Questionable Loyalty

A/N: This chapter took FOREVER to write. I apologise for the long delay.



CHAPTER 9



Kakashi spent the next several days exploring the building his room was situated in and the area around it. As he had discovered at first, the place was getting more populated towards the lower floors, filled with all sorts of service personnel and various offices necessary to lead such a massive city like Amegakure.



And surprisingly, on the 12th floor there was a large, well-furnished kitchen with a huge, fully stocked fridge. He even recognized the quiet girl that came to bring him his food – apparently that was where it was first prepared. The notion that Akatsuki had a kitchen, a fridge, and a staff working there, was so otherworldly and ridiculous that he waited for the girl to bow and leave and chuckled out loud. His laughter grew in volume until it turned into a hysterical guffaw, and it took him quite a while until he finally managed to calm down. Well, at least they didn’t cook for themselves here – now that would be a mental image too difficult for his tired mind to compute. Thankfully, he hadn’t walked in on Kisame making dango for his partner – that would’ve been too much for his tired psyche.



After Kakashi raided the fridge, he headed out of the building again, munching on an onigiri ball as he walked down the damp street – it had rained again this morning. Amegakure, he had realized, deserved its name completely, because the skies opened and water poured down for about three quarters of the day. The architecture of the buildings was carefully adjusted to take on the large quantity of rain, so it could be led away safely, without damage to the people or their dwellings. A complex system of gutters and drainage pipes intertwined all over the city, other buildings often constructed around them or on top of them in a dizzying combination that could make a person cross-eyed if he tried to figure out where the pipes began and where they went.



Still, in this strange city, full of steel and glass sky-scrapers, there were tiny retreats, oasises of vegetation and traditional architecture, dwarfed by the giant forms next to them.



Kakashi had discovered one of these places the day before – a tiny park with rich water-loving vegetation and a wooden tea-house, often visited by the locals. When he entered, the girl by the door bowed and told him that regretfully, there were no free tables at the moment.



“That is okay, Miss.” Kakashi answered. “I don’t mind sharing, as long as the other clients don’t mind my presence.”



She nodded, then bowed again and led him down the main isle to one of the partitioned rooms. After a short conversation with the clients inside, she led him in.



Kakashi gracefully sank down to his knees on the tatami and ordered a cup of tea, then turned to look at his companions – a pair of middle-aged men, obviously not ninja if one could judge by their clothes and uncalloused hands. Merchants, perhaps? Then again, in civilian clothes and without his hitai-ate, Kakashi, too, didn’t look that threatening. Or perhaps he looked like a pirate with his eye-patch. That thought always amused him.



He bowed to the men across the table and offered a fake name. The pair also bowed and introduced themselves. The tea arrived, and a little later - a substantial dinner which Kakashi offered to pay for as an apology for intruding on them. His suggestion was heartily accepted and by the time the food was consumed, they were all chatting quite amiably. Still, he waited a bit more until he finally asked them about Pein.



“I would like to know more about your Pein-sama – everyone speaks with such reverence when they mention him.”



The two men looked at him curiously:



“What do you wish to know, Goro-san?” one of them asked, a short, stocky man with bushy sideburns.



Kakashi shrugged.



“Your fellow country-men mentioned how he came to power several times – that he deposed the previous warlord who ruled here.”



The second man, a much thinner fellow with unfortunately bad teeth, nodded.



“Him, and his whole family, along with all of his associates and their families.” He explained.



Kakashi regretted that he had eaten that food, because what the man had said made his stomach churn with revulsion and horror.



“Their families?” he asked softly.



Both men nodded.



“Indeed - men, women, children, everyone.”



Neither of them seemed particularly disgusted.

“I… it doesn’t bother you?” he blurted out.



Again those curious gazes.



“The person whom you worship has murdered women and children and yet you revere him so much?”



The thin fellow looked like he wanted to deck Kakashi, but the stocky one put his hand on his wrist and pressed it back down.



“Where are you from, stranger?” he asked.



Kakashi quickly said the first thing that came to mind.



“Wave country.”



The man nodded, as if that explained it all.



“So you are not from a shinobi nation.” He stated. It wasn’t a question. “Your country has always been protected from the conflicts and squabbles between the large shinobi powers.”



“What does that have to do with anything?” Kakashi asked impatiently and tried not to look at the face of the man, because the expression on it made his already sickened stomach churn even more.



“For a long time, the ninja from Wind, Fire and Earth were at war with each other.”



Kakashi nodded impatiently.



“They always fought on our territory – on this small patch of land that we call home. Can you imagine the kind of devastation such constant conflict leaves behind? We were never a direct player in any of those conflicts, but they were always fought here – at the crossroads between all these countries. And when they were done for the moment, they retreated to their clean, beautiful cities and left us behind to try and pick up the pieces. Cities and villages leveled to the ground, thousands of people dead – as collateral damage from the battles, from disease or famine or exposure to the elements because they were homeless. It has been so for generations. In between those conflicts, we had no unified government, only petty warlords who rose to power over different factions and continued to fight for power. There was no law, no justice, only anarchy, and the people continued to suffer. Two decades ago, when the conflicts finally waned, one man finally managed to unite the warlords under his command. That was Hanzou, you know. He was powerful enough, brutal enough, to make all the rest defer to his rule. Or if they refused, he destroyed them. Those of us, ordinary people… we were even worse off that before, because the new ruler saw us as nothing but tools – we were to be used until we broke and we were then discarded. All the good food went to Hanzou and his cohorts. We starved and they feasted, up there, in their steel castles. They took our women and discarded their mangled bodies from the windows when they were done with them…” the man’s voice cracked and he closed his eyes, as if trying to block a memory. Then he continued, his voice hollow:



“Anyone who tried to protest, to struggle against Hanzou’s rule was labeled a traitor hung, drawn and quartered.”



There was another lengthy pause.



“Their women and their children were often present with them, to witness these executions. They laughed and tittered and ate the food that had been stolen from US while they watched.

I don’t know where Pein-sama came from. But he swept in, like an unstoppable force of nature and destroyed them all. All those who had used us, and abused, and had laughed at us while they were killing us. He destroyed them, down to the last person, so they could never rise again. And then he ascended up there in their towers and took control over Amegakure and the country itself.”



The man made a wide, sweeping gesture around him.



“You can see what Ame is like now – you can see the schools and the hospitals, the clean streets and the happy people. You can see the orphanages. He didn’t just give us back our freedom, Goro-san. He gave us our dignity back, and that, sometimes, is worth so much more than a full stomach.”



When the man was done talking and the room became silent. Kakashi was looking down at his hands.







Over an year later, Kakashi was looking down at the decapitated body of a drug trader and thinking the same thing he thought back then:



‘Peace through any means necessary. It has always been his motto.’