Starting over

#26 Giving Back

Naruto POV

I watched Gaara as he checked if Baki was awake already before disposing of Touma's corpse. I looked over the clearing and saw Akira sitting next to Leonard's body while cleaning her fur which was full of blood. Gaara went over to her and disposed of the second body too. I tightened my arms around Temari a bit before standing up to see the sun rise over the treetops. I smiled, helping Temair up and grinned. "You had to do it. There is nothing to be sad about.", I tried cheering her up. "I am glad that I can't take a life so easily, because that would mean that I am a monster.", Temari explained smiling slightly while Gaara was walking over to us. "How is Baki doing?", the blonde girl asked her brother. "I think he is just unconscious, he should wake up any minute.", Gaara replied. Looking over the partly destroyed camp he suddenly grinned widely. "What are we going to do with this stuff?", he asked while letting his sand carry the chest over to us. My eyes went wide seeing how much gold coins were in it, along with a bunch of scrolls, likely containing even more money, and a few other valuable looking things. "I don't know, I would suggest that we wait for Baki to wake up before we decide on anything. But I think we all want to know just how much money these bandits robbed, so maybe we could count the money and sort everything out.", I suggested. My teammates nodded and we got to our task.

When Baki had finally woken up, we were already finished with sorting the valuables. I sat in between approximately twenty swords and knives. Currently I was holding a large katana with a black handle and a silver blade. It's sheath was a dark blue with a few red ornaments engraved into it.

Temari had taken to counting the gold coins and all the other money and had put them into little piles of two hundred coins each. She had accounted for around two hundred thousand coins whose value we were not sure about.

Gaara was surrounded by a whole bunch of other valuables, mostly rings, necklaces and bracelets. He had amassed around sixty items total and was currently looking at a ring that was decorated with a few seals which he found intriguing.

I noticed Baki moving and put the sword I was inspecting down. After a brief explanation what had happened while our sensei was knocked unconscious he looked at the things we had sorted and his eyes widened a bit. "Wow that is quite a bit of gold.", he murmured. "What are you going to do with it?", he asked while looking us straight in the eye. "We don't know, we wanted to ask you what we should do with it since we don't know who it belongs to. We just sorted it a bit while we were waiting for you to wake up.", Temari explained. "That is very good, you didn't become greedy. But this stuff belongs to us so you can go ahead and take some things that you like.", Baki said smiling. Our eyes went wide. "What?", we shouted at him. Our leader just chuckled grinning wildly. "You see, the farmers had no money to pay for this mission, which was somewhat logical since they came to us to get rid of the robbers. But they had offered us a very generous deal; if we could get rid of the people who had been stealing from them, then we could take everything that they owned without having to give back the stuff belonging to the farmers. So if you have an idea of what to do with this stuff just say so, because the stuff that we are not going to use, we will bring back to Suna and there it will be stored until someone comes along and either buys it off of us or we can give it to one of our shinobi.", Baki explained. Gaara looked at the stuff he had amassed around him. "I think we should at least give these back to their owners if we can find them. I mean they are just accessories.", Gaara suggested. Temari and I nodded looking at our team leader. Baki looked at us and then at the stuff we had spread on the ground. "Ok, but how are we going to give the people their stuff back while ensuring that we give the things to the people to whom they belong?", he asked. "Maybe we could give the jewelry anonymously to Iwagakure with a note that we have found them in the woods. Then we can go back to Suna while the Hidden Stone can struggle with giving back the accessories.", I reasoned. Baki chuckled lightly and smiled at me. "That is a great plan. Temari and you will bring the stuff to the gates of Iwagakure in this night.", Baki said grinning at us. Temari looked at me and smiled sadly, knowing that we would have to travel at full speed the whole distance to even make it to the capital of the Land of Earth. "We can do this.", I said smiling, while taking the sealing scroll, Baki was holding out to me. "We will be waiting for you on the border between the Land of Earth and Ishigakure.", Baki said, while they were sealing the rest of the stuff into two other scrolls. Temari hugged  "Well, we'll be off then.", I said, waving goodbye to Gaara and Baki before jumping after Temari.