"Nope, doesn't ring any bells," Inoue-sensei said. "But honestly, that's not surprising. Sealing's never been my thing—I'm a people person all the way—and in terms of general fame, seal masters don't tend to get much of that outside their own village. The really good ones normally don't get sent on missions, because they're way too valuable to risk. And when you get a seal master who can hold her own in combat... well, it's hard to build a reputation when there's no comprehensible evidence left of what you did, and no survivors to tell anyone that you did it. I mean, look what happened with Whirling Tides."

The three genin gave her blank looks.

"Uhh, Hidden Village of Whirling Tides? Land of Whirlpools? Come on, you must know some foreign history."

Inoue-sensei looked at them despairingly.

"OK, basic education time. So there used to be this teeny little country called the Land of Whirlpools on an island down south. It was one of those islands with weird currents that made it a nightmare to sail to if you didn't know the routes, kind of like Rokushima back in Water. And despite being as isolated as it was, Whirlpool had its own ninja village, the Hidden Village of Whirling Tides. Highest concentration of redheads in the world, a paradise ultimately brought low by the jealousy of the boring-haired majority."

Inoue-sensei flicked a hand through her hair demonstratively, then noticed that the genin's faces remained resolutely blank. She sighed.

"All right, jokes aside. Apart from having the best hair, they were also the world's best sealcrafters. They could do things with seals that the rest of the world still can't replicate decades later. And that freaked a lot of people out. Now, this was all before my time, but the long and the short of it is that the Elemental Nations, minus Leaf, sent them an ultimatum: ‘stop your research or we'll do it for you'.

"That went down about as well as you'd expect. The reply they got was along the lines of ‘our research focus is on non-military applications; mess with us and that will change.' Classic six-year-old-boy school of diplomacy on both sides. And naturally, when six-year-old boys don't get what they want, they throw a tantrum. If by ‘tantrum', you mean ‘huge joint punitive force'.

"Here's the thing, though. When that force finally gets to Whirlpool, communications drop like there's a ninja with the Gravity Element around. Suddenly, no one's getting any reports back from their troops, and even summoners can't get in touch with each other. So, of course, they send a new wave of scouts to find out what the hell happened. And do you know what those scouts find?"

Inoue-sensei gave a dramatic pause.

"Nothing. Literally nothing. The Elemental Nations did a full sweep, aerial scouting, genjutsu specialists, everything. There's no Land of Whirlpools anymore."

"What do you mean by that?" Mori asked.

"There's just a blank patch of sea where Whirlpool is supposed to be now, with some really freaky weather patterns. Pretty much every village with sensory specialists went over the area, and there are no bits of blown-up island, no ninja gear or corpses sunk beneath the waves, no blood, no bone, no ash. We don't know how that's possible, and we don't even know if it was deliberate or accidental. The only thing we know is that if the Whirling Tides seal masters are still out there, then they have the power to get rid of entire countries... and they are royally pissed off."

She gave that a little time to sink in.

"Incidentally, some villages lost a lot more ninja than others in that fiasco, and the Third Great Ninja War just happened to break out shortly afterwards. A little something to think about."

o-o-o-o

The journey to Yuni was not particularly eventful by local standards. The chakra voles were no threat now that Hazō knew in advance what to look for, and even the hunter-killer dragonflies' near-silent wingbeats were loud to someone who'd been training with Inoue-sensei (who moved like a cat, in addition to being as elegant as a cat, as capricious as a cat, and on occasion as sadistic as a cat—not that Hazō was at all bitter about that round of punishments after the first encounter with Kagome). Dispatching attacking creatures had taken more of an effort—for instance, even without the advantage of surprise, the dropbears were heavy, aggressive, capable of taking amazing amounts of punishment, and very, very good at grappling. If it hadn't been for Mori and the ninja wire strangulation trick, Hazō wasn't sure he'd still have all his limbs.

The town itself was the biggest settlement Hazō had seen outside Mist. After the tiny villages the group had spent its time in, they were struck by the sight of crowds, the myriad different smells and the sound of multiple different accents. The guise they'd chosen for themselves was that of travelling mercenaries, loosely modelled after Baikan's caravan guards for extra verisimilitude. After establishing a temporary base (i.e. renting a room at the nearest inn), it was time to discuss their immediate plans.

Inoue-sensei, of course, wasn't here. She'd split off in an attempt to track the "Liberator"'s recruiters after every single villager averred that no, they had no idea where the travellers had gone, hadn't seen them leave, and in most cases didn't even know they'd been there at all. When she sent the group onward to Yuni, Hazō had asked how she'd find him and the others again, given that they'd be in disguise in an unfamiliar town, only to receive a stare of pure incredulity, followed by vengeful ruffling of his hair.

"All right," Hazō began in his burly warrior baritone, having, as usual, tuned out Wakahisa's chatter during the journey in favour of making plans. "Here's what I think we should do. Wakahisa, you can start by—"

"Hold it," Wakahisa scowled. "Who died and made you team leader?"

Hazō blinked. "Shikigami-sensei, actually, though not in that order."

Mori gave a quiet snerk, but the amused expression quickly disappeared. Wakahisa's scowl deepened.

Hazō refrained from rolling his eyes by dint of extraordinary, nay, legendary willpower.

"Look, anything I come up with is going to get run past Mori. If she vetoes it, we'll go with something else. OK?"

Wakahisa shrugged, satisfied and apparently unaware that he'd just agreed to being the only group member whose opinion didn't matter.

"Good. Now, Mori, you should go and find some ways of earning money, because I have a feeling what we earned back at the village might not be enough to cover everything that luna- um, Mr Kagome wants. Quality paper and ink are supposed to be expensive. Please figure out the most efficient jobs in terms of time, our skills and not exposing ourselves as ninja. Inoue-sensei said a lot of bigger towns have job boards for itinerant workers and such, so that's probably a good place to start."

Mori nodded seriously.

"Wakahisa, you can go and find the actual things we want to buy. Obviously, be discreet, and come up with good reasons why we want them if anyone asks. Also, if you can, use those conversational tricks Inoue-sensei taught you to try and lay the groundwork for some discounts once we're ready to buy. Try not to overdo it, though—she won't be happy if we get chased out of town with torches and pitchforks before she even gets here."

"What about you, Kurosawa?" Mori asked before Wakahisa could respond.

"I'll be looking for information. This Liberator business sounds like it's going to be a big deal. I don't know if we can make use of it or not, but we definitely don't want to get caught off guard. I'll also see if I can find out anything about ninja in the area, because getting caught off guard by them would be much worse.

"We'll meet here again at sunset and talk about what we've found out. Mori, any comments?"

Mori was silent for a little while.

"They really are all dead now, aren't they? Shikigami-sensei and Kanna-sensei and Ueda and Saitō and Unabara and Yamaguchi and the rest."

For a couple of seconds, no one was sure how to respond.

Eventually, Wakahisa tried. "It's OK. They were fighting Captain Zabuza, so I'm sure they died quickly and without too much pain. And they were all strong ninja, so he wouldn't have been able to capture many of them for torture."

Wakahisa was stunned when Mori gave him a look of pure venom before disappearing downstairs. After a second, he glared at Hazō as if the whole thing was his fault, and then left as well.

Hazō was beginning to understand why so many jōnin instructors had perpetually hounded expressions.