Industrious - Chapter 57 (Patreon)

I looked over the puppet I'd built and nodded.

As much as Nohara Rin was more than trustworthy enough to be made aware of my secret, the Hokage had judged her a high-risk asset due to how much time she spent out of the village. As such, while he couldn't forbid me from telling her, he'd made it clear that he strongly discouraged it.

That complicated matters given she wanted to meet the medic who was going to perform the surgery on Kushina's spine before she would grant her blessing.

Which... well, Kushina probably suspected I was behind the offer of a new spine, but couldn't prove it and also knew how important it was to keep such an asset on the down-low if they could be.

So, in the great tradition of supervillains everywhere, I'd constructed an LMD.

Wild blonde hair, tan skin, blue eyes, somewhat fat, wearing the robes of a monk and bearing the scars of a man at least fifty years older than me. Rihaku would be the new face for any surgeries I needed to conduct.

With a small gate implanted in his chest cavity, I could even control him from great distances without anyone the wiser, having fixed the mistake that had allowed Hinata to pick my seals out.

“Hmm... okay, let's think personality,” I muttered, cocking my head as I pursed my lips. “I'm thinking... Jiraiya-esque? Little bit lighter than that, but still kind of an asshole. Mix in a bit of neuro-divergent and paranoia? That would explain the lack of any official ties. Just a general kind of weirdo.”

I nodded in approval of my idea, then picked up the fabricated history Sarutobi had drawn up for my life model duplicate. This would be a long surgery and I didn't want to mess anything up if Rin decided to ask probing questions while I was doing the setup.

Hopefully by the time I was done Satsuki and Yakumo would be on their way back from their mission. Even if that ran long, though, Tenten had probed me about arranging a date during the off-period after her own mission, so I did have that to look forward to.

I sighed, centering my thoughts. Yakumo had been distracted and worried ever since meeting Kokoro again. Hopefully she was holding herself together well. If not, I trusted Satsuki to look out for her.

I wondered what they were getting up to...

…

Not for the first time, Kurama Yakumo pressed her hand to her lower abdomen in an absent-minded motion that seemed to rear its head every time her thoughts turned to her unborn child. The revelation that she would, indeed, be able to bear an heir for the clan had been a powerful and uplifting one. Ever since Kotaro, wonder-worker that he was, had confirmed he would be able to realize Kokoro into a physical form, she had spent several of her precious off-days wondering what it would be like to have a child.

The reality, as with so many things in her life it seemed, was far stranger than she'd been able to contemplate.

“You okay?”

Yakumo blinked, looking over to where Satsuki sat on a branch above her, the other girl's eyes keeping a watchful bead on the forest around them. Even if the mission was, as Kotaro had termed it, a 'milk run,' Obito-sensei was correct in that these low-level jobs were still good opportunities to engrain proper habits.

“Fine,” Yakumo replied shortly, going back to mixing the ration packs to make something approaching a proper meal. She would have preferred to simply unseal one of the packs Kotaro had given them for food, but sensei had another good point about holding the 'good' food in reserve for emergencies. They should use the rations while they had time and weren't in a difficult position. Should things escalate, they could get an easy morale boost by eating Kota's dishes on the go.

If they were being overly cautious, they could enjoy them at leisure on the way back to Konoha.

Satsuki gave a short grunt, the noise somehow conveying disbelief. After a moment, the dark-haired girl spoke up again. “Communication.”

Yakumo grimaced, wishing that Naruko and sensei would come back to interrupt the awkward moment. It was a foolish thought to have given that would mean their scouting operation would have been blown and they'd need to break camp and clear out.

It was ironic, she considered in her more thoughtful moments, that she'd end up sharing a man with Uchiha Satsuki of all people. There was... not bad blood between the Uchiha and Kurama clans, but certainly complicated. Her clan had splintered off from the Uchiha a hundred years before the founding of Konoha and reconciliation between the two groups over the differences which had caused the split were slow in coming.

It was only recently, after all, that the Uchiha were beginning to shed their taciturn and cold-blooded reputation among the greater part of Konoha.

No, Yakumo would have much preferred that, if she could not have Kotaro to herself, the other party in the relationship would have been more personable. Naruko, for instance, would have been less objectionable...

But Satsuki was, in her own awkward way, trying here and now to initiate dialogue.

Something she was usually only truly comfortable with Kotaro around.

“Kota called up Kokoro so we could talk,” Yakumo stated without preamble.

Satsuki was silent before making a wordless noise that somehow managed to combine surprise, interest, and disappointment.

“It was spur of the moment,” Yakumo shook her head, not quite sure that was actually true, but willing to obfuscate the matter for the sake of harmony. “Kota had a conversation with the Hokage. Since Kokoro isn't entirely human...”

Although Yakumo trailed off, the way Satsuki's eyes narrowed and flashed red told her that she didn't need to give explicit details about the talk their mutual boyfriend had with the village leader.

“Will she put Kota in danger again?” Satsuki asked bluntly, forgoing roundabout information-gathering attempts in a way that, and she could tell, made them both uncomfortable.

Still, Kota was correct in the fact that it was better to be honest when dealing with important subjects rather than so circumspect that none of them could tell exactly what had been decided.

“Kota has put safeties in her new body,” Yakumo replied, knowing that both of them had more faith in their man's skills than anything else. “But he wanted to talk to Kokoro and make sure she understood that there would be rules once she's out in the real world. I'm...”

Yakumo chewed on the thought for a long moment, trying to find the words she wanted to say.

Satsuki, to her credit, waited quietly for the other girl to get her thoughts in order.

“Kokoro... I thought it was going to be like having a... a normal human daughter,” Yakumo admitted, weight lifting from her shoulders even as something heavy settled in her gut with the admission. “She just... she just seemed perfectly fine until... she talked about eating people, Satsuki!”

Yakumo shook her head, taking a stabilizing breath and drawing upon her boyfriend's lessons to properly center herself emotionally. Tears that were threatening to gather were reabsorbed in a blink, and the riot of feelings within her began to calm. Distracted as she was for the moment, though, she was startled when she felt a pair of arms encircle her.

Her breath caught.

“It sounds rough,” Satsuki admitted, leaning against her. It was an awkward embrace, what with both of them wearing full mission gear, but... the fact that Satsuki was even trying... again, that meant more than the act itself. “Sorry I wasn't there.”

“It's... okay. I just-I need to get used to the idea. Kota was able to talk me through some of it, like how the Aburame clan's insects are part of them and they're known to eat corpses. Or how the Inuzuka and their dogs occasionally eat human flesh when there aren't other options. There's even shinobi like Sasori of the Red Sand, in Suna, who uses human bodies for his puppet materials.” Yakumo regurgitated the list that Kota had given her like a mantra, trying to normalize the revelation once again.

Satsuki grunted, making no move to extract herself. “Sounds like him. I-I love him, but he can be a dumbass sometimes.”

Yakumo snorted. “He can, can't he? I like the way he cuts through the drama, but every now and then it would be nice if he understood emotions better.”

Satsuki chuckled, the sound dying away as they were silent for a moment.

“You okay now?” The Uchiha heiress asked.

Yakumo sighed. “I will be. I have to be, don't I?” She paused. “Even if things aren't perfect, they could be worse. I'd rather Kokoro have strange urges or a... diet that I can't understand the appeal of instead of being born like me.”

“There... have been Uchiha like that,” Satsuki admitted slowly, audibly grimacing. “It... it's not pretty, but it sounds like Kota's fixed it.”

“Yeah, he... Kota seemed to understand what was going on immediately. He handled it a lot better than I did.” Yakumo sighed, leaning back against Satsuki. As irritating as Kota's tendency towards hard logic and straight-forward courses of action could be, his streak of realistic pragmatism so elegantly cut through the bullshit around them that she wouldn't trade it for the world.

“You have two choices. The first choice is to accept our daughter for who and what she is. She will kill people and she will enjoy it.”

“What's the second choice?” Yakumo had asked, hand pressed against her lower abdomen.

“You can try to force her to spend the rest of your life pretending to be something she's not. Even if it works, and that's not likely, it will be a constant uphill battle and she will fight you every step of the way. Whatever relationship you have beyond that, you will doubtless build a great deal of resentment over it.”

It wasn't quite the same as her own parents' attempts to force her out of the shinobi life, but there were enough commonalities that she could see them without them being pointed out to her.

Even if some part of her wanted to call Kokoro, the child she'd been so looking forward to bringing into the world, a monster... well, Kotaro had the unfortunate point that a great many people the village looked up to and acknowledged as heroes and saviors would be termed such by Kumo or Iwa. Just as their own village called the great ninja from those villages 'monsters.'

It wasn't about how many people you killed, it was about what symbol those people were wearing when you killed them.

Kotaro could be so damn irritating when he was being insightful.

“Hey.”

Yakumo blinked, turning her head to look at Satsuki.

The other girl took the opportunity to close the distance between them, pressing their lips together. Yakumo's eyes widened, then slowly closed as she felt Satsuki tighten the embrace around her. For all that the other girl's kunai pouch was pressing against her shoulder blade at an angle she almost believed would bruise, the gesture wasn't something she would ever spurn. Certainly not at this point.

For a long moment, only the sensation of the kiss occupied her mind, banishing all of the worry and self-recrimination and anxiety she felt over the oncoming future.

Then, finally, Satsuki pulled away, breaking the embrace as she removed her lips from Yakumo's with a thoughtful hum.

Yakumo was left blinking as the Uchiha heiress took two steps before launching herself back onto her perch. Absently, her hand trailed up to her lips and she blinked at the girl blankly. “I... thought you didn't like girls?”

A tiny dusting of red appeared on her teammate's cheeks, something which could just as easily have been an artifact of the late afternoon sun. “'Don't like' doesn't mean 'hate.'”

Yakumo couldn't help the giggle that burst free.

Satsuki visibly rolled her eyes and turned, ostensibly, to watch another approach to their camp. Yakumo was sure it had nothing to do with the fact that it obscured her face. “Besides, you made it pretty clear you do like girls.”

Her laughter cut off and shifted to an embarrassed squeak as she turned away as well, hurrying to finish making dinner. “Ugh, can't you and Tenten leave that alone? It was just a stupid illusion!”

This time, the grunt she got in reply was heavily laced with amusement.

Still, it was heartwarming that Satsuki was willing to go so far as to kiss her to ease her worries. It meant the usually cold-blooded Uchiha viewed her more than simply as a function of her relationship with their mutual love interest.

It was into that moment that Naruko and Obito-sensei finally arrived, approaching from one of the two sight-lines her Kurama-style genjutsu hadn't covered. The rest of the approaches had been obfuscated with pastoral nature scenes that would, with a little seal work, allow anyone looking to traverse the space their camp sat within without actually covering the ground itself.

“Seal the camp,” were the first words out of Obito's mouth once he and Naruko had cleared the illusionary line between the exterior and interior of the space.

Barking a quick affirmative, Yakumo pulled a pair of playing-card sized piece of paper from her waist-pouch and flicked them like shuriken into the ground with the ease of long practice. Instantly, a film-like shade slid up, joining itself to a similar translucent fabric-like sheen circling the rest of their campground.

“Good,” the jounin nodded, relaxing slightly as he looked over the encampment. Finding nothing amiss, he turned to Naruko. “Okay, you're up. I want a report for your teammates on everything that happened.”

Naruko, who had been clearly about to do just that, took a deep breath and visibly attempted to calm herself, her hands pulled anxiously on the jacket Kotaro had made for her. “Okay, so like Obito-sensei and I made for the coast and saw the bridge the guy is building. We did some recon and saw the builder-guy-”

“Tazuna,” Obito inserted.

Naruko bobbed her head. “Tazuna, yeah! The drunk! Anyway, like, he's totally coming back from Kiri with the last of the shipments for the bridge right now! It looked like him and a bunch of workers were unloading barges at the docks!”

Satsuki, who had dropped down from her perch, frowned. “I thought the client had control of the docks on the island?”

Naruko grinned, holding up a finger. “See, that's the thing! The boats came in under a heavy bank of fog. You could barely even see 'em before they landed! Then a bunch of ninja jumped off and started tangling with the guys in uniforms around the docks!”

“What village?” Yakumo asked worriedly, her brows creasing.

“Hidden Mist,” Naruko answered, her glee at knowing a secret fading as she spoke more seriously. “Sensei and I think it was, um... a team of three chunin and a jounin. The three chunin all had these weird red and white masks too, ya know!”

Satsuki blinked, cocking her head as she turned to regard her cousin. “Kiri hunter-nin? What would a squad of those be doing here? Aren't they deployed like ANBU? To capture renegade ninja?”

Obito nodded, taking a sip from his canteen. “Good catch. Yeah, it's unusual. Keep going, Naruko.”

Naruko nodded eagerly, bouncing on her heels. “So it looks like we/ve got about a week to destroy the bridge before it gets finished! Once we confirmed that, Obito and I went around the other side of the island to meet one of uh... Gato's boats. He's like, totally got that yakuza-type feel to him! Like, I can't even! Ugh. Anyway, he was all, 'Just get the job done! I'm paying you, aren't I?' And told us to leave. Total asshole!”

Bright blue eyes turned towards Obito-sensei for approval, the man in question sighing deeply as he reached up to rub at the bridge of his nose. “Let's call that... serviceable and move on to more important things. We got here too late to just attach some explosive seals and take the easy way out. Plus, the client has offered us a bonus if we're able to take the bridge over for him instead of destroying it, but the priority is that Tazuna and the rebel islanders don't keep control of the bridge.”

Satsuki frowned. “Why does he want to control it? Everyone knows big bridges like that are a huge target for enemy ninja. He'd be better off just leveling it and leaving it at that.”

Naruko paused, looking as though she didn't want to admit the Uchiha had a good point. “Yeah, it's weird. Kind of makes you wonder why they're building it at all.”

Obito waved a hand. “It's not too strange. Wave isn't in the center of any major trade lanes, they don't have a hidden village, isn't easy to travel to, and the area at large doesn't have any exploitable resources outside of seafood. A place like this can sometimes get away with major infrastructure projects even without having ninja around to defend them every waking moment.”

Obito paused. “Alternatively, there are a great many civilians who just don't have any idea what ninja are capable of and believe they're the first one to come up with a great idea like building a bridge or rail line or whatever.”

Satsuki grunted uncharitably. “They're idiots, then.”

“Ignorant, not stupid,” Yakumo commented idly, then nodded towards Satsuki. “But, yes, I can see why someone would be inclined to think less than charitably towards a man like this bridge builder. He's endangering the status quo of a shipping company, building a large infrastructure project that is temporary at best, and creating a large target for shinobi, monks, or samurai to take hostage in the event they choose not to destroy it.”

“So... basically exactly what we're here for?” Naruko asked with an amused snort.

“More or less,” Obito nodded, smirking in amusement briefly before sobering. “The presence of the Kiri team complicates matters, especially given their apparent status as hunter-nin. It's possible that their mission is deeper than simply guarding the bridge-builder and his construction project or they might simply be here on a training mission to break them in. They seemed like fairly green chunin if I read them right.”

The encampment was silent for a long moment.

“Are we gonna' fight them?” Naruko asked, the other two girls perking up at the question.

Satsuki hummed, giving Obito room to think things over further. “Open conflict between two teams on village-sanctioned missions should be a last resort. It would be one thing if they were missing-nin themselves, but...”

Obito willfully kept his eyebrows from climbing. It always surprised him when Satsuki spoke up as the voice of reason in situations like this. They'd only been on a few C-Ranks so far; one bandit-clearing, a minor noble wanting a package shipped, and a protection job for a survey crew in the south of the Land of Fire, but each time it seemed like there was an easy avenue for violence, Satsuki had taken the high road.

It was a little bit eerie how level-headed his excitable little cousin had become under Kotaro's guidance.

Something he didn't know whether to thank him for or not, given how powerful his influence on her decision-making paradigm apparently was.

“Eh... if tha' Kiri team is here, isn't this all, like... political, now?” Naruko's question brought him up short, surprising him that he hadn't needed to broach the topic first. Even Satsuki's appraisal of inter-village conflict avoidance was far above what he would consider the skill level of genin to be. Contrary to the understanding of many shinobi, conflicting mission parameters didn't automatically mean you tried to start a fight.

They were ninja, after all. There were multiple ways of achieving an objective.

Naruko continued. “I mean... isn't this like Hidden Mist making a move on Konoha's turf? Since the island is really close to shore and now they'll have a bridge? So couldn't they invade easier or something?”

Yakumo shook her head, fielding the concern. “Not for an invasion, I don't think. But you're right that expanding their influence into the area is a bit worrying, Naruko. This strikes me as some kind of catspaw, distraction, or possibly the construction of a new smuggling route.”

All good guesses, Obito thought, though she had missed the possibility of using the island as a recruitment base. Hidden Mist, while not as small as Hidden Sand, was never the largest of the villages and would always welcome the possibility of a larger population to draw from, even if they were only skilled craftsmen or unskilled labor. The other possibility, and one he thought just as likely, was that they would be using the route to funnel money and supplies to dissident groups within the Land of Fire. Even now, there were still a rare few temples, ronin houses, and ninja clans who remained outside the modern system headed by the daimyo and nobility.

Satsuki grunted. “We need more information.”

Yakumo paused thoughtfully, then nodded. “They aren't going to finish the bridge for almost another week anyway. We have time to do further scouting and planning before we have to act. In theory, we could even wait for the Mist team to just leave. Unless they plan to station more teams here on a rotating basis, the bridge will be just as vulnerable to attack next week or next month as it will be tomorrow.”

Obito made a mental note, once again, to try and squeeze some teaching tips out of that brat Kotaro. It was breathtakingly rare to see a team of green genin actually realize they could wait out a problem. Kids always wanted to take the most expedient course of action, which was seldom the smartest one. From the way Naruko was bouncing on the balls of her feet, he could tell that strategy didn't appeal to her, but she was still contemplating it.

“Naruko, are you good to throw off a dozen shadow clones?” Satsuki asked, her dark eyes flicking over to the blonde bundle of energy.

“You know it!” Naruko grinned, bringing her hands up to-

“Hold on!” Obito called, raising a hand. “Not here, Naruko!”

The Uzumaki princess froze, the hand seal half-made, but dropped her hands with a pout.

Satsuki snorted. “So let's use Naruko's shadow clones and transform them as local fauna like we did for the bandits. We can see what we're dealing with before we act. In the meantime... Yakumo.”

The Kurama heiress perked up.

“Can you set up a painting to make the bridge disappear?”

Yakumo's eyes sparkled, then she grinned. “I'll have to see how big it is, I might need Naruko to provide chakra for it.”

“Hehe, you prolly will,” Naruko grinned, stretching her arms. “It's super fuckin' huge. Like, maybe half the Hokage Monument.”

Yakumo and Satsuki's eyebrows rose as they looked to their teacher for confirmation. Obito chuckled. “She's exaggerating, but not by much.”

Yakumo nodded slowly. “I'll need a big canvas and some time to properly treat it with seals then, but a week is more than enough and I have my supplies with me.”

All three genin paused, then turned to look at their teacher.

Obito huffed a laugh and nodded. “Not bad. Not bad at all. I'll fill you in on some of my thoughts, but it's a workable plan for now. How about we break for dinner?”

~~~

Okay, so I ended up taking Sunday off since it was the last day my brothers were in town and i wanted to do a bit of family stuff with them, so that delayed this getting out a little bit.  Also, um... this one's a lot longer than usual?  So extra content for the wait, woo!

I hope everyone's had a great Valentine's Day in the meantime and I've already started working on the next chapter of Winning Peace.  Hopefully I'll have time this weekend to sneak in a quest update as well, but we'll have to see about that.

Beyond that, though, we're gong to take a step away from Kotaro's shenanigans for a brief moment to do something that every Naruto fic is contractually obliged to cover.

The Wave Arc!

No, wait!  Don't run away, I promise I'll make it interesting!