Looking Through the Mist (Old Version)

Kiri was a set of islands surrounding the main island, and each of the islands of Kiri were unique. Each one had its own sense of the culture of Kiri, its own dialect of Korean, and (to some extent) its own climate. The islands closer to the Land of Honey were typically colder, and the further north the more bitter the winters. The ones that were closer to the Land of Fire were warmer. The islands that were close to the Land of FIre also had a lot more Japanese mixed into their Korean.

The island Ren was taking her team to was one of those islands. They had gotten caught in the crossfire when the war broke out, being close to trading ports, which could have thrown the war in either side’s favor, but nothing had been done as of yet to help them rebuild.

They arrived mid-morning, Ren having done what she could to hasten the trip. The locals weren’t very trusting, but that was a given. No one in Kiri was after the last Mizukage and the war that had just ended. “Ji-Su, we’re going to rely on you for a lot of the diplomatic parts of this mission.”

“Ne, Seonsaengnim.”

Jae-Un glanced around the village they were in. She had been distinctly uncomfortable since they got on this island, though her teammates didn’t seem to notice it. She had an excellent talent for masking her emotions.

“Soo-Jung, keep an eye on Ji-Su and Mi-Na, yeah?”

The other woman huffed a breath, acknowledging the barely whispered request. “Get that girl in shape, Sunbae. If she’s compromised, she’s a liability.”

“She’s a kid, Soo-Jung.”

“Yeah. And she’s a shinobi. She knew what she was signing up for, so if she can’t cram that emotional shit down, she needs to learn fast. This region isn’t exactly friendly. Or did you forget?”

Ren didn’t gratify her with a response.

She was right, after all. Even if she didn’t want to admit it, these girls knew what they were signing up for. They were all left destitute by the war, and they had seen the effects of war beyond that, so they knew that they were signing up for a life of emotional suppression and risking their lives. Soo-Jung took her silence as a prompt to move toward the other two and push them towards a local farmer to make them ask what needed done.

While the other two were busy stumbling through the language with locals – which Ren would have to address later – she pulled Jae-Un towards her. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, Seonsaengnim!” She refused to meet Ren’s eyes. “I – It’s nothing, really.”

Ren recognized that look. If they were still fighting a war, she would demand an answer because if personal issues bled into the battlefield it could cost a life. But this girl was a kid who had lived through the war and didn’t have to fight it anymore. Ren could only hope Jae-Un would come to her when she was ready.

“I’m here if you need me. Let me know, alright? That’s what I’m here for.”

Jae-Un nodded, not meeting her eyes. Instead she was watching the people around her, looking like underneath her bravado and all her control, she wanted to cry. “Thanks, Choi-Seonsaengnim.”

“If you’re coming to me with something personal, please, just use Chae-Seon. Okay?”

Jae-Un nodded again, wiping at her face. “I’m going to walk with the other girls, if that’s okay?”

“Always, Hakseng. Always.”

Her team was walking ahead of her, where she could see all of them. The village they were going to work in for the next two weeks was just a little ways ahead, already somewhat visible. She could keep them safe, she could protect them. They were hers, and she would do what she could to keep these three – these three children who were counting on her to watch out for them and take care of them to at least some extent as much as they were counting on her to teach them – safe. She could keep them out of harm’s way, at least for the time being.

And that brought such a warm feeling to her chest that she couldn’t help but think it was a good thing she had been given a Genin team. It was rewarding to teach them. Maybe they hadn’t learned new jutsu and cool moves in the last few weeks, but they had gone from being able to walk on water only when they were focusing to being able to do it as easily as walking or fighting on land. They had learned to start manipulating their chakra, and she had found scrolls for the three of them for their respective elements.

She had watched them change slightly. They no longer looked nervous, like the first attack would have them killed. They learned to fight together as a team with minimal conflict.

She was going to keep watching these girls. They were as precious to her as her team back home, as her team here. As Seonsaengnim. As her family.

God, what was she going to do when it was time to go back?

She had been warned. She had been told to take it easy.

She also wasn’t the teacher to make her students do all the work while she lazed about. Especially not when they needed any and all positive image they could get in this area. The civil war was over, but there were still civilians to win over to the new regime, and she had to show a positive force in the process of rebuilding.

But every night she hurt worse and worse. She wouldn’t say anything, lest she set Soo-Jung or her students off that something was wrong, but it was harder and harder to get up in the morning.

Shut the fuck up, Chae-Seon. You’ve had worse.

Akagi Ren had been what she was when she was going back. Now that her placement seemed more permanent, she had started, without realizing, to sink more into Choi Chae-Seon, and there was something kinder about that than Akagi Ren. Choi Chae-Seon was allowed to laugh, cry, to feel, where Akagi Ren – an identity always meant to be discarded – had become a shell of armor around her.

As her eyes cracked open, she glanced at the clock.

4:00 AM

Rolling and pushing herself up, she kicked the person next to her lightly. “Soo-Jung-shi. Get up.”

“Not now, Sunbae… too early.”

“You’re a shinobi. You signed up to get up early.”

Ren ignored the curses lobbed in her direction as Soo-Jung sat up, glaring a hole through her head. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you saying that? That I signed up for this? I thought it was gonna be cool shit, not getting up at four in the morning!”

“You didn’t have to come with us, you know.”

“But I didn’t want to be stuck in-village.”

“Soo-Jung,” Ren glared, “We’ve gotta get up. Come on.”

Soo-Jung didn’t fight much more than a sentence or two at a time. She was definitely a fighter, so her career fit her, but she seemed to restrain herself, even if it made her uncomfortable to do so. Ren didn’t know much about her, but she had heard she came from a more conservative area of Mizu no Kuni. If that was true, it would make sense that fighting authority was drilled into her as a strict ‘no’. Add in a war where it was dangerous to question the authority too much, and it was bound to make the freedom of peace a little harder to bear.

That made integrating everyone into the new regime even harder. Some of the more remote communities knew there was a war, but they didn’t know who won or that there was a new Kage. Some of them didn’t even care, but there still needed to be an effort to get them integrated into the country, if only for the image of solidarity.

They were staying in an abandoned house on the edge of Nogeun-Ri, the villagers not having any places open for someone to stay. The damage done throughout the war had started to be repaired, but many of the people of the village had been caught in the cross-fire and were left maimed or dead. Of those still alive and whole, there were still youth and elders that couldn’t help.

The village nearby, Kochmur-Ri, had been razed to the ground.

Ren pulled herself into the room where her genin were staying and nudged Mi-Na, who was closest to her. “Come on, girls. Get up.”

The three groaned as they pulled themselves up, their night clothes and hair all in slight disarray. Jae-Un glanced around, not really responding to her environment as she went through the motions of getting dressed. This was an everyday thing, ever since they came to this village. She was distant in the mornings, and focused only on the task at hand during the day.

Ji-Su was doing her best to be diplomatic, but the amount of Japanese that mixed into the local speech made it hard, as she hadn’t had much in the way of Japanese education under her family.

Mi-Na seemed to thrive. While she used the standard Korean, she was bubbly and sociable in a way she wasn’t usually during training. She had made a few friends among the younger generation, many of whom took to her putting together new plans for how to lift beams and supplies to where they needed to be with a curious gleam.

“Seonsaengnim, can I head out now?” Mi-Na had loved the work they were doing over the past few days.

They still had a week and a half here, so Ren would have to watch how she was handling it later.

Nodding, Ren motioned Ji-Su out of the room, signaling to Soo-Jung as she closed the door. Despite their routine morning spats, once she was up the arguments and fights seemed to be pushed aside in favor of just working through the day and/or harassing Ren.

Yeah, something told her she had just made yet another troublesome friend.

She seemed to have a habit of doing that.

Grabbing Jae-Un’s shoulder, the girl tensed up, eyes widening before snapping her shoulder out from under her teacher’s grasp, a kunai out and in her hand, only to be removed within seconds.

“They assign you a jounin teacher for a reason, you know. I told you to come to me if you had problems.”

“I’m fine, seonsaengnim. Trust me. I… I’m fine. I’m just tired is all. When we get back, would you mind… nevermind. Don’t worry about me, seonsaengnim. ”

The way she spoke was characteristic of the area. Slightly more even rhythm, and she didn’t miss the drop in of some Japanese in the statement (the Japanese that had been adopted into this dialect was still altered slightly, but it was noticeable if one listened for it).

She must have been from nearby.

“You’re from around here?”

“I mean, yeah, but it’s not that big a deal, I promise.”

Ren pushed down lightly on Jae-Un’s shoulders before sitting in front of her. “You can’t take on the world alone. It’s just not something anyone can do.” Forget she had been trying for nearly three years, and was a total hypocrite, Ren still knew when she needed other people. “Learn from me, kid. Don’t repeat my mistakes. You’ve got a team out there, and if you ask, I am almost positive that they would have your back. Give it a year, and guess what.

“Those two girls will be at your side without so much as a question. You guys work well together. But if something is bothering you, I have no doubt that it will show when you guys are working. Let someone help, even if it’s not me.”

Jae-Un tensed up before standing. “I’m gonna go get to work, seonsaengnim.”

“Alright.”

Ren wished she knew what to do for her student, but if one thing could definitively be said for Jae-Un it was that if she wanted to keep something private there was no way to get her to admit so much as a word of it. 

Tsunade hated the entire situation with Kiri. Pulling out her own soldier could cause an international incident because she was an instructor now, and worse, the girl had gotten attached.

Mei had forwarded along photographs that had Riko in them. Included was a photograph of a Genin team playing cards in an apartment, two recognizable Jounin also in the background. The three girls were all smiling at the camera, all with sharp looks in their eyes, ready to challenge the world.

And Riko...

She was leaning against a couch, cards in her hand. Her hand was up lazily, waving at the camera. The seals hiding her appearance did a good job, but that keen look, that posture… that was all Nara (though something about the way she held her hand reeked of Kakashi, and if she had another emotional mess of a jounin coming back to her village that she would have to deal with she was going to kill someone). There was a seal tattooed on her wrist. Her clothes were cheap but durable – the kind shinobi wore in wars, when things weren’t going to last as long.

She seemed relaxed the way a shinobi was when they were in a space that was ‘home’. It wasn’t the true relaxation like could be seen in civilians, but her muscles weren’t tensed, and she wasn’t worried about the person behind her while she was turned towards the camera. From what Tsunade could see of the house, there was a décor that could only be attributed to the long-haired boy (Haku, according to the letter from her fellow Kage), as he was the only one that looked put together enough and elegant enough to have decided to try and furnish and decorate what was clearly a spartan-style shinobi apartment. There were books everywhere, though, and there were also a few pieces of paper with notes on them. The writing seemed to go between a neat Korean script (now that she had a name for the language, she had to wonder if maybe she had done something irreversible. Another language? Another culture? She hadn’t even known something like that existed in Kirigakure) and a script that, while having become slightly scratchier and more slanted, was clearly Riko’s from what she could make out of spats of Japanese on one on the edge of a chair in the corner of the photo.

There were a few more, one from a festival where Riko was wearing a strange gown. That one kept her attention longer. Her hitai-ite was tied around her neck, tucked under the collar of the dress, which fell on her body differently than kimonos ever had, and which covered some of the scars she could see in other photos.

She was pulling Hoozuki Suigetsu behind her and she seemed to blend into the entire environment fine. She looked like someone at a festival with friends, enjoying herself. She looked like part of the city as much as she looked like part of the culture.

The public ones had been taken, according to Mei, by a trustworthy photographer who had originally just been taking photos of the festival before she asked him to snap pictures of the four whenever he saw them around, if it wasn’t an inconvenience at the time. There were two of them at a bar, one where they were laughing and one where they were glaring at the photographer (this one had a small note on the back that the photographer had survived, though the four of them had started trying to mess with him if they saw him in the streets after that).

There was one from the marketplace, where another woman, this one with dark brown hair, was leaning next to her, the smile on her face reminding her of all the times Jiraiya would do similar, egging on Orochimaru or herself as they went about their errands. This one had one of the most recent dates written on it.

The one in the house had been taken by Hoozuki – which likely explained the slight slant to the photo, if his reputation for being slash-and-dash was anything to go by – and seemed to be a lot more natural, even if it wasn’t candid.

These were, however, proof that she was alive, that she was well, and –

Wait.

She flipped back to a picture from earlier in the pile before pausing.

“SHIZUNE!”

The door opened. “Yes, Shishou?”

“Go get that hospital document for Riko for me.”

“The original or the copy? We sent the original to the Nara compound…”

“The copy will be fine.”

The paper was on her desk in a moment, and she pulled it out. She had skimmed, marking the reason she had been admitted as abnormal, but had figured it was just a misreport or another case of a shinobi getting too excited and trying something without preparing properly first.

But those scars on the picture…

There were a few of them that were close enough to showcase them, one of which was the one in the apartment. There was one of her walking with her Genin team, and another, close up, her arms braced, her sword in her hands (and something about the sword was oddly familiar, too, though she knew she hadn’t seen it with Riko before), braced against the Nuibari, her the expressions on her and her opponent’s faces ones that spoke of a long line of friendly challenges.

Tsunade looked closer at the scars. The earliest photo had to be the one with her Genin team in the streets. They only barely past her wrist, and were hardly noticeable, but being taken professionally, they were a lot clearer than the next one, the one from the apartment.

In that one they went up her forearm, almost reaching her elbow at their farthest edge. The patterns looked like lightning chakra, as was to be expected.

The third one, the one in the fight, they were past her elbow, and if Tsunade had to guess, dangerously close to the seals modifying her appearance. If she wasn’t careful, they could mar the surface and she’d be screwed.

The hospital report claimed muscle damage from using lightning natured chakra improperly. The scars told Tsunade that it wasn’t just improperly, it was repeatedly, over the course of several weeks, ignoring the stabbing pain that should have told her to stop.

“Nara Riko, if you come back in a body bag I’ll never forgive you.”

The fact she had kept going just told her the girl had become even more stubborn.

There was a scar she could see, even with some of the damage done over it, of a human jaw over her arm. That one she wanted a look at, because it didn’t look like it was properly healed. There were several others, including one by her collar, and Tsunade had to wonder just how much combat she’d seen. Certainly more than Tsunade had expected.

The mission report from Sapphire Lake had been too matter of fact and abrupt to learn much about how the girl reacted to trauma. Her other mission reports were short, as well, but as though she were trying to avoid using more paper than necessary. Overall, there wasn’t a lot to be gained from looking at the intel sent from Kiri other than that she had gone on to do a lot more than they had initially planned for her.

“Shizune!”

The woman was by her side in a moment.

“Take these to Nara Yoshino, tell her they can be added to the file.”

Shizune nodded, bowing as she left. As the door closed, Tsunade looked out the window, facing the direction of the Land of Water.

One of her own was out there, and it was too late to change the past.

Beginning a letter to the Mizukage, she began planning for the future.

Kakashi liked the new girl, don’t get him wrong. Uzumaki Karin was an excellent motivator for Naruto, and Sasuke didn’t seem to have any issues with her before or now.

But there was something clearly different in their team dynamic, and Kakashi wasn’t sure how he liked that. She hadn’t been told much about Riko until Naruto had started babbling to his new ‘Nee-san’ about his best friend and suddenly the girl was trying her hardest to live up to the former red-head on their team.

That was an impossible bar to set for herself, though, and Kakashi could tell she knew it. She wasn’t a kenjutsu user, she didn’t use senbon, and she didn’t dive into a fight with the same precision-based strategy that Riko was known for. She wasn’t Riko.

Karin had her own strengths. She was loyal (much like Riko, though Kakashi was trying to discourage comparisons), she was well-versed and steadily learning more in the field of medical jutsu, and she liked to boost morale. She was personable, and despite her background she smiled a lot and welcomed the team to any sort of event, whether it was buying more kunai or going to get lunch.

Kakashi watched the three of them work on their individual assignments, smiling at this team. He felt guilty for not looking out for his third student, but looking into the reputation she had cultivated for herself he could at least take some comfort knowing she was safe.

“Maa, students, you can stop now.”

“Hey, Kakashi-sensei, when do you think Ri-chan’ll be back, huh?” Naruto asked almost every day, but Kakashi never answered.

Kakashi sighed. “Naruto, I don’t know when Riko-chan will be coming back from her training mission. Perhaps you should bother Hokage-sama about it.”

The light that popped into Naruto's eyes promised a fiery retribution from Tsunade. It wasn't helped that Karin was excited to meet her cousin's best friend and seemed to mirror his excitement to pester Lady Tsunade. 

Oh well. Not his problem what his student does in his off time.

Yoshino was glad for the pictures, even if seeing her daughter scarred and war-hardened hurt her heart. She knew when Riko went into the Academy that this was a possibility, but she had hoped she would at least be there to help her.

Sighing, she smiled at the picture in the apartment. Even if diplomacy made it hard to bring her back to the village, she was pleased to know her daughter had a network of people who supported her. That would have to get her through for now, and she had an idea how she could use it to help Shikaku too.

Digging an old frame out of storage, she put the photo inside and put it up in the family’s communal space.

Next to other pictures of Riko and Shikamaru, this one stood out. It was a woman, not a girl. She'd have to take one or two of Shikamaru soon to match this. 

Maybe she could sneak one while he was with Temari one of these days... 

Looking at the smiling faces, Yoshino had to wonder what RIko's teammates were like. Maybe one day she’d meet them.