Crow's feathers - Naruto fanfiction

Chapter 50 No matter what

“It’s official now, we’re lost,” Hiro sighed, “how can we get lost when we have a map?”
“We’re not lost,” Daro countered, “just… slightly off course.”
“So… we’re lost.”
Daro sighed. “Come on guys. We’ve been to Iron before. We already crossed the border. Haven’t you noticed the weather change?”
Iron was only a small country, but when you had to cross it, it was still fairly large. They had been walking for days. Hiro had sent Kera back to take some rest, so now they were on their own.
“Okay,” Kuro sighed, “let’s look at the map again. No matter if we’re lost or not, we still need to find out where the meeting is at. Besides, I need a break.”

“Me too,” Hiro nodded and he sat down on the ground. He wrapped his cloak around him and blew his hands. Iron sure was a lot colder than Suna.
Daro pulled the map from his backpack and unfolded it.

“Right,” he said, “we crossed this river a while back, so we should be somewhere around here.” He pointed at the map.
Kuro peeked at the map over Daro’s shoulder and then glanced around. “No,” he said, “we’re closer to the forest. See? You can see the mountains at the horizon to the North.” He pointed in the distance.
“How did we get there?” Daro said puzzled.
“We probably took a wrong turn when we came out of the canyon,” Kuro said, “we could go back and retrace our steps.”
“Then we’ll lose a whole day if not two.”
“Oh come on,” Hiro complained, “we’ve been traveling for days. We’re not going back now. Can’t we take a different route to the meeting?”
“We would,” Daro said, “I only we knew where it was being held.” He turned to Kuro. “Do you still have the note?”
“I made a copy,” Kuro said. He sat down next to Hiro and opened his bag. “The location is in code, but we should be able to decipher it.”
The three boys hovered over the note together. They tried for several minutes to make sense of the code, but couldn’t figure it out.
“My head hurts,” Kuro said, “this is advanced stuff. We’ll never figure it out. You have to be a Jounin to crack this code.”
“You didn’t actually believe it would be easy, did you?” Hiro questioned, “if it were easy, anyone could figure it out.”
They sighed.
“Okay,” Hiro said, “what would Taryn-sensei do?”
“She would crack the code,” Daro said annoyed.
“I mean if she didn’t have the code,” Hiro countered.

“She would…. observe,” Kuro said thoughtfully.
“Huh?” his friends questioned.
“Think about it,” Kuro said, “there will be shinobi from all the Five Great nations. Iron is just a small country. Any strangers will get noticed. We can ask around in the villages.”
“Why didn’t we think of that before?” Daro gasped. The Kages would have to camp somewhere too.
Hiro studied the map carefully. “There’s a village a few miles South from here. We can start there.”
“It will be dark soon,” Kuro commented, “perhaps we should find an inn and start questioning the villagers tomorrow.”

“I second that,” Hiro said, “we won’t be able to find anyone in the dark and we really need to rest.”
“Alright,” Daro agreed, “we’ll spend the night in the village and continue tomorrow. We have to be close. We’ll find the meeting point in no time.”

***

“I never expected the meeting to turn into such a battleground,” Yamato said. He stared at Gaara stunned, “so Danzou has betrayed us.
“Kakashi sighed. I’ve never aspired to become Hokage, but still… I’ll have to go back to Konoha to discuss this with the council of Jounin.”
Temari shook her head. “Madara declared a war. This is no time to take things slow. We have to act now.”
“I agree,” Yamato said, “I’m sure no none in Konoha would object. We should continue as if you were Hokage, Kakashi-sama.”
Kakashi nodded. “Alright then. I’ll accept. Thank you for your trust.”
“So…” Yamato said hesitantly, “about Sasuke…”