Earlier…
"Hazō?"
He was the last person Akane had expected to knock on her door. Well, maybe not literally—assuming the Sage of Six Paths bothered knocking instead of just teleporting in—but she'd honestly thought she wouldn't see him for a while after that unfortunate training session. It would have been better that way.
"Can I come in?" he asked.
Akane opened her mouth—
"You're not taking one step into my house," Dad growled behind her.
"Dad?!"
"I gave you your chance, Gōketsu. You followed through. I respect that, and as a man of my word, I let her date you even though you two were still a match made in Naraka. You went from too low for her to too high. But then you broke her heart."
Akane spun around. They'd
had this conversation. She'd explained, patiently and repeatedly, that it was nobody's fault. Things had just worked out this way. Hazō had never meant to hurt her. Eventually, it was Mum who'd taken her side, and given Dad a lecture about young love and growing up and a lot of other things that didn't really have anything to do with each other but together did the job.
"Sir," Hazō began, "I never meant to—"
Dad held up his hand and Hazō stopped talking.
"I'd have done it, you know," he said in a tone that was less hostile and more… tired. "I'd have let you take my daughter away from her family if it meant she could live a life of luxury and influence and safety, or as much safety as you ninja ever get. The most precious thing in my life, sent into another world from which she could never come back. Instead, you just threw her away as soon as she stopped being what you wanted."
"Dad!"
"Hush," Dad said. "You've got your perspective and I've got mine, and mine's based on twice as much experience.
"You're done here, Gōketsu," Dad said. "You got what you wanted. Now leave. I can't stop you inflicting yourself on my daughter out there, because you're as good as omnipotent now and I'm still a carpenter. But if you have any respect for us commoners left after your ascension, you'll damn well not do it under my nose."
"Come on, Hazō," Akane said. "We can find somewhere else to talk. Sorry, Dad."
"Be safe," Dad said helplessly.
He hadn't changed.
Well, no, that was a stupid thought. Of course he hadn't changed. It had only been three weeks. Just… the last time they'd been apart this long was probably when she'd been in hospital and he'd been in exile.
Now there they were, sitting opposite each other in a café (his treat) like they'd done so many times before, and like they never would again.
Ugh. She had to stop doing that. Even in her own head, she sounded like one of those lovesick idiots from the novels who eventually ended up being taken advantage of by a diabolical villain or throwing themselves off a bridge after writing bad poetry that the author thought was profound.
"How are you, Hazō?"
"Good. I'm good. You?"
"Also good," she said vaguely. "It's nice to see you."
"You too."
Silence descended.
Akane had to get a hold of herself. She was better than this. Once upon a time, she'd been the one to smooth over difficult social situations for the group. She just needed to move the conversation on, or at least make sure there
was a conversation.
"How is everyone?" she asked.
"Varied," Hazō said. "Noburi's great. He went on some kind of secret mission, and now he keeps rubbing it in my face how he's important and I'm not. He's also been going off for some kind of special training, and he won't tell me about that either. Don't worry, I'll get my own back soon enough.
"Mind you, him being away made it very clear to the rest of us that we're not that good at holding down the fort on our own. It was a relief to have him back."
Akane smiled, imagining Noburi teasing Hazō, and Hazō taking a moment to think before firing his own insult back.
"And Keiko?"
Hazō beamed. "You won't believe this. Keiko's dating Shikamaru!"
"She what."
"Seriously. They're using first names and everything. And they're no longer going on instances of two individuals spending a day together in order to facilitate greater mutual knowledge and familiarity, arranged in anticipation of a long-term relationship. They're just hanging out now."
"Hazō," Akane said carefully, "are you sure they're not just friends?"
"Since when has Keiko had friends?"
Akane arched an eyebrow.
"That came out wrong. I mean, we were never friends in the normal sense, right? We went straight from being strangers to people who had to trust each other with their lives. Whatever process you make friends through, I don't get the impression she's ever been through it."
Akane nodded. "And that means she can never make friends because…?"
Hazō didn't say anything.
"Hazō," Akane said gently, "I know deep down you want Keiko to be happy. We all do. But you can't let that colour your perceptions. When you really think about it, are you
sure they were acting like a couple?"
Hazō took a second to think.
"Honestly, no. I just can't imagine Keiko being so… laid-back with a boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Or both—for all I know, she's the next Mitarashi waiting to happen.
"But you're right. I just wanted to see her happy, and maybe I worked too hard to see something that wasn't there, even if her being that close to
anyone outside our team is a bit weird.
"She hasn't been happy lately. Ever since we came here, she's been spending a lot of her spare time going out training, and she avoids the subject whenever anyone asks, and every time she comes home she looks a little bit sad, like being with us is the worst part of her day."
Hazō gave Akane a melancholy look. "Sometimes I feel like she's pulling away from us. She's become even more focused on her privacy than before. She has this thing where she officially 'retires for the night', and anyone who disturbs her after that is liable to get murdered if they just fail to knock loudly enough. Even when she's with us, sometimes it feels like her mind's somewhere else. Back when we were"—he quickly glanced around to make sure no one was within earshot—"missing-nin, she and I used to have these conversations about modelling, and analytical structures, and branching paths for conversations, and she'd keep making fun of me for my lists, but she and I connected on a level we couldn't with other people. We don't do that anymore.
"Sorry," he added. "I didn't mean to go down that road."
"It's fine," Akane said. "What are friends for?"
He was still opening up to her. They were still friends, or something like friends, and she hadn't lost him for good.
"But I think you're worrying too much," she said. "Not to say that there's anything wrong with feeling the way you do, but I think Keiko's probably happier than you give her credit for. Maybe she just needs to adjust to living as part of a household again, only a loving one where she doesn't have to protect herself all the time. If you want to help with that, I think you should respect her boundaries, but give her opportunities to reduce them, like little pockets of safety."
"What do you mean?"
Akane was thinking on her feet here, as she often had to. She'd sell her soul for the kind of training Mari-sensei had. The Spirit of Youth could only get you so far where detail-oriented thinking was concerned.
"Like conversations about personal topics where you bring them up but let her take the lead. Or activities on the edge of her comfort zone where you're there to support her. Or maybe you could talk to her about some of the things that have been bothering you—give her a chance to feel like the helper rather than the helped. Just don't go in with expectations for her, because I suspect that's half of why she's so defensive to begin with."
"How do you keep doing that, Akane?"
Akane shrugged. "It just seems obvious. Remember how I told you what kind of person I was before I could have real friends? And how I felt when I realised that I could break all my imaginary ones down into tropes? Eventually, once I was done, I realised that there's a core to every character that makes them who they are, like a piece of the writer's soul. The tropes give it shape; they don't create it.
"Real people are like that too. There's a core, and there are all the outer bits, and once you learn to look for the core, the rest of it falls into place almost on its own."
"That doesn't really explain anything," Hazō said.
"Maybe it only works for me, and you have to figure out your own equivalent. Sorry."
Hazō was looking a little dejected. He always did expect things to be simple once you analysed them enough.
"How about Kagome? Is he still Kagome?"
"Yes and no," Hazō smiled. "He's doing a lot better now. We can even trust him to go out unsupervised sometimes,
and he gets why it's a bad idea to tempt fate too often. Plus now that he's relatively safe, he's really cranked up the sealcrafting. He's getting new ideas for research all the time, and the house is festooned in explosive tags. Well, not literally, apart from selected areas."
"That's wonderful!"
"Oh, and get this: he's trying to be a teacher. A real one, I mean. He has his own little student, and he's doing maths with her, and basic chakra stuff that I'm not entirely clear on. I have no idea where that will go, but the idea of him pursuing his own projects that have nothing to do with sealing is amazing."
"It really is," Akane said. It was strange to realise how much she missed Kagome in addition to all the others. He was like the crazy uncle you thought twice about inviting to family gatherings, but he was
her crazy uncle she thought twice about inviting to family gatherings.
"What about Mari-sensei?"
Hazō's expression fell.
"What's wrong?"
"Mari-sensei's been feeling sad lately."
"Sad? What does that mean?"
Hazō squirmed in a way she didn't see often. She knew that he was an excellent liar when he put his mind to it, but he was terrible at lying to people he cared about, and until recently he'd—no, she wasn't going to think that.
"It's not something to worry about," Hazō finally said. "I just wanted to give you a heads-up for when you see her at the birthday party."
Then she was invited after all.
"Is that an invitation?" she asked just to check.
"Of course," Hazō said. "It's half the reason I'm here. Of course we want you to celebrate Kagome-sensei's birthday with us. It'll be tomorrow, because we'll have to leave for Mist afterwards."
Akane smiled, both on the outside and on the inside. That time spent brainstorming a gift hadn't gone to waste. Not that she wouldn't have appreciated a little more advance warning.
"The other half," Hazō went on, "is to remind you that you're always welcome at the compound. It doesn't matter that things are a bit complicated between you and me, or that the clan thing didn't work out."
Where would she be without Hazō's unique capacity for tact?
"You're still one of us, and you're free to drop by whenever you like."
"Thank you, Hazō," Akane said softly. "That means a lot to me."
"No problem," Hazō said. "I should have reminded you sooner."
-o-
Akane quickly ran through her checklist one more time. Calming herbal teas that Mari-sensei liked but didn't admit to because she didn't want people to know her nerves needed calming, check. Latest edition of the Leaf Fashion Gazetteer in case she needed to occupy her mind, check. Finger puzzle set that Mari-sensei hated but felt proud for completing, check. Soft, cuddle-friendly clothes (currently worn), check. One square of chocolate, painfully expensive but therefore meaningful as a gesture, check.
She passed through the compound gates. Really, she should have gone back with Hazō after he told her Mari-sensei was feeling non-specifically sad, but it hadn't taken
that much time to run through the shopping district, and a good ninja was always prepared.
Sounds of shovel digging into ground on the right. Probably Kagome updating the trap arrays. She wondered whether he'd reach triple-digit layers before he ran out of space, and whether he'd then come up with an excuse to expand beyond the walls.
For the first time in recorded history, it wasn't Kagome taking the lead on the trap arrays.
"Mari-sensei?" Mari-sensei was arguably the opposite of Kagome, and, in the absence of missions or hunter-nin, would hardly want to get dirty of her own free will (except in the figurative sense).
Mari-sensei stopped digging a ditch and turned to look at her, but didn't say anything. Her eyes were half-closed in a combination of exhaustion and misery.
Akane should have brought more chocolate.
"Mari-sensei, what's wrong?!"
Mari-sensei shook her head mutely.
"You can't talk," Akane inferred the obvious.
Mari-sensei nodded.
"Rather, you won't talk."
Nod.
"Because somebody told you to and you're following their instructions."
Nod.
Soon, Akane was going to run into the domain of Twenty Questions, and it would be much more efficient to just find and ask someone else.
Fortunately, this was the point at which Kagome turned up.
"Akane!" he exclaimed joyfully. "Good to see you. Why haven't you been coming?"
It made her wonder how much he understood. About the breakup. About her becoming an outsider. About how the two fit together. But maybe it wouldn't matter, or at least not matter as much, now that they were treating her as one of them again.
Akane decided to cut right to the chase. "Why is Mari-sensei digging ditches and not saying anything?"
"Doctor's orders," Kagome said reluctantly.
"A
doctor told her to do this?
Why?"
"I don't know about the ditches. The talking is so she won't manipulate us."
"What's wrong with Mari-sensei manipulating us?" Akane asked. "It's just what she does."
The look of mixed resignation and self-loathing on Mari-sensei's face explained everything.
"Oh, she's overwhelmed with guilt about being someone who can't have normal human relationships after a lifetime of manipulating people for her own benefit."
Akane had always suspected it was a matter of time. All the hints Mari-sensei dropped about her past were steeped in disgust with her past self, and every time she said anything that indicated a belief in her own redemption, she did so with a sense of fragility, like she was only just able to make herself believe it. A heavy enough hammer could shatter the whole thing. Akane should have tried harder to come up with a solution, a way to make Mari-sensei strong enough for the eventual confrontation, no matter that something so deep and powerful felt far outside her reach.
Kagome stared at her in shock. "How did you know?"
"I knew," Akane said. She knew and she should have tried harder.
"How did it happen?" she asked. Every detail would make it easier to work out what to do.
"The night Hana arrived, they had some kind of talk," Kagome said. "I don't really get what happened, but she said something to Mari that broke her into pieces." He looked down at the dug-up earth. "I thought she was nice at first. Let down my guard just because she was Hazō's family."
"His
family?" Kurosawa Hana. Yes, that was her name. The woman Hazō had been obsessed with during their time as missing-nin, and hardly less so afterwards. The most important person in his life, whose sandals Akane hadn't been fit to lick. Not that he ever realised he felt that way, or that Akane had any right to complain. It was enough to be his girlfriend, and she wasn't the kind of person who resented other people's happiness.
"When did this happen?" she asked as the implications began to unfold in her mind.
"Maybe three weeks ago," Kagome said. "Just marched in here uninvited—past my arrays, too, stupid jōnin and their cheating jōnin ways—and sat down to dinner like nothing was wrong. Should have known right then not to trust her."
Hana had been here for three weeks. Akane hadn't known. Nobody had told her. Even if she no longer had the right to have him introduce her to his parent… At best, they'd all forgotten about Akane for those three weeks, while Hazō's mother was here, with them, and while Mari-sensei had been "broken into pieces". At best. Maybe Hazō had only told her she was welcome at the compound now because she hadn't been welcome before.
"Where is she now?" Akane asked. "I think I should talk to her." At least after questioning the others. Kagome was naturally helpful, within his limits, but she needed details.
"Gone," Kagome said. "She drowned Mari for a bit, but the others stopped me from killing her. Then Jiraiya-stinker finally did something right. Punched her through some walls and kicked her right out of Leaf. Not a day too soon."
For a few long seconds, Akane was speechless. What kind of Icha-Icha-level drama had she missed out on? How could this have happened to one of the most trusted, most
competent people in her life? And how had Lord Hokage have let it get that far?
How much of it could Akane have prevented if they'd only let her?
She could feel a tingling behind her eyes. It was too much, all at once. Every time she thought Team Uplift might let her back in. Every time she managed to suppress her bitterness at being left out in the cold. Every time she briefly managed to recapture the happiness of those days of constant danger and privation, but also every time she thought she'd made her peace with the way things were now.
She wasn't youthful enough to keep going like this.
But she was youthful enough to set her own feelings aside when it mattered. That was her talent, if she had one.
"Doctor's orders, you said. What exactly are these orders? Why is Mari-sensei doing what she's doing?"
Kagome's explanation was deeply disturbing, and amounted to torture for purposes he himself didn't understand.
"Is that right?" Akane said, keeping the anger from her face in case it alarmed Kagome. "Just who is this doctor?"
"Tsunade," Kagome said. "Fine woman. Gets what's important in life."
"
The Tsunade?!"
Things just got an order of magnitude more difficult. She'd have to pay attention to her breathing.
Kagome nodded. "I mean, could be a doppelganger or a chakra fleshdancer, but you don't get those on the mainland. Wrong climate. Also Jiraiya recognised her, and he's supposed to know her like a sister."
"And where is she?"
"Some bar in the market district. Takeshi's, I think Noburi said."
"Takeshi's," Akane repeated. "If I'm not back in two hours, my will is in my desk, top left drawer. My parents might forget."
-o-
It was prime sealing research time, but for once Hazō was choosing to spend it in his room. There was something he couldn't put off any longer, not if he wanted to find the right words to say to Mari-sensei before he left. Or to apologise for what Mum had done, because somebody had to do it, and he was the only one who could.
What had she been thinking? Mum had always been the ultimate pillar of self-control, imperturbable come rain or shine. It was one of the things he'd admired most about her. She wasn't the kind of person to lay into someone so badly as to destroy their self-esteem in a time and place where that put her—and her ability to see her son—in immediate danger. He'd almost have guessed genjutsu, except that the only user around that night was Mari-sensei herself.
It was just like the killbox incident—an emotional outburst at someone she couldn't afford to alienate, without considering the fact that the consequences might be devastating, and not just for her. It even involved Jiraiya nearly killing her as a result, followed by banishment. Maybe the whole thing ran in the family. It made him a little scared for if he ever had kids.
It also gave him a clue. He'd ascended to the heights of self-destructive stupidity for Akane's sake. Had Mum done it for his?
She had. He thought back to the time she'd stormed into the Academy to have Words with the headmaster after one particularly unfair detention. She'd been a terrifying banshee, sweeping aside everything in her path in order to protect her son (overlooking the fact that it only made the teachers hate him more in the long term). Here in Leaf, she'd been irrational. She'd been almost—he hesitated to say it—stupid. Knowing that it was possible put the woman he'd so longed to see in a slightly different light.
He was going to have to admit that she'd done something stupid, and apologise for it, in her place. It was a horrible thought, but it was also what his mother would have done if she'd realised she'd made a mistake. Not once in his life had she been a hypocrite.
He tried to imagine Mari-sensei's feelings at that apology, whether it would mean anything to her, and felt a sudden stab of pain. She'd murdered her own father figure, without apology or regret. She'd killed family. Was she even Hazō's Mari-sensei anymore?
Why had she done it? Why would anyone do something like that? Had she said anything, done anything, that could possibly make a capital-s Sin justifiable? Hazō had been reeling too much to carry on the conversation then, but could there have been a reason good enough to let him forgive the unforgivable?
She'd mentioned her uncle before, just once, he realised after minutes of desperate thought. She'd been an early bloomer, and for some reason that was terrible, and she didn't want to talk about it. She'd been an early bloomer, and that was explanation enough to justify murdering a stranger who'd merely reminded her of it.
Hazō was intelligent enough to put the pieces together. There was something her uncle had done to her as a young girl, something so traumatic that it deserved torture and death. There weren't many things he could have done that were specifically
related to her being a young girl, and thinking about any of them made Hazō feel sick to the stomach. No wonder Mari-sensei had vomited when Jiraiya talked about women being forced to have sex. He remembered it because it was the first time Mari-sensei had ever been sick at a mere mental image, and he should never have dismissed her feelings as irrational.
He'd been arrogant. Hypocritical. Judgemental. He'd looked down on Mari-sensei without understanding a fraction of the suffering that had made her who she was, of a betrayal greater than anything he could personally imagine. He had to do better. He had to understand her, or he didn't deserve to be called her friend.
It wasn't going to be easy, because so much of her past was completely alien to him. He'd have thought an experience like hers would turn her off sex for life. Instead, everything he knew, from Mari-sensei's own agonised confessions to Mum's allusions, suggested that she'd been promiscuous. She'd even willingly taken up a seduction specialisation. And the Mari-sensei he knew certainly approved of sex and encouraged it in others. Hazō still remembered, with a deep shudder, the time she gave him the Talk alongside Keiko.
He'd have to ask her, a long time from now, after she got better, and he apologised for disrespecting her and gathered up the courage to broach a topic that would likely lead to a conversation that made the Talk look like a casual chat. It made him smile, a little, to imagine a return to that normal world of Mari-sensei's merciless teasing.
Until then, he had work to do. Maybe she wasn't his Mari-sensei anymore. Maybe he'd learned things he could never unlearn. Maybe behind the woman he'd lived with for two years was someone who'd been broken from the start, a monster that had spent all her Mist days hurting others, who had twisted his own fate beyond recognition out of pure selfishness, and whose many horrifying confessions included ones that sounded like they could be true.
But she was also the woman who tried hard to choose what was right over what was easy—it was a line that had stuck with him when she said it in Hidden Mountain, because it was the first time Mari-sensei had said the kind of thing
he would say in a serious situation, without awkwardness and without prompting. She was also the woman who'd spent so much time and effort teaching them,
raising them, without any prior experience and with every incentive to abandon them for the sake of her own survival. She was the woman who was prepared to die for the team, and had proven it in a way that, whatever she believed, could never be construed as manipulation.
Even if she wasn't his Mari-sensei anymore, she wasn't the Mari-sensei she'd been in Mist either. Whoever she was now, it was something more than the mother and something more than the monster, and because he loved her, he was going to do everything in his power to learn who she really was.
-o-
Tsunade was roughly twice as intimidating as the books portrayed her, and that was while she was lounging casually in her seat. Her muscles looked rock solid, her posture, while appalling for somebody who was supposed to be a role model for good health, contained a barely disguised willingness to kill those who disturbed her, and her face managed to radiate "sceptical and unimpressed" no matter what actual expression was on it at the time.
Noburi, sitting at an angle from her, didn't seem fazed by any of this as he chattered excitedly at her and she periodically nodded benevolently, as if she was watching a dog perform its new trick over and over. He also had a drink in front of him, but if nothing else, Akane could trust Tsunade to keep his liver within safe limits.
Noburi looked up at her as she closed the door to the private room, and grinned with pleasant surprise.
"What's up, Akane? This isn't the kind of place I'd expect you to be hanging out."
"Noburi," Akane said tensely, "please leave the two of us alone. I'll owe you a favour."
She couldn't get him caught up in the middle of this, especially if it went wrong and Tsunade decided to resort to violence.
Noburi glanced at Tsunade, who was watching him with an unreadable look on her face. Then back at Akane. Then at Tsunade again.
The woman was turning this into a contest over his loyalty just by sitting there and doing nothing in particular. Well, Akane had known from the start what kind of battle she was in for.
"Please go," she said. "I accept full responsibility for offending Tsunade."
Noburi gave Tsunade a last anxious glance, saw no change of expression there, and made a quick escape. Akane breathed a sigh of relief, though only on the inside.
"Do you know what happened to the last person who offended me?"
Akane could make an educated guess. Like every literate girl whose parents bought her books, she'd read about Tsunade. Unlike most literate girls, she'd had a lot of time in which to do little but read about topics that interested her—she hadn't realised until long afterwards how much of the family income her parents must have allocated to fuelling her reading habit after she fell ill.
"You put him in hospital, and made him pay for the privilege of having you bring him out again."
"That's right. And
he thought he was being polite."
A mountain fell on Akane.
If she'd tried to stay standing tall, it would surely have crushed her spine, followed by everything else. She didn't try. Standing tall didn't matter. Her bones didn't matter. On this scale, nothing mattered.
She could distantly feel herself fall to the floor. The impact should have hurt, but even that didn't matter.
She was going to die here. She didn't know why she hadn't died already.
There was some reason. Something she was here to do. Why she still existed. To protect. Something. Someone. Someone she knew. Someone she'd seen. Just now.
Mari-sensei.
The mountain was still on top of her. "Don't care," she forced out. "Will… protect…"
She tried to look up. Couldn't. Couldn't move her eyes. Everything was a blur anyway.
She needed strength. Couldn't lift a mountain. Had to keep going. Had to protect. Needed strength.
"Youth," she hissed. "Can't destroy youth…"
The mountain disappeared as Tsunade roared with laughter.
"Gender-swapped Rock Lee, are you? Guess I'm not the only surgeon with a sense of humour."
The room slowly came into focus. Akane's arms regained mobility before her legs and she gradually pushed herself up into a kneeling position, stayed there until she felt balanced, and then leveraged her legs into place. She stood up and waited for the room to stop swaying.
Tsunade hadn't moved an inch throughout the whole thing.
"Not… Rock Lee…" Akane said slowly so as not to stumble over her own tongue. "There's more than one kind of youth."
"But it all comes in green."
That was unfair. Granted, Akane owned several very fine youthsuits (as Hazō had dubbed them, and now she couldn't get the word out of her head), but right now she was wearing her best cuddle clothes (also as described by Hazō, and maybe she should look into replacing her wardrobe), and it was a pure coincidence that those also happened to be all-green.
"Now, girl, why shouldn't I just pound you into dust for interrupting my conversation?"
Was there a reason? She can't have gone through that near-death experience for nothing, right?
Oh, that was it.
"Because then you won't hear what I have to say," Akane said, making sure her voice didn't shake. Controlled breathing was everything, and so was not showing weakness until she was out of the room. "You can always crush me after that."
Tsunade snorted. "Assuming I care. Go finish Noburi's drink so I haven't wasted my money."
"It is unyouthful to cloud one's mind with alcohol," Akane said resolutely, while keenly aware that she was only accumulating reasons for Tsunade to kill her.
"Not endearing yourself to me, girl," Tsunade said. "Now why are you wasting my time? Five words or less."
Akane couldn't afford to hesitate. "Want Mari-sensei's treatment explained."
"Do you know what I did to the last person who tried to make me justify myself?"
"I don't think it matters," Akane said. "You're not going to do the same thing as last time just because it's the same thing as last time."
"Doesn't mean I won't." Tsunade shifted into a less casual pose. "I don't like people who think they can predict me."
People always thought being predictable was a bad thing. And it was, when you were facing an enemy or making the same mistakes over and over. But nobody seemed to understand that the rest of the time… you had to be predictable if you wanted to be reliable.
But that was a discussion for another day, assuming Akane walked out of here alive
and capable of speech,
and Tsunade was interested in ever speaking with her again. Tsunade probably wasn't a necromancer, so one out of three would do for now.
Akane had read enough about Tsunade. She wasn't a raving lunatic who just happened to be the best healer in the world. There were rules to the game.
"Please tell me why you prescribed that treatment to Mari-sensei," she said simply.
That feeling of pressure returned. It was lighter this time, and Akane was more ready for it, so she was able to avoid falling to the floor by folding her arms onto the table in front of her and letting it take most of the mountain's weight. Some background part of her mind felt a flash of surprise that the table was still in one piece.
"No."
"Why… not?"
"I don't need to give a reason. There's only one person that gets to ask me to justify myself, and her name is Tsunade."
She was here to protect Mari-sensei. That was why she was here. It didn't matter how crushed she got. She just had to protect Mari-sensei. And to do that… she had to be able to think. She'd come here with some kind of question… for when Tsunade refused.
"If you don't explain yourself to anyone… how do you know you haven't done things wrong?"
The pressure disappeared again, as if Tsunade was toying with her.
"I'm the best doctor there is by a mile, girl. Even if I make a mistake, there's no one who could ever catch it for me. And if your best argument is 'Some random carpenter's daughter can spot the holes in your treatment plan', then I think it's time your spine and I had a short but enlightening conversation."
"I know Mari-sensei better than you do," Akane said. "What you're doing won't work."
Finally, Tsunade looked like something other than contemptuous. "Oh, this should be good. Hit me, second best doctor in the world. What am I doing?"
"You're making sure she gets lots of youthful outdoor exercise so she's too tired to think unhappy thoughts. You're having her help Kagome with the arrays so she's being helpful to her family. And you're keeping her silent so she can't talk to people and then go into a cycle of blaming herself for manipulating people again. Oh, and the youthful outdoor exercise will probably make her feel better in general because that's what youth does. Is that right?"
"I don't want to hear the word 'youth' one more time in this conversation."
Akane could do that. Long months spent by Keiko's side had taught her that, with sufficient effort, one could temporarily suppress the instinct to talk about youth and youthfulness. It was a skill she suspected Rock Lee had never learned.
"All right, Ishihara, maybe you've got the basics," Tsunade said grudgingly, putting down her mug. The smell of the drink was so strong it felt like a punch to the face. "You think I can do better?"
Tsunade had never given her a chance to introduce herself. That had to be important, but Akane couldn't take the time to analyse.
"You're making her do busywork and she knows it," Akane said firmly. "Nobody cares about improving the trap arrays except Kagome, and maybe Hazō when he's bored, which he hardly ever is. Mari-sensei might hate her talents right now, but deep down she's proud of being the smart one while other people are better suited to grunt work. Pointless manual labour is only going to make her feel worse. So's getting herself dirty digging ditches all the time. She's vain, and there must be some way to play on that vanity to motivate her to start taking care of herself.
"I get why you don't want her to talk to people. I don't know enough about healing to say whether that's right. But not having people talk to
her is wrong. Kagome is a poor conversationalist, and if she's alone with him all day, she's going to feel isolated. You can't let someone be isolated when they're unhappy."
Tsunade picked up her mug and took a drink. "And your better idea is what, exactly?"
"I'd get her to build something useful, like a Lightning-style meditation garden, with the grey sand and the symbolically-placed rocks. I'd have to read up on how to make them, but it isn't complicated, and making one is supposed to be a form of meditation in itself. Every few years, the sages take them apart and start from scratch in order to keep their minds fresh. And I'd encourage people to talk to her when they're home and have a spare minute. Tell them how their day's going, give her news from outside the compound, share their worries—everything they'd talk about anyway. I'd come by every day I could."
"Mm-hmm. And supposing I tell you that you don't get to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship and had better back off while I'm feeling merciful?"
Akane had to channel the Spirit of Youth very, very hard.
"Then I will do all of the things I just said anyway."
Tsunade choked on her drink.
"Say that again."
"I will do all the things I just said anyway," Akane repeated. It was easier than the first time. "You're not in the chain of command, so you can't order me not to. If you're going to stop me… it'll have to be through force."
Technically, Tsunade could just ask the Hokage, but that would mean getting someone else to solve her problems for her. Akane was betting, with very high stakes, that Tsunade wouldn't be able to do it.
Tsunade was staring at her incredulously. "How much of a death wish do you have, girl?"
"I don't. But I don't have any leverage over you that I could use without hurting the people I love—and I have to do my best."
She met Tsunade's gaze. She wasn't strong enough to hold it for any length of time, but she only needed a few seconds.
"A day to celebrate Kagome's birthday. A day to read. A day to say goodbye to the others. After that, I'll come to the compound in the morning… and you do what you have to."
"December 17th," Tsunade said with a grim finality. "I'll be there."
-o-
The setup couldn't have been more perfect if Mari-sensei (who had the evening off from her torture) had been able to help him arrange it.
An enormous banner hung over one wall of the room, a joint effort that read, "BEST MASTER/TEACHER/TEAMMATE/HELPER/PROTECTOR", and that had made Kagome-sensei sniffle when he got to the end. Beneath, a fireplace crackled merrily under a mantelpiece decorated with Kagome's finest carvings, originally given as gifts because "They'd just clutter up the place if I didn't get rid of them". The walls had explosive tags hanging within easy reach in case someone tried to gatecrash the party, and a couple of bowls were set up by the entrance in case anybody hadn't come with enough. There was even a smaller bowl of training tags for Honoka so as not to make her feel left out. Finally, there were red streamers hanging everywhere—red was very emphatically not Kagome-sensei's favourite colour, because it didn't matter how pretty a colour was if it made you a better target out in the wild, and you couldn't wear it around the house anyway because it would be setting a bad example.
"This is Hazō," Kagome-sensei began. Honoka listened attentively. "He's my apprentice. Like you but older, and he's learning how to make seals, not use them. His head is always full of ideas, and some of them are crazy and some of them are really good."
"Kagome-sensei!"
Honoka giggled.
"I know Mr Hazō already."
"Shhh…" Hazō said. "Not yet."
"Sorry."
"This is Keiko. She's the smartest person I know. Brain the size of a planet. If there's anything you don't know, ask her and she'll either know it or know how to find out."
Keiko gave the small child a hesitant smile.
"Oh, but even if she's really nice to you, you shouldn't hug her because she doesn't like that."
"Why not?"
Kagome-sensei looked at Keiko questioningly.
"I simply do not," she said tensely.
Honoka shuffled back a little.
"Apologies. Let us move on."
"This is Noburi. He's really funny and he tells good stories. Also he has to carry a big barrel on his back when he's doing ninja stuff."
"Does he really?"
"Really. This is Mari. She's good with people, and always nice to everyone, but she's not feeling well right now, so try not to bother her."
"OK."
"And this is Jiraiya. He's the Hokage, but he's not that bad once you get to know him."
Honoka's eyes bulged.
"The Hokage?"
She stared at Jiraiya as if trying to bore a hole in him through sheer concentration.
"Are you really the Hokage?"
Jiraiya chuckled.
"That's right, kid. Good to meet you."
As Honoka seemed dumbstruck and the introductions were over anyway (at least until Fifi decided to grace them with her presence), the family unanimously decided to move on to the next part of the evening.
"Kagome-sensei," Hazō began, "as the banner says, you're the best master and the best teacher ever. Honoka and I know that you're going to have many more pupils once people find out, so we wanted to get ahead of the game."
He handed Kagome-sensei the portfolio. Kagome-sensei opened it with a look of puzzlement that turned into a beaming smile as he looked over the professional-looking sketches of Hazō and Honoka, with a carefully-crafted signature over one and a slightly messy one that had taken forever to practice over the other.
He looked from Hazō to Honoka. "Thank you," he said slowly. "I can't wait."
Noburi was next.
"Now, this is technically a group present," he said, unsealing the scrolls and pulling out the books. "It was Hazō's idea, but I talked to the Akimichi to pick out the best books, and Keiko checked to see which ingredients were most popular and hardest to import into Leaf."
"I suggest you explain what it actually is," Keiko said.
"Oh, right. These are the finest ingredients we could pick up in Mist, plus some of the traditional uses for them prepared in tasty meal form. And those there are cooking guides. If you want, you can become the best Mist-style chef in Leaf, on top of all the amazing stuff you can already do."
Kagome quickly flicked through the cookbooks, then spent a lot longer examining the ingredients, especially the seafood.
"No brain-eater spinefish or Hidden Depths battle-anemones. All good. Thank you, you three."
"Oh, there are also some mugs," Hazō added belatedly. "Those are from me, but since I was with Honoka anyway, I got her to help choose the ones that came out best."
Kagome-sensei looked at the mugs.
World's Best Teacher. Explosives Solve Everything. Safety First, Second and Third. Glorp Out of Ten. (The last one was a mystery to Hazō, but Honoka had insisted, and Hazō could afford a last-minute special order.)
"These are great. I was just thinking we needed more mugs. Glorp out of
glorp for you, Honoka!"
"Thank you!"
"What is this 'glorp' business?" Hazō asked.
"Sorry, Hazō, you're not at Honoka's level yet. You'll have to study hard to catch up first."
"Don't worry," Honoka said reassuringly. "Kagome-sensei is a great teacher."
"May I make my offering next?" Keiko asked, unsuccessfully trying to suppress a smirk.
Keiko presented her own storage scrolls and unsealed them. Inside were what looked like a mutated cutlery set plus several chunky blocks of multi-coloured somethings.
"Regrettably, I could only use my own hands to model the grip, though the artisan made her best effort to scale the result up appropriately. Nevertheless, I hope it will be of use to you."
"I suggest you explain what it actually is," Noburi said snidely.
"Oh. Pangolin-style carving tools, and samples of several types of tree that, to the best of my knowledge, do not exist on the Human Path."
Kagome-sensei's hand lashed out and seized the nearest carving tool, which looked like the Leaf symbol had had a fight with a hair comb while half-immersed in molten iron. "I see. So if you line it up with the grain here…"
"I believe you are holding it upside down."
"Am not."
"I assure you, the pangolins hold it the opposite way."
"Then they're stupid."
"Miss Keiko, what's a pangolin?"
"A kind of giant armoured anteater with enormous claws."
"What's an anteater?"
"I will summon you a pangolin at a later date," Keiko said testily.
"Summon?"
"Ahem," Noburi said dramatically. "Ladies and gentlemen—also Hazō—please set your zoological and metaphysical squabbles aside and feast your eyes on this, a present for the ages! This is a complete and comprehensive map of the Gōketsu compound trap arrays, as distributed among the information dealers I've been able to track down with my unique charm and bulging money pouch."
"What?! Are you insane—"
"Naturally, the inner half of this map is completely wrong, and the outer half is erratic to simulate the arrays being upgraded over time, and I've paid to make sure we find out whenever somebody buys a copy."
Kagome-sensei's horror magically transformed into a broad smile.
"Aww, you shouldn't have."
"I got you this," Mari-sensei said quietly after a few seconds' silence. "I know I shouldn't be giving you things, but…"
She carefully proffered a sizeable but elegant pin decorated with images of the Guardian Dragons of the Depths, tapering to a sharp point.
"If you ever get captured, they'll try to take it off you because it's a sharp object you could stab someone with. Unless they know how to handle it, poisoned blades flip out of the front and slice up their hands. That gives you an opening to escape. If you can't escape, there's antidote inside the golden dragon's eye to use as a bargaining tool. Or if you cut yourself by accident. Ask Noburi about the symbolism."
Kagome-sensei gave a grin. "That's perfect. Always wanted something for if some stinker gets you from ambush before you can blow them up."
Mari-sensei stepped back, uneasy at being the centre of the room's attention.
Jiraiya came to the rescue. "Hey, Kagome, you ever heard of Black Bakushin?"
"Are you kidding? The Daimyo of Detonation? The greatest of Rock's Explosion Corps? The man who
taught the Last of the Dragonlords?"
"How'd you like his research notes?"
Kagome-sensei's jaw dropped.
"Here," Jiraiya handed him a package. "They're a bit charred—well, very charred—but maybe you can get something useful out of them."
Kagome-sensei took the package as if receiving the blank for the Seal of Instant Divine Ascension, which for all Hazō knew he was (nobody said it involved ascending in one piece).
Akane came last. There was something strange about her manner, a kind of alertness as if she was trying to take in every last detail of her environment. It had been standard practice as a missing-nin, but he'd never seen her do it while in the safety of Leaf.
"I got you clothes," she said. "I couldn't get them tailored, but I remember your measurements from when we were missing-nin."
She took out several sets, one of casual homewear and a few more of varied levels of formality. All were in various calm shades of red.
"You still wear your survival gear all the time, and you get strange looks, and some people think you're crazy when you're just being practical."
Kagome-sensei nodded.
"These all have plenty of pockets for seals and so on, but they're also the kind of thing an ordinary person in the street might wear. Plus a cosy one for when you're resting at the compound.
"Leaf is your home now, and I think it'll start feeling more like one if you try doing some of the things other people here do, instead of keeping yourself apart from them out of pure habit. You're learning to be more than a survivor, just like the rest of us, and I think this'll help."
Kagome-sensei eyed the suits with a mixture of appreciation and suspicion. "I'll think about giving it a shot. Thanks, Akane."
It was a very Akane gift. Practical, heartfelt, and addressing needs that somebody else might not even notice. Hazō hadn't thought about integrating Kagome-sensei into society for a while, not since he adapted enough to stop trying to blow up everybody outside the team for existing in a threatening manner. Akane, who saw him a lot less often, apparently had.
As he watched her, smiling at Kagome-sensei, and joking with Noburi, and helping Honoka feel welcome, and giving Mari-sensei strangely focused looks, he realised all over again how much he'd lost. Stupid. Careless. Inattentive. Proud of his analytical powers yet utterly oblivious when it came to what was really important.
Still, for all his failures, she was still here. In front of him, doing all the same Akane things she always did. She was still here, and now that he'd reminded her she was welcome, hopefully she'd be here more. He hadn't lost everything.
It was important to remind himself of that. Just like Mum hadn't turned into a different person when he realised her flaws, just like Mari-sensei hadn't disappeared from his life after he stopped understanding her, Akane remained Akane no matter how their relationship changed. The bond that had made them friends before it ever made them lovers was still there to rediscover.
Celebratory dinner. Family board games. Figuring out how to redefine his relationships with all of the important women in his life (once he included Akane's advice on Keiko). It was starting to look like a very full itinerary.
-o-
You have received 5 + 1 XP.
-o-
You have fulfilled the rest of the plan offscreen. However...
Looking back at seven days of sealing research and seven failed infusion attempts, the whole thing has been an unmitigated disaster. Twice, you came within a hair's breadth of a catastrophic sealing failure and Kagome-sensei only just spotted your error in time. You're frazzled, confused and with a horrible suspicion that you've gone off in completely the wrong direction. You might not be able to power through this one with natural ability alone.
Keiko has noted your request, but she did not have time to both do her shopping and unveil the deepest, darkest mysteries of an alien world, so that research will have to wait for now.
-o-
You get a free pass for using youthsuit green in the plan because you specifically reference Akane, but don't forget that it is a cursed colour that makes bad things happen. Also, I advise you not to give QMs instructions on what they should and shouldn't offscreen.
-o-
In order to bring my updates in line with international standards, I am updating my plan word counts henceforth to need under 300 rather than under 400 words to qualify for the bonus.
-o-
What do you do?
Voting closes on Saturday 17th of November, 9 a.m. New York Time.
