Chapter 49

Needless to say, I was trembling from the encounter for several hours afterwards and compulsively checking the room for traps. I could tell it upset Nagato, but every few minutes I had to check both of us for Genjutsu. I knew part of it was psychosis from the lack of sleep, but even though Nagato tried to make me settle down, he even set up extremely dangerous security seals to ease my mind, I couldn't rest, nor would I allow him to move out of arm's reach.

It wasn't fair to Nagato that I couldn't cooperate with him. He begged, pleaded, argued, and cried himself to exhaustion, before finally threatening to knock me out if I refused to calm down. Shortly after, he managed to stick a paralysis seal on the back of my elbow without me noticing. I bonelessly collapsed back onto the bed and Nagato raced to retrieve my medic pouch and emptied it, sifting through the contents until he found one of the sedatives I carried and forced the pill down my throat. When the sedative started to have an effect, Nagato removed the paralysis tag.

For the average kid my size and weight, it was the correct dose to knock them out. For an Uzumaki Jinchuuriki, it was barely enough to calm me down, and would wear off within the hour.

I stopped jumping up to redo security sweeps every few minutes and Nagato was able to persuade me that no Genjutsu could have escaped the repeated, detailed checks. Either someone had told Nagato how to handle a person like me panicking, or he knew me better than I thought, which was frightening. He had me sharpen every blade in the room, clean and oil my bokken and sticks at least three times, pack and unpack my medic pouch several dozen times, repair several tears in my ANBU and Chuunin uniform, then the even more numerous tears in his uniforms, itemize everything we owned in the room, then organize it by frequency of use before repacking it, and practice putting on and taking off my ANBU armor, among several other things.

When I was calm enough to remain sitting in the bed to continue packing and unpacking my medic pouch without prompting, Nagato laid his head in my lap and watched. "What are those?" He asked suddenly.

"What are what?"

He lifted his head and picked up a spiral-bound notebook with a triangle drawn on the front. Originally, there were about a hundred pages in it, but several had been torn out.

"Those are bandages."

"But you heal everything with chakra!"

"When I have time, yes, and normally, I have time, but if I'm in the middle of a battle, then I might not, so I bandage it so they can either continue fighting or get to a medic that has the time to heal the injury."

"Why is it labelled with a triangle?"

"It's the shape of the bandage."

"That seems silly."

I rolled my eyes and opened the book to reveal a small storage seal filling up the first page. I unsealed one of the bandages, fingering the stiff fabric. "I bet I can wrap anything you can name with this. Pick a non-lethal injury someone can get on the battlefield that would require treatment."

Nagato smirked. "A busted knee."

"Severity?"

Nagato thought for a moment. "Compound fracture, the joint destroyed."

"Gimme your knee."

Nagato smirked and sat up, sticking his foot in my face. He winced as I wrapped his knee in less than thirty seconds.

"If you busted up you knee, no matter how badly, as long as it was still there, obviously, you'd be able to make it off the field with this." I untied the bandage. "Next."

"Stab wound, shoulder."

I pulled him into a sitting position and in even less time wrapped his shoulder. "You could go back to battle, though I wouldn't advise it." I untied the bandage. "Next."

The cycle continued with me bandaging every injury he could think of, some were exceptionally creative, until Nagato released a jaw-cracking yawn that amazed me.

"It's time for you to go to sleep," I announced.

"Not until you do too," Nagato snapped.

"I've been trained to stay up for nearly a week on end with minimal loss in cognitive function and—"

"I don't care."

I sighed and repacked the medic pouch, tying the bandage around Nagato's head like a bandanna before he could stop me. As exhausted as he was, it wasn't difficult, but he escaped as soon as I finished. I doubted he slept much the night before. "I'll be fine going without sleep, you won't."

"Please stop trying to reassure me. I don't wanna have to be taken care of anymore!"

"Nagato—" I reached out to grab his shoulder, but he slapped my hand away.

"I don't wanna be the one who has to be protected."

"You've got a bit of growing up to do before that happens."

"I don't want—"

"You want to be a shinobi, fine." I interrupted sharply. "You want to protect people, fine. All of that takes time, Nagato. You're six years old and whether you like it or not, there's not much you can do."

"I want to do something!"

"I'll tell you what, you go to sleep and I'll wake you up early and we can go to the training ground and I'll teach you anything you want to learn as long as its within my capabilities, okay?"

"You have to sleep too!"

I sighed. "It's not that simple, but I'll try." I set the medic pouch on the floor beside the bed and flopped down on my back rubbing my face. "Since you're the only one that can touch those seals, go turn the light off."

"Can we leave the light on?" Nagato asked in a small voice. He wasn't afraid of the dark, but he was six years old. When I was six, I slept with the lights on whenever I had a bad day.

"Sure, Nagato," I murmured, not moving as I stared up at the underside of Roach's bed.

(-_-)

I spent the entire night with Nagato using my stomach as a pillow and trying to decipher the security seals he had stuck to the bed above us. Several times, I dozed briefly, but woke with an unpleasant jerk. Six hours later, I prodded Nagato until he woke up. "It's almost six in the morning," I told him when he blearily opened his eyes. "Do you still want to go train?"

Nagato jumped up, fully alert before I finished the sentence. "Yes, please!"

The security seals fell a few seconds later. Within three minutes, Nagato was ready to go.

"Come on, Nii-san!"

I had barely managed to put on half my armor.

"Breakfast is at seven, so if we hurry, we'll have an entire hour for you to teach me cool stuff! Come on! Hurry!"

"Easy, Nagato, there's no use wasting your energy."

"You're talking like an old man."

"I am not old!" I snapped. Physically, I was only eleven. Mentally, I was sure I was somewhere between thirty-three and thirty-five. That was most certainly not old. I finished putting on my armor and carefully attached my sticks to the small of my back.

"Then hurry up! I want you to teach me that cool Taijutsu move where you spin and end up behind you opponent and then you go wham and knock them unconscious from behind!"

"You have to be more specific, I know a lot of moves like that."

"The one where you don't stop spinning and no one can hit you."

"That's an entire Taijutsu style, not a move. How do you know about that anyways?"

"Sensei told me that I had to ask you or Sakumo if I wanted to learn it because he didn't know it. He doesn't know many water jutsus either."

"I see." I secured my medic pouch beneath my sticks and then my senbon on my thigh.

"Are you going to teach me?" Nagato begged.

"Be patient." I finally strapped the bokken to the center of my back and my miscellaneous supply pouch to the back of my left hip. "Now, I'm ready."

Nagato cheered and grabbed my wrist, dragging me out the door and through the halls at a surprising speed until we reached the training ground. "Teach me, teach me!" Nagato chanted.

"Alright, alright. Calm down. You're asking me to teach you an entire Taijutsu style, this is going to take time, understand? Probably months."

Nagato nodded.

"Good. Let me ask you, have you ever tried to slash a leaf out of the air?" I picked up a small deciduous leaf from the ground and tossed it in the air, handing Nagato the bokken and backing away. "Try and knock it out of the air."

Nagato swung at the leaf, but the air current around the bokken caused the leaf to twist around the wooden training blade. He frowned and tried until the leaf hit the ground.

"It's much harder than it sounds. This Taijutsu style was based off that and it's extremely effective when you're unarmed or facing someone with a longer blade or is physically bigger than you. In theory, if your opponent can't touch you, your opponent can't win. It's called the Spinning Leaf and not very offensive, but you can easily make up for that with Ninjutsu. What Taijutsu style do you already know?"

"Kushina taught me the Uzumaki style and Sensei taught me the Academy style and he's trying to teach me something called Gōken, but I don't like it."

I frowned. Sakumo taught me the style but recommended that I shouldn't use it, mostly because it required more strength and physical power than I would likely ever have. "Well, both of those are aggressive styles and are extremely different than this one, so you'll be starting from scratch. The quickest way to learn how a style is supposed to work is to fight it. Just to be clear, this is for learning purposes only, so it's not about the fight, it's about the style." I settled into the starting stance. "Whenever you're ready."

The boy wasted no time in attacking, carefully analyzing my movements. I let him set the speed of the fight, even letting him land several hits through weak points in the style, unfortunately, said hits were the necessary sacrifice to let me spin behind him and strike his back in four different places that sent him to his knees gasping for breath, even though I was only at a quarter of my full speed and strength. I tapped his neck with a kunai before backing away a few steps to let him recover.

"Don't you get dizzy?" Nagato whined, standing up and rolling his shoulders.

"No."

"I still feel dizzy just watching."

"That's the point." I let him test the limits until I had used the main katas against him. "Now you have a feel for what it's supposed to look like, are you ready to start learning for yourself?"

He nodded and I demonstrated the starting position. Nagato mimicked me as I walked through the kata. His stances were extremely rough, but it was much easier to teach the finer points when he already knew the basics. Maybe I was just aping Sakumo's style of teaching.

The warm-up spar had taken about ten minutes, so I spent the next forty teaching and correcting the first kata. Nagato picked it up impossibly quickly, and the last ten minutes were entirely focused on making his muscles memorize it, not just his brain. In the last two minutes, Nagato's sensei appeared behind me.

Even though I was in control of myself, I had not calmed down from the encounter with Madara. The second I registered a presence behind me, I pulled my sticks out faster than I knew I could and attacked. A cane intercepted the strikes, but I was already ducking underneath a strike I thought was coming and sweeping at the stalker's legs. The man, unbalanced by the fact he only had one leg, fell hard on his butt and I pinned him, my hand around his throat. I barely managed to pull back what would have been a killing blow as I recognized him.

"Easy, kid, I'm not going to hurt you," he placated. I took special care in confirming his chakra signature before helping him up.

"Sorry," I forced out, obviously unrepentant.

"My bad," he responded, smirking. "I ought to know better than to sneak up on a shinobi, even one reputed to be as soft as you."

"Sensei!" Nagato interrupted my smart response. "Did you see Nii-san teaching me? Did you? Did you? He's the best Nii-san ever! Much better than Kushina-chan. She's a mean teacher, always whacking me on the head, but Nii-san is awesome! I almost got that Taijutsu I was asking you about!"

"One kata is not an entire style, Nagato," I interrupted, but Nagato ignored me, animatedly acting out his story.

"Earlier, he showed me how it was supposed to look and he was all whoosh! And then bam! Bam! And even though he was going really slow, I didn't even see—"

His sensei stuffed a ration bar in Nagato's mouth. "Yes, I've been watching this entire time. Good job, both of you." He handed me two ration bars. "I don't believe we've been formally introduced. I'm Matsushita Katashi, formerly known as Mouse. Most recruits call me Shita-sensei. I would like to officially thank you for beginning the program to incorporate the retired forces into teaching roles, Kichiro-kun."

"You're welcome," I responded and shook his hand. He gestured for us all to sit, and I did so before beginning to inhale the ration bars.

"There are a lot of rumors about you. How many of them are true?"

I paused halfway through the first ration. "I'm not entirely familiar with the rumors you're talking about."

"My personal favorite is that you are sent by Inari and here for some ambiguous purpose that can't be decided on."

I choked and barely managed to swallow before I started coughing. "There is no way to respond to that without offending or terrifying someone, so I won't share my opinion on the matter."

"The most popular one is that you're the reincarnation of the Sage of Six Paths."

I made the mistake of taking a bite out of the second ration before he finished the statement. Nagato pounded on my back as I choked again. "That one, I assure you, is false."

"Then you are a reincarnation of the Shodai."

"Also false." I swallowed the last of the rations.

"Are you the Kyuubi hell-bent on destroying us?"

I winced. "No, we are two separate entities."

"What about the most likely: you're a man who is reborn as an infant every time he dies."

"You're going to keep asking until you figure it out, aren't you?"

"You're a smart one." He smirked.

"You made a bet, didn't you?"

He was at least moderately surprised. "There is a bet. I abstained."

"And how many people are watching right now?"

"About thirty or so."

A collective groan came from the nearest wall. A crowd of people emerged from beneath a Genjutsu.

"What was the bet?"

"Everyone except Hatake bet in their favorite theory. He bet that you would figure out the ruse before the rumors could be confirmed."

"Exactly how much did he win?"

Nagato's sensei winced. "Enough money and favors to last him the rest of his life."

"Almost all of ANBU now owes him something, don't they?"

"Yes, but it's not the first time."

I turned to the freshly revealed group. "Good to know someone in this godforsaken world has a brain instead of a rock in their head. Just because I don't relish destruction doesn't mean I'm incompetent."

Matsushita winced. I stood up sharply.

"Thanks for the food." I marched away.

"Nii-san is the best ninja ever!" Nagato announced, angry. I was surprised he had understood the implications of the conversation. "You're supposed to be his comrades, but you're just—"

"Leave it, Nagato," I snapped before slamming the door behind me, only to find my path blocked by Sakumo. I tried to step around him, but he held out a hand to stop me.

"You're supposed to be training."

"Apparently, I'm an incompetent fool who can't be trusted to see through a basic deception tactic. Why should I train when I'm never going to go out in the field again?"

"Plenty of bets have been made on this topic before, Kichiro."

I turned on my heel and tried to walk in the opposite direction, but Sakumo grabbed the back of my armor. The second his hand touched me, I spun and attempted to strike the back of his elbow. He caught my wrist without a problem.

"This isn't about the bet. Something happened."

"What makes you come to that conclusion?"

"Normally, you'd be demanding a cut of the winnings and you would never try and attack me outside of a spar, not even to make a point."

"Let me go."

"All of ANBU have explicit orders not to harass you after you almost lost control in the spar with Kyo."

I scowled.

"Kichiro?"

I didn't know why I wasn't telling Sakumo about Madara's visit. "I want to go home."

"That's not the problem either."

The door slammed open and Nagato ran out, crying into his hands. "Nagato," I breathed. Sakumo released me and I ran forward to kneel in front of him. "It's alright," I murmured as Nagato buried his face in my shoulder and hugged me tightly. I quietly reassured him for the next minute until the crying eased.

"They're all a bunch of traitors!" Nagato said into my shoulder. "They said you were going to go crazy and die and they would relish putting you down like an animal." That escalated impossibly quickly, it had barely been two minutes since I stormed out.

"I'm not gonna die, Nagato, I promise."

"If they had a say in it, you would already be dead."

"Well, they don't have a say in it."

"But—"

"They're just scared, okay?"

"They're still—"

"I know, it's no excuse, but that's how people are. It's going to be alright."

Nagato hiccupped, but after a minute, nodded. He pulled away, rubbing his eyes. I gently dried his face of tears.

A knot of cold fury coiled in my stomach as I noticed the beginning of a bruise on Nagato's temple. That bruise wasn't from me. I was careful not to allow any expression to show on my face as I pulled off my glove and healed it. When we were sparring earlier, I had landed several hits, but none were strong enough to leave a mark, only cause pain.

"Feeling better now?"

He nodded.

"Glad to hear it," Sakumo snapped. "Both of you, get in here."

Nagato winced and I stood to obey. I didn't miss the way he took up a position off my left shoulder as if he was expecting a fight.