2013.11.10 Season Finale

15

Four young men struggled in the desert under the simmering heat of the flaming sun. They were trying to support each other's weights as they trudged through the red sand dunes. Crows squawked loudly and hovered above them, as if sensing that a feast would present itself at any second…

"Ramen…ramen…" the blonde said.

"There's no hope left… " the redhead declared.

"We... are going... to die," the dark-haired one stated... with a smile.

"We have reached the winter of our youth." the one with the half-coconut cut said in tears that quickly evaporated in the desert heat.

Suddenly, four men appeared in a wisp of sand as if transported there through space-time jutsu, a bald guy, a bearded one with a pony tail, another with a crew-cut, and finally, a curly-top. Their eyes were all ablaze and they had evil smirks on their lips.

"Mwahahahahaha! It's time to meet your end!" they said as they quickly formed multiple hand seals so fast the movement was almost invisible to the naked eye.

The crows squawked louder as if to cheer them on.

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

Or so four shinobi felt at the moment. Naruto, Gaara, Lee and Sai had never felt so incompetent in their lives. No amount of hard work could make them understand what made people laugh. Old Yonbaka seemed to have forgotten their fear of the shinobi's abilities and had gotten quite strict in their instructions. But no amount of explanation could make the replacements understand the humor in Rakugo tales.

Hope was momentarily kindled two days earlier while Kota was having coffee alone at the ship's lounge. He was seated on a couch with a high backrest when he heard Lee's voice behind him.

"Don't worry. We mean no harm. We just wanted to clear something up."

Kota listened discreetly as the Gaara Love Square incident unfolded. He couldn't help but take a peek behind the backrest when Noriko revealed her 'act of love' above her chest. Then Otsu came along and revealed the same thing. Finally, Gaara came in with Mia and the characters of the tale of the three Ai tattoo pledges were complete. Kota couldn't believe it. He was witnessing the famous Rakugo tale right before his eyes albeit with reversed roles between male and female.

"If the crows are gone, I will be able to focus on my paperwork till after sunrise," Gaara said.

All hell was about to break loose as Naruto, Lee and Sai tried to pacify three scorned women when Kota suddenly leaped from the couch he was sitting on. "That's it!" he declared excitedly. "You! Come with me!" He dragged Lee and led him out of the lounge. The others followed confused after them.

Somewhere along the way, Kota had asked a passing crew member to summon Aoyama and the rest of old Yonbaka to the theater. They were then all seated and facing the stage once again. Lee, to his surprise, was told to go up and take his position at the center of the Rakugo stage.

"What's this about?" Aoyama asked, glancing furtively at the three female additions to the audience behind him.

"Lee," Kota called. "Go ahead, tell us what just happened."

"What happened? Y-you mean with…" Lee pointed at Gaara then at the girls, then at his forehead, then at his heart.

"Yeah, that. Start from the beginning," Kota ordered. "And say the lines like how everyone said it, alright? Go."

"Ano…"

And so Lee began to narrate the incident starting from the discussion by the poolside.

"The Three Pledges," Aoyama whispered to himself in astonishment by the time Lee got to the part where Mia revealed her tattoo. The other men began to snicker in amusement at the other side. The ninjas were surprised by this reaction, the very first display of approval any of them got before then.

"It is similar to The Three Pledges, isn't it?" Naruto muttered in amazement as the narration went on. It did seem amusing to him now.

Lee finally got to Gaara's statement about the crows in relation to his paper work and that was when Kota told him to end the account. The older men in the audience clapped but they looked like they were congratulating Kota more than they were Lee.

Otsu bowed a little and shook her head before starting to giggle. The other two girls giggled too. They realized that the foolishness was their own. It turned out they were all smitten by a young man who was truly innocent in matters of Ai. The irony made them giggle even more.

"That's one down, eh," Ryo said with satisfaction. "Now, to get 'em to relate to the other stories..."

"..."

The momentary kindled hope, thus, got snuffed out abruptly. Indeed, the boys didn't need to understand the humor to tell Rakugo effectively after all, but how could they be expected to experience the other tales in real life within the remaining three weeks of their sea journey? They had no choice but to go back to square one and attempt to teach Rakugo the conventional way.

Hence, Naruto and the gang were feeling like a bunch of extra dull usuratonkachi two tough training days later. They were again idling by the poolside and exploring their options.

"They did say Rakugo is popular with the middle to senior age groups. Hya!" Lee was vigorously performing kata exercises by the side of the pool as he spoke. "We will definitely understand it when we become much older. Hya!"

"What good would that do?" Naruto asked. "We have to perform in three weeks."

"Hya! I'm just trying to stay positive. Hya! Hya!"

"The first performance should be no problem," Sai said as he lay prone on the lounge beach chair, still trying (but failing) to get a tan. "We can just imitate how our shishou did their act."

"True," Gaara agreed, cradling his bass as usual. "It's the succeeding performances that will be a problem. We can't repeat the exact same thing every day for a whole month."

"Yeah," Naruto agreed. "And we won't even get to the syndicate's club until the last week. Frizzytop-jiisan said the contract with the club will be cancelled if our first performances suck."

"Two acts for each of us per show, three shows per day…" Sai calculated. "Six days a week for four weeks. That's 144 Rakugo versions for each of us, which makes 576…"

"What are you counting?" Gaara asked.

"I'm thinking that if our shishou can come up with 576 different Rakugo versions within three weeks, Dickless here can memorize each one with his kage-bunshin and perform for all of us with henge."

"Whoa! That's a great idea, Sai-kun!" Lee declared.

Gaara revealed his half-smile of satisfaction at the favorable suggestion.

Naruto's face, however, was contorted in a way that's hard to describe but obviously, he was not pleased. Even if he could copy all the versions, doing Rakugo was no fun at all. "You can't dump all the work on me," he protested.

"The success of the mission is top priority," Sai reminded. "I can only produce three clones maximum. 144 Rakugo versions will be impossible to retain."

"The same goes for me," Gaara concurred, quite liking the direction of the conversation.

"I can't even do clones," Lee said, glad for the first time of his lack of the particular shinobi trait.

"Temera! There's no way I'm gonna do Rakugo alone!"

Sai rose from his prone position and sat up facing Naruto. "Why not?" He asked casually. "Don't you have the balls for it, Dickless?"

"Teme!"

Naruto stood up in his rage and pointed an accusing finger at the artist nin. "I'm sick and tired of your stupid nicknames, you… you…Pasty Face!"

"Pasty Face? Hmm…" Sai considered this a moment before his face lit up. "Oh, it's because of my pale skin, isn't it?" he asked. "Unfortunately, my skin color does not really match the color of paste. It would probably fall under no. F35 on my color wheel. The parent color would be orange and is comprised of about 95% red, 92% green and 90% blue. The color of paste is more light grayish and falls under a very light shade of brown. It will only be about 89% red 63% green and 88% blue. So I think…hmm…" He examined his arm. "…What other substance is colored the same as #F35?..."

"…"

Naruto could only slump his head in defeat. He finally realized an attempt at a return jab in the nickname game was useless as far as Sai was concerned. Life was so unfair.

~アホ~アホ~アホ~アホ~

Three weeks. Just three more weeks. Impossible. It's hopeless. Two months of perilous sea journey to and fro a strange land just to end up recruiting four idiots. A great chunk sliced from YIPIAI funds had gone to waste. I'm going to get fired for this!

A knock on Aoyama's door jolted him from his somber thoughts. "Come in," he said and was a little surprised to find the four idiots enter. They stood side by side in front of the agent, Sai at the farthest left, Gaara next, Naruto and then Lee.

"Ne, Frizzytop-jiichan," Naruto started as he looked to his friends for encouragement. "We kinda arrived at an agreement."

"Agreement on what?"

"We agreed that we can't do Rakugo," Sai said (yes) smiling.

"What?! You can't decide that on your own! We paid in advance for your services!"

*POOF*

"Wha-!" Aoyama blinked. Ryo, Saku, and Taiko were standing before him. "Ryo, what are you doing here? How did you-?"

"It's me-dattebayo," Ryo-henged Naruto said in his own voice.

"N-Naruto?"

"I'm Sai," Saku-henged Sai revealed.

"And that's Gaara-kun."

Aoyama almost jumped to find Lee standing behind him pointing at Taiko-henged Gaara. How did he get there?

"I can't henge," Lee said. "But I can move really fast that you won't be able to see me."

Aoyama turned from one person to the next, unsure of what to make of this new wizardry.

"We believe we can be of more use to you with our abilities as shinobi than making us do Rakugo," Gaara said.

"But…but Rakugo is the key to entering the syndicate lair."

"Then you can ask Saku-shishou and the others to do it," Sai said.

"They're criminals on probation," Aoyama argued. "They can never be trusted again."

"Ano ne," Naruto started almost wistfully with a kind of sincere and kind appeal for his point to be heard. "We've been taking all these lessons from them this past month and... we know we're not learning very well but we kinda came to the conclusion that they're not all that bad. They really like what they do when they're up there on stage."

"I think... they love doing it," Gaara said. "We've been watching them the whole time."

"We also figured they can't come up with 144 variations of each Rakugo act within three weeks anyway," Sai said.

That last point was totally lost on Aoyama so just decided to ignore it. "And how do you intend to help me with the case if they're the one performing? It's a limited access set."

"We're shinobi. We can get in anywhere," Naruto replied. "Besides," he added somewhat shyly. "We'd still like to perform on stage."

"As the musical act," Sai finished.

"We can get in disguised as crew members," Gaara offered. "We'll investigate the case unnoticed while Taiko-san and the others are performing and we can play music at the end of each show."

"You can do all that?" Aoyama asked.

"We can do a lot of things," Lee replied. "We just can't seem to do Rakugo…until we reach middle age."

"So maybe it's about time you tell us what this syndicate is all about and what we'll be looking for," Sai said.

*POOF*

Naruto, Gaara and Sai returned to their original form as Lee sped back to stand beside them. Aoyama eyed them seriously as he considered their proposal. He had journeyed leagues to find replacements for a Rakugo act, to serve as mere decoys while YIPIA agents infiltrate a notorious syndicate. He didn't get what he paid for…He might just have gotten something more worthwhile at a bargain. The young men in front of him had abilities far beyond his expectations…They just might get the job done where YIPIA had failed for years. These boys were no idiots. They were shinobi.

~Season End~

Next Season:

The Four Idiots reach the other side of the world

More Rakugo Lessons

More adventures

Even more social retardation

And maybe a bit of rock and roll

A/N:I'll reprint just the last part of my mid-week message here (minus the drama):

I am comfortable with "temporarily" ending with 15 chapters. I left no cliffhangers and each chapter is kinda like an episode that could pretty much stand on its own as far as themes are concerned. Hence, let us consider the 15th as the "Season" Finale instead of a series end (anti-climactic as it is). Till next time and from the bottom of my heart, God bless you all and ARIGATOU! I'm off to chase a dream ~Yui