Bad influences
Tsunade was feeling put upon… and hungover, but mostly put upon. The trouble, she decided, with being the best medic in the world, was that everyone and their ninja dog wanted her to fix their weird and wonderful ailments. Was it really too much to ask to be left to wallow in alcohol alone. She bloody retired and abandoned the village, but did that stop people? Oh no it didn’t, it just meant the missing nin, now considered her a perfectly valid source of emergency medical support. Of course she was getting two weeks worth of bar tab paid for looking at this one, so she couldn’t complain too much, but still, it irked her.
At least the brat looked fixable. One of those nasty hereditary lung conditions that was a result of genetic mutations caused by generations of heavy chakra usage, compounded by too much inbreeding in ninja families. She wondered where Danzo had dug this one up. In any case it was totally fixable if caught early enough, and it looked like his new creepy kidnapping ninja dad had brought him to her well within the limits.
She knocked him out while she fiddled with his lung structure, technically he could have been awake. The process wasn’t actually painful, there were no nerve endings in the lungs, but the kid was annoying and fidgety and kept asking questions, and what was the point of being the best medic nin in the world if you couldn’t get away with knocking out irritating patients. It was mostly detail work to be honest, more down to patience and practice than chakra reserves, so it took a while. Creepy ninja kidnapper dad, had wandered off with creepy brainwashed child assassin number two, presumably to keep out of her way, and Shizune had flounced off hours ago to write another letter to her postal correspondence boyfriend. Honestly that girl had become so dramatic lately, Tsunade hoped it wasn’t the teenage hormonal mood swings starting to surface, she’d dealt with enough of that for a lifetime being stuck on a team with “nobody understands me” Orochimaru, and “look BOOBS” Jiraiya. Surely she’d earned some kind of reprieve. Then again given that she was currently in the throes of the mother of all midlife crises, she probably shouldn’t be casting stones.
In any case everyone else had disappeared, and as the light faded it was just her, and her unconscious patient, and the work that needed doing. It was oddly peaceful.
…
“Something must be done!” Danzo declared grandly. Everyone pretended not to notice the fluffy white cat sitting on his knee. The last person who’d pointed it out had been disappeared in the middle of the night by the not very secret police. There was a rumble of cautious agreement as people waited to see where he was headed.
“In the last four years there have been four incidents in which respectably Konoha ninja have turned traitor and kidnapped pre-genin on their way out. That’s a rate of one per year, this state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue. At this rate there won’t be any pre-genin left.” There was a collective sigh of understanding, so that was what this was about.
“You seem unusually fired up about this.” Shikaku drawled.
“Pre genin are the future of our village! Are you saying this is not a problem that needs to be addressed?” Danzo snapped.
“Do you think he’d be so worried about it if someone hadn’t grabbed a couple of his mini assassins?” Tsume muttered to Shibi. Danzo took no notice, instead choosing to continue his speech.
“We must take action, for the sake of our village’s future. It is our duty, as loyal members of Konoha’s council.”
“You know I’m not sure moral crusader is a particularly good look on him.” Inoichi murmured to Chouza, “It’s like a wolf suddenly taking up work as a therapy dog. It just doesn’t fit. Do you think he’s having some sort of breakdown?”
“Give the man a break.” Chouza whispered back. “It’s been a rough few years, we’ve all been under a lot of pressure.”
“And so we shall stand firm, against the forces of evil, that seek to undermine us at every turn. And future generations will remember this day, as the day we all declared, no more.” Danzo continued, seemingly oblivious to the background commentary.
“Then again he is laying it on a bit thick.” Chouza mused. Tsume snorted.
“I blame the cats. Nothing good ever comes from fluffy white cats.”
It took a while for Danzo’s speech to wind down. The trouble was he wasn’t exactly wrong, just a little, overenthusiastic. Something did need to be done about the situation. The village really couldn’t afford to be haemorrhaging pre-genins at a time it was already weakened. If only because it looked bad.
“I really don’t see what we can do about it though.” Hiashi pointed out sensibly. If we could stop people from going missing nin we would have done it already.
“Personally I reckon this whole problem arose because people don’t guard their cubs properly.” Tsume retorted. Mostly to see Hiashi squirm. Koharu picked up on her suggestion though.
“You know you might be right. We do leave the pre-genin pretty much unguarded in this village. I mean it’s not like the chuunin sensei could stop them if a jounin decided to just walk into the academy and grab one.”
“Hmm. Maybe we should look into posting guards around the academy. It might at least limit the numbers of abductions a little.” Homura suggested.
“Then it is settled we shall place a jounin guard around the academy to protect the students.” Danzo declared, satisfied with the plan. Everyone present had a niggling feeling there might be a flaw in the plan, but the meeting had already run over by an hour and it was time for lunch. No-one wanted to be the one responsible for dragging things out.
…
Hizashi wondered if there was some kind of guide book for being a missing nin, that he’d somehow missed. He’d been on the run for weeks and he still wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing. At least his darling niece Hinata was a sweet and well behaved girl. He shuddered to think what this would have been like if he’d been stuck with a little hellion like he vaguely remembered Sasuke being. Maybe he should find another missing nin and ask for advice.
He sighed. Honestly he had no idea where to even start looking for them. It wasn’t like they’d just randomly show up on his doorstep. He left little Hinata sleeping in their hotel room, surrounded by pretty much every trap known to ninja kind, while he went to look for work. Hiashi had given him some money, but it only went so far, especially after he’d brought both himself and Hinata a full set of sunglasses for every occasion.
Right at that moment he was wearing set no. 21, shady individual looking for employment, if he found some he’d switch to either set no. 18 competent unflappable professional, or set no. 5 bad motherfucker, depending on the specific sort of work he found. He was halfway through negotiating a contract to guard a caravan to volcano country, when he sensed it. Even after so many years Hatake chakra was unmistakable. What a stroke of luck. If he could catch Hatak in time, he might just be able to get the advice he so badly needed.
He completed his negotiations quickly, and went in search of his fellow missing nin. He managed to track him to a hotel not dissimilar to the one he and Hinata were staying in, which was already occupied by the overpowering chakra signature of what could only be the jinchuriki Hatake kidnapped. He activated his Byakugan to get the lay of the land, and then deactivated it almost immediately in horror. No, it couldn’t be.
It was. He reactivated his byakugan just to double check, and Hatake was definitely reading porn in public. There was no way he could allow his darling niece anywhere near such a bad influence. The man had probably already corrupted little Naruto, so he would have to be kept away from Hinata too. Avoidence was clearly the only viable strategy.
He hurried Hinata out of the village wearing the bright yellow framed sunglasses set no. 14, clueless and innocent tourist, with Hinata wearing set no. 7 cute little girl, the ones with the flowers on the frames. She liked those ones. He was pretty sure they’d managed to escape unobserved. His new temporary employer had given him an odd look when he’d asked to rendezvous outside the village, but since he was getting a jounin level ninja escort for roughly half the price he should be paying he wasn’t going to complain. In any case Hizashi was willing to endure any number of funny looks to keep his niece from being corrupted by such… degenerate elements.
…
Gai was one of the first jounin assigned to the new academy guard rotation, mostly because everyone else had conveniently found themselves elsewhere when Shikaku went looking for victims. Gai didn’t mind. It was an opportunity to safeguard the youth of Konoha, and as long as he kept his attention on the academy, no-one minded if he worked on his training while he worked. Gai was excellent at multi-tasking, the best in Konoha. It was a shame his eternal rival had left the village really, because that could have been a wonderful basis for a challenge. Sometimes he really did miss Kakashi. He shook off his unyouthfully depressed thoughts. It was a beautiful spring morning, guarding the youth of Konoha. There was no sense in dwelling on things that couldn’t be fixed.
He relaxed into the distant sounds of children playing. Soothing and relaxing, as long as you didn’t listen too close to what they were actually saying. The academy officially closed mid-afternoon, but plenty of the kids stayed later to use the training grounds. Gai approved, it was never too soon to foster the power of youthful energy. Technically his shift ended when the academy session did but he didn’t mind staying a little longer so that the kids could safely get some proper training in.
Most of them left after a couple of hours, even the overachievers didn’t stay more than three or four, but just as Gai was about to leave he noticed that one of them was still there, practicing, two hours after all of his peers had gone home.
The next day Gai was back guarding the academy, and he noticed the same kid staying late again. He wasn’t much to look at, small, dark hair, dark eyes, nothing to mark him out from all the other hordes of small children that swarmed around the academy, but the sheer determination he practiced with, that was something special. Gai prided himself on being a good judge of character, and something about that kid caught his attention.
On the third day he swapped shifts with Genma so that he could continue his observations. The boy was failing his classes. He clearly had no gift for ninjutsu, that much was clear from the abject failure of his patient dogged attempts to perform a henge. It was equally clear that he wasn’t really one for written work. He wasn’t bottom of the class, but it obviously didn’t come naturally. The teacher’s attitude made it clear that the boy, Lee apparently, was expected to fail.
But Gai remembered the determined way the boy ran through kata after kata alone on the practice fields as the light faded. The sheer refusal to give up as he practiced his throws until constant misses became reliable hits. There was something there. A talent for hard work that very few people possessed. A talent that all taijutsu masters needed. Ninjutsu masters could coast by on talent, genjutsu was pretty much entirely down to the user’s imagination, but taijutsu required something more. Talent helped, but in the end it could only ever carry you so far in a discipline that by its very nature required constant hours of conditioning just to maintain the abilities you already had.
He didn’t return to the academy on the fourth day. It really wouldn’t look good if people started to think he was stalking the pre-genin. Especially not in light of recent events, and Gai wasn’t an idiot. People knew he’d been friends with Kakashi, it wouldn’t take much for them to jump to conclusions. Especially since he wasn’t entirely sure they’d be the wrong conclusions. The kid had potential, and th academy was clearly wasting it.
Not that he was actually going to kidnap the boy, that would be wrong. He probably had a home and a family. And in case he obviously had a future planned out as a ninja of Konoha. Gai wouldn’t take that from him. Besides, it wasn’t like he’d be stuck in the academy forever, Gai could take him on as a student when he graduated. As long as that fool of an academy teacher let him graduate.
It wasn’t a problem. There were strings Gai could probably pull to make sure the kid made it. Still, it couldn’t hurt to investigate Lee’s living conditions. Just in case the situation changed. It was important to keep options open.