The Way Into Mist Village (Naruto)

14: Mei's Response

[OP: "On the Mountain Tall"--The Oh Hellos. Btw, while The Valley is the theme album for this story as a whole, Notos is the album that I thought fit the Mist section of it, so you could call it the second theme.]

Gaara, Temari, and Momo went to the Kage house.

Temari gave Momo a run down along the way of what shinobi diplomatic procedure might be. It was far less complicated than some things Momo had heard of--and very much like what she was used to at home.

"My father always made sure I knew how to act," she said. "I have to meet business partners and politicians when we go on business trips as a family. Not so much since I started hero school...one of the nice things about hero school. Sometimes it's rather boring."

Temari laughed. "This is not going to be boring. It's always life or death with us."

"Well...if you had to discuss the stock market in Switzerland with adults...you might feel it was life or death if you didn't know the answer to a simple question that your parents expected you to learn," Momo said.

"I have no idea what you just said," Temari said. "But it sounded threatening."

Momo had to laugh at that idea.

"I take it we're more alike than I thought," Temari remarked. "Rich families, a lot expected of us."

"I wasn't expected to guard my siblings from assassins," Momo said. "But of course I have to represent the family name all by myself then. Being a hero is a good thing, but my parents expect me to handle the family business responsibly too. I can't decide which is more daunting. Fights have different rules than meetings...but sometimes both of them are stressful."

"I prefer fighting," Temari said. "You don't have to say anything right in a fight, and no one cares if you're personable or polite. It's dangerous, but it's at least the right kind of danger. I hate standing on ceremony. Or mincing words."

"I prefer not hurting people's feelings," Momo said thoughtfully. "My mother taught me that it's important to be polite. Still, I wish I was bolder at speaking my mind sometimes."

"Normally I have no problem speaking my mind," Temari said. "But I wish I had Gaara's confidence in doing it when it's something that is going to sound crazy to other people."

"Perhaps if you believed it would work," Momo said, "you would feel that way."

"I want to believe it'll work," Temari said. "And I don't know why I always think it won't. We've done enough so far...but it's not enough to change some things. You have to keep going, or it'll just go back to the way it was before. I push people to get better. But I'm worried about facing the authority figures and doing it. Why is that?"

"I think both of us are part of a culture that highly respects authority," Momo said. "What I mean is there are places where it's seen as a good thing to reject authority now and then--even to say they're wrong and execute them. Sometimes it's really brutal, and I don't think I'd want that, but other times it's more civil. But when I'm actually about to do it, I hesitate. After all, the rules have to exist for a reason, and don't they know best?"

"But you changed your mind," Temari said.

"I believe it was Shine and Wally that changed my mind," Momo said. "And it's not actually that they do it themselves that really changed my mind--I would have just found that scandalous or reprehensible on their part. It's more that they allow themselves to be questioned so easily. I came to see that some people don't find that disrespectful. And if some people don't, one wonders why others do.  And then it came out, to me, that someone just wants not to be questioned so that if they do anything wrong, they can cover it up. And those who are okay with being questioned are probably not hiding something. I mean, they don't tell us everything, but they explain their decisions to us. I don't mind following their lead because I know they don't see us as sheep. And as much as I respect my other teachers...truly...deep down, I get tired of being told anything we do on our own is wrong."