Chapter 2
Mei didn’t necessarily have to talk to Tsunade anymore about Riko. She had sent the necessary notifications, and was technically off the hook.
But there was something about it bothering her. Based on her correspondences from before, as much as Riko had annoyed Tsunade, the Hokage had still been fond of her. It didn’t make sense that Tsunade would be entirely uninterested in the military ownership of one of her own being transferred to another village. This was compounded by the fact that, even if she was adopted, she was a child of the Nara clan which meant she was losing potential political clout. That didn’t even consider the risks of alienating a Konoha clan by sending one of their children off permanently.
The rational solution had been to organize a meeting, face to face, in Konoha. If there was something wrong, she was there in a diplomatic capacity and it was Tsunade’s home turf, putting Konoha at ease. She already had what she wanted – Nara Riko in her shinobi forces permanently and through nearly irreversible, legal means. She didn’t need the upper hand in the meeting.
She also felt she needed to look out for Tsunade, if only because they needed to stick together as the only female Kage in the game. They couldn’t look weak in front of each other or their villages, but they also had to look doubly strong in front of any other villages.
Not every country or village wanted to admit that kunoichi were vital. Kirigakure’s honoring of the women that started their village’s shinobi tradition was an exception rather than the rule, and even their history of female involvement in the shinobi ranks was relatively strange to the other Hidden Villages. If the bits and pieces that had come out of Ren over the years about the kunoichi classes from Konoha were any indication, any weakness could put Tsunade in a bad place with her councils.
She had two weeks to cement Ren’s loyalty, and then she would be leaving for Konoha. Bracing herself, she looked at the files brought to her by Suigetsu.
This could go very well or very horribly.
*
There was nothing stopping Hiroshi from going on missions – it would be easy to start, actually – but he had found a home and career here. Never mind the sins of the past, the new Mizukage was making strides toward the future.
His mother and father would have cursed his name for his job choice, but there would never have been heat in it. They had loved Mei – they had grown up right there with her under the Sandaime and Yagura, they had been first people she told when she had finished planning and was ready to execute her coup d’état. His maternal grandmother had been the first one to marry into the Terumi clan. Even if it was for her own safety and that of her immediate relatives, the Terumi’s had welcomed her and her extended family and encouraged them into whatever professions and supportive roles they wanted to take. His mother had always said they were too kind to be shinobi but too harsh to be anything else.
None of his grandmother’s family became shinobi. They operated on the assumption that survival would mean not standing out, not calling attention to themselves. They acted as internal support for the Terumi clan, but they didn’t put themselves into the village’s sights. Not under Yagura, and certainly not under the Sandaime Mizukage before him.
He liked to think he was an optimist, though, even if it could get him killed in battle. Life was better when he went out of his way to see the good in people. That optimism is what led him here – living out the dream of entering the profession of his ancestors, even if it was by proxy.
The research and development branch of the Intelligence Sector in Kirigakure was well managed. Even if he was generally a mess, his assistant had helped him set up a delegation system and break up the research into focused teams. Where he could get people inspired and encouraged to come into work the next day and the day after that, Haruka was the better of the two of them at actually managing the people in it.
“You have your own job here, don’t you?” Haruka was looking at him, wary about his spaced out staring. “You’re not just supposed to sit here and dream up dangerous shit for Mei-sama?”
He hadn’t been thinking about anything of the sort, but he certainly had something that was enough of a potential disaster that Haruka wouldn’t ask any more questions.
Hiroshi forced a convincing laugh as he pulled out some notes from a few days before. “I think Akagi-san has a bloodline she isn’t letting on about.” He liked the other redhead, but he still kept his eyes out for anything that might be pertinent to their department. Previously undisclosed, potentially undiscovered bloodlines tended to fall into that description. “She seems to use it in moments of high tension, likely without realizing it.”
Haruka skimmed the paper. His eyebrow quirked up. “You sure you shouldn’t be in the Covert Ops unit?”
“Nah, I couldn’t do with all the subterfuge. I’m happy here.”
“You’re a terrible shinobi. Subterfuge is our entire profession.”
Hiroshi just laughed as he placed the paper back in her file. “Sure, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
*
Ren rolled her eyes as she threw a sock at Suigetsu. “Either do your fucking laundry or get strung up naked, with ninja wire, by your ankles to the Mizukage’s office window. I don’t care which, just know option two is going to be painful.”
Suigetsu batted the sock away, causing a chain of nigh on tennis between the two of them. She may have enjoyed the company of her team, but living together had been an interesting exercise in preventing murder between the four of them. Or, her and Suigetsu rather. Haku and Chojuro generally tried to avoid the conflicts they spurred.
“I don’t know. That soap stuff is dangerous.”
“Only when laced with any number of poisons. Which is Option Three, but instead of your laundry soap it will be your shower soap.”
Suigetsu rolled his eyes, but he got around to picking his laundry up and at least putting it in a bag to carry down with him.
“Okay, Mom.”
“You wish your mom was as cool as me.”
Suigetsu scoffed, leaving the room. Chojuro, who had been quiet to that point, leaned over his bunk. “That was the weirdest thing I think I’ve witnessed since we all moved in together.”
“What did you expect?”
He laughed. “True. I heard a rumor you and Hiroshi were sparring.”
“Does he know everyone?”
Chojuro huffed a small laugh. “I haven’t met him personally, but no one told me his surname.”
“He introduced himself to me as just ‘Hiroshi’ – maybe he doesn’t particularly care for it.”
“You’re deflecting.”
Ren rolled her eyes. “Yes. I sparred with the R and D weirdo we are all secretly scared of.”
“No one is secretly scared of Hiroshi, to be fair. He gets really into that R and D stuff.” Chojuro shrugged, and they both pretended the Research and Development department wasn’t one that terrified a significant number of Kiri shinobi. “I hear he made a seal for T and I that makes even natural chakra movement painful.”
Ren winced. Any shinobi other than Gai or Lee wouldn’t handle that very gracefully. She couldn’t imagine it, but she could see it being reason enough to sell out and give up secrets if you had them. She wouldn’t even blame anyone who did.
“Yeah?”
“Man, R and D is filled with nutcases.” Suigetsu bit out a hiss as he closed the door. “I met one guy there that says he researches only how chakra injection can be used in battle.”
“Isn’t it medical, though?” Ren knew there was something about injecting chakra into someone when healing them and using yours and theirs to heal wounds, but it had been so long since she had learned the theory that whatever she did, it was by rote memorization and the hours of sleep-deprived, chakra-exhausted practice she got in the war, rather than by a delicate comprehension of theory.
Suigetsu threw himself into the lower bunk – across from where Ren had sat to talk to Chojuro. “I mean, yeah, but if you can use it to heal you can use it to hurt. That’s their logic anyway.”
Ren shook her head. “That’s a special kind of crazy, I’ll give you that.”
Suigetsu glared at the clock. “I’ve got thirty minutes. Let’s go train or something.”
Ren grabbed her sword and strapped her kunai pouch on as they left. The Jonin training ground wasn’t far from the dorm, and it would let them blow off steam – Mei had kept the four of them largely in village as things had settled, opting to get all the shinobi registered and accounted for while setting up an infrastructure to take in missions and divvying up forces across the islands that made up the Land of Water.
It was driving her whole team insane.
*
Half an hour had long passed, but Ren couldn’t bring herself to care, because she was looking down at a likely victory. She had already incapacitated Chojuro in their little mock fight, and all she had left was Suigetsu, who was starting to wear out.
To be fair, so was she. She had managed to find a spot to camp out in for a moment to catch her breath, though, letting Suigetsu deal with some convenient traps.
“I know you’re here somewhere you red-headed rat!”
Ren dropped behind him, charging and driving her sword towards him, putting a little spin into her last launch.
“Holy shit!”
Suigetsu managed to block her, but it was by a hair’s breadth, and he was cursing her name from the second he saw her through each time he tried to strike her with the Shibuki. “You little bitch!”
“Takes one to know one, Suigetsu!”
Maybe it was being overly showy, but she had taken to trying to add some spin to her strikes, or to drive them in spiraling. “Adds torque” had been her go to excuse, but Ao (among others) had seen right through her. It felt cooler to put spin into the blade where she could.
She put her sword back as she ducked one more cutting blow from Shibuki. Instead, she launched herself up, headbutting Suigetsu the half second it took her to shunshin behind him, grabbing his hair as he came back from it and putting a kunai to his throat. “I win.”
He turned to water and suddenly she was moments from having her head taken off, but still taking the brunt of force from an explosive jutsu from Shibuki.
“Fuck!”
“Don’t get cocky, midget!”
They were about to go at it again when Chojuro stumbled into the field. “Guys, Suigetsu’s laundry’s gotta be done by now.”
Even if it was Ren’s fault he had started it at all, she joined him in groaning. Things had just started getting good.