You cannot run away from weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand? ~Robert Louis Stevenson
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"Hey, Baa-chan!" Naruto called, slamming the doors to the Mission Assignment Desk room open. "Got anything good for us?"
I felt like face palming.
Tsunade twitched. "Don't call me that, brat!" Then her face took on a sly look. "Well, if you're going to be so rude, then I might not give you this mission. That would be a shame, wouldn't it? It's A-rank, long term and I've had quite a few people asking about it…"
Naruto practically vibrated on the spot.
She sighed theatrically. "But maybe I can find a nice D-rank for you instead. I think we have a Tora mission here somewhere…"
"No! Baa-chan!" Naruto practically wailed. "I mean, Tsunade the Most Awesomest Hokage Ever." He abruptly changed to at her raised eyebrow. "Please, please give us the cool mission! Don't make me face the demon cat again!"
There were quite a few snickers in the room.
"Cool mission indeed," she murmured quietly. "Alright, brat, your flattery needs work but I'll let it slide this time. Like I said, it's an A-rank mission. Body guarding. Mission specs include a fair amount of travel, so hopefully that should keep you out of trouble." Her eyes flicked to Sasuke, just for a second.
So, somewhere to get Sasuke away from Orochimaru? I wondered. Was that even possible?
"I'll let your sensei fill you in on the rest," she said, throwing the mission scroll to Kakashi. "There's no point in me rehashing the details."
It was interesting that Tsunade was personally selecting our missions, but if she really was trying to help protect Sasuke from her old team mate then it made sense. And, well, everyone knew she had an interest in Naruto.
Sensei took the scroll and we crashed in one of the briefing rooms while he read over it.
"Ahuh," he murmured, nodding. "Oh, I see. How very interesting…"
Naruto was practically bouncing on the spot. "What? What? What is it, Sensei?"
Sasuke was glaring at him every time he spoke, a very impatient 'get on with it already' glare.
I knew the only reason he was doing it was to wind them up.
"Sennnnseiiii," Naruto whined, dragging the syllables out.
"Mah, mah, Chunin need to be patient, you know," Kakashi-sensei said. "It's a good quality."
Naruto's face was priceless.
Sensei let him suffer for a moment, before starting. "The client is Sandayuu Asama. We're being hired to protect his company as they take a tour of the Land of Snow." There was a slight pause before the word 'company'.
"Land of Snow?" Naruto parroted. "Where's that?"
"It's on a separate continent, to the south," I said, frowning. "We don't usually have much contact with them." I didn't actually know all that much about the place. Like I said, there wasn't much contact.
"Very rarely," Kakashi-sensei confirmed. "Most of the countries there have their own ninja villages. The Land of Snow has the Village Hidden in the Snow, for example. None of them are really a match for the Five Great Nations, though. They're more akin to the minor villages like Hidden Waterfall or Grass."
"How long will we be gone?" Sasuke wanted to know. "Hokage-sama said it was a long term mission."
Kakashi-sensei hummed. "It depends. It might take a week to sail there, depending on currents and winds, and the tour is listed as between a month and two with the potential to extend further."
Two to three months wasn't exactly 'long term' for most ninja, but it was still the longest mission that we'd been sent on. And the furtherest.
"We'll be meeting them at the Port City and it'll probably take us three days to get there. If we leave tomorrow morning, that gives us plenty of travel time, as well as giving you kids time to put cold weather mission gear together. Land of Snow lives up to its name, trust me on that one."
That meant we'd have to bring two sets of gear, one for travelling there and one for when we arrived. If I didn't know how to make sealing scrolls, that would mean things would start getting bulky. As it was, well, sealing scrolls did take up space too; the more you put in them the bigger they had to be.
Given that we'd been Genin for about four months, we didn't even have cold weather gear yet.
Sensei hadn't given us many details on the whole thing, but we also hadn't met the client so I guess it could be saved for then.
I went home and found Mum, who fussed about me being sent away on a long mission so soon, and then proceeded to drag me all around town gathering the gear I'd need. One of the good things about shopping in a ninja town was that you could get things even when they were ridiculously out of season. I made a mental list of what we were getting, so I could make sure the boys had everything, because while there was the obvious stuff - thermals, insulated sleeping bag, heavy gloves, closed shoes thank the gods, Konoha standard wrap around cloaks - there were also things I never would have thought of - winter issue double walled canteens so your water didn't freeze.
"We would have had to get most of this anyway," she murmured at one point. "This is just a bit earlier than I expected."
Eventually, she decided enough was enough and I staggered home under a load of shopping.
It took me a while to organise everything and seal it away, but I was being pedantic. I didn't particularly want to get all the way to the Land of Snow and realise I'd forgotten to pack socks or something. You could use chakra to regulate your temperature to a certain extent - and most ninja did - but in snowing climates, proper gear was a must.
Then I went to assist the boys and found that Kakashi-sensei had actually taken it on himself to help them pack - separately, of course.
Then, since I actually had time, I went and said goodbye to everyone. Ino was jealous that we always seemed to get the interesting missions, but I told her that I doubted freezing for two months in a place optimistically called the Land of Snow was interesting.
So bright and early the next morning - ish, we had to wait for Sensei to show up - we left Konoha and headed east of the Port City where we'd meet our client.
Travelling together, being together twenty four hours a day, meant that I noticed the unsettled undercurrent to our interactions, subtle and uncomfortable like stone grinding on stone. It didn't affect our fighting, and we'd already displayed that we could work well together still, but our equilibrium had been unsettled and we didn't know how to react. Naruto being promoted just upset the makeup of the squad even further.
I would have said Kakashi-sensei was completely unaffected by our drama, except… except… it was just little things. An extra sweep of the campsite at night. Not letting us stray too far away. Given that Sasuke seemed to have a bullseye on his back, it might have even been justified. Except it kinda seemed like hovering.
We arrived with no trouble at all, having made the trip easily.
"Well, we made good time," Kakashi-sensei said cheerfully, looking up and down the street. People were giving us a wide berth, but that was probably because he had just jumped down from the rooftops. "It's a few hours before we need to meet the client, so why don't you kids go and amuse yourselves?" He glanced behind us. "Oh, look. There's a cinema. They're showing the new Unlucky Princess film right now. You should watch that."
He shoved something into Sasuke's hands, then up and vanished.
I stared at the empty spot where he had been, absolutely mystified.
"Uh," Naruto said. "What?"
Why on earth did Kakashi-sensei want us to go watch a movie, and that one in particular?
Sasuke looked equally bewildered. "I don't know." His hands opened, revaluing a set of crumbled notes.
Okay, and Sensei had even given us the money for it. That was… unusual.
"I guess we better," I said. "There's probably a reason for it."
We shrugged. There wasn't really any reason not to.
The acting was very good, though some of the lines were a bit corny. Actually having a working knowledge of how fights went meant that the fight scenes were slightly less dramatic than intended and the use of chakra… well, I wont say it's impossible since there's probably a blood limit or special technique out there somewhere like that, but it certainly wasn't standard.
Apart from that, with a bit of suspension of disbelief, it was actually a good movie.
Naruto seemed to enjoy it anyway. I think that was because Princess Fuun's catchphrase was 'I wont give up'.
The cinema itself was next to the film studio, and there was a good bit of space out front, so we decided to wait there for Kakashi-sensei to show up.
"That," Naruto declared. "Was an awesome movie. I wonder if there are princesses like Fuun around."
"Well, I guess daughters of Daimyos can be called princesses," I said. "But I doubt there are any sword wielding, chakra using princesses on a quest to defeat an evil sorcerer." Or whatever the quest had been. Having not seen the previous Unlucky Princess films I was a bit hazy on that.
"It's just a story," Sasuke added.
Naruto was about to argue when he was cut off by a horse jumping over the wall to the film studio. We blinked, startled, and then darted aside as the gates swung open and a set of armour clad riders charged out.
"Wha- hey!" Naruto shouted. "That's Princess Fuun! We have to stop them!" He jumped up and darted after them.
A group of men chasing a single woman was the kind of situation that we involved ourselves in automatically, mission or no. And generally, the person fleeing was the victim, particularly when the pursuers were so obviously intimidating. But, not always.
And it was the times when it wasn't true that it came back to bite you.
So first step; information gathering. Finding out who and why and just what, exactly, was going on. Sometimes it could be done observationally, but sometimes you just had to ask.
"Wait! Naruto," I called after him, exchanging a glance with Sasuke. He looked ready to act. "If I pin them with Shadow Jutsu, you surround them with clones and then we can ask what's going on."
We darted after them, taking to the rooftops to cut across in front of them. I waited till they entered the shadow cast by a tall building before dropping down, and lashing out. It was tricky work, but I'd always been better at the fiddly things like timing and multiple capture than straight out power. A single fleeing woman and at least ten pursuers, all of them on horses? Tricky, but not impossible.
Naruto, obligingly created clones to surround everyone, cutting Fuun off from the rest protectively.
"Just what is going on here?" Sasuke demanded, standing with arms crossed and ready to spring into action, on a cart that had been overturned during the chase. It gave him extra height and a vantage point
"Pretty obvious…" Naruto muttered lowly. It was in Naruto's nature to jump straight into things head first, but I did prefer to be cautious when possible.
But, what the leader of the gang had to say wasn't at all obvious. "Ah, you must be the ninja from Konoha. What excellent timing." He had a polite and cultured voice and seemed pleased about it.
"What?" Sasuke asked, thrown.
"Yes, I am Sandayuu Asama. The lady behind you is Yukie Fujikaze, who you will be protecting for this mission. Yukie," he said, addressing her instead. "Please come back to the studio."
She glared at him sullenly, pretty face pulled into an unattractive scowl. "I don't want to."
Oh dear. Well, at least it didn't look like I had to keep everyone immobile. I dropped the shadow jutsu, but the only reactions was that some of the horses tossed their heads and jittered nervously in place.
"I apologise for this," Sandayuu said, with a bow. "Yukie is a wonderful actor, but she has been… difficult during this last film."
"So, wait," Naruto frowned. "What happened? You were chasing her… and who are these guys?"
"Ah, places that house famous people are often targets, so the film studio has its own security guards. We also have several body guards who work as stuntmen for the film," Sandayuu explained. He gave a nod to the guards who moved to surround Yukie. She gave no reaction. "Please, if we return to the studio, we will be much more comfortable."
I shrugged. Naruto was still frowning, but he acquiesced with a 'sure, I guess.'
Kakashi-sensei arrived just as we were returning. His eye roved over the whole group of us, apparently trying to determine what had happened. "Well," he drawled, "I see you've all met each other."
"Yes, indeed," Sandayuu said. "And they were a wonderful help." He shook his head. "Managing to stop all of us at once, just what one would expect from a Konoha ninja."
"I see," Kakashi-sensei said, because he might not have known what happened, but the client wasn't upset about it so it was fine. "I'm Kakashi Hatake and this is my squad."
'Genin Team' was only two thirds accurate now, so squad or team were actually the correct terminology. Usually, when promotions happened, the Chunin was placed with a Chunin squad and another Genin was placed, or the teams were rearranged. It hadn't happened with us, or any of the other rookie nine. It could have been because we were rookies and had only been ninja for a few months and they thought we needed the experience we'd gain under a Jounin-sensei still.
"Sandayuu Asama," he introduced again. "Please, come with me and I'll take you to the Director."
The guards took the horses away and went around the side of the building where I glimpsed outdoor sets and stables while we went inside. It was a flurry of activity in there too, with people moving backdrops and lights and chattering busily.
"Sensei," I asked lowly, as we moved inside. "What exactly is our mission?" I should have asked for details earlier, really. I had thought Kakashi-sensei would tell us before we needed to know. But we'd had a whole three days to get here and I hadn't asked once.
Sensei sighed. "Our mission is to protect the actress who plays Princess Fuun, Fujikaze Yukie. We're her escorts for the duration of the filming."
A man with blond hair carrying a megaphone overheard and nodded eagerly. "This is the first time The Unlucky Princess will be filmed overseas. But Fujikaze Yukie plays the most critical role."
"And all the way to Snow Country, too," another man said. I thought he might also have been one of the actors. Kin? "Everyone is really excited. Well, apart from Yukie."
"The Rainbow Glaciers," someone else confirmed. "It's said that in spring, they glow with seven colours."
I probably should have been more excited to meet famous actors than I really was. But I'd never really been the type to follow celebrities, or even really watch movies and much less so since I'd arrived here.
"That's nothing more than a myth," Kakashi-sensei said. "In the real Snow Country, there is no such thing as spring."
"Kakashi, was it?" the Director asked. "I've heard that you've been to Snow Country before…"
"A long time ago," Kakashi-sensei confirmed, clearly not wanting to expand on that. I didn't know if I should be surprised or not; Kakashi had been a ninja for a long time, there were probably few places he hadn't been.
"Snow Country is quite a poor nation, I heard," the actor continued. "The economy collapsed several years ago and it never recovered. They have a lot of technology though."
"I hope they have a heater," the other one joked. "I don't really like the cold."
"Are you going to just run off like Yukie then?"
"Hey! Give me a break."
I tuned them out, turning to Sandayuu. "About Yukie…" I said. If we were supposed to be protecting her, that could prove to be a problem, if it was as bad as people were hinting at.
"She really doesn't know the meaning of the words 'motivation' or 'ambition'," the guy with the megaphone said, shrugging. "She's really quite helpless."
"But she doesn't slack off when it comes to work," the Director cut in. "I don't care about an actors private life. As long as she gives a great performance when the camera is on, I'm not going to complain. She was born to be an actress." He paused. "Thinking about it she started trying to run away when she was told she was going to Snow Country."
Ninja senses tingling, I thought drolly.
"Does she have a history with the place?" Sasuke asked.
Sandayuu shuffled, but didn't answer.
The Director shrugged. "I wouldn't have a clue. You'd have to ask her. In fact, please do. Maybe you can get this nonsense sorted out."
The discussion went on longer, sorting out the details of the trip and so forth until it was interrupted by one of the stage hands running up to us.
"Director, Sandayuu-san," he panted. "It's Yukie. She's gone!"