A Shinobi Never Gets Lost
"Hey, kid, are you sure you'll be alright on your own here?" A scary-looking but gentle natured man asked gruffly, puffing out smoke from the pipe hanging from his lips, his shaggy beard frosted over from how long he'd been standing on the frozen pier, accompanying a lone foreign child. "The ship isn't due to depart for another hour anyways. I can accompany you til then."
"I'm sure I'll be fine on my own, Captain." A small child wrapped in a white coat made from an unknown beast's fur replied in brisk Russian. "My uncle will pick me up."
"If you say so." The captain shrugged but made no move to leave, making it obvious that he didn't trust the child's words, or, to be more accurate, he didn't trust the uncle who was supposed to pick up the child but let the child wait for nearly an hour in the cold and frozen pier.
The thick overcast sky, the crunching of snow as people scurried by, and the foggy breaths that escaped lips with every breath.
This was foreign land. Or, atleast it was to Inari Shiroe, who, although lived previously in the secluded land of Kirigakure, never experienced this kind of all year round snowfall and was more used to foggy climates.
If his weather chart wasn't wrong, it should be spring right now, and this blizzard was the so-called Fair weather. It was horrid.
He regretted accepting the Mizukage's instructions. In fact, now that he thought about it, he should have realized something was amiss from the moment the Mizukage refused to disclose too much information about the mysterious academy he was supposed to attend. All he knew was that it was called Durmstrang and that the Headmaster was named Karkaroff.
Speaking of that Headmaster, he seemed to have met him once when the Headmaster personally visited their village and inspected the young nins while they were training, but Shiroe didn't really have a good impression on the old man who gave him a feeling of an unreliable uncle despite his appearance.
"He's here."
Shiroe glanced at his silver pocket watch for the nth time, eyebrows scrunched as he gazed at the panting man in a dark coat jogging towards him, having seen him clearly long before from his position on top of a sign board.
"If another three minutes were to pass, he'd be exactly an hour late." The captain muttered under his breath as he watched Shiroe jump down silently from his eight foot high perch. "Careful now, kid. I don't know what exactly they teach you in the eastern lands but you best be cautious still. These boards are slippery."
Being the captain of a large flying ship which travelled from the Northernmost Arctic regions all the way to the mysterious eastern isles for months at a time, people mostly thought of him to be a rough man who couldn't care less for children. But, in truth, he was an all out family man and a gentleman with the appearance of a bear. The proof of this was the fact that he named his prized ship 'Neverland', according to the wishes of his granddaughter who had become obsessed with the tale of a flying boy and his lost friends, despite his disgust for muggles and anything muggle related.
So to say, towards this unreliable uncle who let his poor nephew suffer in the cold weather alone in a foreign land, he had no so-called good impressions. And he made it very clear by glaring at the man sternly, coupled with his stature which towered over most people by more than a head, he exuded enough deterring pressure to make even dragons cower.
Despite this, it did nothing to deter the unreliable uncle who acted as if he didn't see him at all and went straight to Shiroe, lifting the unmoving boy into a tight hug with a speed that normal people couldn't react to.
"Shi-chan! I'm so sorry I'm late! You'll forgive me, right? Shi-chan is such a good kid so you'll forgive me, right? You know that uncle always had trouble with directions." Shiroe smiled stiffly, unsure of how to deal with this situation.
Unknowingly, after two years of separation, this unreliable uncle of his was still so unreliable. It made him think of his uncle's famous reputation in their village; Inari Kousuke, the failed shinobi.
The one who failed to graduate from Shinobi Gakuen and decided to wander around the Outside Lands and do business despite lacking a sense of direction. The type that doesn't know which is right and which is left. Surprisingly, he did become a fairly successful businessman in the end. Though it was in the wrong country.
Shiroe sighed and patted his uncle's shoulder, signalling the older man to stop twittering in his ear and put him down. "I remember giving you a locator map two years ago. What happened to it?"
"It's no use, ya~ You know my bad luck with directions! Can you imagine what I felt when I saw the map committing suicide and jumping into a fire pit with my own eyes?! You can ask Gorn about it, he was there at the time!" Kousuke grumbled helplessly, blinking his milky white eyes.
Yes, this man who had just claimed to have seen a map committing suicide was actually blind. More or less atleast.
"Ahem." From the side, the bear-like captain who had been reduced to a backboard for the past three minutes, cleared his throat awkwardly.
"Ah, this is?" Finally realizing that they were not alone, Kousuke put on a polite but alienated smile akin to what nobles would use during negotiations but, it was already useless since the captain had already seen all that should and shouldn't be seen.
"Captain Alexei Ivanov. Your nephew boarded my ship from Abashiri to Murmansk." The captain said stiffly, his eyelids twitching from how fast the strange eastern man changed his persona.
"Good day, captain. I hope I didn't appear too rude just now." Kousuke said politely, handing the captain his business card as Shiroe stood by and watched with an expressionless face. "I am sincerely thankful of your care for my nephew. If you have any troubles, please feel free to contact me."
"There's no need for-" Just as the captain was about to decline, he suddenly froze midsentence, eyes glued to the business card as if there was an incomprehensible beast trapped inside the small paper.
"Then, if there's nothing else, I'll be taking my nephew with me. Have a splendid afternoon, captain."
Left alone in the desolate pier, Captain Alexei Ivanov stood in a daze.
The wind blew desolately, accompanying the howling of an unseen beast.
Just who can tell him why that unreliable guy was the same person as the widely praised potion genius!?
Inari Kousuke, Deputy Head of the Russian Potion Association and Founder of the Kitsune Herbs and Potions Industry.
...
"How was your first time riding on a flying ship?" Within the quiet room, a young man and a child spoke in hushed voices, their identical white hair making it obvious that they were related.
"I remember the first time I rode on one. It seems to be on a stormy day, a day after I got drunk and wasted on the ports of Sicily. In the end, before I knew it, I was already on my way to Russia. Sigh... But that was 12 years ago already." The white-haired man sighed with a nostalgic expression, no doubt thinking back to his youthful days when he wandered around the world without a care.
"It was alright. I was expecting to experience airsickness, as grandfather said I would most likely experience it at one point, but in the end, nothing happened." The child replied, wiping his mouth with a napkin, directing his ice-blue eyes towards his uncle who had been chattering on his own for so long.
"So, can you tell me what exactly is going on now?" Sitting by the counter in a secluded restaurant, Shiroe slowly sipped on a steaming mug of hot cocoa, having just finished eating lunch.
"What do you mean, Shi-chan? There's nothing going on. You're just being sent to school." Kousuke smiled lightly and spoke as if he had no clue what Shiroe was implying.
But, of course, Shiroe knew better than to trust everything they told him. He knew that what they said wasn't the full story. The reason for his suspicion being simply the fact that Kirigakure, one of the most secluded Shinobi villages in the the Hidden Lands, suddenly welcomed several Outsiders for the first time in 600 hundred years.
Those Outsiders being Igor Karkaroff, the Headmaster of Durmstrang, several representatives from a place called Wizengamot, as well as a particularly large lady called Madame Maxime.
With his uncle, Kousuke holding considerable influence in the Scandinavian and Eurasian Regions, along with the news of his father, Tsukasa's and several senior Jounins' decision to cancel their long term missions a year prior and seemed to be undergoing preparations for something, he would be an idiot if he believed everything was as simple as him being sent to study abroad.
And it wasn't just him either. His cousin who was around the same age as him was being sent to study in Beauxbatons at the same time, as well as the other four main Hidden Villages who were also involved in whatever was happening.
"It's fine if you don't tell me. I'll know about it sooner or later anyways." Shiroe said quietly as he finished his drink, just in time for his uncle to finish paying the bill, handing a considerable tip to the waiter.
"By the way, why were you alone in the port? Weren't you sent with those from Kumogakure?" Kousuke asked as they made their way from the warm restaurant and into the freezing outside world, handing a slightly crumpled piece of paper to his nephew. "Oh, and before I forget, we need to buy the things in this list before we head to Moscow."
"They went on ahead. Kaede-san said that they'd booked another airship heading to France to experience Europe before meeting us in St. Petersburg in August." Shiroe muttered as he studied the list, pulling his uncle's sleeve to make sure the older man doesn't get lost on his own somehow. "There's still five months till then."
"Only five months? That's too short!" Kousuke exclaimed as he allowed himself to be dragged by his nephew towards a bustling market, mysteriously managing to avoid bumping into anyone as they passed. "That's barely enough time to explore Russia in it's entirety! And I was planning on taking you with me to watch the Russian Quidditch Championship on June too!"
"Quidditch is fine but we already explored Russia two years ago. As much as possible, I would like to just rest before I get sent to an unfamiliar school." Shiroe declined as he thought back to those days in the past when his strange uncle, whom he had never met before, suddenly showed up in his house one day and abducted him to Russia.
"Oh..." Kousuke sighed in disappointment, which lasted for barely a second and he was back to grinning brightly again. "If Russia doesn't work, then how about Scandinavia? Or would you prefer Britain? I've just started expanding the scope of my business to the UK this year so it should be fine if I take you there for a tour."
"Please just let me rest in a comfortable place." Shiroe halted his steps, giving his uncle an exhausted expression. "We're here."
"Hmm? Where exactly is here?" Somehow, during their conversation, Kousuke had been pulled through the crowded market and into a dark and secluded area where people hid their faces in masks and black cloaks.
"Katarina Street. A lot of potion materials in the list can't be sold in the shops outside but they probably have them here." Shiroe's nonchalant answer made Kousuke's eyebrows furrow.
How did Shiroe even know of the existence of this street?
"I don't seem to recall taking you to this place." Kousuke said seemingly careless. "How did you find the way here?"
Towards that, Shiroe just gave his uncle a strange smile. "A shinobi never gets lost, uncle."
Somehow, Kousuke felt targeted.