Chapter 24 — Assignments
Author’s Notes
Wow — long time in coming for this chapter. It proved much harder to write than I expected. I rewrote parts of it quite a few times. Tsunade/Itachi revealed too much, which would have drastically altered Sakura/Katsuro’s behavior; and I had to take great pains so that the plot still supports the storylines to come and yet doesn’t reveal too much too soon to the reader! (More about this in the extra notes on the website.) Another surprising aspect of writing this chapter was how hard it was to go back to the (little bit) darker stuff after writing such happy little scenes.
There is definitely more information in this chapter, but I tried to make it as enjoyable as possible. Interspersing the info/conversational with more active vignettes, plus a few flashbacks. So hopefully it didn’t bog down the reading too much. Next chapter back to lovely active stuff. Can’t wait!
The map: I drew up a realistic map like the one Tsunade would have had on her desk. Even has the grey splotch over rain! I think it turned out quite nice. Check it out at my deviant account.
So I didn’t get to thank anyone for the reviews (I try to respond to all of them), because it’s been crazy busy lately. So I’ll just say thank you, than you, thank you!!! They keep me going, really. It’s a big project, and I love knowing that you look forward to reading it as much as I enjoy writing and sharing.
So in that spirit, I’d like try doing a little kiriban for the 500th review and because I’ve rounded one year of steady writing. So it’s my way of saying thank you for all the amazing feedback over the past year.
And this is a kiriban everyone can enjoy! How it will work is there will be a poll on my profile on ff.net of what kind of preview you’d like to see: Naruto in the Akatsuki; Naruto interacting with Sakura after he’s returned to Konoha… you get the picture. So everyone can vote on what they’d like to read. Then the 500th reviewer gets the final vote. (If the 500th is anonymous or doesn’t want to participate, then I can still do the kiriban based on votes. And with a preview, I can easily slip it in without taking away from the chapter writing.)
I don’t know if anyone has done this before, but we’ll try it and see how it goes! So read, review and vote, and in the next couple of chapters we can all look forward to a Naruto preview!
Chapter Notes
• Chapter is definitely about their parallel assignments and lives. There are lots of things mirroring: there are manipulators on both sides; some people you can trust but more you distrust (for Katsuro, it’s only Sakura whom he can trust); Sasuke and Katsuro are both valued for their powers, with Danzo and Itachi driving the main instigators. Anyway there are lots of little reflected things, so if you get a sense of the parallels, then I’m happy. And I’ll only go into the most intentional, outright themes in the notes.
• Sasuke’s clothes — so, I’ve said Sasuke is hard to write for. One of my problems as a reader is that I always envision him in his part 2 clothes whenever he matures in a fic. It doesn’t matter how well described his outfit is, I always picture him as the way he is in the manga. So in an effort to bypass this little visual hiccup, I’ve got him in his manga clothes, but as a nod to tradition and his clan. Let me know what you think — am I the only one that’s bothered by this? Does leaving him in part 2 clothes work for you or not? (lol — And please disregard the fact that I’ve completely change Naruto’s clothes and appearance!!) Check out e-nat’s (e-nat.deviantart.com) “Sasuke design” for a great pic of what I would imagine Sasuke to look like. It was sheer coincidence that I stumbled on this in the process of writing the chapter.
• “We have no assurance that you would not seek your brother out,” a council member prodded meanly. “Abandon Konoha, your teammates, your mission, for the sole reason of exacting a toll on him.” — I don’t like Sasuke in the manga, but I do feel sorry for him. He is ultimately a pawn. Even in revenge. So here I’m trying to write him as a realistic extension of part one Sasuke before Orochimaru. At some point, he would have had to obeyed orders and not pursued Itachi. No matter how much he wanted to and was justified in doing it. So I’ve had the council members worry about him choosing the path to revenge, as he did in the manga.
• Council vs. shinobi politics — just to touch on this….I am writing the village structure with a military side and a political/civilian side, and they have to work together. Tsunade’s powerful, but she still has to get along diplomatically with the ones who put her into power.
• He was a merely a vessel for the Uchiha’s prized sharingan. A weapon to be jealously guarded. Sasuke must have always known this. — in the manga, Naruto and Sasuke are both vessels. No one calls Sasuke a sharingan container or a susano’o container (like Naruto as the demon container) but they might as well. So in this story I’ve put more focus on the similarities between the power they hold and the people who want to use it.
• Drawing one foot even with the other, standing in the exact spot as Sasuke, Sakura had a moment of clarity: It was true, they weren’t a team. …. She’d had a taste of Sasuke’s fury. And she was in a unique position to understand his point of view. She wouldn’t let it go to waste. — Sakura understands Sasuke’s point-of-view. To reinforce this change of perception, I have Sakura physically taking his place on the floor. Then later she really does assume his mindset when she yells at the council.
• Heart racing, words dried up, she returned to her seat. She’d really done it now. It was only when her warm hands wrapped around the edge of the cold bench did she remember to breathe. — Something that bothers me about fanfics is that the characters blast in, completely confident, and do whatever brave thing they came to do. It just doesn’t ring true to me. So I think whether fighting or standing up to someone, there is an element of fear that the character must overcome, or an adrenaline burst that carries them through the terrifying moment. That the bravery and fear are linked together. I hope this conveys.
– Tsunade’s office: “Sakura rapped once and, receiving permission to enter, opened the Hokage’s office door to be greeted by another push of warm air. Apparently even Tsunade had figured out a way to enjoy the fine weather: a window behind her desk was cracked open. The little gust of wind rippled across the papers scattered across her desk.” Itachi’s tent: “The tent flap lifted and fell closed behind the courier. A warm spring breeze skittered through, but was cut off by the fall of the thick canvas. It was an unwanted disturbance in the controlled air of the tent.” — Really worked hard to create subtle differences between the two worlds. This was the most overt, how both leaders interact with the world around them. So hopefully, when thought of side-by-side, the Konoha world is light and open, and Itachi’s world is closed off, full of shadows.
• Tsunade: “Something is happening in these border countries,” she began slowly. “But I just can’t figure it out what’s going on….” Itachi: Itachi narrowed his eyes. And to double up on assignments….If that was the case, then where had Katsuro gone in the time between missions? What was he doing out there? — Echoed theme, both wonder ‘what is going on out there.’ So building suspense for things to come.
• Danzo — hmmm, he represents the manipulative factions within the Leaf. I don’t know if he will be a bigger villain later on or not. But right now, he is the counterpart to Itachi’s manipulating ways, just as he is in the manga, with both of them using Sasuke as a means to an end.
• Tsunade pointed to the red dot of a town Sakura was assigned to. It was in the center of a spiderweb of trade roads. … Katsuro: “Here,” he said pointing to the large merchant village at the confluence of many trade roads. “There’s a festival coming up, I’ll meet him on the northern road the night after it ends.” — same town, different perspectives.
• Tsunade: “And if we can uncover a pattern, then we can find out what’s happening.” Itachi: This time Itachi was watching for his studied carelessness. Katsuro shrugged, then evaded eye contact — it was the same as before. He’d found a pattern. — important theme, will come back again. That when you don’t know what’s going on, if you can find a pattern you can trace it back to it’s source. Tsunade’s pattern is self-protective for Konoha, while Itachi’s is of much darker intent, trying to root out what’s going on with Katsuro. Same tactic, different feelings.
• Tsunade: “There’s nothing there but rain. … That country’s been at war with itself for years. Just one less border to patrol. They’re no threat to us.” … The muddy pothole was already overflowing when the cold downpour began again. Fat rain drops sloshed out more water, spilling it down into the narrow channels of the cobblestone lane. — So the gray blotch covering the Rain territory on the map corresponds to the gray pothole. Katsuro is not necessarily in the Rain territory in the scene.
Spoiler Notes
Sasuke’s clothes: e-nat on deviant has done some great sketches of what I would imagine Sasuke to look like. It was sheer coincidence that I stumbled on these in the process of writing this chapter. Full pic and a sketch of the black shirt.
• Writer’s notes — so in this chapter I had a bit of a challenge, because I had to give enough information to the main characters to move the plot along, but not too much that the Sakura and Katsuro’s reactions were out-of-character later. Specifically, I had Tsunade revealing a lot more, being more sure of what was going on, and impressing upon Sakura how terribly important it was to bring back data from the meeting. But I discovered at the end of writing it, that if I let Tsunade reveal too much, then Sakura would have to be entirely too serious at the festival. As a reader, it would be hard to believe that Sakura would get such a speech from Tsunade, then not be immediately suspicious of Katsuro. So I had to go back, rewrite, and strip out Tsunade’s explanations.
Ultimately it worked out better, because both Tsunade and Itachi have this feeling of “something’s going on out there” which just builds up more suspense.
• Finally the Hokage produced the mission request scroll from the clan who hired her. Red tassels swung at either end. — This red-tasseled scroll will reappear in the next few chapters. A play on the red thread of fate.
• setting the stage for Katsuro flashback — coming up is a chapter about Katsuro’s history. So right now I am writing some little fragments from Tsunade and Itachi’s pov so the reader has a bigger picture when it goes into detail about what Katsuro lived through.
• the map — the way I wrote it, the larger nations are only concerned with themselves, they simply don’t see the border countries as a threat. The nation’s have plenty of information about each other, and they don’t care about these territories. It was interesting thinking about the position of the nations, and the fact that some of the manga countries don’t even have names, such as Rain. There’s a village, but no country. So I built upon that shifting of territories.
• the Rain village — It has always been odd to me that the Rain became an industrial city right under the noses of the Fire, Wind and Earth nations. There were in the perfect position to attack and control all three. And if they had succeeded, that trifecta of large nations, with the controlling industrial capital at it’s heart, they would have been unstoppable. Picking up on some of the manga themes, the large nations wage their wars over the small ones, then leave them to fend for themselves after the larger nations pull out. The country of the Rain village is simply forgotten, but that suits them just fine. Because they have other plans….
• Sakura looked down at the map again. Now she understood the depth of Tsunade’s concerns when she began these cross-border missions. Though she knew all about the border countries from her academy lessons, now she saw them in a different light. The Fire country was in a precarious position. If something was going on out there, it was in their best interests to check it out, and stop it before it spread out of control. — So at the end of Tsunade’s discussion, Sakura’s thoughts about the border countries have shifted. Before, she was more sympathetic. But now she sees clearly from the standpoint of a village-based shinobi. It’s terribly subtle, but it’s a mark of her moving toward her village and her responsibilities. This will play out in the chapters to come.
• Itachi snorted lightly at the last bit. “Ah, money and adulation.” He rolled up the scroll and set it to the side. “It is so easy, isn’t it. Just find what someone wants most, and there you have them,” he said, opening his hand. He fixed a steady gaze on Katsuro. — dun-dun-dun…. foreshadowing.
• Katsuro scowled deeply at the memory, applying a particularly rough stroke to the edge of a kunai. His finger slipped off the end of the whetstone. The stone scraped across the face of the blade, and a red streak of blood blossomed across the pad of his finger. While he watched, the skin at the edge of the slice was already mending itself. By the time he smeared off the blood on the side of his pants, the nick was almost completely healed. He had never forgiven Konoha. He still hated that place just as much as on the day Itachi found him. But somehow Sakura had smoothed over those wounds that had never quite healed. — So, Katsuro has this wonderful power that heals his physical wounds. The demon, which only does that to keep his host alive. But he doesn’t realize that he carries emotional wounds too, that have never healed. Only when Sakura arrives in his life does he recognize these old heartbreaks and that she is helping him move past them. This theme will be built on. It’s a little twist with Sakura as the medic, but it’s her personality and presence in Katsuro’s and Sasuke’s lives that helps heal the wounds that no medic could ever touch.
06 May 2011 No Comments
Chapter 24 Notes
Chapter 24 — Assignments
Author’s Notes
Wow — long time in coming for this chapter. It proved much harder to write than I expected. I rewrote parts of it quite a few times. Tsunade/Itachi revealed too much, which would have drastically altered Sakura/Katsuro’s behavior; and I had to take great pains so that the plot still supports the storylines to come and yet doesn’t reveal too much too soon to the reader! (More about this in the extra notes on the website.) Another surprising aspect of writing this chapter was how hard it was to go back to the (little bit) darker stuff after writing such happy little scenes.
There is definitely more information in this chapter, but I tried to make it as enjoyable as possible. Interspersing the info/conversational with more active vignettes, plus a few flashbacks. So hopefully it didn’t bog down the reading too much. Next chapter back to lovely active stuff. Can’t wait!
The map: I drew up a realistic map like the one Tsunade would have had on her desk. Even has the grey splotch over rain! I think it turned out quite nice. Check it out at my deviant account.
So I didn’t get to thank anyone for the reviews (I try to respond to all of them), because it’s been crazy busy lately. So I’ll just say thank you, than you, thank you!!! They keep me going, really. It’s a big project, and I love knowing that you look forward to reading it as much as I enjoy writing and sharing.
So in that spirit, I’d like try doing a little kiriban for the 500th review and because I’ve rounded one year of steady writing. So it’s my way of saying thank you for all the amazing feedback over the past year.
And this is a kiriban everyone can enjoy! How it will work is there will be a poll on my profile on ff.net of what kind of preview you’d like to see: Naruto in the Akatsuki; Naruto interacting with Sakura after he’s returned to Konoha… you get the picture. So everyone can vote on what they’d like to read. Then the 500th reviewer gets the final vote. (If the 500th is anonymous or doesn’t want to participate, then I can still do the kiriban based on votes. And with a preview, I can easily slip it in without taking away from the chapter writing.)
I don’t know if anyone has done this before, but we’ll try it and see how it goes! So read, review and vote, and in the next couple of chapters we can all look forward to a Naruto preview!
Chapter Notes
• Chapter is definitely about their parallel assignments and lives. There are lots of things mirroring: there are manipulators on both sides; some people you can trust but more you distrust (for Katsuro, it’s only Sakura whom he can trust); Sasuke and Katsuro are both valued for their powers, with Danzo and Itachi driving the main instigators. Anyway there are lots of little reflected things, so if you get a sense of the parallels, then I’m happy. And I’ll only go into the most intentional, outright themes in the notes.
• Sasuke’s clothes — so, I’ve said Sasuke is hard to write for. One of my problems as a reader is that I always envision him in his part 2 clothes whenever he matures in a fic. It doesn’t matter how well described his outfit is, I always picture him as the way he is in the manga. So in an effort to bypass this little visual hiccup, I’ve got him in his manga clothes, but as a nod to tradition and his clan. Let me know what you think — am I the only one that’s bothered by this? Does leaving him in part 2 clothes work for you or not? (lol — And please disregard the fact that I’ve completely change Naruto’s clothes and appearance!!) Check out e-nat’s (e-nat.deviantart.com) “Sasuke design” for a great pic of what I would imagine Sasuke to look like. It was sheer coincidence that I stumbled on this in the process of writing the chapter.
• “We have no assurance that you would not seek your brother out,” a council member prodded meanly. “Abandon Konoha, your teammates, your mission, for the sole reason of exacting a toll on him.” — I don’t like Sasuke in the manga, but I do feel sorry for him. He is ultimately a pawn. Even in revenge. So here I’m trying to write him as a realistic extension of part one Sasuke before Orochimaru. At some point, he would have had to obeyed orders and not pursued Itachi. No matter how much he wanted to and was justified in doing it. So I’ve had the council members worry about him choosing the path to revenge, as he did in the manga.
• Council vs. shinobi politics — just to touch on this….I am writing the village structure with a military side and a political/civilian side, and they have to work together. Tsunade’s powerful, but she still has to get along diplomatically with the ones who put her into power.
• He was a merely a vessel for the Uchiha’s prized sharingan. A weapon to be jealously guarded. Sasuke must have always known this. — in the manga, Naruto and Sasuke are both vessels. No one calls Sasuke a sharingan container or a susano’o container (like Naruto as the demon container) but they might as well. So in this story I’ve put more focus on the similarities between the power they hold and the people who want to use it.
• Drawing one foot even with the other, standing in the exact spot as Sasuke, Sakura had a moment of clarity: It was true, they weren’t a team. …. She’d had a taste of Sasuke’s fury. And she was in a unique position to understand his point of view. She wouldn’t let it go to waste. — Sakura understands Sasuke’s point-of-view. To reinforce this change of perception, I have Sakura physically taking his place on the floor. Then later she really does assume his mindset when she yells at the council.
• Heart racing, words dried up, she returned to her seat. She’d really done it now. It was only when her warm hands wrapped around the edge of the cold bench did she remember to breathe. — Something that bothers me about fanfics is that the characters blast in, completely confident, and do whatever brave thing they came to do. It just doesn’t ring true to me. So I think whether fighting or standing up to someone, there is an element of fear that the character must overcome, or an adrenaline burst that carries them through the terrifying moment. That the bravery and fear are linked together. I hope this conveys.
– Tsunade’s office: “Sakura rapped once and, receiving permission to enter, opened the Hokage’s office door to be greeted by another push of warm air. Apparently even Tsunade had figured out a way to enjoy the fine weather: a window behind her desk was cracked open. The little gust of wind rippled across the papers scattered across her desk.” Itachi’s tent: “The tent flap lifted and fell closed behind the courier. A warm spring breeze skittered through, but was cut off by the fall of the thick canvas. It was an unwanted disturbance in the controlled air of the tent.” — Really worked hard to create subtle differences between the two worlds. This was the most overt, how both leaders interact with the world around them. So hopefully, when thought of side-by-side, the Konoha world is light and open, and Itachi’s world is closed off, full of shadows.
• Tsunade: “Something is happening in these border countries,” she began slowly. “But I just can’t figure it out what’s going on….” Itachi: Itachi narrowed his eyes. And to double up on assignments….If that was the case, then where had Katsuro gone in the time between missions? What was he doing out there? — Echoed theme, both wonder ‘what is going on out there.’ So building suspense for things to come.
• Danzo — hmmm, he represents the manipulative factions within the Leaf. I don’t know if he will be a bigger villain later on or not. But right now, he is the counterpart to Itachi’s manipulating ways, just as he is in the manga, with both of them using Sasuke as a means to an end.
• Tsunade pointed to the red dot of a town Sakura was assigned to. It was in the center of a spiderweb of trade roads. … Katsuro: “Here,” he said pointing to the large merchant village at the confluence of many trade roads. “There’s a festival coming up, I’ll meet him on the northern road the night after it ends.” — same town, different perspectives.
• Tsunade: “And if we can uncover a pattern, then we can find out what’s happening.” Itachi: This time Itachi was watching for his studied carelessness. Katsuro shrugged, then evaded eye contact — it was the same as before. He’d found a pattern. — important theme, will come back again. That when you don’t know what’s going on, if you can find a pattern you can trace it back to it’s source. Tsunade’s pattern is self-protective for Konoha, while Itachi’s is of much darker intent, trying to root out what’s going on with Katsuro. Same tactic, different feelings.
• Tsunade: “There’s nothing there but rain. … That country’s been at war with itself for years. Just one less border to patrol. They’re no threat to us.” … The muddy pothole was already overflowing when the cold downpour began again. Fat rain drops sloshed out more water, spilling it down into the narrow channels of the cobblestone lane. — So the gray blotch covering the Rain territory on the map corresponds to the gray pothole. Katsuro is not necessarily in the Rain territory in the scene.
Spoiler Notes
Sasuke’s clothes: e-nat on deviant has done some great sketches of what I would imagine Sasuke to look like. It was sheer coincidence that I stumbled on these in the process of writing this chapter. Full pic and a sketch of the black shirt.
• Writer’s notes — so in this chapter I had a bit of a challenge, because I had to give enough information to the main characters to move the plot along, but not too much that the Sakura and Katsuro’s reactions were out-of-character later. Specifically, I had Tsunade revealing a lot more, being more sure of what was going on, and impressing upon Sakura how terribly important it was to bring back data from the meeting. But I discovered at the end of writing it, that if I let Tsunade reveal too much, then Sakura would have to be entirely too serious at the festival. As a reader, it would be hard to believe that Sakura would get such a speech from Tsunade, then not be immediately suspicious of Katsuro. So I had to go back, rewrite, and strip out Tsunade’s explanations.
Ultimately it worked out better, because both Tsunade and Itachi have this feeling of “something’s going on out there” which just builds up more suspense.
• Finally the Hokage produced the mission request scroll from the clan who hired her. Red tassels swung at either end. — This red-tasseled scroll will reappear in the next few chapters. A play on the red thread of fate.
• setting the stage for Katsuro flashback — coming up is a chapter about Katsuro’s history. So right now I am writing some little fragments from Tsunade and Itachi’s pov so the reader has a bigger picture when it goes into detail about what Katsuro lived through.
• the map — the way I wrote it, the larger nations are only concerned with themselves, they simply don’t see the border countries as a threat. The nation’s have plenty of information about each other, and they don’t care about these territories. It was interesting thinking about the position of the nations, and the fact that some of the manga countries don’t even have names, such as Rain. There’s a village, but no country. So I built upon that shifting of territories.
• the Rain village — It has always been odd to me that the Rain became an industrial city right under the noses of the Fire, Wind and Earth nations. There were in the perfect position to attack and control all three. And if they had succeeded, that trifecta of large nations, with the controlling industrial capital at it’s heart, they would have been unstoppable. Picking up on some of the manga themes, the large nations wage their wars over the small ones, then leave them to fend for themselves after the larger nations pull out. The country of the Rain village is simply forgotten, but that suits them just fine. Because they have other plans….
• Sakura looked down at the map again. Now she understood the depth of Tsunade’s concerns when she began these cross-border missions. Though she knew all about the border countries from her academy lessons, now she saw them in a different light. The Fire country was in a precarious position. If something was going on out there, it was in their best interests to check it out, and stop it before it spread out of control. — So at the end of Tsunade’s discussion, Sakura’s thoughts about the border countries have shifted. Before, she was more sympathetic. But now she sees clearly from the standpoint of a village-based shinobi. It’s terribly subtle, but it’s a mark of her moving toward her village and her responsibilities. This will play out in the chapters to come.
• Itachi snorted lightly at the last bit. “Ah, money and adulation.” He rolled up the scroll and set it to the side. “It is so easy, isn’t it. Just find what someone wants most, and there you have them,” he said, opening his hand. He fixed a steady gaze on Katsuro. — dun-dun-dun…. foreshadowing.
• Katsuro scowled deeply at the memory, applying a particularly rough stroke to the edge of a kunai. His finger slipped off the end of the whetstone. The stone scraped across the face of the blade, and a red streak of blood blossomed across the pad of his finger. While he watched, the skin at the edge of the slice was already mending itself. By the time he smeared off the blood on the side of his pants, the nick was almost completely healed. He had never forgiven Konoha. He still hated that place just as much as on the day Itachi found him. But somehow Sakura had smoothed over those wounds that had never quite healed. — So, Katsuro has this wonderful power that heals his physical wounds. The demon, which only does that to keep his host alive. But he doesn’t realize that he carries emotional wounds too, that have never healed. Only when Sakura arrives in his life does he recognize these old heartbreaks and that she is helping him move past them. This theme will be built on. It’s a little twist with Sakura as the medic, but it’s her personality and presence in Katsuro’s and Sasuke’s lives that helps heal the wounds that no medic could ever touch.
by tricksie in Chapter Notes