Spear & Shield

Spear & Shield
Chapter 14

Yasu was being followed.

She wound her way through the bustling streets of Konoha’s market district. She kept her hands in her pockets, forcing her shoulders to relax. She milled around the stalls, sometimes picking up light bits of small-talk with the vendors, but mostly keeping to herself. The grocery bag she had looped around her wrist swayed gently with each step she took, the produce and dry-goods within tapped a steady rhythm against her thigh. 

She finally got true confirmation of a stalker when she passed a random jounin while rounding a corner. The jounin seemed to be busy evaluating an array of fresh-caught river fish, but lifted her head and tossed Yasu a questioning look as she passed. Yasu met her eye with a withered shrug.

Two turns and a loop-around later, and Yasu’s mysterious companion still hadn’t given up. 

It was starting to get annoying. 

So Yasu picked up her pace slightly, making her turns more erratic, weaving through seldom-used back alleyways. She hopped a gate, taking the opportunity to leap to the rooftops, tip-toeing carefully to avoid damaging any bricks or tiles.

The sun was falling lower and lower as Yasu began to realize she had gone in the exact opposite direction of her apartment. 

Bao-chan was probably getting hungry…

Yasu sighed, pausing briefly to gather her thoughts. She didn't want to bring another stalker home, but whoever they were, they weren't giving up.

Finally, her boundless journey came to an end on the rooftop garden of the academy. 

"Can you just show yourself, already? Please?" she finally grumbled, foregoing politeness and letting her agitation be known. "I don't like being followed."

‘I just wanna go home,’ she whined inwardly.

A breeze picked up, bringing with it a flurry of leaves. From within the leaves appeared a young girl.

She stood with a hand on her hip, head tilted back slightly while she stared Yasu down her little button nose. Despite her haughty expression, Yasu could see something in the way her eyes gleamed. Her cheek twitched as if repressing a smile. The two-bun hairstyle made her face look even more youthful, giving Yasu the mental image of an arrogant toddler. 

“Hm,” the young girl scoffed, “I guess you’re alright, but your sensory skills need work. I’m surprised you didn’t catch me earlier. I’ve been following you for some time, now.”

“Yeah, an hour and a half. I know.”

The girl blanched immediately. “Eh? You knew the whole time?!”

“I was hoping you would just go away,” she admitted with a shrug,  “All I’ve done is buy groceries and walk around the village... Why were you following me in the first place? I wasn’t doing anything.”

“You… You were trying to bore me out of hiding?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Yasu glanced down at her grocery bag, “Can you stop now? I really want to get home. I have to feed my cat.”

“B-but!” the girl threw her hands up, her imperious front falling away completely, “Don’t you want to know why I was following you?”

Yasu huffed a very large sigh, allowing her shoulders to slump. She looked out over to the other rooftops, taking note of one building’s patchy exterior. She would have to put in another work order in the morning...

“Look, I’m really tired. I’ve had a long week, and I have about three D-ranks lined up in the morning. So I’m too tired to fight you. But we can tell everyone you beat me, okay? If anyone asks, you took me down hard and let me limp back home after I begged you for mercy. Sound fair?”

Still, the girl seemed perplexed, “No!” she admonished. “I wasn't following you because I wanted to fight you! I just wanted to meet you!”

Now the confusion passed to Yasu, “...Meet me? Why?”

“I wanted to make sure you were worthy of Gai-sensei,” she huffed, crossing her arms.

“Gai-'sensei,’ huh?” Of course. She finally meets another one of his students face-to-face and she’s another weirdo. At this realization, Yasu pulled a face, “To be clear, he chose me.”

A bright pink flush flooded the girl’s cheeks, “I knew it!”

“I mean, I guess it was accidental at first. But he was so persistent…”

Her brown eyes lit up, “He was?”

“And I suppose everything’s been going pretty well so far…” Yasu looked thoughtful, "My taijutsu is better than it’s ever been. I’m getting faster, too, and the training has really helped my overall strength.”

“Wait,” she interrupted, waving her hands in confusion, “Training?”

“Yeah?”

“I-I thought… I thought you two were, you know,” she leaned forward, cupping a hand against her mouth to whisper, “Together.”

Yasu felt every muscle in her body tense at once. The quiet bustling sounds of the village slowly faded away, replaced by the crescendo of a  high-pitched whine.

She froze.

Yasu's mind began to race. Dear gods above, why couldn’t they have just fought? How did these people find her? Why couldn’t this girl just ambush her like Gai? Why couldn’t she be normal ninja-weird and just fight? Why did she have to be weird-weird?

“Why would you think that?” Yasu spoke loud and pointed, forcing every facet of expression from her face like a robot. She would not let this child see her sweat. Panic and alarm mixed with the horrible feeling of anxiety flooded her chest.

Curse this young girl and her deranged imagination.

The girl took a step back, alarmed by the forceful tone of Yasu’s voice. She glanced around sharply, hoping they weren’t drawing unnecessary attention.

“I’m sorry!” she placated, “I-it’s just you’ve been spending so much time together--”

“You’ve been spying on us?” Now Yasu’s tone was beginning to resemble her mother’s. Here she was, standing on a rooftop, scolding a child... Just like Mom.

“Not me! Well, I mean, not just me--”

Yasu’s hands came to slap against her face in frustration. She groaned into her palms and sank into a defeated crouch.

Who was it? Who told? Was it Saburo? ...Kakashi, maybe? 

…Or were Gai’s boisterous coercions simply just loud enough to draw the attention of the whole village?

“Is that what people are saying?” she groaned. “About Gai and I?”

“No, no, no!” the girl tried again, “It’s not like that! It’s just-- I mean-- We--” she sputtered, “It’s just… Gai-sensei… Well, it hasn’t been the easiest time for Gai-sensei lately. I only followed you because I was worried about him! I’m sorry for assuming…”

Yasu’s embarrassment quickly dissolved, replaced by stark concern. “What do you mean by that? Is Gai-sensei okay?”

She thought back to his hasty exit yesterday, where he uncharacteristically left her to patch the damaged wall by herself. She had figured he would jump at the chance to help her fix it, but given his excuse, she had brushed it off.

The girl fiddled with her fingers, one hand twitching towards her kunai pouch before she clasped both her hands behind her back, “It’s our team mate, Rock Lee. He… He was injured very badly during the Chunin Exams…”

Yasu allowed herself a moment to absorb the information. The girl was doing her best to maintain a neutral face, but Yasu could see the cracks forming in her façade. Yasu felt the same types of cracks pulling at the corners of her mouth, down around the back of her neck, creeping along her arms and slithering down her back. 

Flashes of memories appeared against her will. Hospital visits to her own teammates... The uncertainty of knowing if they were dead or alive during chaos-filled battels... The gut-churning look of fear on her old sensei’s face…

It was something she had learnt to live with during her ninja career. But the fact that this young girl was going through it, too… That Gai was now the helpless teacher… It made Yasu’s heart twist.

“Yesterday, Tsunade-sama was finally able to take a look at Lee’s injuries. She thinks there’s a surgery she can do to fix him, but the outlook doesn’t look good. If you know Gai-sensei… He took Lee’s injuries very personally. If Lee doesn’t heal… I don’t know what Gai-sensei will do. But it scares me.”

Yasu sighed a weighty breath, standing up straight for the first time that day. For a moment, the two stood in compassionate silence, marinating in unspoken feelings of uncertainty and apprehension.

“I… I didn’t know any of this. He never told me.” To be honest, Yasu was a little troubled by it. Gai had seemed like such an open book, it was a little jarring to know he had been hiding this from her. She felt like she knew so much about him already. She knew his favorite restaurant (Mako’s Finest in the market district because it has the freshest sashimi and the curry menu is quite good), his favorite color (green, because it is the color springtime, youth, and growth), and even knows his win-loss ratio to Kakashi (51-51, but Kakashi hasn’t been around the Village lately, so they hadn’t had a chance to break the tie). 

Come to think of it, while he had sung praises for his genin students until her ears had bled, Yasu quickly realized she knew virtually nothing about them outside of their fighting styles.

“Your name’s Tenten, right?”

She nodded sheepishly.

“Would you like to get some dinner? My treat.”