Repay in Kind
It was the day of the bet, and Hazou intended to collect. He rocked on his toes, back and forth across the precipice, keeping his balance on the building ledge. It was a movement he'd performed one thousand, four hundred and sixty-four times before. Below sprawled his home, the Village Hidden in the Mist, and this muggy morning it lived up to its name. The morning sun was an orb of white fire, wreathed in shawls of fog, and from it broad tendrils of mist crawled across the landscape. It was the same mist that swept in every day, regular as the tides, enveloping and enshrouding, permeating every cranny. A hug, his mother called it, that the sea gives to the land, a shroud for their Hidden Village which opposed the burning heat of the Eastern sun and - deadlier by far - the clear regard of enemy ninja.
Hazou scowled at the thought. It was a childish metaphor, and he was almost eight, basically a ninja grown. His first year at the academy was all but over, the springtime of his youth already passed. With this bet, he would con his first mark, earn his first ill-gotten wage as a shinobi. Scents wafted up from below: fresh-caught fish and shaven ice, preserving salt and pickling brine, and above it all the heavenly aroma of Amatetsu's roasted yams, sticky-sweet with their pulpy flesh caramelized, kept always just on the right side of burnt. Rumor had it Amatetsu cooked them so that they'd slightly scald the tongue, a tasteful reminder to any genin-candidate that slacked on his elemental defenses. Some jounin liked to eat them by the whole armful, because they were delicious, but also to show that they could.
There was the slap of sandals against stone, and Hazou knew from the gait that Hoshigaki Tonume was here to pay. He turned, putting on his best impression of a confident smirk.
As usual, Tonume's face was distorted by the overlarge lollipop in his mouth. Blue-skinned and tall for his age, Hazou's classmate answered his smirk with a widely gleaming shark-toothed smile.
"When I win," Tonume said, "I'm going to buy fifty candies. If you beg nicely, I won't tell the others how I got 'em."
Crap.
Hazou was no good at this ninja banter thing.
He plucked at the collar of his loose, long shirt, painfully aware that it was many sizes too large.
"Um... Just shut up and watch!" he eventually replied, tone boastful. "You better have the money."
"Got it right here," Tonume revealed a thick roll of 1- and 5-ryou notes, wealth enough to buy ten bowls of ramen, or thirty baked yams. "Nicked it from my brother the other day. And you? Last chance to back out. I don't mind taking your money, but this almost feels too easy."
"B-Back at you," Hazou replied, slightly unsteady. The sight of so much money... he was starting to get anxious. He briefly flashed his own ante, a neatly folded stack of ryou that he had painstakingly counterfeited over the last week.
"Great!" Tonume sat down and leaned back, resting his head on crossed arms as if they were on one of the island's sandy beaches. "Entertain me. And remember, it's foot-to-foot only. If you grab on with your fingers, or even knock a shin, your money is mine."
Hazou blew off Tonume's condescension with a casual wave. "Keep talking tough. Maybe you'll talk yourself out of life's regret, following your loss to me. After all, you'll need something to fill that mouth once you're too poor for candy."
That was okay, Hazou thought, marshaling his confidence. Maybe a little stilted, but respectable for a genin-candidate.
"Hey! I teethe!" Tonume protested, but Hazou was already running, already breaking for the edge, steps clattering against stone with metronomic regularity. He sprang off the final ledge with convulsive power, shocking strength for a body that small, and hung suspended for a brief breathless eternity over all the Hidden Mist, a sight that never got old.
Any spectator that looked from below would have known for a certainty that the little boy with outflung arms wouldn't make it, that he was too low by a hair.
But as Hazou neared the apex of his jump, he passed above Amatetsu's shop, directly over the exhaust pipe of Amatetsu's mighty Thousand-Yams Furnace, and its warm, steady updraft was caught by the boy's outflung arms, trapped momentarily by the cloth of his oversized shirt. It carried him just a bit further, just a touch higher at the peak of his leap, and he landed feet-first on top of the Mizukage's Tower, the subject of so many forlorn bets by so many genin candidates in the past.
It looked an exceptionally haphazard landing, a chaos of twisting limbs to keep his balance, but on a windless day he could stick it every time. Below, Tonume shouted a very dirty word, and raised his palms to his head in despairing disbelief.
"No way... A first year can't make that jump! One in a hundred times you make that jump, and it had to be this one," Tonume groaned.
One in four hundred, actually, and Hazou had the bruised shins, bruised knees, and bloodied fingers to prove it. But one in four hundred was good enough for a Kurosawa to stick it every time.
Hazou raised an eyebrow. "Pay up, Hoshigaki."
"Yeah, yeah," Tonume grumbled. "Let it not be said that a Hoshigaki failed to keep his word... What'm I gonna teethe with now?" The blue-skinned boy threw his cash on the ground, and Hazou deftly made the much easier gravity-assisted leap back to collect it. Carefully he inspected the bills, rubbing them between his fingers. They were good.
"Pleasure doing business with you," Hazou said, trying out his most professional tone of voice.
"Whatever," Tonume had turned away, and was already absentmindedly gnawing on a kunai. "I'll get you, Kurosawa. Next time!"
Hazou hoped Tonume wouldn't ask for his money back, after he found out that the Kurosawa were a Bloodline Clan. Well, if he ever found out. The Hoshigaki's chakra was almost casually overpowering, but he was extremely inattentive in class.
He waited until the other boy had departed before allowing himself to feel a spark of hope. Hazou clutched the wad of cash protectively against his chest, and began an excited trek home. Maybe with this... with this, maybe their money troubles wouldn't be so bad.
He couldn't wait to see the look on his mother's face!
---
"...And that's how I came up with the idea," said Kurosawa Hazou, genin, missing-nin, traitor to the Hidden Mist, who was currently standing before a massive chasm next to his temporary teammate for this mission.
Tonume had never gotten his next time. Over the weekend his distant relative betrayed the Mizukage and Hazou had never seen the boy again. Nor had his minor fortune put a dent in his mother's arrears. She'd been a jounin, with a jounin-sized debt, up until the day she died.
But it had given him this fast-traveling method, and bittersweet memories of his mother were still warmer than the ones that presently dominated his mind. The ones that had, as of late, clung to his awareness like a stubborn mist, as if scratching out the symbol on his headband had caused another to emerge in retaliation. Another mist that he wished desperately to discard.
"So it took you about twenty tries to make this jump, but since you made it once, you can do it every time? And this entire route is filled with obstacles like that?" His companion pressed a finger to her lips. "I can see how that would be useful."
"Not obstacles," he said, "shortcuts. There are seven chasms like this that block off the southern region. Even chunin otherwise as accomplished as yourself can't jump them consistently. To continue in a straight line towards the main road, there are two mountains that can only be traversed via goat-path, and in the forest beyond I can take four-tree jumps instead of two for further speed. I've three separate landing points encoded for each jump, alternate branches for the tree jumps, and slightly slower paths in case of heavy wind or storm. There are subroutes that branch off of each of the main routes, for easy delivery to a specific vicinity." This he delivered with calm confidence, encoded synpases firing flawlessly, not a muscle out of place.
He showed her the map he'd drawn, which resembled a single snaking blood vessel flanked by a thicket of capillaries extending into the thick forests of Fire Country. There were two other primary routes as well, cutting east and north-east, each laced with fewer, but still numerous, sub-routes.
"If your client needs it delivered quickly, in the dangerous terrain around here, I'm your man."
His companion propped up the run-through forehead protector covering her eyes. Inimitably blue, they looked upon him with amused interest.
"Huh," she said, "who knew one of our cute genin could be so useful? Maybe you're not all dead weight."
"I never forget a movement," he replied, and returned her smile with his own, an easy smile that seemed to emanate genuine goodwill. It was rare, to see a smile so sincere on a shinobi.
Don't forget, Hazou.
Don't forget me.
Don't forget us, don't forget why we died. Don't- Oh, what am I asking?
I'm being silly. There's no need to ask this of you. The talent is even stronger in you than it is in me. We might almost have succeeded in you, or maybe your daughters and sons.
Listen to your mother, Zou-chan. You're a genin now, so be strong. Obey your sensei's orders, that man can usually be trusted. Try not to eat so many sweets, and remember to dress warmly when it gets cold. Be prepared to kill everyone you meet. One day, when you're strong, find a nice girl and treat her well. Mama won't forgive you if you're mean to her, okay? Take care of yourself. Don't worry if you seem selfish. It's selfish people who get what they want in this world.
Now, place the kunai like this, right above my heart. You know what follows. I want you to do it yourself. That way...
...You'll never forget.
---
Climbing the hill back, she placed the forehead protector down over her eyes. The less pollen that got in from this damnable country, the better. Who said medical ninjutsu was too trite to use on allergies!?
"Shikigami." If she was surprised by the jounin's presence, her voice didn't betray it.
"So, what'd you think? He's my personal student, so be kind." It was impossible to tell if he was being serious.
She turned to regard the student, far below them, as he packed up his maps. His movements were crisp and efficient, surprisingly quick despite their almost unhurried air. He was fast, for a genin.
"I've heard of the bloodline, but I guess they're rare enough we don't see them," she ventured.
"Should've seen the boy's mother," Shikigami interjected. "No one's ever forgetting her."
She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I guess he's... pretty normal? I don't know, I just kind of thought his movements would be more puppet-like, artificial. With what they can do."
"You still have a lot to learn," the jounin exhaled. "Here's a lesson for you: a perfect copy of human movement, looks like human movement. If it betrayed anything else, it wouldn't be perfect."
