THE WILL OF FIRE: 1. The Serpent (A Naruto Fanfic)

The Serpent, Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

The old man Hokage was sitting at his desk, looking worried. When I arrived, there were only four people in the room: two old people who I guess were the Elder Council, Lord Hokage and Kakashi.

“Where’s the team?” I asked.

“The details of this mission do not concern them,” answered the Hokage.

“They damn well do! Those guys risked their lives out there, not even knowing what was going on! And how dare you send those three Genin on a mission like this! You put their heads up for sale!”

“Watch your mouth, young lady!” said the old woman angrily.

“No, she’s right,” old man Sarutobi said, “This was no easy mission.”

“Then why? Why send a bunch of Genin instead of a trained group of Chūnin or even Jōnin?”

“Kakashi was a Jōnin and your skills are far more advanced than a regular Genin’s. Do not forget why you’re here in the first place.”

“I know why I’m here but that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to disagree. What the hell is going on with you guys?”

“We though there were not going to be any problems along your route. We were mistaken, we admit it, and we apologize for putting you through all of this. But I presume it wasn’t all in vain?”

I pulled out the Guide to Shogi. The Elders stared at me like I’d gone mad but the Third nodded calmly.

“Explain to us what you have learned, Captain.”

“It was all a jumble at first,” I began, “We thought it was a simple mission and I almost had a fit when I found out I was Captain. It was very clever to use this as a cover-up. But things got complicated when we were attacked by those three assassins and lucky for you I knew who they were or this would just be one big mess. Ok, so we didn’t know what was going on and why they wanted the documents so we fought them off. We split after coming to the dessert, knowing they’ll be mostly after me, thinking I had the documents-which would be rational-but I purposely gave them to Naruto, where they were least expected. After walking a few miles into the desert, Sakura and I met two Sand Shinobi who told us they would escort us to the village-for safety reasons. Turns out they were working with the spies all along and were also after the documents. And here came the first confusion: why would the Sunagakure Shinobi want the documents that we were supposed to deliver to them anyway? Let’s leave the question for later. We were dragged to the village where we were tortured so they could get info on the documents. Sasuke and Naruto rushed in just in time to save us and we ran away. We fought them again, same story, we went to a cave where we sent off our reports. After talking to Kakashi and learning what the documents really contained, it got me thinking again. I asked some questions and learned that you, the Hokage, dispatched this mission to confirm our peace with Sunagakure, when they asked that they could take the documents for safe-keeping. But it only raised one more question: how did they know we had the documents in the first place? So we hit the road and battled those guys again but it seemed way too easy. By the way, if a few white snakes happened to startle the medics with the dead bodies, those are the assassins and the Suna Shinobi-we thought I’d be best to examine them since we’re dealing with my Uncle Orochimaru. Ok, back to the story. So we ate some dinner and I kept tossing around ideas. And thanks to this book,” I raised the Guide to Shogi, “I figured they used something similar to the Climbing Silver move. But it got me thinking again: who’s the king? It can’t be Uncle Orochimaru because the king can-and in real life, always does-move only one space at a time and that’s a tempo that’s too slow for Uncle Orochimaru. And it all didn’t make sense anymore because the documents we were delivering were Uncle Orochimaru’s old research papers. It didn’t make sense and I kept tossing it around in my head. Until I gave the shogi guide one last look and I figured it out.”