Chapter 3: Team 11

Published: 6/21/2016

Dear Jiraiya-sama,

Thank you for your letter; I'll start thinking up some names right away. I'm giving this to Minato to pass along to you.

You needn't share anything I ought not know, but write to me if you can. Tell me of your health at the least.

I will be waiting eagerly for your return, so please be careful while you are away. Don't pull any muscles, old coot!

Be safe,

Suzu

It took a little bit, but Kakashi gradually warmed up to Minato. He never got to the point of coming over for dinner, but Minato, when regaling me with stories of their missions, was always pleased to mention his progress. Not academically—though I was sure Kakashi was soaring with progress, because what else could happen when two geniuses got stuck in a teaching relationship together?—but rather socially. These days, I was led to believe, he was positively amiable. Even affectionate, at times.

That changed when I finished my second year at the Academy. I came home after a long but well-fought celebratory game of ninja—I had been on the losing side, since I had been on the team opposing Yoshiya and Akihiko's, but it had been a good battle all the same—and found Minato on the sitting room floor with his head buried in one hand. He looked, for lack of a better word, stressed. Since he was a man of nigh-unbreakable composure, it was a startlingly uncommon sight.

Kushina was sitting next to him. Though she was still dressed in her mission gear, her flak jacket was unzipped, and she looked right at home.

"Oh, Suzu-chan," she said upon seeing me enter. "Welcome home."

"Tadaima," I replied, used to having her welcome me like she lived here herself. She was a near constant guest at the House, after all. Then I shot a concerned look at Minato and raised my eyebrows in silent question.

"It's Kakashi," my cousin said before she could explain, dropping his hand and sighing. "He's angry with me."

I found this to be rather unexpected. Lately Minato had had nothing but good things to say about the goings-on between himself and his student.

"What happened?" I wondered, brow furrowing.

"The village assigned two of the new Academy graduates to our unit," Minato explained, finally straightening his slumped shoulders and sitting up. "So we could finally be a proper platoon instead of just a master-apprentice pair. He's not happy that I agreed to take on additional students."

"Oh," I said, connecting the dots easily enough. That meant Obito and Rin had arrived on Team 7. Kakashi probably wasn't appreciating the intrusion much; it had taken him the better part of a year to start getting along with Minato, after all, and in the Naruto series, he hadn't managed to mesh with his teammates right up until the day Obito sacrificed himself. Kakashi just wasn't the type to get along with people easily, it seemed.

I felt a sudden spike in anxiety. Right. That was going to happen, wasn't it? Obito was going to go to Kannabi Bridge, give up his eye, nearly die, and then...

"It's only temporary," Kushina soothed, rubbing Minato's shoulders consolingly. "He's just adjusting. Give it a little while and he'll be the same to you as he always was."

"We were finally just starting to work well together," Minato muttered to himself, rather failing to take in her wise words. "And now the team is all out of whack… the boys despise each other, there's so much animosity…"

It was rare for him to air out his problems like this, but I supposed it was just Kushina's privilege to be privy to his troubles. For the briefest moment, I felt a little jealous; then I realized how ridiculous it would be for me to try and compete with the woman he would marry and decided to stop. If anything, being clingy and resentful would only add to his stress.

Still, it would be nice if he ever relied on me like that. But who would confide in a little cousin? I know certainly wouldn't have relied on any of my cousins back on Earth. And in reality, I wasn't all that reliable anyway. I put the matter of Obito far from my mind.

Feeling heavy, like I'd suddenly picked up a few troubles of my own, I huffed out a sigh, waved goodbye at the commiserating couple, and went upstairs.

If Konoha's Team 7 struggled at the outset, Team 11, upon its formation a year later, flourished. As expected, Akihiko and Yoshiya and I were once again grouped together, just as the Academy had teachers had planned. They had groomed us to become a classic front-line squad, balanced with ninjutsu capability while still leaning toward superiority in physical combat—exactly the kind of team that was ideal for enduring drawn-out open-field battle—so there had been no way village administration could pass up making a squad out of us. Our teamwork ratings from group exercises, of course, were already exceptional.

As for our sensei, he was a cheerful, sensible young man who had given what people these days call an "oh-shit" promotion. He had been a fairly skilled chuunin, seasoned enough to be called reliable, and he had been one of the few unfortunate everymen to be shoved into the office of jounin when our stock of elites began dwindling dangerously low. By his own admission, he did not think he was particularly cut out for the title, as his only major strength was in bukijutsu and he had no patience for ninjutsu theory or chakra studies. Akihiko liked him immediately and decided he was a good target for idolization.

At barely twenty years old, Itsuki Mikawaya was the type of person who was, I suspected, often underestimated. He was not from any clan; like Yoshiya, he was only a second-generation ninja. Unlike Yoshiya, however, he did not have any talent for the flashy, stereotypically "shinobi" arts like ninjutsu. And compounding that, he looked—speaking frankly—just a little bit like a girl. His hair was actually longer than mine, and though he often ponytailed it, it didn't do much to diminish the fairness of his face. If he hadn't been born with a fairly deep voice it wouldn't have been at all difficult to mistake him for a woman.

But despite that—or maybe even because of that—he had a razor-sharp intellect. His deduction skills were fearsome; we learned this on the very first mission we took with him.

The mission, as far as genin's first missions go, was actually fairly significant: patrolling the merchant road that traders took into Konoha. Everyone had to check in with the gate guards, of course, but having shinobi wandering up and down the route was both a necessary show of power and a practical measure to reduce congestion at the wall. Having people present their papers before they got to the sentries made them put their documents into order, which would in turn expedite their entry into the village. Plus, if there were any suspicious characters were running about, we were better off detaining them as far away from the village proper as possible.

What was amazing about Itsuki-sensei's deduction skills was how quickly he was able to sort out those suspicious characters. Our team alone caught four people trying to enter Konoha illegally—three because they had skipped getting their visas properly checked and stamped, and one who suspiciously didn't have a visa at all—within the first hour and a half.

If he couldn't figure people out by their body language, our teacher only had to ask a few guided questions to completely solve their personalities and purpose; he was that good at reading people. The only thing that was perhaps more impressive was his ability to completely mold his own personality to fit theirs. His act ranged from forceful, intimidating killer to fabulously camp to reliable nice-guy and on; he could change faces like a revolving door. Yoshiya and I quickly came to admire him as much as Akihiko did.

"I grew up doing stuff like this," Itsuki-sensei cheerfully told us as we finished filling out our last detainment report. "My granddad owns a fruit store, so I spent a lot of time watching people when I was a kid."

"Where did you learn the other bit?" Yoshiya asked eagerly. "The whole personality-changing thing?"

Sensei blinked and looked at him quizzically before comprehension dawned on his face.

"Oh, that," he laughed. "I guess that's more of one of my quirks than anything, but I can probably blame it on the fruit store, too. I've haggled a lot with the suppliers over the years, and, well, I guess I just noticed that it was easier to crack them if I behaved a certain way. Before I knew it I was adjusting for everyone, not just the sellers." He laughed again.

I wasn't sure whether I found that impressive or not. Well, it was impressive, but it was also a little disconcerting. If he spent so much time acting, when was he being himself?

"I'm always being myself." He grinned at me when I asked. "'Myself' being a person who reacts according to the environment. Changing demeanors is just part of my nature at this point, I'd say."

This puzzled me, but I considered it for a moment. What was a person's personality if not the inclinations he held and the behaviors he naturally performed? Perhaps if Itsuki-sensei was most comfortable arranging himself according to the people he was interacting with, that could be called his "personality."

I was deep into this line of thought when a sudden weight crashed into my shoulders and sent me hurtling into Akihiko's back. I let out a yelp; Akihiko went down with my weight and caught me piggyback-style by reflex. Startled, he looked over his shoulder at Yoshiya with eyebrows raised. Yoshiya lowered his hands and shrugged his shoulders.

"She had her really serious 'I'm thinking important profound thoughts' face on," he said by way of explanation.

"Oh, I see." Akihiko immediately put an overly-somber face on and nodded knowingly.

"See what?" I demanded, knowing I was being mocked and hitting a fist against his shoulder in protest. "What's there to see, huh?"

"You know, you do tend to take yourself rather seriously, Suzu-chan," Itsuki-sensei put in thoughtfully. His lips twitched like he was fighting back a smile, and I scowled at him.

"Well, whatever," Akihiko interrupted before I could get started. "Hey, Yoshiya, I bet I can beat you in a race to the gates even with Suzu on my back."

My displeasure instantly refocused.

"What do you mean, 'even with'—" I began indignantly.

"You're on," Yoshiya immediately responded, sinking into a running position. Vehemence quickly dissipating, I found myself paling as Akihiko did the same, arms still wrapped firmly around my legs.

"Hey, wait a second!" I had seen these two in races before, and this was not particularly a position I wanted to be in. "I don't think this is a good idea!"

I tightened my arms around Akihiko's neck and shook him a bit, but he only let out a bark of laughter and smacked me in reply.

"Ready," Itsuki-sensei called out, holding an arm up and no longer trying to hide his grin. "And… go!"

"Wait—!"

It goes without saying we received high praise for our first mission, and our streak continued for several months after that. Our performance was pretty much impeccable. Never in all my shinobi career have I ever clicked with a crew as well as I did with Team 11. I never reached that level of synchronization and efficiency with anyone again, actually; not until I began running missions with my husband, anyway, and even then that was more of a partnership than a proper squad. No… as far as squads went, nothing to this day has managed to compare to the synergy we had on Team Itsuki.

We were brilliant. Perhaps nostalgia and my childhood naïveté has romanticized my rememberings, but I really think we were; we grew so fast, and we worked so well. Itsuki-sensei, astute as he was, was able to understand and correct our weaknesses with great efficiency. He had us train in our deficiencies, and the polarization in our squad blended until it became tight coherence. Yoshiya picked up the slack on his taijutsu; Akihiko figured out how to rein in his chakra; I polished my skills until I could hold my own against them… none of us became all-around masters overnight, of course, but we progressed enough that it almost seemed like there would be no end to our advancement. There had been a lot of hope for the future back then.

In the end, though, we didn't even last a year. Five months: that had been the lifespan of the platoon called Team 11, the twice-bright star that burned itself out in half a breath.

The war ended us, like it did a lot of other things. That was about the time that Minato was called away to the western front, to the campaign against Iwa that was stalling in the valleys on the border of Earth and Grass. It was a testament to the state of our offensive; even though splitting something as rare as a full platoon was a seriously undesirable action, the village made him go anyway. If he had to leave his team behind for a full half-year rotation because of it, well, they must have figured it was better than the alternative.

Minato's departure for the front lines also marked the point where things began to really fall apart. Konoha began spiraling uncontrollably into disaster: our lines crumbled like dry clay in a string of horrific losses, teams were split left and right as the casualty count climbed higher and higher, and Iwa pushed us all the way across Kusa no Kuni and right up onto Fire Country's threshold. They had had us on the ropes long before we finally managed to cobble together a desperate alliance with Suna, and our numbers—numbers that had still been recovering from the devastation of the Second War when this third one had started—shrank to about a fifth of what they had once been. Morale hit rock-bottom faster than a bag of bricks in a wading pool.

It was really no wonder. It was the worst part of the worst conflict in the history of our Hidden Village. Konoha's military strength reached an unprecedented low.

Just about everyone lost someone in those days. We were no exception.

We were assigned the mission on the same morning that Akihiko, after properly screwing up for the first time since we'd graduated, fractured his tibia. It had happened while he had been chasing after a cat named Toramaru; the plank Akihiko had landed on while roof-hopping had been positioned badly, and he had gone feet-first into the ground when it had fallen through. He was lucky not to have broken both of his legs, really. I suppose that was what one got for underestimating the strength of the demon cat.

Despite being down a member, though, we received a summons and were told to deliver a vital message to the Leaf-nin at Tatsumi River, who had failed to contact the village even once this whole week. Never before had I seen Itsuki-sensei protest a mission so harshly. He was furious that we had even been considered for such a task. Unconscionable, he said, to send a genin team—a genin team not even at full capacity, led by a ninja who was only a jounin in name—to the front lines like this. None of us were even remotely qualified for an assignment of that gravity.

Tough luck, had been his answer. Team 11 is the only viable option for this assignment, they had said. Your team has a flawless record, and your students are highly skilled; if you do not take this mission, it will only be shoved upon another team, one weaker and even more ill-suited to the task.

He took it in the end, though only after almost a full twenty minutes of arguing. The mission dispatcher eventually had to resort to the threat of a court-martial, citing three different counts of insubordination. With charges tantamount to treason, our teacher suddenly found himself standing on a road that could end only in incarceration—or execution. Possibly both.

Unsurprisingly, he acquiesced. He received the message in private, and I never learned its contents; to this day, I have no idea what words our team perished for. Then we were charged to leave ASAP. Sensei bore the hawkish glares of the entire Missions Office as we left.

"What do you mean they barred me?" Akihiko demanded once we'd gotten to him, smacking his hands on the table he was seated upon. The way he jostled his leg must have hurt like hell; the iryou-nin tending to him let out twin cries of horrified protest at his movement.

Akihiko seemed too angry to care, though. "My injury has barely even been processed!" he said furiously. "The healers are halfway done with it; it's going to be fixed in a couple of hours!"

"They weren't willing to wait for a couple of hours," Itsuki-sensei replied, expression tight and tone straining for neutrality. "I don't doubt they would have cleared you and let you run on that leg if they could've, Akihiko-kun—" a slight curl of disdain formed on his lip then��� "but I guess it's just not meant to be."

Akihiko threw his arms into the air and nearly kicked one of the medics in the face. At that point we were curtly asked to leave, as we were agitating a patient and disrupting his treatment. Sensei gave off the impression of a taut rubber band just a twitch away from snapping as we exited.

But there was nothing we could do. He sighed in defeat as we reached the road outside; then he gave us an hour's time to assemble our gear and report to the main gate. I went back to the House to put together a travel pack.

"You're going out of the village?" Auntie asked curiously when she saw me drag a box out of the hall closet and begin stuffing sealing scrolls full of camping equipment. These weren't my own scrolls, of course; they were Minato-produced ones. We had a stock of them, since he had gone out of his way to make a box-full. He had insisted it had been for practice, but I rather suspected he did it to save us the money that would been used to purchase them from a store. Common as they were, scrolls like these weren't cheap.

"Yeah… it's an emergency mission, apparently." I furrowed my brow as I stuffed a waterproof cloak and an extra set of clothes into my bag. Even with sealing scrolls, was I going to have enough space…?

"The team leader usually carries the that, if one is necessary," Uncle Souhei informed me, plucking what was apparently a redundant item from my hand. "It must be urgent, if your teacher didn't even have time to tell you that. He didn't go over out-of-village travel protocols at all?"

"He just told us to bring our overnight bags," I replied. "The mission people told us to go right away, too. We kind of got the stink-eye for dawdling."

Auntie's forehead began to crease. "Where are they sending you?"

I told her. Both she and Uncle let noises of disbelief.

"Tatsumi River? That's where they sent Minato!" Auntie exclaimed, horrified. "They want you to go to the front lines?"

"They're sending you? Genin?" Uncle pushed his bangs back, eyes wide and incredulous. "There wasn't anyone else who could do it?"

"Is it really such a terrible mission?" I fretted, beginning to really worry now. Itsuki-sensei's reaction had been troubling enough, but this was taking my anxiety to a whole new level. Auntie tended to fuss, but Uncle was a good measure for the seriousness of a situation. He never reacted loudly if it wasn't called for.

My foster parents both straightened up and seemed to grab ahold of themselves.

"Not necessarily." Uncle cleared his throat and tried to play it cool. He seemed to know well enough that there was no point in backpedalling, though; his grimace was very telling. "But it's not exactly… what most people would consider appropriate for rookies fresh out of the Academy. Generally these missions go to the more experienced, since it's a fairly dangerous duty."

Auntie was starting to look rather off-color. Uncle turned, concerned, and touched her arm.

"Please be careful, sweetheart," she finally managed to get out after a moment, putting her hand on his and squeezing it hard. "Be very careful. Listen to everything your sensei says, and stay with your team at all times, okay? Don't go off anywhere alone, even to the bathroom."

"Yes, Auntie." I was going to have no issue with that. I had already heard plenty of horror stories about kunoichi going out on their own, unwilling to take along comrades because they were all men. None of them had had particularly happy endings.

Uncle helped me put together the rest of my pack, which turned out to be fortuitous help; by the time we had finished I only had fifteen minutes left to report to the gate. My aunt bestowed upon me a hug and an anxious kiss, and my uncle echoed her instruction to be careful.

Itsuki-sensei was already there when I arrived. He waved me over and showed me how to check out with the guards, and we received a scroll recording the size of our party, our business outside of the village—in this case, a mission—and the day of our departure. We needed to present it alongside our identification if we wanted to be permitted re-entry upon our return.

Yoshiya arrived last, since he had had no assistance with his packing. Sensei did a quick check on our bags, just to see if we had made any egregious mistakes, and then we were off.

We did not go particularly quickly. Though sprinting might have been more in line with the pressing nature of our task, Tatsumi River was a great distance away, and we had to keep our limits in mind. That probably would have excused a somewhat steadier pace, I grant, but even with that caveat I could still tell we were far too slow for this task. Itsuki-sensei might have been able to keep a swifter stride, had he been on his own, but little genin Yoshiya and me would have had no hope of keeping up with him whatsoever.

"Why did they send us on this mission?" Yoshiya finally voiced what we had both been thinking, once we'd stopped to refuel and rewater a few hours later. He grimaced, rubbing a stitch in his side. "I mean, I'm not saying that I think we should speed it up, but that's also exactly what I'm saying. We're not going nearly fast enough. We can't."

Itsuki-sensei, who had been all temper and nerves back at the village, seemed to have calmed down during the run. "There wasn't any other option, it seems," he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I doubt we were their first choice, either. But with most of our forces out fighting, there's a only limited number of viable shinobi left at home. They probably just decided to make do with what was left and give it what they could; it's better than not trying at all."

The situation really was that dire, then. Had things gone this badly for Konoha in the series, too? We weren't losing yet, but we certainly seemed to be on the fast track to defeat.

There was nothing much to say after that. Quietly, we stashed our canteens away again and took off into the trees. I was forced to redirect the energy I spent brooding before long, though; it was a brutal run. I had always thought of myself as fairly fit and athletic, but by the end of the day I was sure I had been mistaken. What had I been doing before today? Training? It certainly didn't feel like it.

It was a bad state of affairs. Yoshiya, who was supposed to have first watch, was unconscious the moment we set down camp. I couldn't throw stones, either; I was drooling on his shoulder about ten minutes into mine, and Sensei, who had originally only been supposed to take on the dawn watch, was forced to forgo sleep altogether. The fact that we had to be up and running before dawn did not help anyone's mood, either.

We ran for the whole rest of the next day, too, and it was in that condition, half-dead with fatigue, that we made it to the border of Grass Country. It was, all in all, a disaster. Prospects hadn't been ideal even when we had been fresh, and our chances pretty much hit zero by the time we arrived. Itsuki-sensei was tired and distracted; Yoshiya and I had no idea what to watch out for; we knew nothing of the land whatsoever. It was no wonder at all that we walked straight into the ambush.

It was the height of midsummer; the scorching heat made the days that followed feel perfectly like hell.

A/N: Here we go.

Cheers,

Eiruiel