Chapter Text
The remaining Konoha shinobi sat around the makeshift table they had set up for their ‘family meetings.’ This was the second meeting with Naruto as Hokage and the turnout was even more miserable than the last one. They had engaged the enemy in another battle, only a week after Kakashi died, and they had lost several more of their comrades. Genma didn’t know exactly how many. As one of the most senior shinobi remaining, he was supposed to keep a tally of how many they had lost for administration purposes but, at the rate they were getting killed off, he couldn’t keep up. A small, traitorous part of his brain even questioned the point of keeping tally. Who even cared anymore how many of them were left? They were all going to die in the end, weren’t they?
Even Kumo’s Killer B had died in the last battle, giving Madara the chance to capture the Hachibi. Genma didn’t like to sound defeatist but, with eight out of the nine bijuu already in the hands of the enemy, the Shinobi Alliance’s odds of emerging victorious from this war were worryingly thin. Naruto was the last jinchuuriki. Madara and Obito only needed to capture him (and by extension the Kyuubi) and everything would be over.
“The first bijuu caught by the Akatsuki was the Gobi,” Sasuke’s voice broke through the haze of Genma’s maudlin thoughts, “Itachi was sent to retrieve it in Iwa with Kisame. Next was the Nanabi, taken by Hidan and Kakuzu around the same time as the Chuunin Exams in Suna. Then the Ichibi, taken when Deidara and Sasori abducted Gaara. Hidan and Kakuzu got the Nibi after that. During that time, the Sanbi was roaming freely and it was also captured by Deidara and Tobi. Pain got the Rokubi before attacking Konoha, and then Itachi and Kisame went after the Yonbi.”
Sasuke e prattled on, giving a rundown of how the Akatsuki collected seven of the bijuu.Earlier in the meeting, someone had raised the idea that knowing how the bijuu were collected might help them in their strategy to protect the Kyuubi.
Genma thought of it as an exercise in futility. This late in the game, how the bijuu were collected was immaterial. What mattered was that they were even collected in the first place, and they could no longer do anything about that.
#
An acute sense of loss greeted Kakashi as he stepped onto Uzushio’s empty shore – a strange feeling to havesince he had not seen the village in its heyday. Logicallyspeaking, he was in no positionto mourn, and yet, that was exactly what he felt as his eye fell upon the neglected landscape.He didn’t oftenentertain ‘what-ifs’ but, being here, he couldn’t help but thinkthat maybe, things would have played out a little differently had Uzushiogakure not been ruined. What would have happened if Kushina had the assistance of Uzumaki fuinjutsu experts when she had given birth? What if the Kyuubi hadn’t escaped? What if Minato-sensei didn’t have to die?
Kakashi shook his head like a dog shaking off water from its fur; such unproductive thoughts needed to be cut off before they could spiral. He resumed walking up the shore and followed a weathered path that he assumed would lead to the village. At the end of it, he found a tall wooden archway, blackened with soot and riddled with termite holes. The gate had fallen off but the Uzushio spiral on top of the arch was more than enough to clue him in.
There was a phantom weight in Kakashi’s steps as he crossed the threshold and entered the village. This place, which used to be teeming with life, was now nothing more than a ghost town.
Letting his instincts guide him, Kakashi followed the main road into the market street. The library was the place to go if Genma had been doing research, and if the people of Uzushio had any sense in village planning, then the library should be found near the village’s commercial center.
After a few minutes of walking, Kakashi found the library – a large cylindrical structure reminiscent of the Hokage Residence Building back in Konoha. The door to the library was as dilapidated as the village gate; one of the double doors had fallen off the hinge and the other one was in danger of meeting the same fate soon.
Kakashi entered the library with the same feeling of ‘having lost something significant’ that he had been unable to shake off since he stepped onto this island. Even though they were standing empty now, the myriad rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves were proof that this building had once been a bastion of knowledge. It was a shame to see what it had been reduced to.
The only shelves that still held anything were the ones in the last row, so that was where Kakashiheaded to first. His eye was drawn to a scroll that seemed to have been tucked haphazardly back into place and he took it out to read. Contained inside the scroll was a theoretical treatise on seal crafting. He imagined that Minato-sensei would have loved to read it but it probably wasn’t what Genma had come for. Kakashi had long suspected that Genma was trying to learn more about fuinjustu and, after the little disappearing act at the Genjutsu Tree Village, he had finally been able to narrow down Genma’s possible area of interest – time-space jutsu.
Kakashi picked up the remaining scrolls and opened them one by one, examining their contents. The scrolls covered various topics, most of which were of such a dangerously experimental nature that, for a brief traitorous moment, Kakashi wondered if maybe the world was better off not having an entire village of shinobi with this level of mastery over fuinjutsu. He quickly shooed that thought away though; Kushina would have been horrified to hear it.
After going through the entirety of the remaining scrolls, Kakashi was left with one distinct impression – there was a suspicious lack of time-space jutsu scrolls among the ones left behind in the library. This could very well be a coincidence but, much like ‘what-ifs,’ Kakashi didn’t often entertain the thought of coincidences either. It was safe to conclude now – Genma was researching time-space fuinjutsu, but what could Genma possibly want to do with that?
#
Genma didn’t know much about the Land of Frost and Shimogakure, but the few things he did know were enough to make him extra cautious. He was no longer on active ANBU duty when it happened, but he had heard of the ill-fated alliance negotiations between Konoha and Shimo, which ended with Kakashi’s Team Ro having to kill all of the Shimo-nin present during the talks.
In Konoha’s defense, the Shimo-nin started it when they killed the Konoha-nin they were supposed to be meeting with but, needless to say, a Konoha shinobi like him would be met with nothing but hostility should he be discovered here.
In a bid to appear as much of a nondescript civilian as he could be, Genma covered up his black turtleneck with a plain, gray hanten, which also served the purpose of insulating him from the cold climate. He kept himself from reaching for a senbon to bite onto, even if he felt a strong urge to do so since such details often left a mark in the minds of witnesses.
He had arrived at the village two days ago and, during that time, he was able to gather information on Deidara while hanging out at pubs. It turned out that the elder male civilian population of Shimogakure became delightfully loose-lipped after a couple of bottles of sake. Of course, they didn’t actually know about Deidarabut, they did know about the nuke-nin from Iwagakure, who used explosives as a weapon and had been instrumental in turning the tides in favor of the insurgents.
On his third night drinking with the resident old geezer troupe, he was able to fish out details on the approximate location of the insurgents’ headquarters.
On the fourth night, he politely declined the old men’s invitation for drinks, went home early in the guise of tucking in early for the night, and donned his old ANBU uniform (sans the symbols of Konoha) to scope out the headquarters of the Shimo insurgents.
Rather surprisingly, the headquarters of the Shimo insurgents was located in an underground bunker on the outskirts of Shimogakure, approximately 15 kilometers southwest of the village gate. Genma couldn’t decide if the insurgents were simply too brazen to station themselves so close to the village, or if the Shimo-nin were simply too incompetent to take out an enemy that was within spitting distance from their stronghold.
In the first thirty minutes of scoping the area, Genma was able to identify three entrances to the bunker.
The first one was through the mouth of a cave, which he didn’t attempt to enter as it seemed to be the main entrance and was bound to be heavily guarded.
The second one was less conspicuous, hidden within the roots of a giant tree, which he had to crawl into to get inside the bunker.
The third one was the most difficult to locate, which Genma only found because he was already inside the bunker and was trying to find a way to get out without having to crawl back out of the tree roots. From inside the bunker, Genma was able to access it through a hidden trap door in what appeared to be a holding cell. From there, he followed a path that took him further underground, and then underwater. When he finally emerged, he found himself in an ice-cold river within view of the giant tree he crawled into earlier.
The upside - Genma’s exploration helped him find a quick entry and exit point; he was going to enter through the giant tree and then escape from the underwater exit. The downside - he was now freezing, which meant he had to cut his reconnaissance mission short lest he wanted to die from extreme cold before even coming face-to-face with Deidara.
Genma swam the short distance to the edge of the river and hauled himself up, and quietly as he came, he left the vicinity of the insurgents’ headquarters and made his way back to the village.
