Chapter 6 - The Hunter-nin's Secret Agenda!

THE HUNTER-NIN’S SECRET AGENDA!

For a couple days, Kakashi was too laid up to teach anything, which meant that the genin were free to do what they wanted. Naruto and Sasuke had been injured slightly, and Sakura convinced them both to take it easy and relax. Ryouko had also been injured, but he didn’t deter his training. Every night, without fail, he had his white scroll in front of him, making notes, corrections, and additions. He extracted his scrolls and worksheet on chakra control and studied that, making rapid notes, muttering if he made a mistake. Ryouko had taken to sitting out on the roof, and became so absorbed he missed meals. One night, Ryouko had taken the time to construct a straw dummy of Zabuza, and used a cut on this thumb to mark certain areas on the straw dummy. Going by the knowledge he had gotten from his own dojo, Ryouko knew pressure points, and what strike went with what point. Something about that hunter-nin bothered Ryouko, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. He was hoping this reconstruction would help. After coming close, but getting nowhere, Ryouko decided to take the dummy to Kakashi-sensei. From there, Ryouko could outline what he knew about pressure points. Kakashi-sensei could probably put his mind at ease.

A second person joined him on the roof. It was Sakura, and she was carrying a plate of rice, dumplings, and some kind of delicious-looking roll.

“Kakashi-sensei says you need to eat, Ryouko. If he’s hurt, we need all the help we can get…” Sakura looked worried, and rightfully so. The last couple days had been trying for her.

“Thank you, Sakura. Sorry if I worried Kakashi-sensei. I’ve just been thinking…something feels off to me…I just can’t figure out what…well, no matter, I should keep training…” Ryouko looked tired; he hadn’t slept in almost a day. Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi needed their rest, and Ryouko was up at night anyway, so he was perfect to keep watch.

“I meant to ask, Ryouko…that scroll of yours- what’s in it? Can I see it?” Sakura questioned, kneeling down next to Ryouko.

“Oh, sure. I’m sure it’s not anything fascinating. Just some notes I’ve taken. I was just adding to my section on the Sharingan…” Ryouko opened the white scroll. It was longer than Sakura had thought, and it didn’t take her long to realize that this wasn’t genin level work.

“Wow, this must have taken a TON of studying!” Sakura exclaimed. Geez, I’m supposed to be the smart one, and I can barely wade through this!

“Yeah. Well, I mean, I kind of threw myself into my training. I left my old dojo, and not under the best circumstances. But I couldn’t do any more there…I feel like I fit in at Konohagakure…” Ryouko smiled serenly. Then he blushed furiously.

“Sorry…I always get nervous around girls…especially kunoichi…” Ryouko muttered shyly. Sakura smiled understandingly.

“Can I ask…how come you’re always alone?” Sakura had been wondering about this.

“Well…I guess it’s because I’m older. And because I’m the new kid on the block. Not that people haven’t been nice, they’ve really been great! But I’m different, I just don’t really fit anywhere. My parents aren’t Shinobi, NONE of my family is, and they don’t get my fascination with this, or the other martial arts I do.”

That made sense to Sakura/ She offered him an empathetic smile.

“My parents don’t get it either. They don’t understand that I’ve got to be a ninja to be with Sasuke.”

Ryouko forced a smile; it was difficult being completely ignored at times. Well, at least she doesn’t hate me. She’s pretty. If she had confidence, she’d easily have Sasuke…or any other guy she wanted. She’s too self-conscious about her forehead. It adds to her charm…that’s not the turn-off to Sasuke. The turnoff is that Sakura doesn’t think she had strength. She does, you can’t be that brilliant and not have some kind of strength. But she doesn’t display it…Must be nice to have a fangirl, huh, Sasuke? Ryouko though, smiling for real. He was fifteen and only really starting to find an interest in girls. But his social awkwardness put the kibosh on a relationship in his mind.

Sakura could also see why Ryouko liked it up here. A view of the ocean, a nice cool breeze on a warm day, and the quiet sounds of life that the ears could just hear. She stood for a few minutes, letting the breeze toss her hair. She couldn’t help but dream a little…what if Sasuke were up here with her?

“Sakura.”

For a moment, Sakura could swear she heard Sasuke’s voice. She sighed audibly.

“Sakura, come on.”

Again, Sasuke’s voice. Sakura looked at Ryouko, who wasn’t saying anything, but had gotten up and rolled up his scroll and taken his straw dummy up.

“Sakura!”

This time, Sakura felt a hand on her shoulder. Her heart nearly stopped. It was Sasuke. Her dream was coming true! If only he would kiss her…

“Sakura, come on, sensei wants to see us.” Sasuke jumped back down off the roof, leaving Sakura alone, and slightly depressed.

So much for that daydream…(sigh)What’s a girl gotta do to get some attention?!

--

Elsewhere, the hunter-nin from the Hidden Mist Village laid down Zabuza’s corpse. Getting out the tools to do the job, the hunter set to work.

“First I’ll cut the wrappings to allow the blood to flow out the mouth, then…!” the hunter stopped. Zabuza sat up!

“I’ll do it myself!” Zabuza reached up to his neck and pulled one senbon out roughly, practically throwing it to earthen floor in the clearing he was lying in.

“Be careful. If you pull those out carelessly, you’re going to kill yourself for real,” said the hunter-nin placidly.

“Just how long do you intend to wear that stupid mask? Take it off!” Zabuza demanded, yanking the other senbon out. “You’ve got all the finesse of a butcher!”

The hunter-nin removed the mask. At first glance, you couldn’t determine the gender of the hunter. Even going by voice, you still couldn’t tell if this…thing…was male or female.

“Sorry. I got attached to the mask. And it served it’s purpose well. You would be dead now if I hadn’t intervened.”

“You didn’t have to hit the neck! There are plenty of other spots that would have worked! You’re a sadistic kid…” Zabuza groused angrily, feeling the strength return his body very slowly.

“You would have complained if I had cut your perfect body, and besides, the neck is a much easier target. Normally, such an attack will leave a person ‘dead’ for a week. But you’re so strong, you recover quickly,” the hunter-nin explained, still holding the porcelain mask.

“You’re so innocent…no doubt that’s why I keep you,” Zabuza mused, smiling slightly. The hunter gave a genuine smile.

“Well, I AM just a child. Look, the mist has lifted…next time, will you be alright?”

Zabuza spoke determinedly. “Next time I’m going to break the Sharingan’s spell!”



At Tazuna’s house, Kakashi was awake, and moving a little bit, but was kept in bed by Tsunami, Tazuna’s daughter. Which was really what he needed. But something kept nagging at him. Something about the way that hunter-nin had acted.

“Kakashi-sensei, you were in ANBU, right?” Ryouko had shown up at Kakashi’s bedside with his ‘Zabuza Scarecrow’, and two senbon.

“That’s right, I was,” Kakashi confirmed, wondering what Ryouko was doing with that straw-filled villain.

“Isn’t there…some kind of pressure points on the neck? I’ve just got this feeling…” Ryouko looked uncomfortable, but, mercifully, Kakashi finished the thought for him.

“I know…Zabuza isn’t dead…I’ve been thinking about it…”

“WHAT?!” Team 7 had rejoined the group, and Naruto had voiced what they were all thinking.

“The way that hunter-nin carried off the body…they don’t normally do that. They obliterate the body where it lay. As I said, a ninja’s body, even a dead one, can reveal many secrets. A corpse is disposed of thoroughly and silently, with no room for error. Which begs the question- why would that hunter-nin go to the trouble of lugging of Zabuza’s body like that?”

“What are you saying, sensei?” Sasuke said/demanded. No way…

“I’m saying…it’s likely that Zabuza is still alive, and that he and that hunter-nin were in cahoots this whole time.”

Silence followed Kakashi’s statement, but the air had become thick with worry. Naruto was even trembling a little bit. To his surprise, so was Sasuke. Sakura was biting her nails. Ryouko was inspecting his straw dummy.

“That kid must have had some incredible skill to his the two points on the neck like that. There’s almost no margin of error…A quarter-inch to the right or left, and Zabuza would have been dead for real…” Ryouko played with the senbon, spinning them between his fingers, before stabbing them back in place. “I think that hunter-nin is going to be attacking with Zabuza next time.”



Later that night, everyone, save for Ryouko, was eating. He didn’t eat as much as the others, so he was finished already, and back to studying. That was when a little boy came in the room. He had been around before, but Team 7 had been too exhausted to notice.

“What are these guys doing here, Grandpa?” the little boy asked, after hugging his grandfather, Tazuna.

“They’re ninja, here to protect me while I finish the bridge,” Tazuna explained.

“Don’t they know they’re going to die?” Inari muttered. Unfortunately, Naruto had heard the mutter.

“WHAT was that, you little brat?! Hero’s never die!” he shouted animatedly, food flying from his mouth. As he pounded the table, a drink spilled, and a chopstick went flying. It plunked Ryouko in the back of the head. After uttering a somewhat-stifled curse and resisting the temptation to throw the chopstick back, Ryouko went back to his studying.

“What are you, stupid?” Inari snarled. “There’s no such thing as a hero. If you don’t want to die, you should leave.”

Tsunami apologized for Inari’s rudeness. “Where are you going, Inari?”

“To look at the sea from my room!” The little boy called back, exiting the room without a backward glance.

--

Naruto slammed down his plate and ran out of the room, intended to give the kid a piece of his mind. When he walked upstairs, murmuring about how rotten the kid was, he heard a small sound. Crying. Silently opening Inari’s door, Naruto saw the small boy crying. He was looking at the sea, and holding a picture of some tough-looking man with a headband made of rope, and a courageous smile. Silently, Naruto backed away from the door, and went back downstairs.



Kakashi nodded, privately agreeing, and forced himself out of bed.

“What are we going to do, Kakashi-sensei?” Sakura wanted to know.

“We’re going to climb trees,” Kakashi answered mysteriously, limping outside with the aid of a crutch, and motioning for the others to follow him outside. The four hiked to a clearing in the nearby woods.

“Climbing trees, huh? What kind of bogus exercise is that?!” Naruto was ranting. Privately, Sakura and Sasuke agreed.

“By itself, it’s pretty useless. But, in this case, you can’t use your hands,” Kakashi informed the group dryly.

“How do we do that, it’s impossible!” Sakura whined, thinking Kakashi had lost more than chakra in that fight. Like brain cells… she thought, eye twitching.

“Really? Huh!” Kakashi began to walk. He walked up to a tree- then UP the tree itself, no hands! He kept walking until he was hanging upside down, staring at the shocked group of genin.

“The key to this is chakra control. It’s a skill difficult to the most skilled Shinobi, but it’s invaluable to those who master it. If you can master control of your chakra, in theory, no jutsu is impossible for you to learn.”

Naruto’s smile widened, and he got his telltale look of excitement.

“Alright, I’ll have this done by breakfast, no sweat!” he declared. Naruto was too busy celebrating to notice Kakashi rolling his eyes. After thoughts of exasperation had danced through his head, Kakashi threw four kunai to the ground, at the feet of the genin.

“Use this to mark your progress. Each time you do the exercise, you should make a mark on the tree with the knife. The more practice you have, the higher you’ll get up on the tree. So, go to it! A running start should help you at first. But keep in mind- tree climbing is one thing, maintaining chakra control in battle is another.”

Naruto and Sasuke were working side by side, and they started at the same time. Like a yin and a yang, these two were complete opposites. When Naruto attempted the exercise, he simply fell off the tree without making a mark, then rolled around comically, clutching his aching head. A welt was already visible.

Sasuke, on the other hand, ran up the tree, but his foot dug in. He back-flipped off the tree and made a mark, but soon came to an understanding.

There’s more to this exercise than meets the eye. If you don’t focus enough chakra, you won’t hold on to the tree, like Naruto. If you focus too much, you dig into the tree and eventually fall…


“Hey, this isn’t so hard!” Sakura shouted down from the tree top, playfully sticking her tongue out.


“Well, well, it seems like Sakura is the closest to becoming Hokage, despite all Naruto’s grandstanding. And she even bested the Uchiha clan’s finest…Ryouko, I can’t insult you, since you haven’t tried yet…”

“Sensei, how could you?! Don’t say things like that!” Sasuke will hate me! Sakura fretted from her perch.

“I’m not sure how you’d make fun of me sensei, hopefully I won’t give you a reason to.” Ryouko took his running start, and ran up the tree. He reached the branch, but his chakra concentration at his feet slipped. Ryouko stabbed the kunai into the tree and hung on with one hand. It was a long way down. Ryouko looked over, seeing Sakura a few feet above him on the adjacent tree.

“Not bad for a first try at all, Ryouko! Almost made it, try again,” Kakashi instructed. Sakura’s got the best chakra control, but the smallest pool of chakra to work with. Sasuke and Ryouko have an even amount of chakra, but Naruto…he has more chakra than me. All four have enough resources of chakra to be sturdy Shinobi. If this exercise goes according to plan, they’ll be able to tap into those resources.


Alright! I’m gonna do this! For starters, I’m going to catch up to Sasuke! Here we go! Naruto started again, getting a little farther, but still failing dismally in his goal to catch Sasuke.


Unbeknownst to any of the genin, Inari was watching from a distance. For some reason, he seemed to be on the verge of tears. In his mind, he saw the man with the rope tied around his head. That hastened the tears, and Inari took off, undetected.



In the forest, in a strange, almost cocoon-shaped house, lay Zabuza. He was still too weak to move much, so the ‘hunter-nin’ sat at his bedside, getting food and water as Zabuza instructed. Soon, the two had company.

“Well, you DID show your face after your humiliating loss!” A short man with a big mane of hair and a little cane touted. This was Gato, the shipping magnate that had hired Zabuza to kill the bridge builder. Flanking him were two samurai flunkies. One was shirtless, and had a muscular, tattooed body, and an eye patch. He was called Waraji. On the other side of Gato was a smaller samurai, wearing what seemed to be a huge, pocketed coat. Atop his head was a knit hat with a long, pointy tip. His name was Zouri. He had the curiosity of being left-handed. Tradition dictated that samurai, when wielding a sword, were right-handed.

Gato continued to tear into Zabuza, who stayed silent. This angered the tiny man even more, and he approached Zabuza’s bedside.

“No last words?!” Gato intended to say more, but his wrist was suddenly being crushed by Zabuza’s ‘hunter-nin’, who apparently also served as his bodyguard.

“Do not contaminate him with your touch!” Zabuza’s companion ordered. That’s when the sound of swords being drawn by clumsy samurai echoed slightly in the cavernous room. The bodyguard turned quickly and somehow grabbed the hands of both samurai.

I didn’t even see the kid move! Zouri thought, struggling against the kid’s powerful grip.

“Doing that while I’m angry is a mistake…” came the threat.

Knowing when to back off, Gato tried to retain a shred of his dignity.

“Don’t fail me again! If you do, don’t even think of coming back here! Consider that your warning!” Gato and his flunkies left after the show of bravado, leaving Zabuza and his companion alone once more.

“Haku…there was no need for you to do that…” Zabuza said groggily. Under his blanket, he was holding a sharp kunai knife.

“I know, but it’s too soon to kill Gato. If you kill him, we’ll be forced to run again,” the bodyguard, now known as “Haku”, gently explained.

“Heh. You’re right,” Zabuza admitted, laying down to get some more rest. He wanted his strength to come back quickly, so he could finish with Kakashi and his pack of scheming rug rats.



Later in the afternoon, three hours after beginning, Sakura sat back to watch the others try to figure out the exercise. Ryouko seemed the closest. At one point, when he was out of breath, he had reached into one of his makimono (scroll) pouches, and extracted a diagram about chakra control. Sakura noticed it was one Iruka-sensei had shown to her once. After reading it, Ryouko seemed ready to try again. He nodded to himself, muttering some instruction from the sheet, and took off. This time, he reached the branch he was supposed to hit- but he kept going, straight to the top of the tree. He stood up and gazed out across the landscape. This was mostly to catch his breath. He leapt back down, landing in a crouching position, breathing heavily, but not panting.

Sakura kind of smiled. The boys have so much energy…man, I’m tired!

“Good work!” Kakashi offered. Ryouko nodded his thanks. He sat down against his tree and opened up two scrolls, one he had borrowed, and his own white scroll, which he was making fervent notes in about chakra control.

Sakura watched Naruto fail once more, and her smile broadened. He’s so predictable. Now he’s going to throw a tantrum and quit, just like a little baby!

Naruto appeared to be doing just that. “Darn it!” he said, stifling a curse. But, to Sakura’s surprise, he didn’t throw a tantrum. Instead, he walked over to her and crouched beside her.

“Hey, Sakura, can you give me some tips?” he asked in a whisper.

Kakashi didn’t smile, but he WAS proud of Naruto. Naruto’s growing up, in terms of skill and height. I wonder how strong he’ll be? If he only knew that his potential surpasses Sasuke’s, and even mine…

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