Chapter 65: volume 2, chapter 16: Land lords, Reunions and Returns.
The four young samurai that came with us were named Takeshi, Isamu, Raiden, and Katsuro.
Very strong names — the kind that came with equally high expectations. It had been my read of things that none of them met those expectations.
Mostly through no fault of their own, the situation they inherited was dire. The lower echelons of the samurai were dying a slow death as the much cheaper and far more flexible ninja took their place. The more elite samurai retained their positions, as status symbols if nothing else, but families of their calibre could only languish in decline.
"Come on, guys! We're only a few miles out!" called Naruko, who had taken pity on them and joined them outside the carriage during our long trek. Her inhuman — and I suspected bloodline-endowed — stamina was only a shadow of itself as a clone, yet these young samurai could not even keep up with that.
You see, training a samurai was very different from training a shinobi. It involved tonics and precise techniques refined and passed down over generations. This regimentation meant they could more easily churn out mediocre samurai, though the lack of flexibility in these methods prevented the emergence of the freaks of nature regularly found in the hidden villages. That reliability had its own charm, of course, but it lost its uniqueness with the creation of the academies and the standardisation of shinobi training.
All you needed for your run-of-the-mill genin was five years of education. Samurai required tinctures and tonics that allowed their bodies to survive — and benefit from — their brutal training regime.
And tonics weren't cheap.
This left the latest generation of low-class samurai the most poorly funded and, by dint of that, the most poorly trained. In other words: incredibly weak. And among that crop of weakness, these four were especially weak.
They huffed and puffed, gasping for breath with every step. Sensei had long since taken pity on them and slowed the carriage, but they still fought for every stretch of ground they crossed.
Very weak indeed — which was to be expected. It's not like they would hand me the cream of the crop. My reputation was good — for a given definition of good — but not that good.
We had been on the road for four days now. Konoha was still a few days out, but that was not our first destination. My senses picked up the small candles of chakra that signified a gathering of people in the distance as we approached.
It also allowed me to perceive the peculiarity of a samurai's chakra compared to that of a shinobi or civilian. It was something I had noticed back at the capital, particularly in Yorimoto — the man I now knew was the leader of the Daimyo's personal samurai — and during my spar with the jō-level samurai.
The rigidity of their chakra.
A shinobi or civilian's chakra, even at rest, ebbed and flowed like a flickering candle or wavering flame. Samurai were like electric lamps — a constant, steady glow with no variation in strength or shape.
There was something about the way a samurai was trained, how they were formed, that led to this strange inflexibility. I couldn't wait to find out from my wonderful new minions — and they were minions. I was a generous guy, but I wasn't running a halfway house for failed samurai.
I put those thoughts aside and stepped off the carriage as it came to a stop.
The soil beneath my feet was no different from any other plot of land in the Land of Fire, except for one crucial detail. This wasn't just any land.
It was my land.
Welcome to the village of Tomoshibi.
It wasn't much to look at.
A typical isolated farming village filled with wooden structures sturdily built but clearly the product of rural, unplanned growth. Yet I felt myself bursting with ideas of magic and industry, better yet, Magical industry.
Distracted as I was, I still remembered to offer a hand to Kuro as she disembarked. She didn't need it, being a trained killer and all, but the flush of appreciation in her chakra told me she enjoyed it regardless.
The other lady of my heart was busy doing other things.
"This place is a dump!" Naruko hollered from atop the carriage, her transformation gone and her kimono replaced by her black overalls and orange jacket. Her return to herself came complete with blunt and offensive language.
"Yeah, but it's my dump," I said.
In reply, she stuck her tongue out at me. I wondered what it said about my tastes that I much preferred this version of her.
Of course, a horseless carriage rolling into town accompanied by an entourage of young samurai and a kunoichi screaming from the top of said carriage was bound to draw attention.
We had arrived around midday, and it was clear most people were in the fields. Only the very young and the elderly lingered about.
Not seeing the point in standing around all day, I approached the person who seemed most knowledgeable about the village at first glance: an old man seated on a stool outside one of the wooden houses. He was short, bent with age, and sported a full head of white hair. He looked ancient, though he was probably only a little older than my sensei. Peasant life outside a shinobi village was hard.
"Hello there!" I greeted him with cheer.
He glanced around as though searching for who I was actually addressing. Finding no alternatives, he slowly came to the damning conclusion that I was speaking to him. The way he paled suggested this was not comforting.
That confused me, but I pressed on.
"My name is Hanama Izuku. I would like to speak to the village leader, please."
He stared blankly for a moment before jumping in surprise as the reality of the conversation finally settled in.
"Ah! Of course, Hanama-sama," he said with a strained smile that quickly transformed into a ferocious snarl as he turned toward his open door. "Suzuka! You layabout, get out here!" he yelled before turning back to me with a beatific smile that would have been more convincing if he weren't missing half his teeth.
There was scrambling inside, accompanied by the unmistakable crash of things falling over, which added a distinctly wooden quality to the old man's smile.
"Ashhh! Old man, why'd you have to yell like that? You woke me from my nap! I fell over and almost broke my neck! That's no joke, you know? I could've died! I need compensation — you can't just go around yelling at whoever you—"
The rant cut off as its owner came into view — at the same moment we came into hers.
She was a young woman I could only describe as sleazy. In both my lives, I had encountered many sleazy men, but never a sleazy woman — at least not in appearance.
Not sleazy in the sexual sense — that implied some degree of allure — and this girl had not been blessed in the necessary ways to achieve that. In other words, she was flat as a board, and not even in a cute way, if that made sense. Instead, she resembled a female snake-oil salesman: shaggy hair dusted with dandruff, beady eyes suggesting a keen yet miserly mind, and a narrow face that screamed grifting opportunist.
I briefly glanced at Kuro, who watched the exchange from the carriage with amusement, then back at the girl, wondering how they were even members of the same species. Truly, the gods were cruel.
"Eh! Who is this?" she exclaimed, sizing me up as a leer formed on her face — which was strange, since she was probably in her twenties, but I chalked that up to the culture of the times.
"This is Hanama-san, you wayward sow. Now run down to the farms and fetch Old Jin before you make an even bigger fool of yourself," the old man said with the neutral disdain of someone accustomed to delivering such insults.
"Eh? Old Jin? Who is he that I have to get up from my nap and fetch Old Jin for him?" she demanded, ignoring his barbs with an equally accustomed shamelessness.
"He is Hanama Izuku, disciple of the Third Hokage, who is seated in the carriage behind us, and as of last week was named master of the land on which you stand by the Daimyo himself," Tano said, speaking for the first time.
I turned to see the silent discontent I had felt building in his chakra reflected in his dark eyes, which watched the villagers with an intensity that promised no violence yet inspired fear all the same.
"In short — your lord," he finished.
An awed silence followed. Both villagers stared at the carriage containing my sensei as though it housed an armed nuke — which, honestly, wasn't far from the truth.
"What he said," I added lamely.
That seemed to break the spell. Suzuka scrambled barefoot out of the house and sprinted down the road, leaving us alone with an old man who looked on the verge of a heart attack.
Ah. I hoped she didn't take too long.
I didn't have the medical expertise to handle hypertension.
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Old Jin was about what I expected in some ways and wasn't in others.
He was skinny, in the strong, wiry fashion that came with manual labour. He was middle-aged and tall — not towering, but taller than you would expect from a rural village in the middle of nowhere.
"Please make yourself comfortable, Hanama-sama." His voice was smooth and calm, soft in a way that suggested he didn't speak much.
"Thank you," I told him as I walked into the hut that served as his house. It wasn't poorly built by any means, but it was less than I would have expected from the leader of the village.
I took one of the offered seats; it was more of a stool. One for Old Jin and whatever visitor he had over at the time. Kuro followed in shortly and took the other stool. Old Jin himself sat on the floor without complaint.
That didn't sit right with me, but I was interrupted before I could offer him the stool.
"You live here?" Naruko asked as she followed in after Kuro. The question came with genuine empathy, like she felt bad for Old Jin.
The older man simply shrugged in response.
"Man, that must suck," she commiserated before walking up and depositing herself in my lap without shame. Old Jin did not react to this in any way. Kuro simply giggled at Naruko's antics, and I tried to give her a stern look, but she gave me that mischievous smile of hers and I found my will to refuse her dying a rapid death.
With a sigh, I slipped my hands around her waist to hold her steady and carried on the conversation like there wasn't a girl in my lap.
"Right, Jin-san. I have some questions for you," I asked him.
"I will do my best to answer, Hanama-sama," the older man responded.
"While I am grateful to the Daimyō for this reward, I am also aware that I am much too young and lacking in credentials to be made the master of land with any significance or value," I stated.
"So in short, what's wrong with this village?" I asked.
"Nothing," came his calm reply.
I raised an eyebrow and gestured for him to continue.
"We are not a prosperous village, Hanama-sama, but I wouldn't say there is anything wrong with us. Our barley farms produce more than enough to keep us all fed, with a little extra to trade with other villages and passing merchants for essentials," he said.
"Then why have you not been set under the jurisdiction of a noble until now?" I asked.
"If I had to guess — and I could be wrong — it is because we live too close to Konoha's borders. Most nobles don't like having ninja that aren't on their coin breathing down their necks," he replied with some caution.
I nodded. That seemed fair.
"If I can ask a question, my lord?" Old Jin spoke up, his hands curled into fists in his lap.
"You may," I replied.
"What do you intend for us?" he asked after some hesitation, the words tumbling from his lips.
It was a fair question. They seemed to be living a happy life. It wasn't a luxurious one, but everyone seemed satisfied.
Satisfaction was good, but I could do better.
"A lot, Jin-san. I intend for a lot of things. But first, what do you know about tractors?"
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My talk with Jin was long and enlightening. Village life, down to the nitty-gritty details, was very complex. It was clear from the way he spoke that he had lived this way for so long he hadn't even thought about these many shifting mechanisms. What he told me was most likely the tip of the iceberg, and even then only based on his own experiences. I would have fun plumbing the depths of this strangely complex ecosystem that was a rural village.
It was as I was stepping out of Old Jin's hut that the chakra signatures I had sensed from miles out arrived.
"Izukuuuu!"
One of them decided to be particularly dramatic about her entry.
I smiled and looked up to see a dot descending from the sky, resolving into the blonde-and-orange blur of Naruko. I opened my arms and, in a burst of controlled chakra, cancelled her momentum and caught her in a spin.
"What are you doing here?" I asked her as we came to a stop.
"C-ranks!" she said with a giggle, then kissed me like she missed me.
"Yo." The baritone voice of one of the other chakra signatures that had accompanied her came from ahead of us.
"Kakashi-sensei," I greeted him once Naruko relinquished my lips. I was not surprised to see him, given I had sensed him from literal miles away, but I was happy all the same.
Despite his usual outward stoicism, he wasn't my sensei, and his feelings were obvious to me.
"I'm happy to see you too," I said, and in response he took out his book and started flipping through it like the tsundere he was.
"Sup, Gremlin-kun. Creepy-chan," he said in return while avoiding eye contact.
Don't worry, Kakashi-sensei. We know you love us.
I turned to what I assumed were Naruko's teammates and offered my own greetings.
"Sakura."
She nodded back, her chakra much less antagonistic than the last time we met.
"Uchiha-san."
He grunted in reply, eyeing me strangely.
"Guess who else is here?" Naruko said, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
"Hinata," I said, looking in the direction of the trees that hid the last four chakra signatures.
"Muu, that's cheating," she said, stepping aside as Hinata's team emerged from the trees with her at the head. She sprinted at me, then came to an abrupt stop a few feet away, her fingers pressing together nervously.
"I-Izuku—" she began hesitantly, only to be cut off by me sweeping her off her feet in a hug.
"Hey, Hinata. I missed you too," I said as she melted into my embrace, her knees giving out beneath her.
"Tch." Kiba sucked his teeth.
"Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Izuku," I said to her teammates over her shoulder.
Kiba turned his face away from me with a scowl, and the boy I recognised as Shino watched me from behind unnerving pitch-black lenses.
What pleasant fellows.
"Nice to meet you, Kurenai-san," I greeted their teacher.
"Nice to meet you as well, Hanama-san," she replied, looking professional in her flak jacket and shinobi attire.
A loud puff of smoke and the disappearance of one of Naruko's twin chakra signatures signalled the clone that had accompanied me for almost a month returning to its source.
I turned around, my arms still full of Hyūga princess, to see Naruko crouched and cradling her head.
"Wow, that's a lot," she breathed before springing back to her feet with her signature tenacity.
"Man, the capital's a crazy place!" she exclaimed, then turned to my samurai companion, who had been silently watching the proceedings. "Tano! Welcome aboard, buddy," she said, giving him a bear hug and a slap on the back.
"…Thank you, Uzumaki-sama," he said, outwardly stoic, though his chakra was extremely uncomfortable.
Chatter filled my ears as the more sociable among us began to talk.
I would be setting up a reverse summoning fuin to send and receive messages to this village, as well as allow myself to return once I figured out how to get into Mt. Huoguo.
I had learned some things about Tomoshibi, but there was much left to learn.
For now, though—
It was time to go home.
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The Akatsuki was a gathering of some of—if not the—most dangerous people alive. An organization composed entirely of S-class shinobi, each individual capable of destruction on a scale that could threaten a great village.
How did one leave such an organization?
The red clouds stitched into Sasori's cloak as he arrived at their rendezvous were answer enough.
You didn't.
"Uchiha-san."
The puppet pretending to be a man—or was it a man pretending to be a puppet? Whatever Sasori truly was, Itachi knew one thing with certainty.
He was not a man of many words.
Without another syllable, Sasori extended his hands. Itachi, without hesitation, placed a scroll into them.
He could not hesitate. No matter how much he might have wanted to.
Contained within that scroll was information that would, without doubt, lead to the deaths of multiple genin squads once Sasori brokered it onward.
Just as Itachi intended.
A certain level of truth was required to deceive a man like Sasori. The only way to guarantee credibility was to lace falsehoods with genuine intelligence. One might ask why deceive him at all—why maintain the charade?
Itachi could kill Sasori. It would not even be difficult, especially now that he was closer to healthy than he had been in years.
But what would that accomplish?
It would ignite war.
A bloody conflict against a gathering of monsters. Even if Konoha ultimately prevailed—even against the vaunted and mysterious Pein—the cost would be catastrophic. Villages did not survive victories like that unchanged.
Especially not if the Akatsuki struck an unprepared Konoha.
And despite the years Itachi had spent among them, their intelligence remained incomplete. Not enough for preemptive war without accepting the same unbearable casualties.
So the only rational choice was patience.
The cruel truth was that the squads doomed by this leak were worth less—strategically—than the lives that would be lost in open conflict. Itachi himself was proof of that calculation. As a combatant alone, he was worth battalions.
As one of the last two male Uchiha?
He was priceless.
And his life would be the first forfeit should his betrayal be uncovered.
So he performed the same merciless arithmetic of war he had once executed on the night he slaughtered his clan.
"Prepare. The leader will be moving on Konoha," Sasori said, his voice rough and hollow through the puppet shell.
Itachi inclined his head, masking his shock perfectly as Sasori turned and departed the clearing.
Only once he was gone did Itachi allow himself a moment to process the implication.
Then he moved.
Branches blurred beneath his feet as he ran through the forest canopy. A familiar presence slipped beside him—silent, steady.
Anko.
Her proximity eased something tight in his chest.
She was unusually quiet, which was understandable.
She had been present when he chose what information to surrender to Sasori. She had shared the burden despite his insistence that she did not need to. In truth, she had shared all his burdens since their confrontation months ago—and not all of it could be explained by duty.
Even if it could, he found he did not care.
Her stubborn refusal to remain uninvolved had never wavered, not once, and he would remain forever grateful for it.
The walls of Konoha drew closer through the trees.
It was time to report to Jiraiya-sama what his shadow had learned while slinking through the dark.
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A/N: We see the Land of Tomoshibi! It's not much to look at!
Naruko and Hinata reunite with Izuku and Naruko!
The Leviathan of the crimson dawn approaches!
What is it that sets Samurai apart from Shinobi?!
What wonders can young izuku enact on this unsuspecting village?!
How will Konoha face the looming danger?!
STAY TUNED TO FIND OUT NEXT TIME, ON FOR THE LOVE OF KUNGFU!
P.S. Thank you for reading, if you enjoyed it please comment and like, if not please comment why. Again, thank you for reading! Have a nice whatever-time-it-is, wherever you are!