The Leaf Public Library was unreal; an open foyer leading to the librarian's desk, and beyond that a pair of tables covered in neatly stacked books. Past the tables was an array of bookshelves that seemed to march off to the horizon, each six shelves high on both sides and jam-packed with books. Bound books, not scrolls. How in the name of the Sage had Konoha acquired this many books? How could there be this many books?
The entire team had stopped dead in the foyer, looking past the librarian's desk into the room in awed wonder. Even Inoue-sensei was shocked at the sight.
Hazō was unsure how long he stood gaping, but Kagome's twitching finally jolted him out of his trance. He looked around to see the rest of the team shaking off the wonder as well. Off to the side stood Team Asuma; the jōnin wore a tiny smile, from the corner of which dangled his trademark cigarette. The three genin varied between amused (Yamanaka), bored (Nara), and relaxed (Akimichi).
"You put that out right now!" hissed the librarian, appearing out of thin air with a suddenness that made Kagome jump and spin around, kunai in hand.
The librarian in question was ninety years older than the Sage of Six Paths, stick-thin, shorter than Inoue-sensei, with a face like a withered apple. She snatched the cigarette from Sarutobi's mouth and shook it at him as though he were a student being threatened with the whip. "You will not smoke in my library, do you understand me? I told you last time that I would ban you if I ever caught you smoking in here again, so you can turn yourself around and march—"
"Can't do it, Auntie," Sarutobi said, smiling like a child teasing a grownup. "The old man sent me; we're escorting this batch and they've been given browsing privileges."
The librarian glared at him, then spun on the team and leveled upon them a gaze that should have caused spontaneous combustion.
"Welcome to the Leaf Public Library," she ground out. "Let me make a few things plain; I've known little Hiru since he was on his mother's knee, bless her. I don't care if he comes here and personally squires you around; you be respectful to my books or I will ban you. You damage a page, I'll skin you to make a replacement. Do you un—"
"Wouldn't work," Kagome said. "Skin doesn't hold ink well enough. Fades after a few years, and then what have you got? A book that can't be read. Horrible."
She looked at him in shock. "What did you say?"
He frowned at her in confusion before speaking very loudly and slowly. "I said: Skin. Doesn't. Hold. Ink. Well. Enough. Making. A page. Out of. Skin. Is stupid. You end up with a book you can't read. S'like a poet who can't write or a sealmaster that can't infuse. Or a dog that you find lying on the garbage pile with three legs broken and bruises all over. Horrible. Just horrible." He visibly remembered that he was supposed to be speaking loudly, so he repeated himself. "Horrible. Books you can't read. Are. Horrible!"
"You don't have to shout," she said. "I'm not deaf, just shocked. Thirty thousand people in this woodpile, does anyone respect books? No! They come here to read them, lollygag about, then shove the books back anywhere they like. Sometimes they even spill on them! I keep telling them no food or drinks in the library, but do they listen? No! They spill on my books, and even dog-ear the pages!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"Those stinkers! Where are they? We'll blow 'em up!" He smacked his fist into his hand with a loud crack! "Boom, squish!"
"You would not believe how many times I have asked little Hiru for permission!" she said, taking him by the arm and leading him back to the desk. At her touch he jumped a foot in the air and came down flapping his arms furiously at her. She tutted and raised her hands placatingly. "Of course, of course. No touching, should have realized. So sorry. Come on, I'll make us some tea and we can talk about all the books." She paused and turned to glower over her shoulder. "You lot be good. I'll be watching!" She disappeared back around the counter; Kagome paused, obviously torn as he looked back and forth between his team and the librarian taking her seat at the counter.
"Go on!" Inoue-sensei hissed, shooing him on. Kagome's face lit up and he hurried off to join the librarian who was busy pouring tea. Hazō was happy to see that his paranoid teacher hadn't completely lost his mind; the minute he sat down he pushed the librarian's tea set aside and unsealed his own steaming hot teapot.
"Well, that happened," Sarutobi said. Silence ticked by. "Does he do that a lot?"
"He's...unusual," Inoue-sensei said, watching as Kagome and the librarian chatted. The sealmaster had a teacup in one hand and a kunai in the other. The librarian didn't seem to mind.
"Well, yes," Sarutobi said. "Anyway, come on. Let's look around."
Hazō followed along behind the Leaf jōnin like a duckling trailing its mother. What he was seeing was impossible. Literally impossible. It took months to write out a book, illuminate it, and bind it. Even if every person in Konoha spent all their time writing it would have taken years to create all these different....
He stopped, leaning in close to the first table. There were three copies of Cuisine, At Home and Afield next to each other. Why in the world would anyone make more than one copy of a book?!
"How...?" he asked, trailing off as too many questions collided in his brain.
"We're Konoha," Sarutobi said with a tone of irritatingly smug assumption that was belied by the twinkle in his eye. "We do the impossible before breakfast and eat the unlikely for a snack. What's a few books between friends?"
"A few books?" Inoue-sensei said archly.
Sarutobi chuckled. "You can touch them if you want," he said to Hazō. "Just don't spill on them or Auntie will get cranky with me."
Hazō wiped his hands on his pants to scrub off whatever specks of dirt might have clung to his skin before very carefully picking up one copy of the cookbook and opening it as carefully as if it were a possibly-primed explosive tag.
The instant he saw the page he froze in panic.
Seal-quality paper. No extraneous lines, just a perfect grid of kanji, written in an inhumanly perfect hand; seal! Unknown seal, and he'd probably triggered it by picking it up! Crapcrapcrapcrap!
"Breathe, Kurosawa," Yamanaka said with a laugh. "It's just a cookbook." She scooped the book out of his hands and stuck it back on the table exactly where it had been. She started to turn back to him but Hazō pushed her hands away in his hurry to grab the remaining two copies of the book, his fear of death diffused by Ino's proof of safety and replaced with an entirely different fear. He flopped one book open on the edge of the table and flipped frantically through the other until both were open to the same page. He flicked his gaze back and forth between them, comparing that inhumanly precise writing.
It was exactly the same.
Every word, every symbol, perfect. Every brush stroke exactly like its counterpart in the other book.
Rage burned away every trace of judgement; he uncoiled like a snake, slamming both copies of the book into Sarutobi's chest. (The jōnin shifted fractionally and then allowed the contact, doing nothing except brace himself so the force of the impact didn't knock him backwards.)
"WHO?!" Hazō shouted, dropping the books so he could grab Sarutobi's flak jacket in both hands and yank the man down until their faces were only a whisker apart. "Who did you steal from my clan to make these, you bastard?! How many Kurosawa do you have chained up in your sweat shop, cranking out books so that Konoha can look rich and powerful?!" His voice got louder and angrier with every word; by the end he was shoving Sarutobi, driving the man backwards with the sheer force of his rage.
Sarutobi retreated one step, two, three, then caught Hazō's wrists and twisted, driving Hazō's elbows out and up to shut down his forward momentum. "Stop," the jōnin said. "As far as I know you're the first Kurosawa to set foot in Konoha. We don't have any of your clan here—"
"BULLSHIT!" Hazō said, bracing himself to push forward again. A tiny shift of Sarutobi's fingers applied pressure on a nerve bundle in the genin's wrists that forced him to stop shoving, although it didn't calm him at all. "Only a Kurosawa writes like this! This is the Iron Nerve!"
"This is a printing press," Sarutobi said calmly. "It's a machine that writes. I promise, we don't have any of your clan here."
"...a machine?" Hazō asked, the anger draining and leaving only confusion in its wake.
"A machine," Nara said from behind him, his tone not at all sleepy or bored. "My grandfather invented it. It's just metal and wood, that's all."
Hazō glanced back; Inoue-sensei was restraining Kagome, who had kunai in both hands and a look like a panicked wolverine on his face. Noburi and Keiko had faded out to the sides, kunai in her hands and an open canteen in his. The three Konoha genin were squared off with them, hands in position to cut handseals. Akimichi had lost his usual amiable look; he carried his hands high as though about to sledgehammer them down.
"You really want to let him go, Kurosawa," Yamanaka said, her voice cold. "Right. Now." Tension thrummed in the air. She flicked the first of what would clearly be a chain of handseals.
"What did you do to my books?!" Auntie shouted, shoulder-barging Yamanaka out of the way in her haste to get to the two books that Hazō had dropped. The blonde stumbled to the side, her hands going out wide as she caught her balance.
Everyone shifted, their attention coming off of each other and onto the tiny old woman who was busy scooping up the bound pages like they were her precious children. She dusted them off and turned them carefully, inspecting each with a critical eye.
"You foxed the cover!" she snapped, waving the books at Hazō. "Get out! All of you, get out! You should be ashamed of yourselves, damaging perfectly good books because you couldn't keep your tempers! What sort of ninja are you if you can't even control yourselves? Terrible ones! If I were your teacher I would make you dig latrines for a week and use your stupid faces for target practice the week after that!"
"We don't use students for target practice, Auntie," Sarutobi said calmly. "Never have."
"I know!" she said, throwing her hands in the air. (While keeping a tight grip on the books.) "Never once! Little Hiru, always so stubborn! You want children to learn how to dodge, you throw things at them! Honestly! I've been telling him that for forty years!"
"Believe me, it's been tempting," Inoue-sensei said with a smile, slowly releasing Kagome and stepping back. "Sometimes they're just infuriating, aren't they?"
"Infuriating? Infuriating?" the tiny little librarian said, whirling on Sarutobi. (In midwhirl the books slotted themselves back onto the table in a movement so fast Hazō almost missed it.) "I'll tell you what's infuriating! Infuriating is telling someone Time. And. Time. Again"—each word was punctuated by a jab of a bony finger into his ribs—"Not. To. Damage. The. Books!"
Sarutobi yielded ground with every poke, pivoting adroitly to avoid what was only a hairsbreadth from being an actual taijutsu strike. The whole time an urchin's grin was spilled across his face. "It wasn't my fault, Auntie! Really!" he said, laughing. "I promise, I didn't start it!"
Auntie stopped and set her hands on her hips, glaring up at him like a terrier glaring at a mastiff. "Well, who did then, hm?"
"It was him!" Sarutobi said immediately, pointing accusingly at Hazō. "It was all his fault! I am the victim of circumstance, that's all!"
The librarian turned to Hazō with an expression so thunderous that Hazō braced himself for an attack...until the tiny woman spun back to Sarutobi again and started smacking him repeatedly.
"Shame on you!" she said, driving him back around the table with thwaps to shoulders and chest that he ducked or blocked, laughing all the while. "Shame on you for selling out a young boy that you're supposed to be guarding! He's your responsibility, why are you trying to get him in trouble, hm?!" Thwap, thwap, thwap.
"Time to go!" Sarutobi said, sidestepping Auntie's next lunge and shunshining to the door. "Everyone out, let's go! Step lively, now!"
o-o-o-o
"Here you are," Jiraiya said, opening the heavy door and gesturing them in into a conference room with a heavy walnut table and ten chairs evenly spaced around it. On one wall was a small three-drawered credenza with a pitcher of cold water and a set of glasses on top. There were curtain rods, but the curtains had been removed so that the walls—and the absence of peepholes—were visible. "This is Shield Room Three. We use it for secure briefings, so it should be a safe space for you all to talk."
"Safe? Safe?! I'll show you safe, you stinking Toad stinker!" Kagome growled, pushing his way into the room with suspicious glares in all directions. "There's no such thing as safe! Safe, indeed. Pfah." He crouched down so he could look under the table while staying well away from it.
Jiraiya watched the other sealmaster's antics with a raised eyebrow and a calm expression. "What are you looking for?" he asked as Kagome shuffled around the table, examining every inch of its underside.
"The lupchanz dispensers," Kagome said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Uh-huh. Yes, that is absolutely a thing we wou—" His dry words were cut off as Inoue-sensei hurriedly reached up and put a hand over his mouth. He looked down, giving her The Eyebrow but not bothering to move aside. She shook her head frantically at him, nodded her head towards Kagome, then shook her head again. Jiraiya rolled his eyes but nodded; Inoue-sensei removed her hand.
"I'll leave you to it, then. You have an hour and then someone will come to collect you." He nodded to the team and strode off down the corridor to do whatever Toad Sages did when they weren't unwisely teasing paranoid and massively overstressed sealmasters.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Inoue-sensei did a turn around the room herself, studying the walls, floor, and ceiling carefully.
"Okay," the jōnin eventually said. "If there's anything fishy about this room I don't see it. Sit down, everyone."
Kagome was in the process of studying the credenza carefully before pulling one of the drawers one with the tip of his kunai. (Gouging the wood slightly in the process.)
Inoue-sensei spun around quickly enough to catch Kagome stuffing something into his belt pouch.
"Kagome, what was that?"
"Nothing," he said guiltily.
"Kagome," she chided, crossing her arms and tapping her foot expectantly.
Looking even guiltier, he produced a sheaf of high-quality paper and half a dozen pens and inkstones from his belt pouch. "They were just sitting there," he said pointing at the drawer defensively, almost managing to keep the pleading whine out of his voice. "I mean, they were obviously there for us to use."
She eyed him for a moment, lips pursed. "Okay," she said.
Kagome's face lit up. "Really?"
"Yes, just be discreet. Okay, we're on a clock so let's get this party started." She settled into the chair at the head of the table and leaned back, fingers tented as the others took their own seats. (Kagome refused to sit in one of the chairs and instead perched cross-legged on the table, turned slightly so that he could see the door in his peripheral vision.) "Hazō, you had something to talk about?"
"There are two things," he said carefully. "Both are somewhat sensitive, and I'd like to be very clear about my intentions, so please let me finish before saying anything. My first item concerns Yakushi and his desire to experiment with our bloodlines. Noburi, I recognize how important it is to you that you learn medical ninjutsu. I am completely in support of this desire, both because it will offer a great advantage to the team and because you are my friend and I wish to support you in something that will make you happy. I am very confident that, given the appropriate training and resources, you will be a brilliant med-nin. Furthermore, I recognize that Yakushi is an expert and it sounds like he is also a good teacher. You can clearly learn a great deal from him, which means that keeping him happy with us is important. I do have concern about his strong desire to study our bloodlines. We are a small team faced with enormous challenges and no safety net. We need every advantage that we can get, and our bloodlines represent a significant set of advantages for the team. Giving up information on them reduces that advantage and this worries me. I suggest to you that Yakushi's first loyalty is to Konoha, not to our team. Allowing him to study our bloodlines seems to me to be a risk, and yet may also be a requirement in order to keep him happy enough to train you and give Akane the best possible care. I would like to know how you feel on the subject of letting him study our bloodlines.
"Keiko, Inoue-sensei, Kagome, I would also appreciate your input and I hope you do not feel slighted by the fact that I am asking Noburi first. I feel that he has more to lose in this situation than the rest of us do and therefore his opinions should be reviewed first so that he does not feel peer pressure to conform to our opinions."
Noburi considered Hazō's speech for a moment before cracking a smile. "Boy, talk about kid gloves. Okay, let me see if I can do this Clear Communication no Jutsu too.
"Hazō, I appreciate your concern for my feelings and your desire to support me in something that, as you said, is very important to me. I feel that you are correct in most of what you said: Yakushi-sensei is a very good med-nin and studying under him is both an honor and extremely useful. I do understand that revealing details of our bloodlines represents a risk, but Yakushi-sensei has been very careful not to ask about clan secrets."
Inoue sensei looked at him sharply. "You said that he had tested you to make sure your chakra system would not react badly to the medical ninjutsu he was teaching, right?"
"Yes...?"
"Noburi, that was him studying your bloodline," she said patiently. "In fact, I'm...both impressed and nervous about how good all these Leaf nin are at deception and subtlety."
"What do you mean, sensei?" Keiko asked. "Everyone seems to have been very direct so far."
Inoue gazed upwards, ticking points off on her fingers. "Gai: I strongly suspect that his whole 'Youth!' persona is a front. That librarian: appeared exactly when a fight was about to break out, distracted everyone, turned it into almost a comedy. Removed tension, put everyone back on a 'us against the enemy' footing with herself as the enemy. Clearly recognized that Hazō was the one to drop the books, but then demanded an explanation from Sarutobi. Speaking of Sarutobi, the Hokage saw right through every misdirection I tried." She shrugged. "Granted, that one's less surprising. Still."
Everyone digested that.
"I find Hazō's points convincing," Keiko said. "I believe that allowing Yakushi to experiment on us would be a bad plan unless we received significant value in return. We may need to yield a certain amount of cooperation in order to ensure that Akane receives optimal care, but we should keep it to a minimum. It is essential that we maintain value to Jiraiya in particular and to Leaf as a whole. Our secrets are the most valuable things we have to offer and we must spend them as slowly as possible."
"On the subject of getting value for it," Hazō said, "I was thinking that perhaps we should tell him that he can watch us practice any jutsu he teaches us. It would show cooperation and give us increased options."
Everyone considered that for a moment and then Inoue looked around the table, taking a vote by eye. "Okay, sounds like we're in agreement. Trickle out the information as slowly as possible and in as small doses as possible. Hazō, I like the idea of jutsu training, but they need to be useful ones, and none of that happens without me there. If he complains, tell him that I'm your jōnin sensei and I'm very controlling. It's not unknown for jōnin to bar their students from studying under other teachers, so it shouldn't raise too much of an alarm."
"Or me," Kagome said, his smile entirely too creepy. "I could be there. Watching. You know, to make sure he doesn't do anything dangerous."
Inoue eyed him nervously. "That is definitely a thing we could do," she said diplomatically. "Moving right along...Hazō, you said you had a second topic?"
Hazō licked his lips nervously. He had put a lot of thought into this speech, but there was an entire swarm of butterflies hatching in his belly right now.
"I was thinking about what reward I'd like to ask Jiraiya for," he began. "I have a couple of options, but I wanted to ask permission from the entire group for my first pick."
Inoue-sensei's eyebrows shot up; Keiko cocked her head in curiosity.
"I would like to preface this by saying that I won't go forward with it unless you all approve," Hazō said. "You are all very important to me, and I do not wish to damage our team dynamic by causing resentment or jealousy. Also, if anyone else would like to ask for the same thing I would be happy to work it into my own request so that you can get a separate reward in addition."
"Well, that's not a bit ominous," Inoue-sensei said. "Spit it out, kid. Anticipation only makes it worse."
"I would like to ask for Jiraiya's help in extracting my mother from Mist."
Keiko and Noburi blinked. Inoue-sensei looked thoughtful. Kagome had produced one of the stolen pens from his pouch and was petting it lovingly; he seemed utterly unbothered by Hazō's suggestion.
"Hazō, you know that's...really risky, right?" Noburi said carefully. "The Mizukage is all about massive hate for anyone who runs. And security in the village is really tight."
"The chances of success seem extremely low," Keiko said. "However, I would be interested to hear the reasoning behind the request."
"My momma is the only family I have," Hazō said. "The rest of the clan kicked her out when she married poppa. They stripped her of everything except the clothes on her back and the weapons on her belt. Poppa didn't have any family so it was just the three of us. No grandparents to visit on festival days, no brothers to wrestle with or sisters to tease and scare suitors off of. Just us, against the entire world. Momma and Poppa were both ninja, so they were each gone a lot but they made sure one of them was always there as I was growing up."
He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. "They were so proud when I made it into the ANA. They both walked me to school the first day and handed me off to the proctor at the gate, then stood there and watched me until I was all the way inside. Momma practically glowed.
"You all know I was in trouble a lot when I was in school. If I hadn't been so good at taijutsu I think they would have thrown me out. Momma used to scold me every time I got demerits, but I could tell she was proud of me for thinking and asking questions. She always told me, 'A good ninja isn't just a tool, cricket. A good ninja understands the purpose of the mission, the reason for the training. It's the only way to excel.'
"We've been gone a year now, and we must have been labeled traitors. She probably thinks I'm dead, or a coward, or something worse. She's all alone now, and I can't stand it. I want to see her again. And it would be useful to have another jōnin on the team, right? She almost certainly hates Mist for killing us, so I'm sure she'd jump at the chance to come work for Jiraiya if it meant being with us again. She's a great fighter, and smart. She's good with people, although probably not as good as you, Inoue-sensei, and...." He trailed off, biting his lip and looking around imploringly.
"If any of you have people you would like to have extracted, I would be happy to ask for that as well," Hazō hurriedly added. "I think it would be entirely reasonable for me to ask Jiraiya 'I would like you to extract our families.'"
Uncomfortable silence reigned.
"Hazō, I wish to communicate my feelings about this issue very clearly," Keiko said, "because it is clearly of extreme importance to you. I find the idea of having another jōnin on the team extremely desirable. I also am very in favor of anything that will promote your happiness and well-being, which I believe having your mother on the team would do. I am willing to devote as much time and effort as required for the team to come up with possible plans. I am willing to perform very deep dives into the Frozen Skein in order to validate any plans we come up with. Despite that, I do not wish to give you false hope. I believe that the chances of safely extracting any ninja from Mist to be low. Extracting a jōnin seems even less probable, as they represent such a disproportionate fraction of Mist's combat power. Extracting a jōnin who is related to a missing-nin seems exceptionally unlikely."
"Not to be a Debbie Downer," Inoue-sensei began, "but I'm pretty much onboard with Keiko's assessment. I won't say it's impossible—there's no such thing as a security system that can't be cracked—but it would be very hard. There would also be serious political risks to weigh; stealing any ninja, much less a jōnin, from another village is the kind of thing that will definitely cause a diplomatic crisis if it's identified where the ninja went. Defections are bad enough, but an actual extraction...well, it probably wouldn't be enough to cause a war, but it would definitely raise tensions. This is a request with international implications."
Silence fell again.
"What's wrong with all of you?" Kagome said. "Of course we extract her. She's part of our team, even if we haven't met her. Sure, it's hard, but it's not like it's going to tear a hole in reality and eat our faces. It's just a problem—we think, we plan, we take precautions, and then we solve it." He clutched the pen to his chest and glared at all of them.
Inoue-sensei smiled and nodded. "Okay, we are properly chided. Like the man says, let's plan this. Jiraiya is a lot more likely to grant the request if we have a workable suggestion on how to do it."
"Seems like getting a message to her would be a much more doable beginning," Noburi said. "It should be lower risk than an actual extraction, and it works better for both sides. Jiraiya might prefer that, actually. It could give him an agent in place; if she establishes enough value onsite it would make him more likely to want to extract her. We saw that he was willing to extract those civilians because the mother had information Jiraiya needed. Being willing to extract a civilian isn't the same as extracting a jōnin, but it's a sign that maybe he could be convinced."
"The first problem will be establishing trust," Keiko said. "An initial contact that said merely 'come defect to our village' would rightly be viewed with distrust. She might attack the messenger in perceived self-defense, or turn them in to the authorities. Likewise she might be uncomfortable or unwilling to follow a plan she had no part in creating. It would be more effective to establish an initial relationship by offering her proof that Hazō is alive, then engaging her in planning how to get her out."
"Hazō, you'll need to come up with the initial contact message," Inoue-sensei said, slouching down into her seat so she was looking up at the ceiling, tapping her fingers together in thought. "It needs to be purely informational; offering a physical object for a first approach raises the risk of discovery to unacceptable levels. You'll need something personal that no one aside from you and her would recognize. It needs to be significant enough that she will definitely remember it, but also short and simple enough that it can be conveyed in no more than two or three seconds."
Hazō pondered. "Well, how about—"
The discussion went on, ideas being batted back and forth, plans proposed and shot down. It seemed like only minutes before the knock came at the door and a very polite ANBU escorted them back to their quarters.