The next morning, having already packed his essentials, Naruto was out the door as soon as he'd eaten his cereal. The wind felt good on his skin as he made his way to the front gate, and a small smile crept unbidden to his lips. Last night's dinner with his team had done him some good: he felt refreshed and ready.
Their client was waiting for them at the gate, and as Naruto took in her appearance, his eyebrows inadvertently rose. Known as the merchant 'Toru,' he'd expected a typically overweight man sporting a ring on each fat finger. In reality however, she was a thin, freckled woman dressed in baggy journeyman clothes who looked like she could be closer to his age than to Kakashi's.
"I asked for bodyguards, and I got a bunch of kids?" she frowned, her foot tapping impatiently on the ground.
"We're all qualified chūnin," said Naruto in what he hoped was a reassuring tone.
But the merchant's frown deepened. "Shouldn't you all be in school or something?"
"Shouldn't you be at your appointment with the plastic med-nin?" Sai returned with a pleasant smile.
Mayu let out a squeak of disbelief, but to Naruto's surprise, the merchant smiled toothily back. "Not so gutless, then. Alright, I'll take you lot." She kicked the bulky knapsack by her side, which made a thunking sound upon contact. "You there with the scar – you can carry this for me."
With a scowl, Rai easily shouldered the bag on top of his own. The merchant clapped her hands together. "So, are you all ready? I'd like to cover a lot of ground before lunch."
Mayu looked around curiously. "Are we going by foot? Aren't you a merchant?"
"It's hardly worth paying the fee to ferry a wagon across the sea to Wave country...and besides, I've got all my goods right here." The merchant gestured towards the bag Rai was now holding.
From the sound it had made when she'd kicked it, it was a wooden box, but the contents were a mystery as far as Naruto was concerned. Not that it mattered – 'Toru' was known to be a supplier of a eclectic variety of goods, ranging from precious jewels to dusty tomes, but all his mission required of him was to take her in one piece to Wave country.
"Come on then, let's get moving!" Taking surprisingly large strides, the merchant began to head toward the opening gates.
Hefting his bag higher on his shoulder, Naruto followed, the others right at his heel.
...
Idly seated on top of a tree branch, Kakashi put his book down as he watched from afar Naruto and the rest of his team leaving the village. He'd be leaving too, in about half a day, to follow them.
What the Hokage had said about his going on a mission to Earth country had been a nice bit of misdirection – both for Naruto and for Danzō's little spy's sake – but his real mission had been to trail Naruto's team. The Hokage was obviously making a big show out of showing Naruto that he had trust in him and had told Kakashi it was for the sake of observing Naruto's leadership ability, but he knew, and the Hokage knew that he knew, that the reality was that he could not afford to have their jinchūriki running around in unknown territory unsupervised.
Kakashi had agreed because he'd felt uneasy about leaving Naruto alone with a member of Root – but despite himself, he felt a tweak of guilt at the thought of deceiving his student.
All the more reason not to get caught, he supposed.
...
"It's been a while since we last went to the hot springs like this," Rai remarked, a note of wistfulness evident in his tone as they peered up at the wooden sign.
It'd been a week since they had headed out, and although they had made several stops here and there at various cities, they'd made good time with only a few minor scuffles. They had reached the border of Fire country around noon at the end of the seventh day and since the boats that ferried people to the Land of Waves only operated in the morning, they had turned in early for the day. As a treat, the merchant – who'd turned out to be a shrewd, but mostly friendly sort of person – was letting them stay at a traditional-type inn, complete with yukata and hot springs. It promised to be an experience not unlike that of Yugakure from two years ago – but this time, hopefully without the crazed renegade ninja.
Waving goodbye to Mayu and the merchant, Naruto and the other two boys made their way to the men's section. Stripping down and scrubbing themselves in the bath, they then dipped down in the bubbling water of the hot springs. The only other occupants were a scattered number of elderly men, and a father with his young son in the shallow end. He couldn't completely rule them out as potential assailants, of course, but he didn't think he needed to be on high alert; judging by the looks of it, the pair in the opposite end couldn't have had more than a handful's amount of teeth between the two of them. But more importantly, their hands, which were resting along the wall, looked unscarred and relatively uncallused – they were hardly that of a ninja used to a lifetime of handling weapons.
His soaked towel resting on his head, Naruto relaxed, feeling some of the tension leave his muscles.
Beside him, Rai let out a contented sigh. "Remember when we tried to make Kakashi-sensei take his mask off?" His arms behind his head, Rai leaned back against the stone wall of the tub. "Man, it feels like forever ago. And we never did figure out what he looks like."
"I've seen it," said Naruto casually.
With a splash, Rai's towel fell into the water as he incredulously leaped to his feet. "What? How?!"
"We were on a mission together, and I walked in on him brushing his teeth one morning," he explained to the other boy's astonishment.
"So?" Rai prodded him. "What'd he look like? Did he have a huge scar? Was he ugly?"
"Now you're just talking about yourself," Sai interjected with a placid smile.
Some of the eagerness fading from his face, Rai shot him a nasty look. "I wasn't talking to you, you pasty little – "
"Can you sit down? Your dick's hanging in my face."
Turning red, Rai opened his mouth – but Naruto reached up and gave his arm a warning squeeze. After a pause, looking disgruntled, Rai nevertheless sat back down with a splash.
After a few more minutes of soaking in the hot water, Naruto excused himself (leaving the two boys glaring daggers at each other – or rather, Rai was, while Sai continued to smile amiably at nothing in particular). Changing into a yukata that the inn had provided, he covered his wet hair in a towel and left to take a cursory look around the inn's grounds. It was then that he noticed someone hunched over in front of the wooden fence that separated the men's bath from the women's bath.
It was a large man with shaggy white hair cascading down his back. He was peering through a small crack in between the slats of the fence and laughing delightedly to himself. What caught Naruto's eye, however, was the large scroll strapped to the man's back; he couldn't be sure, but it looked like a summoning scroll.
But before he could decide what to do, the man let out another cackle, and reached into his kimono to pull out a orange book that Naruto immediately recognized as one of Kakashi's favorite reads. As he did so, he noticed Naruto staring at him, and his face immediately turned grave.
Holding up a finger to his mouth, he made a slitting motion across his throat in a clear promise of death. The man then returned his undivided attention to the spectacle that lay beyond the fence.
After a pause, Naruto walked past.
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