Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
.
.
"Just to confirm," I said. "If I make a single seal, for field use, and gift it to a single shinobi who understands what it is, then I don't have to have it approved by R&D, right?"
I leant against the doorframe to Kofuku-oba's office. Doorframes were my friends, these days. And walls. And people who stood still long enough. Being upright took so much unnecessary effort.
Kofuku-oba looked up at me. She'd probably been here all of five minutes, and I did not feel bad about that at all. She was here early, I was here late, everything worked out. Tada.
"Who are you giving it to?" she asked, with what almost sounded like trepidation.
"Shikamaru," I said impatiently. Keep up. What else have I been working on? "I can do that, right?"
I didn't want to get caught up in this bullshit again. Not a turf war I was interested in participating, especially when 'replacement for arm' could maybe be stretched as a medical intervention. Not that it was.
Kofuku-oba laced her fingers together. "I'm afraid I need a little more information than that, Shikako," she said carefully. "What kind of seal are we talking about, here?"
I huffed. "For his arm," I said. But I knew I wasn't being particularly clear so it wasn't fair to get so annoyed at her. My clan wasn't the one composed of mind readers.
But demonstrating was easier than explaining. I lifted the square of paper in my right hand and channeled chakra into it. A dark shadow extended up, solid and three dimensional, and formed a hand.
I made it wave.
Comparing it to my lightsaber had been a good plan – it was a jutsu anchored to a seal that could be turned on and off at will, repeatedly, with little expenditure of chakra. But it could also be controlled once it was out, the same way I could launch huge swathes of lightning around. Well, more finely controlled than that. Much more finely controlled.
I'd had trouble with the jutsu at first – creating something from the combination of two other jutsu wasn't easy. But then …
Well, I already had a shadow hand, didn't I? It was just attached to the rest of a shadow me.
Probably not the best way to put it, if I was to ever explain how I'd come up with this. Especially give the way the last conversation about arms had gone. I hadn't sealed it or done anything like that. I'd just used it as a template for what I wanted the seal to be – the density, strength, construction, size and shape… all so much easier to describe and analyse when I had something to base it off of. I'd copied it.
It would still need fine tuning. For a long time to come, probably. But it was the kind of fine tuning that would need to be done with Shikamaru, would need someone to use it to figure out the limits and weaknesses.
"It'll go on a thing," I said, vaguely, waving the paper about sloppily. The technique collapsed back into it. "So he can wear it."
"How-" Kofuku-oba said, rising out of her desk. "I really think that does need to be examined."
"It's not medical," I objected, fingers tightening on the paper. I could see the quick resolution spiraling out of reach. Once it got caught up in testing it would be there forever. "And I'm not selling them. You don't need to test it."
Kofuku heaved a sigh like I was being entirely unreasonable. But everything she did would hold it up and make it take longer to get to Shikamaru. That was the whole point.
"There would be a lot of demand for a reliable prosthetic," she said, patiently.
"It's a clan jutsu," I rebutted, because I'd actually thought of that. It was still a jutsu. "It requires ability to manipulate shadow natured chakra. No one else would be able to use it."
"And you think your brother is the only one in the clan to have been injured, do you?" she shot back.
My fingers gripped the seal even tighter. "It's for Shikamaru," I said. And if she wanted to give it to someone else then she could pry it from my cold, dead hands.
I should have just given it to him and asked for forgiveness later.
"I'm not saying otherwise," Kofuku said. "But I'm asking if there's no reason we can't make more. Besides," she switched tactics, "you don't want to give your brother something that isn't safe, do you?"
I glowered at her almost resentfully. She was winning.
She was going to win and I'd known that before I'd even set foot in her office. That didn't mean I liked it. But the conditions of victory were just as important as the victory itself.
"Shikamaru gets to be involved in the testing," I said, flatly. I could have edged around it, manipulated the conversation into going the places I wanted, into getting the concessions I wanted… but I was too tired. I was too goddamn tired and I didn't want very much.
"He's not exactly… qualified," Kofuku-oba said delicately, after a long moment of surprise. "I know you've worked with him on seals before but-"
"It's his arm," I said. "So if you want to test it, you do it with him or not at all."
Once he had it – they couldn't take it away. Not really. Not unless it was horrifically, terribly wrong. Not unless everyone agreed unanimously.
Kofuku-oba could tie this down for months with testing – but I could turn this into a shitshow too. Thanks to the Logistics Storage Scroll Nightmare, no one doubted that. And Shikamaru was exactly the kind of thing I would do it over.
No one was going to call my bluff. I wasn't even sure I was bluffing.
That might have been the reason.
I blinked, slowly. My head felt very heavy.
"Very well," Kofuku-oba said crisply after the silence had stretched on and on. "Submit your notes by tomorrow morning and I shall organize a preliminary review of it."
I nodded and, pushed off from the doorframe, stepping into her office for the first time during the conversation. My ankle rolled, poorly placed and I stumbled but righted myself – still it was the kind of physical error I'd have never made at full capacity. It was glaringly obvious.
I set my notes down on her desk. They were a haphazard jumble, shorthand scribbled in margins, ideas that had never gone anywhere, missing intuitive leaps of logic that I'd never written down. I'd probably have to come back and make a proper summary at some point, should have before handing it in, but I'd wanted to be done so badly.
"Thank you for your help," I said distantly and turned myself right back around to go home. And sleep.
It had been a long couple of weeks.
I'd done it willingly, voluntarily – against better judgement, even – but there was no denying that the schedule had taken its toll on me. I was glad to be finished with it.
"Up early again?" Shikamaru asked, voice and body language straining for neutrality as I sank down to the table for breakfast.
I propped my chin in my hand and looked at him through half lidded eyes. "Mm," I agreed, because I didn't have the energy to argue. Didn't know what he wanted to argue about, but didn't much care either. "I finished it."
"Finished what?" Dad asked, after the pause where they tried to work out what I'd just said.
"Hand," I said, descriptively. "Thingy. For Shikamaru."
Why did people assume I would have been working on anything else? Especially dad, who knew what I was trying to do. Who had been helping me with it.
"You've been practicing the jutsu?" Dad asked, carefully setting down his chopsticks. "Without supervision?"
Ooh. Oops.
"No," I said, not mumbling this time. "I still can't do it. Don't need to though. I worked out how to describe it for the seal. It should work. I gave it to Kofuku-oba for testing – she wants Shikamaru there to trial it tomorrow."
Well. 'Wants' was an exaggeration.
"Wait," Shikamaru said. "What have you been working on?"
I looked at him, puzzled. "A prosthetic arm," I said, slowly. It hadn't exactly been a secret. And I'd worked on the shadow part around him at training. "Well. It's not really a prosthetic. I couldn't get that part working. Yet. It's basically just that Shadow Hand jutsu tied to a seal – kinda like my sword. You just turn it on and off."
He'd get it when he saw it. It wasn't complicated.
Shikamaru looked conflicted. "You didn't need to do that," he said. "I can- I'll learn how to do it myself. I will. You didn't need to… to make it easier for me."
I stared at him. That was weird. He was complaining about having to do less work? Maybe Asuma-sensei's 'train harder' speech had done something to his brain.
Maybe it was a pride thing?
"Well," I said, after a very long and bewildered pause. "You don't have to use it if you don't want to. But it exists now. So. Your choice. But, uh, at least go and do the testing because otherwise Kofuku-oba is going to be really annoyed at me. Like. Really."
Especially since I'd blown all her good will in getting it into his hands in the first place.
"I don't want you to run off and try and fix it," Shikamaru went on, almost desperately. "I just want you here."
"I am here," I said, the edge of exasperation growing inside me. "I've been here. Every day. And I didn't fix it. I'm sorry but I can't fix it, okay? All I can do is try to make it a little less bad."
He grimaced, clearly not happy with my response, and pushed back from the table. He ran his hand through his hair. "I'm going to go find Ino," he muttered. "Get some sleep or something."
He stalked out the door.
I sighed, and thought about getting up and following like I had every day since we'd come home. But that had been a pretty clear dismissal. "Yeah, whatever," I said, like he could still hear me.
Dad cleared his throat. "I'll speak with Kofuku about the seal," he said, as though the conversation were still about me developing it in the first place. Still, that was as good as a guarantee that it would be prioritized.
"Thanks," I said, gratefully. I couldn't make Shika use it if he didn't want to, but at least it would be there if he did.
.
.
Kofuku-oba had really pulled out all the stops. By the time Shikamaru and I got to the R&D building the next morning, there was already a flurry of activity taking place. One of the spare labs had been converted into a makeshift office – conference room? – with pages and pages of my notes spread out across the benches and half a dozen people working hard on them.
I felt possibly a little bad about forcing everyone to work in a rush, but not really.
"Shikako!" Kofuku said, clicking her fingers in my direction. "Come over here and explain this."
I ambled towards her, Shikamaru following half a step behind and looking around curiously. He nodded in greeting to a few of the people. He was probably on friendlier terms with them than I was at this point.
"Maybe just start from the beginning," she amended, looking down at the pages in front of her. "Half of these are groundbreaking, half of them are complete rubbish."
I nodded, ruefully. Fair enough. "Okay," I said and cleared my throat. The room went unnecessarily still as everyone stopped to listen. Oh, it was a speech then. Joy. "Right. So. The Shadow Hand jutsu itself is a three dimensional physical manifestation technique. It's … uh, currently in development with Shikaku Nara." I nodded. That made it sound legitimate and official. "It has aspects from both the Shadow Neckbind Jutsu and Shadow Stitching Jutsu. It's short range but shadow-dense and has a high degree of flexibility and precision."
"About that-" a lady near the back of the room interrupted.
Kofuku waved her silent. "Wait till the end, Nanto," she said. "Let's keep this orderly."
"Um," I said, slightly derailed. "The Jutsu itself is anchored to a… a recycling seal. That is… the chakra used to maintain the jutsu is retained by the seal and reused during the next activation. There is, of course, a minimal chakra bleed off but at least eighty percent of the jutsu cost should be offset by the seal. Um. In order to trigger the jutsu, the chakra input has to exceed the activation barrier – which is chakra that cannot be retained by the seal."
I paused. That was really it, actually. It had been ridiculously complicated to make for something that sounded so simple at the end.
People kept staring at me, silently. I shifted my weight. "Yeah. Um. You had questions?"
Turns out, there were a lot of questions. Kofuku-oba herded them into some kind of order.
"You said the technique was flexible and precise," Nanto said first, picking up where she'd wanted to interrupt before. "But we've been unable to actually mobilise it." She gestured to the seal sitting on the front table.
I nodded. "Um. Well. The seal only creates the jutsu. It's still controlled by the user the same way that other shadow jutsu are. It requires concentration and familiarity to … to use it to its fullest potential."
I took a hesitant step over to the seal and activated it. I could make it bend and wave but it clearly wasn't as smooth and natural as a real motion would have been. "That's why I wanted Shikamaru to be involved in the testing from the start," I said. "Because there's going to be a heavy learning curve before it's useful for fine motor tasks."
"What about the original jutsu?" Nanto said. "Can we compare the two?"
I shrugged, a little. "Uh, you'd have to get dad to demonstrate it. I can't perform that technique. I only managed to describe it for the seal."
Yeah, let's go with that.
She didn't look happy with the answer, but subsided. There was someone else to pick up the slack and ask questions, anyway.
"The size of it," someone asked next. "It seems too small for its intended purpose."
I frowned. "I only had my own hands to base it on," I objected. "The size can be adjusted easily enough – the only problems will be if the density and chakra requirements need to be recalculated."
Rude.
"Can it be altered for, say, a leg replacement then?"
"Probably?" I guessed. "I mean, it's intended to be combat capable so it should be strong enough to be weight bearing."
There were more technical questions after that. How often could it be used? How long could it be used for? Would the seals degrade? How did the jutsu react to light sources? What if this? What if that?
"There shouldn't be a limit to how long the jutsu can be active for, as long as the user can sustain the concentration and chakra to maintain it. Or how often," I said. And then was mostly reduced to shrugging helplessly and saying 'probably' a lot. Seals didn't really degrade as such but they could get a little… funny with chakra running through them constantly.
No one ended up satisfied and that was just the start of the testing.
.
.
It was still nearly a full week later before I was called to the missions desk for an assignment. It was late, after sun down, when the messenger knocked on the door and told me to get to the tower ASAP.
I stared at him, distinctly aware I was wearing pajama's and was in no way field ready – and then flew up the stairs to fix that. I wrestled myself into my field gear, peeked quickly into my pack and thanked god for paranoia that made me keep it ready at all times.
I pretended I didn't see the sudden tightening on Shikamaru's face. Even he couldn't say anything to an official summons.
"I know you haven't officially returned to active duty," the chunin on duty said apologetically. "But this is a really urgent one and you're the highest ranking Sensor Squad ninja in the village."
I hadn't even realized I needed to request a return to active duty – I wasn't on medical leave – though in hindsight that really explained why I'd had so much downtime to work on the seal. Was there some kind of 'oops I screwed up' leave? Maybe it was unofficial.
"It's fine," I said. "Mark me down as back on duty. What's the situation?"
I was handed a mission scroll. "Missing child from Mori-gai," he said promptly. "Daughter of the ambassador. Last seen in the morning, but the alarm wasn't raised until around six. Searchers were deployed but couldn't find her and at sundown they sent a hawk for us. The initial assumption is that she wandered into the forest and got lost."
She could have been missing for nearly twelve hours, then, which was plenty of time for harm to befall a child, natural or otherwise. Overnight would be worse, with dropping temperatures inviting hypothermia, or predators, or simply wandering around in the dark and getting injured.
"No scent trackers in the village?" I asked. Scent tracking beat chakra sense by a mile at things like this.
"None above chunin," he said, pulling forward a list of Sensor Squad ninja.
Frankly, a Chunin Inuzuka would be better at this mission than Special Jounin me, but I didn't comment on his selection criteria. It was hardly the time.
I ran a quick glance over it. "I'll take Kiba with me," I decided, near instantly. It might have been a mistake – I hadn't talked to him since our last mission had ended on a sour note – but I had complete faith in his abilities as a tracker. Even if he hated me, he could find a missing child.
Whatever else was going on, the mission came first.
I held onto that thought as I made my way into the Inuzuka compound. Hana answered the door when I knocked, looking vaguely annoyed but also prepared to spring into action if so required.
"I need Kiba for a mission," I said, holding up the scroll. "It's urgent. Sorry."
She shrugged and disappeared out of the doorway. After a second, I heard the distinct sound of his name being bellowed down a hallway. In an impressively short span of time, Kiba was out the door and ready to go.
He paused a fraction at seeing me, but said nothing.
I hoped that was good enough. "I'll brief you as we go," I said, leading the way towards the gates.
"Piece of cake," Kiba said confidently, once I'd filled him in. "Me and Akamaru will find her in no time."
Akamaru gave a supportive bark.
"That's what I thought," I said. "I figured if we pushed the pace now, we could have her home safe and sound by morning."
He gave me a fanged smirk. "You call this pushing it?"
I speed up. So did he. It was still a sustainable pace, still nothing that would tire us out – just in case – but every minute we shaved off our time here counted.
"Look," I said, breaking the silence that fell between us. "About our last mission…"
It was hard to gauge anyone's reaction when you were travelling side by side at a breakneck pace through the trees, but his shoulders stiffened.
"I'm sorry," I said quickly, turning my face forward. "That I put you in that kind of position. You made the right call trying to get everyone out of there."
Kiba snorted. "No, I didn't," he said. "It was wrong. You managed to do whatever the hell it was you did and saved the day. I should have trusted you."
"It wasn't about trust," I said, because those had been his words. And he'd been right. "And that doesn't change the fact that it was the right call, to look after the client and the team."
Give that exact situation as an Academy exam question, and no one would ever pick what I had done as the correct answer.
"You can make all the right calls and fail, and all the wrong calls and win," I said, struggling to articulate what I wanted. "I won but… I risked a lot. If those ninja had gone after you instead of all staying at the castle…"
If they'd gone after my team. If I hadn't beaten them both. If I'd been injured too. If. If. If. There were a lot of ways that that could have gone badly.
"So I think you made the right call," I said. "And I think… if we were there again you would still make the same one."
Kiba was silent for a long minute. "So would you," he said. "You'd still go."
I paused. "Yeah," I agreed. "I'd still go."
He barked a laugh, but it didn't sound amused. "How does that even work? You say you're wrong, but you'd still do it. You say I was right, but you still wouldn't listen."
I huffed, a noise that wasn't quite a laugh either. "If you haven't noticed that I'm a raging hypocrite by now then I'm won't be the one to shatter your illusions."
He shook his head, but my attempt at levity seemed to have managed to do something to the situation.
"You're a jerk," he said in mock-disgust. "There we were, all worried about little old you, and you just took on two maybe-jounin like it wasn't the first time."
"Well," I said, then stopped.
"Liar," Kiba accused, then squinted at me. "For serious? How come they kicked our ass so bad the first time then?"
"How come you didn't go Fang-Wolf-Fang?" I pointed out. "Way too much friendly fire when you're not fighting alone. Besides, the plan was to stall them and not jump straight into the 'try kill them' part. And yeah, maybe that was just a flaw in the plan but… killing isn't a first resort."
Maybe it should have been. Maybe we'd been a little too casual, a little too defensive, about the whole thing.
"Point," Kiba conceded. "I wouldn't have wanted to be too close to that fuck-ton of explosives."
"And that was only the opening move," I said dryly.
.
.
We reached Mori-gai in the early hours of the morning. Given that the mission scroll specified the girl as the child of the ambassador, I'd been expecting the place to be a city. Some place that would make sense to post an ambassador.
It wasn't.
It wasn't small exactly – it was a good sized town, but it jarred with my expectation. The ambassador didn't work there; she lived there when she wasn't in the capitol or away on postings.
"Thank you for coming," she said, face calm and composed as she greeted us. She appeared unruffled, though there was a tightness to the corners of her eyes. She didn't seem bothered by our youth, though some of the people with her were giving us looks, which suggested she might have worked with ninja before.
Well. She'd known to call us. And done it quickly, too.
"Of course," I said, bowing. "Ambassador Kan. Please forgive our abruptness, but time is of the essence. Can you tell us what happened?"
"My daughter Makoto is missing," the Ambassador said. She picked up a framed photograph and handed it to me, showing a young dark-haired girl of about eight or nine years old. "She often takes food to some of the … disadvantaged children in a poor area of town after school. Today she didn't return home. When we searched the area we found her schoolbag in a field near the forest."
"Is this her bag?" Kiba asked, moving closer to the item in question, where it was propped up against the wall.
"Yes," Kan confirmed. "As far as I can tell, nothing is missing."
Kiba set Akamaru down beside it and probably got a good scent off of it himself. I hoped. There didn't look to be any blood on it, or anything of the sort, but I'd wait until we were out of the house to ask.
"Which area was this?" I asked, unfolding my map on the table so she could point us in the right direction.
The sooner we got started, the better.