Chapter 59 (1/5)

The Next Morning

"Huh." I swing myself out of my hammock and stretch my arms to the sky. "It's actually a bit chilly now."

I quickly fly through some hand signs and touch the ground.

"Summoning Jutsu: Care Package!"

A small plume of smoke puffs into existence right where I touched the ground.

"Sweet. So that did work." This is something that I kind of came up with myself. I took the idea of being able to summon a Nest Egg - which is basically just summoning a mass of webs and whatever is inside it - and changed it to suit my needs. Basically this is a new way for me to get stuff from the Nest, in this case a new coat.

All I did was Summon Murasakino a while back and asked her to make me a snow white coat and told her to wrap it like a Nest Egg. I wanted to see if it would work, plus this way my Summons don't have to brave the fierce cold on this mission.

Why do I need a snow white coat you ask? I'm a shinobi, I should at least try to blend in with my surroundings and right now I'm in the Land of Snow. Plus Ino kinda has my other one.

I scoop up the small package.

"A package?" I turn over the small bundle. "For me? Who would be so kind? Oh, it was me! Thanks me!"

~Host, I know you like to act insane to freak people out but that was just weird. There's no one but us up here.~

"Be quiet you." I shush the Jiongu. "Hold on a moment, are we not moving?"

I look out over the water and sure enough the nearby icebergs are not getting closer nor farther away.

"Why the hell aren't we moving?" I ask myself. "Better yet why the hell are we docked next to an iceberg?"

"This! Is! Perfect!" The Director happily shouts from down on the deck. "Yes yes yes! We're going to the iceberg to shoot a scene! We even have a glorious sunrise as the background! I couldn't have timed this better if I tried! Everyone, let's go!"

"Oh come on we're not even at Snow yet and we're already making detours for the stupid movie?" I whine as I flip the new coat onto my shoulders. "Dammit I have to actually do my job now."

I walk down the mast while grumbling the entire time.

"Stupid Shikamaru. Stupid debt. Stupid movie. Stupid everything!" I'm not trying to be quiet about my whining, I've even attracted the attention of a couple members of the movie crew. "That's right I meant you people!"

They quickly look away from me.

"You seem very chipper this morning." Shikamaru says as he and everyone else walk out of the interior of the ship. "Already bitching and the day has just started."

"Fuck you too." I shoot him a glare for an extra effect.

"Wow, something tells me he's not a morning person." Naruto loudly whispers. He meant for everyone to hear that, he's enjoying my discomfort. Asshole.

"You've got it wrong." I correct Naruto with a hint more irritation bleeding into my words. "I'm not a doing-things-I-don't-want-to-do person. The morning has nothing to do with it."

"You sure?" Anko asks with a playful smile. "You look like you just woke up."

"I did just wake up." I growl out. "Then the next thing I do is discover the idiot Director decided that filming on an iceberg is a good idea. So now I have to actually go be around… people." I shudder as I say the last word.

"Oh come on people aren't that bad!" Naruto cheerfully smacks me on the back as we all move towards the movie crew.

"I have to go keep a self entitled bitchy Princess alive. That means staying close to her and I'm not even supposed to be here!" I stomp my foot on the ground.

"You do know she's not actually a Princess, right?" Ino asks me with a confused look on her face. "She just plays one in the movies."

"Yeah." I distractedly answer her. "Sure. And her uncle doesn't rule the Land of Snow either."

"Quit whining." Kakashi chastises me. "You've got the easiest job out of everyone."

"I shouldn't even have a job!" I yell to up to the sky.

"You know, I would feel bad about this if you were anyone else." Shikamaru nonchalantly says. "But you did this exact same thing to me so I have no remorse at all."

"Hate you." I hang my head. "Hate you all."

Hours Later

"Scene thirty six cut two!" A stage hand snaps that black and white movie thingy together in front of a camera lense. I've always wondered what those are called but never had the motivation to find out.

"ACTION!"

The entire crew, actors, lighting people, cameramen, microphone pole holder people, and more that I can't identify all spring into action to make a very intense confrontation scene between Princess Fuin and Mao come to life.

And I couldn't give less of a shit.

"This is dumb." I vocalize to the rest of the shinobi here. We've all been shooed into one spot and told - very rudely told might I add - to stay out of the way by the Director.

"It's a mission." Ino shrugs. "They can't all be exciting like you're used to."

"Eventful." I correct her. "Don't worry, now that I've been roped into this it's sure to spiral out of control as soon as possible. And it's not going to be a controlled spiral either, no that would be too easy. It's going to be like leaping off of a cliff head first, with your arms spread wide open, a smile on your face and sharp pointy spikes at the bottom that are dipped in acid."

"I'm not surprised you're a pessimist." Shikamaru says out of sheer boredom. The only thing keeping him awake is Naruto who throws snow at him when his eyes start to droop. It's been the only amusing thing to happen for hours.

"I'm not a pessimist. I'm a realist. Just wait, it'll happen." I promise him.

"Alvarcus isn't technically wrong." Kakashi shrugs while he diverts less than half his attention to our conversation. I bet you can guess where the other half is. "Most of the missions I've been on since he left have been relatively normal. Okay so they're all still outlandishly difficult but that was in the mission parameters."

"Yeah, every mission we took together went crazy really quick!" Naruto adds on his own experiences. "We're three for three so far, I'm not going to be surprised if it becomes four for four."

"Is your luck really that bad?" Anko asks in genuine curiosity. "I've heard some crazy things in my day but not ever having normal missions? You have had a normal mission, right? Excluding D-ranks."

"Excluding D-ranks? Hell some of my D-ranks have been crazy missions too. I've had one normal mission. I think. Shit. Maybe?" I wrack my brain for whatever it was. I know I've done one of them but what was it exactly. "Yeah, Tsunade sent me to deal with a bunch of bandits once. I was done within a day and nothing weird happened. Though she didn't pay me fully for the mission, does that count? No, wait that bit is on me. Pretty sure I pissed her off and the pay cut was a punishment."

"I almost felt bad for you for a moment." Shikamaru snickers out. "Then I remembered how you act and what you force people to do."

"That's real rich coming from you." I heft back a leg and kick snow in his general direction. It didn't even come close to hitting him. Dammit.

"You took care of some bandits?" Naruto asks. "How'd you do that? Beat some sense into them until they saw the error of their ways?"

"No." I look at the innocent boy with a confused look. "I am a shinobi. I was told to remove a problem so I removed it."

"I got that but how'd you do it?" He presses for an answer. "Maybe show them that what they're doing is wrong and hurts others?"

"I shoved cold steel into their spines." I levelly say with as little emotion as possible. "Like I said, I am a shinobi. I was told to remove a problem so I removed it."

Naruto reels away from me once he truly processes my words. He took a step back in pure shock that I'd resort to killing so easily, so quickly.

"It's certainly an effective way to do it." Kakashi says between pages of his book. "Not one I particularly approve of or remember teaching you."

Everyone but Anko is standoffish with me. She's the only one who simply accepted it and moved on, everyone else is bothered by it.

"Okay quit it with those looks. I didn't kill children." On that day at least. "They were bandits. Thieves. Liars. Murderers. The world is better off without that scum."

"And who are you to decide that?" Naruto heatedly demands an answer from me. "What makes you better than them? HUH!"

"For starters I'm still breathing so I am better than them." I sassily respond and Naruto's anger spikes higher. "Second of all it wasn't me who made that call, it was the Hokage. Your precious Tsunade. She said take care of them and sent me to do the job. I didn't decide that they would die, I was just the tool that killed them. Jeez Naruto you're acting like you've never killed anyone."

"I haven't killed anyone." Naruto proudly says. He's being completely honest, there's not a hint of a waiver in him.

"Damn." I let out an appreciative whistle. "Consider me impressed. It's alright, my kill count makes up for that. I'll loan you a dozen or two if you want."

"Keep them. I don't want it." Naruto didn't get that I was joking. It went right over his head. "What is your kill count at anyways?"

The atmosphere shifts from generally neutral to dreadfully awkward. Everyone has subtly become tense and hyper aware of me in this one instant. They all want to know how I'll respond yet are also dreading being asked that question themselves.

"My kill count?" I tap my chin with a finger while I reflect back. "Good question. I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know? I know you have killed before from our… conversation down in the cargo hold but you don't know how many?" Naruto asks in surprise. "Didn't you count?"

"I did count for the longest time." I admit to him. "Every once in awhile their faces would haunt my dreams and prevent me from sleeping. Now it's just a few faces that do that, the ones that were important or impactful. I would like to say I've simply forgotten the number, lost it in the vastness of the human mind, but that's a lie. I didn't forget it, I just lost count."

"You… lost count?" Naruto can't comprehend that idea. He simply can't wrap a mind that hasn't taken a single life around it.

"Yes. I have killed so many people that I've simply lost count. There are just too many of them for me to tell you an accurate number and I gave up trying to keep a general estimate long ago. I'm pretty sure I'm over a hundred at this point. Maybe even closer to two."

"Really?" Naruto says with wide horrified eyes.

"Yep." I nonchalantly confirm. I'm acting like it's no big deal to try and lessen the blow to Naruto. "Going to Orochimaru skyrocketed it though, I'll tell you that. He doesn't particularly care about people unless they can be useful to him."

"Don't need to tell me that." Anko snorts out in dark amusement. "He used me long before he started using you."

An uncomfortable silence falls between all of us shinobi.

"Not awkward at all." I blurt out after a minute of the tense quiet. "I hope something explodes."

BOOM

"Holy shit that worked?" I say in disbelief as each shinobi's eyes dart to one of the higher peaks of the large iceberg we're on. The movie crew has been using small explosions for practical effects for their movie but nothing near this size. Nor did anyone ever venture up that high. That can only mean one thing.

Someone else is on the iceberg with us. Someone hostile.

I'm not the only one to draw that conclusion, all of the shinobi spring into action. Kakashi blurs to stand protectively between the explosive and everyone else, whoever comes out of that spot has to get through him first. Naruto, Ino, Shikamaru and Anko are all evenly spread out among the movie crew to react as quickly as possible should another threat appear. I moved right next to Yukie, absolutely nothing will get to her while I'm here.

"WHO THE HELL RUINED MY SCENE!?" The Director roars at the explosion. "I WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD ON A PLATE! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH TIME WE SPENT SETTING THIS ALL UP!"

"Well that was unexpected." I comment offhandedly, more to myself than anyone else, as I spare the furious Director a glance. "He's always been nice to me, even when I was a dick to him."

"That's because he likes you." Yukie distractedly adds as she's staring at the smoke. "I have no idea why though, you're an ass."

"Yes I am." I easily agree. "I'm assuming you still have the trinket on you?"

"I do." She confirms.

"Good. You will never know when shit gets real. Best to always be prepared for the worst." I scan the debris, looking for anything remotely human shaped. "Who the hell makes a flashy entrance like that then doesn't do anything - oh there he is. About damn time."

A lone figure is standing up, he hid himself under a stark white sheet of some sort that helped him blend in with the snow. He's a tall man with light blue hair that's pulled back in a ponytail with a single strand escaping and hanging down in front of his face. His eyes match his hair's color and there's two vertical markings that run through them on his face. He's wearing a ridiculous hat, it's like someone cut the top off of a snow cap. Seriously, it looks bad and horribly ineffective at keeping his head warm.

But that's all irrelevant, it's what he's wearing beneath the neck that catches my attention. It's a light blue, borderline white, tunic with dark blue markings on it. His right hand is encased in a metal gauntlet of sorts and on his left shoulder there's a single pauldron of metal with a blue and white yin-yang design on it.

It's chakra armor.

But not the chakra armor I'm here for.

"Who the hell is this guy?" I blurt out the question that everyone is thinking.

"Nadare Roga." Kakashi answers my question with a hint of… holy shit that's fear. Kakashi is afraid of this guy? Kakashi?

"So you do remember me!" Nadare smiles down on Kakashi. "The one who got away. I'm glad I left an impression. Unfortunately you are not the mission objective."

"Correct." A female voice calls out from the east. "We're here for Princess Koyuki. Do you still wear the Hexagonal Crystal around your neck?"

This woman has shockingly neon pink hair and for some ungodly reason also saw fit to defile her hat. She's cut two holes in it so that she can have what looks like two pigtails pop out of it. She also has pale green eyes, but I'm still stuck on the whole cutting holes in the hat thing. Why would anyone do that?

Like Nadare she's also in a suit of chakra armor but her metal yin-yang symbol is on her back instead of the shoulder. Interesting, have the chakra armor suits been customized to each individual? Does that mean they all have unique secondary functions?

"We can always find out." Another male voice calls out from the west. "It isn't like Doto will care if she dies, we just need the Crystal."

This man has darker purple hair and also cut off the top of his hat to show it off! What the hell is wrong with these people? Sorry sorry, that's unimportant yet extremely annoying! Anyways his eyes are all one solid color, almost similar to mine but they're a lighter shade and he's actually got eyeballs still.

Like the rest of his team, this guy is wearing chakra armor. His is a lot different from the other two I've seen, theirs was conservative. It was built for someone with a lighter frame in mind. But this guy is a beefcake and he's got way more metal on him than the other two. Both shoulders are covered and one has an ornate spike jutting out of it, his gauntlet is a lot bigger and the yin-yang symbol is on his chest.

Also he's got a snowboard on his back. What? A snowboard? Why the hell does a shinobi have a snowboard?

"I'm totally stealing that the first chance I get." I promise myself. I've never gone snowboarding before but that was because I was too uncoordinated. But now I'm a shinobi! I bet it'll be super easy!

"Mizore, Fubuki." Nadare calls out to his two underlings. "You know what to do."

"Everyone back to the ship!" Shikamaru shouts over the racket of everyone else.

"But what about -"

"MOVE!" Shikamaru cuts off the crew member from finishing his sentence. "Your life is more important! Those are shinobi! Get your asses back to the ship! NOW!"

Everyone explodes into motion. The movie crew is scrambling around like mad to gather as much as they can before running back to the ship but I don't really think they're in any danger. Shinobi are trained to remove the biggest threat as quickly as possible and right now that threat is the other shinobi. Us. These Snow shinobi will deal with us first then move onto their true mission goal.

Which is something Yukie has wrapped around her neck and I've sworn to protect said neck from all harm.

"I fucking knew it would spiral out of control." I seethe as I grab Yukie's wrist. "Come on, that means us. I'll have to get that snowboard later, your life is more important. Though it is close."

"You're not getting away that easily Princess!" Mizore, the guy with the heavy armor, is making excellent use of his snowboard. He's careening down the iceberg at breakneck speeds with every intention of snatching Yukie away from me. "You're mine!"

"No she's NOT!" Naruto springs forward and lands a heavy punch to the side of Mizore's face and it knocks him off course away from Yukie and I. "You'll have to go through all of us before we let you touch her!"

"Well that makes my life easier." I tug on Yukie's arm and she stumbles. "Oi. Princess. Walk or I drag you. I don't care which."

"You're not getting her back to the ship." Fubuki shouts at me as she flies through hand signs. "Ice Prison Technique!"

The ice between me, Yukie and the ship surges to life. It bursts from the ground like a geyser and forms a very tall wall blocking the shortest route back to the ship.

"You have a bloodline?" I divert almost my full attention to Fubuki, I've only met one other Ice user and Haku was deadly.

~No, she doesn't. She's a water affinity but must have undergone extensive specialized training to learn how to manipulate ice. Haku was a true carrier of the Hyoton, Fubuki is a cheap imitation. All she's doing is manipulating the water in the ice instead of creating ice itself for her jutsu. She's nothing special, if not for that armor enhancing her abilities she'd have no hope of making a wall this size.~

"Aw. Lame. Guess I won't be stealing your heart." I turn away from her and walk straight at the wall.

"Sorry kiddo, you couldn't steal my heart if you tired." She darts at Yukie while talking to me. "You're way too young for me. I'm not a cradle robber."

"Not what I meant but whatever." I glance down at her feet. "Oh, this is going to be funny."

"No this is going to be victory!" She shouts as she's barely a meter from Yukie.