Hazō watched the farm wife as she busied herself with making sleeping arrangements for the ninja who had demanded her spying services and then refused to protect her family.

Jiraiya’s words echoed in his ears. "Ninja only kill to protect."

Hazō had done more than enough killing lately. When did the protecting begin?

“Captain Minami,” he leaned over to speak quietly into Minami's ear, “I know it’s your call in the end, but personally I don’t think I’d feel comfortable imposing on her right now. Imagine how she must be feeling.”

Minami looked at him. Then at the door, beyond which they could hear the heavens trying to murder the earth. Then at the farm wife, whose posture was just that little bit more stooped, more weary, than when they’d come in.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she finally said, “but I’m afraid we can’t take you up on your offer. It… wouldn’t be secure.”

“Is that right? Well, if you’d rather brave the rain, who’m I to stop you? You have a safe journey now.”

“Thank you,” Minami bowed. “Team, move out.”

Outside, out of hearing of the house (though in this weather it didn’t take much), Noburi turned on Minami with a put-upon look on his face.

“Is this really a good idea... Captain? We could be indoors and safe and warm right now, instead of having to set up camp in the middle of the night in this horrible rain and freezing cold and low visibility and everything.”

“From an efficiency perspective,” Keiko added, “setting out tomorrow in a well-rested state with whatever food our hostess can provide would only improve our travel speed.”

“I’m not denying it,” Minami said regretfully. “So let’s have a show of hands. Who thinks they’d sleep well tonight in the home of some civilians whose lives we're choosing to put in danger for the sake of the mission?”

“I don’t see what all the fuss is about in the first place,” Kagome-sensei muttered. “So it's a bit of rain. When I was a kid, we’d bring out our dried loofahs on a day like this and call it a free wash.”

After that, nobody felt able to raise their hands.

-o-

“Can I talk to you, Keiko?” Hazō asked, squatting down next to her bedroll.

“I have consistently failed to stop you in the past,” Keiko said.

“Are you OK? After what happened with the ship, I mean?”

“Yes, Hazō, I’m fine. Unlike some members of this group, I have always been aware of the pointlessly cruel nature of the world we live in. It does not at all surprise me that ninja should be forced to instigate massacres in order to maintain a status quo they do not support.”

The coolness in her voice made Hazō’s insides tighten. There was something of the Mizukage in it, a remoteness that dehumanised people’s suffering. It was something he could see now, with the expanded perspective earned through his travels. When you said that pain and death were necessary, when you accepted them as the background tone of life, you emptied them of meaning. If it rained, you adjusted your plans and moved on. If you missed breakfast, you adjusted your plans and moved on. If your comrades died on a mission, if a chakra beast decimated a village, if a war left a generation of children without parents, you adjusted your plans and moved on.

If you believed in a world where others' lives were too cheap to mourn, how could you find value in your own?

“You can’t dismiss it that easily, Keiko,” he insisted. “You’ve seen the same things I’ve seen. You’ve been to all the same villages, and you’ve seen how civilians live. Their lives are just as real as our lives, and they matter just like our lives matter. Even if this time the mission forced our hand, we can’t stop caring about them, or about the things we believe in.”

Keiko’s expression grew fixed. She stayed silent for a few seconds, but whatever she was trying not to say to him finally forced its way out.

“Yes, I care, Hazō!” she hissed. “Is that what you wanted to hear? That I despise this inimical, lightless, relentlessly sadistic, soul-crushing world? That I despise myself even more for becoming an instrument of its perpetuation? That I have tasted anew the Mori curse of understanding fused with impotence? Well, here you are. You’ve heard it. Now leave me alone.”

Hazō was staggered by the depth of venom in her voice… but also a little relieved. She hadn’t given up. She hadn’t stopped caring. They were still on the same side—not just as ninja, but as people who looked at the world with open eyes and refused to accept what they found.

“You’re wrong,” he said fiercely. “You’re not impotent. We’re not impotent. When we went to Iron, we prevented the deaths of dozens of ninja, and who knows how many civilians. When we went to Tea, we ended up overturning a conservative order that had lasted for centuries, and gave a whole ninja village a chance to prepare for the modern world. When we decided to take some time out to do research, we created a tool that stopped a world war before it could begin. Even when we messed up in Hot Springs, we ended up changing the fate of an entire country. Our team may have its flaws, but not being able to affect the world is not one of them.”

Keiko frowned as she contemplated his words.

“Perhaps you are correct,” she said thoughtfully. “If we continue at our current pace, it is not implausible that we will break the world sufficiently for something new to be made out of the pieces. However, I see no guarantee that it will not be even worse.”

“I do,” Hazō said. “We can learn from our mistakes. We can learn from the world’s mistakes. We’ve got Jiraiya on our side, and even if he doesn’t believe in the mission we’ve set ourselves, it’s still in his interests to teach us about politics, and power, and not accidentally handing over neutral countries to our worst enemies. We’ve got Leaf on our side, to some extent at least, and they know more about creating peace and prosperity than anyone. There has never been a person or group in history with both our motivation and our odds of success.”

Keiko rolled her eyes, not unaffectionately. “You keep doing this, Hazō. You say things that by all rights should defy common sense, that lack support from empirical data, or competent authorities, or any kind of developed theoretical basis. And yet somehow, you not only manage to continue on your improbable path, you sweep all of us up in your wake. You are dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with your technological imagination."

She gave him a look of resigned condemnation, like a librarian admonishing a noisy child who she knew would forget her words within the hour.

“Please feel free to continue drastically altering my destiny tomorrow. For now, I require sleep.”

Hazō smiled.

“One more thing, Keiko?”

“Yes?”

He hesitated.

“Philosophy and snark aside, are you coping OK? Is there anything I can do to help?”

Keiko yawned.

“It is as I told you, Hazō. I have been aware from a young age that this is the kind of world I was born into. This is not to say that I am beyond anger, or despair, or self-loathing. Quite the reverse. I have learned to live with them, day by day, without any external assistance. If you would be of aid, look instead to those of our party who still have illusions to protect.

“Now begone, lest I decide to practice for life as a Nara by inflicting creative vengeance on those who disturb my rest.”

-o-

The journey dragged on. The weather improved only slowly and with the utmost reluctance. However, Kagome-sensei’s mockery spurred the rest of the team on to new heights of fake stoicism, and thus in turn to greater speed.

Thanks to Jiraiya’s updated list, there were now two contacts to visit in Honey, and on opposite sides of the country at that. With a sigh, Minami made the call to split the team into two subgroups and visit both contacts simultaneously instead of travelling in a longer loop. Her decision received unanimous support, as by this point the entire team was sick and tired of the mission, and keen to get it over with as fast as possible. Not to mention, Hazō pointed out, the risks involved in repeatedly piling the entire team into one small area where a single exploding tag or other area attack could spell the end of them all.

Minami had promptly assigned Akane as head of the other subteam, with Kagome-sensei and Keiko as her subordinates. Hazō suspected that Minami’s decision was at least partly motivated by the desire for a break from Kagome-sensei’s alternating smugness and paranoia and Keiko’s gloomy, self-absorbed silence.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Hazō was reluctant to be pulled away from Akane, but he had to admit that he, Noburi and Minami made for a much more relaxed, companionable team. They were able to chat idly as they scanned the surroundings for chakra monsters and potential ambushes (and potential ambushes by chakra monsters), with Noburi teasing Minami just enough to get her to drop the stern team leader façade and start closing the distance between them.

It seemed they weren’t the only ones concerned about the possibility of chakra monsters, as their contact’s farmhouse turned out to be an imposing construction of reinforced wood, with heavy shutters over the windows and a door that looked like it could keep out a chakra behemoth. Hazō’s inner Kagome-sensei grudgingly awarded the place a “passable” rating, conditional on at least a few hundred defensive seals being deployed in the vicinity.

“They say every time the Mizukage smiles, a Mist ninja dies of a heart attack!” Minami called out Jiraiya’s password.

“Then it’s lucky Mist ninja don’t have hearts,” came the countersign.

Hazō made a note to enlist Mari-sensei in a scheme of petty revenge when he got back to Leaf.

The door opened with the familiar complaining creak of hinges that hadn’t been oiled for days. On the other side was a plain-looking woman in a ratty black robe with voluminous sleeves, who studied the three sceptically before stepping back to let them in. Noburi, going last, barely made it across the threshold before she slammed the door shut and locked it.

It wasn’t paranoia when entire villages could be wiped out by sudden chakra beast assaults.

“Welcome to my humble home, ninja,” she said, waving them to come further inside. “Are you here with a message?”

Minami reached for the scroll in her pack, then paused.

“Where is everyone? We didn’t see any sign of your family when we were approaching.”

“Pfah!” The woman waved her hand dismissively. “Men. Never there when you need them, always there when you don't. You'll see them once the sun goes down, and you won't be impressed.”

She stretched out her hand, and Minami placed the scroll in it.

The woman unfurled it briskly and ran her eyes over the text. “Hm.”

With no further comment than that, she carefully tucked it into one of her sleeves.

“You must be hungry after your journey. You take a seat at the table over there, and I’ll make sure you have your fill.”

She guided the team to the benches surrounding the large central table before retreating towards the kitchen at the back.

She stopped halfway there, and turned back to face them.

“Oh, before I forget, I do have something of a… confidential nature. Which one of you’s in charge?”

“That would be me,” Minami said. “What can we do to help?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” the woman said, pulling a bottle out from another sleeve and taking a swig. “You don’t have to do anything at all.”

Then she brought her hands together.

“Water Element: Eternal Lullaby Technique!”

The three Leaf-nin jumped to their feet, but nothing seemed to happen, which in some ways was the most terrifying of all possible effects.

Hazō’s blood turned cold as ice with realisation. What kind of ninja locked themselves in with a three-man team in a reinforced building where even exploding tags couldn’t make an instant escape route?

A prepared jōnin.

Hazō forced his breath into evenness. He was already feeling slightly dizzy just from the enemy’s killing intent, and that was unacceptable. So they didn’t know her capabilities. She didn’t know theirs either. She was already holding a kunai he hadn’t seen her draw, but at least it wasn’t a sword or a seal. If they could hold her off for just a little while, Noburi could use his mist drain, and even jōnin had no protection against that.

He hoped.

He started to move in, but Minami was way ahead of him. Her body was a sword in itself, cutting through the air with inhuman speed as she crossed the distance to the jōnin.

Her blade came down—

“Hōzuki’s Mantle!”

Minami’s attack fractionally slowed as it met the screen of water, by an amount so tiny that even Hazō’s kinetic vision barely registered it.

In that sliver of a moment, the jōnin slid out of the way and thrust a kunai through her throat.

Hazō didn't understand what happened until Minami’s disguise dispelled itself. Her sword clattered against the floor.

An agonising awareness of his own hubris washed over him. A prepared enemy. A prepared jōnin. She wouldn’t have engaged them unless she knew she would win.

Hazō abandoned all thought of conventional combat. Even if Noburi could drain the jōnin dry in seconds, this was the woman who’d killed Minami in a single perfect cross-counter. She wouldn’t give them that much time. If they were going to survive, he would have to get… creative.

He forced his brain to work through the growing haze. They needed defences. Something strong. Something fast to make. Something that didn’t let her out of their sight.

Air domes.

Except no enemy would stand still and watch him plant and activate two separate seals.

“Noburi, you trigger them!” he yelled, affixing one seal to the floor next to his foot and practically diving across the room to set the other in place.

Noburi synchronised with his movements the way only a long-time teammate could, not one second wasted.

Before the jōnin had a chance to strike, a nigh-impenetrable dome of solid air sealed off the space around them. The eerily melodious trickle of Hōzuki’s Mantle disappeared along with every other external sound.

Hazō and Noburi exchanged slightly manic grins of relief.

The jōnin, though, seemed completely unfazed. She walked slowly to the edge of the dome, glanced down at the seals, then tapped the dome experimentally with the point of her kunai.

Mercifully, nothing happened.

The relief was making Hazō even dizzier than before. For an instant, he thought the jōnin was using a clone technique, only to realise that he’d been seeing double.

Was this really normal? No, something was wrong. This wasn’t relief. The jōnin had done something to him, maybe was still doing something to him. And he had no idea what.

He glanced at Noburi, who had put a hand out to lean against the inside of the dome.

“What’s happening?”

Noburi shook his head as if to clear it. Then his eyes widened.

“Oh, shit,” he said, slurring the word just a little. “Remember that bottle she drank from? Antidote. We’re breathing poison gas.”

Poison gas. He knew something about poison gas. Kagome-sensei had flipped out when he heard that Hazō hadn’t… hadn’t done something. No, hadn’t made something.

Purifier seals.

And because he was Kagome-sensei, he’d immediately handed some out.

Hazō slapped down Usamatsu’s Glorious Life-Saving Purifier and poured his chakra into it exactly as if his life depended on it.

He and Noburi thrust their faces into the stream of clean, untainted, close-enough-to air, and though Hazō’s mind didn’t get any less hazy, it at least stopped getting worse.

“Tunneller’s Friend,” Noburi said vaguely. “Can’t run out of air.”

How many did it take if you were standing still? One each? Two each?

Hazō put down ten.

There was still no sound when he looked back up.

Oh, right. Air domes blocked sound. He knew that.

But he could still see the jōnin. As he watched, she gave them a leisurely round of applause.

Then, with catlike grace, she stalked over to Minami’s body, and dipped a finger in the pool of blood accumulating around her neck.

Hazō watched, entranced, as the jōnin’s hand moved slowly across the wall.

When she was finished, she turned around and blew Hazō a kiss with that same bloodstained hand. Then she strolled past the air dome, running her hand along it as she passed so that a streak of Minami’s blood seemed to follow her through the air like the red string of fate.

She pulled the door shut behind her as she left, but Hazō barely registered it. He was stuck watching the thin, capillary-like traces of blood already beginning to stream down from the jōnin’s parting message.

NO ONE FUCKS WITH THE YAKUZA