Kapitel 56: Naruto : Venom : Chapter 56
We finish the race without issue, in fact we finish the race without talking at all. Even for Sasuke that is abnormal. There was a huge reception for Idate at the finish line, he was hoisted up on the shoulders of the crowd and his big smile never left his face. Everyone was happy. Everyone except Sasuke and me.
"A job well done!" Jirocho tells Sasuke and me once he was done congratulating Idate. "Here is all of your payment, I'll have to request you two again in four years! Idate said you took out a whole team of shinobi to protect him. I'm impressed, how old are you kids anyways?"
"Old enough to kill. Thank you for the payment. If you could sign this scroll saying we upheld our end of the agreement?" Sasuke hands Jirocho our mission scroll and he happily signs it for us.
"Thank you." I give Jirocho a respectful nod. "Well, mission complete. We leave you to celebrate."
"Come now! You two are more than welcome to join us!" Jirocho insists, "You both are the only reason we have a celebration in the first place!"
I see Sasuke tense out of the corner of my eye. This could get bad, Sasuke has been touchy ever since the confrontation with Aoi. I step forward,
"Thank you Jirocho, but we really must be going. Konoha needs her shinobi. Tell ya what, if we are ever in town again we'll stop by and say hello. That work for you?"
"Please do! At the very least I can promise you a warm meal when we meet next." Jirocho finally leaves Sasuke and I alone.
We go back to our hotel room in silence, it is just the two of us now.
"Sasuke." I need to fix this. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." He replies curtly.
"I know you, something is wrong. You aren't this quiet, this closed off. Not to me."
"Alvarcus, nothing is wrong."
"They why are you acting strange?" I ask him.
"I'm not."
"Sasuke. Don't lie to me."
He rounds on me with rage in his crimson eyes. He's so emotional that he accidentally turned on the Sharingan.
"You're stronger than I am! There I said it! You've passed me. You're stronger. That's what is wrong. The entire time I've known you I have been the stronger one, the one that would come out on top if we fought. But today? You handled an entire team by yourself. You didn't need me, I didn't have to be here at all. You made killing my opponent look like child's play! He took my strongest attack head on and came out unscathed and you just waltz in and kill him like it is just another day of the week. You didn't even use the Jiongu! You didn't even have to go all out!"
"That doesn't mean you are weak."
"Yes it does!" He insists.
"Sasuke, look at how far we have come. Look at how much we have grown. You've improved by leaps and bounds! You know an A-rank assassination jutsu, the Chidori. You saved the Land of Waves, you stopped Gaara, you stood up to two S-rank criminal and walked away! Who else can say those things?"
"You can." His posture slumps, almost as if he is ashamed. "You can say all those things and more."
"I don't have the Chidori."
"No, you don't. But you have the Jiongu. That's better than the Chidori. You have access to each element, you have B-ranked jutsu from all them! You don't tire, you don't die if your head gets cut off, you don't even die if your heart gets destroyed! Don't you see? You surpassed me a long time ago."
"That doesn't mean you are weak." I say again.
"No, it just means I fell behind." Sasuke storms out of the room.
Not good. This is very bad. Has the cursed seal been influencing him? He's never been this confrontational before. This has never been a problem. We have our own strengths, surely he knows that.
I stay awake the entire night, waiting for him to come back. He doesn't, not until sunrise. He didn't sleep either, I can tell from the dark circles under is eyes.
"We should head back to Konoha now." Sasuke says to me.
He has a fire in his eyes. Like he finally answered a question that has been nagging him for weeks. This could be it. He could have finally decided to go to Orochimaru, I may lose him.
"Alright. You lead, I'll follow."We exit the hotel and take off towards home.
We make it back in one go, like how we did on our way out here. We don't exchange one word the whole way.
...
The Hokage's Office
"Alvarcus Mar and Sasuke Uchiha reporting mission success, Hokage-sama." I say to Tsunade.
She quirks her eyebrow at me, "Since when have I been Hokage-sama to you squirt?"
"Since you took the hat and we are in a formal debrief?"
Tsunade sighs, "You had such spunk before. Alright kids, tell me about the mission."
Sasuke signals me to start talking. "So here's what happened..." I explain everything to Tsunade. From when we left the gates to when we got back. She's impressed with us, I can tell.
"You two took down Aoi Rokusho? I'm impressed. Do you have the sword still?"
I look at Sasuke. He reaches into his hip pouch and withdraws the hilt.
"Thank you. It's good this is back with Konoha. Sorry kiddos, but I can't credit you with his bounty unless you-"
"Have his head?" I interrupt and hold out the scroll with his head in it. "It's in here."
"I was going to say proof, but a head works just fine too. I'll hand it over to T&I, they will confirm it is him. I'm sure Ibiki will be glad to see this one."
"Ibiki? Why would he care?" I ask.
"That's how he got his scars." Tsunade informs me.
"Ah. That would do it."I have to admit, if I was given Orochimaru's head in a scroll I would feel infinitely better.
"Well done on your mission you two. You both went above my expectations. Take the next three days off, then come back for a mission. Usually you'd get a week, but the times are tough. Konoha can't afford to have capable shinobi take long breaks."Tsunade goes back to her massive stack of paperwork. That has to be annoying.
Sasuke gets up and leave the room.
"Well?" Tsunade glares at me. "That was a dismissal. Get out of here! Go on! Scram!"
"Tsunade I think Sasuke's a flight risk." I blurt out.I should have done that with more tact.
She stills. "You better have some damn good reasoning behind this. What you are implying is treason. Not only that, you are saying your teammate might commit treason. You do know the punishment for that, correct?"
"Death."
"Now explain very clearly, if I don't like your reasoning then I will give you D-ranks for the next month."
"It is simple really. He wants power, power to kill Itachi, power to avenge his clan. Power to surpass me again. He doesn't feel like he can get that in Konoha anymore."
"Where else would he go?" Tsunade laces her fingers together in a thinking pose. She is taking me seriously. Good, even if he does want to stay the chances he will be kidnapped is high. "Most countries would kill him on sight just because he is the last Uchiha. The Uchiha made many enemies and all of them would love to kill off the clan."
I take a deep breath, "To the person who gave him the cursed seal, Orochimaru. Sasuke knows that the seal grants him strength, and he knows that Orochimaru has an interest in him. Orochimaru is good enough to battle Kage, he even killed the Third Hokage and the Fourth Kazekage. We've fought before and Orochimaru destroyed us, no contest at all. All Sasuke has to do is find Sound, Orochimaru's village. If he can do that, I think he will leave Konoha."
"What do you propose I do? I can't assign an ANBU watch over him from a hunch from gennin."
I honestly didn't think she would ask me what to do.
"There are a few options I considered. The first, we let Sasuke go."
Tsunade gives me an 'Are you stupid?' look.
"Not going to happen, we will fight to keep him I know. The second, Sasuke leaves the village in search of Sound. Unlikely, but possible. He could pull it off, most likely a tracker team could find him and bring him back. The third, Orochimaru sends someone to get Sasuke. It is possible he has spies in Konoha right now observing him, waiting to see if Sasuke is ready to join him. The fourth option, Sasuke and I both leave the village."
Tsunade start radiating killing intent.
"Did you just tell me you're going to go missing nin?"
"Don't be daft!" I roll my eyes. "I won't go missing nin, but I can't deny Orochimaru wants me to join him as well. I could play spy, the man on the inside. Er, the kid on the inside."
Tsunade thinks over my proposal for a minute, weighing the pros and cons.
"Orochimaru has too much of an interest in you, he wouldn't let you out of his sight. There would be no way to communicate. Unless you have a skill you've been hiding, maybe a minor summon? Jiraya uses his Toads to carry messages occasionally."
"Nope. I don't have a summon. How do I get one anyways?" I've always wondered that, where do the contracts come from?
"Two ways. One is safe, the other could end in your death. Either you are approved by a current contract holder and they let you sign their scroll or you do the summoning jutsu and you will be reversed summoned to a summon realm. Most people don't come back." Tsunade explains to me.
She is rather good at teaching, must be a side effect of training Shizune for so long.
"I forbid you from doing the second option. I need you alive, you could maybe give it a try after Konoha stabilizes again."
"Well then you're right. We would have no way to communicate."
"Fourth option is out." Tsunade nods her head in agreement.
"Great, because I really don't want to go to him either." I can't deny Orochimaru would train me spectacularly well, but he is someone I never want to see again. "I believe the third option is the most likely to happen."
"It still isn't a good enough reason for an ANBU deployment." Tsunade looks at me with regret, "My hands are tied. I can't do anything, I need those ANBU nin to run missions."
"Alright. I just thought you should know what I saw." I didn't expect much, but his is literally nothing.
"Think of a retrieval team. If it does happen, I want a plan ready." Tsunade assigns me a task.
Good, even if she can't get ANBU to watch Sasuke, she is at least letting me do something to try and help.
"I already have one in mind. Me, Naruto, Kiba, Neji, Choji and Shikamaru as team leader. We can't have a gennin lead the mission."
Basically the cannon team plus me. That should be plenty, the only threats to me would be Kimimaro and Kidomaru. Kimimaro because of his bloodline and pure skill, Kidomaru because I don't know if I can redirect his unique projectiles. After Gaara's Sand Shuriken I'm wary of things I'm not 100% certain I can throw back.
"Sounds like a solid team." Tsunade praises me. "Why them?"
"Me, to talk Sasuke into coming back. Let's face it I'm the only one he might listen to, even then I don't know if I can. Naruto because that kid can help with just about anything. Kiba and Akamaru to track him. Neji, our taijutsu specialist. Choji, our brute force. Shikamaru, our team leader and strategist. He will coordinate us and give us the best chance of success."
"All gennin and one fresh chunin? You don't want a jonin? Or even a chunin with more experience?" Tsunade is looking at me like I'm an idiot.
"Do you really think you'll have a jonin to spare when this goes down?"
Tsunade nods her head in agreement. She needs the jonin to always be on missions.
"As for a chunin with more experience? We wouldn't be able to coordinate properly. We wouldn't know what they are capable of and vice versa, with the team I want we all know how everyone fights. Shikamaru, the team leader, has seen all of us fight and has actually fought with all of us at least once. He'll use us exactly where and how we need to be used to have the best chance of success."
"Acceptable, you really thought this through." She admits to my brilliance. About damn time. "I can't promise the people you want will be available, but if they are that is what the team will be."
"Thank you. That is all I can ask."
"Now go home squirt. You've been in here long enough."
...
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