Chapter 175: Rising/Falling

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It was lunchtime in the barracks. Mist had kindly provided the food, which was exactly what Hazō had expected—filling and nutritious, but requiring a true shinobi’s strength of jaw to chew through, especially the meat. Not that, after seeing how civilians lived in their villages, Hazō would ever turn his nose up at free meat.

Despite the aching jaws, the mess hall was abuzz with conversation, teams either trying to subtly extract information from each other or form new alliances ahead of the next event. In one corner, a trio of heavily-muscled men with enormous bladed weapons were trying to convert a fearful young woman to… something or other, and it made Hazō doubly grateful that Leaf had no popular religion beyond the Will of Fire.

Suddenly, this relative idyll came to a crashing halt.

“There you are, my strapping young lads!”

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t possibly be. The event was over as far as they were concerned.

But no. Granny Karina shambled over to their corner table, grinning widely and displaying the toothy grin of a mouth that, never mind chewing rations, could probably bite the table clean in half.

“You don’t write, you don’t send summon messengers… here I was beginning to think you’d already forgotten the nights of passion the three of us shared together.”

All conversation stopped. A dozen appalled looks focused on Hazō and Noburi.

“You know,” Hazō said coldly, “now that we’re no longer part of the event, we have no reason to keep playing along.”

Granny Karina chuckled. “Oh, you’re not bitter about the scoring, are you, boy? You do realise that if I wanted to, I could have changed the money and left you with an even score of minus twenty, hmm? It was what any good proctor would have done, and you should thank your lucky stars that your friend here made me have second thoughts.

“Oh, how I enjoyed that silver tongue,” she added more loudly for the benefit of the audience.

Was Keiko really not back from the bathroom yet? Hazō had an awful feeling about where this was going, and he did not want to go there without her.

“So is there something you wanted, or…”

“Let’s go to your room,” Granny Karina said at the same volume. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”

The worst part, Hazō reflected, was that the consequences of refusing would almost certainly be even worse.

-o-​

“Well?” Noburi asked. “What do you want from us?”

“Oh, nothing,” the hag grinned. “It’s just that you’ve been such good sports that I felt like giving you a little reward.”

There was a pop and a dramatic puff of smoke, as of a magical creature being released from confinement and readying itself to grant any conceivable wish.

“G-G-Gisuji Kanako?!”

The young woman gave the two of them an alluring smile.

Hazō wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the last two years had made their senior even more irresistible than she’d been before. The most popular girl at the Academy had always had a certain slender, willowy elegance, but now it had been literally rounded out with eye-catching curves, and the way she stood even when relaxed made it clear that her ambitions of an infiltration/seduction career had not been idle talk. Hazō could feel a stirring deep down. Based on the dazed look on Noburi’s face, he wasn’t immune either.

“You know, I was ever so impressed with your resolve,” she said in a voice like warm honey. “I know I never made it easy for you, but you handled yourselves like real men.”

She stalked closer to them, so close that they could almost lean in and kiss her. Hazō could smell her scent, a heady mix of unfamiliar spices.

“Such a shame,” Gisuji purred. “I’d never expected you to develop quite so much during your time away,” she went on, slowly stroking the tips of her fingers down their pectoral muscles, one hand on each boy’s chest. “If only you’d given in just once, what unforgettable nights we could have had…”

Then she lightly pushed them with a flick of those same fingertips, forcing them to take a step back to regain their balance.

“Such a shame,” she repeated.

She swivelled on her heels and slowly walked away, leaving Hazō and Noburi to watch the hypnotic swaying of her hips.

“I’ll be seeing you around, boys…”

The sound of the door closing behind her was also the sound of two hearts breaking.

-o-​

The rest of the afternoon was uneventful. The boys were too dispirited to get much done. Keiko could roll her eyes at them all she liked, but it wasn’t like she was volunteering to do the team’s socialising for them either. A couple of proctors had been marked as having vague curiosity about the supposed traitors, though they weren’t in a hurry to impart any useful information. On the other hand, the other teams were now half-convinced that they were a pair of particularly sick gerontophiles (of course “Granny Karina” would put on her disguise, complete with a satisfied smile, once outside the room), and took the client being “alive and well” and apparently pleased with them as evidence that the team had cashed out early after a successful performance. Hazō should have been feeling bitter about that, but now every time he started dwelling on the iniquity of Granny Karina, his mind substituted in Gisuji Kanako and he found himself unable to concentrate on much of anything.

“Should have figured you’d already be here, Hazō.”

The familiar voice took Hazō completely by surprise.

“Shin?”

His former classmate was just how he remembered him, from the unstyled but naturally neat black hair (which Hazō had always envied), to his perpetual relaxed smile, to the custom-fitted clan combat uniform that constantly reminded Hazō of the once-unbridgeable gap between them.

“I admit, I came down here half prepared to spit in your face for being a traitor who’s brought shame to our clan. But after hearing what you did to Old Lizardbreath? I’m this close to shaking your hand instead.”

“Old Lizardbreath?” Hazō asked with an innocent curiosity. “What about Old Lizardbreath?”

“Classic Hazō. So full of bright ideas he forgets that other people are allowed to be smart as well.” Shin laughed, but without malice. “As soon as I heard the announcement this afternoon, I knew it had to be you. Who else benefits from the Mizukage making an official statement on the legality of drugs? Who else would pick Old Lizardbreath as a target? Who else would think this crazy stunt was a good idea and get away with it?”

“What makes you think that the legal status of narcotic substances has any bearing whatsoever on our exam performance?” Keiko asked.

“We all know what the high-ups think of your team, Gōketsu. There was no way they’d give you something as easy as common apothecary goods and call it a day.

“Still, though,” Shin went on, “beautiful work. My insider friends say Old Lizardbreath hasn’t been seen since he was taken into custody yesterday, still off his head on whatever it is you slipped him, and they’re expecting Mori Junko to be sitting in his office within the fortnight.”

“Aunt Junko? Why would the Mizukage…?”

“You really don’t know? Mori, your clan were the ones to propose Lady Ren’s candidacy. It’s not quite public knowledge, but I really thought the Hokage’s adopted children would be more on the ball.”

“Sorry,” Hazō said. “We’re not really involved in the politics side of things. We’re just trying to keep our heads down and get through the exams in one piece.”

“By successfully violating all known military doctrine, and then drugging a major authority figure? Which isn’t public knowledge yet, by the way. Obviously, everyone put the pieces together after the Mizukage made the proclamation earlier today, but according to the proctors, you were already in the barracks at that time, and we’re the first team to arrive here since it was made. Funny how the idea of Old Lizardbreath going on a drug-fuelled rampage didn’t come as any surprise to you.”

Hazō was all ready to make the obvious comeback, that they had their own source of insider knowledge in the form of Jiraiya, but spotted the trap just in time. Admitting they’d been talking to the head of their clan during the event could still get them disqualified for real. Had Shin done that deliberately?

“We all knew he was a drunkard,” Noburi said lightly. “Why should it surprise us that he decided to take the next step up? Not that I’m not flattered that you’d make us out to be some kind of heroes of justice, Kurosawa, but we’re not taking the credit for this one.”

“Don’t worry,” Shin said. “I’m not trying to get you in trouble just yet. I actually came by because I had an invitation for you. My teammates each have private business with you two, and I wouldn’t mind a chance to catch up with Hazō one-on-one either. On my honour as a Kurosawa that it’s not a trap, a distraction or some other way to manipulate you into a position of weakness.”

He gave Hazō Look Thirty-One: Do Not Mistake My Playfulness for Insincerity.

Hazō glanced at his teammates behind him, realising with an inward wince that Shin had just put them in a position where refusing would make them sound like they were afraid of mere social interaction.

“On your word that this is just a conversation with no ulterior motives,” Hazō repeated.

“Honour of the Kurosawa,” Shin said. “If those words mean anything to you.”

-o-​

She hadn’t changed at all. Still taller than him, still a striking blonde, still with that “I own this world and you’re only here because I feel like it” smirk. Still drop-dead gorgeous. The old Noburi would have fallen at her feet.

Today’s Noburi, though? He had this new-fangled thing called self-esteem. (Also the memory of Gisuji Kanako fresh in his mind.)

“What do you want, Kiri?” he asked with a deliberate casualness.

“Oh, just to see how you’ve been, Noburi. I was wondering how that snot-nosed brat who used to follow me around like a lovesick puppy ended up being the Hokage’s son. I can’t imagine how you managed to extract your tongue from that much ass when it was time to come back here.”

“Very funny,” Noburi said, suppressing the flinch—not at the content of her words, but at the tone. He didn’t care about her approval anymore. He didn’t. It was long past time his brain got the message. “If you just called me here to insult me, then I have better things to do. I hear there's some paint drying near the entrance."

“Still covering up your insecurities with lame jokes, then? Sorry, Noburi. Didn’t mean to hit a nerve. Obviously you didn’t have the initiative to go after the Hokage’s ass. One of the other traitors probably took charge, and you followed their lead because what else were you going to do? Make your own decisions?

“That’s why I wasn’t interested in you, you know. You’ve got no ambition in you. You get yourself a girlfriend yet? Or did you once again fall for a girl only to find out she was aiming higher? Bet your leader hasn’t had any problems scoring himself some tail. Girls everywhere swoon over the strong, decisive types—even if they’re amoral filth. Hey, maybe you should sell out a little further. There must be some girl out there who’ll go for you just because you’re the Hokage’s son.”

Noburi knew what she was doing. It wasn’t subtle—nothing about Kiri ever was. He knew, he had known from the beginning, and he hated himself because it still worked. He wanted to tell her to shut up, to fire some clever insult back, but the fact was that back in the day he’d been too busy crushing to ever find any of her own weaknesses.

“I don’t even hate you, Noburi. The more I look at you, the more I realise that I just feel sorry for you. Some of us are bigger than the barrel. But it looks like you still only exist to serve drinks.”

It was something about her tone of voice. The sheer smugness of it. For a second, Yamanaka Neira’s eminently punchable face flickered across Noburi’s mind. There had been an expert at taking Noburi’s still-healing wounds and tearing them open with her long painted fingernails. A woman who’d destroyed his relationship with Keiko without batting an eyelid, leaving an abyss of uncertainty and pain between them that he still hadn’t even begun to fill. A professional torturer where Kiri was… just a schoolyard bully.

“Nice try, Kiri,” he said. “You almost had me for a second there. Tell me, have you ever faced a chakra megalodon? Huge beast, aquatic, teeth more than half your height in length. Or a horde of ninja mounted on trained chakra monsters? An angry jōnin in close quarters, twice? A psycho bio-sealer who could raise the dead? No? That’s all right. Maybe you managed to keep outwitting the world’s greatest hunter-nin until he died of ninja natural causes. No, wait, I’ve got it. Maybe you beat your village’s greatest chūnin candidate in a single duel with zero chakra on unfamiliar terrain. You’ve had two years, same as me, and with a village at your back.”

“Fucking bullshit,” Kiri growled. “Just an empty barrel making the loudest noise.”

“Newsflash, Kiri,” Noburi gave her a smile as sharp as a cutting blade, “I don’t care what you think. I’m not the team planner and I don’t have to be. Am I jealous of Hazō getting all the glory and hogging all the girls? Sure, why not. Do I wish I had Keiko’s brain the size of a planet or her deadpan wit? Well, frankly, who wouldn’t? Do I feel like I don’t get enough recognition for the things I do? Yeah, more than a little. So what?

“At the end of the day, I’m the reason our team works, as much as anyone else. I’m the reason we can all reach our full potential, and the one who keeps the home fires burning while the others are busy wrestling with their issues. I own the support role, and if you think being a Wakahisa is about the barrel, then maybe I’m not the one letting down the clan.”

Kiri stared silently, that ever-present smirk for once replaced with an expression of uncertainty.

Noburi turned to leave.

“Hey, Noburi.”

He looked back.

“You doing anything in the post-tournament break? Because if you’re free, I wouldn’t mind hearing some of those stories.”

“Sure,” he said. “Look me up whenever you decide you’re done being such a bitch.”

As he left, he could hear Kiri’s laughter even through the walls.

-o-​

Kei didn’t recognise the girl at first. She had been facing away from the door, sorting storage scrolls, and her lustrous red hair had surpassed its former neat bob in favour of an elegant ponytail. By the time she turned around, Kei had already closed the door behind her.

Otherwise she would likely have fled, and appearances be damned.

“Anna?!”

“Keiko?!”

The other girl seemed as stricken as Kei herself. “That bastard,” she muttered under her breath.

Assessing the situation immediately, if with no clue as to Kurosawa Shin’s motives, Kei turned around and made to leave.

“Wait!”

Kei froze.

“Wait,” Anna repeated.

Keep it together, Kei. Keep it together. This was no longer the Academy, she reminded herself. She was a competent, mature shinobi, nearly a chūnin. There was nothing Anna or her clique could do to her, and even if they attacked, this time she had her own team standing ready to defend her.

Still, Kei’s heart beat very fast.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

Anna didn’t say anything. Her gaze suggested fascination with Kei’s sandals. Was Kei to find pins in them tomorrow morning?

The silence stretched on. Finally, Kei reached for the doorknob once more.

“Please.”

There was a desperation in Anna’s voice that made no sense. Anna was the powerful one, the one in control. Kei was the victim. Always and forever. There were no grounds for role reversal.

“What do you want from me?” Kei asked insistently, wanting nothing more than to leave before the situation could develop into anything.

“I don’t know,” Anna said quietly. “But please. Don’t go just yet.”

She sat down on the bed, hands running through her hair. There was something pitiful about it, an adjective that did not belong to her sneering tormentor.

Kei did not know what she was seeing. Doubtless Mari-sensei would have been able to read this situation in an instant, would have been able to understand why Anna seemed to be displaying neither of her usual hatred or cruelty, but fear of all things.

Something was expected of her, that much was clear. It was also clear that Anna did not know what it was any more than Kei.

Kei could leave. She should leave. She owed Anna nothing—unless it was vengeance. She was under no obligation to be here, and indeed merely being in the same room as one of the ringleaders was making her tremble inside. But it was at times like these that Kei hated herself—more than usual, at least—for being unable to walk away and leave a mystery forever unsolved. She found a place on the bed opposite Anna’s and let herself seek clues in the girl’s pose of inexplicable distress.

Time passed.

“You hurt me first.” It was barely more than a whisper.

“What?” Kei leaned forward, thinking she had misheard.

“You hurt me first. It was only fair.”

Kei reeled. “Hurt you first?” she hissed. “I did no such thing. I made no provocation, gave you no reason to torment me for your vile amusement! If that is all you have to say—“

“You wouldn’t kiss me.”

For a second, Kei’s mind filled with panicked static.

“Kiss you? Whyever would I kiss you?”

This time, it was Anna’s turn to reel. “You forgot?!”

“I forgot what?”

“You don’t remember,” Anna said softly. “Moemi’s birthday party. The dare. The closet.”

The memory was distant, covered by the haze of time. Long enough ago to have happened to another girl.

“Oh,” Kei said. “That. But what does that have to do with anything?”

“You pushed me away. I thought we were friends, but then you pushed me away. You screamed at me, as if I was something disgusting, and then you ran out.”

In retrospect, that had been an overreaction.

“And then,” Anna said in an increasingly shrill voice, “the next time I saw you, you didn’t say a word about it. As if that was all I was to you. As if it was natural to treat me that way. As if you barely tolerated me at the best of times, and now that tolerance had run out and you could let your contempt for me show.”

“I don’t understand,” Kei said. “That isn’t what happened. I did not apologise because… well, because I did not have the words. You knew I struggled with self-expression. And then you also said nothing, and I assumed that you had found the experience too humiliating to remember, and wished it buried forevermore.”

“But why? Why would you treat me that way if we were friends?”

Kei weighed her words carefully. They no longer shared the relationship of a bully and her victim. Indeed, after the Chūnin Exam was over, they would likely never see each other again. And her personal weakness did not truly hinder her in combat, where physical contact was already inherently antagonistic and could freely be treated as such. Even so, she hesitated.

But if she held back, if it was so easy to resolve a major misunderstanding and she refused to do so, what kind of person would that make her? Even if it was to hurt Anna, it felt somehow wrong.

“I did not realise at the time quite how uncomfortable it made me to be touched by others,” she said cautiously. “The claustrophobia of the closet and the intense proximity involved were aggravating factors. I would have reacted the same way with absolutely anyone.”

At this, the room was silent as the grave. Rather than displaying relief, Anna’s eyes filled with a horror Kei had only previously seen in the eyes of sealmasters.

“You mean…” she said as if every word was being ripped from her, “I betrayed you first?”

Kei simply nodded.

Anna burst into tears.

Kei looked at her helplessly, having no idea what to do, nor any clue as to what was happening inside Anna’s head. Perhaps this was the point at which she should bow out, and allow the girl to face her inner demons on her own. If nothing else, the situation was awkward beyond words.

“Wait,” a hoarse voice reached her through the sobs. “You have… the right… to see this.”

Kei waited. The tears did not slow.

-o-​

“You’d really bet your mother’s life on Leaf’s kindness?” Shin asked.

“They’re not monsters,” Hazō repeated. “Sure, there’s a lot of hatred on both sides. But it’s not like we, as in Mist, want to raze Leaf to the ground and slaughter them down to the youngest child either.”

“Well, no,” Shin conceded. “But that’s because we’re sane. Three times now Leaf has declared war on us. Our ancestors left in order to escape the Fire Country ninja’s persecution. They’ve broken the ultimate taboo and accepted missing-nin in order to have another weapon to use against us. The evidence adds up.”

Hazō shook his head.

“According to Leaf, three times now Mist has declared war on them. Our ancestors left because they refused to accept the Fire Country ninja’s desire for peace and mutual understanding. They’ve broken the ultimate taboo and accepted missing-nin because we’re proof that even bitter enemies can find it in themselves to embrace the Will of Fire.

“Shin, I’ve had a unique opportunity to see the conflict from both sides, and the evidence doesn’t add up. I’ve made friends in Leaf. Sure, there are still people there who would try to kill me if they thought they could get away with it, but there are also people who would fight to defend me if they did. The same people who trusted my team enough to sleep while we kept watch. Jiraiya of the Three has adopted me as his potential heir when a couple of years ago I was cheering at the Mizukage’s speeches alongside everyone else. If there is hatred and suspicion there, it can be overcome.”

“So what are you saying? That every single authority figure in Mist’s history is wrong and you are right? Doesn’t it seem more likely that you have been taken in by their lies, and that they welcome you because you’re a successful test case for Leaf taking in foreign missing-nin? Imagine what a massive military advantage Leaf would get if they could make this sacrilege into a policy without provoking retaliation from the other villages.”

“I can only use my own judgement, Shin. It’s all any of us can ever do. And my judgement says that Leaf are not genocidal maniacs. Some of them want to conquer Mist so Mist doesn’t conquer them first. Some of them want to conquer Mist because they want to spread their way of life, which they honestly believe will make us happier. Sure, some just want to pillage Mist to get themselves money and power, but I could find people who want to do the same to Leaf within a hundred metres of this building.

“Most importantly, some of them don’t want to conquer Mist at all. The Hokage wants to do what’s best for Leaf, and he will always put that first, but the best thing Leaf can ever have is a world without war. That’s the opportunity we’re looking at here, the new status quo we’re working to create. If these two passionate enemies can forge a firm alliance, it will open a door for us to understand each other. We’ll be able to see how alike we all really are, and then we can stop fighting over the different symbols on the hats.”

Shin tweaked the bridge of his nose as if trying to forestall a headache.

“They got you good, didn’t they, Hazō? We were warned that Leaf’s propaganda machine is the best there is.”

Hazō’s heart sank. “You mean you don’t believe me?”

“I’m not stupid, Hazō. I know reality is more complicated than it looks. I think Lady Ren is the epitome of what a Kurosawa shinobi should be, but having seen her up close, I know that putting on the Mizukage’s mantle hasn’t magically made her omniscient or omnipotent. And if she’s fallible, then maybe past Mizukage were fallible as well. Maybe My Vision isn’t gospel truth, and maybe the Fourth’s system of denunciations and secret police didn’t create the utopian society he promised.

“But I have to judge the world with my own eyes too. You’re asking me to take a leap of faith based on the words of a boy who kept getting punished at the Academy for failing to understand how people worked, who let an unfamiliar authority figure trick him into betraying the village, and whose claim to objectivity disappeared right around the time he got adopted by Leaf’s ruling clan.”

Shin’s expression grew serious. “Unlike you, I don’t claim to have already found my answers—but I’m willing to meet you halfway. My team is still going to take your team down with everything we’ve got, and climb your unconscious bodies to Chūnin Exam success. But it won’t be because we’re sworn enemies trying to punish traitors at the behest of the Powers That Be. It’ll be because I believe your worldview is simplistic and naïve, and your defeat at our hands will show you that you are not yet strong enough or smart enough or wise enough to try to force it on anyone else. If you want to prove me wrong, do it with actions, not with words.”

Hazō smiled. “Noburi and Keiko aren’t here, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you lured both of our teams away before asking me how I really felt. Even so, I think I speak for all of us when I say… Team Uplift accepts your challenge.”

A playful spark danced behind Shin’s eyes.

“Team Uplift, you say? Then I guess that makes us Team Downfall. Our enemies’ generally and yours specifically.”

He met Hazō’s gaze.

“Let’s do this fair and square.”

Both boys laughed at the joke.

As Shin walked away, Hazō could hear him muttering to himself. “You know, we should keep that name. It sounds way more badass than ‘Team Retsu’.”

Author's Notes: It is now the late afternoon. You have not yet done your sealcrafting or your sleight of hand training, leaving those for the evening once socialisation becomes impractical. I suggest you come up with a reason why Hazō wants to practice sleight of hand.

You have made note of a couple of proctors to imitate, though your attempts to observe the older ones have only served to confirm the belief in your gerontophilia for anyone that noticed. The security measures around the barracks appear to consist of a handful of patrolling proctors. If there are traps or seals, they are either on the outside of the building or very well-concealed. A few rooms appear to be locked, while those you’re staying in have no such security features.

There aren’t many teams to talk to yet, and the ones present are still suspicious of you for aforementioned reasons. Hazō is hoping this will be less of an issue for new arrivals (who might just assume this to be an ordinary discrediting ploy). The only thing you’ve managed to learn, thanks to some fine work by Noburi, is that jinchūriki are not an interesting topic of discussion. None of the teams seem like they’d admit it if their jinchūriki had recently gone missing, and they’re not reporting any disappearances of anyone else’s.