It's not the glittering weapon that fights the fight, but rather the hero's heart. ~ Proverb
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"I thought… what kind of leader was I if I let you fight for us and didn't help?" Shibuki explained later. "They all called me a hero, but I was too scared… and… you all just jumped in without caring that they were stronger than you. To save my people."
We'd rounded up all the enemy ninja and stashed them in the surprisingly secure cells, and we'd found the kids and their mother that I'd left in the forest and brought them back to the village. We'd even been let inside, since Naruto and Sasuke had seen it anyway while they were scouting. It was pretty impressive. The entire cliff face behind the waterfall seemed to be hollow and riddled with tree roots that created a maze of passageways leading to a gigantic cavern where the Sacred Tree grew and all the houses were.
Shibuki had the look of someone who Naruto had given a talking to. Given that he'd gone against his stated cowardice to step into a losing fight, to the lengths of taking a chakra enhancing drug with potentially lethal side effects… a drug that had killed his father, no less…
Definitely the result of talking to Naruto, I thought.
The Hero's Water did explain the mystery of how such a small village could hold its own. Shibuki had been understandably sparse with the details, but it seemed that the Hero's Water was, at the very least, an artificial way of replicating the opening of the Eight Gates. It wasn't exactly the same, but it increased the amount of chakra available at one point in time, even to the detriment of the body, so the comparison was apt.
It was the village leaders job to protect the Hero's Water and to dispense it in times of need to prevent the village from falling.
But that led to another question that had been bugging me ever since we set foot here…
"Shibuki," I asked tentatively. "Where are all your ninja?"
He blanched. "Ah, well, you see," he started, before wilting. "When I went to Hidden Leaf to discuss the alliance with the Hokage, I left the Jounin Commander in charge. I can't imagine why he would have left the village undefended."
I bit my lip. That didn't sound good at all, really. If it was a coup, they wouldn't have left but leaving the village undefended went entirely against the grain. Maybe they had left a guard but Suien had taken them out? But that still left the question of where the majority of the ninja were…
That was the sort of question that made the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.
"Do you want us to stick around until you find out?" Sasuke asked casually, leaning against the wall.
Shibuki paused, then nodded. He might not have liked how much he was having to rely on us, but having no ninja around would be worse if there was a second attack. "Thank you," he said. "I need to go and talk to the villagers, so please, stay here."
He went off, either to reassure them, or to find out what was going on.
"So," I said, sitting down and stretching out my legs. "What did I miss?"
Naruto flopped down on the ground, sprawling out messily. "Not that much," he said. "Sasuke took care of the guys that jumped out of the waterfall, then Shibuki showed us how to get inside. Not the way we just came in, but a different way, and we had to swim through these tunnels… and we came up in the water over there somewhere." He waved his hand vaguely towards the lake around the Sacred Tree.
"Shibuki went off on his own," Sasuke picked up. "And we got ambushed."
"And you shoved me in the lake," Naruto grumbled, making a face.
"If you'd noticed the attack, I wouldn't have had to," Sasuke shot back, completely unrepentant. He even smirked. "I told him to go after Shibuki and I fought off the other ninja. The weaker ones were no problem, but the two Jounin caught me." He made a disgusted face. "I didn't even sense them coming."
"They were pretty tough," Naruto said, grimacing. "But yeah, I went after Shibuki and he had the Hero's Water and stuff. We were up in the wall somewhere, so I could see you guys through the gap. And I was with Shibuki, so I totally knew it wasn't him, but if I hadn't been I would have believed it," Naruto said generously. "It was a cool plan."
"It was reckless," Sasuke corrected.
"Yeah," I agreed. "But it didn't look like he was bluffing and I wanted to do something before he started killing the kids. I figured, if I could get you down we might have managed something until Naruto showed up. But I underestimated them…"
Or overestimated us.
It could have, in hindsight, gone very, very wrong. If, say, Naruto hadn't moved all the villagers. Or if they'd seen through my transformation. If Shibuki hadn't shown up…
Naruto shrugged, almost philosophically. "It worked. That's what counts."
"Yes, well," I said. "Here's hoping we don't get stuck in another fight like that too soon."
Sasuke nodded in agreement, a frown pulling on the edges of his mouth.
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It was much later when the commotion of returning ninja roused me from the doze I'd fallen into. It wasn't exactly late, but the mantra of missions was catch sleep where you can, because you don't know how long it'll be until your next chance. Given that the situation looked so unstable, I wanted to recoup as much chakra as possible.
Naruto hadn't been sleeping, and Sasuke had come to alertness the same time I had, so we wandered out to see what was happening.
"-left two Chunin patrols," an older man was saying to Shibuki when we tracked them down. He had dark hair dragged back into a low ponytail and he was wearing a shinobi vest that was dark blue in colour, though similar in style to a Konoha vest, which was Hidden Waterfall's variation of the shinobi uniform. "I'll send a squad out to see what happened to them." He grimaced, clearly not expecting anything good to come of it.
There was a group of ninja arrayed behind him, spanning ranks from Genin to Jounin, though much more of the former. A few of them I thought I vaguely recognised from the Chunin Exams.
"But what happened?" Shibuki asked.
"We went to reinforce the border," the Jounin explained. "Hidden Cloud ninja have been incredibly active lately. They've come down through Land of Frost and Land of Hot Springs… I think they were just testing our defences but we don't know whether their goal is to head west or to go south through the Land of Fire. Either way it isn't good for us." He waited a beat. "The border patrols have been restructured, and there's another Genin team due back from a mission in the morning. The situation won't happen again."
Cloud ninja are active… go south through the Land of Fire…
… Jounin only, emergency response…
We technically had a treaty with Hidden Cloud, but given what had happened to Hinata during the signing of it, it wasn't worth the paper it was written on.
I felt cold.
"Send people out after the Chunin patrols," Shibuki said quietly. "See if they can be recovered. And… someone to deal with the prisoners."
The Jounin nodded. "Will do. I'm putting everyone who was on the second shift off duty and Fu…" he trailed off, an uneasy expression on his face.
Shibuki twitched.
Interesting, I thought, though it was detached. My mind was still stuck on…
"Aha," Shibuki said nervously. "You didn't leave her at the border? No, no, of course not. Never mind."
I cast a glance over the group, wondering who they were worried about. No one really stood out. Some of the ninja looked tired, some looked bored. Some had interesting weapons…
Then I saw her. She was standing away from the main group, by herself. Maybe fourteen, fifteen years old, wearing a white shirt and skirt, a red backpack, with mint green hair. And her chakra was enormous.
I didn't know as much about the Jinchuriki as I would have liked. They hadn't really shown up in the show in any meaningful way, or at least not early on. I knew the ones that had featured in canon. And I now knew the ones that didn't hide what they were, like Roshi and Yagura.
There had been a Jinchuriki with green hair. Hidden Waterfall had a Jinchuriki. She had an inhuman amount of chakra.
The math wasn't perfect, but there was potential.
"She looks lonely," Naruto said, following my gaze. I glanced at him, just in time to see the firming of his expression.
Therefore, I wasn't reallysurprised when he marched over to her.
"Hi, nee-chan!" he chirped. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki, Konoha shinobi!"
She blinked at him, nonplussed.
Beside me, Sasuke sighed. "That moron…"
"Ah, leave him be. If he wants to make friends, it's fine," I said with a shrug.
"As long as he doesn't annoy her into trying to kill us," Sasuke returned dryly.
Which was a valid outcome, really. Naruto's special brand of annoying grew on most people pretty quickly, but there were still people that he rubbed the wrong way and he didn't always know when to back off.
"Oh, there you are," Shibuki said, finishing up with the Jounin and approaching us. "I was just going to come looking for you. As you can see, our ninja have just returned. You can stay tonight, if you like, and I'll have someone escort you to the border tomorrow." He looked around. "Where is Naruto?"
The second he caught sight of Fu his face sort of froze. Then he smiled weakly, looking more like the twitchy person that we'd escorted here than the determined shinobi that had been peaking through recently. "Ah, well, I guess we can talk to her now."
He approached her cautiously, footsteps loud to ensure she heard him coming. "Ah, hello, Fu," he said. "I see you've already met Naruto. I was, uh, going to ask if you could escort them to the border. Tomorrow, I mean, because it's late now and they'd have to travel in the dark. If you don't mind, that is?" He sounded so incredibly nervous and not at all like a village leader assigning a mission.
Given his reaction to her, I wondered if the mission was really just a way to keep her busy and out of the village. It certainly wasn't because we needed an escort, or that he didn't trust us. That would have been redundant by now.
Fu just gave a careless shrug. "Sure, I guess."
Naruto beamed. "Awesome. That's so cool, nee-chan! You can show us all the really neat spots on the way. We passed this inn when we came here, with a little teashop and the sign said that they had a special on ramen, but Kakashi-sensei said we didn't have time to stop which was lame, because you should always have time for ramen." He nodded, to himself.
"I guess?" Fu said hesitantly.
"Well," Shibuki said, shifting nervously. "I'll just, uh, leave you to it. I have stuff to do. Yeah."
Okay. Weird. I could possibly have written Shibuki's nerves off as him being Shibuki, or possibly as teenage male confronted with teenage female, but the way the other ninja were giving her a wide berth told a different story.
What that story was wasn't so clear, but I had a suspicion.
"So what time should we leave?" I asked.
"Whenever you're ready," Fu said, unconcerned.
"After breakfast?" I suggested. "We're already late so there's no point in delaying longer than necessary."
In which case we probably could have - should have - left earlier. But I liked my sleep, even in a strange place, and I wasn't going to pass up a chance to have actual food for breakfast.
And also, that would mean we would pass the teashop-with-the-ramen around morning tea time.
I am so weak.
"So, Fu-nee-chan?" Naruto asked, bouncing on his toes. "Can you show us around? We didn't get to see much before. Hey! Have you ever been to Konoha?"
Fu looked around, possibly for help or someone to tell her what to do. "Sure," she said eventually. "And no, I've never been to Hidden Leaf."
"Well, if you do, you should totally come and find me," Naruto decided. "And I'll take you to Ichiraku. They make the best ramen, ever. And the bridge where we always meet up, which is really nice even when it's really early and, oh, and Cherry Blossom Avenue, which is just a bunch of cherry blossom trees, but Sakura and Ino are always talking about how pretty it is, so maybe you'd like it too?"
Sasuke and I mostly trailed behind them as Fu showed us around, and tried to deal with Naruto's excited, lets-be-friends chatter. There really wasn't much to see, because as an actually hidden village it obviously didn't get trade and probably had to source food and materials outside. We put in a comment or two when Fu was starting to look too overwhelmed. She seemed like a nice girl, if overly passive and indifferent.
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As promised, after breakfast the next morning we got ready to leave. Quite a crowd gathered to see us off, mostly the villagers we'd rescued yesterday, though there were a few curious or appreciative shinobi amongst them.
"Bye nee-chan," one of the two kids I'd protected in the forest yesterday said quietly.
"Hey, what's with the long faces?" I said cheerfully, chucking her gently under the chin. "Smile."
"Fu is scary," the boy said, voice equally low. He kept glancing at where she was standing, off to the side.
"Bah, she doesn't seem all that scary to me," I said, contradicting him gently. "And you two know what really scary things are like now, right? And you were really brave in the forest, so don't be scared now."
I couldn't, truthfully, say outright that Fu wasn't dangerous. She didn't seem it, now, but you never knew someone fully at the first meeting. And well, all shinobi are dangerous, if you catch them at the wrong time.
"Oh, yeah. That was really scary," the girl said.
"See?" I said, before straightening. "Anyway. I've got to go now. So take care and pay attention in class, right?"
I jumped back to rejoin my team, and we left, waving behind us. Fu was silent.
"That was weird," Naruto said, frowning, as we took to the tree tops. "They were all nervous and twitchy and stuff. I thought they liked us."
"It's not you," Fu said, voice blank. "They're afraid of me."
Fu is scary.
"That's silly, nee-chan," Naruto objected. "Why would they be scared of you?" He was completely and utterly sincere, and even Fu could tell, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.
She sighed, then said resolutely, "because I'm a demon."
"No you aren't," Naruto refuted with certainty.
She double-checked, expression bemused. That really wasn't the answer she was expecting. She glanced at me, then Sasuke. I'd already suspected, and Sasuke just shrugged.
"Yes, I am?" she said weakly, obviously not used to arguing this part of it.
"No, you aren't," Naruto repeated patiently. "Demons have, like, teeth and claws and they growl a lot and are really mean. You're people-shaped and really nice, so you're not a demon."
Fu stopped, and expression of frustration on her face as she turned to him. "People shaped, huh?" she whispered, before closing her eyes. There was a surge of chakra - strange chakra, inhuman but nothing like Kyuubi or Shukaku - and wispy tendrils of chakra burst from her sides, beating up and down with enough force to lift her off the branch.
"There," she said, throwing it out there, face set grimly like she was waiting for the accusations. "I took this burden on when I became a Genin. And now, because of it, people from my own village - people I grew up with - treat me like a stranger. No, like a mad dog about to bite!"
She wants him to know, I realised. She wants to push him away before he gets too close.
Naruto's mouth dropped open. "You have wings! That is so cool!"
Fu's mouth dropped open. She spluttered.
"You're a Jinchuriki," I said calmly, as soon as I could trust myself not to laugh. It probably wouldn't go over well. "The Seven Tails, right?"
"Yes," she said.
Naruto blinked in surprise, glee fading into determination. He lifted his chin. "Me too."
Fu double-checked again. Yep, she hadn't seen that one coming. It was a good thing we weren't moving, or she might have actually fallen off the branch.
"I'm the Jinchuriki of the Kyuubi," he said. "So, when I say 'you're not a demon', I know what I'm talking about! I'm not one, you're not one and Gaara isn't one either! Some people might treat you like you are, but you just have to find people who look past that and see you. Those precious people… they're what's worth fighting for!"
"I see," Fu said, blinking at him, then at us.
I smiled. "You know, I have to wonder if you're magnetised or something, Naruto. Of all the people we could run into, it'd have to be another Jinchuriki."
Naruto chuckled and rubbed the back of his head. "I'm just awesome like that," he decided.
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Moron," he said, but as fondly as Sasuke ever said anything. "Are you coming or what? We don't have time to stand around all day, you know."
"Sheesh, don't get all worked up about it, Sasuke," Naruto complained, and we started moving again. "Hey, Fu! Do you know what this means? It's like you really are my nee-chan!"
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Having confirmed that Fu was a Jinchuriki, things got a little trickier. Not outwardly, because Naruto took the opportunity to bond and not even half an hour later had Fu smiling; a little bewildered, but smiling all the same. He seemed ecstatic to meet another Jinchuriki, and one who wasn't trying to kill him at that.
But I had information that it was really kind of important for Fu to know. Namely that Akatsuki were after her.
And I was pretty sure that that was classified information and the village would not be happy if I happened to tell her about it.
Which was frustrating. The ninja world horded information and secrecy was the name of the game, but that tendency was a double edged sword. In this case, I was pretty sure that that secrecy was one of Akatsuki's greatest weapons.
It seemed to me, that the more people knew about Akatsuki, the better the Jinchuriki could be protected. And the more the other Jinchuriki were protected, the fewer resources they could commit to hunting Naruto and the safer he would be.
There were probably flaws in that logic somewhere. But still.
How could I not warn her? Knowing that they would hunt her and that she would be killed… how could I not?
The difficult part was how. Being as how I was certain that the village wouldn't like me giving this information away, I kind of didn't want to get caught doing so.
And didn't that thought just make me cringe. 'Doing something the village wouldn't like' sounded an awful lot like treason, even if it was just something like telling someone they were likely to be attacked.
We reached the teashop about mid morning, like I had thought we would. It was a quaint little place, just off a well travelled crossroads, that looked like it got it's fair share of visitors.
"Time for a break," Naruto declared, bounding inside.
Sasuke paused in the doorway, and looked back at me. "Coming?" he asked.
I shrugged. "I just want to talk to Fu for a second," I said. "Order me whatever looks good, okay?"
He looked at me for a second, dark eyes probing, then nodded silently and continued inside.
Fu looked wary.
I gestured at the bench on the opposite side of the worn dirt road. It was far enough from the shop that we wouldn't have to worry about eavesdroppers if we spoke quietly.
"Naruto is a good person, you know?" I said conversationally, settling into the seat.
Fu perched beside me, gingerly. "I know," she said, eyes fixed on the teashop. "There's no one in Taki quite like him."
I laughed a little. "I don't think there's anyone else in the world quite like Naruto."
Naruto could make strong bonds. Despite the absence of fighting, I hoped that he'd formed one with Fu, too.
"I want to keep him safe," I admitted. "But it's hard. You wouldn't think that Jinchuriki make good targets, would you?"
Her eyes turned to me. "No, you wouldn't," she agreed carefully. Fu was a shinobi too, and I hoped she was good enough to pick up on what I wasn't saying.
"I guess only people who counted themselves as also that strong would knowingly attack a Jinchuriki," I mused. "S-rank, maybe."
"There aren't many of those," Fu said.
"Enough," I said. "Enough that go missing-nin, even. Hmm, I know one from Konoha, even. Uchiha Itachi is S-rank." I tapped a finger to my lips. "And Kisame Hoshigaki from Mist."
"I've heard of them," she said carefully. "They sound very strong."
"Mmm," I said. "Imagine what people like that could do if they got together. Scary thought, isn't it?"
"It's a good thing they don't," she said mildly.
"It would take someone even stronger to make them," I agreed. Hmm, that was getting a bit off track. I tilted my head back to stare at the sky. "We're lucky that we had such nice weather today. Did you see the sunrise?"
She blinked, thrown. "No."
"It was quite pretty," I said. "All pinks and reds. I hope it's not a bad omen. There's a saying, you know, red sky in the morning, shinobi's warning. A red dawn. Akatsuki." I blinked and laughed, a little shakily. "Maybe it is a bad omen. If I saw someone in a black cloak with red clouds on it, I'd probably run away."
I glanced at her. She caught my gaze and held it.
Listen, listen, listen!
I blinked. "Ah, listen to me rambling. Just forget I said anything. What I was going to say was, I'd appreciate it if you didn't spread the news about Naruto. Obviously, not many people know about you and we'd like to give him as many advantages as possible."
"I don't talk to many people," she said.
"True enough," I said easily, standing and stretching. "But we all have to keep secrets at some time or other. I mean," I said, with another false laugh. "Even Shibuki asked us to keep the location of the village secret."
A reminder. And one that smelt very faintly of blackmail at that. Something sour twisted in my stomach.
This was also the dangerous part. There was no doubt in my mind that she was stronger than me, even without the added Jinchuriki part. Everything I'd said had been carefully worded as hypothetical, as random assumptions, with no concrete basis. But it had still passed information along. I needed her to keep silent about it.
"I wouldn't want to do anything that would endanger Naruto," Fu agreed, standing as well. "Or my village." There was a faint killing intent emanating from her. Yeah, I got the message.
"No," I agreed. "No one wants that."
We walked inside the teashop, blinking at the change from bright light to dimness.
"Hey!" Naruto said cheerfully. "There you are. What took so long?"
"Ah, just girl talk," I said, waving the question off.
We didn't stop for long, just long enough for a snack and cup of tea, before we were off again. The border between Land of Waterfall and Land of Fire wasn't far, which was where we left Fu.
"Keep yourself safe, okay?" I said, as seriously as I could.
She gave me a long look. "And you," she said finally.
She left, heading back for Hidden Waterfall and leaving us in there. The weather was nice, the sun was shining, and the birds were chirping. It was very peaceful.
I wondered how much of that feeling was a lie.
"Think we can double time it back to Konoha?" I asked, a little uneasy about being out here alone. I could have been wrong; I hoped I was wrong. But if I wasn't…
"Baa-chan will understand why we're late, right?" Naruto asked, rubbing the back of his head.
Sasuke smirked. "You know, with Kakashi-sensei gone, you're the one in charge. That means the one she'll blame is you."
Naruto's face looked like it had got caught between hey, yeahand oh, shit. "But… she'll understand… right? Right?"