Hazō filled Noburi and Keiko in while they were busy with the traditional post-battle activities of treating their injuries and looting the bodies. When he was finally finished, Noburi stood up from where he'd just finished making Akane a splint, and walked slowly up to him.
"Hazō," he began a little awkwardly, "it took a hell of a lot of guts to do what you did. Obviously I could've taken them the second they gave me an opening, maybe with Keiko's help, but making the choice to fight them three-on-one in the first place... I don't know if I could've done that. So thanks, I guess. I owe you one."
By this point, Keiko had joined them, holding a handful of human teeth in her hand with barely-suppressed revulsion.
"That was without doubt the most incredibly stupid thing I have ever heard," she told Hazō in an unimpressed-Academy-instructor tone. "What were you thinking?"
Then she bowed to him in the deepest bow he had ever received. "Thank you, Hazō."
Hazō squirmed a little, uncertain how to handle intense expressions of gratitude. Was he meant to take it in stride? Or would that come off as arrogant? But if he tried to humbly brush it off, would that offend her sense of pride? Maybe he should just pretend she hadn't said anything and get on with the practicalities of their situation? But that might come across as if he didn't value her feelings. He could remind her of all the times she'd saved his life, but then that might be highlighting how badly she'd performed this time. And he couldn't afford to delay his response for too much longer. Argh...
Hazō was saved at the last moment by a sudden groan as Akane stirred to life. For reasons Hazō couldn't begin to guess at, Keiko suddenly found something important to do to the most distant of the enemy bodies, and dragged a confused Noburi with her.
"You came back for me. Against three-to-one odds, you came back for me. You nearly died for me... Hazō-sensei." Akane spoke his name slowly, hesitantly.
"You nearly died for me," Hazō replied, deciding to seek refuge in pointing out the obvious. "And yes, my real name is Hazō. Kurosawa Hazō, formerly of Hidden Mist. I'm sorry I lied to you."
She really had nearly died for him. Painfully, and without hesitation. After he'd spent all this time doubting her loyalty. She deserved better.
Hazō took a deep breath. "Akane, actually... I lied about a lot more than that. I'm not really a master of the Righteous Face Punching Style. That was something Inoue-sensei and I made up as an excuse to draw attention and let me fight lots of people for our infiltration. I'll tell you the full story next time we make camp, but for now... I'm not who you thought I was. I'm just another ninja who will do anything to survive, even if it means taking advantage of other people."
Akane didn't say anything.
"Akane, I..."
"Wait," she said. "I'm trying to find the words. It's hard to think right now."
So he waited.
When she finally spoke, her voice was as solid as stone and as certain as gravity. "Hazō-sensei, back when I was at the Academy, before I met him, I spent a lot of time trying to lose myself in my textbooks. I learned a lot of history. I know that in Hidden Mist they talk a lot about how a ninja is meant to be a tool, and how you're supposed to kill your emotions. Apparently Leaf used to be a lot more like that before the Third Hokage took over.
"So I can guess at what you were brought up with. You must have been told that kind of thing every day. But the things you said to me, before... I could feel the sincerity behind them. I know that you were telling me the truth, even if maybe you didn't think you were. I don't for a second think that you're just another ninja.
"I think you're someone who will never let others choose your path for you. Someone who will never hold back out of laziness or fear. Someone who puts everything you have, everything you are, into getting stronger. Someone who will never abandon his comrades.
"You are someone whose soul blazes brightly with the spirit of youth, even through all the layers of conditioning your village must have put on top of it. I think he would be proud to fight by your side.
"And no matter what you say, no matter what you do, you will always be my sensei."
o-o-o-o
Their movement was a lot slower than Hazō would have liked. Replenishing chakra took time, moreso as Noburi was still woozy from the knockout powder he'd inhaled, and they had to be careful since the one thing they could not afford was breaking their transformations, whether through accident or merely a lapse in concentration (which would have been entirely understandable under the circumstances). It had taken enough time and chakra to successfully activate those through the pain.
On the bright side, they'd been able to replenish their supplies from the enemy ninja, including standard items like shuriken and kunai (which, being mass-produced, were subject to considerable wear and tear, and sometimes irretrievable after battle). The more interesting loot was a lesser storage scroll containing quite a lot of raw meat, and what appeared to be a technique scroll that Ken had been in the middle of studying. Being a Fire technique, it wasn't something anyone in the party could learn (and many ninja considered learning without a teacher to be a flat-out bad idea), but still, those things were valuable. Better still, the technique didn't take up the whole of the scroll, leaving several large sheets' worth of sealing-quality paper.
There were also three un-scratched forehead protectors, two Grass and one Waterfall, which could come in useful for disguise someday. Finally, there were sketches of Hazō's group, including a particularly unflattering one of Noburi and a rather exaggeratedly good-looking one of Inoue-sensei. Hazō hoped he'd be able to show it to her. She was a skilled jōnin. She had to be all right.
o-o-o-o
It was the following evening that Inoue-sensei finally caught up with them, looking none the worse for having presumably taken out a jōnin single-handed. The team had just made camp, but had yet to release their transformations.
"Password?" Inoue-sensei asked without any preamble.
"Blood in the water," Hazō quickly said. He braced himself for the countersign, but no amount of incredible taijutsu mastery was enough to prevent Inoue-sensei from suddenly appearing behind him and vigorously ruffling his hair.
"Dispel!"
"Spoilsport," Inoue-sensei complained as the genjutsu broke and her real form appeared in front of the party. "Still, am I glad to see you kids alive and..."
Her eyes narrowed. "Ah, crap. You're transformed into yourselves, aren't you? Noburi, your muscles aren't that sculpted in real life."
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Then she dispelled her own transformation. The Inoue-sensei before them looked pretty bad. Part of her clothing appeared to have been torn away, she had ugly-looking bruises all over, and she was distinctly favouring one leg.
The rest of the team took this as their cue to undo their own techniques, feeling a lot safer with even a battered jōnin around.
"Are you all right?" Noburi asked stupidly.
"Never better," Inoue-sensei told him.
"What happened?"
"The little son of a bitch rained hell down on me with AoE techniques. He had this electroshock field that makes your muscles seize up, and a cutting Wind barrage. I figured him for a mobile artillery type and closed to melee ASAP—and then it turns out it's a trap and the bastard has Lightning-enhanced taijutsu. I knew straight away I couldn't take him. Body-enhancement Lightning techniques are rare and drain chakra like nobody's business, but they make you stupidly fast while they're active. When you're my size, you have to cancel the other person's reach advantage as fast as you can, and that just wasn't going to happen."
"So what did you do?" Keiko's voice was high with anxiety.
"I cheated, of course. I let him nail me with a punch, and fell to the ground pretending to be out of the fight. Didn't take much pretending, actually. Then I looked up at him, tiny five-foot girl, helpless and vulnerable, with doe eyes and my clothing all torn up from his stupid Wind technique. He hesitated for just a second—and bam! Special Hell Technique, one of my very own creations, right to the brain."
She paused, clearly expecting someone to break the suspense.
"Special Hell Technique?" Hazō reluctantly obliged.
"There he is, having sex with the most beautiful woman he's ever met, which is to say me. And then right as his senses are at their most heightened, suddenly everything goes dark, and then the only light is from the dozens of glowing eyes of the twisted eldritch abomination that happens to have his most sensitive part inside it.
"By the time I was done with him, there was hardly anything left to put out of its misery. It wasn't quite another Heartbreaker, sadly, but it was close."
The four genin just stared. Noburi's mouth had dropped open.
Inoue-sensei rolled her eyes. "Pro tip, kids: any form of persuasion, including genjutsu, is at its most powerful when the target wants to believe you. And given what he wanted to believe? Well, mindrape seems like poetic justice to me."
Then she flicked her hand in the air dismissively. "Anyway, enough about what I do on my days off. I see our new member seems to have earned your trust, and she and Hazō look like they've been chewed up by a death gator and spat back out, and then chewed up again by a different one because it was just that hungry. So how'd it go?"
"S/he saved my life!" Hazō and Akane said simultaneously.
"Is that so?" Inoue-sensei said with some amusement. "I guess I'd better hear the whole thing."
o-o-o-o
"You look like you've been in the wars!" Yūjin announced cheerfully. "And I should know; the last one was my rite of passage. And I see you've made a new friend."
"We recruited her from the Liberator's village," Hazō said. "She nearly died saving us when we were escaping their pursuit."
Yūjin nodded seriously. "Young lady, your courage and skill have my deepest gratitude and admiration."
Akane blushed.
"Now, am I to guess that you would like an expert to examine your bodies as soon as possible, even Miss Inoue who is carrying herself with her customary grace?"
"After everything we've been through, we'd all appreciate some special treatment," Inoue-sensei agreed, "medical and otherwise."
"Not a problem," Yūjin said. "Tempting though it is to offer my own services, there's only one person I know who can reattach teeth in field conditions painlessly and with no chance of error, and unfortunately I'm not her. On the other hand, I do know a medic-nin in Yuni who happens to be very talented in every conceivable way. Don't worry," he added on seeing their expressions, "you'll be there under my protection."
"What protection is that?" Hazō asked. "Not to be rude, but we still don't know who you are, so we have no way of knowing how well you can protect us."
Yūjin struck an odd, theatrical pose. For a second, his appearance flickered to that of a middle-aged man with long white hair and a red haori over Yūjin's green clothes. But only for a second.
Inoue-sensei took a sharp step back.
"I am the Great Sage Jiraiya," Jiraiya proclaimed. "Statesman, spymaster, bestselling writer, beloved of women everywhere."
Akane took an eager step forward. "You're the Jiraiya? Of the Leaf Three? Hero of the Third Great Ninja War? Master of all five elements, creator of his own syncretic taijutsu style, visionary sealcrafter and toad summoner? Living proof that physical age cannot hold back the spirit of youth? I wrote an essay on you!"
Then she froze. "Wait. You're a Leaf ninja."
"What's that?" Jiraiya asked. "I'm afraid I've had no time to pay attention to recent Academy graduates. As far as I can tell, you must be a Leaf genin in good standing, sent here on an infiltration mission that by some oversight I wasn't informed about. If that's the case, I commend you on your successful alliance of convenience with these missing-nin, and look forward to hearing your report as we travel to Yuni."
"Y-Yes, sir," Akane forced out.
o-o-o-o
"This doesn't make any sense," Jiraiya said quietly, almost to himself, as he paced back and forth across the main room of the hideout. "Orochimaru is the last person I'd expect to start a war—he finds disorder, or what he thinks of as disorder, to be utterly disgusting, to say nothing of how he feels about 'crude implements'. Besides, he's survived this long despite being an acknowledged S-class threat partly because he takes care not to draw any attention to himself. When the Liberator goes public, it'll be the equivalent of dancing the yosakoi on top of the Hokage Monument during the Heroes' Day assembly, butt-naked and with extra-loud clappers.
"But then again, how many other ninjutsu researchers who use immortal snake symbolism are there? And if it is him, what could push him into doing something so violently out of character?"
"Who is Orochimaru?" Noburi asked.
"Another of the Three," Akane told him. "He was also a hero of the Third Great Ninja War, and he was famous for being a biological research and sealcrafting prodigy. But he betrayed the village—our textbooks don't say how—and now he's one of our worst missing-nin."
"Do you know what he did?" Hazō asked Jiraiya, perhaps incautiously, but aware that this was a rare opportunity to get a real answer to a question that might turn out to be important later.
"He decided it was easier not to care about people," Jiraiya said heavily. He did not elaborate.
"Regardless," Jiraiya said with a slightly forced brightness, "the information you've provided me with is invaluable. With this, I can coordinate further spying efforts, prepare countermeasures, and get the Powers That Be in Leaf to finally turn their gaze in this direction. This is sterling work."
He turned to include all four ninja in his gaze. "I'm sure you all saw this coming, but I'd like to invite you to join my network. You will receive challenging, dangerous and sometimes confusing missions at unexpected times, be paid what I can spare from a limited operational budget, receive specialised support as and when it's available, and if you're in the right place at the right time, you might be able to wrangle yourself extra equipment and/or training. In other words, it'll be just like back home.
"With a few key differences, of course. One of which is that I'm a firm believer in informed consent, and that includes in suicide missions. The alternative is not part of the world I'm trying to build, and it's also a great way to have your ninja bail on the mission and turn into an enormous diplomatic embarrassment that you have to burn political capital to get rid of before they sell all your secrets to your rivals.
"Another difference is that I have neither the interest nor the resources for micro-management. When you're not on task, you're free agents, and I won't be terribly interested in what you do unless it runs contrary to my interests. Which among other things means no plots for world domination—you'd be surprised how often I have to say that.
"A third, of course, is that you're missing-nin. Well, most of you. Since Miss Ishihara has not made any comment to the contrary, I'm going to assume she's a loyal Leaf genin working undercover, at least until someone from Leaf takes the time to tell me otherwise. Make yourselves valuable enough, and I might be inclined to burn a little of my own capital to get Leaf, at least, off your backs. And while I make no promises about Mist, let's just say a ninja can always find ways to cheat the system.
"Mind you," he went on, "I am given to understand that there is a certain pleasure in the independence of being a missing-nin. I'm not going to have you eliminated if you choose to continue down that road. Mist is not our friend right now in terms of the quest for world peace, and having four more thorns in its side wandering around would give me nothing but pleasure, as long as they're prepared to take an extended holiday from Iron and the neighbouring nations.
"Besides, you four haven't been missing-nin that long. If you refuse my offer now, I suspect you might reconsider when you discover how difficult long-term survival becomes without a support network."
He brushed a stray strand of hair out of his face. "Oh, I nearly forgot the most important part. My organisation not only tolerates but actively encourages workplace relationships."