chapter 117

Playing guitar was, as Eiji found out, quite a lot better than drawing. Or, at least, it worked a lot better at calming him down. Drawing was nice and it allowed him the ability to immortalize moments and memories. However, playing was something that happened in the moment. If he was in a bad mood for whatever reason, taking a pencil and trying to make a picture appear was a lot harder than it was just taking the guitar and playing something.

There was also the fact that other people could enjoy it a lot more. Everyone could appreciate a good drawing and enjoy it if it involved them somehow or it meant something for them. However, at most it'd last for a bit and go away. Few people could stare at a drawing for very long before becoming disinterested, really. At least in one sitting.

Music, on the other hand, could be enjoyed for a lot longer. Furthermore, if one wasn't playing the same thing all the time, people could enjoy it indefinitely, really. 'Why didn't I pick this up before?' He couldn't help but wonder, as his fingers pulled on the strings for a song he'd been trying to make work for a while.

Eiji had taken to playing the guitar quite easily, really. However, it was probably a bit unfair, he supposed. After all, Living Thread worked on those strings too, which meant that making mistakes became a little harder when he could command the things with his mind instead of with his fingers. It felt quite a bit like cheating, he'd admit, but he'd take it.

There were few things more frustrating than the wrong sound being thrown into a song, he'd found.

[Guitar Mastery has gone up a level.]

'Nice,' Eiji thought to himself as he continued playing. The screen distracted him, but he did his best not to let that get in his way. It was probably the least distracting thing happening at that moment, honestly. One would think the explosions and wild movements going on around him would do at least a little more to his concentration.

Eiji found that it wasn't all that much of a problem, really. He had faith in the twins and what they were doing. Besides, if something happened, he was likely to be given warning or something. He didn't have anything to worry about. In case all that somehow failed, he trusted his teammates.

"We've got this," Kage muttered, his strained voice belying how much effort he was putting into the current exercise. Eiji didn't know why the Orochimaru lookalike was even trying to hide that, really. He knew it was a difficult thing, what they were trying to do.

"Because he's a pride driven fool," Hachi explained, even though her words made Eiji want to laugh. She was one to talk, honestly. She could be just as bad, if not worse. "I'm not!" She protested.

Eiji didn't comment, but all three of them knew that he wasn't gonna take his thoughts back.

"Tsuchi? Could you comfort Hachi while she sulks?" Eiji called in his mind, a smile forming on his face as the chakra beast let out a dutiful bark. He knew his mind occupants well enough to know that the female twin would be grumbling and complaining even while the eight legged wolf cuddled to her, but he knew her too well to listen to her half-hearted protests.

Back to the exercise, Eiji had decided to train in something that could come in quite handy in several situations. That is, sharing the 'outside' of his mind with the twins. As in, more than one of them being out of the mindscape. Not in the sense that they could share his senses, they'd figured that out long ago, but more than one of them controlling stuff outside was difficult to coordinate. It was also very awkward, since it felt to him like parts of him, physical or not, were doing things on their own.

Regardless, the skill had lots of advantages if they could pull it off smoothly enough. It was still a work in progress, but he thought it had potential. Things that would affect the mind were disrupted by it, or at least that was his guess. Considering what it was they were doing, he thought it was a fair assumption.

Genjutsu became a little weird sometimes too, they'd found. Not completely dispelled or anything, but subtle things became glaringly obvious when there were two minds at work. After all, Genjutsu affected the mind through the chakra network. However, the illusions were tailored to minds that were… well, in a singular state of being, really. Two minds in one body wasn't at all taken into account, which made the whole thing messed up. Like someone had taken a fresh painting and dragged their hands across it to ruin the shapes and colors.

It was another protection against a potential Tsukuyomi. However, that wasn't very reassuring. They had no way to really test it against that. They could only hope that the technique wouldn't be too different from normal Genjutsu, but there was a fair chance that that wouldn't hold in reality. The Mangekyo made little sense and they were very aware of that.

Regardless, it would be a while before they could apply their new… technique? Method? Approach?

"Approach sounds good," Hachi grumbled, likely already enjoying Tsuchi's company. Lucky bitch. "I heard that," She said, but both Kage and Eiji ignored her.

For the moment, it was already quite hard as it was, nevermind applying it in a more battle oriented moment. After all, the way they were training at the moment was simple. Eiji played the guitar and Kage controlled wires disrupting the Squad's spar here and there. Just that had both of them struggling quite a bit. Eiji could tell that his thoughts were a mess at the moment. Jumping from thought to thought and going on tangents more than usual, or so was the impression he got.

It was messy and not something he'd risk in a real battle, but that was what training was for.

With some luck, they'd get somewhere with it.

[}-o-{]

"What do you mean she freaked out?" Ino asked, her expression shifting to a scowl.

"Ino, calm down, everything's fine now," Eiji reassured her easily. Honestly, things had been just fine as of late. There was no need to get worked up because of that.

"What did you do?!" The blonde asked, her eyes narrowed accusatory. "You didn't do anything stupid, did you?"

"I didn't," Eiji denied quickly, raising his hands placatingly. Really she was acting like he'd done something terrible. He didn't even know how they'd even ended up talking about the little fight he'd had with Tayuya a while back, if it could even be called that.

"Hmmmm…" The girl hummed, narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously.

"I didn't!"

He resigned himself to having to explain quite a bit so that his friend would shut up about it. In hindsight, maybe he should have known better than to bring that up. In his defense though, Eiji wanted to share that kind of thing with Ino. She was his advisor with that kind of stuff, after all.

"I'm so glad things are going well for you, Eiji," Ino told him when he was done telling the story, beaming all the while. He only returned her a wry smile. Because it had taken entirely too long to explain that no, there weren't any real problems between him and Tayuya despite the little "fight" they'd had a while back.

"Thank you," He replied hesitantly, almost expecting her to pull him back to that conversation once more. Before she could, he decided that the best course of action was to send her mind somewhere else. Fortunately, he knew exactly how to do that. "So, how are things going for everyone else? Or for you, found anyone yourself?"

"Not yet," She replied, pouting, but she brushed that off quickly enough. "I think I've convinced Sasuke to give it a try with Karin. Sakura wasn't too pleased, but she'd all but given up already anyway. It was a little complicated for them, considering their history back in the academy."

"So, Sasuke and Karin, huh?" He said, content on letting Ino ramble about her gossip. Absently, he took his drink from the table and sipped from it. They'd stopped at a little place out of the way to talk at. He'd chosen it mainly because it offered free drinks when they'd walked by, really.

"Yes, I think they'll be good to each other," Ino nodded. "And I think Sasuke will ask her out once they can go back to Konoha after this mission."

"Huh, difficult to picture the Sasuke we all knew from school doing that, right?" Eiji commented, drawing a hum from Ino as she took her drink too. "Then again, we are all quite different from back then."

"Yeah… Well, you aren't that changed, really. At least now that you are more relaxed. You are actually more similar to what you were back then than how you've been as of late…" Ino told him, looking him up and down as if she could physically see that kind of change. "You look like you are doing well, Eiji. I'm glad."

"Yeah, well," He started, leaning back on his chair and giving her a smile. "I feel like I'm doing better myself. The fact that this mission has been practically a vacation besides a little something helps, I guess."

Her eyebrow twitched at that.

"Ah… You heard about what happened, huh?" He noticed, his smile turning wry.

"Something like that…" Ino deadpanned at him.

"Anyway," Eiji started before they could go down that road. That way laid stress, and he'd like to avoid that, thank you very much. "Yeah, things have been going well, I think."

"Well," She said, smiling softly at him. "That's good to hear."

"So, any more gossip I should know?"

"Oh, I'm just getting started, Eiji, barely getting started."

[}-o-{]

Eiji looked on, following his team's training with his eyes and Web Sense. Then he yawned, his facade of seriousness crumbling down as he stretched. By the time he focused back on the training, his eyes were barely half open as his expression turned sleepy.

He didn't think it was all that big of a deal, in all honesty. After all, Jirobo and Fu were working on Kurotsuchi's side of the training, since they were the ones that could withstand any mistakes Princess made. It was basically a spar in which she would test stuff against the Squad members. Most of her ideas failed, some others needed to be worked on, and a few succeeded. Regardless, the pair could tell her most of what she needed to know without his input, really.

As for Tayuya and Kabuto, the two were training behind him at the moment. More Genjutsu training, really, while the medic nin used his puppets too, which was something he usually didn't do during normal training against illusions. As Tayuya saw it, it was almost like training against more numerous forces, which was fine in his opinion. He'd probably add a little to that at some point in the shape of clones or spiders or both.

He leaned against the redhead's back and she did much the same in response. His head tilted back, resting on her shoulder as he looked up at the sky. Her music reached his ears loud and clear and he smiled appreciatively as it shifted to a softer tune. He closed his eyes, which didn't do much, considering that he could still see everything with his wires. A second later, he turned off Web Sense for a moment, to be able to focus solely on the music.

He had a clone made just for this, after all. To be able to be distracted and focus on other, less important things and not feel guilty. To allow himself moments of peace, when he needed them.

"Your hair's getting longer, Eiji," Shirakumo commented from his shoulder, poking her legs at his head. She was right, he knew. It'd been quite a while since he'd run into Deidara and Sasori and gone through that mess

"What do you think, Shira? Should I keep it like I've had it lately? Or go back to how it was before?" He wondered out loud. He was probably annoying Tayuya, but she was training. If some idly chatting was enough to disturb her, they probably had other things to be concerned about.

"Hm, I liked how you had it before, I think. It was simpler but it suited you," The spider summon replied, still poking at his hair.

"What do you think, Tayuya?" He asked then. Said girl didn't so much as twitch, but he noticed a slight shift to the music. The song was still soft, but just the smallest bit different. He couldn't quite place what the actual change was, if he was honest.

"Whitey is onto something," The redhead replied with her Genjutsu voice.

"Stop calling me that," The spider whined then, twitching in both annoyance and slight mortification.

"No," Was Tayuya's merciless response.

"Eijiiiii, your girlfriend is mean," Shirakumo protested then, poking at him more aggressively.

"Yes, she is," He agreed, his lips tugging up into a smile. His eyes remained closed, the smallest use of Web Sense told him that Tayuya's expression twitched for a split second before returning to normal. "Your point?"

"Tell her to be nice!"

"She wouldn't be my girlfriend if she were nice though," He said then, his grin widening the smallest bit.

"Eijiiiiii, don't be mean!"

"Sorry," He replied, still smiling peacefully with his eyes closed. "Must be my mean girlfriend's influence."

"I'll tell mum!"

"Hm, go ahead," Eiji shot back calmly. "Be sure to tell her that you weren't actually training Genjutsu Dissipation too."

That made the little arachnid freeze for a second.

"Hehe… There's no… No need for that. It's all fine," Shirakumo said nervously.

"No, no, you've got a point, Whitey," Tayuya started, and if she could have, Eiji was sure she'd have been smirking at the white spider. "I should be doing as I'm supposed to and helping you train."

"There's really no need though," Shirakumo tried. It was a worthy attempt, but it was ultimately destined to failure, sadly.

"I insist," Tayuya dismissed, her music shifting, probably to apply a Genjutsu on the spider summon too. "That'll teach her," The flute player muttered and Eiji saw her eyes narrow slightly through Web Sense. "Stupid Whitey," She added then, as Shirakumo started whining louder from whatever Tayuya had inflicted on her.

"So, you liked my hair how it was before, huh?" Eiji asked then, adjusting his head's position on her shoulder. "Good to know."

"I meant that it was better as it was before, not that I liked it," Tayuya denied, which only made him hum.

"Sure, whatever you say," He replied with a slight smirk.

"Idiot," She grumbled, saying nothing else for a long moment. It was fine. He liked to just listen to her music well enough and she was training, after all. He didn't want to annoy her too much. In the end, she interrupted the silence herself. "I'm your mean girlfriend now, huh?"

At any other moment, maybe Eiji would have given it more thought. They'd never quite agreed to a label or anything. They hadn't even talked about it at all. They were a weird pair, that was for sure, so the topic was never something they really approached at all. They'd just gone with things.

'That has been working well for us so far,' Eiji mused.

"Yeah, you are," He answered confidently, still smiling.

"Hmph," She huffed, but her music stopped for a second. Just for a moment, she showed a smile that he found quite beautiful, if he was honest. Then, it was gone, her music coming back as she started playing and focused on what she was doing once more. "Idiot," She told him with her Genjutsu.

"I suppose I am your idiotic boyfriend, then," He accepted easily.

[}-o-{]

"Good, isn't it?" Eiji asked, grinning at Chouji as the other boy stuffed his face.

"Yeah!" The Akimichi exclaimed enthusiastically. "Man, I can't believe this. Do you think they'll tell me how they prepare this?"

"Eh…" Eiji considered the question for a moment, looking towards the kitchen. Iwa nin were taking well to him, since he had a good reputation in their village. Usually people from Iwa were at the very least polite to him, when they weren't treating him like he imagined the Fourth Hokage would be in Konoha. Eiji wondered what kind of tales were being spread around about him to guarantee that kind of reaction. Unfortunately, that courtesy didn't extend all that well to other people unless they were standing next to him. "We'll see, I guess. Can't hurt to ask, right?"

"Thanks! I'll promise not to tell anyone else, if that helps," Chouji said after taking a few more bites. "I know how important recipes can be. If you could get something, even if it's not personalized or anything, it'd be nice. Some of this I hadn't even thought about until now," He continued, eyeing the array of dishes in front of him with a glint in his eye.

Eiji'd have to pay for the meal, even if the owner had offered to make it for free. The poor man had obviously not realized what he was doing. To their credit though, the staff hadn't so much as reacted when they'd ordered and even now that Chouji looked like he'd go for seconds.

"Hm, this is a nice place, actually," Eiji noted, looking around.

"I know, right? The food is awesome," Chouji readily agreed, still eating like he'd just started and not like he'd eating a small buffet.

"Save some space for dessert, yeah? I need a second opinion on those," Eiji told his friend, grinning amusedly as the Akimichi paused to give him a narrow-eyed glare.

"Of course I'll save space for dessert. What kind of person do you think I am?" Chouji asked, sounding genuinely insulted.

Eiji just laughed.

[}-o-{]

"You don't have to humor her, you know?" The woman standing next to him said as Eiji continued playing the guitar.

"Oh, but you are wrong about that," He replied with a grin that was not all that friendly. "I do, because I promised I'd help her get better at drawing the last time I was here. That still holds true now, you know?"

"And what about them?" The woman asked, somewhat amused as she signaled to the people in front of them. Eiji simply turned to the side, to look at Itsuka's drawing and then at her models, his Squad and Kurotsuchi. The same Squad that was doing its best to hold different poses and not move even the smallest bit.

"Well, they decided to bet against me and this will be a lesson they won't forget," He replied with his smile still in place. The woman giggled behind her hand. Kurotsuchi's face turned red, likely being able to hear them. The rest of the team paid them no mind. They probably knew the punishment would get worse if they failed in any way. "I saw that, Princess. I guess I'll have to add a little something to the next training session."

That was enough to drain all color from the girl's face.

"You are quite the taskmaster, huh?" Itsuka's mother commented, looking at the lot of them like they were the most entertaining thing ever. Evidently, she wasn't at all concerned that Eiji's team, or even the Iwa equivalent of nobility would hold that against her.

"Not at all," He replied, shaking his head and taking a break from playing. "My training sessions are easy, really," He said, making one of his teammates cough. "Oh?" He mused, turning to stare straight at Fu, who immediately started sweating bullets. The rest of them stayed still.

Itsuka giggled, pulling her notebook up to cover her face. It was actually rather adorable. Evidently, her mother agreed, if the look she gave the child was any indication.

"Truly, thank you for this, Eiji. If you ever need flowers, be sure to tell me," The woman told him and he blinked.

"You have a flower shop?"

"Indeed," She answered, looking at him curiously. Eiji simply looked towards Tayuya and he could tell that she was making a very good effort not to look at him or otherwise react. She failed though, because slowly her face started coloring. "Oh?" Itsuka's mother seemed to have noticed too, and that only made the Genjutsu user blush deeper.

"Indeed," Eiji repeated. "Guess I'll be paying you a visit sometime soon. Maybe with company. As it is, I have four people that have earned themselves harder training."

Jirobo and Kabuto paled, likely wondering which of them had slipped up to earn the extra training, which is to say punishment. They hadn't, of course, but that comment made them both fail. Eiji grinned widely at that.

"It was actually just three, but now it's five, I guess," He commented then. "Truly, I have such a dedicated Squad, don't I?"

"Seems so," Itsuka agreed with a nod and a poorly contained smile.

"Anyway, keep it up, yeah?" Eiji told the girl who quickly focused back on drawing, which was a bit funny to see, really. "And tell me if they slip up again, ok?" He added, even though Hachi would keep an eye out for him while he went back to playing the guitar.

"I will," Itsuka replied with an adorable amount of seriousness. Truly, she was a breath of fresh air.

"Guess I can leave you two to it then," The mother said, giving both of them a warm smile. "I'll be back to pick you up later, ok, Itsuka?"

"Ok, mum!" The girl replied, beaming at the woman. "You are quite good at playing, aren't you, Eiji?" She asked a moment later, eyes firmly set on the page in front of her as she drew.

"Guess I am," Eiji said, waving the compliment off. Maybe it was weird, but out of all his skills, Guitar Mastery was probably one of the skills that felt the most like cheating to him. He knew all of them were around the same level of ridiculousness, of course, but still.

He guessed it was related to the fact that he'd tried to play an instrument in his past life at some point, even if he didn't even remember what it had been. That meant that he knew how hard it could be, and thus could tell that he was progressing much faster than he should. It wasn't all that important in the grand scheme of things, but it was an interesting thing he'd noticed.

As he continued playing, his eyes found his teammates once more. He wasn't checking on them though, that was Hachi's job at the moment. Instead, he considered them. There were a lot of things to train on. Everything could be improved. With them and with Eiji himself, he acknowledged that.

The problem was that he didn't know how much time they still had at their disposal, really. That was why he was doing his best to come up with different ways to train different stuff. Think outside the box, make games out of it, and so on.

"Is this training for acting? Like, how well we can keep a straight face or something like that?" Fu called, using her one guess. He'd given everyone one chance each to see if they could figure it out.

"What do you guys think?" Eiji asked then.

"Sounds about right," Kabuto agreed, quickly getting everyone else to do so too.

"Good guess," Eiji said, and all of them sighed in relief. After all, the price for guessing correctly was that their training wouldn't be harsher if they failed to stay completely still. "But you are wrong."

"Fuck," Tayuya cursed as everyone else paled.

"That's extra points taken from you, dear," Eiji chastised her. "There's a child present, you know."

Itsuka just giggled.