“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t just get some extra storage scrolls,” Kid grumbled as he adjusted the weight of the humongous packs on his back.

“Quit ya whining, kid,” Grandmaster F said over her shoulder without breaking stride. “Suffering builds character, ya know.”

She stopped so suddenly that Kid nearly ran into her.

“Or was it ‘character builds suffering’? Does that sound more spiritual to ya?”

Grandmaster F reached into her left sleeve, groped around for a few seconds, then pulled out a worn-looking scroll. By now, Kid instantly recognised it as one of the Fulgurite Sutras, the sacred texts containing the ancient mystical teachings of the Sage of Six Paths himself. Most sutras in Hidden Cloud were kept in special miniature shrines in sanctified chambers of people’s houses. Grandmaster F wore the first Fulgurite Sutra, On the Six Paths of Samsara and the Outer Path that Transcends Them, to keep her hair out of her face in lieu of a forehead protector.

She unrolled the scroll with one hand and scanned its contents.

“The true nature of chakra… How to control seals with ya mind… Curing psychic trauma with basic ninjutsu… ah, here ya go. ‘Suffering builds character.’ I was right the first time.” She smirked as if she’d just won an argument.

“Of course you were, Grandmaster F,” Kid said resignedly. “Far be it from me to question your superior wisdom, Grandmaster F.”

Grandmaster F eyed him suspiciously for a second, and then shrugged and moved on, flicking the scroll closed and back into her sleeve in a single unfollowable movement.

Other people, Kid reflected, called their mentor “sensei” or “master” at most. He alone was stuck with the mouthful that was “Grandmaster F”, and woe betide him if he ever dreamed of shortening it. Then again, he reckoned he’d got off lightly. Grandmaster F had once been the Supremely Accomplished Enlightened Soul of Transcendental Revelation (or something along those lines), head of the Adepts of Perfect Lightning, Cloud’s greatest monastic tradition. She considered it testament to her deep humility that she now only went by Grandmaster.

Kid wasn’t sure whether this was normal for retired nuns. For that matter, he wasn’t sure Grandmaster F was technically retired. The way he’d been told it, one fine afternoon she’d marched up to one of the more competent senior monks, declared “I’m bored of this”, and plonked the August Crown of Radiant Wisdom straight onto his bald head. Then, before he could open his mouth, she walked out of the monastery and Hidden Cloud itself.

Apparently, the Raikage had had one of his desk-splitting incidents when he heard. Then, two years later, Grandmaster F had turned up as suddenly as she’d left, bringing with her a complete report on the clandestine activities of the yakuza gambling houses… of every country in the known world. How she didn’t get labelled a missing-nin in the meantime was beyond Kid’s power to explain.

So there she was. Grandmaster F. Back when he’d been unfamiliar with Cloud’s naming conventions, he’d once asked her what her full name was, only to be told it was “F Off”. He still wasn’t sure if that was true.

Grandmaster F cut off his contemplations with a sharply raised hand—her left hand, the one with the pipe.

“Ya see anything suspicious, kid?”

Kid glanced at the woods lining their path. He spotted it almost immediately. He was pretty sure an ordinary Cloud genin wouldn’t have, but then Kid had spent several years being personally trained by Grandmaster F, and she had ways of teaching people to be alert.

“Giant chakra panther, there behind the oak. Adult, uh, male? No, female. They’re bigger.” According to Cloud’s Fauna Bingo Book, the creatures could outrun a chakra-boosted chūnin over short distances, and had perfect reflexes, hides that were impenetrable to kunai, and fangs sharp enough to pierce through samurai plate (if any ninja was both rich and stupid enough to wear samurai plate). This kind of thing was why sane people didn’t take shortcuts through deep wilderness.

Grandmaster F sighed and stuck out her other hand, the one with the flask, towards him without looking.

“Hold my beer.”

She took off at a brisk walk, heading straight for the cart-sized, sabre-toothed predator as if intending to tell it off for taking up her time.

The panther took a second to recover from what Kid thought must have been sheer confusion, then pressed its body against the ground in preparation—and pounced with the speed of a thunderstrike.

At the last moment before contact, Grandmaster F casually stepped to one side, reaching out with her empty hand as she did so. Her small fist closed solidly around the middle of the panther’s two-foot fang.

There was a howl of unbearable, eardrum-splitting agony as, with a single chakra-enhanced yank aided by the beast’s own motion in the opposite direction, Grandmaster F tore the fang clean out of its mouth.

As the panther crouched in place, briefly paralysed by the sudden overwhelming pain, Grandmaster F let the momentum bring her all the way round, then thrust her hand down. The blow impaled the panther through the skull with its own fang. The helpless monster thrashed once, twice, then was still.

“Hey, kid,” Grandmaster F glanced back at him after a second, “ya reckon we can get something for this sucker down in Hot Springs?”

With a sinking feeling, Kid began to recalculate the balance of his packs.

-o-

​ It was late at night, and Kid was, as usual, alone in the inn room he shared with Grandmaster F. The woman was too cheap to shell out for a separate room for him, meaning that every night, he’d fall asleep early, only to be woken up at some unmentionable hour of the morning as Grandmaster F staggered in, smelling of tobacco and cheap booze (admittedly, the way she always smelled) and collapsing in a drunken stupor into what wasn’t always the right bed.

Well, almost every night. In Kid's long experience, the only time Grandmaster F didn’t have a pipe in her mouth was when she was pouring drink in it instead. And if both her hands were empty, that could only be because they were busy in somebody else’s bed—young or old, male or female, it didn’t seem to matter, and Kid didn’t care if it meant he could get a decent night’s sleep.

Heck, even with her dodgy habits, she was still one of the more upstanding adults Kid had known in his life. Back in Toro, the official ass-end of Rice Country, adults existed only to exploit kids like him, and kids existed only to rob the adults of what little money there was going round. It had been nothing short of a damn miracle when Grandmaster F had seized him by the ear in the middle of an unrelated con (which admittedly was already going south at that point), dragged him two hundred miles to the Village Hidden in the Clouds “on a hunch”, and literally thrown him at the nearest chakra oracle.

He was too old, the authorities told her after a reluctant divination confirmed the presence of chakra reserves, too old to begin the training. So Grandmaster F had made an untranslatably rude gesture at Headmaster Okamoto, grabbed Kid’s other ear, and pulled him into Death Valley, the condemned former training ground where even jōnin didn’t dare to venture.

Two years later, Kid became the first ninja to pass (or indeed take) Hidden Cloud’s graduation exam without ever having set foot within the Academy halls. He’d also developed an intense phobia of goats. And even though to this day Grandmaster F had never asked his name, Kid knew he’d follow her to Hell itself (again).

​ -o-

​ To Kid, every time he passed through Hot Springs with Grandmaster F was a little taste of the Pure Land. Even though Grandmaster F refused to “waste” money on an extra room even at the cheapest inn, her great love for pleasures of the flesh meant she also refused to stay anywhere but a hot spring resort when the opportunity arose. And so Kid, who in his other life in Toro had considered an abandoned basement to be the height of luxury, got to periodically rub shoulders with the exalted nobility of the world. Indeed, Grandmaster F had taken care to drill him in the basics of etiquette and respectful behaviour that every shinobi needed to know, right before wandering into the women’s baths with her smoke-belching pipe in one hand and a hefty jug of saké in the other.

Today was not a taste of the Pure Land. Today, four wrathful Asuras watched Kid for the slightest excuse to wreak bloody destruction upon him. They were here as bodyguards to the Hot Springs diplomat, or so the theory went, but Kid knew better, especially from how the female one was watching Grandmaster F like a hawk.

Why were they in the middle of this richly-appointed conference chamber with a Hot Springs bigwig again? Oh, right, Grandmaster F had decided to “follow her nose” a hundred-mile distance from Hidden Cloud.

The young man across the table executed a low bow. “Welcome, my lady and my lady’s assistant. I am Kurosawa Benzō, here to represent Hidden Hot Springs before honoured visitors. I have seen your Raikage-affirmed credentials. Might I enquire as to your name?”

“Grandmaster F,” Grandmaster F said offhandedly, keeping the honorific title even in a self-introduction. “Hey, isn’t ‘Kurosawa’ a Mist name? What happened to the Mugiwara fellow? Ya know, about yay high, scar across one eye, beast in the sack?”

Kurosawa blinked before a smooth, relaxed expression reasserted itself on his face. He sipped the green tea they’d both been brought as if to buy himself time to think.

“I’m afraid the esteemed gentleman has felt the pressures of age, and been granted a peaceful retirement. My clan dispatched me in order to serve as the new Personal Adviser to the Lord of the Burning Waters. It is a great responsibility, but I have faith that in time I will live up to my honourable predecessor’s legacy.”

“Huh,” Grandmaster F said. She didn’t touch her own tea, but paused long enough for Kurosawa to be in the middle of another sip before she spoke.

“Ya people move fast. Clan trying to consolidate power before the ya-know-what?”

Kurosawa hesitated. “I can make no comment regarding my clan’s position or any actions it may or may not be taking.”

Grandmaster F grinned. “But ya didn’t question what I meant by ‘ya-know-what’.”

Kurosawa’s face shifted from horror into blank politeness so fast Kid barely noticed his initial reaction. “Forgive me. What I meant to say is that my presence here, which dates from before any… recent events… is nothing more than the Mizukage’s expression of goodwill towards our allies, and our work together is aimed purely at securing the peace and prosperity of both Mist and Hot Springs.”

There was a knock on the door behind Grandmaster F.

“With your permission?” Kurosawa extended a hand towards Grandmaster F.

“Knock yaself out.”

Kurosawa nodded, and one of the bodyguards opened the door. A panting, sweating, lethally exhausted Hot Springs ninja rushed through it.

“Ur-haah-urgent message for you, sir.”

“This urgent?” Kurosawa indicated the ongoing meeting with a twist of his head.

“This urgent,” the messenger confirmed.

Kurosawa beckoned him, and listened to the words whispered in his ear.

His coughing fit sent green tea spraying across the table.

“I, uh, forgive me for this indecorous display,” he wheezed, waving across a bodyguard who silently wiped up the fluid as if it were a personal threat to his client. “You,” Kurosawa addressed the messenger, “go. Protocol Thirteen.”

“Trouble at home?” Grandmaster F asked sweetly as the messenger stumbled out as fast as he could.

“Not at all,” Kurosawa said, his composure instantly restored. “Merely a piece of news that I imagine is even now becoming common knowledge across the country.

“Jiraiya of the Three, the Fifth Hokage, has founded his own clan, the Gōketsu.”

Grandmaster F was silent for a full second.

“’bout damn time,” she said affectionately. “We’ll make a decent man out of him yet. So who’s been brave or stupid enough to sign up?”

“Three children of prominent Mist clans,” Kurosawa said as if not believing it himself, “and two adults of no notable parentage.”

“Well now,” Grandmaster F whistled, “if that won’t throw the chakra panther at the chickens. Got some names?”

Kurosawa’s voice was flawlessly neutral. “By inference, yes. Inoue, Mori, Wakahisa... and Kurosawa.”

Kid noticed there were only four names there. He knew for a fact that this would come up in Grandmaster F’s test later.

“Yeowch,” Grandmaster F smiled cheerfully. “Reckon ya’ll be able to sort that mess out in time?”

But Kurosawa seemed to have finally gathered himself. “I’m afraid I am unable to make any statement regarding Hidden Mist’s opinion on this development or responses to it, nor the Kurosawa’s.

“It seems I will be rather occupied in the immediate future, but on behalf of Hidden Hot Springs, may I offer you our hospitality?”

“Thanks but no thanks,” Grandmaster F grinned in a way that boded nothing good. “I reckon the kid and I have places to be right now, if ya know what I mean.

“See?” she turned to Kid. “Told ya my sixth sense always pans out. We get this to the Raikage yesterday, he might even be grateful enough to forgive me for that thing with his sister.

“Ya been a great host, Kurosawa. Got that body control shtick down real good for a kid ya age. Just make sure to get yaself a proper reflex face for when stuff freaks ya out, OK? And say hi to li’l Ren for me when ya get the chance.”

Kurosawa bowed in silence as the two of them left. Yeah, Kid wouldn’t have known what to say either.​