How to get ahead in politics
Genma felt he was actually getting pretty good at disabling pit traps. Practice made perfect he supposed, this was the sixth ancient ruin they’d found with… exotic security measures. Either the ancients had been considerably more paranoid than modern day civilians, or these were actually ancient ninja temples. It would explain a lot of the mysterious and ominous doomsday weapons they’d retrieved from such locations anyway. Not that he was complaining of course. This was actually a fairly good job as mercenary work went. No self important VIP’s to bodyguard, no orphanages to burn down, no cats named Tora, just a few plain old psychotic death traps with a historical theme.
It was good for the kids, educational, a learn while you earn experience. Shikamaru was getting very good at solving riddles and Chouji was a natural at dealing with unfortunate obstacles the traditional way. (i.e. with excessive brute force), as for Ino well they never had to worry about the locals not telling them everything they needed to know that was for sure. They were working together more as a cohesive team, and it was obvious they genuinely enjoyd their wrk. Even Shikamaru, who as a classic Nara was likely to admit to enjoying work right about when hell froze over.
Yes, life as ninja archaeologists had been good to the kids, although letting Ino keep that ancient mystical whip as her primary weapon may have been a slight miscalculation. And it had been good to the adults as well. Genma especially liked the respect he got from being able to introduce himself as Professor Genma, while Raidou took the opportunity to attend any lecture that caught his interest when they were on campus between jobs. The general consensus was that they should have run off years ago.
Still there were always a few flies in the ointment, and the biggest flies of all came in pairs and wore incredibly tacky cloaks. Genma wasn’t sure why Akatsuki was so interested in ancient history, it didn’t seem to fit with their other main interests which mainly involved organised crime, and undermining wages. Still, everyone had to have a hobby, maybe for someone high up in the organisation, that hobby involved collecting doomsday weapons. Still, that wasn’t Genma’s problem, he had a job to do, a good job, and like hell was he going to let akatsuki interfere with a good thing by getting him fired and possibly destroying the world.
A few encounters had been enough to sort out an unspoken code of engagement, in the interests of all of them not being eaten by ancient temples of doom before they could get what they came for. (It was a risk. Genma had seen it happen to one of the graduate students Professor Katsura kept sending with them for “field experience”). Now they always pretended not to recognise each other until after they’d found the target, and didn’t fight until the target had been removed from its resting place. After all, if they worked together, they were more likely to defeat the fiendishly sadistic ancient minds that created these places. They could always destroy each other afterwards after all, and some of these ancient deathtraps were dangerous enough to threaten even high level ninja. (There had been one in the desert of Wind country that Genma still suspected might have been sentient.)
So while Genma, and Raidou, and the kids, had all spotted the Akatsuki members right at the start of the expedition, because subtle the Akatsuki were not, they had elected to ignore them until they had located the dancing statue of Kar’Ash, an artefact of mysterious and devastating power. The location this time was Snow country, which was far too cold for Genma’s tastes, and had Shikamaru, and Ino with their far lower body mass shivering in their fur lined boots. Raidou and Chouji just stomped through the snow like they were born for such weather, bastards.
The Akatsuki looked at least as unimpressed by the weather as Genma felt, which was something he supposed. This time they’d sent the functionally immortal ones which would be fun, for a certain, very twisted value of fun. Hidan and Kukuzu he thought their names were. Anyway they fact that they had been sent said worrying things about what Akatsuki knew about the artefact they were trying to retrieve. The last time those two had been sent the artefact had release a corrosive wave of energy that killed everyone within a hundred foot radius when the wrong panels were pressed. Luckily he and his team had been out of range when the idiot grad student touched it. Genma resolved to be very careful with this statue.
It took awhile. That was the trouble with fighting immortal people, they just wouldn’t stay down, no matter how many spike pits you dropped them into. Techincally Genma and his team had the numbers advantage, and since Raidou was holding the statue of unspecified doom the Akatsuki were reluctant to go all out against them. Functionally immortal wasn’t the same as completely immortal after all and it wasn’t the sort of thing people wanted to test to its limits. But still, the fact was they were up against a pair of mostly indestructible S ranked missing nin, and it was only due to a very improbable series of events that started with the statue glowing in alarming ways, and ended with Shikamaru dropping a mountain on the Akatsuki’s heads by throwing a rock to just the right place to trigger an avalanche, that they managed to make it out of there with their prize.
Considering how often the Akatsuki seemed to be turning up on their missions, maybe they should be training more.
…
The jounin lounge was… embarassingly empty these days. Kurenai had never thought she’d miss that idiot Genma, but at least when he and his idiocy were around it was easy to forget just how many faces were missing. And he was definitely an idiot, only a moron would steal the Jounin commander’s kid, even if plenty of sensible people had also left. She didn’t like the quiet though. Gai had of course been one of the earlier departures, and the silence in the break room had become increasingly pervasive. Anko was gone as well, and Kurenai really did miss Anko, and the chaos she’d always brought with her, like a bottle of wine to a party. Admittedly she didn’t blame Anko for leaving, it had only been a matter of time before her havoc causing tendencies got her into the kind of trouble it was best to bail on. By all accounts Danzo had been utterly furious about the pink cat incident.
It was a good thing Anko had seen fit to pass on her position as bookkeeper to a couple of chunin before she’d left though, or it would have been more than just Danzo chasing her. After all, hell hath no fury like a jounin who thinks they’ve been cheated out of their winnings.
It wasn’t just the conspicuous absences of course, it was the atmosphere in the village. The sense of tension as Danzo became ever more paranoid, had people watched ever more closely. It was the way that children no longer played in the streets for fear they’d be snatched by jounin or even, some whispered, a secret division of Anbu. Kurenai couldn’t really blame them. Not when she knew they weren’t wrong. That Root did exist, and jounin did steal children, and it appealed to the more twisted side of Kurenai’s sense of humour, that these days being recruited by your village was a worse fate than being kidnapped by a criminal.
She missed Asuma. Not because she thought he’d have been able to do much about any of this, he might have been the Sandaime’s son, but he had no head for politics, and Danzo had no respect for anyone who couldn’t play the game. No she missed him not because he’d have been particularly useful, but because she wanted him around. Wanted his steady, calm presence, the straightforward intelligence so different to her own twisting corkscrew of a mind. Also the sex. She definitely missed the sex.
But Asuma had left while the going was good, and Kurenai had been doing her best to play politics in his absence, inexperienced new made jounin that she was. But she was a genjutsu mistress and the village was short of jounin, and in that lay many possibilities. And because she was young and new, Danzo underestimated her, as only an old man can underestimate a young woman. After all playing with expectations was a kunoichi’s stock in trade, and Kurenai was a very good Kunoichi.
She’d done well, and while her colleagues ran away one after the other, she had only grown in influence, a spider at the heart of a thousand manipulations. Not enough never enough, but she’d done what she could to hold things together, to mitigate the damage Danzo was doing to her village, and it had been so much fun. There was a serious purpose of course, to protect the children that should have been safe to walk the streets of their village, that deserved to be protected. But really she’d be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy the process. After all, she was so very good at it.
She’d aligned herself with one clan and another, with the medics, with the administrators, she’d supported the triad of the Nara, Yamanaka, and Akimichi as they locked down their control of all the things Danzo thought to unimportant to watch, she’d convinced Danzo to tell her far more than he should have about his work.
She’d overreached herself though. Danzo might be mad, and was certainly unstable, but he was also dangerously clever, cunning in that way that old ninja had to be to become old in the first place. She’d overreached and tripped the paranoia that had Danzo seeing enemies all around him. Although, she mused, was it truely paranoia when they really were all out to get you. Then again, when half the reason they were out to get you was in fact because of said paranoia it did become rather a chicken and egg scenario. The line between madness and perceptiveness could in the end, be so very fine in the shadow world they lived in.
The cats though, there was no good explaination for. That was just pure old person crazy.
Yamanaka Inoichi had given her enough of a warning though. Enough of a warning to leave quickly and quietly before they came for her in the night. The request he had for her, well that was really just a bonus.
She stole into the Root training bunker under cover of darkness. Carefully weaving her subtle spider’s web over the inhabitants. They were good, for such small assassins, but they were young and she was better. There weren’t many, Danzo kept most of the training cells separate from each other, for fear one rogue jounin could sneak in and do, well exactly what she was doing actually. She spared a thought for the kids in other bunkers that she had no time to get to, but really, at the rate jounin were defecting, theyd probably all be taken soon.
Yamanaka Fuu, Akimichi Chouichi, Aburame Torune, her own little stolen genin team. It was Inoichi’s request, in exchange for the warning he’d given her but it wasn’t exactly a hardship. She always had wanted to be a jounin sensei. Maybe they could all infiltrate the Daimyo’s court together, it would be a fun training exercise, and a good opportunity to meet up with Asuma. She giggled as she put the little ducklings under a genjutsu that would convince them they were on a sanctioned mission until they were well clear of the village. She couldn’t wait for their reactions when they realised she’d tricked them. They might even try to kill her. It would just be so cute.
…
Hizashi was good with his Byakugan, one of the best, so he was more than a mile away when he first detected Genma, Raidou and their stolen students. He did briefly consider introducing them to his darling, innocent little niece Hinata. After all, Genma might be a little… wild, but Raidou was sensible enough and it would be good for his little princess to have some friends her own age. He’d even gone so far as to check into a hotel in a nearby town, while he considered his approach.
Then they arrived in town and Hizashi changed his mind. Clearly he’d been about to make a terrible mistake. Tomb Robbing. Yes, Shinobi were thieves and assassins, but stealing from the dead, that was just… inappropriate, lacking in refinement, tacky. Not to mention the little Yamanaka girl was wearing crocodile skin everything. Clearly not the sort of people the princess should be associating with.
He quickly donned sunglasses set no. 34, unobtrusive bodyguard, and put Hinata in set no. 8, daughter of minor official. They left town with the Bad Influences none the wiser.