“Welcome back, kids,” Jiraiya nodded in greeting. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
The team bowed back, Akane deepest, Kagome shallowest.
Jiraiya glanced briefly at the closed door. “Now,” he said seriously, “before anything else, I have something very important to tell you all.
“You aren’t responsible for Minami’s death. I am.”
To Hazō’s left, Akane blinked uncertainly. On the other side, Noburi frowned and tilted his head sideways a little, much the way Dr Yakushi had when trying to puzzle out Hazō’s motivations in the aftermath of the Killbox Incident.
Next to him, Keiko went very, very still. And Kagome-sensei opened his mouth, and Hazō’s survival instinct screamed at him that he was about to say something that would get them put under house arrest at best and thrown back in the killbox at worst.
Jiraiya didn’t give him the chance.
“I should have remembered that the training Mari gave you was mostly survival—with a dash of social manipulation because that woman can’t say ‘Good morning’ without trying to charm the pants off someone. I should have taken the time to drill you in basic OPSEC instead of sending you off half-cocked.
“What I’m trying to say is that I don’t blame you for the failure of the mission and the loss of a big chunk of my network. As your superior, I’m the one who should’ve made sure you were better prepared—and frankly, what kind of nationwide net falls to pieces just because one agent gets compromised? The Moyashi Clan must be laughing their heads off right now.
“That said, this is how things played out, and now there are consequences.”
He looked at Akane.
“This next part is clan business. I'm letting you stay because you're going to be spending a lot of time with my clansmen, and keeping this secret from you would get real inconvenient real fast. Don't make me regret it."
“Yes, sir! I won’t let you down, sir!”
Jiraiya gave a smile, but it vanished quickly.
“Here’s how it is. The Hyūga have patron-client relationships with certain big-name craftsmen in the luxury goods sector. It’s an important source of income for them, and a major source of economic influence.
“So naturally, we were going to steal it.
“Which is to say the Minami and I worked out a complicated scheme to hit the Hyūga clients with every tool in the box at once, and grab a massive share of the market from them before the Hyūga had time to get their headbands on. The Minami needed starting capital for that, and we couldn’t afford to leave a paper trail for the Hyūga, so I gave them a huge sum of money as an unrecorded gift, which they’d repay out of the profits from their new investments.
“Then this happened. The Minami think I’ve betrayed them, pretty much for the reasons I just gave, and they’ve pulled out of the deal. As far as they’re concerned, that gift is now blood money for their daughter getting killed through my and my clan’s incompetence. And we're not getting it back.
“Which means, boys and girls, that we’re royally screwed. We've just gone all in on that new compound, our coffers are about to get emptier than Uchiha Itachi's heart, and the Hokage doesn’t get to knock on people’s doors and ask for handouts. Even if I swallowed my pride and asked one of the other clans for a loan, there’d be enough strings attached to cocoon an Akimichi.
“I’ll give you what recovery time I can. I know the last few weeks have been hard on you. They’ve been hard on everyone. But soon I’m going to need you to start taking on missions to make sure we stay afloat while I find a way to fix this.
“All right,” Jiraiya said more lightly. “That’s the bad news. Now for something completely different.”
He gave a mischievous grin.
“Who wants to help me rewrite history?”
-o-
Yamanaka Neira’s chambers were surprisingly simple for a clan elder, containing little but some carved wooden furniture adorned with embroidered cushions, wall hangings, and a large tabby cat whose ears briefly flicked towards the guests without otherwise breaking its deep sleep. With the exception of the cat, the dominant motif was of trees, dark green shapes curving against paler backgrounds. Unusually, there were no calligraphy scrolls.
“Welcome,” she said in a gentle, smooth voice that went flawlessly with her greying hair and old-fashioned dress. Hazō had never known his grandparents, but he imagined that if they weren’t twisted, hate-filled fossils who’d never known a moment’s happiness in their worthless lives (quoth Kurosawa Hana), they would have been something like this.
“I am Yamanaka Neira. You may call me by my first name if it makes you feel more comfortable. I understand you were sent here by the Hokage?”
“That’s right, ma’am,” Hazō said. “He said he was calling in his favour for the White Man Incident.”
Neira gave an affectionate chuckle. “Memory like a Tea Country stalkbeast, that man. So how can I help you two?”
Hazō realised he hadn’t introduced himself, and she hadn’t asked.
“My name is Hazō, and this is Kagome-sensei.”
Kagome-sensei twitched, but otherwise continued not making eye contact and generally trying to pretend that Neira didn’t exist, and nor did he. That meant it fell to Hazō to explain.
“Kagome-sensei’s experiences have left it difficult for him to trust people, and it’s been causing difficulties in his professional life,” he grievously understated. “We were hoping you could provide him with therapy to help him work through his issues.”
“Therapy?” Neira raised her eyebrows. “That’s not a term I’ve heard before. I suppose you mean by analogy to muscle therapy, repairing damage and putting things back into alignment?”
She sounded sceptical. Were they about to get turned away?
“Jira—the Hokage said you were the best of the best.”
Neira sighed. “I bet he says that to all the girls. Hazō, Kagome, I’m going to tell you what I tell the Uchiha: there is no such thing as a healthy mind. Nobody, not even a Yamanaka, can take what you are and twist it into shape until your flaws and weaknesses are gone, because there is no shape there to twist it into.”
“I don’t understand,” Hazō admitted. “There are mentally healthy people and mentally unhealthy people, aren’t there? And if you can find the source of a problem, surely you can fix it?”
Neira shook her head. “You’re talking about people as if they were devices, like that printing press Shiro came up with. As if when a part breaks, you take it out and replace it, and the world is set to rights again.
“A person is more like a seal. A seal that you’re drawing for the first time, without an original to copy and without knowing in advance what it’s supposed to do. When you spot a mistake, you can’t just erase the ink you’ve put down. Every line is forever. Instead, you add more ink, and maybe the new will balance the old, and maybe it won’t. You won’t know what happens until it’s time to infuse the seal for real.
“And needless to say, with a person you can’t throw away the old blank and start over.”
Hazō frowned. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I followed all of that.”
Neira gave a resigned smile. “Decades of studying broken minds, and I still haven’t found a good metaphor. What I’m trying to say, Hazō, Kagome, is that every choice you make shapes who you are. You can never take back your choices, and you can’t undo what you’ve become. You can move forwards, you can try to find a new direction that cancels out the one you were heading in before, but that’s not the same as returning to a ‘neutral state’. You haven’t had one of those since you first started making choices as a baby.”
“Then… you can’t help us?”
Neira smiled again. “I can’t fix you. It cannot be done. But I am an old woman who has seen many ninja go by, each flawed in their own unique ways, and I have noted where their choices took them.
“Kagome,” she said, looking straight at the man who looked like he wanted to climb the walls to get away from her, “you have yet another choice to make. You can talk to me, and tell me how you came to be where you are, and together we can look for possibilities that you wouldn’t be able to see on your own. Or you can leave this place, and seek your own answers. There is no way to know which, if either, will help you. But what you choose will shape who you are, like any other choice, and I think you already know how.”
Kagome-sensei reluctantly dragged his stare off the back of the sofa, across the ceiling, down to Neira’s chair, and finally stopped somewhere in the vicinity of her left ear.
“And you won’t use any of your stinking Yamanaka mind tricks on me?”
Neira laughed. “If it were that easy, and that safe, to alter another’s mind, I would be ruling, say, the Country of the Wave right now—they have the loveliest climate—instead of spending my retirement in Leaf training T&I specialists.
“No, Kagome, I won’t use any of my stinking mind tricks on you without your consent, and maybe not even then. I have touched enough minds in my lifetime to know how that particular choice can shape you.”
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Kagome-sensei glared at her for what must have been close to a minute, without at any point meeting her eyes. Neira smiled peacefully the whole time.
“Fine,” he finally said through gritted teeth. “For the good of the team. But if I think for one second that this is all an excuse for you to hypnotise me and brainwash me and steal my secrets and put lupchanzen in my ears…” His hand turned towards one of his seal pouches, and he visibly restrained himself.
Neira chuckled. “I can see we’re going to have a whale of a time.”
-o-
Sanada Ushio was not impressed with the Hokage at that particular moment. Didn’t the man know he had an urgent order of footwear to fulfil? Why did the ninja never consider the interests of the little people when raising their taxes, or starting their wars, or summoning everyone in the village to their special assemblies?
Ushio had more important things on his plate. Last week, a Nara—a Nara!—had come into his humble shop with diagrams for “experimental footwear” and a bag of ryō that made Ushio’s heart skip a beat. He’d even paid half in advance.
Didn’t the Hokage understand? A Nara had come to him personally. If Ushio could make this order perfect, if he could impress them with his skill and punctuality, he might become an Exclusive Supplier to a Noble Clan. If he played his cards right, he could be the first Sanada in history to sit on the Merchant Council, and with Sanada Sandals only two generations old! What could the Hokage possibly have to say that was more important than that?
“Come along, dear. You don’t want to miss the speech.”
Reluctantly, Ushio obeyed his wife and trudged to the Hokage Plaza.
“People of Leaf!” A figure in radiant white addressed them from the roof of the Hokage Tower, arms open as if to embrace the whole village. “I have called you here today to reveal to you all a great secret once known only to a tiny elite!”
All right, maybe Ushio could stay and listen for a bit.
“I shall tell you a story that I myself would not believe had I not lived through it. A story of courage, loyalty and heroism in the face of unimaginable danger. A story to inspire us all.
“Several years ago, a miracle took place within the Elemental Nations. The Will of Fire spontaneously awakened in the last place anybody would expect—the Village Hidden in the Mist.”
Ushio restrained himself from joining in on the sceptical muttering, mostly because he didn’t want Rin to slap him for being rude to the Hokage. The Will of Fire? In Mist? Maybe the Mist-nin had learned to fly while they were at it?
“I see your disbelief, but it is true! A handful of ninja opened their eyes to the ideals of peace and justice that lie at the root of Leaf’s philosophy, and stood up against the Mizukage’s tyrannical warmongering. But though they sought to turn Mist away from its path of destruction—a destruction that we have all now seen visited upon it—the Mizukage would not listen to their warnings. Some paid a terrible price for preaching wisdom.
“And so, after every attempt to curb the Mizukage’s belligerence had failed, these enlightened ninja did the only thing they could. A courageous jōnin who called himself Shikigami led an exodus from Mist into the Fire Country, where he and his followers intended to pledge allegiance to Leaf and help us prevent a terrible war.
“But the Mizukage’s hatred knew no bounds. He dispatched his hunter-nin, famed for their mercilessness and brutality, and though the valiant ninja fought with every drop of their strength, they were slaughtered mere hours before Leaf forces could come to rescue them. It seemed as if it was the end of our hopes for peace.”
The story, conveyed by the rich timbre of the new Hokage’s storyteller voice, began to spin inside Ushio’s head. How could anyone be so brave as to defy the Monster of the East to his face? What must it have been like to realise that your village was a hellhole, and your worst enemies had been right all along? And then to have the courage to act on your beliefs, only to die moments from safety? It was too cruel, and in a way that was what told Ushio that the story was true.
“But that was not the end!” The Hokage boomed into the mournful silence. “Shikigami’s right-hand woman, the strongest kunoichi in Mist, was skilled enough to save herself, but instead she put her life on the line to save four innocents who would otherwise have perished. With unmatched cunning she played the hunter-nin for fools, and deceived them into thinking that no one had escaped their massacre.
“Afterwards, the five survivors approached me, and I told them that Leaf would welcome them with open arms, for we turn away no one in whose heart burns the Will of Fire. I was ready to bring them through the Gates of Peace… but they said no.”
There was a collective gasp. Ushio himself couldn’t believe his ears. After all that they’d been through, why would they say no?!
“They told me,” the Hokage’s voice sounded a tiny bit choked, “they told me that they could better serve Leaf by working from the shadows, so that the Mizukage could never find out that they were alive and his secrets had been revealed to us. For the greater good of us all, they chose to give up their safety and the recognition they deserved. Guided by a solitary Leaf operative, they accomplished mission after mission to bring us new resources and defeat our enemies.
“But now their self-imposed exile is over! The Mizukage has fallen, and his forces are broken, thanks to the righteous might of Leaf and the intelligence these five brought us. The time has come for Leaf to meet its heroes.”
The Hokage gestured, and one by one, a row of figures came to join him at the railing.
“Mari, the mighty warrior and mistress of cunning who led the team through impossible danger in the name of Leaf’s peace and prosperity.”
The red-haired woman was tiny, shorter even than Ushio’s mother, but she carried herself with an amazing mixture of dignity and humility that made her seem as tall as the Hokage. Ushio wondered if she’d been part of a noble clan back in Mist.
“Hazō, an ingenious young sealcrafter whose designs are already impressing our experts.”
The black-haired boy, improbably young to have gone through all the terrible things the Hokage had mentioned, seemed to be scanning the crowd thoughtfully. Doubtless, his brain capable of understanding the arcane mysteries of ninja seals had already analysed everything about the people in front of him. Had he noticed Ushio? What would he think?
“Noburi, a prodigy in the secret arts of Mist ninjutsu.”
Well, that explained why the stout boy was carrying a barrel of all things. Actually, Ushio reflected, it didn’t explain it in the least, but Ushio’s aunt had married a ninja when he was little, and by now he knew that ninjutsu masters could do absolutely anything and it didn’t have to make sense.
“Keiko, a kunoichi so brilliant the Nara want her for their own.”
The girl didn’t seem to be looking at the crowd at all, but staring into the distance as if solving great problems in her mind. Or perhaps she was just shy, Ushio thought wryly. He certainly wouldn’t want thousands of people staring at him all at once like this.
“And finally, Kagome, the man who endured the very worst of Mist’s torture chambers for his beliefs, and still had the strength and the conviction to defy the Mizukage in order to do what was right.”
A man named Kagome? And as his first name, even? Boy, they really did things differently in Mist. The man himself, lanky and unkempt, kept turning his head warily, as if expecting those vicious hunter-nin to attack him at any moment. And no wonder—they said torture did terrible, terrible things to people, and it spoke of Kagome’s incredible mental fortitude that he was still sane at all.
The Hokage raised his voice. “In recognition of the Will of Fire burning so brightly within these five, I, Jiraiya of the Three, the Fifth Hokage, am giving them the greatest reward it is in my power to grant. I hereby announce the formation of the Gōketsu Clan, with myself as its head, and take Mari for my wife, Hazō, Noburi and Keiko for my children, and Kagome for my cousin!”
The crowd was in an uproar. Ushio himself didn’t know what to think. A new clan? Was that even allowed? No, of course it was allowed. The Hokage couldn’t break the law—he was the law. And besides, there were almost as many tragedies about Jiraiya of the Three as there were comedies. He was the legendary champion who had never known his parents, who had outlived his student, who had been betrayed by his best friend and rejected by the love of his life. After losing his master as well, who could begrudge him the chance to start a new family, especially with these shinobi who had sacrificed their old lives in order to become part of Leaf?
And what legends would this new clan of heroes forge? Ushio felt himself present at the making of history, a moment when the fate of the world turned in a new direction.
He wondered if the Gōketsu Clan would need sandals.