Chapter 28: Don’t You Forget About Me
Shikaku awoke in a hospital bed feeling slightly disoriented but overall very rested. Gingerly he flexed the fingers of his previously crumpled hand. They were stiff but still responsive, no blinding stab of pain like earlier. So, clearly, someone had already gotten started on patching him up. He thought back, he remembered making it back to the border of Konoha with Chouza carrying Yoshino most of the way, Inoichi occassionally carrying to give him a rest.
She had flickered in and out of consciousness, especially more toward the end so he had actually begun to hope that the antidote might reverse the fever, or at least slow it down enough so that they could get her into the hospital back home.
They had crossed the border into Konoha and been met by a standard security patrol who whisked them all directly to the hospital. After that it was pretty much a blur. He remembered being frantic about them seeing to Yoshino first, remembered medical attendants fussing over him, too and also vaguely recalling the ashen look Inoichi had developed now that they were in out of the darkness and under the bright lights in the hospital. Inoichi had kept waving the attendents off until he swayed himself and only CHouza kept him from falling to the ground. The red-head folded him up into a chair and told him to sit still and shut up or else he would sit on him.
There was no one else in the room with him. Shikaku started to get up. He had to know what had happened to Yoshino and Inoichi. He caught the side of the bed and that was all that kept him from crashing to the floor. He was weaker than he thought, weak as a kitten. Using that much chakra back at the coast and then the fast pace back to Konoha running only on adrenaline had left him completely drained.
He saw the mane of red hair before Chouza poked his head in the door way. “Shikaku! Good to see you up. How are you feeling?” His friend greeted him as he entered the room.
“Okay, I guess. But how’s Yoshino? How’s Inoichi? And what in the hell were you two doing?” He started to rise again and then realized that he did not want to pass out in the hospital room and have Chouza catch him, too. So he quickly sat back in the bed and motioned for Chouza to take the chair beside him.
“They’re both fine. Yoshino’s sleeping, mostly, she’ll be fine but she needs a lot of rest they say. Inoichi’s gonna be back to normal soon, too. He’s just got one helluva splitting headache for now.”
“Well? Why is that?” Shikaku asked, waiting for his friend to begin to fill him in.
“Well, ah, you see…”
“He took it, didn’t he?” Shikaku asked bitterly. He couldn’t believe his friend would have been so stupid. “He took the jutsu enhancing drug didn’t he?”
Chouza nodded. “Yes. No, wait. Yes he did, but he took Tsunade’s version of it. That is, Tsunade and Orochimaru’s version.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Shikaku asked. “What version?”
“Well, ah, apparently, she and Orochimaru had made some progress on a way to circumvent the addictive properties. And,” here he shrugged, “I guess it works as advertised. You saw it, I saw it. You gotta admit, Inoichi was pretty fucking amazing.”
Shikaku was going to kick Inoichi’s ass. When the hell did he going around volunteering to be a lab rat?
“Anyway,” Chouza continued, “if it’s no longer addictive, I don’t think anybody will have to worry about it being habit forming any time soon, either. Inoichi is barfing his guts up in his hospital room as well as, and I quote, ’suffering throught the worst fucking-with-a-capital-F headache’ he’s ever experienced.”
A light tap at his door and Shikaku looked up and recognized two of his clan’s elders. He shot a glance over at Chouza who mumbled an answer back to his unasked question.
“Err, yeah, sorry about that Shikaku. You were pretty fucking amazing, too. I, err, guess I blabbed too much about it while I was waiting on you in surgery. I reckon that’s what they’re here to talk to you about.”
Shikaku scowled at his friend’s retreating backside, then tried to properly and politely greet his new visitors. He then spent the next two hours convincing them that his friend from the Akamichi clan had been overly effusive in describing the situation. Chouza had been down on the ground, it was dark the angle of observation must have made the cliffs seem much higher than they actually were, of course he was holding Yoshino when they both slipped over the cliff, overtaking her and catching her the way Akamichi described was preposterous, didn’t they think?
After an exhausting interview, the two older men reluctantly left to let him return to his rest. As he watched them turn down the hall, Shikaku was just about to put his feet on the floor and make another attempt at searching out Yoshino and Inoichi when he heard a noise at his window and turned to see Jiraiya entering his room through that portal.
“So how’re you feeling, Shikaku?” the older man greeted him.
“I’m fine, the better question is how did we do last night, all of us?”
Jiraiya grinned, “It was a success, all the targets were taken out, unfortunately we lost one man, but we achieved the main objective. Koharu’s got a pile of paperwork from all three sites she can sit on and hint at its existence. It’s enough to make everybody even remotely involved in it stay really really quiet for a long time.”
“So, what exactly did we do last night?” hating to even ask the question, ashamed to admit it, but Mugato’s declarations that what they were doing would trigger a new war were unsettling to say the least to Shikaku. “Did we start a war?”
“No. If anything we prevented one. At the very least delayed it for a long time.”
“How so?”
“There’s no one obvious to blame. All three nations suffered an attack last night. Amegekure could hardly call it an act of war if Konoha suffered an attack on the same scale, in the same night now could they? So they can sit around pointing fingers at each other all they want to, but no one’s really going to have any impetus to declare a war.”
He continued. “The other good thing is that everyday people are at least a little bit suspicious now, they are at some level, now aware that non-nation entities, or let’s call them extra-governmental entities, are capable of organizing something of this scope. Of course what they’re going to be concentrating on are the three sites that were attacked last night – since for all public information purposes those three were each legitimate installations of their respective governments. Never really realizing that the destruction of those site actually thwarted the goals of the true extra-governmental entities – the ones that set up their black shadow operations under the auspices of those labs. But at least it’s a start, it will get people thinking and talking I hope.”
Shikaku grumbled something that could be taken as reluctant acceptance of the explanation he’d just been given. “So did we really accomplish anything? Did we get rid of the bad guys?” Emphasis on the word bad made it sound like the childish and simplistic view of things Shikaku realized it was.
Jiraiya nodded. “Yeah, we got rid of them. But there’ll always be somebody ready to step in and take their place. That’s what you have to watch out for now.”
“So, which team lost a man? Who was it?” Shikaku asked.
“Orochimaru’s team. They lost Miterashi.”
Shikaku sat quietly absorbing this for a moment. That was the husband of Yoshino’s friend. That would leave their little girl an orphan.
“But enough about us,” Jiraiya said, interrupting his thoughts, “let’s talk about you. I heard you were pretty spectacular last night. Maybe Tsunade really does see something in you after all.”
Shikaku’s ears pricked up. That was the second time he’d heard that expression. What the hell? He answered in reply, “Chouza talks too much, he’s prone to exaggeration.”
“Hn, yes, must be. Because what he described would require a LOT of chakra and a tremendous level of chakra control, certainly nothing in your mission reports ever indicated you were capable of anything like that.”
“Maybe nothing in those missions ever required anything like that,” he answered coolly. “Now since we’re talking about me, let me ask you a question, what do you mean Tsunade sees something in me?”
Cocking his head sideways just a little, puzzled, Jiraiya asked him, “You really don’t know? You haven’t figured it out?”
Shikaku shook his head, honestly, he didn’t know what the sannin was driving at.
“You’re her fallback guy. Oh, don’t get your hopes up, I don’t mean in a romantic sense. I mean she begins to see more clearly the weaknesses Dan would bring to the Hokage-ship. Weaknesses she always thought she could help him to overcome by being there for him, with him, sort of as a co-Hokage since in this day and age she herself would never be chosen even though by all rights she should be.”
Shikaku sat still in his hospital bed, listening as Jiraiya had more to say. “From her perspective you bring, or allow her to bring a lot to the table. You’re Nara , your clan alone brings its own gravitas. You’re an accomplished jounin, a brilliant strategist, serving with distinction in battle, although not too much distinction…I must say. And I wonder, after hearing what I did from Chouza, if that’s calculated on your part?”
Shikaku was now very still in his hospital bed, trying his damnedest to not blush furiously like a twelve-year-old kunoichi who’d had her first kiss. He felt…out-ed. He shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “Well, I might have been trying to keep a low profile…”
Jiraiya laughed with warmth, then, companionably. “She’ll be after you, you know. She’ll try to pick you up and shake you out and smooth out your rough edges. And Tsunade can be very persuasive when she wants to be.”
“So how many votes could you count on on the council?”
“At least one.” Jiraiya grinned, “And here’s a tip for you. The queen is just a pawn herself after all, but with fancier moves. Tsunade would support you, covertly, through other council members because she still loves him and won’t politically abandon Dan outright . And…Koharu will support you if I tell her you want to pursue it.”
“And Minato?”
“Minato has Sarutobi’s support,” Jiraiya answered flatly.
Shikaku shook his head. “No. No, I’ve spent the last eight years lying low. This doesn’t fit in my plan. And besides, what I did last night, I’m not even sure if I could do it again. You were right. It really is all about the girl.”
Jiraiya clapped him on the shoulder, “That’s what I thought you’d say, but I still had to let you know. Well, see you around. I’ve got a couple more goodbyes to say.”
“Tsunade?”
Jiraiya didn’t turn around as he left by the room door heading down the hall. He simply called back, “No, I’ve already told her goodbye.”
Walking on down the hall, Jiraiya came across Orochimaru just exiting Inoichi’s room.
“Is he going to be okay?” he asked his dark-haired teammate.
“Oh, yes. He’ll be fine. A massive headache. I don’t think he’ll be wanting to repeat the experience any time soon, but there is no damage physically or neurologically. You know, the effects of that are more remarkable than I would have thought possible. Imagine being able to unlock kekkai-genkai that are recessive or possibly even heretofore unknown jutsu locked up in junk dna somehow…”
Jiraiya held up one hand to slow his friend’s rapid speech. “Orochimaru, I’m leaving,” he said plainly.
“Now?”
“Yes. Now. I just came…to say goodbye.”
There was a long pause between the two friends and Jiraiya filled it. “I heard you lost a man last night. Miterashi, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. A good man. I’d worked with him on several missions before. A reliable shinobi.”
“His wife was the one who died a few weeks ago, right? From the fever?”
Orochimaru simply nodded. He knew Jiraiya was expecting, coaching him to say something and he just couldn’t come up with the right words.
“They had a daughter, Orochimaru. She’s four. She’ll grow up an orphan. We both know what that’s like…”
“Miterashi had a large family. I’m sure her experience as an orphan will be far different than ours.”
“But still, Orochimaru…”
“Fine, I can sponsor her to the Academy.”
After a moment of silence, Jiraiya spoke. “That would be a nice thing to do.”
Another long pause then Orochimaru added, “You see, I feel like I should feel something about Miterashi. But I just don’t. Why is that Jiraiya? At least when you are here, I can mimic the social expections based on yours. If you’re gone I don’t…Sometimes I wonder if… Can’t you stay?”
“There’s nothing for me here, anymore, Orochimaru.” Jiraiya responded. Orochimaru’s jaw clenched but he merely nodded. “But you could come with me,” Jiraiya added.
Orochimaru forced a small smile. “I don’t think I was made to be a wandering monk, traveling the open road, Jiraiya. My place is here.”
“Well, goodbye then, Orochimaru,” Jiraiya said and he embraced his friend like a brother then turned and walked back down the hall.
As his teammate walked away, Orochimaru was struck not for the first time by his mane of white hair. Idly he wondered if it was a badge of purity of purpose or simply a white flag of surrender.
Back in his room, Shikaku hesitantly tried standing again. He was much more stable on his feet this time. He decided to go down the hall, looking for Yoshino’s room. It didn’t take him long to find it. She was only a few doors down from him. When he first entered the room, she was sleeping. He just stood and watched her for a few minutes, unable to believe and unbelievably grateful that she was here, right in front of him.
Her eyelids fluttered open and she smiled up at him. “Hey,” she whispered softly.
Shikaku walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed beside her, holding one of her hands in his and kissing her on the top of the head. “Hey yourself. How are you feeling?”
She shrugged, “You name it, tired, exhausted, weak. Bleah, whatever it was it sure packed a punch. Plus,” she said grinning up at him, “I can’t get any sleep – I keep having visitors.”
“Oh, I can come back later,” he teased, starting to rise from the bedside.
“No, stay,” she said, tugging weakly at his hand and he sat down again beside her.
“So,” he asked,”who’s been interrupting your sleep?”
She laughed,” You wouldn’t believe it. Chouza, of course, then Jiraiya, then even a couple of guys from your clan, asking me stuff about what happened last night. I had to just tell them that it all seemed like a dream to me, I really don’t remember much of it.”
Shikaku sighed, “My big chance to be your hero and you don’t even remember it?”
“Wellll,” Yoshino said slyly, “that’s what I told them.” She stopped for a moment then continued, looking up at him with her eyes so soft and dark. “But what I do remember is that I was falling. And would have died. But you were there.”
Shikaku leaned forward then and kissed her very softly on the lips. “So who else came?”
“Koharu did. She came down here to see me. She said that when I got out of here, if I wanted to, I could stay staffed to her office. I don’t know. I loved what I did for her, but it was only for a couple of weeks. I don’t know what it would be like to not take missions for an extended period of time but just to stay staffed to that one office. But I did like working for her. “
“Wow,” he said, not quite knowing what to make of that.
Yoshino giggled then and added “And one more person came by, it was the headmaster from the Academy. Seems like I have an aptitude for keeping the younger students in line so they wanted to know if I’d consider taking an assignment there when I got out.”
“Guess you told them no?” he asked.
“Not yet. I mean, I know I grumble and complain about it, but it is something I’m good at and I don’t mind it as much as I let on.” She shifted in the bed, straightening her pillow so that she could sit up a little better. “It’s just that, I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t know where I want to be,” she added.
He gave her a half smile and said, “I thought you would have figured it out by now.”
“What? Do you know where I’m supposed to be?” she asked, arching an eyebrow at him.
Leaning forward and kissing her again, he whispered, “With me.”
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