Ch 27: Despair Not
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Genin Uzumaki
Kushina liked to think she knew how to fight. She liked to think that she was pretty solid as far as kunoichi went. Then she picked a fight with one of Noburu's teammates and got kicked so hard in the stomach that she went flying twelve meters back and landed in the sound.
While Kushina struggled back to the surface, her opponent casually skipped -- literally skipped -- across the surface of the water and crouched down next to the Konoha genin.
"Maybe Noburu is right," the strange girl with tattoos around her eyes said with a pout. "You still need practice before you're a good fight."
Kushina wanted to snap something, but she instead coughed and tried to stay afloat. How did a girl barely older than her already know how to water-walk?
"Here, let me help you up baby-girl!" The cheerful Oto nin reached down and grabbed Kushina under arms. As if she weighed nothing, the girl -- Junko, Kushina remembered her name was -- picked Kushina up and carried her back to shore.
"H-hey! Let me down! I can swim!"
"Not when the water's negative-one degrees, silly!" Junko giggled and held Kushina over her head. "I thought you'd land one of the ice floes -- but you can't control how you fall yet. It's okay, there's always next time!"
Kushina wiggled valiantly, but she couldn't escape the other kunoichi's grip. It was like iron despite Junko being, at best, a couple months older. In short order, she found herself back on shore with a couple dozen blankets foisted on her and a seat by the fire she was mandated to stay at.
"I… I can't believe I lost that badly," Kushina muttered from within her coccoon of blankets. "She kicked me once and that was the end of it!"
"Well, yeah!" Junko cartwheeled onto the scene and crouched down next to Kushina. She wrapped her hands around her knees and grinned. "I'm a Kaguya, we're the top dogs at taijutsu in Oto now. We almost were with Kiri, but the Fujimotos had us beat." She stuck her tongue out. "But there will only be one Fujimoto left after the rest get killed! And he's not really interested in taijutsu!"
Kushina twitched as she listened to the odd girl talk. "He's… your teammate? And you sound happy that his family is going to die?"
Junko nodded. "They can't let go of the past! They're so wrapped up in their Kirigakure pride," she twirled her finger around, to indicate the wrapping, "that they're letting go of reality. By now the food in Kiri will be running out, and there's no more boats there." Junko smiled. "By now they know that they should have come with us, but there's nothing they can do."
Kushina felt a chill run through her that wasn't brought on by her dip in the sound. "And… you're happy about that?"
"Yeah. It means that we've got less people who will make our lives trouble." Junko stuck her tongue out. "My clan's honest about who we are, and we can tell the difference between what's real and what isn't. Everyone here can too." She rolled her eyes. "Everyone who stayed in Kiri would just make it more likely we'd end up like a second Kiri. It's good to get rid of them."
Kushina couldn't say she disagreed, but to see someone reflect her views with such cheer made her think she should. "S-so…, " she started, to turn the conversation in another direction. "Um. How did you train to be so strong?"
"Oh, a lot of training. My family makes games of it all -- stuff like, 'withstand the guillotine', 'catch the knife' and other stuff." She giggled, unaware of how her words made Kushina even more ill-at-ease. "You'll get that strong too, if you train. Though, now they want us to play new games." She tilted her head to the side, and made a confused face. "Stuff like 'drawing', and other not-very-hitty things. Maybe by the time I'm good at that, you'll be good at fighting?"
"Sure… yeah," Kushina nodded. Part of her felt genuinely insulted by Junko for that line, but another felt it was genuine criticism. Junko had kicked her once and won the fight, and Kushina needed to get better at taijutsu so it didn't happen again. "But then I'll have to learn how to be a better artist than you, too."
"Hee! It's like a race! I've got the lead, and you gotta catch up!" Junko gave Kushina two thumbs-up and a grin. "You can still win, if you work hard or get really lucky! I believe you can do it!"
"Um… thank you for believing in me?" She didn't know what to do with that information -- the girl who was glad her teammate's insane family was going to die, and had beaten her with almost no effort believed in her. "I hope I won't… disappoint you?"
Junko's smile slowly faded, and she looked at Kushina -- deadly serious. "You can only disappoint me by giving up. It is better to try, and fail, than to give up." She stood, and walked off suddenly.
Kushina was left in a state of utter bewilderment, cozy though she was in a nest of blankets.
--
Genin Aburame
Shibi stayed with Orochimaru-sensei while the others were allowed to wander the tent city. His sensei wanted to speak to Kousuke, and Shibi had asked to accompany him -- he'd heard stories of the rebellious monk, and wanted to see how true they were.
When they approached the slug-banner tent, Shibi could see that Water Temple monks weren't the same as their Fire Temple compatriots. Fire Temple monks had their hands and feet exposed, and typically went without hair or head-coverings. But the Water Temple monks in Kousuke's entourage had almost every patch of skin apart from their heads covered, and even then they wore hats in fig-like shapes. He'd seen those hats worn by locals in the villages -- perhaps they were making an active change to assimilate to Wave's culture?
Shibi wisely stopped the thoughts in the vein of 'did Wave even have a culture' before they took shape. That would be massively rude to give thought to.
Kousuke broke from the tradition of what he expected a powerful monk to look like. The massive hoop earrings were an obvious sign, but the staff in his hand was another. Shakujo were typically reserved for a monastery's abbott and were used in ceremonies only. But Kousuke's staff had the telltale scars of life as a weapon. He was not surrounded by an aura of killing intent, as the stories told, and he didn't have a sneer that caused ninja to flee at the sight of it.
But one thing the stories got right were Kousuke's eyes. While Orochimaru-sensei talked with the monk, Shibi occasionally caught Kousuke's gaze. Each and every time, without fail, Kousuke's eyes unnerved Shibi. It was as if he were an ant that had caught the complete, undivided attention of a human. Whatever was behind Kousuke's eyes to create such an effect was as high above humans as they were above common insects. However, his hives were relatively still. They had no fear of Kousuke, even though Shibi did.
Shibi didn't know which of them was in the wrong -- maybe neither of them were.
Maybe Kousuke was only something terrifying to Shibi because Shibi had never been in the position his insects spent every day.
"I think your student is having trouble with maintaining his courage," Kousuke commented as he removed his conical hat and began to shed his vestments. "That is good -- he will remember this and find other moments of fear trifling in comparison."
Orochimaru-sensei turned to look at Shibi with an odd expression -- it was like Orochimaru-sensei had something he wanted to express, but didn't quite know how to make his face make the shape. But that was impossible, Orochimaru-sensei was one of the Sannin and their infiltration expert. The Sannin laid his hand on Shibi's shoulder. "It's okay to be afraid. You can stand behind me, or outside the tent if it makes you feel better."
Shibi thought he'd been hiding his fear relatively well. But no, it had been obvious. "If I do not challenge myself," he said as he looked up at his sensei with what he hoped was conviction, "I will not get better. I want to try, at least."
The unfamiliar expression on Orochimaru's face became a smile. "That's a good attitude. Alright." Orochimaru turned back to Kousuke just as the monk sat down with his back to them -- his torso uncovered with no apparent ill effects despite the cold.
A moment later an elaborate tattoo of interlocking diamond-shapes began to appear on Kousuke's back. It spread out from the base of his neck until it encompassed his entire back. Some diamonds were filled, some half-filled, some empty, and others had a pattern within them.
Orochimaru-sensei approached and looked at the elaborate tattoo. Shibi didn't know what he was looking for, just that he looked. Orochimaru-sensei formed hand signs and began to tap some of the diamonds with patterns inside them with his fingers. When he touched a pattern designed to look like a spiral, there was a sudden flood of overwhelming chakra.
Shibi's bugs stilled and hid within their homes, Shibi had to struggle to remain standing, and several of Kousuke's monks looked ill at ease.
"Oy, oy," Kousuke muttered with a different accent than he had possessed a moment prior. "The hell you want, yeah? I got more important things to be doin' than coming out and speakin' to you."
"Pardon me," Orochimaru said, and bowed his head. "Just inspecting the seal. It… appears damaged?"
"Hmph. Well don't bother me about it, yeah? Young people these days, disturbin' their elders for every little thing…." The oppressive chakra faded and his normal voice returned. "Saiken and I are equals. He may come and go as he wishes."
"Well," Orochimaru said as he stood up and crossed his arms. "The seal being that badly damaged means that most seal breakers wouldn't actually do anything. However… why is it this damaged in the first place?"
"The barrier between myself and Saiken strained his ability to lend me his power. I removed it." Kousuke turned and glared directly at Orochimaru. "Isobu and Saiken are the most passive of their kin -- you need not fear rampages unless you do something to provoke them."
"I'll be sure to tell the Hokage that." Orochimaru did not wince from the glare as Shibi knew he would. "Though he might ask that you be sealed somewhat more securely."
"I am not a ninja, thus not bound by your agreement with Oto. And Hiruzen already knows I'm not afraid of him. Or you." Kousuke calmly started to dress himself again. "So to put it bluntly: No."
Using the Hokage's name so casually made Shibi almost more afraid than when the monk had unleashed that terrible chakra. The idea that someone could be equal to Lord Hokage enough to use his given name so casually… it boggled Shibi's mind.
"Well." Orochimaru said, calm despite how shaken Shibi was. He turned and patted the boy on the back. "You did well. Let's go back and meet up with the others, huh?"
Shibi nodded and followed his sensei when they walked away. It took his hives a long time to feel safe enough to begin moving again. Just as they'd begun to go back to normal, they froze again and returned to their rest state. It took Shibi a moment to see why. A gap in the crowd formed around three people, two adults and a girl younger than Shibi. He recognized them immediately.
A man in the jounin uniform of Konoha with spikey white hair in a long ponytail, with a large scroll tied to his back and long red lines tattooed beneath his eyes. A woman with long blonde hair, a purple diamond tattooed on her forehead, and dressed as a civilian with a stunning jeweled necklace.
Lord Jiraiya and Princess Tsunade, the other Sannin. Shibi hastily bowed to them, but the Sannin had eyes only for each other.
Orochimaru's face was full of relief when Shibi glanced at him. "I didn't know if you would come," he said.
Tsunade seemed to initially want to avoid his gaze, but she took a breath and met Orochimaru-sensei's eyes with determination. "I wouldn't leave you with only this lummox for support at a time like this," she jerked her thumb at Jiraiya.
Shibi didn't understand, was something wrong?
Tsunade glanced down at him, and made him want to hide behind Orochimaru-sensei with her intense stare. "You took an apprentice?"
"I have a genin team now." Orochimaru-sensei patted Shibi on the shoulder. "This is Shibi Aburame. Shibi, these are my teammates. And… that shy little thing is… Shizune?"
Tsunade glanced down at the girl who actually hid behind her teacher. "Shizune, come on. They're our allies." She was shorter than Shibi substantially, with short black hair and a dark kimono on. Quite nondescript.
"You've grown since I last saw you." Orochimaru smiled, which only seemed to frighten the girl more. "Shibi, could you take Shizune to meet with the others? Maybe talk to some of the Otogakure genin?"
"Of course, sensei." Shibi nodded, emboldened by his teacher's request. He stepped away from the Sannin and waited for Shizune to follow. She did, although hesitant to leave Tsunade's side. It took her a while, but Shibi was patient enough to wait.
"You've done well keeping everyone calm," Jiraiya said as he reached out and patted Orochimaru on the shoulder. "But we're here now. Let's get a look at it."
Shibi just barely managed to coax one of his bugs to fly after them as he and Shizune walked in the opposite direction.
--
Legendary Sannin Tsunade
Two medical ninja sat across from each other in a room adjacent to where Orochimaru and Jiraiya worked.
Tsunade looked over the former medical director for Kirigakure with a narrowed gaze. "Suzume, you look like shit."
"I feel like shit," she replied back, exhausted. "War does that to you."
That was a feeling Tsunade could understand, so she let that topic die off. Suzume had been on the development team of the seal which held the three-tails, and she was also the jinchuuriki's primary physician and medical tutor. So while the boys talked shop in Orochimaru's cabin about the seal, she talked to Suzume about the jinchuuriki's health.
For a brief period in the Second Shinobi World War, Kiri and Konoha had been allied against Suna and Iwa -- and in that time Suzume and Tsunade had a chance to meet and talk as peers. Tsunade found Suzume's theft of Suna's chakra threads for use in treating multiple patients at once, and her reduction ninjutsu to be an effective combo.
Suzume as she was in the present seemed a shadow of her old self. Brow-beaten, tired, bags under her eyes, the hints of early bald spots in her hair. The civil war hadn't been kind to her.
"Any long-term concerns?" Tsunade started while she checked the files for the boy's father. Orochimaru's older brother. The notes seemed to indicate that he had the precursor to a kekkei genkai, but was denied treatment on account of caste considerations.
"His vitiligo has stabilized, though I can't tell what caused the change in the first place." Suzume brushed some of her hair out of her eyes. "The bijuu's regeneration has been increasing in effectiveness exponentially since he started learning medical ninja techniques."
Tsunade arched her brow and looked up from the file. "Could the bijuu be… using those techniques?"
"We haven't discounted it." For a moment, the old energetic Suzume who would climb mountains for fun returned. "From past observations, the three-tails has the best chakra control of all the bijuu -- it can use genjutsu, and has been seen using rudimentary hand signs."
"...That's terrible." Tsunade said, her eyebrows high as she wanted Suzume to realize the problem. "The bijuu being able to use jutsu is a terrible thing. It means that they might be able to break out of seals from the inside."
"Which is why the Mizukage initially ordered the creation of the Seal of Hooks." Suzume's voice became more brittle as she talked, and her shadow-of-her-former-self state returned. "He wanted something to blind the bijuu with pain, so that there would be no escape."
"How typical of the Two-Faced Dragon." Tsunade flipped through more data on the boy's father and saw a picture of him. She made a face, and quickly flipped away. Orochimaru definitely got the good looks out of the two of them. "I don't imagine you'll be in a place where you can manufacture your own vaccinations for a while… might need to tell the hospital in Konoha to send you some."
"That would be greatly appreciated."
Tsunade nodded and stood to leave the room. The boy was in surprising medical health despite being overweight. She entered the next room over, where the men were talking seals, and found Jiraiya with his head in his hands and a scroll unwound on the table in front of him.
Orochimaru sat on a bed and watched, impassive.
The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. Tsunade looked at each of her teammates, and got no response. It seemed obvious what the outlook on the seal side of things looked like. "It's bad isn't it?"
"I expect this kind of shit from Kumo," Jiraiya snarled and tapped the scroll with his pointer finger. "I thought Kiri was better than this… well, I was wrong."
Tsunade flinched. Kumo, the worst village on the entire continent at sealing, had a bad reputation of their jinchuuriki killing more of their own forces than their enemies. "Can it be fixed?"
"No." Jiraiya shook his head. "We'd need to break the seal, since it doesn't have a key, and seal the bijuu back in with a totally new seal. But in order to keep it from being on the loose and rampaging… we'd have to seal it into something else first. That would take hours -- then we'd need to apply the seal and put the bijuu back…." Jiraiya visibly sagged. "The kid would be dead almost immediately after the seal was broken, it's linked directly to his nervous system. And leaving it alone isn't an option either." He tapped the scroll again. "They purposefully made this version of it brittle, so they could reinforce points of failure in the next version. It's a good thing he's not gotten into a serious life-or-death fight, or he might pull on more chakra than the seal can channel at one point."
Tsunade's eyes shifted to Orochimaru. He was silent and stony through the proceedings. Perhaps he hadn't gotten to know his nephew well enough to really care whether he lived or not, perhaps his yearning for a family had been such that he'd bonded right away. She couldn't tell, from his face.
"Let me look at that," she snapped and pushed him aside with ease. It took her a minute to look at the seal notes and see the medical information among all the noise. "Shit. They hooked it into his brain stem?" That would be tricky. Really, aggressively tricky. "Damnit. I… think I'd be able to keep him alive for a while, with a full hospital setup." Just keeping his heart beating, lungs expanding, and nerves firing would be easy. No blood involved at all. But repairing any lingering damage to the brainstem….
Jiraiya twitched on the ground, useless in that instance.
"There are only a few hospitals on the continent which are set up appropriately to do such a thing," Orochimaru said, soft. He'd sussed out what Tsunade hadn't given voice to. "The boy will not willingly come to Konoha -- not while Danzo is alive."
"Danzo?" Tsunade looked over her shoulder at Orochimaru, then back at the scroll, and tapped it with her finger as her voice was raised. "Did Danzo have something to do with this?" Oh if that slimeball had conspired with Konoha's enemies and they finally had proof....
"No." Orochimaru gently shook his head. "But he knows about Danzo's reputation."
Tsunade cursed. For a moment she'd hoped they'd finally had something to get that bastard executed for.
Jiraiya sighed and sat up. "We… could maybe finish that experimental seal we've been working on," he said with a meaningful look to Orochimaru. "The Seal of Hooks will crumble underneath it, but the Five Elements Seal is strong enough to keep it at least… semi-functional. It'll buy us a couple years to get Otogakure a hospital good enough to fix this."
Orochimaru's eyes widened a little. "I… that would take a lot of work, and money."
Tsunade scoffed. "I can share some of my medical know-how with these Oto punks," she flicked her hand dismissively. "And I know every medical goods supplier on the continent. For my endorsement, they'll send their best equipment to the moon if that's my price."
"And, I don't mean to brag," Jiraiya said with a shrug that indicated he clearly meant to brag. "But my books sell well, and sell often. And with my network, I can scout talent all across the continent to get this place up and running -- the hospital, and a village with the income to pay for it."
Orochimaru looked at each of them, bewildered. "I… can't ask you to do that. Not for me. Not for a nephew I've only just met."
"When's the last time you asked us for anything?" Tsunade snapped, a mask of affront at her offer being pushed back hiding how amused she felt. "Any time we needed reinforcements, you came. Any time we needed a day off, you did our work and yours. Having us come here was the most you've asked of us in our entire time together."
"You've done the most out of any of us, yet you live like a pauper. You keep telling Sarutobi-sensei not to pay you when the village is short on money." Jiraiya leaned on the bed and poked Orochimaru in his sides. "Come on… let us help you out. You got lucky enough to find a family -- unless you've got more brothers out there somewhere with more kids, this is your only shot at a family." He pointed his thumb at himself and Tsunade in turn. "Neither of us are going to be making any squealing brats anytime soon, so it's the only shot for us too."
Tsunade quickly flicked Jiraiya in the side of the head and sent him flying into the wall. "He's right," she said despite Jiraiya's painful squawks while embedded in the steel. "Though I believe he's got at least a dozen 'squealing brats' somewhere on the continent, I have no proof." She let her annoyed mask slip just a little so she could show her teammate how serious she was. "Let us help."
Orochimaru wasn't big on emotional displays, but the clear gratitude in his face was enough to tell Tsunade she'd gotten through to him. Neither of them helped Jiraiya pry his head out of the wall.
Naturally, none of them considered what the world at large would think of all three Sannin throwing their support at some podunk, not even finished village would do. They didn't even think how the people back in Konoha would react.
---
Bet you guys thought I wouldn't be able to finagle a way to get Oto some of their most distinct guys without Oro prowling around and swipin' kids, huh? Well you thought wrong!
