7In regards to a review I received via PM, I have something to address that may have caused some confusion.
Most Kunoichi are still capable of missions or other duties for the first part of pregnancy. In the life of a shinobi, when the pregnancy reaches six months, women are generally discouraged from performing heavy work, and thus may be put on leave for the final portions of their pregnancy, which is what happened in chapter 2.
I hope this clears up any confusion, and hope you enjoy this story.
Chapter 3: The Battle, Recovering, and Returning Home
The morning of the fifth day after Kakashi's arrival in the Land of Waves was a fairly normal one. Kakashi had stayed behind at Tazuna's house with Naruto, while Shin had taken Sasuke and Sakura to the bridge along with their client. Things changed from normal to bad quickly.
The bridge was shrouded in heavy fog, and many of the workers lay unconscious on the ground. Shin detected a faint smell, but couldn't put his finger on it. Apparently, Sasuke had picked it up too, and his hand drifted towards his holstered kunai.
"Sakura, stick close to Tazuna," Sasuke took the lead. She did so, drawing a kunai and focusing her ears on their surroundings as they walked farther onto the bridge. Sasuke held up a fist, signaling a stop. Looking ahead, he spotted two shapes approaching in the mist.
"Well, three out of four today? Some luck, 'eh Haku?" Zabuza laughed. "Gato agreed to pay double my fee, boy. That's a lot of money to take out both your team and the bridge builder. I think I'll have some fun playing with you first, Takashiro. Haku, you take the one with the black hair first. He looks like the bigger threat of the two tykes."
"Hai, Zabuza-sama," the highly effeminate boy replied, before closing in on Sasuke. After several clashes between them, Haku slowly lured the Uchiha further from his companions.
"Well, looks like they're having quite the time. What say we start our own fight?" Zabuza voiced just before he charged at Shin, who ducked under the swing of Zabuza's sword and lashed out with a vicious kick.
Zabuza hopped over the kick, and Shin took the chance to jump back, away from Zabuza. During his brief respite, he drew his tanto from within his cloak, and braced it in a reversed grip against his forearm. When Zabuza closed again, steel met steel, sending sparks flying as the two Jonin sprung away for a second time.
"Huh, never took you for a swordsman. That thing just for show, or are you actually any good with that toy?" Zabuza taunted. Shin's cringe caused him to chuckle and close in again.
Shin wasn't going to be able to play Zabuza's game, not if he wanted to see his family again, so he jumped onto the flat of the giant blade as his opponent swung at him, and used it as a platform to jump over the former Kiri ninja. Landing in a crouch, Shin stabbed behind him with as much force as he dared use this early in the fight, and was rewarded with the satisfying, and surprising, sound of his blade meeting flesh.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a wound that would impair his sword wielding opponent, and Shin was forced to roll away from Zabuza or risk being struck by the heavy blade his opponent was using.
Zabuza's muffled curses at Shin's luck brought him a slight smile, but that lasted only a moment before he was once again evading the swings of the sword for all he was worth.
That lasted until Naruto and Kakashi arrived, and Naruto leapt in to help Sasuke, who was trapped in a dome of icy mirrors, courtesy of Haku. Kakashi went to help Shin fight off Zabuza, who was running Shin towards the limits of his endurance.
Kakashi's Sharingan led to Zabuza using the Kirigakure no Jutsu, shrouding the bridge in mist to the point where you could hardly see five feet to the front. After Kakashi took a hit from Zabuza's blade protecting their client, the Jonin felt the ominous chakra of an enraged beast, which caused all three to look in that direction briefly.
"You know, I really don't think we should keep playing around," Shin spoke as he sheathed his tanto. "What do you say to one last jutsu, finish this now?"
Zabuza paused in contemplation. "Hmm? Just one jutsu? You're giving up so soon?" he barked a laugh. "Come, you must certainly have better than that in you!" He took up his blade and charged, only to be met with several hounds erupting from the ground to bite him, courtesy of Kakashi.
"I'd rather not kill myself from exhaustion, thank you," Shin bit back sharply. The air around him sizzled audibly, and sparks began to gather in his hands. "This particular jutsu is a nasty one. It likes to chain between targets, when it has multiple, though that'll lessen the impact that each one takes."
Zabuza's eyes widened in realization and shock. "The Lightning Eel. You have enough chakra left to do that?" he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.
"Barely. I'm not sure I still have enough to kill you with it, actually," Shin admitted. "Though I doubt you'd be able to do much of anything anyway."
"Feh. You've earned your win. Finish it then, I don't like these miserable dogs anyways," he coughed out.
Shin nodded to Kakashi, who released his technique. As Shin unleashed his own jutsu, a blur of motion appeared right before Zabuza, taking the eel-like bolt of electricity in full force. The jutsu wrapped around the boy and struck Zabuza as well, their screams of agony short-lived as they collapsed shortly before Shin fell to his knees in exhaustion.
Zabuza's airy laugh caught Shin's attention, and he looked up to see the mist dispersing, and Naruto running their way. "Heh, good job, Haku," Zabuza wheezed, clinging to consciousness.
"After all he does for you, you only see him as a tool?" Naruto shouted, his emotions overpowering his reasoning.
"Shut up, kid. Haku's too kind to kill. Broke his heart to fight you after that day," Zabuza whispered, too quietly for Shin to clearly make out what he was saying. "He told me about your meeting in the forest. Too bad, really. You two might have gotten along bet-" whatever Zabuza was saying was interrupted by a harsh wheeze, and a new voice.
"Well, what do we have here? Looks like you're just about dead already. 'Demon of the Mist,' heh, what a joke. More like a 'baby demon.'" Roaring laughter erupted from the band of thugs behind the short man.
"Gato," Zabuza struggled to say. "What are you doing here? Why all those thugs?"
"I never intended to pay you double, you gullible fool. In fact, I never intended to pay you at all," Gato smirked. "I was simply going to let the two sides fight it out and then kill whoever was left in their weakened state after the fight was over." More laughter and jeers followed this statement.
Shin noticed Naruto growling in rage, and he would have sworn that the boy had red chakra surrounding him, had he not been so tired. Sakura had extracted the senbon from the quite alive, and now conscious Sasuke, and was supporting him as they walked towards their tired sensei.
Kakashi stepped in front of Naruto, surprising the boy and Shin saw the red chakra disappear. "Yes, well I apologize for having to disappoint you then, Gato," Kakashi spoke up. "You see, I'm still fairly fresh, and this boy here has a bit of steam that needs to be worked off."
Gato blanched as Kakashi pulled out a kunai, and Naruto did the same. "Well, what are you waiting for? Kill them!" he screamed, as he ran for cover behind his thugs.
Gato's thugs, now motivated, raised their weapons and charged. Kakashi and Naruto turned to look at each other, then they shrugged and leapt into the midst of the thugs, kunai glinting in the morning sun. The spattering of blood covered the ground like a mural when the thugs finally backed off to regroup their numbers. This ended up being a moot point, however, when a staccato 'twang', followed by a whistling and a soft 'thud' brought all eyes to Gato's figure.
There, embedded in the crime lord's heart, they could see clearly the feathers of a crossbow bolt. Gato staggered back, clutching at his chest. He teetered on the edge for quite some time, for a man hit with a crossbow at least, before finally falling over the edge.
The eruption of cheering behind them was revealed to be the villagers, all clad in some form of makeshift armor. The thugs, however, were less than disheartened.
"You guys just killed our meal ticket!" one shouted. "Yeah! All that's left for us now is to go and plunder to our hearts' content, since there's no one to tell us to hold back any longer. Let's go, boys!" Another shouted, and led the charge towards the villagers, their eyes full of nothing but madness and thoughts of base desires.
"Art of the Shadow Doppelganger." Naruto muttered, and four more of himself popped into existence.
'Nice one, Naruto,' Kakashi thought. "Art of the Shadow Doppelganger - Kakashi Style," He intoned, creating eight copies of himself.
The sight of eight additional instances of Kakashi was the breaking point for the thugs. They panicked, turned, and ran away, piling onto the boat in such a hurry that the majority of those left fell into the water and drowned.
Shin never saw Gato fall, having closed his eyes at the beginning of the charge, content that Kakashi would be able to handle it. He only found out later, when he woke back at Tazuna's house. Kakashi had used his clones to help carry him back, along with the comatose Haku and Zabuza, the latter of which had slipped into unconsciousness during Kakashi and Naruto's fight with Gato's thugs. When asked, Kakashi had simply stated that it was Shin's decision what to do with them, not his own.
Sasuke was still in recovery, and the bridge was still incomplete at that point, so Shin decided it would be best to stick around until the bridge was finished and then leave, as per his original plan. Kakashi had taken over providing security for the bridge, and Shin was left to train his genin team. Shin had a bit of a shock the first time he saw Sasuke's Sharingan active, and after a bit of prodding, Sasuke admitted to having awoken it during the battle with Haku.
Sakura had been rather discouraged after seeing what the fighting was like, and had approached her sensei early one afternoon, asking what he thought of her progress. Shin had encouraged her to work on physical exercise and chakra control, to improve on her low stamina and reserves. The pinkette had taken his suggestion to eat more with a grain of salt, until Shin told her that she should check out a book on nutritional values and the needs of the body for effective shinobi from the library if she didn't believe him.
Sakura's entire thought process had come to a screeching halt, having to reprocess what she'd just been told compared to what she'd been hearing from most of her friends from the academy. Deciding that she'd try what sensei was telling her, she nodded and headed off to practice her control exercises.
Naruto, on the other hand, was a bit of a mess. Shin had found him sitting on the end of the small dock at Tazuna's house in the middle of the night, with his head in his hands. Sitting down beside the Uzumaki boy, he placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. "My first kill had me feeling the same way you're feeling. It's good that you feel bad about killing. It means you're still human."
"I feel like a monster. It's not right, taking away a life," Naruto mumbled.
"If you can get away with not killing someone, while being certain they aren't a threat anymore, then not killing them can be a better option at times. It takes more skill and finesse to not kill someone, but what that boy Haku did to Sasuke was just as effective as killing him would have been," Shin admitted. "The thing you need to be careful of is feeling nothing about killing an opponent. Even the most experienced shinobi feel something when they take away a life. They just have their ways of coping with it. I use my sketches as a way to cope. Kakashi has his books, which I want you to stay away from until you're older. Some ninja develop perverted tendencies, some gamble, and some drink heavily."
"So you're saying that it's okay to kill?" Naruto asked.
Shin sighed. "A shinobi's job is to kill if the client asks us to kill someone. That doesn't mean it's right, to kill just anyone. We only kill when it is necessary, and only those we have to. The number of kills I have made is relatively high, but that is because we were at war at the time." After almost a minute of silence, he added, "I still have nightmares about my first kill, you know. It was another shinobi, and at the time, I couldn't think. In a war, or a battle between more experienced shinobi, if you think, you're dead. Everything has to be instant, because your opponent will not give you time to do otherwise."
"But what about after?"
"After, you will have time to reflect, and feel sorrow, regret, shame, fear, and whatever else. A kill should never be a happy feeling. The only thing to be glad about is that you and your comrades survive to see the sun rise one more day. Because that's what our way of life is. Live each day as it comes," Shin said to him softly.
"And what about being a tool? Was he right about that?" Naruto asked after a short pause.
"Yes, and no. While we are tools for our superiors to use, we are not machines. We can refuse to follow immoral or inexcusable directives, though that is usually at great cost to ourselves. We have a duty to protect our nation and our homes, and if that requires that we throw away our lives to do so, then we will do that. But we will always have our own desires, feelings, and dreams." Shin stood, "Come on, let's go back inside. It's getting towards morning."
-x-x-x-
It was nearly a full week later that the bridge was finally finished and they could head back to Konoha. Kakashi had gone on ahead with the comatose bodies of Zabuza and Haku, along with a letter from Shin to Hokage-sama explaining the details, so that Team Seven wouldn't be burdened down with the additional weight on their return journey.
After a tearful farewell, and the naming of 'The Great Naruto Bridge', Team Seven started their trip home. The first night of the trip, the three genin were introduced to the world of paperwork in the form of mission reports.
"These are only filled out by an entire team when the mission encounters complications, like this one did," Takashiro-sensei told them. "Normally, only the team leader has to file one for missions outside the village, and rarely do genin ever fill them out. You won't have to turn in your reports for the village's records, you'll be turning them in with me. I'm having you do this because I think you could use the introduction to it, even if it is a pain to do. I'll answer any questions you have regarding these reports, because you don't need the experience of having to struggle through them just yet."
After five minutes, all three genin were regarding the things with disgust and Naruto had almost gotten his half-finished report incinerated within the campfire, if it hadn't been for a last moment save by Sasuke. They had all finished theirs by the end of the third night, and Naruto had vowed to forever ban such an affront to ninja when he became Hokage. Shin didn't have the heart to tell him that these were easy compared to what the Hokage dealt with on a daily basis.
When they finally arrived back in Konoha on the fourth day of traveling, they had been gone for nearly a month. Shin dismissed the three with a wave, and headed off to turn in his own paperwork to the Hokage.
Naruto had almost immediately charged off to the Ichiraku Noodle Bar, having not been there since they had left Konoha for their last mission. The Ichiraku's were delighted to see Naruto again, and listened eagerly to his, perhaps over embellished, tale of what he had done on his mission with delighted smiles.
Sasuke had headed directly home, put away his travel gear, and collapsed onto his own bed. He simply was glad that there was nothing he had to do, and that he could once again relish the feel of a real bed, rather than the ground.
Sakura was the only one who had a destination in mind, and something to do. She headed to the library, as her sensei had suggested to her, and pulled out a scroll about the nutritional needs of young ninja. She was surprised to discover that what she needed most was to eat more, and spend less time on her image. The time she spent getting ready was time lost building her reserves, and her lack of nutrition caused her body to suffer a lack of energy that could be used to keep going longer.
Most shocking, however, was that not eating caused her mind to suffer from the lack of energy, and thus misinterpret what her body was trying to tell her. According to the scroll, this downward spiral was the reason many young women failed to adapt to the shinobi lifestyle, and led to their failure to become a kunoichi, or their early demise in the shinobi world.
Sakura vowed that she would admit to herself that she had been wrong, and left the library to head home where she could reflect on what she had just learned.
-x-x-x-
"Hokage-sama," Shin greeted as he was admitted by Hiruzen's secretary.
"Ah, Takashiro-san. You've returned. I hope the trip back was pleasant?" Sarutobi returned the greeting.
"It was. I take it you've already heard from Kakashi then?" Shin remarked. "I have a few things that I didn't want to include in the written report, in case it was intercepted. It concerns Naruto."
Sarutobi set down his pen, and activated the intercom. "Move my appointments back if I'm not finished here by the time the next one arrives. I would like to not be interrupted," he informed his secretary.
Upon receiving the affirmative, he released the intercom switch, and turned to face Shin. "I take it this concerns his tenant then?" When Shin nodded, he sighed. "Alright. What happened? You can have as much time as is needed to tell me the situation at this point."
Shin squared his shoulders, and went into a more formal tone. "During the battle, with Sasuke and Naruto going up against Haku, the boy brought back along with Momochi Zabuza, Sasuke was placed in a death-like state. Haku, likely seeking to unnerve Naruto, spoke as if he had truly killed Sasuke, which led to Naruto becoming enraged. I was engaged with Zabuza at this time, and as such I was unable to see what happened directly, but I know I felt the Kyuubi's chakra. From what I heard from Naruto, he ended up punching Haku through one of the boy's ice mirrors, and he really only remembers a red haze until he stopped his fist from very nearly turning his opponent's head into a bloody smear on the concrete. When I checked the seal, it was perfectly fine. I suspect that he will not remember how he even accessed it, and will not seek it out intentionally at this point, unless something drastic should happen to someone he cares about."
How Shin had spoken that entire thing without pausing for breath, Hiruzen doubted he'd ever know. "Your report is in short, saying that there is no danger of the seal weakening at this time, correct?" he asked in clarification.
"That is correct, Hokage-sama."
"Very well. Then this upgraded C-ranked mission is successfully accomplished by Team Seven." The Hokage pulled out a small scroll and signed off the mission completion, then handed the scroll to Shin. "There is also the matter of the exams in a little more than a month's time," Sarutobi spoke before Shin could turn to leave. "There will be a general meeting soon, and I want you to be there. Will you be nominating your team for the exams?"
Shin paused. "I believe they are ready for the exam, but I cannot say that they will pass it this time. I don't know if they will be able to handle the stress of the back-to-back tests, without some warning. Considering what they just went through, however, they are probably as ready as they will be."
"Very well. I'll mark the roster for them taking the exams," Hiruzen told him. "The records for this mission will read as a C-ranked mission, even though it was more likely in truth a B-ranked one. You may go now, I have paperwork to finish."
Shin bowed, and slipped out of the office.
And that's Chapter 3 for you. I hope you all enjoyed it, and I look forward to seeing more reviews from my readers. I mean, seriously? Two reviews per chapter? I know more people are reading my story than that. I want to hear what you all think. Your feedback is what keeps me writing.
-Sieben, out.