll go in the air and stay there, and never come back. Does that make sense?"

Hazō nodded.

She cackled again. "Not that it'll matter long for you, young man! The rules here are reversed. Old crones like me have ages to live, while young rats like you have one foot in the grave. We got more memories, you see. More memories, at least, until you're done with 'em. That Daiji boy, he was trying his best to get rid of all his memories. If you let go of everything, you just disappear. It'll happen to all of us, in the end."

"So why are you hanging on?" Hazō asked.

"Because I love living," Yuika said, grinning a toothless grin. "I can't walk around any more, my joints hurt too much for more than a little bit every day, but I love seeing everyone around here doing as they please." She waved at a young woman walking down the village's single street with a wide washbasket in hand, and the woman waved back with a smile. "I know I ain't really living, but I'm still finding joy in others' joy. My old life wasn't a quarter as nice as this one is, and I'm taking my time in my little slice of heaven before I find out what's next for me. Nothing wrong with that, is there?"

"Not at all," Hazō said.

The elderly lady slowly reached over and rapped a knuckle against Hazō's head. Hazō held himself back from grabbing her wrist – he'd probably break it. "Look, you got time, son. Not a lotta time, but time. You just gotta figure out what you want, then do it. If you just want to think and talk, that's fine. I'll be here. Plus, it's not like you'll be losing memories the whole time. The way your mind goes, it has a way of knocking loose memories you thought you forgot."

"Memories you thought you forgot…" Hazō muttered. A descent, darkness, a deafening, clangorous silence…

"Now look," Granny Yuika said, "If you're getting sick of entertaining a useless old woman, why don't you go make yourself useful? Whatever ninja skills you had in life, I think you might get some joy out of using them to help others out here. It'll give you something new to chew on."

Hazō smiled softly. "Not as new as you think. I was one of… very few ninja that tried to use our powers to help people."

"Pull the other one, son," Yuika said cackling. "But I won't stop you if you want to feel good about yourself."

"You know, you said your joints were hurting?" Hazō said. "Actually, I've been studying medicine with my brother, who himself studied with the legendary Tsunade. You may have heard of her. Let me see if I can come up with anything that could ease that pain…"


Hazō waved down the twenty-something man who was circling the village's outer wall, hands clasped behind him and lost in thought. It took a couple tries, but eventually the man noticed, jumped, and hurried over to bow to Hazō.

"You don't need to bow to me," Hazō said. "I'm not your superior or anything."

"You're a ninja, and ninja deserve respect, honored ninja sir," the man said, still bent halfway over.

"Please, stand. And call me Hazō. Not sir, not 'Lord Hazō', just Hazō," Hazō said, trying to smile as warmly as he could.

The man stood hesitantly, avoiding looking Hazō in the eyes. "Yes, uh… Hazō. I'm Masaaki."

"A pleasure to meet you, Masaaki. I've been asking people, so you might have heard about my curiosity, but do you know anything about the other villages and settlements around here? Maybe anything you've heard from travelers?"

The young man blinked. "I know a little, sir. There are a couple settlements nearby. Small villages, like this one. There's a path to each of them, one on this side of the village, and one opposite us. Sometimes people travel out or come here. It's pretty common. You might have met Natsuki? She is from the village down this path, for example."

"What about farther out?" Hazō asked. "Are there bigger cities?"

"Yes, sir!" Masaaki said, before flinching away.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Hazō said gently. "It's fine. You can call me Hazō, or sir, or whatever you like."

"Right. Sorry. Yes, there are bigger cities somewhere. I don't know where. I assume if you just follow the paths, you'll find one eventually. I don't know how far though. I think there are more people that find this village than stay here, and that means they must be leaving somehow. Probably along the roads, right? But I think I lost those memories, so I'm not sure. I do know that lifesingers travel around sometimes. They listen to people's stories and preserve the best ones in their songs so that those stories become immortal long after we all fade away. I remember Daiji hated them. Thought that they were an abomination, trying to keep alive what the Sage wanted to die."

"When was the last time a lifesinger passed through here?" Hazō asked.

"I'm… I'm not sure," the young man said. "A long while back. I liked it, I was trying to hold onto those memories, but… there's only so much I can do, you know? I can't even remember what I look like when I wake up, before I go down to the pond and see my reflection…"

"Do you remember anything the lifesinger talked about?" Hazō asked.

"Yes!" Masaaki said. "I think. She told us two stories. One was about an emperor who struck a deal with the King of Hell to live beyond the time he'd been allotted so that he could build his empire and his legacy. Every time the King of Hell came to claim his soul, he bargained again for a little more time, but each bargain cost him more and more, until he was cannibalizing his empire for just a few weeks longer. Eventually, the King of Hell would take no deal, and the emperor looked back at what he'd wrought and found that he'd be remembered as the man who ruined his people's prosperity for no purpose at all. The other was about a pair of ninja, from rival clans. They were enemies, but then they fell in love somehow, but… but I guess I don't remember how that one went. I did, I swear. Damn. Maybe she told us more than two stories, then…"

"That sounds like a folk tale we have in Leaf," Hazō said. "Tears of Red. I could tell it to you sometime. Do you know where the lifesinger came from, or where she went?"

Masaaki shook his head. "I… I don't know. I assume she took the paths, right? Probably she's not wandering the wilds. Maybe she did, though. Maybe she was a ninja. Or maybe she just wanted to die and go back to where she started. She didn't seem impressed by any of our stories, except maybe Granny Yuika's. I need to ask her to tell me that story again…"

"Do ninja come by often?"

"I think they're rare," the man said. "I think Daiji kept them away. Maybe he was too grumpy or something. I think I remember seeing some other ninja, but they didn't stop for us. Maybe they were going to the cities, like the other travelers. I don't remember a ninja killing me, at least…"

Masaaki looked distressed, and Hazō suppressed a grimace. All these questions were probably reminding the man of what he'd lost.

"Well, if you have time, let me tell you about Tears of Red again," Hazō said. "I had a flute that I used to play to accompany it, but I lost it. Still, I remember the story. A long, long time ago, long before Hashirama and Madara's grandfathers were born, the Uchiha and Senju clans ruled supreme over the heart of the world. They hated each other deeply, yet, among their number was a young kunoichi of a gentle disposition. She trained her heart to be hard, yet…"


Hazō sat by the dying embers of the campfire. He'd made it himself just outside town and left it to burn all day while he busied himself asking the villagers questions and trying to help with their problems, coming back to tend it every once in a while to make sure it was still burning brightly. Now, it was finally running out of fuel.

The villagers felt much like that – embers rich with color and warmth, yet doing nothing but waiting to be extinguished. They seemed so vibrant, improving their homes, telling stories and sharing poetry, yet in the end, they couldn't fight back against annihilation.

Hazō wanted to fight back, yet… yet he couldn't tell what he was supposed to be fighting back against. He hadn't felt the supposed memory-drain so far. Was he somehow just… fine? Was he losing memories that he didn't even know he had? Or, scarier, was he forgetting not just the memories, but the mental associations he needed to notice the holes in his mind? Would he remain functional and lucid until one day the holes got too big, and suddenly he was finding countless gaps in things he knew he should have known, the way Masaaki did?

Maybe it was his fame. The villagers were nobodies, but tens of thousands of people knew Hazō's name. If Kagome-sensei was right, that would mean Hazō would decay far, far slower than anyone else here. Who knew how long he could last?

Hazō had taken it slow in this village today, but he didn't know if he could afford to. If the constant memory-loss worked the way everyone promised him it did, then this, right now, was going to be the strongest and most capable he would ever be. If he didn't find a way out (and quickly), he wasn't likely to luck into it farther down the line as a partial amnesiac. He needed a way out, fast.

The embers were finally going out. Hazō waited a couple minutes longer for them to cool.

Hazō knew he was an ordinary ninja in many regards. There was one way in which he was truly exceptional though, and that was his skill as a sealmaster. Really, runecrafting would be a far better way to try to break out of the afterlife, but all of his runic substrate was locked in now-inaccessible storage seals. Hazō would need to somehow master Orochimaru's substrate-production ninjutsu despite the memory drain (oh, and how Hazō looked forward to telling Orochimaru that teaching Hazō this ninjutsu years ago would be the Sannin's downfall). Until then, he had only seals.

To make a seal, you needed three things: Paper, a brush, and chakra ink. Paper was solved by the dozens of seals he'd kept in his bodysuit – built for wearing externally, the paper was extra thick and sturdy, and Hazō suspected that he'd be able to scribe seal designs on their backs without the ink bleeding through and interacting with the designs on the fronts. Hazō had considered improvising a brush, but a villager had eventually offered to make him one, and Hazō had gladly passed on the duty to someone with more experience in craftsmanship. That left only the ink.

Hazō grabbed a stick and poked around the firepit. The fire was well and truly out, though touching the stick's end revealed that the embers were still hot enough to burn. Still, Hazō sifted through the fire to find an evenly-black section of burnt wood, before he scooped it into his bowl.

Another of the villagers had offered her bowl to him, a simply-carved wooden thing with remarkably-visible grain underneath its well-worn lacquer. Hazō grabbed a stone and ground the charcoal with it, trying to get the black powder as fine and even as he could. Once he'd ground it as much as he could, he walked to the village's small pond and let some water run into the bowl, then mixed it with the clean end of his stick. The water quickly took on the rich blackness of ink.

Experimentally, he dabbed a bit of the ink on his finger and streaked it across one of his seal-backs, one he'd already consigned to testing. It hurt to spend his limited paper sheets in this way, but he had to test the ink to make sure it was good.

The ink was watery and thin, and it ran as he adjusted the paper. He blew on it to help it dry. He'd definitely crushed the charcoal small enough to keep the ink from looking lumpy, but it still wasn't strong. The dried ink looked more gray than black. He experimentally brushed his hand over a dry section, and the charcoal smeared and flaked.

No good. This would cause a sealing failure immediately. He needed something to make the ink take better. Hazō remembered an inkmaker in Leaf explaining how she used resin from the same tree whose wood they'd burned for the ink's charcoal, but he didn't know the appropriate ratios for combination, nor if there were other ingredients needed. Plus, Sage only knew which trees in this area had resin for inkmaking, or how afterlife-tree-ink would interact differently with the seventh-order harmonics needed to stabilize his chakra through the brushstrokes.

Well, either way, he still had one more experiment to try. He pulled his kunai from his belt, spoke his short chant while he cleared his chakra pathways, then dipped his kunai in the ink and blew across its surface. He pulsed the faintest bit of chakra through the ink and… it failed to take hold.

It could have been the ink, or the chant, or the fact that he was dead and in a different dimension… but Hazō suspected it was the kunai. The steel of his kunai felt wrong compared to the polished brass lump he normally used to create chakra ink. He would probably need something similar, a brass trinket of decent size.

None of the villagers had anything made of brass. How rare would someone be who died carrying a temple bell, or even an incense burner? Maybe his best bet would be to find a daimyo's guard who'd had brass studs on their armor, then convince a smith to melt it all down and cast it into a single lump…

The thoughts occupied him while he emptied the bowl and rinsed it. Charcoal and water were easy enough to mix, and he could always requisition a bottle from one of the villagers before he left if he wanted to carry around his mediocre attempt at ink. He was halfway back into the village when he noticed a villager flagging him down.

"Hazō!" the man said. "I finished the brush you asked for."

Hazō smiled in gratitude and took the brush as the man offered it on both palms. It was amazing. Shoddy work for any craftsman in Leaf, yet far beyond anything that Hazō could have made. The man had stripped the bark off a six-inch straight stick and sanded it to a comfortable oblong shape, leaving it smooth to the touch. The brushes' bristles were human hair, a shade warmer than black and surprisingly fine. Hazō rubbed his fingers over the bristles. It was almost too soft, but if he could solve his ink problem, he could adjust his calligraphy to account for the new brushfeel.

The only issue was the binding. A handful of strings, likely ripped from the man's shirt, bound the bristles to the brush handle tightly, and Hazō saw bits of mud rubbed into the bristles at their bases to hold everything together. That would last for many seals, but it wouldn't last forever. Hazō would need to baby the brush to keep it from falling apart. Still, it was worlds better than Hazō's haphazard idea of using needles from local trees.

"Thank you Kai, this is incredible," Hazō said.

"One more thing," Kai said, reaching to his belt, then offering the new object with another bow.

Hazō took it. "You didn't need to…"

"You've been so kind to us, taking care of Granny Yuika's joints, so please accept this as a kindness from me."

"I feel like I ought to repay you," Hazō said.

"Masaaki said you wanted to share a story, but you didn't have the right tools for it. If you like it, I would love to hear the story the proper way," Kai said. "As would we all."

Hazō tucked the carved wooden flute into his belt. "It'll be different from the instrument I learned with, so I'll need some time to learn with it… but I'd be happy to tell you all Tears of Red."

"Masaaki said it was a beautiful story," Kai said. "How did you learn it?"

"I heard it a long time ago," Hazō said. "It was the favorite story of someone very precious to me…"

---

None of the villagers that Hazō talked to had heard of anyone matching Jiraiya or Akane's description.

Hazō's performance of Tears of Red was well-attended. Hazō slept in an unoccupied house, and when he awoke, Miki and Keiji told him that they were ready to head out into the Wilds. There's a beautiful-looking shrine they've seen before, past the Sphere and somewhere up the infinite mountains (though they don't remember more detail than that), and they want to find it. A shrine like that, adorned like the night with rich blues and blacks, seems like it should be good luck. They're bringing some of their favorite trinkets to leave as offerings.

Hazō has added a delicate calligraphy brush and a wooden flute to his inventory.

Hazō has 162 CP at present.