The Way Through Stone Village (Naruto)

45: I'll Go With You

["This Will End"--The Oh Hellos]

"Excuse me?" Temari said to Shine. "You mean as a matter of diplomacy, right? Not seriously."

"If you gentlemen and lady wouldn't mind giving us some time to talk this over," Shine said to the Rain shinobi, "I think we would do better without an audience."

"I suppose we could wait a few more minutes." Kyuu still seemed offended, but he'd probably come too far to let any chance at a success slide, no matter how unlikely.

He and the other two moved back several paces.

"Okay." Wally put his hands up. "I get it, you don't like Rain Village. But what's with the hostility here? They came all this way just to ask you to visit them--that's pretty nice of them to do. And without even know if you'd say yes, it took guts."

"Even if they were sincere," Kankuro said, "we don't know who else is in the village."

"The land is cursed," Temari said. "No one ever makes it out it alive, but rumors say that it never stops raining there. That's not natural. It's in the land, it's so full of darkness."

Shine and Wally both did not look impressed.

"Really," Shine said, as if they were children acting up in a supermarket, "this is your excuse? You're afraid of rumors?"

"Don't you think they're true?" Kankuro said.

"That it never stops raining? Might be mostly true," Shine shrugged. "But the rest? Come on, it's implausible. If no one ever escapes, where do those rumors come from? Jiraiya himself would have gotten away if he'd been smarter about it, but he stalled too long. It's not a matter of possible, it's a matter of being arrogant enough to go in alone. Which we couldn't do. And you seem to forget that we are adept at escaping anything. Who but us would be so sure to escape Rain Village?"

Temari hesitated. "But there's still the possibility of being attacked by them."

"You really think people who are never attacked by anyone else are that good at fighting?" Wally snorted. "Pain was just overpowered. They've been soaking in their rain gear out there for years, and he had the whole village under his thumb uncontested. If they had powerful fighters, don't you think there'd have been a coup against him? He wasn't exactly a nice guy."

That was a good point.

"The Village is only about the size of a small city," Shine added. "Not like yours that are big enough to fill a whole cavern or valley. And it's not protected at all by the terrain. Pain was the only reason it was so formidable."

"How do you know all this?" Temari asked. "No one knows anything about it."

"You seem to forget that we know things no one else does," Shine said like she was stupid. "Didn't you think that might include Rain Village? Just because Wally didn't study it doesn't mean I didn't. I think I've a pretty good idea what it looks like, and I don't see it as any threat for us. Though the weather will be depressing, no doubt, but we've had enough bad weather already; that shouldn't deter us. The people can't be very brave there, being oppressed for so many years. And as for the possibility of an assassination attempt, that's nothing you might not face at home too."

They stared at her.

"Wait, are you actually thinking about it?" Shikamaru said. "Please, even if everything they said there was true, it's too big of a risk."

"And what is with this timing?" Karin said. "We get kicked out of Stone Village, and the day after that Rain Village offers for us to go to them? That's too unbelievable."