Chapter 55

I finished about twenty minutes before Nagato. Rat was in the cafeteria to pick up our tests.

For the next two months, Nagato and I never left headquarters. For most of that time, it was almost eerie how empty the place was. Even so, on my days as a medic, I had enough people to fill up the entire day. I barely passed the test to make ANBU and continued the thrice-weekly stealth sessions.

Nagato advanced faster than I anticipated. I started him out on a routine similar to what Sakumo used to train me. We started about an hour before sunrise with flexibility and strength exercises, both of which Nagato struggled with. After three hours, we worked exclusively on balance. Nagato had none whatsoever. After the first day, I replaced the slackline with a metal pole on the grass. It took him almost three months to stop rolling his ankle several times a day and breaking his wrist at least once a week. Unless he severely injured himself, I didn't heal anything until the end of the exercise. After five months, I had him try the slackline again, and he was moderately successful.

I made him work on balance every day until he got too frustrated to continue. Normally, he lasted about two hours. We'd stop for a quick, late breakfast, then moved on to training his reflexes and speed. As long as he was concentrating, I eventually figured out that he could track most Jōnin at full speed, though he couldn't move as fast as he wanted. By the middle of the third month, he could beat me in sprints, without chakra assistance, and speed training became an exercise for both of us.

Around noon, we stopped for lunch and spent the afternoon working on actual skills. For the first two weeks, I worked almost exclusively on getting him to a point where he could pass the thrown weapons test. When I tested him after those two weeks, he scored a six-point-eight.

After that, I limited weapons down to an hour and started teaching him Taijutsu katas for two hours. The rest of the time until dinner was spent on chakra control. Since our affinities were different, Nagato practiced Ninjutsu with another agent on the days I worked as a medic. After dinner until twenty-one-hundred hours, I worked with Nagato on other skills, like stealth, survival, sensing, and other skills that were useful but didn't have a place under the other categories.

Three times a week, I met with a man who refused to give his name. He taught me advanced stealth and how to operate without being noticed at all, as well as helped me start noticing people who were trying to hide. Headquarters was a lot less empty when I started to apply those lessons. By the time I took the ANBU test, Nagato almost never noticed my ambushes until it was too late—but it didn't take long for him to improve. On Wednesdays, Nagato joined the group training with the other young ANBU, and I occasionally did as well on the days I didn't have medic work. On those days. we spent the afternoons on teamwork and the evenings getting to know the other ANBU agents. After the first three months, Nagato and I could consistently win against the twins, but it didn't mean much considering they were slated for infiltration work, not combat. It took another two months for us to be able to hold our own against the rest of the young agents, though we still lost most of the time.

At the end of the first five months, I intensified the exercises. On the days I didn't work with the strange man on stealth and sensing, I spent that time working on mastering earth Ninjutsu. Without an affinity, it was twice as hard. Twelve months later, with help from several ANBU who noticed me struggling, I had several jutsus I could do without hand seals, and a little of the control I had over wind. I was well on my way to my secret, unacknowledged goal of becoming an Avatar. The only reason I didn't master them in the proper order was because Nagato was already working on water and in order to balance our Ninjutsu strengths, I needed to learn earth. I would never have the control over earth I needed to fight with it like I fought with wind, but it was damn useful to be able to pull up a wall out of nowhere, or move underground and relocate with my opponent none the wiser, at least until the clone I left in my place got destroyed.

I still relied heavily on tricks and traps to hold my own against stronger opponents, but with my new skill in stealth, the traps became actual threats, rather than distractions.

For the three months before Nagato was scheduled to take the ANBU test, I exchanged the time spent on chakra control with sparring. From what I could tell, almost everyone in ANBU was spoiling for a fight and they liked showing up to help both Nagato and myself gain experience. The older, less trigger-happy ANBU gave pointers, advice, and some days almost took over our training for the rest of the day.

Through the entire seventeen months, I avoided sparring with Nagato as much as possible. Instead, I used our infrequent spars to judge how much Nagato was progressing in comparison to me. When the seventeen months were up, Nagato went to take the test. I asked Kagami for another month, but he refused. It wasn't that I didn't believe in Nagato, but he had only been training to be a shinobi for two-and-a-half years. Sure enough, Nagato failed. It wasn't by much, but it was a major hit to his confidence. If he had a month more, he could have passed. The next test was scheduled for three months later, which Nagato passed with a better score than I had.

Throughout the entire time, the war was like a shadow. There was evidence everywhere, and I was pulled out of training Nagato several times to deal with a team that returned severely injured and twice I was called out to the hospital to help when they had more injured shinobi than they could handle. I couldn't train Nagato to total exhaustion on certain days because ANBU was short-staffed or there weren't enough Jōnin in the village. Training between midnight and four was banned. A month after I passed the ANBU test, food rationing began. Six months before Nagato was first scheduled to take the ANBU test, jutsu was banned from sunset to sunrise. After Nagato passed his test, the two of us started running weekly patrols inside the village to cover for the short-staffed Chuunin. Twice a month, we were called to help the civilian Uchiha at the police station.

Every time I left headquarters, I made a point to leave a note on the dining room table of the Uzumaki house along the lines of: We are alive and well. Can't give any more details than that. Love you all, Kichiro and Nagato.

The first chance I got, I gave them mine and Nagato's ID number. Since only Jōnin and ANBU had assignments that lasted for more than a few months, they were the only ones allowed unofficial communications from civilian family members with their ID number. There was only about a seventy-five percent chance the messages would reach their recipient and the family was only allowed to send one letter every month. Every month, we received an update from the family, though the letters were almost always written to both of us. The youngest of the orphans, Misaki, wrote to both of us individually every week and sealed her letters onto a single page whenever they put the letters together and sent them off. It was against protocol to respond, since the communications weren't secure, but Jōnin could send messages home with their peers whose assignments were over. ANBU weren't allowed any responses, and it was against protocol for me to tell them we were still alive.

Almost three years after I spirited Nagato away in the middle of the night, I reported in to Kagami to receive the files of those I would be treating that day.

"Jiraiya and his former Genin team are out of the village," he stated instead of handing me the files I expected.

"So?"

"Aside from the Hokage himself, you and Nagato are the only shinobi in the village with a working knowledge of Fūinjutsu."

"So?"

"Iwa has been able to counter, or at least fend off, everything we could possibly throw at them."

"What does any of this have to do with me?"

"We haven't tried Fūinjutsu."

I frowned, hoping he wasn't thinking what I thought he was thinking. "Fūinjutsu is a supplemental skill. No one, not even an Uzumaki, has managed to use it by itself, like Ninjutsu, Genjutsu, even Taijutsu can be used alone. There's no real way to use Fūinjutsu in a war of this scale."

"Your sister has gotten pretty close."

"Let me put it this way. There's active Fūinjutsu, which she uses. It is meant to be used in combat, primarily for defense, and theoretically, with enough preparation, can be used like any other jutsu. For example, it's used to create barriers and function as quick Ninjutsu, and if someone's good enough, they can be applied with a touch. Those abilities are extremely rare and only Uzumaki Mito got anywhere close to what Kushina can do. I and almost every other Uzumaki use static Fūinjutsu, that means I scribble out the seals on paper and slap the paper on people or things or whatever. No matter how many or of what kind of seals I produce, they'll barely make a dent."

"You're missing my point. Did Sakumo tell you about the sixteen Jōnin who wiped out half Iwa's invasion force?"

I nodded.

"They used one of the two major seals that was developed without the help of the Uzumaki." He pulled out a tube of paper from behind his desk that reminded me of a poster. "It was developed primarily by the Nidaime, with help from several of the Senju elders at the time."

I took the paper when it was offered to me and unrolled it, laying it on the floor and crouching to best see it. Kagami walked around his desk and spread out a similar seal matrix on my left.

"The technique you have, Edo Gyakusatsu, banishes souls from this world. In order for it to work, it takes the life of several individuals. The number of banished souls just depends on how much chakra was put into the technique to determine the range of the jutsu, but it is the decision of those who are sacrificing themselves on who is affected and who isn't. The technique I have here, Edo Tensei—"

I flinched.

"Which you seem to recognize, draws souls back from the afterlife. This requires an equal exchange, a life for a life. In case you're wondering, they don't work against each other. We can get another sixteen people to sneak into Iwa and perform the jutsu, but the amount of detail and chakra required to apply the seals properly so they can be used is something only the Nidaime has managed to do. I am the last person with an existing seal, and it was damaged over a year ago."

"Let me guess, you want me to apply a suicide seal to a half-dozen people?"

"More like several dozen volunteers."

"Volunteers who can then be ordered to die on a whim."

"Kichiro—"

"ANBU seals are one thing, they are in case of the worst happening. This isn't a just-in-case seal."

"You of all people know this stalemate cannot continue."

"So as soon as I complete the seals, the will be sent out, most likely to Iwa, in an attempt to murder as much of the population as possible."

"Konoha can't sustain—"

"So, murdering thousands of people, most of whom would be civilians and have next to nothing to do with the war, is the answer?"

"What other solution do you propose?"

"Not this."

"I will order—"

"I dare you!" I snarled back at him.

We glared at each other until a knock at the door interrupted.

"Enter," Kagami growled while I folded both poster-sized pages in half, a polite note to anyone who entered that it was not for their eyes. I knelt stiffly, glaring at the front of Kagami's desk.

"Kichiro-kun." My shoulder twitched at the Sandaime's voice. I was officially in a bad mood now. I decided to ignore him.

"I refuse to assist anyone in suicide, for any reason, unless there is no other option. I refuse to believe this is the only option." I stood up and turned to leave.

"Kichiro, wait," Kagami ordered.

I stopped with my hand on the door but didn't turn around. A battle of wills raged behind me, I could feel it.

"Kichiro—" the Sandaime began.

"If there is nothing else, Kagami-sensei," I interrupted. "I'll be headed to the training grounds."

"The Hokage has a question for you."

"Have a nice—"

"Kichiro," Kagami growled.

"Kagami," I retorted immaturely. Kagami pinched the bridge of his nose in a mixture of exasperation and frustration.

"I wasn't aware you let your agents—" the Sandaime tried to scold.

"Sometimes, I think you might fit into my clan better than I do, Hiruzen."

I tried to take the opportunity to slip out the door, Kagami would never chase after me once I left the room. Unfortunately, sometime that year, someone had replaced the 'no one can enter without my permission' seals around Kagami's office with 'no one can enter or leave without my permission' seals. Annoyed, I yanked on the handle once in annoyance and turned around.

"He seems much less mature than when I met with him three years ago."

"For once, he's acting his age," Kagami retorted pointedly.

"And I'm right here," I scowled.

Kagami sent me a glare that told me to shut up and deal with it. "My office, my rules, and neither one of you is allowed to deliberately piss the other off while you are in this room. Am I clear?" He barked like a drill sergeant.

I found myself reacting to the tone without thinking. "Yes, sir!"

Kagami directed his attention towards the Sandaime, who nodded. "Now, Kichiro is the only ninja in this village potentially capable of applying this seal. He has refused to do so. While he can be ordered," Kagami held up a hand to stop my protest before it could be made. "Everyone here is reasonable enough that it is not necessary." He turned to me. "Kichiro, you claim there are other options, do you have any suggestions?"

I scowled. "Almost everything I know about this war is secondhand at best, and aside from patrols and two missions, I haven't been outside of the village in three years."

"Unless Iwa pulls some impossible technique out of thin air, Konoha will win his war. Our shinobi are too motivated and too skilled to allow for anything else. Konoha cannot afford to lose the resources it would take to win if we want to recover in a timely fashion. The quickest way would to decimate their morale. The destruction of who they are fighting for would be the simplest." The Sandaime argued.

"Then go ahead and drop an atomic bomb on Iwa. It may be the simplest, but it won't do squat and you homicidal—"

"Kichiro!" Kagami scolded.

I scowled and shut up.

"What other option is there?" The Sandaime demanded.

I forced myself to calm down. "Practically any tactic is better. If you're thinking about maintaining the village after this war is over, bathing in blood is sure as hell not going to get the job done. Konoha already has a reputation that will help it recover faster than Iwa could hope to. You need to keep everyone on your side, the shinobi, the farmers, the merchants, the craftsmen, everyone."

"Konoha doesn't have resources to waste in that kind of campaign."

"It's not a campaign! It's a moral code!"

"We're shinobi." The Sandaime growled.

Before I could shout at him for being an idiot, Kagami grabbed my arm to get my attention. "He doesn't understand your point, and neither do I. Not everyone sees eye-to-eye with you, so you need to explain yourself."

"Fine," I snapped, stopping to think. "You're operating on the assumption that everyone can put aside their emotions when asked. Civilians don't have the training or motivation to do so. If you can't beat them, join them."

"Civilians have no stake in this war."

"They have more stake than almost anyone else. It's their children and parents and siblings that are fighting. It's their lives that are being forced to adapt. Shinobi operate on nothing, but civilians each build a giant network and the war is compromising their networks."

"They can't—"

"Tell me, what would happen to the war effort if just the non-clan civilian rice farmers stopped working?"

The Sandaime frowned, then paled. I glanced at Kagami who had a similar expression.

"Are you still going to claim they are unimportant? Their opinions matter, they fund at least seventy-five percent of missions during peacetime and provide raw and manufactured supplies in both war and peace. May I please go?"

Kagami sat down on his desk. "Dismissed," he waved his hand at me.

I was out of the room before he could change his mind. As the door shut behind me, I heard the Sandaime protest. Instead of running away, I stopped. Without the security seals active, any shinobi who tried could listen through the door. The tiny flaw in the design was that as long as I was not actively using chakra, the passive seals wouldn't do anything.

I stood outside the door and listened.

"Why did you let him leave?" The Sandaime demanded angrily.

"Keeping him here against his will is only going to needlessly upset the boy. We got the answers we needed."

"I supposed he's finally told you about the unauthorized chakra signature we found in his room three years ago?"

"He never reported anything," Kagami snapped. "I don't think the boy knew about it, and if he did, he didn't think anything of it."

"How do you know he's not spying for whomever—"

"If he was, he has very good reason to. Can we get back to the glaring flaw in our war strategy that a fourteen-year-old boy just pointed out before our enemies can take advantage—"

"Kagami!"

"That boy is as loyal as you are to this village. Give him a little credit."

"That is a risk—"

"I am sick of arguing over him! Jinchuuriki or not, he is fourteen!"

"He is a wild—"

"Fine, he is unpredictable, irrational, abrasive, arrogant, mistrustful, and obnoxious, but have you taken ten seconds to look at the results he gets? ANBU is almost twice as successful, we are completing the same amount of missions on half the manpower, and alongside his brother, could defeat almost any Jōnin, so long as he has a good reason to win."

"That kind of power will go to the boy's head."

"Then why is his security clearance as high as mine?" Kagami demanded. "There are at least six other medics who can do his job. The regular ANBU program could train his brother just as effectively. Why? Until you can answer that, can we please focus on the problem in our strategy?"

"There may be a problem with our strategy, but there is still the question of winning this war."

"You are a fool to think you can force the boy put those seals on someone if he doesn't want to. Maybe, you can get someone he respects to persuade him, but don't expect it to work."

"He will obey."

"If you torture him to insanity first," Kagami snarled.

I decided I no longer wanted to hear the conversation and hurried off towards the most likely place Nagato would be training.

Three tries later, I found Nagato running in circles on the ceiling in the basement under a Genjutsu while Panther watched carefully with his hands in the dragon seal, suspiciously low on chakra.

"What is going on?" I asked, flinching as Nagato violently dispelled the Genjutsu and crashed to the ground.

"Again," Nagato snapped, his eyes flickering to me as he ran up the wall.

"No, break," I snapped, watching Panther carefully. "Not everyone has your stamina, Nagato."

"Do we have a mission?" He asked hopefully.

"No. What's the lesson here?"

"Dispelling Genjutsu while in motion and attached to things," Nagato responded, frustrated.

"Not going too well?" I surmised.

"Not at all. It's been all morning and I haven't gotten anywhere."

"Sticking to surfaces with your feet should be second nature, dispelling a Genjutsu should only be conscious to the point where you realize it needs to be done. That's most likely your problem. You know how to do, and can do it perfectly, but you don't have either skill properly mastered. It's the same problem you have with using Ninjutsu without hand seals. Look at it this way: any beginning Fūinjutsu student can copy an explosive seal. They can copy every explosive seal in existence thousands of times, but it doesn't mean they know what the chakra conversion factor does, or what part of the seal is the trigger mechanism. Does that make sense?"

Nagato groaned.

"I've been trying to figure out the problem all morning, you upstaging little brat," Panther growled at me good-naturedly.

"You only work with him a fraction of the time I do. Nagato, do you want to work on fixing it now or later?"

"I want to get this by—"

"You can't put mastery on a timer, you'll just get frustrated." I knelt down and pulled out the sealing kit, drawing a simple training seal Kushina invented shortly after I learned tree climbing and taught it to her a year before the rest of her classmates. It was a wicked little thing, but effective for both training and pranks. I motioned for Panther to get off the floor, and when he did, I activated the seal.

Nagato whimpered comically as he read the seal expanding across the floor of the room. Panther jumped down from the wall to just outside the door while I leapt onto the ceiling.

"Nagato, without an active Dōjutsu, there's no way the human brain can process more than one thing at once. That's why I do so many repetitions and make you do them as well, so the muscles can take over while we make sure no one is going to stab us in the back."

Nagato frowned. "You're going to—"

"Yes."

"And he's going to—"

"Yup!"

"While I—"

"Exactly. You ready?"

Nagato whined but set his feet in the most basic Academy stance. "This is gonna hurt."

"I won't do any damage."

"That won't make it hurt any less."

My response was a vicious slash at his face with one of my sticks. Nagato gave me a pathetic look when I skipped Taijutsu entirely.