It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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My feet were blistered.
That was second degree burns, at least. I hissed as I tipped my canteen of water over them, trying to wash off the worst of the dirt. It was a little too late for the 'run under cold water' treatment to do much good, and I didn't have that much water anyway.
Well, it wasn't like I'd never had burns before. Admittedly, these were the worst – I'd never tried to set off a tag I was holding before. Because I could recognise that as a dumb move, even if it had been the only option I had at that point.
There were also lightning burns marking up my shins, little feathery fernlike patterns. Lightning flowers, they were called, caused by the rupturing of capillaries under the skin. These were probably no more serious than a bruise.
But it did highlight one fact.
Despite how the fight had gone, most of my injuries had been the result of my own actions. Nagare had managed to land very few hits. I'd have bruises, for sure, but they wouldn't have slowed me down nearly so much.
I was getting careless, and it was becoming a problem.
More than a problem – I'd unintentionally torn myself in two with an untested, experimental jutsu that I'd been heavily advised against developing. This time, it hadn't even been a neat and even split like it had the first time I'd used it. It had been rougher, lopsided, and had left me physically defenceless in the middle of a fight.
I hadn't meant to use it. I'd just… panicked. I'd been trying to get away.
I shuddered and gently coaxed my burns into healing with medical chakra, then slathered them with burn cream before wrapping them heavily in bandages. It would have to do.
I rubbed my throat, chasing the phantom touch of a hand wrapped around it. My palms were sweaty. I was trembling, faintly. It had never been this bad before. A feeling of Deja vu once or twice. A lurching feeling in the pit of my stomach. Nightmares. A momentary faze when faced with Sharingan. Nothing like this.
"I'm okay," I told myself, out loud. The words didn't have some magical ability to fix everything. I didn't feel any better. "It's okay."
It wasn't, though. And the worst thing was I didn't know how to fix it, because I had done the best I could.
I limped towards the shrine tunnel, subdued.
Toki was going to have to overhaul this whole tunnel thing after this. Secret evacuation tunnels worked best when they were actually, yknow, secret. Otherwise they were just a direct line into the heart of the palace. And while I would have said that neither Naruto or I would abuse that knowledge, Sai also knew. And if Sai knew, Danzo would know.
More problems.
Wearily, I crawled out from the trap door, sliding out under the table and giving Naruto what was apparently the fright of his life. Well, at least they were back. I'd wondered if they were still out investigating.
"What happened?! You're hurt!" Naruto hovered, darting forward, then back again as he changed his mind. "Do you need me to get stuff? A first aid kit?"
"I'm fine," I said. "I've got one."
"But what happened?!" Naruto burst out. "Did someone attack you?"
There was a rustling sound in the other room, and Toki appeared in her night clothes. One hand rested out of sight behind the door, and I was sure she was holding a weapon.
"Another attack?" she asked, eyes flicking over me. I felt twice as dirty and dishevelled because of it.
"Something like that," I said.
"Where's Sai?" Naruto followed up. "Was he hurt too?"
I shook my head. "No, I don't know; we split up. He went to listen in on some kind of meeting."
"A meeting?" Toki echoed. "This late at night?"
"We were a little suspicious as well," I agreed. "It's definitely ninja, though. The two I fought were from the Watari Clan – they're a bunch of wandering ninja that don't belong to a village. Not missing ninja, they just never had one in the first place. I bet the three assassins earlier were also from there. Whoever hired them hasn't skimped on the numbers."
"So there's probably more," Naruto finished. He lifted his chin and knocked his fists together. "So we'll just beat them all up!"
"Right, right," I agreed almost absently. I didn't bother pointing out that the conspiracy likely went deeper than we'd expected, if someone was able to hire and hide a whole lot of ninja for the several weeks, if not months, that it had been since the Daimyo died.
Sure, ninja were sneaky. But we were talking at least a dozen people. That had to leave some kind of imprint.
"I didn't get much information out of them," I said. "Hopefully Sai knows more."
"I'll send a clone to go and find him," Naruto said. "In case he runs into trouble too." His face was creased with worry.
I gave Toki as much of a reassuring smile as I could. "You should go back to sleep. Tomorrow might be busy."
Her hand closed around her pocket watch. "Good."
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Sai snuck into the room.
He was good at that, in a way that betrayed training and experience. I tried to think of it as a helpful trait, not as something to be wary of.
"Taicho," he said, dropping one knee to the ground. "I have information."
"What is it?" Naruto asked. "What was the meeting about?"
"There was a squad of ninja receiving orders from their employer," Sai said, calmly.
"Who is it?" Toki demanded. "Who is behind all of this? Tell me."
Sai was still looking at Naruto, not her. He didn't continue until Naruto nodded impatiently. "Their employer is the same man who hired us. Mousou."
I hissed through my teeth. It had always been a possibility, but not one I had taken that seriously. I hadn't even met the man.
Naruto looked shocked. And betrayed. "Oh, no!"
Toki's face closed down, becoming cold. "Mousou. So it was you, all along," she murmured.
"I was unable to confirm the identity of the ninja, or the village they were from," Sai said.
"They're from the Watari Clan," I said. "I ran into two of them, earlier."
Sai's eyes flickered over me. I knew he couldn't have missed my injuries, but he had given no indication that he'd noticed them, either. "I see," he said. "They were identifiable?"
"Nagare and Hokushin," I offered, on the off chance that the names meant something to him.
He might have recognised them. He might not. But he pulled out a Konoha issue bingo book and after a few moments, managed to open it to display the faces of the men I had fought. The Watari Clan had a two page spread in general, with several more pages following for the stronger shinobi in their ranks.
I was surprised he had a bingo book, though I shouldn't have been. Of course he did. Even Naruto might have been issued one when he was promoted, though I'd never asked.
"That's them," I confirmed, though the pictures were seriously out of date. Looking at their bingo book stats made me feel twice as lucky to have won - I'd already known that I shouldn't have really stood a chance, but this just confirmed it. "Who else do they have listed?"
More information was better, if we were going to run into more of them.
"There's one more thing," Sai said, surrendering the bingo book to me. "Komei has been arrested. Guards confiscated a suit of armour identical to that of the Cursed Warrior from his quarters."
"But he's got nothing to do with it!" Naruto protested.
"It's a set up," I confirmed. "He's being framed." It was a cunning plan, if you considered it. Komei was Mousou's main opposition in gaining control over the country. This way he got to disgrace him and stop the rumours about the ghost of the Daimyo. It wouldn't actually solve the problem of the ghost – but how many people could see Toki, how many times could she go out without getting caught? It was a fairly neat solution to what had to be a last-minute complication; no one could have expected someone to seek vengeance as a ghost.
"He is going to be executed at dawn."
I nearly dropped the book. "What?"
"He is being provided with an opportunity to commit seppuku and end his life in an honourable fashion," Sai said. "Though I imagine someone will assist him if he decides not to."
"There's no time to lose. We'll go there right now!" Naruto declared.
"That is something we cannot do," Toki said, just shy of sounding regretful. Like she had judged the outcomes and knew that she could live with it. Or not live with it, as the case may have been. "It would mean revealing to Mousou that we know truth. I wouldn't get my revenge."
"You're saying you'd sacrifice an innocent guy for the sake of your stupid revenge?" Naruto exclaimed, voice rising higher and louder. He sounded both disbelieving and totally appalled. "You're the Daimyo! You're responsible for all your people!"
"I have no choice!" Toki responded. "Besides, he'll be guarded by a legion of soldiers. We would never be able to save him with anything less than starting a civil war."
I winced. That would be bad. That was pretty much the opposite of what we were going for here.
Naruto's chin edged out in a sullen, defiant way. "Not if we do it," he said. "Do you have a problem with that?"
"Okay," I said in the tense silence that followed. "Do we have a plan?"
"We can be the ghost," Naruto said. "Then everyone will know that Komei didn't do it."
It was a workable plan. We'd be able to get Komei out, at least. Then we just had to reveal Mousou for the mastermind behind it all in some way that was incontrovertible.
I drummed my fingers against my leg.
Well. We already had a ghost in play. It would be all very Hamlet.
"Okay," I said slowly. I didn't want to jump into another fight so soon. But Naruto was here. I wouldn't be alone. "I think that this could work."
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The plan went wrong even before it started.
Of course it did.
It wasn't even that complicated a plan. Toki and I would take our places at the dais, because she was the Daimyo and I had been sort of acting as her bodyguard. Sai would tail Komei to ensure he made it safely to the execution grounds. And then Naruto would swoop in as the Cursed Warrior, reveal himself to be the murdered Daimyo through careful transformation, proclaim he had been murdered and try to get some kind of reaction or confession. Toki would then join in, condemn Mousou and get her vaunted revenge.
That was the plan.
It went wrong the second that Mousou entered to sit on the dais, and I saw him for the first time.
And felt the chakra humming from him. The chakra of an active technique. It wasn't much. Maybe about the same amount as an academy technique, and done with efficiency and precision besides. If he hadn't been so close to me, I might not have notice. His chakra signal felt natural enough that I wouldn't have looked twice at it – but now that I second guessed it, it felt distinctly compressed, for a civilian.
As casually as I could, I draped my braid over my shoulder and ducked my chin. Perched on the silver clasp at the end of my hair was a tiny Naruto clone spider. I'd wished I thought to tell him to make it into some other creature, but they were small and handy and that trumped my instinctive dislike of eight legged things.
"Mousou," I breathed to it, the barest of sounds. "Is a shinobi."
It didn't disappear, but it did, sort of, wave legs at me. I hoped that meant the message was received.
Then I sat back and watched Mousou as well as I could without staring. That changed things. If he was a shinobi and hadn't just hired them… was he Watari Clan as well? Was the whole clan here? That would be ridiculous and really bad.
Toki was in much more trouble than we'd thought.
A set of guards lead Komei into the yard. He was dressed in a white kimono – the formal attire of the rite of seppuku – with his hands bound. He also did not look entirely unharmed.
He waited, still and watchful, as he was led to kneel on a mall bamboo mat. It was positioned in front of Mousou, not Toki, which said large amounts about the power structure here. I wasn't sure Toki had even been invited, it was just that no one could turn us away after we had showed up.
Casually, Mousou opened a scroll passed to him by one of his attendants – also ninja, unless I missed my guess. "A verdict has been reached," he said. "Betraying your position as chief tactician to the late Daimyo, Owashi-sama, you conspired to his assassination as well as the murder of his daughter, Toki-sama. Furthermore, you and your subordinates were responsible for manufacturing the apparition known as the Cursed Warrior; your purpose being to spread panic among our people, undermine the authority of Sagi-sama and usurp his role as Daimyo of the Land of Birds. You are a traitor. You are commanded to take your own life!"
There was muttering from the crowd that had started to gather. This event had not been publically announced, but people had been drawn here anyway, through a grapevine of gossip. We had been counting on that, initially, as witnesses but now they were people we'd have to keep safe.
There were a lot of them. I swallowed, nervously.
Komei gave a short, bitter chuckle. "So that's it, Mousou," he said. "I see it all now. You've sprung your trap, haven't you?"
"If you're a warrior, Komei," Mousou said, eyes narrowing. "Then die like one."
One of the guards lifted a sword, clearly the kaishakunin - the second - that would perform the beheading. Komei lifted the unmarked tanto lying on the mat.
I shifted. Where was Naruto?
I didn't want to see this. I didn't want to let it happen.
Then, fog started rising from the ground. It was thick and eerie, billowing up around our knees, and completely saturated with Naruto's chakra.
He was going to continue with the plan then.
"Yooouuu," Naruto moaned in a credible imitation of a ghost, appearing suddenly in the middle of the yard with a replacement jutsu. We didn't know what the old Daimyo had sounded like, so the ghostly voice would have to do.
And while all eyes were on him, I felt the spike of chakra and switch that suggested Komei had been replaced with a clone as well.
Good. That was one thing down.
"My trusted advisors," Naruto continued, drawing all the words out. "Betrayed me."
I could see Mousou taking stock of the situation and trying to work out how to turn it to his advantage. "What trick is this, Komei? This will not stay your execution!"
Naruto reached up to unlatch the helmet, revealing an excellent transformation into the last Daimyo, copied straight from the portrait in Toki's rooms.
Mousou may have known that he was facing ninja. So he probably knew that it was only a transformation. But the whole thing was a performance, for the crowd, more than it was about him.
He backed up a step, then caught himself. "Owashi-sama," he said smoothly. "As you can see, we have apprehended the man responsible. You can rest in peace."
"He is not the one," Naruto said, though it sounded slightly less ominous and slightly more ridiculous. I hoped he didn't ham it too much. "I am here for my vengeance! I name you, Mousou, as the one responsible for my death! You are not what you seem!"