The art of the double cross
“Nii san! I had the most awesome idea.” Naruto charged into the room with an air of overwhelming excitement. Zabuza had a bad feeling about this. He wondered idly if it was too late to run, before remembering it had been too late to run ever since that first day he’d met the Copy Nin and his pint sized little brother.
“Oh? What idea is that Naru-chan?” Hatake drawled.
“I was thinking about what you said, about how I couldn’t call my summons on land, and how it would be nice to spend more time with Gai sensei and Zabuza nii without drawing the attention of hunter nin, and how it would be cool to have somewhere more permanent to stay and I had an idea. We should become Ninja Pirates. Like on that TV show we watched last time we were hiding out in a hotel room. It’s a really good idea, cause we could have a ship to live on and we could all be crew together, and we’d be on the sea so I could use my summons, and we could find Treasure. Nii-san, can we be pirates? Please.” Yep, Zabuza called it, yet another disaster in the making. Hatake was looking disturbingly intrigued by the idea, and Hatake’s overenthusiastic friend Gai was already giving a thumbs up and a beaming smile.
Zabuza looked over to the entrance Naruto had burst in though in the vague hope that his agemates might be able to rein him in. No such luck. The Mini Gai seemed almost as enthusiastic about the idea as Naruto himself, and Zabuza could see Haku hanging back in the doorway with his head in his hands, his air of utter resignation a sure sign that he’d already tried and failed to talk Naruto out of it. There would be no help forthcoming from that quarter then.
Why did he have to be the voice of reason? He was the demon of the bloody mist, a notoriously unstable missing nin, who had once slaughtered all of his classmates to prove a point. Why was he all of a sudden the sane man in the room. Bloody Konoha nins. He blamed the magic chakra trees their Shodaime had grown. It couldn’t be healthy, growing up around that much chakra imbued vegetation. Kiri had import restrictions on any plant with its own chakra system, Iwa had a blanket ban on the stuff, Suna used their chakra enhanced plants in esoteric religious rituals, Konoha on the other hand built large quantities of their housing out of the stuff, and then wondered why all their ninja had gone crazy.
“You know we can’t be pirates without a ship Naruto.” If he was going to be the sane man he might as well make the effort. He doubted it would work though. Haku was much better at being the voice of reason than he was and since he had apparently already failed… well Zabuza doubted his own powers of persuasion on the matter. He was right.
“That’s OK Zabuza nii. We already got a ship. We just need a crew, and I’m sure all of you have cool grown up friends you can call in to be our crew though.” Screw it, being the sane man was a thankless job anyway, and it wasn’t like he had any pressing reasons not to become a pirate. Besides he was from Kiri, deep down inside him there was a little boy who’d always wanted to be a pirate. Anyway they’d need someone on this endeavour who actually knew how to sail.
“I call first mate.” Hatake could be Captain. Zabuza wanted just enough authority to order people around without having to be responsible for everything.
…
Itachi wondered vaguely if he should have burned the letter before Kisame could read it. Burning things was usually an effective solution after all. But he hadn’t, and Kisame had read it, and now the damage was done. He still set the letter on fire of course, just on basic principles.
Dear Itachi-chan the letter had said.
Me and a few friends have recently got together to set up a high risk trading initiative (That was code for either piracy or banditry), on the high seas, (Piracy then). If you are interested in a life of excitement, adventure, and exploration (Itachi mentally translated to extreme violence and large quantities of alcohol), then we would be honoured to invite you to join our crew. (Translation, come and be a ninja pirate, it’ll be fun, honest.)
Please reply as soon as possible. Your favourite senpai, Kakashi.
Itachi didn’t like boats. They made him seasick, as well as being unfortunately flammable. If it had been up to him the letter would have burned and that would have been an end of it. Unfortunately Sasuke’s adopted missing nin from Kiri had got to the letter first, and had seized on the opportunity to fulfil his childhood dream. Apparently all kids in Kiri wanted to grow up to be either pirates or smugglers, preferably both.
It was yet more evidence that all mist nin were crazy, as if the title “the bloody mist” hadn’t been warning enough. Itachi blamed the water, it couldn’t be healthy for kids, to grow up drinking water full of chakra enhanced bacteria. Konoha filtered the chakra bacteria out of the water system like normal people and fed them to the Hashirama trees, Ame subsisted primarily off of neutralising teas and alcohol, Suna only drank it at special mystical events, Kiri on the other hand gulped the stuff down as though there was nothing wrong with it. And as a result they were all insane.
And now as a result of that insanity Itachi was being shanghaied by new best friend into becoming a pirate, and the worst part was it seemed to be contagious. Kisame had somehow gotten to Sasuke, and now Sasuke was declaring his love of all things sea and ship related. Sasuke apparently thought pirates were very cool. If Itachi was honest he lost the argument as soon as Sasuke made that declaration.
Oh well, it would be nice to work with Kakashi again at least.
…
Anko was bored. So very bored. Kurenai was on a mission, Hayate was in the hospital, Genma, Raidou, and Gai had all independently done Hatakes, Asuma had sort of done a Hatake, the jounin lounge was mostly deserted. There was no juicy new gossip to spread, no stubborn prisoners to interrogate, and absolutely nothing on tv. Basically there was nothing to do and no-one to torment. She could torment Iruka sensei she supposed, but she remembered what Iruka had been like in the academy even if everyone else had forgotten, and she did not want to make herself his prank target.
Hmm speaking of pranks though, it had been a while since anyone had properly pranked the Anbu barracks. They might be getting complacent. It was practically her civic duty to keep them on their toes. Besides, her other options involved lurking around the academy and trying to decide which kid she’d most like to steal if she ever were to do a Hatake (purely a theoretical exercise of course, like a game of seduce, recruit, assassinate), and that was the sort of thing that could get you dragged in by Danzo’s not so secret police. Not to mention that was probably where most of the other jounin were already, and Anko had never been one to follow the crowd.
…
Kiba was bored. Horribly, mind numbingly bored, and it was all the fault of those stupid jounin. They must have stolen all the interesting kids his age because by now his class consisted solely of civilian born kids, and Aburame Shino who never said anything. None of them were bad, but seriously there was no-one fun to spend time with. He’d have liked to have a fellow prankster to make trouble with, or even just someone to cut class with him like Shikamaru and Chouji used to. It wasn’t fair. Especially since you’d have to be crazy to steal an Inuzuka cub. Inuzuka could always track their offspring down. At this rate he’d be the only kid in class that didn’t get stolen by a jounin to go off on exciting adventures.
Anyway he was bored, and it was the jounin’s fault, and he might not have a partner in crime but he was definitely a competent enough prankster to get some… creative revenge. He’d managed to figure out where the Anbu barracks were, and he had some… supplies he’d been saving for a special occasion. Jounin beware.
…
Anko ran, too out of breath to even be impressed at the way the brat was keeping up with her. Things hadn’t gone according to plan, and seriously if one little Anbu chase was enough to have her out of breath she must seriously be out of shape.
It was of course the brat’s fault. Not that there had been anything actually wrong with his plan. Actually it was a pretty solid piece of prank work, especially for a brat that couldn’t be more than seven, and was probably less. It had just… interacted badly with her own prank. It was like those clusterfuck missions you heard about when someone undercover on one classified mission managed to totally blow the cover of someone from a different branch of the service on a different undercover mission. Anyway upshot was she and the brat, an Inuzuka judging by his clan marks, were now running for their lives from a pack of angry Anbu.
They were halfway into the forest of death before she remembered that she probably shouldn’t take an academy student in there. Ah well, he was with her, he’d be fine. She led him to a clearing before collapsing in exhaustion.
“Don’t worry, they won’t follow us in here.” She reassured the brat.
“Where is here?” He asked. The crinkled up look of curiosity was actually kinda cute.
“This.” She paused for dramatic effect, “This is… the Forest of Death.” She gave him one of her most manic smiles. She wasn’t expecting him to smile back.
“Cool.” Was his response. “You know Nee chan, you’re actually pretty cool for an old lady. Even if you did ruin my totally awesome prank.”
“Hey, who are you calling old lady. And it was you who ruined my prank.” Anko growled. The brat didn’t seem the least bit intimidated. Probably Hatake’s fault, ever since that had become a thing small children had totally ceased to be intimidated by high level ninja.
“No it was totally your fault. Everything was going fine until you showed up.” Anko was not going to descend into an argument with a brat like him. She was far more mature than that.
“We’ll just chalk it up to communication errors.” She said instead. “Just imagine the chaos we could cause if we joined forces.” The smile on the brat’s face was like looking in a mirror. Anko suddenly knew exactly which kid she’d take if she did a runner.
…
Thus far the temple had yielded six gold statues, five scrolls in mysterious and unreadable languages, twelve distinct death traps involving moving walls, spinning blades, and pits with spikes in, and an entire room stuffed with creepy wooden dolls. Professor Sato had been disturbingly pleased by that last one, creepy fucker. Raidou felt more than a little put upon. They’d signed up for a basic bodyguard mission, not a… whatever the hell this was, and their clients just kept getting more suspicious by the moment.
You knew it was bad when Professor Sato was one of the less suspicious individuals in the party. Professor Hinamori was way too nervous for the experienced archaeologist she claimed to be, Professor Kirihara had something in his bag that he wouldn't let anyone look at, Professor Katsura, supposedly the leader of the expedition got evasive whenever any of them tried to corner him on what, exactly the expedition was searching for, and Professor Shiba kept on sneaking off to talk to someone on a radio, it was kind of cute how he thought they hadn’t noticed. And then there were the grad students who were all suspicious purely on the grounds that they weren’t complaining yet, the expedition was miserable, apparently lethal, and they weren’t getting paid, if they weren’t complaining they pretty much had to be up to something. The only people on this mission that weren’t suspicious, were him, Genma, and the kids, which, considering they were professional liars thieves and assassins, currently on the run from their own government for three high profile kidnappings, was pretty bad.
Raidou’s musings were interrupted when a boulder started rolling slowly down the narrow corridor they were walking through. Spikes appeared from the walls a minute later, and Radou wondered idly what kind of madman actually designed this building before Shikamaru froze it with a shadow. He was about to disintegrate it with a low level douton jutsu but one of the grad students apparently ran out of patience and got there first with a decent amateur usage of mining explosives. Why he had them Raidou didn’t know. But then he also wasn’t being paid to care about the grad students’ pyromaniac hobbies so he just shrugged, gave Genma a look and carried on.
The next room was a puzzle room, there was a riddle, a bunch of oddly shaped blocks, and a piranha pit in case you got things wrong. Of course. Raido was getting very bored of those. He called Shikamaru forward to solve the riddle. Yes he, or any of the professors could probably have solved it, but Raidou was bored and Shikamaru was fastest. Ten minutes later and the door opened on the final treasure chamber. That was, predictably, when it all went to hell. Couldn’t these people wait until they were safely outside to double cross each other? Seriously, no professionalism.