"What - what are you going to do to us?" Grapefruit-breasts breathed in a high voice, her eyes flicking down repeatedly to the object he was twirling in his hand.
"Surely you don't think we'll crack from you tickling us with a feather," Bubble butt scoffed. She'd recovered face relatively quickly despite being completely immobilized in his hair trap, but the underlying tension was still apparent.
"This will make excellent material for the next book I'm writing," said Jiraiya with a shake of the feather. "It'll take some time, but you ladies aren't particularly pressed for it I hope?"
"We're not telling you anything!" Bubble butt spat at Jiraiya, but he made no move to avoid or clean it off. He sighed instead.
For her own sake, he hoped she would.
...
They were waiting where they had agreed to meet, by a massive oak tree near the edges of a forest along the far outreaches of Tazuna's village.
After everything they had already gone through, Naruto had braced himself for the worst – so when Rai and Sai's faces finally came into view, the relief he felt was so immense, he nearly stumbled on his landing. With Mayu helping to support him up, the two of them landed down just as the sun was starting to rise, spreading its tendrils almost shyly through the cracks of the canopy trees.
"Mayu! Naruto!" Rai called out to them, relief spreading across in his face. Leaving Sai behind, he began to run toward them. "You're alri - whoa...Naruto?" Rai hesitantly came to a stop in front of them, his eyes raking up and down Naruto's bloodied form.
"I'm fine, they're just flesh wounds," said Naruto, deciding not to mention the pain in his ribs. The pain had already ebbed away to a minor throbbing in his chest. Sitting down, he tipped his head back and allowed himself to lean back against the tree trunk.
"Kakuzu found us," Mayu said shakily, her arms crisscrossing across her chest.
Rai's eyes widened. "You too?"
"What do you mean?" Naruto frowned, quickly turning toward the other boy. "Were you caught too?"
"Yeah, that other one – Hidan, he got to us," Rai confirmed with a troubled look on his face. Then, apparently noticing Mayu's expression, he hastened to add, "But nothing happened. He was just spewing a lot of crap...and then he suddenly started talking to the air, before leaving."
"That's essentially what happened with us," said Mayu. "Except...except Kakuzu didn't talk so much." Rai's face noticeably grew in pallor, and this time, it was her turn to add, "Don't worry, I'm alright. It was Naruto who fended him off right until he suddenly left."
As some of the color returned to his face, Rai let out a whistle. "Didn't Sai say he was an S-rank? And you managed to hold him off?"
Naruto didn't say anything, but clenched his hands tightly. He looked down at the ground, unable to meet his teammates' eyes. It had been his plan to split up the team and send off decoys, but it hadn't worked. His decisions had placed all of his teammates in danger, and it could only be called a miracle that they were all there alive.
"Naruto – " he heard Mayu start, but she was cut off as suddenly, Rai punched him on the shoulder so strongly, he could have sworn he'd heard another rib crack. Naruto's head snapped up to see Rai looking down at him exasperatedly.
"Oh come on now, enough with the gloom," said Rai. "Two insanely powerful lunatics were after us but the three - well, four I suppose – of us are all here in one piece, relatively unharmed. What more could you ask for?"
Naruto paused. "Sorry," he finally said, his hands uncurling at his sides. Rai was right; this was no time to be wallowing in regret.
And if it was any consolation, despite Kakuzu's comment about jinchūriki, Mayu seemed to be none the wiser.
"Anyways," Rai said, waving away his apology with a dismissive air. "We did get something out of that Hidan guy. Turns out they weren't just a random pair of criminals walking around in the middle of nowhere. They're involved with whatever's going down in Wave country right now."
Mayu's hand leapt up to her open mouth. "You mean with Gatō?"
"There's going to be an event of some sort in three days," Sai finally spoke up. It seemed the incident with Hidan had gotten to him; he seemed unusually on edge. "Someone important will be in the city."
Rai shrugged. "Well, that's the basic digest of what we thought Hidan was saying anyways. It's probably got nothing to do with us, but..."
Naruto got to his feet. "But first things first, we need to get back. We'll decide what to do after we've gotten back in touch with Shirakumo and the others."
However, forced to take multiple detours and roundabouts to throw off any possible trackers, it was several more hours before Naruto and the others finally reached Tazuna's home. Ushered through the door by a worried-looking Tsunami, the starving four were promptly seated at the table with platters stacked high with – as one could have guessed it – fish and rice.
Once they had managed to get out the full story of what had happened, the involved adults stood around with troubled expressions on their faces while Naruto and his teammates stuffed their faces.
"An event in the harbor city in which someone important will be in danger?" Tsunami murmured uneasily.
"There's only one thing that could be," said Kaine flatly.
Tazuna sighed. "Aye. The ceremony."
"The ceremony? What's that?" Menma cocked his head curiously. "You've got a piece of rice stuck on your face by the way," he pointed out to Rai, who ignored him.
"The daimyō and his children will be paraded through the city in a charade of well-being, with the stated purpose of reassuring the citizens that they are doing just fine," Kaine spat. "But basically, one of Gatō's ways of appeasing the other nations by telling them that he's not trying to overthrow the system."
"And at the same time, reminding everyone in the country who's really in control," Shirakumo murmured, his brow furrowed in thought.
"So is the daimyō going to be assassinated then?" Tazuna asked in a heavy voice.
"It depends on whether those two you described – Hidan and Kakuzu, was it? – work for Gatō or not," Kaine said. "But regardless, this doesn't change anything. Risks like this have already been accounted for in my plans."
Naruto put his chopsticks down, and looked at Kaine. "Plans?"
The others had also stopped eating – though Rai continued to chew on some seaweed – as they waited for the guerilla merchant to answer. She looked around at them seriously, her freckles in stark contrast with the morning lighting.
"I've already forced you all to overextend your stay for the affairs of a country that have nothing to do with you," she said, with a slight bow of her head. "And I am truly sorry for that. But that ceremony in three days is when all my plans come to a head. After that ceremony is over, whether the mission has succeeded or failed, I will ensure with all my power that you are all properly compensated and relieved from your obligations here."
"And this mission will involve...?" Shirakumo crossed his arms across his chest.
Kaine smiled grimly, and looked directly at Naruto. "How good are you all at behaving like actual, normal children?"
...
Hirumo whistled as he looked around at the messy scene. "This is brutal, Jiraiya-sama..." His nose wrinkled. "Is that something burning I smell?"
Hirumo was one of his trusted sources in Wave country, and their mutually beneficial relationship had a long history spanning the many years Jiraiya had spent building up his spy network. The short pony-tailed ninja's best characteristic was, in Jiraiya's opinion, the way he showed up promptly and without any unnecessary questions as soon as he was called for. He was, if anything, efficient and experienced in covering his tracks, making the chance of his being caught and spilling details of their alliance rather miniscule indeed.
Jiraiya sighed heavily. "If only they'd break sooner." He made no move to wipe his face, which was speckled with tiny flecks of dark blood. "It would have been better for them."
"I assume you got the information you wanted?"
"Some. The one who actually knew anything didn't break quite so easily."
Squatting down, Hirumo opened the mouth of one of the bodies, peering inside it with the air of looking at an interesting museum specimen. "You had preventative measures to stop her from biting her tongue or ingesting any sort of poison, I gather?"
"Yes," Jiraiya said simply. He chose not to mention how he'd chosen to end her life as soon as he realized that he'd gotten everything he'd ever get out of her. A loyal one, she'd been. "She was working for Zabuza...who is in turn, working for Gatō."
Hirumo nodded in confirmation. "Yes, I've heard multiple reports about Zabuza being spotted as a bodyguard for Gatō. He's not exactly a difficult man to miss. But is that it...?"
"She didn't seem to understand the significance behind a certain word they were using as a code name for suspicious individuals such as myself...but perhaps you could shed some light on their connection to them."
"This certain word being...?" Hirumo said curiously.
"'Akatsuki.'"