Having only encountered archery as a hunting practice in Isan and the civilian villages he'd visited as a missing-nin, Hazō had been unaware that there were some older ninja clans that practiced it as a form of moving meditation. Today, Ami was apparently training her throwing skills at an Uchiha dojo designed specifically for kyudo and shuriken practice, an elongated indoor space known informally as the Bow-Ring Alley.
She was not, however, throwing shuriken. As Hazō stepped into the building, he was just in time to see a large black ball leave her right hand with lightning speed. There was a clatter as it knocked over several sets of training gear stacked up next to the far wall.
As Hazō opened his mouth to ask Ami about the contents of the day's training, the ball hit the wall—and instantly changed direction. Ami's hand lashed out as the blur of motion came near to striking her in the throat. She grabbed the ball, spun with its momentum, and threw it full-strength at the nearest wall, the impact cracking the wood.
The ball collapsed to the floor, resolving itself into the shape of a stunned black feline a little larger than a housecat.
"C'mon, Sammy," Ami chided, "you can't just keep going for the jugular. It's predictable. Try the Achilles tendon, or the hamstring. Humans only have two legs, so if you take one out, they're all yours to play with as you like."
"Sammy?" Hazō asked, greeting forgotten.
"Oh, Hazō." Ami waved without taking her eyes off the feline. "Meet Jūchi Yosamu, Keiko's pet monstrosity. Do me a favour and stay at the other end of the dojo, would you? You can
probably take him, Iron Nerve and all, but I could be wrong and then Keiko would be sad."
Hazō stayed where he was.
The cat(?)—it just had to be another cat(?), didn't it?—rose to his feet, crouched, then transformed into a black streak barely within the limits of Hazō's kinetic vision, once again heading straight for Ami.
This time, she pivoted to throw him straight up, the impact against the ceiling sending dust and splinters raining down around her. But as Yosamu fell, he had just enough presence of mind to grab onto one of the ceiling beams and pull himself to safety. From there, he began to stalk her with the slow patience of a young predator learning its lesson about full frontal assault.
"Isn't he adorable?"
Hazō chose to suspend judgement.
"Ami, why are you beating up Keiko's birthday present?"
"It's an important stage in his development," Ami explained. "The Inuzuka say I already smell a bit like Keiko, and today I smell a lot like Keiko, and he needs to learn to associate that smell with absolute dominance. Also, he gets to practice hunting ninja without the actual consequences of killing someone, and I get a rare opportunity to practice fighting a chakra beast that'll kill me if I let my guard down.
"Sorry our training's overrun. He's been a bit friskier than I expected. Still, he's only a kitten(?), so it should be—"
Yosamu pounced. Ami sidestepped, thrusting her hand out as she went, and guided him into a meteoritic headfirst crash into the dojo floor.
"—time for his nap now."
Ami picked up Yosamu, who appeared to be unconscious, by the scruff of his neck, and deposited him in a familiar metal box, around which she wrapped several layers of chains.
"So what can I do for you, Hazō?"
"Mostly," Hazō said, "I wanted to tell you I'm sorry."
Ami shrugged. "You mean the soup thing? Nah, I'm over it. I mean, I'm pretty disappointed in Mari, violence being the last refuge of the incompetent and all, but as power plays go, it doesn't break any rules. For reference, though? Assault on a guest in your home under formal flag of truce? I'm not the type to get hung up on honour, but If I were an enemy, I could
ruin you with that. I know you're functionally commonborn, but lesson for the future: laws of truce and hospitality are among the few things every ninja clan has respected ever since the Warring Clans era. Intimidation, manipulation, and especially seduction are a given—I've turned diplomats before and it's delicious—but if you can't guarantee a negotiator's safety, that means you're not open to negotiation, and that means you're a rabid dog that gets put down by the clans who do talk to each other and all stand to benefit from getting rid of an enemy that can't be reasoned with."
"No," Hazō said after a moment to soak in an angle on the meeting that he had to admit hadn't occurred to him. "That's not what I was going to apologise for. Ami, I think there were certain things you were hoping for from me. You were hoping that I'd be a certain kind of person. But I'm not, and I don't think I can be, and I am sorry for that."
"You don't have to apologise for that, Hazō," Ami said, but without her customary jauntiness. She took a few steps back to lean against the wall next to the box. "People resign sometimes, when they decide they're in over their head. It sucks, but it's better than having them break themselves trying to keep up."
Over his head? That was never what this had been about. It wasn't that Hazō couldn't keep up with her—maybe he couldn't, but that was a completely separate question—it was that her actions had been unacceptable, and if they were going to develop a positive, healthy relationship, she needed to understand that she'd picked the wrong way of relating to him.
"I'm not sure what you mean," Hazō said. "What have I resigned from?"
Ami blinked. "Our game. You did understand you were resigning, right?"
"I don't remember doing any such thing," Hazō said, puzzled. "I think there must've been some kind of miscommunication."
"We had a game," Ami said, "you and me. Then you decided to step back and have Mari play for you. That's resignation. You swapped out the Ami-Hazō game for an Ami-Mari game which I have no particular interest in playing."
"I'm right here, Ami," Hazō replied. "I asked Mari for advice in managing a conflict. That's all. If you've somehow interpreted that as, I don't know, cutting ties with you, then you've got it all wrong."
"Let's not do that, Hazō," Ami said. "Mari didn't give you tips; she played for you. And as soon as you get someone else to fight your battles for you, that's not the same relationship anymore, is it? I mean, think about it. If I felt Mari had crossed the line and now
I was the injured party, should I have brought in Naruto to deal with her in my place? Or the KEI? Or the Mizukage, who doesn't have the capital to let a
second Gōketsu assault on a Mist representative go unavenged? That's not the kind of game I want to play, and it's not the kind of game I thought you wanted to play either."
"I don't want to play games at all," Hazō said. "That isn't what I've been trying to do. Maybe that's what the miscommunication here is. I wasn't deploying Mari against you. I wasn't performing some kind of manoeuvre. I was just looking for the best way to handle a conflict."
"Games are a constant of human interaction," Ami countered. "This is an inescapable fact of life. And while other models are viable, they are a less effective and practically applicable means of interpreting human relationships. Although generally unstable, there are at all times victory conditions, rules, and an undeniable element of challenge. The mutually beneficial relationship between Mori Ami and Gōketsu Hazō is a game you commenced, and a game you ended."
"I didn't intend to end anything." Hazō stayed calm. He'd taken time to think about this, and he understood that Ami hadn't arrived at her warped perspective by accident. It must have taken a lot of isolation, the kind of isolation brilliant people were doomed to if they weren't as lucky as he was, to leave her unable to understand that family simply did not interact that way. Keiko had sealed herself away as a means of dealing with a social world that didn't understand her. Ami had turned her abilities into a weapon with which to control it, but that control had never stopped being another form of defence.
Yes, she'd hurt him, and explanations weren't excuses, but she must have been hurt in turn when instead of responding to her intentions he'd chosen to retaliate at full power. As far as he was concerned, that scale was balanced now. In the end, the Gōketsu were already a clan of socially-maladjusted misfits, with a place in the world carved out to compensate for a handful of places that were gone, hostile, or changed by time into something unrecognisable, or that had always been too complicated for simple labels. Ami would fit right in… if she wanted to. If she wanted to change.
"This conflict wasn't part of a mutually beneficial relationship," Hazō went on. "How could it have been? It was just an interruption, and it's been dealt with. We've both acknowledged that, and if you feel you want forgiveness after what happened, I'm happy to offer it. That's all."
Ami glanced at the metal box, as if to make sure Yosamu hadn't learned to walk through solid matter and escaped. Hazō's chakra beast lore wasn't enough to know whether that was a legitimate concern.
"Not part of a mutually beneficial relationship?" she asked. "Why would I seek to trigger those responses in you if not as a part of a mutually beneficial relationship?"
"Why would you?" he asked. "I did wonder. You can't tell me you wanted
this to happen."
"You sure you're prepared to sacrifice your shot at my secret stash of Mist candy?"
Hazō rolled his eyes. "
Ami."
"Right. Clan head. You can probably just have it imported. The Akane thing was the biggest. Hazō, if it does happen, and it might, then you'll be hearing from her first, not me, and in that moment she will need total, absolute support and reassurance. If you just stand there looking stunned the way you did, if you flail or panic, that could hurt her in all sorts of real and lasting ways. That reaction's out of the way now, and you've had time to think and prepare."
"It was too much," Hazō said quietly. "Too cruel. There must have been a hundred better ways."
"Depends what you optimise for," Ami said. "Same with refusing to leave. It was a situation you were going to run into sooner or later, with the kind of enemies you love making, and you handled it well, in the end. When an actual hostile jōnin tests your authority, you're going to be a lot more ready."
"Ami, if I needed that kind of training, I could have just asked," Hazō pointed out, still patient. They'd dealt with it. It was over.
"There's no training like the real thing," Ami said, brushing him off. "You know it wouldn't have worked if you thought it was a friendly test. Also, it made you angry enough to guarantee you'd train with Snowflake instead of being able to go back to work. And just generally, it told me a lot of important things I needed to know about you."
Hazō sighed. "And that brings us all the way back round, Ami. I'm not that person. I don't want my feelings sacrificed in exchange for efficient communication. I'm sorry if I got your hopes up."
"Yeah," she said. "I get that now. My likeliest projection was that you'd cool down a bit and then come talk to me, and explain in detail all the ways I'd hurt you, like I didn't know, and why that was wrong, and then you'd try to set down ground rules to stop the same thing happening again, and that conversation could go in any one of dozens of useful directions. Also, if you took me seriously about the Akane thing, which I really didn't think you would, I figured that was when you'd tell me not to do it. I overestimated you enormously and I own that. Mori get taught early on that it's useless to blame reality for not matching your projections."
She fell silent. Slowly, she slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor next to Yosamu's box. She put a hand on it.
"For what it's worth…" she said quietly, "for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I got too excited and asked for more from you than you could give. I'll find someone else to play with."
She stood, raising the box with her.
"Let's take you home, Sammy."
She began to walk past Hazō, towards the exit.
"Like I said before," Hazō said. "You have my forgiveness, if you want it."
Ami didn't stop.
"Sorry, Hazō," she said. "I need to head back now."
"Ami," Hazō said before she could leave, "the transitive property's still in place. What that means is up to you… but the Gōketsu are willing if you are."
Ami nodded in acknowledgment, but didn't slow down.
"For now, friends again?" Hazō called out, not pursuing, as she neared the door.
At this, she turned briefly, and gave him a small smile that could have meant anything.
Then Hazō was alone in the Bow-Ring Alley, not sure (as always with Ami) whether he'd dropped the ball or played a perfect game.
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