WAP 18

CHAPTER 18

Modachi-sama had been the warning before a flood.

In the next three days, the village was hit with a wave of visitors. Izuna grinned and bore it. He had to stay out of sight as much as possible. It was mainly because he was recognizable as an Uchiha, but his vanity was a little wounded as well.

“Who were these ones?” He picked up his rice bowl and shoveled in a huge mouthful.

The priestess regarded him with reluctant amusement. “People who wanted me to know they were the exact ideal distance from the former Daimyo to be eligible for the open position.”

He grimaced and hurried a swallow to ask, “What is that optimal distance?”

She rolled her eyes, a charmingly weird bit of body language for a grown woman. It was unseemly, but it worked when you were a demigoddess. “They seemed unclear. At times, they were his most trusted advisor. At other times, they had never admired his judgment and were not privy to his decisions.”

He snorted into his extremely delayed meal. The movement hurt his poor bruised face. “I trust them.”

“I don’t really care which of them is the new Daimyo,” the priestess admitted. She seemed bored by the whole affair. “But their offers of support are kind enough.”

Izuna cut her a sideways look. “We could help with those decisions,” he offered innocently.

She smiled reluctantly. “Do you know a lot about the nobility?”

“About as much as any man can stand to.” He pursed his lips. “They’re all wretched. We’re nobility,” he added as an aside. He counted her surprised laugh as a victory. “My cousin knows them better. Perhaps his opinion could help you guide the court.”

“Perhaps,” she said noncommittally. “Someone else is coming.”

“I’m sure they are,” he agreed.

The priestess shook her head. “No, I mean now.” Her brow furrowed and she stood up in a swish of fabric. Her newly long hair swayed with the movement. He got distracted in admiring it for a moment, gaze tracking down the long strands. She couldn’t be human like he was. No wonder that she was so fast, so strong, so deliciously foreign.

“Izuna,” she said. Her voice was a little sharp. “It’s a shinobi.” She looked around the room, eyes narrowing. There was nothing and nowhere for him to go but outside.

He blinked. “I sense them, I think,” he said, frowning in concentration. He put down his food. “They’re coming to the shrine?”

He weighed his options in an instant. There weren’t any. The visitor was too close for him to dodge by going outside and to another house. The visitor was almost certainly here to see the Priestess, and that would involve being inside the shrine. If he couldn’t hide elsewhere and the  the visitor had to be invited in, that meant-

“I’m a villager,” he said. Izuna shrugged. “One of your acolytes. You’re teaching me something.”

She gave him an amused look. “Do we tell them that I bruised you?”

“They’ll think you’re a stern mistress if we do,” he bantered. “We had better tell them that a horse kicked me.”

“I think you’d be dead,” she said thoughtfully.

The knock came at the door and cut off their conversation.

It would probably be fine, he told himself. There weren’t many shinobi in the area. It might just be another one of the dog people, actually, sniffing around after a few days spent in their wretched little kennel or…whatever it was they lived in.

Izuna leaned back on his hands. The Priestess gave him a pointed look.

“Oh, right.” He stood up and hastened to the door. If he was an acolyte, he would be doing chores for her. So he opened the door, ready to dodge eye contact, hunch his body down into a meek posture, and act like a Suna puppeteer.

He opened the door and kept his face directed low. “Good evening,” he said into the cool air.

There was a pause. Then a rise of furious chakra.

He dodged on instinct, looking up. “You!” Izuna pointed at the Senju asshole on the other side of the door. “Why are you here?”

The pale-haired weapons mistress contorted her face in a rictus of fury.

They were going to have to fight. He braced for it, running over his supplies and surroundings instantly. He had a good range of movement in this outfit, but no armor except some metal plating on his forearms and shins. He had kunai and shuriken and a knife. The genkan was too small to fight in, so he’d-

“Stop!” The Priestess came up behind him so silently and swiftly that it seemed she had simply appeared. She asserted herself in between them.

He blinked down at the top of her head. She seemed smaller up this close.

The Senju woman looked between Izuna and the Priestess, disgust turning her nose up. She took a wary step back, out into the street. “I came to investigate the Daimyo’s assassination. I see now what has happened.” She turned her glare on Izuna. “Scum! You’re using religion as a front for your political gain.”

“I think you’re giving him a lot of credit,” the priestess said.

…Izuna wished that she would defend him a little less, but he appreciated the effort. She made it sound like she didn’t think he was capable of political intrigue.

“Do you deny it?” Senju Toka bristled. She seemed to have a hard time keeping her attention off of Izuna. He smiled at her unpleasantly. “We have heard that a cult has taken control of the Daimyo’s court.”

“Ah.” The Priestess took that in. “That’s accurate. He’s not really in the cult, however.”

“He carried your palanquin,” the Senju witch gritted out.

“Look.” The Priestess crossed her arms. “If you came here to look at me, you’ve seen me. Are you interested in joining my cult?”

“No,” said both Izuna and the Senju vehemently. She paused and gave him a suspicious look that made him worry she’d change her mind to spite him.

“Then I don’t care what you do.” She unfolded her arms and shut the door.

He stood blankly.

She’d shut the door. She’d simply shut the door on the Senju strong-arm as if the shinobi was an ugly stray cat.

The Priestess turned around and walked back into the living area of the shrine.

“I don’t think that will work.”

A moment later, Izuna was proved to be correct as Senju Toka slid the door open again, face red with confused anger. “We were speaking,” she snarled.

“We were having dinner,” the Priestess corrected. She didn’t bother to turn around. “Go home if you don’t have manners or anything interesting to say.”

Izuna winced internally. But he didn’t want to be the one to escalate here. The Priestess didn’t know about the feud between the Uchiha and Senju, and she had a good opinion of the Uchiha. As long as the Senju were clearly the aggressors, he would win her support and connections.

Senju Toka had no way to know that the Uchiha weren’t directing the Priestess, so she could be forgiven for focusing on him. “This was treason,” she spat. She exhaled through her nose like a bull. “You dishonor your station and make a mockery of the gods.”

“The Gods explicitly wanted the Daimyo taken down to hell and tortured for an eternity,” the Priestess called from the other room. He heard her pick up her chopsticks.

She wasn’t really helping de-escalate. Izuna grinned at the Senju, taunts on his face where the Priestess couldn’t see them.

Senju Toka had always had a temper. It got the better of her. “You will pay,” she vowed. She curled a hand into a fist at her side. “Prepare for battle, Uchiha. We will not suffer you to turn the country into your puppet.” She wheeled around and leapt out of sight, clearly rushing back to tell the Senju that the Uchiha had been really mean.

Izuna blinked. Wow. He’d expected something more like her ignoring the Priestess and setting in order to fight him personally. But she was a Senju dog, of course, so she had gone to bark at her master before taking action. He huffed.

“You’re not having a war here,” the Priestess said sternly.

He hadn’t thought about where they would fight. “No, of course not.”

…They probably should have set a place while the Senju was still there. Hm. He bolted back inside to finish his dinner. “I can beat her to my clan compound if I hurry,” he said, and then started scarfing down food. He was far too famished to travel without eating. “We can march towards them and confront the Senju on a different border.”

The Priestess was silent for a few moments. Then she said, “I’ll just take you closer. Which direction is your clan compound?”

XX

She was as good as her word, which was basically what Izuna expected from religious figures. She dropped him off about two kilometers outside of the zone that the Uchiha actively protected. It was no trouble at all for him to race the remaining distance, even with the sky nearly black.

The guards let him in without any challenge. He hurried past, en route to his house first. Some important things were there. His favorite sword, for example. Also, his brother.

“Aniki,” Izuna shouted gleefully. He flung the door open. “Get your shoes on! We’re going to fight the Senju.”

Something broke inside the house. “We’re what,” Madara roared.

Izuna scampered back out to the street. He’d come back for his kodachi later. Maybe he ought to get his repaired armor now. He turned to the blacksmiths-

And then a hand grabbed him by the collar and lifted him off the ground. He sputtered. “Madara!”

“Hikaru,” a voice corrected, and shook him like a bad cat. “What did you do? We sent you out on a five day trip to barter for rice. It’s been nearly two weeks and we have a war with the Senju now?” His cousin’s tone was disgruntled. “Do we even have rice?”

“Yes.” He wiggled out of his grip by abandoning the shirt as a lost cause. He wheeled around to face Hikaru as he ducked out of grabbing range. “After the Daimyo died, I agreed to do metal working for the cult, because none of them were any good at art. You should see the pond the Priestess made. I didn’t want to tell her, but it doesn’t look right. The Priestess from the village- the one with the rice,” he clarified, because that might be a confusing point– “she agreed to give us rice. So, the problem is solved.”

Hikaru looked like he was in pain. He put his fingertips to his temples. “The Daimyo is dead?”

Izuna rolled his eyes. “Is that really the important thing right now?” he complained.

“The Daimyo is what?” Madara burst out of the house in his sleeping yukata. His hair was sticking up on one side. “Izuna, what happened?” His eyes widened at the sight of Izuna, probably because of the ugly bruising on his face.

“I just said,” Izuna whined. “I got the deal for rice.”

“There was also something about metal working and a cult.” Hikaru closed his eyes.

Izuna rolled his eyes. “I cut and hammered a design into 500 little pieces of metal for the priestess who had the Daimyo dragged down into hell. It’s not like I taught them how to bend metal.”

“You are going to be my end,” Hikaru said quietly. He crinkled Izuna’s shirt up in his fist.

The brothers ignored it. “I don’t care about that,” Madara said brusquely. “Why is the Daimyo dead?” Then he stopped. He blinked. “Into hell?” His face was openly confused. “Izuna- did you hit your head?”

He self consciously put his fingertips on the sensitive skin of his nose and cheek. “The Priestess hit me. We were sparring.” He thought the bruising was mostly gone.

Madara closed his eyes. Hikaru looked up to the heavens as if he was praying for strength. “Why are we going to fight the Senju?”

Now he felt defensive. “One of them showed up and saw me with the Priestess, and I think they think we’re masterminding the new Daimyo’s court.”

Hikaru blew out air. “Well, now we are,” he said grimly. “Put your shoes on, Madara-sama. We have to go beat back the Senju and take advantage of a destabilized court. I think this priestess is the one to talk to.” He gave Izuna a final look. “Thank you, I know you did your best.”

“I did, thank you.” He gave his older cousin a smile. “Can I have my shirt back?”