Hazō's brain was in overdrive, running the possibilities with a smoothness that felt like the way his body moved when he drew on his family's power.

Agree to go? No. This could be a loyalty test, in which case agreeing to go would be fatal...no, not fatal. Shikigami-sensei couldn't afford to kill off the members of his tiny village. It would bench the team, though. They'd never be let out of the cave again.

Decide to stay? No. It could be a sincere offer, in which case refusing to go might be fatal regardless of Inoue-sensei's claims that she wouldn't hurt them.

Actually, it might not even be Inoue-sensei. It could be something else entirely—a Leaf ninja, Captain Zabuza, a swamp monster, something—in which case the right move was to attack immediately. Of course, if it was Inoue-sensei—or, gods forbid, Zabuza!—then attacking would be extremely painful or fatal. No, on second thought, the chances that this was anything other than Ionue-sensei were slim—she had shown too much knowledge of the team, and too many of Inoue-sensei's personality traits.

Stall until the next patrol came by? No, she wouldn't wait.

Lie? No. She was a deception expert, there was no way the team could play her.

That left only one option, and it was wildly uncomfortable; years of being taught to be reserved, to keep one's self hidden and protected, shouted at him not to show vulnerability. He firmly stamped on the embarrassment and spoke from the heart.

"Sensei, please don't leave," Hazō said, doing his best to let his sincerity show in his voice. It was easier to show sincerity on his face than in his voice; he had once walked in on momma sitting on the edge of her bed, her face buried in poppa's old flannel shirt and her shoulders shaking in quiet sobs. It was easy to wear the same expression he'd had at that moment, the more so because it was the one his face wanted to wear anyway.

"Please, sensei; we need you," he said. "How will Mori cope without you around to calm her down? Who's going to teach me to do more than punch things? Who's going to teach Wakahisa enough self-control to be sent on the good missions? Who's going to look after us—not as ninja, but as...well, as kids growing up? Shikigami-sensei is a great man and a good teacher, but you're the only one who has worried about us as people. Please don't go."

Inoue looked at him for a moment, then smiled sadly. "Sorry, kid," she said. "I'm going, one way or another. You three are good kids and I'll miss you, but I'm not willing to die. Shikigami had a good plan, but it's toes-up now. Are you coming or not?"

Damnit. What to do? Either choice could be wrong, not choosing was definitely wrong...the others weren't saying anything, and just waiting too long might well be taken as refusing the offer.

For long seconds, Hazō looked uncertainly at Inoue before turning to his team. "Mori, Wakahisa, what do you say? Personally, I think we should accept the memory wipe and stay with Swamp. All of us being together and staying in this swamp are the biggest things going for us right now, and I want to stick to Shikigami-sensei's plan, but I won't make that decision for you. This might end up being your only decent shot at leaving before Mist or Leaf stomps us down. If both of you want to go with Inoue-sensei, I'll go with you."

"I would like to go," Mori said quietly, looking at the ground. "Our loyalties are challenged, torn between Shikigami-sensei and Inoue-sensei. Both have been good to us in different ways, and neither has a perfect plan. If I must choose, however, I choose Inoue-sensei; she helped me with problems that Shikigami-sense did not notice, and I see fewer issues in her plan."

All three of the others turned to look at Wakahisa. The young genin fidgeted, trying to meet their gazes and failing.

"Uh…," he said.

Hazō waited a moment to see if his teammate would say anything else. When it became clear that he wouldn't, Hazō spoke up. "Wakahisa," he said as gently as he could. "I know things aren't totally smooth between us, but you're a good guy and a good teammate. You need to do what you think is right; neither of us is going to blame you no matter what you choose."

Wakahisa swallowed, his face shouting how badly he was torn. He eyed his teammates carefully, then looked at Inoue. "Sensei, why now?" he asked. "You said that Shikigami-sensei had this plan back in Mist; why did you go with him if you thought it wasn't going to work? We've been here two weeks and you're only leaving now—what changed?"

Inoue sighed. "It's complicated," she said. "It's part logical, part intuitive. Shikigami had these clever plans with lots of contingencies. I thought we were going good when we broke trail with all the sailing and waterwalking. We were followed coming through Leaf, although we never got spotted. Call it one to the good and one to the ohcrap.

"Shikigami figured that if we could stay clear of Zabuza for a few weeks, Yagura wouldn't be able to keep us a top priority; he'd put a bounty on us like any other missing-nin—probably a big bounty, but still—and then go on to more immediate concerns. Like, for example, the war that was sure to start with Leaf. Going after the Noodle-brains was going to piss off Fire and cause a war between Mist and Leaf. If it did we had a great chance of getting lost in the shuffle."

She sat down tiredly, wrapping her arms around her knees and looking sad. "The chance of the war was part of why we went, y'know? Last time around, the death toll was horrendous, both among ninja and civilians, and none of us wanted to see that happen again. We thought that if the war happened we'd get forgotten about in favor of bigger fish, and we hoped that maybe the drop in combat strength from our absence would be enough that Yagura would back off on getting tangled up in another war. Either way, there was some profit; we could help ourselves, and maybe we could help our village.

"Shikigami's wanted to be Kage for a long time, but it was never going to happen in Mist; as strong as he is, he's not quite strong enough. Which is a pity because, honestly, he'd be good at it. He's strong, smart, charismatic, knows how to delegate, and—underneath that hardass exterior—is one of the most moral men I know. Mist would have flourished under him. If the war had happened we could have made a good go of it here, too. Doesn't look like it's going to, though; I was in town a couple days ago, and there was talk of an old man traveling through. From the description it sounds like Leaf's resident spymaster and diplomancer, the Toad Sage. If he's here, there's no war going on, and if it's held off this long it's probably not starting up in the immediate future."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

She flashed her infectious grin at them. "Pity he didn't wait around a day or so longer; I would have loved to meet him." She clasped her hands in front of her innocently (not-so-coincidentally pressing her bosom together for extra-impressive cleavage) and made bedroom eyes.

"Ooh, are you really the famous Master Jiraiya?" she purred. "Ooh, I've heard so much about you! And I just love your Icha-Icha Paradise—is there any chance that I could model for a character?" She leaned in, taking a deep breath and making her eyes even more soulful. "I'd do anything to be in your wonderful novels, Jiraiya-sempai!"

She snorted and dropped the act. "He'd have seen through it, of course...after breakfast, anyway. Still, we always knew we were going to have to talk to Leaf eventually, and this would have been a great way to make, shall we say, positive first contact.

"The timing sucks, though. We planned for a lot of things, but not for Jiraiya showing up within two damn weeks. If we'd had the chance to get established and then reach out on our own, we would have had a good chance of getting client-state status, or at least being allowed to immigrate. Right now, though, we aren't strong enough to look impressive, and his presence would make it look like we'd been panicked into coming forward instead of doing it on our own terms."

"Do we have to reach out now?" Wakahisa asked. "Couldn't we wait, get established, then talk to them when we were ready? And you said the war would distract them. It could still happen, right?"

"Nice try, kid, but no," Inoue said. "Like I said, if Jiraiya's around that means there's no war going on or even on the horizon. And him being here means we have to assume we're blown. I mean, sure, maybe he's just doing a normal intelligence-gathering sweep, checking in with his contacts in the area. Not the way to bet, though, and a swamp is about the worst imaginable place to hide from a toad summoner."

"Why did we come here, sensei?" Mori asked. "Why not flee to Snow, or even out of the Elemental Nations?"

Inoue shrugged. "There weren't any really good choices," she said. "We talked about looping back, hiding out in Wolf or Vegetable—and by the way, who in the hells names their country 'the Land of Vegetables'? I mean, that's just asking to get your asses kicked." She snorted. "Anyway, we talked about hiding somewhere over there, but that left us too close to Mist for comfort. We could have headed for somewhere in the Kanashii Ocean, but the choices there were either 'be next door to a ninja village' or 'be somewhere where there's no civilians so we have to become farmers.' Snow was out—none of us had cold-weather survival experience.

"That put us on the mainland. Going to any of the smaller nations would have left us camping right next to a ninja village, and even the minor villages would be able to take us out if they wanted to. Wind is huge, but it's mostly flat and they have a ton of scouts; too easy to get spotted from a distance. We couldn't blend in with the population in Earth, and Lightning puts us back in the 'cold weather survival' problem."

She shrugged. "The swamp was the best of a lot of bad choices. It's near a large number of ninja villages but it's ground that no one else wants. It's nominally in Fire, which means the adjacent villages aren't likely to send anyone into the area, but it's far enough out in the Great Bugger-All that Leaf doesn't spend a lot of time here. At the same time, if we could build an actual village here and then apply to Leaf for client-state status, we'd be between them and all their closest enemies."

"Sensei, isn't Fire allied with many of the nations here?" Mori asked.

Inoue laughed. "You're just adorable, you know that?" The words could have been harsh, but the tone of fondness took the sting out. "Yeah, they're theoretically allies with most of them, but alliances between ninja nations are fragile things. There's been a major war every generation for a hundred years, and we're about due—that's why we were giving such good odds on the Noodle Incident sparking things off between Mist and Leaf. Ninja move too fast to be able to find and stop an incoming strike force, but if we were here and provably allied to Fire then none of the neighbors would have wanted to bypass us to strike at Leaf."

"'Provably allied'?" Mori asked.

Inoue grimaced. "Yeah...let's not go there right now. It wasn't my favorite part of the plan. Anyway, the swamp is easy to hide in, the area around it is one of the more lightly patrolled in Fire, and Shikigami knew about the cave system, which makes a good fort and a good hide. Best of some bad choices."

She glanced up at the sun. "Anyway, time's a-wastin'. I'm leaving in sixty seconds, and you kids need to make your choice."

Everyone looked at Wakahisa again.

He was silent for a long moment, warring emotions on his face, before finally sighing and nodding. "I would like to go," he said.

Hazō's mouth tightened, but he forced his face to smooth out. "Very well," he said. "Then it's unanimous; we're all going."

Inoue bounced to her feet and clapped her hands gleefully. She waved casually and the world shimmered around them as the genjutsu released.

"Come on," she said. "We're going to put a few miles under us, then we'll sit down and make more definite plans. You wanted to learn more than punching? Great, first thing to learn is tactical planning; in this case that means 'where are we going' and 'what are we doing when we get there'." You know what the map looks like; start thinking about where we should hide out, how we're going to live when we get there, and what we can do to not get discovered and slaughtered in a gory and horrible fashion by someone from Leaf, or Mist, or whoever."

Mori started to open her mouth and Inoue waved her to silence. "Yes, yes," the jōnin said airly. "You're working with inadequate information. Welcome to the real world, kiddo. You come up with preliminary plans based on what you do know, then I'll give you an infodump on the various countries and you can refine your plans."

Team Kurosawa exchanged looks; as flippant as the words were, they still weren't entirely reassuring.

Inoue laughed. "Unclench your sphincters, as Shikigami would say. I've got some pretty good thoughts on all this; this is just an oral exam. Once we make camp I'll expect a clear statement of your chosen destination, the reasons for your choice, and a general outline of our activities for the next two weeks. No sacred cows—the reasons why a group of thirty ninja should or shouldn't go somewhere aren't relevant to whether a group of four should. Now, give me a minute to fake your deaths and then we're out of here. Follow me, and make sure you only step on the water; don't touch any grasses, reeds, or anything else that could leave a trace."

Without another word she snatched the hitai-ate off their heads, scorched them with a quick fire jutsu, and scattered them and a bit more blood around. She herded them back onto the water, taking care to erase their tracks as she went, then studied the scene for a long minute. She stepped in and made some minor adjustments—flattening a patch of grass here, wiping out a last footprint there—then nodded in satisfaction.

"Welcome to the grave, kids and kiddies," she said. "How's it feel to be dead? No no, that was rhetorical! C'mon, let's get outta here." With a casual wave she turned and flitted away, stepping so lightly that she barely made a ripple. Unhappy but determined, Team Kurosawa followed in her wake.