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“We’ve captured two Kusa-nin.”
When the ANBU first shunshined into my space and dropped into their customary bows to say those words, I hadn’t expected what I would find huddled in the cell. We’ve captured two Kusa-nin, and two meticulously put together flies, and still no indication of what I would find when I swept down the stone hall and unlocked the barred door.
The white was the first thing that caught my attention. Two white draped figures against the stone backdrop. The ANBU had not mentioned the Kusa-nin were medical-nin or noted it in their files. Either because they hadn’t felt it important, in that way ANBU had of skipping over certain details their particular brand of battle training told them were irrelevant, or because of some other reason. Whatever the case, two Kusa-nin was all I was told and here were two of my least favorite things to interrogate. Medics.
They rustled restlessly in their confinement at my entrance and following pause in the doorway. Their movements, accompanied by the clink of chains and the minute whisper of fabric, were like the shuffles of pinioned birds. Ungraceful and awkward. Hampered.
The ANBU hadn’t seen fit to secure these two harmless healers to the table, as they would any other prisoners, but they’d locked chakra inhibiting collars around their necks, under the high folds of their medic’s uniforms, and put chains on their hands and feet. No fast movements or sign weaving.
All of this registered on my senses before I shut the door and went in to stand over them. What came next was the realization of their ages, like a slow burn searing flesh even as you took your hand away from the offending source of heat. They were kids. Small. Frail. Bodies wrapped in billowy, white fabric, to make them look larger, more grown up, but the uniforms couldn’t lie to me anymore than the medics they clothed.
Children.
They’d given me children again, and I didn’t know what I should be more aggravated with. The ANBU, who captured kids for interrogation, or the war that necessitated nin so young be sent to the front line.
Not that it mattered. They were here now, and I would have to deal with them and see what they knew. If I was lucky, I could manage with them gently and those spotless white uniforms could stay clean. There was nothing I hated more than breaking a medical-nin, much less breaking a pair of them, who looked as though they could fracture at a few slight touches. Wary of both me and one another, as they shifted on the floor under my shadow.
The older of the two was the instantly more Kusa in appearance, despite the color in his hair. I stood there with hands in my pockets and he looked up at me with wet, injured, blue eyes. Clear, bright, and intelligent, those eyes said he was no fool and knew where he was and who I was, and he was afraid. No surprise. Kusa medical-nin were not allowed to fight, and so often felt they didn’t need to worry about meeting me. Even if they knew who I was.
And yet, here he was, likely no more than seventeen and dragged into the Intelligence Division with his chakra sealed and chains holding him down. He wasn’t crying, but those blue eyes couldn’t help how wet they were. Glinting cerulean, under hair that had been a powder blue to match, at some point before he’d been sent out of his village, and now was a faded blue at the tips of his almost-too-long spiked hair and a dusty, Kusa brown at the roots.
The simplicity of the contrast almost giving embodiment to the kid’s state of mind. That was the first notion I had of him. He didn’t like that the color was fading, it made him sad and lonely and reminded him of just how far he was from home.
The other one. The smaller, younger of the two, was something else entirely. Tiny. His body compact and petite, to the point narrowing down an exact age was difficult and left me guessing at somewhere between thirteen and fifteen, and yet for all the ways he looked breakable, there was less of fear and delicacy here. His body language spoke more of an animal crouched down and sidling up along a wall, watchful and intent, and ready to spring, if the larger animal prowling above him made a wrong move. Left an opening. And this one hardly looked Kusa at all. Too pale and too slim and too something else. Something I couldn’t identify. His hair wanted to be flaxen and just ended being near colorless, absent of pigment. It fell down around his face in uneven lengths and almost hid eyes that stared up into mine with a disturbing quality.
Perhaps it was the fact those eyes were as color-null as his hair that threw them off. But I thought more likely it was the fact of the fear mixed with hard distaste and resilience. Defiance and cunning. Those eyes weren’t like anything I’d seen in a medical-nin before and all that held me back from doubting he was one at all was the way he responded to the other Kusa. Whatever this one, this healer with a hint of ferality in him was, his every move was an attempt to shield his companion.
I stopped and watched them and the younger one slunk closer to the older and almost seemed to perch in front of him. To dare me to make a move. And that was a very medical-nin action. I’d seen it all too many times out in the field, both by Konoha-nin and those of other nations.
Medics protected as much as they healed.
And this one braced himself with his fingers on the floor, balanced on his toes, as if he really would spring if I got too close to either of them. Or perhaps, if I got too close to the one with the fading, blue hair.
I kept my distance that first time and told them I was Ibiki and asked for their names. The older gave his up readily enough, recognizing it was a battle not worth fighting, and naming himself Yasu. The other held back and studied me and said nothing, until Yasu urged him in a soft voice. Stating I would hurt him if the other didn’t tell. Only then did the one I thought not quite right stubbornly name himself Ko. Just Ko.
A name that fit and didn’t and told me he was hiding something. But I let it go because the exchange told me something else. The two didn’t know each other. They took as much interest in the other’s name as I did. Medical-nin or not, they weren’t from the same squad, and likely not the same nation, or Yasu would have at least vaguely known a fellow Kusa medic. All of which only left me with questions and the knowledge the ANBU hadn’t known what they’d caught.
The second time I opened that door, it was several days later and the two had been given ample time to get to know each other and ruminate on their situation. I hoped Yasu would have had time to inform Ko of who they were dealing with and convince him to talk. I even harbored the hope Ko would decide the risk of the blue-haired Yasu being hurt might outweigh whatever secrets he kept. Because one thing was clear: Ko was a protective feral.
What I saw, before the light hitting them disturbed my two medical-nin, offered some probability my gamble on time was working. The two of them were huddled together in a tangle of limbs and chains. Almost indistinguishable from one another, except for the hair and coloration. It didn’t even surprise me it was the younger Ko with his arms around a gently twitching Yasu, who was curled in the smaller boy’s lap and resting against his chest, blue hair a highlight on the white covering Ko’s shoulder.
I would have been disappointed if it’d been any other way, just as I would have if my assessment had been wrong and Ko wasn’t the first to alert to my presence and turn steady, disturbing, unnatural eyes on me. But the smaller of my two problems saw me well before Yasu woke and protectively, reflectively, drew the Kusa-nin closer to him, body going tense and ready in a way reminiscent of a vixen crouched over its young at the approach of a larger predator.
It was that movement, more than anything that brought Yasu out of uneasy dreaming. He blinked and struggled against the tightness of Ko’s hold, then noted me and went limp in the younger’s arms, clutching at him as best he could with the chains on his wrists.
I brought ANBU with me this time, and had the masked nin pull the two medics apart and stand them up. An unnecessary show of power, to get them both in the correct mindset to talk to me, that did not go as planned. The two came apart easily enough, and didn’t put up a fight, but the moment the ANBU dealing with Yasu had him up and the blue-haired Kusa-nin was suddenly forced to put weight on his leg, he was crying out, against an obvious attempt to hold the sounds back, and those blue eyes of his went bright with a painful glitter.
The next moment, the ANBU meant to be managing Ko was somehow on his ass on the floor and the coiled spring that was the younger medic, was simply right there, hooking Yasu’s bound arms around his neck and bracing him up, as if the older boy had no weight. The discarded ANBU was on his feet again the following breath, and hissing, probably red-faced under his mask, but I motioned him away before he could get back near my two problem assignments.
Yasu’s ANBU was waved away, as well, allowing Ko to bear his companion’s weight to the table and assist him into a chair. The ANBU were for show, only, and the instance told me two things clearer than if I had pried them out of the medics by force. One, Yasu was injured, the ANBU who had captured him either having failed to inform me of the point or not having noticed, and in either case, earning them Ko’s snarled aspersion of, “Your ANBU are clumsy and stupid.” And two, Ko was skilled in taijutsu. Skilled enough that despite being chained, he posed an additional, potential problem. A fact further separating the younger medic from the idea of his being a Kusa-nin.
I let them both settle, Yasu into the chair and Ko at his side, in a loose, yet ready stance. The boy didn’t seem capable of anything else. His movements, every unconscious shift of his feet or sway of his lither body, only serving to bring him into alignment to block the ANBU, who had retreated to the door, if they attempted a maneuver. A sign of a battle-hardened shinobi and not a simple support unit.
What I had gathered in the days since I’d last seen these two added to that notion. Sitting, watching them both, I laid out two files and explained to Yasu I knew exactly who he was. He wasn’t completely unheard of, even in Konoha. A medic of his age, who’d made tokujou, was noted in villages other than his own. Especially when he also worked in Intelligence.
The last statement made the Kusa blanch, though I suspected he tried to hold it back. And couldn’t hide it. And couldn’t hide something else, either. The way he looked at me. It had fear in it, yes, and the injured pain I now associated with the fact his leg was damaged and his chakra likely low or depleted before it was sealed. But that soft, blue gaze held something else, when he turned it on me. Something like excitement and interest, wrapped up in mellow uncertainty and trepidation.
Admiration might have been a word for it. We both worked in Intelligence, in our respective ways, we both somewhat knew each other in a professional, far off, sense, I didn’t doubt he had heard any number of tales about me in Kusa, and now he was meeting me in a personal manner. Never mind that it was in a cell, with him trembling from exertion and injury, it was his mind against mine and he was excited about that.
All of which I could use.
The other of my two matters at hand was confoundingly different. I slid the tips of my fingers along the edges of his slim file and informed him I knew he wasn’t of Kusa, even if we hadn’t been able to find record of a medical-nin called Ko there or anywhere, I knew he wasn’t one of Yasu’s compatriots. Unlike with the blue-haired medic, Ko barely seemed to react at all. He stood there and he watched me back with those unnatural eyes of his.
“I never said I belonged to Kusa; I don’t belong to anyone,” was his only cryptic and undisturbed response. Overall, the younger of my two charges seemed to hold little more than disinterest and disdain for me, but it was harder to be sure of this for certain. Ko seemed to only show emotion and spirit when it had to do with Yasu. The rest left him stoic and unconcerned.
A thing I could still use.
I nodded at his noncommittal retort and closed the files, indicating it would be better if they explained what they were doing in the Land of Fire. I would find it out anyway. Better if they just told me now.
There was always a slim hope the young, more inexperienced ones would give in at this point, a hope exaggerated by Yasu being in pain and already partly afraid. But both of their silences told me this wasn’t going to happen and Ko’s pressing into Yasu, offering him reassurance and comradery, showed my gamble had misfired in one respect. Yasu hadn’t convinced Ko of anything. It was likely the other way around, and Ko had bolstered Yasu’s already stubborn determination to keep quiet. Anyone who worked in Intelligence would have an innate desire to not speak to someone from the Intelligence Division of an opposing village, and Yasu had only needed a small push to hold onto that desire.
It was a pity and I hadn’t really anticipated anything less. But I always hoped.
I left them again, after asking how bad Yasu’s leg was. The older boy had unintentionally slumped at the reminder, telling me the pain was draining, even as he explained it was fine. He had dealt with anything life-threatening in the field. Right before his chakra had run out.
The younger bristled at the question, and hissingly stated the wound needed looking after. I let my eyes scan over him, and returned that it seemed Yasu was already being looked after, before taking the ANBU and going. I could nearly feel the inexplicable nin seething behind me, and wondered what it would have been like if his chakra hadn’t been sealed. I was always given the problems Konoha needed solved. Sometimes that was tiring.
After, I didn’t bother leaving them to the cell and each other and time to think. They’d had enough, and it wouldn’t change anything. I brought the ANBU with me in the morning and pulled the two of them from their rest against the wall, in each other’s arms, to the table. With easy words, I reiterated they had the option of talking to me now, or doing so later, under less friendly terms.
The two of them looked back at me, divergent figures in white that was too big for them. One I could only think of in shades of blue and melancholy, when I considered him and drew his image up before my mind’s eye. And the other that stood like a blur of dissociation and anti-color, every time I tried to draw him in thought. They were almost utterly different, and yet, both turned the same resistance on me.
Ko made no attempt to distract from his reluctance to speak, and just shook his head and looked away with a far-off cast to his features. As if he were pondering something the rest of us couldn’t see. Yasu, alternatively, bluffed and deflected and occasionally outright lied his way through my questions, attempting to push back against my practiced, methodical means of prying information from unwilling informants.
Something in the sparkle of the Kusa-nin’s eyes said a part of him enjoyed it, reveled in a chance to pit himself, and his mental abilities, against those of someone of my caliber. A man he admired and who, up until this meeting, had been nothing but a tale told to frighten genin. A legend only muttered about in the Intelligence Divisions of other nations.
And I let him do it. Noted each subterfuge and half-truth and evasion and tucked them all away for later evaluation and unraveling, until I’d had enough and left my two unfortunate problems with each other and the cell. Whatever they were thinking, whatever crossed their minds in regards to what I’d do next, I didn’t give them long to think about it.
Until then, I’d allowed them time. Given them room to think and adjust and sleep, slumped together and clinging on each other, as if the other was the only lifeline they had left in an upside down world. This time, I allowed them only a short while to settle and go back to that close huddle, before opening the door on them.
They blinked at me, startled as two children when an adult walked in on them. Yasu was again held in Ko’s arms. The ever more faded, dusty blue of his hair and the sudden fright on his face, at Ko’s stiffening and his hiss of warning, more than at my appearance, hint of what this meeting would entail. I did not like this point of interrogation, especially with medical-nin. They were not fragile, they were not easily broken, but they were breakable in a way no other nin were. And once shattered, they did not go back together the same way. Other shinobi could survive a breaking, but medical-nin were useless after. At least after a complete break. Fractures left them feral. Breaks left them dead. Or worse.
And there was worse. The first thing any good interrogator learned was that there was worse.
They both knew it, too, and didn’t go quietly, this time. Yasu fought with the ANBU, who grabbed at him, making a bid to stay near Ko, who was determined not to let the masked shinobi take the Kusa from him. In the space of a moment, everything dissolved into grunts and hisses and cruses and sharp cries. Somehow, it took three ANBU to contain the smaller of my medics, even if he was chained hand and foot. And worse, the one wrestling with Yasu had both drawn the Kusa’s blood and managed to take his bad leg out from under him, leaving the older of the two medical-nin struggling on the floor, eyes watering from pain and spasms wracking his body.
This was worse because it only angered Ko more. The wily ball of white twisted like a snake in the ANBUs’ arms, completely slipping out of the grasp of one, and somehow managing to trip a second up so badly he fell into a sprawl with his empty-handed companion, leaving a single shinobi to grapple a taijutsu master, who did not wish to have hands on him. If the man had been anything less than an ANBU, he would have had no chance. As it was, the smaller of my bound, but infuriated problems, did as any animal with its back against the wall would and showed how sharp his teeth were. The last ANBU holding him cried out in surprised pain, doing everything he could not to wrench the younger nin off his arm. The tiny medic had sunk his teeth into the ANBU’s arm, in that undefended place right where the man’s arm guard ended. The shinobi was shaking from pain and exertion and gripping my problem’s colorless hair in a hand that wanted to yank him away but knew better, knew he’d lose a chunk of flesh for his efforts.
And all of this, all of this chaos in less than a few heartbeats. If it had happened any slower, I would have put an end to it before blood was drawn in one of my cells. But medics were unpredictable and the choice to fight was one I hadn’t expected of Yasu, at least, and the fleeting wonder if some of Ko’s unnatural tendencies were wearing off on the exhausted Kusa held me immobilized just long enough for all-out madness to break out in my space.
My body was only beginning to react, feet to carry me forward, when the more difficult of my two problem-nin pulled his teeth out of my ANBU assistant and calmly informed me he would tell me more than I wanted to know if I let Yasu alone.
My motions stalled and for a short breath there was nothing but panting in the hollow space. Nothing but the sound of the aftermath of struggle, played out over stone walls. Yasu coughed a thing that wanted to be protest, but lacked air, and the other, the indecipherable one, watched me with smooth features and stolid lips, painted a slick red, as if they were glossed with some macabre lipstick. The color was out of place on his too-pale face and more of that red was splattered on his shirt and dripping off his chin into the high collar of the uniform he wore. The droplets on that otherwise spotless white, and the utterly deadpan way he said the words, made the kid hanging there in the ANBU’s arms something else altogether, and returning his intent stare, I understood he had taken off some mask he wore and what I was looking at was part of the secrets hiding beneath. Not all, but part.
A part I could deal with.
Wordlessly, I flicked my fingers at the ANBU holding Yasu down. The Kusa-nin coughed again, when released, and shakily attempted to get his legs under him, while he shook his head like a dog with a tick in its ear. He succeeded in pressing his palms into the floor and pushing himself to his knees, and then his damaged leg gave out from under him and he landed back on the ground again, with a little cry and a sound like an angry whimper.
Something hot and sharp and dangerous flared in the colorless eyes of the medic still pinioned in the ANBU’s arms, and I motioned for the man to let him go, anticipating what he wanted without his having to say it. The already once bitten shinobi had the good sense to obey and back away, clamping a hand over his weeping arm. Not that Ko seemed to care about the man any longer.
The younger medic almost seemed to simply materialize at Yasu’s side, kneeling down and, once more, blending the two of them into a mass of limbs shrouded in white. Ko whispered soothing things that had the sound of song in the quiet room, and brought his companion medic first to his feet, and then to a comfortable position near the wall. Yasu went, but when Ko moved to pull back, the older boy gripped his arm and begged him not to do this. An entreaty met only with placidity. Ko disentangled himself and said a thing I wasn’t sure of, that he wouldn’t say anything about Kusa.
Yasu looked as uncertain on the point as I was and frustrated tears stood in his eyes, as Ko walked over to me. Once at my side, he turned his eyes up to me and I indicated he should proceed me to the door. I had intended to do what needed to be done in one cell, but separating the two felt like a better option, after the madness of the fight. So, I left one ANBU with Yasu, as a subtle motivator for Ko, and brought the more complex of my aggravations to another interrogation cell.
Ko remained quiet and unperturbed through it all and just kept watching me, as I settled into a chair across from his own. I motioned for him to go on with a movement of my fingers, but he shook his head and coolly explained he wanted something to wipe his face, his own fingers extending to receive it, before he would speak.
Only when the blood was smudged off could he be induced to begin and, even then, he kept his word to Yasu and refused to speak a word of Kusa. I challenged him on it, reminding him he’d said he didn’t belong to anyone. To which the inexplicable medic retorted he didn’t care about Kusa. He cared about Yasu. And Yasu cared about Kusa.
But that hardly mattered. He turned his face away thoughtfully and began expelling facts and Intel on nations and Hidden Villages and kage and daimyo that had me grateful I’d had recording equipment set up before we’d begun. The medic detailed information down to an nth degree, as only one trained in subtle nuances and intricacies could. I had to ask him nothing and he went on until the recording equipment could hold no more. Then he simply asked to be returned to Yasu, until I wanted more.
I nodded offhandedly, but stated what he had given us wasn’t something a normal medical-nin would know. Then I asked him what he was.
For the first time since beginning his recitation, the boy looked at me. He cocked his head and said he was a medical-nin. When I countered he was more than just a medic, and repeated my question, a strange thing happened. The almost unresponsive, white-clad puzzle smiled a soft pull of his lips. Something between amusement and sympathy and liking. He said he was a medical-nin because he chose to be. But he was also a fox, an unseen thing walking through every shadow.
He ended with, “And you’re a crocodile, Ibiki Moreno.”
The sentence was unexpected and unnerving for several reasons, prompting me to wave an ANBU to take the small medic back to Yasu and his cell. But before he was fully out the door, the boy turned and asked casually, “Have you seen any hawks recently, Interrogator-san?” Whatever he saw on my face, he smiled again and then I didn’t see either of my problems for several weeks.
Ko had given us a large amount of information that needed to be confirmed. ANBU scouts were dispatched here and there and informants plied for answers. With each report the young medic’s Intel proved accurate, my unease grew.
He knew too much. Far too much, and if he knew that amount of information about other Hidden Villages, what did he know regarding Konoha? The fact he’d called me a crocodile rankled in my mind. I rarely put on an ANBU mask and went out on missions, but when I did the porcelain I wore was painted to look like a crocodile and the small medic in my holding cell shouldn’t have known my pseud. As far as I knew, only my Hokage knew that name, which left me wondering about the last thing he had said to me.
There had been a hawk circling Konoha and the Intelligence Division since both my problems were delivered to me. One day there and another gone, but always high up in the air when it was seen. This too bothered me.
But I wasn’t given time or opportunity to examine the matter. Before all of Ko’s information could be confirmed, I was given word Kusa had offered a prisoner exchange for Yasu. Kusa wanted their medical-nin back, and as Ko was deemed by far the more useful of the two, and Kusa was offering a more than fair exchange, Kusa was getting their medical-nin back. It didn’t matter I protested Yasu was the only means available to me of containing and motivating Ko, I was only given the problems that needed solving and one of my problems now belonged to Kusa again.
I half expected trouble when I told the two of them what was happening, but there was none. Yasu was somewhat panicked to be leaving his companion behind with me, but Ko only drew him close and assured the older boy he was going to be fine. That he would see Yasu again soon. Then the two were separated and that was the end of it. The last time I saw either of them.
Yasu was traded to his village, and the next time I went to see Ko, the door opened on an empty cell. The boy’s red-splattered medical-nin uniform was folded neatly on a chair, the unopened and unbroken chains tucked beneath. And resting on the table was a chakra inhibiting collar, cut cleanly through. My mystery of a medical-nin up and flown away, like a hawk on the air.
It was somewhat difficult to explain how a medical-nin could simply disappear out of a locked cell in the Konohagakure Jōhōbu, and the amount of answers I was required to provide, and yet didn’t have, took days to wade through. By the time I was done and the matter ruled a classified unknown, all I wanted was some peace and quiet, and possibly a drink.
Which was what turned my feet out down the road one night. Alone, I walked toward a bar I seldom visited, my hands in my pockets and my mind other places. Part way to my destination, a sharp bark called my attention to an alleyway beside a ramen stand. A red fox trotted out of the shadows and looked up at me with intelligent eyes, eyes that almost knew me. The small animal shook its fur, unbalancing itself in the process, and glanced at me a final time over its shoulder, before padding away. Disappearing back into the shadows of Konoha. As it did, a hawk called from above and I turned my eyes up, but the raptor was impossible to see in the dark and I let my line of sight fall back to an empty road.
There was nothing much to do, but complete my walk and have the drink I had been aiming towards. I was always given the problems that needed fixing. But some problems couldn’t be fixed, and some I didn’t even want to bother with.