Chapter Text

“Aaaargh! Damn it!”

Kankuro didn’t bother resisting his urge to sigh, even as he tuned out the following litany. This was only the seventh time someone had let out a string of curses because of those damned vines. At least it wasn’t a pack that had been torn open this time, he really didn’t want to imagine how many more rips they’d suffer if they had to gather any dropped stuff back.

“Stop whining, Hihara, at least it wasn’t the fucking invisible stings. You’re still only an ashizukai anyways, it’s not like a replacement cloak would cost you much.”

“The only reason you managed to avoid those stinging leaves is that Kaito-sensei literally shot senbon at you, Imai! Besides, you only became a hidarizukai three months ago because of the whole—”

“ Both of you . Must you two argue here, during a mission, in front of other shinobi?”

Aaand that was his cue to pretend he didn’t hear a single hissed word; Eri-san normally had plenty of patience, but she was a firm believer in behaving professionally, especially when other people were around. He also absolutely did not need the reminder of the hasty promotions made to fill in the ranks after the failed invasion.

Anyways, considering how they kept getting things caught on the newly-christened wait-a-while vines, it was a wonder they were managing to avoid the not-officially-named why-the-fuck-do-these-leaves-have-fucking-invisible-stings tree. Although to be fair, they’d all seen how Kaito-sensei of all people had let out a soft fuck after being stung. If anything could make even mister-when-was-the-last-time-he- wasn’t -smiling swear, none of them wanted to risk it, and Kaito-sensei was perfectly willing to throw things at them if he thought they were getting a bit too close to a stray leaf.

“Kankuro-san, there’s a different type of tree here. What do you think we should call it?”

He turned to see Rima waving at him with a couple of branches in her hand. She was the only one here younger than him, but she was the protégé of their chief healer Fuji-sama and a budding poison specialist herself. In fact, Kankuro was fairly sure she could figure out the recipe of his personal face paint if she could just get a couple of seconds alone with it. He supposed he might as well check the wood himself since Eri-san was still watching Imai and Hihara like a hawk, and Kaito-sensei seemed to have disappeared somewhere.

“Hmmm, let’s see…”

He cut off a branch and split it sideways to see the grain of the wood, then peeled off a piece of the bark before setting the branch on fire. The wood was soft and burned quite easily for an only-just-cut-off branch, so it was likely useless against Katon jutsu. The feel of the bark suggested some degree of water resistance, not much but it could be useful for some of the smaller parts and gears of his puppets.

“Well, depends on whether it has useful poison or is edible or something, but let’s just call it coal tree for now? It burns quickly and doesn’t seem particularly useful for carving anyways.”

“Why did they name trees things like willow or birch or adansonia anyways? They’re not even words that mean anything.”

“Hell if I know, Rima, not my area of expertise. It’s not like naming things sesame or aloe makes any sense either.”

Kankuro was starting to wonder if they should call it a day soon — at this point, they’d collected a fair amount of branches, leaves, and fruits to take back to the village and analyze. Hopefully at least some of them were edible; it wouldn’t make a satisfying narrative if a place named the Garden of Life from Death didn’t have any plants that directly supported life. They’d already found plenty of good carving wood like mahogany and oak, and there was no way none of the plants was poisonous, so they had mostly accomplished what they’d come here for.

“Kankurou-kun, we come bearing gifts and glad tidings!”

He turned towards the singsong voice of Kaito-sensei, then did a quick kai to check for a genjutsu. Unfortunately, it seemed that there wasn’t one, which made the scene in front of him even more bizarre. Rima was the first to get her voice to work, if a high-pitched squeal counted as working.

“Kaito-sensei! Can I touch them? Please please please? I want to touch them!”

“Ah, of course you can, Rima-chan! But you must be gentle with them and avoid harming or spooking them, alright?”

“Yes, yes, I can do that sensei!”

At that point, Kankurou managed to get control of his voice enough to squawk out a, “By the Sage, Kaito-sensei, do you have them all under a genjutsu or something?”

“Why, I’m hurt that you think so little of our capacity to reach understanding with our nonhuman friends, Kankurou-kun! I needed to do no such thing to convince them to follow me.”

Right. Because someone literally wearing animals — living, breathing animals no less — all over them was a completely normal thing.

Kaito-sensei had several weird probably-mammals all over his arms and legs, on both his shoulders and his head he had brightly coloured normal-sized birds, any other part of his body was draped over with blue-and-black butterflies, around him on the ground he was surrounded by large birds that came above their waist, and he was sitting on a deer for crying out loud.

What was he, a fairytale princess?

Kankurou was rather miffed; that role was already claimed, at least for this particular story anyway. Then again, Kaito-sensei’s particular brand of insanity definitely had a distinctly Konohan flavour, so he supposed sensei was a decent enough understudy for the role.

...he still didn’t understand how the animals stuck to him even as Rima and now Eri-san cooed over them.













“Kaito-sensei… You do realize that you can’t take them all back with you? I mean, we could use a sample of each animal to see if we can use their fur or feathers, eat their meat, any useful poisons or medicinal properties they may have, but we need them to be dead for that.”

“Eh, we can’t have everything in life, but we can appreciate the magic that they bring into our lives for the short time we can share~ and really, Kankurou-kun, I’ve been an omozukai for longer than our Kazekage has been alive. So take my word for it, that if you want to thrive in the arts, you must learn to see magic in the mundane as well as the fantastical.”

“Well, I’m starting to wonder at times if I’m living in a myth in the making. But I’d be the hands of the omozukai, unseen and hidden, rather than the tayu or the shamisen players. That’s someone else, I think.”

“You’re understanding that myths aren’t always so far off as everyone seems to think, Kankurou-kun. You’ll get there.”