The Blessed Realm

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-One: Role-Playing

For the first fifteen minutes Sasuke had followed the discussion between Naruto and the woman, then the guy next to him had engaged him in a conversation of their own, asking whether he was from Konoha too.

“I am. But contrary to Naruto I don't hold any illusions about Konoha's peacefulness. You can speak your mind when you talk to me.”

The man asked him for the reason for his resentment. At first Sasuke was careful and did not tell his family's story but answered in a rather vague and general manner, but soon he felt at ease in the company of people who hated Danzou as much as he did, and after drinking some wine he opened up and told people his true identity, and how he had found his parents lying dead on the floor, and how later he had learnt that his brother had been ordered by the Elders and Danzou to commit the murder.

For the first time he did not meet the shocked silence of some twenty or thirty second that was the usual response to his story. People thought it perfectly expectable that Danzou was capable of such a crime, so there was nothing to be shocked about. Sasuke was first irritated, as he had come to expect the silence by now (and enjoyed it too), then he realized that what he got here was far better: For the first time there was no gap between him and other people.

He did not notice that news about his identity wandered along the table, so that he was surprised when the guy next to him told him to look to the end of the table and pointed out a man sitting there: “You should talk to him. He's writing his Ph.D. thesis about your clan.”

Sasuke looked up and saw that a man had been staring at him all the time. He felt annoyed, and he activated his Sharingan, just for a second, just to impress the man, then he asked the guy next to him what a Ph.D. thesis was. He did not understand the explanation completely, only that a it was some kind of scientific book. Sasuke did not feel comfortable with the idea of a stranger writing a book about him and his family, so he looked again to the end of the table and saw that the man was still staring at him. Now he invited him to take the seat opposite to him. Sasuke hesitated, then he decided that talking to the Ph.D. student was safer than ignoring him. The student followed him with his eyes as Sasuke went over to him, looking more and more excited.

“I'm very happy to meet you,” he said. “I did not know that the last surviving member of the Uchiha clan lived in Music Town. If I had been aware of you I would have approached you from my own accord. I would like to interview you for my thesis, if this is okay to you.”

Sasuke still felt weird. The man was busy writing a book on his family, and instead of acknowledging the impertinence of his endeavour he asked him for an interview – he wanted Sasuke's support for his project. Sasuke was on the point of flatly refusing it, then however he leant back and smiled.

“That suits me well,” he said. “Because I need to talk to you too.”

They found a day and a time to meet, then the woman who had given the talk left, and most other people followed her. Sasuke sought Naruto's company again, and together they went home. For a while they walked in silence, then Naruto spoke up:

“My father was pressured to sacrifice himself, even though there might have been alternatives. He was also pressured to sacrifice me and turn me into a jinchuuriki, even though in this matter there might have been other ways too. He was pressured by the few people who knew about my existence.”

Sasuke considered it. He felt reminded of Itachi, who had also been pressured to sacrifice himself and his precious people, only that in the end he had at least refrained from sacrificing him, Sasuke.

“Maybe he just did not know about these alternatives,” he said. “Maybe people just did not tell him.”

He did not manage to dispel Naruto's doubts. Since he had learnt that his own father had sealed the kyuubi into him Naruto had told himself that he had only done this because he had sensed that he was strong enough to master the kyuubi, and to use its power to save the world. People in Music Town considered these ideas ridiculous, however, and Sasuke, who did his best to adopt Music Town's ways of thinking, considered them ridiculous too. Naruto found it more and more difficult to uphold his ideas about his father, about the kyuubi, and about his own role in the world.

“If I am not strong enough to control the kyuubi and use it to bring peace to the world, who am I then?” he asked. “Am I just a little child who had a monster sealed into him in order to turn him into a weapon? Am I a weapon?”

“You're Naruto,” Sasuke replied. “You're not a weapon. You're a human being.”



He embraced Naruto and kissed him in the street, caressing his hair and his cheeks and in particular his whisker marks. Naruto returned the kisses, but absent-mindedly. Sasuke had not been able to restore his confidence.

The next day brought another surprise that even further cast Naruto into doubts about his identity: During lunch in the canteen of the police's head quarter a woman approached them, telling him that his official documents that would serve him as an ID had been lying on her table for quite some time now and that he should finally pick them up so that she could tidy her desk.

Naruto nodded, and when classes were over and their classmates went on patrol (he and Sasuke still weren't allowed to do this) he went to the woman's office. It happened that she was absent, but her colleague knew where to find Naruto's documents. He read them before he handed them out:

“Uzumaki,” he said. “Are you sure you're from Konoha?”

“Yes. Why?”

“There's some Uzumakis living in one of the neighbour villages. Uzumakis' flutes & woodpipes is their firm's name, though they also produce oboes and clarinets. Have you never heard of them?"

“No. I grew up in Konoha where people take little interest in Music.”

“Maybe they're some distant relatives.”

“I don't think so. I am from Konoha. I had not heard about Music Town before I came here.”

The man shrugged, and when Naruto had signed the necessary papers he handed him his documents. “Have a nice stay in Music Town,” he said. “I hope you like it here.”

After leaving the office Naruto stood in the corridor for a while, wondering about the man's words. No one else in Konoha had been called Uzumaki, he remembered, not even his father. And no one had been called Namikaze either.

Not being allowed to go on patrol did not mean that Sasuke and Naruto could go home in the afternoon. Their superiors had sent them to the different departments of the police on these occasions, making sure they got to know the diversity of police work in Music Town. This afternoon, however, they were ordered to one of the smaller martial arts dojos of the head quarter: “Special training so that you will be able to face Madara.”

They wondered what kind of jutsu people in Music Town were able to teach them, but they were wise enough not to ask the question to the two people who were waiting for them: a policewoman in her forties, and a young man who was not even a policeman but a student of social pedagogics who was doing some practical work as part of his studies.

“We are going to do some role-playing,” the woman told the boys. “Next time you meet Madara you must be prepared for it.”

The boys had heard about role-playing: It was a common training-method of the police, and they had been told that it was going to be employed when they were training for demonstrations. They had no idea what it might be, however.

“You've done quite well so far, all in all,” the woman continued. “However in the future you need to change your strategy. You need confidence that Madara can't tempt you, so that you no longer have to focus on rejecting his offers. Your new aim must be to extract information from Madara, and for this you must even pretend that you consider his offers without fear of giving in to them in the end. Now tell me about your last encounter with Madara!”

The boys looked at each other. “Madara offered Sasuke his brother's eyes,” Naruto said, and when he saw the shock in the two people's eyes he added: “It's an Uchiha thing. They transplant each other's eyes in order to enhance their power.”

The people were still in shock. “Doesn't your brother need his eyes for himself?” the woman asked.

“He's dead,” Sasuke replied. “Besides, I rejected the offer. I don't need the eyes.”

The woman swallowed. “Okay. You don't have to tell me any details now: instead show them to me!”

The boys still had no idea.

“Naruto will be Madara!”

“What? Why me? Sasuke's an Uchiha, not me.”

Now the woman looked irritated, and annoyed.

“Because Sasuke, is going to practise now. You'll be Madara and offer him his brother's eyes, and Sasuke will first show his original response, and then we'll all look for alternatives. Next time we'll address a situation where Madara was targeting you, then Sasuke will be Madara.”

“But I can't be Madara. I don't look like him. I don't feel like him. At least I need a mask and a black cloak with clouds on it.”

After a few seconds of thinking the woman nodded, much to Naruto's surprise. (He knew he was acting childishly.) She told the young social pedagogue to get some orange cardboard for the mask and a large piece of black cloth.

“With the clouds you'll have to wait until tomorrow,” she said while the young man was cutting out the mask. “It will take some time to sew them on.”

“It's okay,” Naruto said, feeling a bit embarrassed for causing that much trouble. “It's just that I feel more like Madara with the cloak. It's like crossdressing: I feel more like a woman when I wear high heels.”

The policewoman looked at her shoes. “It's possible to feel like a woman without high heels,” she said.

The young man had now finished the mask and passed it to Naruto. He put it on.

“Now I'm Madara, head of Akatsuki, master of the bijuu.”

“Okay. Now you talk to Sasuke and offer him his brother's eyes.”

The young man had found something that served as a bench for Sasuke. Naruto approached him, straightening, doing his best to look fierce under his mask, and arranging the piece of cloth in the coolest way he could think of.

“You don't need to turn blind,” he said. “There's still Itachi's eyes available for transplantation.”

They did not remember every word, but what they remembered was close enough not to get them into a discussion about different versions. Only when Naruto should have entered the conversation and could not do this because he was playing Madara they did not know what to do.

“It's okay,” the policewoman said. “You did well, but you refute Madara right at the beginning of the conversation to make him stop talking. It makes you look as if you were scared that he might make you change your mind. It would be okay if you were a civilian, and even as a policeman there's a lot of situations where it's appropriate to state the position of the law right at the beginning, and shut down any discussion. This, however, is something else. Your task is to make Madara talk, not to stop him from talking. So now you take some minutes and remind yourself that you really don't need whatever he offers you, and then we try that scene again.”

Sasuke nodded. He closed his eyes and told himself that he was not interested in Itachi's eyes but preferred to keep his own, and that he definitely did not care about the power a transplantation might give him. It would only set him apart from peple around him – he did not feel any temptation at all. Only getting more and more myopic to a point where glasses or contacts could not make up for it still worried him. He shoved away the thought – he could postpone the moment by being careful about using the Mangekyou, and even if contacts no longer weren't of any use there might be other ways to help him regain his sight in Music Town.

He opened his eyes and saw that the others had been waiting for him in silence.

“So let's start again,” the woman said.

Sasuke nodded, and Naruto again donned the black piece of cloth and the mask.

“There's a way to avoid getting more and more myopic until you turn blind,” he said. “There's still Itachi's eyes.”

“Yes, I forgot about them. I should claim them. Itachi is my brother, after all. How is it going to work, by the way?”

Naruto was at a loss: he had no idea about the ways the Uchiha's eyes functioned.

“Improvise!” the woman said. “Make up something! Imagine what you'd do if you were in Madara's situation.”

Naruto nodded and turned to Sasuke again:



“We'll take you to my lair and there we'll do surgery.”

“Who'll perform it? You?”

“Zetsu. Oh, no, he's been captured.”

“Stop,” the woman said. Naruto took off his mask.

“You're far too sceptical,” she said. “You want the surgery, so you don't need to ask about details as if you might reconsider your decision. You ask where you have to go in order to make it happen. Also, don't forget that we need to know about Madara's allies, his ideas, his strategies. Details of the surgery are not relevant. And you, Naruto, make up something that's not obviously wrong!”

Naruto put on the mask again, and they tried a new version.

“You offer surgery?” Sasuke said. “So do you have some other hide-out with a hospital wing and medical staff for surgery and aftercare?”

“We've got a medical team at our head quarter,” Naruto replied. “Small, but elite. The best med nin from the ninja countries.”

“How did you convince them to join you? Did you promise them some bijuu too?”

“Stop,” the woman interrupted the play again. “You're provoking him! That's not what you do in order to extract information...”

 

A/N: Thanks again for your reviews and your plusses! You can find my answers at http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/14965-blessed-realm/ .It is now possible to access the thread without registration at the forums.