Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT: D-0

0124 HOURS reported breach of walls.  Multiple assailants, origins unknown.

       Operative Cat-15 on standby.

0132 HOURS headquarters received reports of heavy assault on targets: Hokage Tower; Uchiha Compound; Hyuuga Compound; Inuzuka Compound; Sarutobi Compound, Lower Market District, West Gate.

0138 HOURS Protocol 73-I initiated.

Cat-15 deployed to escort high-risk targets from Hyuuga Compound to Rendezvous Point E-7 (RPE7)

Arrived at Hyuuga Compound.

Primary target Hyuuga Hinata located with escort Hyuuga Neji, unranked.

Secondary target Hyuuga Hanabi located with escort Hyuuga Makoto, chuunin.

Both targets secured.  Proceeded to RPE7 via East Gate.

Ambushed in forest en route to rendezvous, 2km N 1km E of RPE7.

       4 assailants killed.  1 casualty, Hyuuga Makoto.

0357 HOURS arrived at RPE7, initiated lockdown.  Both targets secure.

Awaiting all-clear.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

At the seasoned and jaded age of thirteen, Uchiha Itachi had seriously considered only a few possible ways his life might go.  

However, life as a shinobi of course meant one had to expect the unexpected.  Life and death, war and peace balanced delicately on the edge of a kunai. A village could be born or simply cease to exist overnight.

But honestly?  Itachi had always known he’d live and die as a loyal shinobi of the Leaf.  Whether as Anbu, Clan head, or simply a jounin (because there had been no doubt in anyone’s mind that he’d reach jounin rank, though he’d on occasion wondered if he’d reach as high as the Kage hat itself) he would die in the service of Konoha.  

And now, at the considerably wiser and worldlier age of fifteen, Itachi could safely say that his thirteen-year-old self would never have thought he’d be ever be a fugitive sitting down to a cup of tea within the same boundaries of the nation he’d sworn his life to.  And especially not with his present company.

Across from him, the ex-Swordsman of the Mist treated him to a pointy-toothed grin over a gently steaming cup of green tea.  “Hi no Kuni ain’t so bad,” he drawled, tapping a large finger along the edge of his cup. The fragile white porcelain looked almost absurd next to his calloused hands.

“Hm,” Itachi responded absently, letting his eyes drift outside the bijou tea shop.  Rain was pouring down in steady sheets, cloaking the town in a hazy mist and churning the mud into a gritty slop.  The villagers went about their business with ducked heads and plodding steps, huddled into their clothes for warmth or protection.

“I mean,” the man across from him continued undeterred by Itachi’s non-answer, “the sun, when we first got here?  That fuckin’ sucked. But this?” he waved a hand carelessly at the rain-splattered storefront. “I can get on board with this.”  He threw back the tea in his cup in one go like it was a shot, heedless of its heat, and thumped it back down on the table with a satisfied sigh.  

It must be the rain, Itachi decided detachedly, that was making the normally taciturn nuke-nin so talkative, when none of them really felt the need to talk at all.  He eyed the other man blandly, who had reached gracelessly across the table to pour himself a refill. Ruthless, twisted, and a killer without a village to hold his loyalty.  But weren’t they all, in the end?

Itachi lifted his own cup to his lips for a sip.  The tea here really was excellent. A strong flavour without being overwhelmingly bitter -- the perfect drink for a rainy day.  It helped that the innocuous teahouse was located on the edge of the village center, really just a few bigger buildings and a sizeable market.  Close enough to any action that might occur, far enough to serve as a vantage point with several viable escape routes. A good vantage point always made his tea taste better.

He listened with half an ear as his partner picked up a new thread -- the criminal lack of fresh fish -- when he caught a glimpse of light on metal.  He paused, gave the man with the Konoha hitai-ate a discreet once-over as he walked past the teahouse. Itachi set his cup down gently, tapped it twice with two fingers as the man passed out of his sightline.

Any halfway mediocre ninja knows better than to turn and look and obviously Kiri’s elite would be no different, but a slight narrowing at the corner of his eyes was clue enough to Itachi that the other man had a lock on their target. His stream of rather one-sided conversation continued uninterrupted, however, and only petered out with a grumbled “...what a man has to do to get some decent goddamn sashimi around here,” when Itachi fished a few coins out of his pocket and placed them on the tabletop.  

Itachi rose smoothly, mirroring his partner, and followed as the other man lumbered out of the booth in a gross contrast to his usual hunter’s prowl.

Which he was, which both of them were -- hunters.

There weren’t many ways for a nuke-nin to be at least semi-legally quasi-employed, and generally the more illegal methods of earning money (robbing and/or looting) tended to attract substantially more unwanted attention.  So for now, they hunted down bounties and turned them in.

Itachi’s first step out of the teahouse sank him ankle-deep into cold, sodden mud.  He slogged onwards, glaring dispassionately at the ground as he trailed his partner through the streets.  The rain had not let up, but the wide-brimmed hats that helped hide their faces also kept the water from their heads so they were reasonably dry.  

He hadn’t yet caught sight of their target after he’d passed by their teahouse, but he could easily find him again if they’d lost him -- it’d just mean a couple hours longer in the rain and mud.  He really preferred that they didn’t, but more mistakes were made by ninja in a hurry and Itachi had not been sloppy since he was six and sliced his finger on a shuriken during target practice. So they’d take their time and when they’d caught their prey and retreated to headquarters, Itachi would resist the urge to moan and complain the way his partner did when they did missions in Suna.

Fortunately, the other man in question walked purposefully despite meandering through the muddy streets.  In fact, there was a restrained glee as he waded through the mud that had nothing to do with the weather -- more the thrill of a shark who’d caught the scent of blood.  Ten meters later, Itachi’s eyes caught his partner’s hands flick two signals, lightning fast.

There was no need to discuss now, only the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of the rain between them now.  No questions this far in the mission, only trust that the other would do their part. Itachi peeled off to the right, into the narrow alley between two grocery markets, and after a quick glance behind him, leaped straight up to land lightly on one of the roofs. He cut south, leaping easily from building to building while keeping low on slippery straw and tile alike.   Finally, he perched on the roof of a bakery to wait, half-obscured by the steam puffing up from the vents. From there he had an excellent line of sight to the motel room where a Konoha team, sans one, huddled to take shelter from the rain.

It would be so easy.

He knew who they were, faces in files, abilities and other details listed dispassionately in paper and ink.  None of them were a match for him. The three of them together would hardly give him a workout, especially not with them unawares and isolated.

“Those who kill their own comrades are sure to die a terrible death,” he remarked absently to his partner.

“Sure, kid.” The other man wasn’t grinning his usual shark-toothed smile, but there was an air of satisfaction and a limp, incredibly bloody body slung over his shoulder.  “We good here?”

“No movement.  His team will not know that we have him.”  Itachi turned to eye the other man critically.  “Assuming you do not leave them a blood trail to follow.  Get it cleaned up and meet me at the north road out of town.”

“There’s rain, it’ll wash away,” grumbled the older man, rolling his eyes, but vanished off the roof the way he’d come nevertheless.  

Itachi cast a last glance at the motel window before dropping lightly off the roof.  He took his time, wandering through the town, and by the time he reached the road leading out of town his partner was already there, this time with a slightly-less-suspicious oversized rucksack hanging off one shoulder.  

Without a word, Itachi took the lead, sprinting into the cover the forest offered.  Here, away from the town, his movements melted back into their easy grace, strong and surefooted as he pointed them back towards base.  Even burdened, his companion kept up easily.

“Boss wanna ask this one a couple questions?” he asked, not winded in the slightest.

“Yes,” Itachi answered shortly.  

An expectant silence followed.  Itachi, not feeling especially charitable, did not indulge it.

The silence turned somewhat resentful, but Itachi had no wish to speak of anything until the pair were safely out of Hi no Kuni, even though they had not ventured more than half a day’s run inside the borders to begin with.  He may feel safe in the trees, but Konoha shinobi were at home up in the branches as well. It left the pair in a prime position to be ambushed.

He kept his senses on high alert, steering them away from the routes commonly patrolled and the paths returning teams favoured when travelling to and from the Hidden Village.  The patrols were easy enough to evade. Even when there was no set schedule, there was always a pattern to find, and those patterns were high priority for him to keep up to date with.  It was the teams returning from outside missions he was more concerned with.

Moreover, his partner was much less one for subtlety and much more for kill first, questions later.  Itachi didn’t doubt they could handle any individual team that stumbled upon them, save perhaps an Anbu task force if it surprised them, but he disliked unnecessary casualties.  Additionally, the disappearance of a team known to be within Fire’s borders would doubtlessly attract attentions, which they needed to avoid.

They ran until dawn, when the rain petered out and the sun’s warm glow could be seen between the trees.  The border for Hi no Kuni disappeared rapidly behind them; they’d deftly slipped between two border patrols with neither the wiser.  

Itachi stopped in a small copse of trees and stood patiently.  He could hear the rush of the swollen river twenty meters ahead, and his partner’s labored pants as he dropped his burden from his shoulder with a careless thud.

Moments later, a narrow white muzzle nosed its way through the undergrowth.  Its owner emerged fully from the bushes, stared at the pair, and turned. Itachi followed, and with much waspish muttering, so did his partner.  

“Caught you a live one,” growled the older man, ducking into the cave after Itachi and tossing the sack to the ground.  He folded his arms belligerently and glowered as if it had done him some personal insult. Itachi couldn’t relate, but then again he hadn’t been the one dragging it across two countries.  

From his seat on the ground, beside which lay a pile of unsharpened kunai, Kakashi regarded the two calmly.  The hound they’d followed in, Uhei, settled comfortably by his master’s feet. “Report,” Kakashi directed at Itachi, even as his hands resumed their task with a whetstone and a blade.

“Hai,” Itachi responded.  Zabuza shifted impatiently behind him, but he ignored the other nuke-nin.  “We arrived in Iitate six days ago and established ourselves as travellers en route to Kawa no Kuni.  Two days after our arrival, the team from Konoha arrived as expected. One jounin, Fukada Juro. Three chuunin; Haga Riko, Sekiguchi Yori, Tabata Minoru.  Fukada remained with at least one of his team for two days, but on the third he left his team and made his way across town to the informant’s location. I watched the remaining team while Zabuza-san --”

“I took him out behind the butcher shop,” the Swordsman cut in gruffly, not-quite-glaring at Kakashi. “Didn’t give him a chance to use ninjutsu or genjutsu.  Hit him around. Cut him up a bit. Knocked him out. Tied him up. Met back up with Itachi.”

“The teammates were unaware of what happened,” Itachi continued. “We departed the village at 1000 hours yesterday.”

The grey-haired nin eyed the body dubiously. “He’ll survive?”

“Long enough,” Zabuza grunted.

“The informant?”

“None the wiser,” Itachi answered smoothly.  

Kakashi nodded sharply.  “Good work. Get some rest; I’ll take care of this one.”

“Hai, taichou.”  Itachi moved past Kakashi, deeper into the cave.  The glint in Kakashi’s eye was one he’d learned the be wary of -- even Zabuza behind him, with all his bravado and tendency towards alpha-dog posturing, followed him quietly, subdued.   

Zabuza would never take orders from someone weaker than him.  Unfortunately for him, he hadn’t managed to best Itachi once in a spar.  The ex-Swordsman hadn’t been deterred. “Next time,” he’d always growl around a bloody grin and the bruises mottling his bare skin.  That, at least, was something Itachi admired about him.

He rounded the bend, and a figure emerged from the shadows thrown by the solitary lantern.  “Itachi-san. Zabuza-san!”

Itachi inclined his head.  “Haku-san,” he greeted, then turned away to find his bedroll.  

“Hey, kid,” the Swordsman said behind him.  “I hope you practiced that ice senbon.”

“Hai!”  Itachi could practically hear the younger shinobi beaming.  “I was able to extend my range to ten meters before the ice begins to crumble.”

“Hn.” The nuke-nin didn’t sound impressed, but Itachi sensed his grudging approval.  “I want that tripled by next week.”

“Hai, Zabuza-san.”

Zabuza grunted dismissively. “All right, shut up and keep watch.  I need some sleep.”

As always, Itachi gathered his bedroll to the far corner of the cave, adjacent to the tunnel leading out.  No sooner had he settled then a pair of quiet pawsteps padded towards him. A cold nose nudged the tips of his fingers and vanished, and a second small body situated itself at his knees.  

It took a month of sleeping in the same room for Itachi to stop startling awake at any slight movement with just Kakashi and his ninken, and now sleep was even longer in coming as he lay not five meters from two nukenin from the village with the bloodiest history, who had willingly slaughtered their own comrades.

But slowly, grudgingly, the other nuke-nin were becoming part of the team.

Ah, what would his mother think of him now?  Hunting shinobi from his own village with a team of nuke-nin who had turned against theirs as well?  Itachi had chosen peace, but Konoha had fallen into war anyways.

All he could do now was live, and hope that one day it would be safe to return home.

Shisui woke him six hours later, dripping rainwater unhappily onto the stone floor.  Zabuza and Haku were both gone, but in the dim glow of the lantern he could make out the shapes of Bisuke and Guruko sprawled at his feet, bodies rising and falling slowly.

“Shisui.”  Itachi’s voice was rough with sleep, but he hauled himself into a sitting position mercilessly.

“Ohaiyo, Itachi,” Shisui smiled crookedly.  “Good mission?”

“Aa,” he confirmed.  “No complications.”

His cousin raised an expectant eyebrow.  “And?”

Itachi scowled faintly, an expression only those close to him would recognize.  “...the weather was unpleasant,” he added reluctantly.

Shisui hummed in agreement.  “I think the storm system caught up to you.  It started raining two hours ago and hasn’t let up yet.”  He reached up to peel his sodden hitai-ate from his head, then sent a hum of warm chakra through his body that Itachi could feel even from a meter away until he and his clothes were completely dry.  

Itachi watched him retie his forehead protector, still proudly bearing an unmarred leaf symbol, and crooked to mirror Kakashi-taichou.  None of them had slashed their village symbols, not even the Kiri pair. After all, it wasn’t as if the civilian villages they visited would know if they were missing-nin.

His cousin would call it sentiment, but Itachi was too practical for sentimentality.

Shisui didn’t feel the need to talk, especially not around Itachi.  The cousins sat in companionable silence. He knew it wouldn’t last; their respites never did last.  One would think that not having a village would cut down greatly on responsibilities, but he couldn’t be more wrong.  

The two ninken sat up abruptly, startled out of dozing.  Guruko wagged his tail as Kakashi strode into view, trailed by two other dogs. “Itachi, supply run,” he said without preamble, tossing a scroll to the teen.  “And turn in the bounty for Fukuda-san while you’re at it; I believe Iwa has the highest reward at present. I’ll be leaving in the morning for ten days or so with Pakkun and Bisuke.  Shisui, you’re in charge while I’m away. Give Zabuza another day to rest, then send him and Haku to check on their contacts in Kusa.”

“Hai,” murmured Itachi, echoed by Shisui.  

The older man nodded at them, then turned away to find his own sleeping roll, shadowed by his ninken.  “Uhei caught a couple rabbits, if you’re hungry,” he tossed over his shoulder.

Shisui heaved himself up with a sigh.  “I’ll get some food cooked, then. Itachi?  Taichou?”

“That would be appreciated,” Itachi responded, rising gracefully to his feet.

Kakashi waved a hand at them.  “I’m fine.”

Shisui scowled at the older man, who had already bundled himself into his blankets under a pile of dog.  “I’ll save some for you, Hatake-taichou. Eat it when you get up,” he said pointedly, and whirled out of sight before he could respond.

Amused, Itachi found his sandals and slung his discarded cloak over his shoulders before following his cousin to the mouth of the cave.  Uhei was already there, his narrow tail thumping the floor in interest as Shisui built up a small stack of wood and spat a tiny flame at it.  It took a couple tries to light up; the wood was damp.

Once he had a small if smoky fire going, the hound dropped a large rabbit in Shisui’s lap with a wolfish grin and was rewarded with an ear rub.  The dog was clearly already sated, if the traces of red around his mouth and round stomach were any clue. There were two other rabbits by his paws.

“Make sure we don’t suffocate?” Shisui suggested as he pulled out a kunai.

“Aa,” Itachi acquicised, folding his hands into a sign and breathing out slowly. The smoke gathering at the ceiling drifted out, dispersed into the air outside rather than trailing skyward in a single column.  He kept it up as he watched his cousin shuck and gut the rabbits with sure hands before throwing them into a pot with water, a handful of tubers, and salt.

Maybe twenty meters out, he could feel the chakra signatures of Zabuza and Haku -- both muted, but the former still and steady while the latter flitted and fluctuated.  Aside from them, the forest was calm and silent.

The nearest village was four hours running, and hardly anyone travelled through this patch of woods.  Still, Itachi hadn’t relaxed, not truly, since he’d left Konoha. He’d taken the protection of the village for granted, he knew now.

“Ryo for your thoughts?” Shisui cut in, quirking an amused eyebrow.  He covered the pot with its lid and sat back.

Itachi shook his head dismissively.  There was no use dwelling on useless musings.  His cousin narrowed his eyes disbelievingly but didn’t press.

Uhei’s ears pricked, swivelled in the direction of the forest for a moment before the hound relaxed again.  Zabuza and Haku emerged, the former bleeding his customary languid grace, the latter with a flush belying the exhilaration he tried to hide beneath a proper shinobi’s nonchalance.

The other teen was just a few years younger than Itachi, yet Haku was still innocent enough to find excitement in training, to delight in his own capabilities and marvel at what he could accomplish.  In him, Itachi remembered Sasuke’s eager eyes and drive to learn.

“Good morning,” the younger shinobi greeted politely as they approached.  Zabuza graced them each with a brusque nod before brushing past, but Haku didn’t follow.  

Itachi tilted his head inquisitively when Haku fidgeted, twisting his fingers into his sleeve.  

“Itachi-san, I -- I was wondering if you might like to spar with me?” he asked hopefully, eyes bright despite the fact that his hair had been all but plastered to his head.  

Purposefully shoving aside the invasively bittersweet memories that threatened to come to the forefront, Itachi glanced over at Shisui, who made a lazy shooing motion with one hand.  “I can handle the fire without you,” his cousin reassured, mouth twitching in an amused smirk.

“Aa.” Itachi rose to his feet and nodded to Haku.  “Lead the way, Haku-san.”

He caught the tail end of a genuine smile before Haku turned, haori fluttering, and leapt back out of the cave mouth.  Itachi ghosted out after him with silent, sure footsteps and followed him to the same clearing he’d sensed his and Zabuza’s chakra before.  

The rain was coming down as though he’d never left Iitate, hampered only slightly by the leaves and branches overhead.  Itachi bore it with a grim stoicness, walking lightly on top of the mud.

“Would taijutsu only be alright with you, Itachi-san?” Haku asked as Itachi slipped out of his cloak.

“Acceptable, yes,” he answered, beginning a few stretches to warm up muscles gone stiff in the cold, damp cave.  “Do you wish to include tools in combat?”

“If that’s okay with you?”

It was difficult to dislike Haku, who was always unfailing polite and painfully earnest.  He was the one who made an effort to connect to the Konoha shinobi, always helpful and friendly -- and he meant it.  Where Zabuza was suspicious and spurned friendly overtures, Haku was open, and as far as he could tell, honest.  Doubtlessly those qualities made him all the more deadly when he turned around as a killer with empty eyes and a fistful of ice, but he was pleasant as a teammate.

“Aa, that’s fine with me,” he answered, turning to face Haku.  Immediately, he ducked under the trio of senbon hurtling towards his head, neatly sidestepped a kick, and gave Haku an open-handed shove behind the shoulder to propel him past when the younger boy lunged.

Haku was fast, but not as fast as Itachi had been at thirteen -- at least, not without his Hyoton.  

Even so, he recovered quickly, and Itachi jerked back as Haku’s roundhouse kick displaced the air in front of his face.  Two steps back out of the way of the continued onslaught, then he whipped out a kunai in time to deflect Haku’s senbon with a loud clang.

The younger’s eyes were alight and focused, intent on Itachi as he whirled in and then away.  Itachi pressed his advantage, following Haku’s retreat with a hurled kunai that the other twisted to avoid.  He lashed out with a kick that Haku ducked, spun around with the momentum in time to block a punch and exchanged a flurry of blows before landing a kick that sent the younger teen skidding back in the mud.   

Itachi didn’t push this time, instead using the respite to draw another two kunai.  Haku sprang from his crouch to meet him, three senbon spouting from each hand like claws.

They met in a clash of metal, and Itachi took advantage of his superior strength to bear down on the Haku.  The younger twisted hard with one hand, and rather than allow his kunai to be torn from his grip, Itachi turned with it, flipping sideways, and yanked their locked blades towards himself when his feet touched the ground.  

Haku didn’t allow himself to be yanked forwards; instead, he let one of his senbon take the brunt of the force, and it was sent flying off to the side as he leapt after Itachi.  Itachi evaded neatly, ducking under Haku’s arm and landing a twisting kick to throw him back a couple steps.

He sent one kunai spinning at Haku, then the other, but each was met by a senbon and both deflected off harmlessly to the sides.  But it was enough to give him an opening.

Itachi pounced with the finesse of a panther, one hand catching Haku’s wrist before he could hurl his senbon, the other smoothly drawing a kunai and pressing it to Haku’s throat in one swift movement.  

For a few seconds they froze, a tableau grossly contrasting the veritable blur they had been just a few moments prior, and then Itachi let go and stepped back, slipping the blade back into its holster.  

Haku straightened, his hair sopping wet and in slight disarray, and his clothes splattered with mud.  “Again?” he requested, eyes sparkling with anticipation.

Itachi considered, blinking the rain out of his eyes.  “Aa,” he consented, and then they were off again.

Itachi enjoyed combat in that it was simple.  Straightforward. He did not desire to injure his opponents, but there was a sort of satisfaction to be gained from his mastery of his own body, his chakra, validated not simply by emerging victorious, but from the knowledge that hours of hard work and endless dedication had indeed paid off.  Sparring was a different chessboard from the politics of everyday life, and Itachi had enough control that he could afford to relax his mind during a match.

He had never been a denier of reality, but afforded himself the luxury of a brief escape every now and then -- though he was careful to curb his speed and reflexes.  Despite their cordial interactions, Itachi would be a fool to display anything near his full abilities, and a greater fool to assume Haku would either.

But as long as their arrangement remained beneficial for the two ex-Kiri nin -- and so long as Zabuza’s strange sense of honor remained intact -- Itachi knew he could generally trust the two at his back in battle.  And no matter how ironically Zabuza called Kakashi ‘Boss,’ Itachi amused himself by noting that they were growing on the Swordsman, so to speak.

Just the other day, he’d abruptly and somewhat begrudgingly shared with Kakashi a jutsu that could keep his mask (or bandages, in Zabuza’s case) dry for a long period of time without a constant drain of chakra, to the copy-nin’s slight bemusement.  And he was finally allowing Haku alone with the other members of their team without his supervision, when in the beginning he’d glower and skulk in the shadows every time Haku so much as looked in someone else’s direction.

As far as Itachi could tell, allowing him to spar with his apprentice alone was the pinnacle of a trust display, for all that Zabuza insisted Haku was simply another tool in his belt.

Itachi managed to pin Haku another handful of times before he called a halt.  The younger nin’s chest was heaving slightly with exertion, and his face was flushed.  Itachi himself was still quite fresh, but Haku had been training already while he slept, and he certainly didn’t need Zabuza to scowl at him for the next week if he returned his apprentice half-dead from exhaustion.  Especially if Haku caught a cold -- both their clothes were heavy and soaked through from the downpour, and he would be shivering if he hadn’t been moving about.

“Thank you for the spar, Itachi-san,” Haku said, bowing slightly.  

Itachi inclined his head.  “It was no trouble,” he replied, and meant it.  

While Haku retreated back to the cave, Itachi detoured to the river to bathe and clean his clothes, flecked with mud and sodden plant matter.  The rain was cold, but the river was glacial. Itachi bathed quickly, sending shocks of warm chakra through his body to combat the freezing waters.   He dried his clothes the same way as best as possible, then made his way back to their headquarters.

Inside the cave, Shisui and Uhei had been joined by the hulking Bull, whom the former was currently using as a backrest.   He hummed a greeting as Itachi approached, sending one last burst of chakra to dry his clothes once he was out of the rain.

The small fire was out now, the pot nestled in the glowing coals of its remains.  Itachi met Shisui’s eyes and tilted his head towards it inquiringly.

“It’s ready,” Shisui confirmed.  “I thought we’d wait for you to get back.  Haku’s getting the bread.”

Itachi frowned slightly.  “You didn’t need to.”

His cousin shrugged, a careless smile tugging at the corners of his lips.  “We didn’t mind. Haku didn’t think you’d be long. We’re not waiting for Kakashi, in any case.”

“I imagine if we waited for taichou, we would have to call it breakfast,” Itachi deadpanned, and was gratified to see Shisui smirk.  

“The disrespect.  He’d be heartbroken if he heard you.”

They ate their stew in trenchers made of stale bread that Zabuza bought it in Iitate sometime before completing their mission (possibly because Zabuza had a soft spot for the ninken, who loved gnawing on the used trenchers).  And they still hadn’t replaced the metal set lost when Kakashi used the storage scroll they were sealed in as a decoy to steal a scroll out from under the noses of a Kumo team. Itachi made a mental note to look for replacements during his supply run.

Zabuza and Haku sat on the dusty floor across from him and Shisui, the pot of rabbit stew between them.  Uhei had since migrated to the Kiri-nins’ side, as he had found out early on that Haku was more than willing to give him the pets and ear rubs that Kakashi claimed would spoil his hounds rotten.

They didn’t talk while they ate, but the silence was considerably more comfortable than the first few tension-charged weeks of their cohabitation.  As ever, the stew was nowhere near filling enough for three teenagers and a grown man -- especially not shinobi -- but it was at least more satisfying than the dry, tasteless nutrition bars they ate otherwise.

Kakashi breezed out with a pair of ninken at his heels when Itachi was finishing up and Zabuza had pulled out his sword and an oiled cloth for maintenance.  He was dressed for travel already, with a plain brown travel cloak over a battered flak jacket and a pack slung over one shoulder.

Shisui intercepted him with a trencher already filled with stew before Kakashi could make it out of the cave.  Kakashi glanced at the food, then Shisui’s expectant face before taking it, slouching against the wall to eat.

And because Kakashi was Kakashi, he turned his head away to eat, to Zabuza’s disappointed interest.

By the time Itachi departed for Iwa, the sun would have been bleeding out over the trees if it hadn’t been for the persistent rain.  Instead, a light grey glow settled with the mist in between the trees as he leapt from branch to branch. Beside him ran the winsome Shiba, whose companionship on the trip Itachi had apparently won when he’d given the ninken his bread trencher.

Itachi had never considered himself a ‘dog person,’ not with his clan’s frequent contracts with the ninneko.  But since Itachi joined the team, Kakashi’s ninken had always been forward in a way that their summoner was not, nosing up to all five teammates with blatant disregard for personal space and an ineffable affability.  Even Akino, the most aloof of the pack, would randomly wander up and simply sprawl on his side near Zabuza, which Shisui for some reason found hilarious.

As friendly as the ninken were, however, and excluding their apparent leader Pakkun, they never spoke to anyone except Kakashi though Itachi knew for certain that each was capable of it. Around the other members of the team, they simply behaved like, well, dogs.  Ninja dogs, but still dogs.

Itachi eyed Shiba out of the corner of his eye.  The ninken grinned at him, tongue lolling from his mouth.  The company, albeit unusual, was comforting.

While Itachi had never been especially...social, his sense of loneliness had increased exponentially since he’d left Konoha.  At least in the village he’d had his comrades, his parents, and his clan. Until he, well. The less he thought about that, the better.  

Most of all, he missed Sasuke.  Was he happy? Was he even alive?  He wished he had taken his brother when he fled.

The sun had set and risen again by the time Itachi and Shiba reached Oshino, a small town in Iwa inhabited only by civilians save for a rickety bounty office.  It would be at this office that Itachi turned in Fukada’s body, but first, he checked in a room at the local motel. He was in no rush and had stopped only once along the way to rest and eat.  

Shiba had wandered off as soon as they entered town.  The ninken undoubtedly had his own reconnaissance to perform, and association with a shinobi would grant him unwelcome suspicion should there be another visiting shinobi among the civilian inhabitants.  He would find Itachi again when he was ready, but until then he was unbothered should the dog to do as he wished. Itachi set traps at the door and window, then let himself collapse into the sagging bed.  It had been a long journey.

When he next opened his eyes, the sun had passed its zenith.  Here, there was no trace of the clouds that had dogged Hi no Kuni or the hideout, and when he made his way down to the street he was greeted by clear blue skies and a warm breeze.  Incongruous in the henge of a middle-aged man in a sturdy, worn cloak, Itachi observed the bustle of the town from a table at a noodle shop. Picking placidly at his meal, he watched with some amusement as Shiba trotted into view, whining hopefully at a pair of boys holding meat skewers.  

Neither boy proved willing to cede their meal to an ostensible stray, and took off giggling towards the residential part of town. Itachi let a smile tug the corner of his mouth as Shiba drooped in disappointment, thwarted.  He paid the bill, snagging a bit of leftover chicken in his hand, and strode over to the ninken, who glanced up with a wagging tail.

“Incorrigible,” he told the dog, who eagerly licked the food from his palm and snuffled happily.  In the span of an afternoon, Shiba had somehow managed to find enough dirt that his light coat now was speckled with brown, and for all appearances he was just another stray begging for scraps on the streets.   

A passerby chuckled, shaking his head.  “You’ll never get rid of ‘im now,” the man warned with a good-natured grin. “Mutts around ‘ere, feed ‘em once and they never forget you.”

“Ah,” Itachi feigned sheepishness, glancing down at the ninken’s wolfish grin.  “Is that so?” And thus Shiba had reason to follow him back to the hotel, though the dog stayed skulking in the shadows while Itachi went up.

In his room, he dropped the henge and retrieved the scroll containing Fukada Juro’s body. A sighting of him in Iwa would keep Konoha’s current leadership wary and guessing if word of his presence ever got back there; if not, there was no harm done in garnering a reputation even here.

Scroll in hand, Itachi stepped out of the doorway and glanced around for Shiba.  Sudden movement caught his eye among the usual flow of traffic along the street, and he cast a perfunctory look at its source, a pair of dark-haired street urchins dashing across the cobblestones.

One had bandages wrapped around his eyes, towed by the hand by the the younger.  And just as Itachi was turning away, the second boy turned in his direction, and Itachi caught his breath as the pair vanished into an alley.

Heedless of the annoyed grumbles of the villagers in whose paths he was standing, Itachi stood, frozen, his gaze distant as his mind worked in endless loops and possibilities and Shiba whined and nudged increasingly urgently at his hand.  His mouth opened and closed around a soundless word.

Itachi’s world started turning the day he held his baby brother in his arms for the first time, and he knew he would slaughter entire nations to keep him safe.  

He was eleven and reeling from his cousin’s death when he was took the weight of his village’s future onto his shoulders.

Two years later he stood in the clan compound with the blood of the girl who had loved him on his blade, and too late he realized he had loved her too; his world was awash with crimson and black as the village came to pieces around him.

It would be another six months before they found Shisui, an empty socket where an eye used to be, and he had felt hope flutter to life.

But none of that compared to the way the world fell away completely when Itachi was fifteen, staring at the boy with his brother’s face in a small civilian town in Iwa.

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT: D-2

1323 HOURS Operative Dog-4 arrived at RPE7 with high risk target Uchiha Sasuke.  

Dog-4 and escort Uchiha Risuke, jounin, were assaulted en route to Rendezvous Point E-8

6 assailants killed.  1 casualty: Uchiha Risuke.  Dog-4 heavily injured.

Dog-4 remained in hiding for 36 hours due to blood loss

Dog-4 took two soldier pills, rerouted to RPE7 with target.

1327 HOURS death of Dog-4 due to inflicted injuries: exsanguination, chakra depletion.

Uchiha Sasuke redesignated as Operative Cat-15’s tertiary target.

1335 HOURS cadaver sealed in scroll for later burial.

1338 HOURS Cat-15 began 1km radius sweep to ensure lack of pursuit and/or discovery.  Targets left in care of Hyuuga Neji.

1354 HOURS sweep concluded, no movement.

Primary and secondary targets secure.

Tertiary target secure.

No contact from HQ.

Awaiting all-clear.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

It had been over a month since Neko-sensei had last stopped by.  Temari and Sai were doing inventory in the storage room of the abandoned warehouse they’d commandeered as temporary headquarters when Neji and Sasuke burst in.  Sasuke was pale, eyes wide, with none of the composure he usually wore like a favorite cloak. At his side, Neji was tense, and worried enough that Temari could see none of his usual resentment.

“Someone recognized Sasuke,” he said without preamble, and Temari could feel the blood draining from her own face.  

She thrust her cardboard-tack-paper makeshift clipboard at Sai.  “Get the others,” she told him tightly, then whirled back to Neji as Sai bolted from the room.  “What happened?” she snapped.

“Food run in town, near the motel.  We were crossing the street when he spotted us,” he answered, keeping pace with her as she hurried through the hallway.  “160-170 centimeters, slight build. Long black hair kept in a ponytail. Plain dark clothes, flak jacket in Konoha style, Konoha hitae-ate, brown travelling cloak.  He recognized Sasuke but didn’t pursue.”

“Are you sure he recognized him?” she asked, turning towards Neji, staring where she knew his eyes were beneath the bandages.

It was a testament as to how serious the situation was that Neji didn’t even bristle at her questioning. “He said -- ”

“ -- otouto,” Sasuke interrupted quietly, slightly behind Neji.  Temari’s eyes snapped to the younger boy as he continued, “he called me otouto.  It was my brother, Uchiha Itachi.”

There was a beat of silence when Temari couldn’t think of anything to say.  Neji’s mouth was a grim slash across his face.

“Okay,” she said at last.  “Okay.” She took a fortifying breath and strode through the hall into the main room, the boys at her back.

The warehouse was possibly the nicest place they’d stayed in, despite the rotting floorboards and gaping holes in the ceiling.  Their main room was the largest portion of the biggest room that had a continuous roof, about five square meters, walled off from the rest by stacks of empty crates and kept meticulously clear of the broken glass and other debris that littered the floor.

Sakura and Hinata were already huddled together, but stopped their murmured conversation when Temari swept in.  Sakura looked up, her eyes calm despite her pale face, but Hinata was trembling, toying nervously with the bandages over her eyes. Above them perched Gaara, silent and watchful, his agitation betrayed by the shifting sand flowing over and around his hands.  

The last member of their group clattered down the stairs and into the room, barely ten seconds after Neji and Sasuke sat on overturned crates.

“We have a Code 2-Red-2,” Temari said, cutting off whatever Naruto might have said before he opened his mouth with a sharp look.  The blond glared back furiously, but plopped down on a crate without responding. Sai slipped in like a shadow and lurked in the makeshift entryway.  “Sasuke was identified in the marketplace today. Sasuke?”

The younger boy flinched, just a twitch.  “His name is Uchiha Itachi,” he said, his voice monotone, and glared blankly ahead at the opposite wall.  “And he’s fifteen years old. Anbu, either A-rank or S-rank in most bingo books, specializes in genjutsu and ninjutsu, skilled at taijutsu and kenjutsu.  Has a fully developed Sharingan.”

“We don’t know his affiliation,” Temari said, when Sasuke didn’t continue.  “The intel Neko-sensei gave us suggests that he went missing-nin after That Night, but we don’t know that he wouldn’t try to kill us or sell us to the highest bidder.”  

Sasuke’s eyes could have burned a hole through the crate.  Naruto and Sakura exchanged a glance over his head.

“Sasuke and Neji,” Temari said decisively.  “Focus on evasion. You’ve already been spotted together, so stay together.  Keep to the busier parts of town, and if he tries to take you, make as much noise as possible.  Sai?” The pale boy straightened. “Give Neji the tanto.”

Between the eight of them, they had three dozen kunai and one tanto, the latter of which was usually shared between Neji and Sai, who were most proficient with it.  Now, Sai unclasped the somewhat battered blade and tossed it to Neji, who caught it without turning his head.

Even now, not a single protest or snide remark from Neji.  What a miracle.

“Sai, you need to get a message to Neko-sensei,” she continued.  “Get in hiding and stay hidden, no matter what happens to the rest of us.  Got it?” Sai nodded sharply, his face blank and serious. “Sakura, Gaara, go with him and keep him safe.  Hinata and Naruto, you come with me for surveillance.”

“Hai!” said Naruto, eyes bright with determination.  Hinata nodded from the opposite side, equally resolute though her hands were trembling.

“Okay, let’s go,” Temari declared.  “Everyone grab what you need and clear out within five minutes.  Keep in touch, and hopefully I’ll see you all on the other side.”

It was a grim conclusion.  But they’d rehearsed this before, so everyone knew what to do, at what was at stake.   Most of the others immediately vanished, clattering up the stairs or down the hall to the storeroom to grab packs, clothes, weapons, or food and water.  There was none of the usual cheerful chatter, and as necessary as it was Temari was sorry to be the cause.

Neji lingered, fixing a serious stare on her as he turned the sheathed tanto over in his hands.

“She’ll be okay.  I promise,” Temari said, although she knew better than to make promises she couldn’t keep.

“She should be with Sai, hiding,” he said immediately.  “An unsealed Byakugan makes her a vulnerable target.”

“My team would be flying blind without her,” countered Temari.  “If you and Sasuke are taken, I need to know to get you back, or to make sure the others aren’t targeted.”    

He looked unconvinced, a frown marring his normally impassive face.  “Her life -- ”

“I’ll take care of her,” Temari said, meeting his eyes as best she could.

Neji studied her face for a second before nodding.  “I entrust her safety to you,” he said at last before he too vanished into the depths of the warehouse.

Temari rubbed her eyes tiredly.  She honestly had too much on her plate to deal with Neji’s old-fashioned sensibilities, but somehow the added responsibility weighed on her that much more.

With a whisper of shifting sand, Gaara hopped down from his perch.  Automatically, Temari reached out a hand to ruffle his hair, and he leaned into it with eyes half-closed like a cat.

“You will be in danger,” he said at last.

“We all will,” Temari sighed.

The sand hissed, expressing his displeasure more effectively than his blank face.  “I don’t like this. I should protect you.”

Temari carded a hand through his hair.  “I need you to protect Sai,” she explained patiently.  “We need him to call Neko-sensei.”

Gaara frowned mutinously, tilting his face up towards her.  “I can protect you better than Neko-sensei,” he argued.

“Maybe, but then we’d have to leave Naruto and Sasuke and everyone.  Won’t you miss them?” Temari cajoled.

Gaara’s scowl deepened.  “I can protect all of them,” he insisted.

Temari sighed, guiding Gaara out so she could pack her own things.  “If you kill him, people will notice. And then we have to run all the time, and Hinata will be afraid all the time, and the others won’t sleep enough.  You’re special, Gaara, but everyone else needs to sleep or they’ll be sad and hurt all the time.”

He simmered, staring at the ground with narrowed eyes.  “Fine,” he snapped, and stormed away with clouds of sand whirling up at every step.

Temari watched him go wryly before hurrying to pack.  There were seven fugitive shinobi children depending on her.  Temari was only twelve, but she was strong. She would have to be enough.

She was the last one out.  Everyone had vanished into the town except Naruto and Hinata, who lurked in the shadows near the wall.  She summoned a weary smile for them, though of course only Naruto could see it. “Let’s go,” she said, reaching out to take Hinata by the hand.  She followed easily, and Naruto trailed resolutely at her heels.

They had protocols for this, though they had never actually had to use them -- so in theory, they knew what they were doing.

“Nee-chan,” Naruto said, muffled under a battered cough mask, as they meandered towards the marketplace.

“Hmm?”

“We’re going to be okay, right?”  Unusually vulnerable, especially for Naruto.

“Yeah,” she answered, turning towards him with a practiced smile. She squeezed Hinata’s hand reassuringly for good measure.  “Neko-sensei told us this would happen, remember? We just need to do as she says and everything will be fine.”

Mollified, Naruto flashed her back a tentative smile and skipped up to take her other hand.

Temari repressed a flinch.  Two years on the run, one of which with constant surprise ambushes, left her reluctant to have both hands occupied.  But she was reluctant to shake off Naruto when she could tell he was genuinely afraid, and she certainly couldn’t let go of Hinata.

At the border of Oshino’s residential and market districts was a small hostel.  Here, Temari let go of both their hands to knock on the door.

The welcoming smile slipped off the face of the baa-san who opened the door as she eyed their threadbare clothes and greasy hair dubiously.  Acutely aware of her bedraggled appearance, the bandages covering Hinata’s eyes, and the cloth mask hooked across Naruto’s face, Temari beamed up at her disarmingly.  “We have money,” she promised, and reluctantly, the baa-san opened the door wider.

Charm, Temari had learned, was both a gift and a skill.

“Our father is a travelling merchant,” she told the baa-san after she’d left Naruto and Hinata in the room the three of them would share.  “He sends us money every month, but we’re saving it. We want to buy a horse.”

“A horse!” exclaimed the baa-san in surprise.

“Yup!” Temari dimpled. “Tou-san only has Moeru now, and she can’t pull the wagon if it’s too heavy.  So if we get tou-san another horse, he can go places faster and carry more things!”

“Oh,” said the baa-san, turning to give Temari a thoughtful glance.  “Your father must be happy to have such filial children.”

“I hope so,” Temari agreed cheerfully.  “Say, do you need help with dinner, baa-san?”

Set up with a large basket of vegetables, a knife, and a chopping board, Temari let her mind wander.  When she’d first encountered the Konohan children, none of them could cook. Through her own efforts, each of them could at least boil ramen with some kind of fresh toppings, though Naruto had learned only after inflicting several large stove fires on the others, and Neji generally refused to cook anything that took more than half an hour and therefore ended up with very plain meals.  Temari had learned to cook first through Academy classes, then by a private tutor which was likely in an effort to make her a more appealing bride.

“Oh, you’re very good with a knife, dear,” the baa-san noted, leaning over to inspect her work.

Temari glanced down in surprise, where she’d reduced the assorted vegetables to neat, thin slices. “Oh.  Yes, I love to cook.”

Dinner was a tomato stew with eggplant, zucchini, and onion over rice.  

“Eat slowly,” she told Naruto when she went to retrieve him and Hinata.  “And don’t eat more than two bowls. And be polite!”

“Yes, nee-chan,” he said, rolling his eyes before bouncing down the stairs.  “Hey, baa-san! That smells great!”

Hinata hesitated, making no move towards the stairs.  Temari stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.  “Any news?” she asked, her voice low.

“A-ano,” Hinata began, twisting the hem of her shirt in her hands, “N-neji-nii-san and Sasuke-kun are w-walking in the m-market.  N-neji says n-nobody has approached t-them yet. I c-can’t see where S-sai-kun or S-sakura-chan or G-g-gaara-kun are, b-but Neji says t-they sent a message out a-already.”

“So everyone’s doing fine,” Temari concluded, and Hinata nodded hesitantly.  “Good,” she said decisively. “Come down to dinner then, Hinata.” She held out her hand, and Hinata took it delicately.  

With the deftness of long practice, Temari guided Hinata down the stairs and had her seated before the other occupants of the hostel appeared.  One man smelled faintly musty, and his clothes were finely dyed if faded around the edges: a cloth merchant. The other guests were a young couple who were clearly smitten with each other, from their frequent sideways glances and poorly hidden grins.

Naruto had helped himself already to a heaping bowl, and after a stern look from Temari, visibly restrained his normally blistering pace, mask rolled up to just above his mouth to allow him to eat.  Eating would distract him from conversation, so she wouldn’t need to cover up any blunders Naruto made -- he was literally the worst liar she had ever met.

She filled Hinata’s bowl first, then guided one of her hands to her spoon and the other to her bowl.  From there, the younger girl managed on her own and Temari turned to her own meal.

Young girls didn’t make conversation with strange older men, so Temari ate silently with half an eye on Naruto, who would go make conversation with strange older men if left to his own devices.  

After dinner, Naruto pulled Hinata back up to their room, but Temari lingered until the other tenants had vanished.  

“Baa-san,” Temari said.  “Do you need help with the dishes?”

The old woman beamed at her.  “Oh, no, darling, you were already such a help with dinner!  Run on up to your brother, and, ah, sister?”

“Ah...she’s adopted,” Temari explained offhandedly.  “Her parents died in the same bandit attack where she was blinded, but they were close friends with my father so he took her in.”

“Oh!” the baa-san cooed.  “The poor dear. That’s very generous of your father.”

Temari dimpled, then skipped back upstairs to their room, but let the smile drop off her face the moment the door closed behind her.  

Hinata, perched on the far bed, slowly unravelled the bandages around her eyes as Temari flopped onto the other bed with a sigh.

“Ne, ne, nee-chan,” said Naruto from his perch on the rickety wooden table on the other side of the room.

“Hmm?” responded Temari absently, scrubbing a hand over her face.

“We’re stuck here in this room and all, right?  So can I practice my tree-walking?” The wood squeaked under his anticipatory bouncing. “I gotta keep training so if that bastard gets captured --”

“Naruto,” Temari interrupted.

“ -- I can save his sorry --”

“Naruto!” Temari glared at Naruto, unimpressed, with one eye.  Hinata stifled a giggle, one hand coming up to cover her mouth delicately.

Naruto grinned sheepishly, scratching the back of his head self-consciously. “Ehe, sorry?”

“Naruto,” Temari paused. “What happens if you don’t channel the right amount of chakra when you wall-walk?”

“I get pushed off the tree.”

Temari raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“And…” Naruto’s face screwed up in concentration. “I fall?”

“And?”  Though it could be frustrating, he really was adorable when he tried to think his way through a puzzle.  Tired as she was, Temari couldn’t help but smile a little at his absent frown.

“Uhh...I blast a hole in the tree?”

“So what happens if you do that in a room?”

Naruto growled in frustration. “Argh, fine, I get it, I get it.” He kicked back until he was lying flat on the table.  “But, nee-chan, we have to do something .”

“We’re doing everything we can,” Temari sighed.  “We just need to keep an eye on Neji and Sasuke, and Hinata’s doing a good job with that already. Here -- ” she fumbled for her pack and fished out a small pad of paper, which she chucked at Naruto’s head.  It bounced off his forehead and he caught it with an offended squawk and flailing arms. “You can practice the leaf sticking exercise.”

“You mean paper sticking exercise?” he teased, with a shadow of his usual bright grin.

Temari rolled her eyes.  “Whatever, you brat. Just hurry up and practice already.”

She flopped back with a sigh and turned her head to watch Hinata.  The younger girl sat in seiza, hands folded neatly, and her face was serene save for the veins bulging angrily around her eyes.  Temari repressed the shiver from the sheer wrongness -- even after more than a year, she had yet to feel comfortable with that particular kekkei-genkai.

With a slow breath, Hinata exhaled and let the Byakugan fade from her eyes. “Neji-n-ni-san and S-sasuke-kun are s-staying in the b-basement below the n-noodle shop.  But I s-still can’t f-find the n-n-n-nuke-nin t-t-t--” she couldn’t finish, her nervousness spilling into uncontrollable stutters before she drew in a deep breath and forcibly stilled her trembling hands.

“Did you see Sai?” Temari asked quickly.

Hinata shook her head, face falling. “He s-still isn’t in my r-range. But N-neji-nii-san says h-he has s-sent out t-two waves of m-messages already.”

Neko-sensei never told them where she went when she left them, so the only way of contacting her was sending out Sai’s ink-animals in all directions in the hopes that at least one of them found her.  “Okay. Great work, Hinata.” Temari let her eyes slide shut briefly before opening them again. “Bath?” she suggested.

The two girls left Naruto in the room, papers sticking to his forehead for one or two seconds before shooting off towards the opposite wall to his disgruntled mutters.  

While Hinata bathed, Temari leaned against the doorframe and closed her eyes, spreading out her senses to the rest of the house.  The baa-san bustled around in the kitchen downstairs, and the other tenants moved about their own rooms, muted chakra signatures flickering faintly.  Naruto’s roiled a little more strongly in their room as he fought for control over his exercise.

Presently, one of the chakra signatures emerged from a room, accompanied by the squeak of a door, and Temari opened her eyes to see the young woman pad tentatively towards the bathroom, offering Temari an uncertain smile when she saw her.

Temari smiled back and knocked lightly against the bathroom door.  “Ne, imouto,” she said deliberately. “Are you almost done? Someone is waiting for the bathroom.”

A shuffle of cloth within.  “O-one more m-moment, please,” floated Hinata’s soft voice.  After a brief pause and a whisper of chakra, the door slid open.

Hinata stood in the doorway, eyes staring blankly ahead, one hand braced against the frame of the door and the other clutching the bundle of soiled laundry at her side.  Temari reached for her hand as the other guest gasped at the genjutsu of scars and cloudy eyes layered over Hinata’s face. She managed a strained smile as Temari guided the younger girl back out into the hallway towards their room.

As they walked in, the paper that had reluctantly clung to Naruto’s forehead blew off with a whoosh. It fluttered to the ground, joining a dozen others that surrounded him like a pile of leaves  Naruto grimaced, and without looking reached over to pull another piece off the pad.

“Hey,” Temari snapped.  She kicked the door closed and hurled a shuriken in the same motion.

Naruto snatched his hand back just in time and turned a wounded, indignant stare on Temari.  “Nee-chan, what was that for?” he whined.

“Stop wasting paper!” she scolded, scooping the loose sheets off the floor. “All you needed was one!”

Naruto pouted exaggeratedly.  “But this way is faster! And you can still use that paper, anyways.”

Temari mock-growled and swatted at his head with the papers.  “I’m going to take a bath,” she grumbled, dropping the stack on the table and retrieving her shuriken.  “Then you’re going to take one. And then you’re going to take first watch. You better not have made a mess when I get back!”

Naruto widened his eyes innocently.  “Me?”

Temari grabbed her toiletries from her bag and rolled her eyes.  “Keep an eye on him, Hinata,” she warned, ignoring Naruto’s offended noise.  Hinata ducked her head and smiled.

As a child, Temari had been a morning person.  As a child however, Temari had not taken the middle night watch shift, resulting in less than six hours total of interrupted sleep.  She was still growing! She was supposed to get at least eight hours of consecutive sleep a night!

She glared blearily at the window and the offending sunlight spilling into the room.  She made no move to get up.

Naruto was still snoring gently on the bed behind her.   However, Hinata was up and running through katas in the space in front of the beds, barefoot.  

Hinata’s creepy clan had a beautiful fighting style -- she’d give them that, at least.  She rolled over and propped her chin on folded arms to watch the younger girl. Where Neji flowed through the same katas with the coiled grace of a tiger, Hinata’s movements were light and delicate, almost hesitant.

From what she could tell, Hinata was actually quite good at the Juuken -- she just lacked the confidence or willingness to actually hit someone.  Her cousin had no such reservations; while Temari could take Hinata down handily in a taijutsu spar, Neji beat her consistently. In an all-out fight with ninjutsu, however, Temari was confident she would come out on top.  The only person in their little group that she knew could kill her without batting an eye was Gaara. And if all worked out as planned, that would never be an issue.

Naruto snuffled and tangled his legs further into his blanket.  Temari twisted to grab her pillow and tossed it at the blond head.  “Hey. Time to get up,” she called, voice hoarse from sleep. Naruto moaned incoherently, groping for the pillow but made no other move to get up.  Temari heaved herself up laboriously and flopped over onto his bed. “C’mon, up,” she ordered, grabbing him in a headlock.

Predictably, Naruto squawked and flailed, and she shoved him away before he hit her in the eye.  “I’m up, I’m up already!” he complained, struggling free of the sheets and sitting up. His eyes were glazed over but open, so Temari rolled off the bed and padded around Hinata to start her own morning routine.

Temari would have liked to stay holed up in the guesthouse with Naruto and Hinata until the crisis was over, but the guesthouse provided only one meal a day and the majority of their food and emergency supplies had gone with Sai’s team, who intended to stay hidden at all costs.  

She finished the last pushup in the set and collapsed, flopping over onto her back to stare blearily up at the cracked ceiling as she caught her breath.  Flashes of Hinata’s clothes whirled past her vision as the younger girl moved through her katas at double speed. Behind her, near the door, Naruto’s stomach warbled plantatively.

Temari cracked a smile, pulling herself back upright.  “Alright, kids. Let’s get some food.”

“I’m not a kid!” Naruto objected, but bounced up eagerly all the same.

Hinata relaxed her stance, and let her hands down by her sides.  Her chakra pulsed, and the veins around her eyes bulged, crawling to the surface.  After a moment, she released her chakra, and her eyes faded to normal. “N-neji-nii-san and Sasuke-k-kun are still i-in the b-basement across the s-street,” she reported.

Temari hummed.  “Good,” she said, and tossed Hinata her roll of bandages.  “Maybe the nuke-nin decided he was mistaken.” She paused and revised.  She wasn’t quite that optimistic. “Maybe he decided he didn’t care, or he’s too busy to track down someone who might be his brother?  I don’t know. What do you want to eat?”

“Ramen!” Naruto crowed immediately.  

Temari resisted the urge to groan.  She should have expected that. “Hinata?”

“A-ano, I’m f-fine with r-ramen.”

Why couldn’t they like tofu or something?  She sighed. “Okay. Ramen it is.”

Naruto cheered, and a small smile spread across Hinata’s face as she finished wrapping the bandages around her eyes, so it was almost worth it.  “Put your mask on, Naruto,” she ordered, and rummaged through her things for her wallet. “Hinata -- keep your eyes on, as much as you can.”

“H-hai.”

Naruto bounced down the stairs, Temari and Hinata following at a more sedate pace, and burst out into the town.  Midmorning. The streets already bustled with people, shoppers and storekeepers and travellers with their wagons full of supplies.  Naruto turned left, towards the noodle shop whose basement Neji and Sasuke were hiding in.

“Hey!” Temari called, and when he turned, jerked her head in the opposite direction.  “Wrong way.”

Naruto made a face.  “That one isn’t as good,” he complained, but darted off in that direction anyways.

Temari tightened her grip on Hinata’s hand.  “And don’t go too far!”

Hinata’s fingers loosened and tightened again, and when Temari glanced over, her lips were trembling.  Temari gave a firm squeeze. “Hey, it’s okay. We’ll be fine,” she told the other girl.

“H-hai,” Hinata whispered, and followed when she moved to join the crowd.

Temari thought the udon-ramen-soba stand near the town center was pretty decent, but Naruto adamantly insisted that the texture of the ramen was not chewy enough, and the soup was just a little too salty.  He’d still take second-rate ramen over any other food, however, and Temari liked some of the side dishes they offered…

Distracted, she reacted to Hinata’s sudden gasp far too late.  She whirled, but an unfamiliar hand landed on her shoulder and yanked .  She stumbled, and then she was in an alley.  Cardboard and food scraps littered the ground, and the air stank of rotting meat and refuse.  

She shoved Hinata behind her with one arm and drew a kunai with her other hand, eyes darting back and forth.  A second later, Naruto was also deposited bodily into the alley with an indignant yell, and she checked herself before hurled the kunai at his head.  “Naruto, get back,” she snarled, as a figure loomed from the opposite side.

At first glance, he looked entirely unthreatening.  He was not particularly tall nor his shoulders especially broad.  His face was youthful and still a little round, and his cloak draped on him like it was a little too big.  He held no weapons. But when she looked closer, she could see the way he stood with a shinobi’s stillness, the calm calculation in his eyes.  He’d snatched them off the streets with ease, and she had no doubt he could kill each of them easily if he wished.

“Naruto-kun, Hinata-kun,” he greeted with a slight nod.  “And...kunoichi-san.” He inclined his head at Temari gravely.  “I have no plans to hurt you.”

Temari’s lip curled as she tensed even further.  “Yeah?”

“It seems rather unsafe for you to be this far in Iwa,” he continued placidly. “Where is your sensei?”

Temari narrowed her eyes and didn’t respond.

A pause.  “Hm. I see.”  He blinked once, deliberately.  “I assume the youngest is with her too?”

“We’re not telling you anything!” Naruto burst out, sidling up next to Temari to block Hinata from view.  “You’ll never find out where Sasuke is!”

Temari gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to stomp on Naruto’s foot.  “Shut up,” she hissed harshly.

“I already know where my wayward little brother is,” Itachi said dismissively, unmoved by their glares.  “What you need is to find somewhere secure.  If I found you here, others will be able to as well.”

“I don’t trust you!” retorted Naruto shrilly, and for once Temari was glad he’d spoken first.

Itachi tipped his head.  “That’s wise, I suppose. However, you are not safe here.  I have not concealed my presence here, and if Konoha doesn’t come looking, Iwa will.”

Temari narrowed her eyes.  “What do you want with us?” she spat.  “Why does it matter to you?”

“Sasuke is my little brother,” Itachi answered after a pause.  “And I do not wish to see any of you fall into Konoha’s hands.”

“Nee-chan,” Naruto whispered -- far too loud to actually hide anything he said. “Is he telling the truth?”

Temari summarily ignored him.  “How do we know you’re not with Konoha?” she demanded.  “You haven’t even slashed out your hitai-ate.”

“My allegiance is pledged to the Hokage, and to Konoha and her citizens,” he replied immediately, “but not to the pretender who holds power now.”

Temari studied his face carefully.  She believed him. She let her stance relax, but kept herself between the nuke-nin and the two younger children -- though if he wanted any of them dead, she knew he could kill them before she’d even blinked.  

Even so, she flinched back a little, kunai coming up defensively, when he advanced towards them unhurriedly.  “Come, we will need to collect Sasuke and the young Hyuuga guardian. All of you need to be moved, protected, and -- “ he glanced back at them, mouth twisting unhappily, “-- trained.”  He moved past them on silent feet, back towards the entrance of the alley.

“A-ano,” Hinata whispered at her back.  Temari could feel her trembling. “A-are we g-going w-with him?” she stuttered.

Temari set her shoulders.  “Yes,” she said firmly, reaching back to twine her hand with the younger girl’s.  “Come on, Naruto.” And she strode purposefully after Itachi. At a safe distance, of course.  

True to his word, Itachi did already know where Sasuke was.  He wended unerringly through the crowds to the ramen shop -- Naruto’s favorite -- and stopped outside the door leading to the basement.  Temari gritted her teeth. At her side, Hinata looked apprehensive, and Naruto a combination of belligerent and defensive.

“Perhaps you would like to go first,” Itachi said, turning to face her.  “I realize this is an unusual situation and likely to alarm your friends.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Temari, and herded Naruto and Hinata ahead of her.  

The door banged shut behind them, leaving them in the dim basement.  Boxes and battered bar stools were stacked to the ceiling, illuminated by a single flickering light bulb swaying overhead.  At the far end of the room, near the stair leading up into the storefront, Sasuke and Neji were poised like birds before flight.

“What’s going on?” Sasuke demanded, the quaver in his voice belying his uncertainty.

“Why did you lead him here?” Neji sneered, and Temari could feel his glare even through the bandages. “Are you that incompetent that you’d give up our location if he just asks ?”

“He already knew you were here!” Temari snapped.  “You were supposed to. Stay. Hidden!” She was being unfair, she knew, but the adrenaline of the morning was still rushing through her veins, winding her up until she was taut and strained.

She could see Neji winding up to spit back a retort, so she forestalled it with her sharpest glare.  “Sasuke,” she continued relentlessly. “He says he’s with the rebels. Do you believe that?”

“Yes,” Sasuke answered immediately, hands twisting in the hem of his shirt.  “He always said he loved Konoha. It’s more believable if he became a nuke-nin to keep fighting for Konoha instead of for money or something.  He won’t hurt us.”

“Of course he won’t hurt us,” Neji muttered caustically.  “Most of us are worth a small fortune on the black market.”

“He said he’ll train us!” Naruto interjected.  “And we can’t stay here, anyways. Cuz there’s people chasing him too, and they’ll find us when they’re looking for him.”

Neji cast an interrogative glance at Temari.  She nodded. He scowled and looked away.

“We’ll go with him,” Temari said decisively.  “But we’ll leave the flowers.”

“The flower -- oh,” said Naruto, realization coming half a beat late.  His ability to grasp the subtle side of shinobi life was tenuous at best.  

Reluctant nods from the other three younger children.  Neji’s jaw clenched before he gave a sharp nod as well.  

Temari turned to lead the way back out of the basement, and before he followed, Neji gave the front stairs one last look.

Itachi was waiting where they’d left him, standing military-straight in the shadows cast by the roof and morning sun.  He started towards them as they emerged one by one, and his eyes went straight to Sasuke. “Otouto,” he greeted warmly, and Temari saw his eyes soften.  “I’m glad you are safe.”

Sasuke’s eyes darted to the side before meeting his, but he smiled.  “Hi, aniki.”

Itachi reached out a hand, and Neji stiffened, but the older Uchiha merely ruffled Sasuke’s hair affectionately, before turning towards the street. Sasuke, who’d ducked away a little at the touch, looked conflicted between relieved and disappointed.  “Come,” said Itachi. “We have been out in the open too long; we will need to regroup before my team arrives.”

“Team?” Temari demanded sharply, hand tightening reflexively on Hinata’s. The younger girl let out a muffled squeak of protest, and she loosened her grip under Neji’s (presumed) glare.

Itachi paused, blinking owlishly.  “Yes. Team. I work closely with others who share my views of Konoha.”  Temari exchanged glances with Neji. “In any case, I cannot effectively protect all of you by myself.”

“We’ve been doing just fine,” Temari muttered.

The nukenin gave her an unexpectedly grave look.  “You have done admirably. But you should not have had to.”

Thrown, Temari faltered as Itachi turned back to the street.  She recovered, sending a narrowed-eye glare at his back. He was three years older than she was, what right did he have to patronize her?

With a quick glance to make sure the others were following -- they were, though with varying degrees of reluctance -- Temari tugged Hinata towards the storefront.  

“-- thank you, Urushi,” Itachi was saying as Temari rounded the corner to find him talking to...a wolf.  Or maybe a dog. It panted up at him agreeably, then swung its head around to eye the children with an uncannily intelligent stare.

A quiet intake of breath -- Temari glanced over her shoulder.  Naruto had stopped, staring at the dog with a faintly bemused expression.  Before she could ask what was wrong, and before she could tell him not to pet strange dogs (honestly, everyone knew that!) he tilted his head thoughtfully and walked up to peer at it more closely. “Hi,” he said. The dog poked its nose in his face, and Naruto giggled a little, hands coming up automatically to push it away.  

“This is Urushi,” Itachi introduced.  “He has agreed to help me keep watch.”

Temari eyed the dog dubiously.  It was a ninken -- it must be -- so was it Itachi’s?  Could it speak?

“In the meantime,” he continued, pulling Temari out of her thoughts, “perhaps you would like to return to the hostel to collect your things…?” he paused.  “I don’t believe I caught your name?”

“It’s Rikku,” Temari said shortly before one of the others could answer for her.  Naruto, absorbed in petting the dog, barely heard -- which was good, because the others were all good enough liars not to give her away. “Naruto, come on.”

She distangled her hand gently from Hinata’s, placing it gently on Neji’s shoulder, and dragged Naruto with her back across the street to the hostel.  The others didn’t follow, but Urushi-the-dog padded at their heels, tongue lolling agreeably.

“Hi, Baa-chan!” Temari called in as she and Naruto entered.  The dog didn’t follow them in, instead sprawling in front and to the side of the door.

“Oh, hello, dear,” the baa-chan beamed, snaggletoothed, appearing in the kitchen doorway.  “What are you up to? Where’s that sister of yours?”

“Ah, our cousin came to get us!” Temari lied, smiling widely.  “He’s keeping her company for a bit while we grab our stuff.”

“Leaving so soon?” She held up a wizened hand.  “Wait right there! I’ll pack you some food for the trip.”

“Baa-chan, you don’t need to,” Temari protested halfheartedly.  

When at last she and Naruto straggled out the door of the hostel, back to the ramen stand, a disgruntled Sasuke was scowling, holding hands with both Hyuuga.  Neji was glowering ferociously, clearly displeased with his participation in the human chain, and Hinata just looked uncomfortable. Itachi stood back a pace, his face serene, holding a large bag of ramen takeout in each hand.  Temari fought the sudden urge to laugh at the sight.

Itachi’s motel was neither shabby nor opulent; it reminded her of the shinobi himself -- efficient and straightforward.  A murmured conversation with the desk clerk got them a large room with a low couch and two beds.

Once in the room, Neji dropped Sasuke’s hand as if it burned him and pulled the bandages around his eyes down to hang loosely around his neck.  Temari scowled at him, but he shrugged. “He knows who we are already, Rikku ,” he said pointedly.

They both turned to look at the nuke-nin, who for all appearances was ignoring them as he sat cross-legged on the floor, setting out the ramen.  

Naruto, lured in like a cat by the smell, crept up to sit across from him, and Sasuke settled somewhat apprehensively at his elbow.  Hinata hadn’t moved from the door, though she’d closed it behind her, and she was fidgeting with the bandages she’d unravelled.

“Come eat, Hinata-sama,” Neji said imperiously, moving to sit more or less as far from Itachi as he possibly could while still being a part of the little circle.  Hinata’s lips whitened, but she moved almost automatically to his side.

It was quite possibly the most uncomfortable meal she’d experienced, and that was including ‘family’ meals back in Suna.  

Neji almost pointedly activated his Byakugan to examine the ramen, and took a few bites of Hinata’s before he would allow her to eat it.

Sasuke, seemingly alternating between jittery and silently imploring Itachi to notice him, picked at his food with little enthusiasm.  Naruto, on the other hand, dug in with his usual appalling lack of manners.

Temari liked to think she was above all that.  She ate at a reasonable pace -- without slurping or checking for poison (really, if he wanted to he could have done it long ago) -- and kept her movements controlled and deliberate.

“So, Rikku-san,” Itachi said after a moment.  He’d eaten more than Sasuke, but not as much as Naruto.  “Did your sensei mention where she might be going?”

Temari felt herself stiffen.  Beside her, Neji’s chopsticks paused on their way to his takeout container.

“Ah.  Never mind,” Itachi amended.  “I am not using you for information.  We will find a way to contact her soon enough.”

Temari’s eyes met with Neji’s.  

Itachi sighed and put down his chopsticks.  “My team wanted to request her assistance in our efforts, but she had gone to ground soon after the Sandaime’s assassination, and we could not find her.  I mean her no harm. Truly.”

An awkward pause.  

“So, uh,” Naruto broke the silence, fidgeting with his chopsticks now that his own ramen was gone.  “Sasuke said you were Anbu?”

“I was,” Itachi allowed.  “I was promoted to captain a year before the coup.”

Temari’s eyes widened despite herself, and Naruto blurted, “What?  Weren’t you like, ten?”

Sasuke’s arm twitched like he wanted to slap the blond, but didn’t want to act out in front of his brother.

“Thirteen,” corrected Itachi. “I was recruited when I was eleven, soon after my promotion to chuunin.”

“Wow, that is so cool! You must be, like, super strong!” Naruto enthused, and this time Sasuke did punch him in the arm.

“Keep it down, idiot, you’ll get us all killed,” he hissed, mirroring Hinata’s reflexive glance at the window.

Temari mechanically forced herself to take another bite of her ramen and wondered if she’d been too reckless.

The evening was uneasy, with Temari and Hinata sharing one bed and Sasuke, Naruto, and Neji crammed on the other.  Silently, she glanced over at Neji and raised both eyebrows; he gave a tiny nod in response. They would take turns with the watch that night.  If Itachi was aware of it, he made no comment.

It was Temari who was awake in the early hours of the morning when it happened.  Itachi, who had been awake and crosslegged on the couch for a little over an hour staring absently out the window, stiffened and rose in one smooth movement.  He hadn’t been expressive before, but the hint of warmth he’d begun to display earlier when they’d been awake wiped off his face abruptly, leaving behind a smooth mask.  Alarmed, Temari tensed, watching through slitted eyes as he strode to the door. Her arm shot out across the gap between beds, shaking Neji gently. He came awake instantly, narrowed eyes focused immediately first on her face, then at the door Itachi opened.

She heard almost inaudible scuff as Itachi stood back to let someone in, and she itched to turn to see who it was.  Neji’s eyes widened slightly before closing. Temari quickly closed hers as well.

The door clicked shut.  

“Taichou,” Itachi greeted softly, stiff and formal.  

A long silence yawned.  “It’s them. You really found the Lost Four.”  The new voice is deep, contemplative.

“Three of them,” said Itachi.  “I believe Neko still has the youngest.”

The other man hummed in acknowledgement.  “Any injuries?”

“They are all almost certainly undernourished,” Itachi said.  “But they have no physical injuries that I could tell.”

“That’s easily fixed.”  Another pause. “And the...others?”

“Perhaps we could ask them,” Itachi said pointedly, and Temari felt a thrill of fear down her spine despite herself.  In front of her, Neji’s breath continued, deep and slow.

“Neji-san, Rikku-san.  Otouto,” Itachi prompted mildly.  

Temari opened her eyes, face darkening in a scowl mirrored on Neji’s face as they both sat up.  On Neji’s other side, Sasuke glowered as he scooted back to the headboard.

The newcomer was at least ten centimeters taller than Itachi, and he too stood military-straight in an incongruous cloak thrown over battered Konoha gear.  From first glance, even with his chakra signature muted, Temari knew he was dangerous -- the stillness he carried himself with, the way Itachi deferred to him, the assessing stare.

He wore a bandana over his hair and his hitai-ate crooked over one eye, and Temari’s breath stuttered as recognition hit.  

Sharingan no Kakashi, the Copy-Nin.  He’d been in Suna’s bingo book since his promotion to jounin at the age of 11.

She stared back defiantly as he turned his visible eye on her.  “What is the Sandaime Kazekage’s heir doing in Iwa with the missing heirs of Konoha’s biggest clans?”

Temari froze under the weight of his unrelenting stare, heart pounding.  By herself, she knew she was unremarkable, unrecognizable, especially as she looked now.  Nobody outside Kaze no Kuni should recognize her without seeing her with the more distinctive Gaara.  And with the implications of who she was and who the others were...

“Temari is important for our survival,” Neji jumped to her defense unexpectedly, interrupting her racing thoughts.  “She has done nothing but protect the children.”

“She takes care of us,” Sasuke chimed in, miraculously resisting the urge to yell at Neji for calling him a child when he himself was only a year older.  

A pregnant pause.  Hatake blinked then, the implicit threat vanishing.  “Hm. I’ll have to hear this story later,” he said, heavy with promise.

“Do you prefer we continue to refer to you as Rikku-san?” Itachi inquired.

Temari scowled again.  “Temari’s fine,” she grumbled.

“Wake those two and pack your things,” Hatake said abruptly.  “We need to collect the others and go.”

“The others?” Neji asked, almost too calmly.

“It would be unstrategic to leave three children, particularly a jinchuuriki, in enemy territory,” he responded offhandedly, and Temari grimaced.  “If you would come with me, Temari-san, we’ll rendezvous outside the village.”

Neji gave her an inquisitive stare, and she gave a tiny nod, resigned.  

“Be careful,” he said, as she leaned out of bed and slipped into her sandals.

“Take care of them,” she returned, grabbing her untouched pack from the floor, and followed Kakashi to the door.

“I’ll come with you!” Sasuke interjected suddenly, and everybody swung around in surprise.  Temari’s mouth quirked in an involuntary grin when he glared suspiciously at Hatake.

“Sasuke -- ” Itachi began, but the younger Uchiha had already grabbed his pack.

“I’ll -- I’ll see you later, aniki,” he said stubbornly, tilting his chin up to better stare down Hatake.  

“Come quietly,” was all Hatake said, before nodding at Itachi and sweeping out the door.  

The ninken from before was waiting outside in the dim glow of the pre-dawn.  His tail thumped welcomingly against the ground.

“The other children, Urushi,” Hatake said, and the wolfish hound was up and trotting down the street.  

Temari scowled at the dog’s retreating back, a little betrayed.  She and Sasuke had to jog to keep up with Hatake’s long strides, and the shinobi showed no signs of slowing down to accommodate them.  He seemed assured that they would follow him, and that rankled a little.

Itachi had seemed genuine, though, and as intimidating as he was, Hatake appeared to be an ally as well.  Between her, Gaara, Sasuke, Hinata, and Naruto, she knew they were valuable, and even if Itachi and Hatake did see them just as chess pieces, they would at least protect them from the Konoha and Suna shinobi hunting them.  With the combined strength of two shinobi who had been in the ranks of Konoha’s elite since they were younger than she was now, Temari believed they could keep all of who she had begun to consider ‘her’ kids safe.

It would be nice, she thought wistfully, to be able to live without constant fear of discovery, always on the run until they became strong enough to defend themselves.

She glanced to the side where Sasuke trotted, pack bouncing on his back.  He met her eyes with a determined set to his eyes, and her mouth quirked in a lopsided smile as she felt a sudden rush of affection.

Sasuke had his brother back.  They could get Itachi and Hatake to train them to get stronger, faster.  They would finally be able to fight back instead of running and hiding.

It wouldn’t be just Temari, trying to keep the kids warm and fed and safe.

She sighed wryly.  The downside of more people -- Gaara would not be happy with this.  

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT: D-5

0500 HOURS All-clear not received.  

Initiated Phase 3 of Protocol 73-I.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15 

High in the boughs of a tree that towered over its neighbors, and with the pointed muzzle of a hound resting on his thigh, Shisui watched the sun set in a blaze of golden hues.  He rubbed his thumb over Guruko’s forehead absently in the ninken’s rare moment of stillness as the wind ruffled the dark tangles of curls flopping over Shisui’s hitai-ate.

Shisui sank into the calm.  Here, above the ground, above the endless futile struggles, he could let himself believe nothing else mattered.  He could be content with a fleeting moment of peace hundreds of miles from home, watching the sunset.

Guruko finally shifted, leaning over to shove a damp, cold nose into Shisui’s hand.  Shisui flinched away, and realized the dying rays of the sun had long since vanished behind the horizon.  The only light now was from the distant pinpricks of stars, and the smoldering remains of the fire below him.  He scruffed a hand over Guruko’s ears apologetically. “Sorry, sorry,” he said wryly. “You hungry?”

The hound yipped and bounded up in a flash, darting back and forth with little pounces and a madly wagging tail that drew a smile to Shisui’s face.  “Lead the way,” said Shisui, and the ninken vanished down the tree in a flurry of rustling foliage.

Shisui dropped out of the tree lightly, landing in an easy crouch.  At the mouth of the cave, Guruko was enthusiastically washing Haku’s face -- the younger shinobi’s eyes were closed as he bemusedly and patiently tolerated the ninken’s greeting.  

“Hey, Haku,” said Shisui, amused.  “Got anything for Guruko, here? Says he’s hungry.  Give him some room, Guruko.”

“I don’t believe we have leftovers from dinner, Shisui-san,” Haku managed, as Guruko reluctantly backed up a couple steps.  “But perhaps I could find some dried meat?”

Guruko’s tail thumped the ground eagerly.

“This is why taichou thinks you’re spoiled,” Shisui scolded halfheartedly, even as Haku dug through their travel packs.  “We keep feeding you and you’ll get fat. You’ll have to roll after your prey.”

Guruko panted up at them shamelessly, making little leaps across the width of the cave.  Shisui crossed his arms even as he watched the ninken fondly. As the youngest of Hatake’s hounds, Guruko was much more likely to indulge in puppylike displays of exuberance.  Further in the shadows of the cave, Urushi stared at the other ninken longsufferingly.

“Looking forward to Kusa?” Shisui asked Haku as the younger tossed a piece of jerky to the ninken.

“It will be nice to leave camp for a little,” Haku admitted, sinking down gracefully next to Guruko.  “Zabuza-san mentioned that a new oden stand opened in Kasai, the border town, and I’d love to try it.”

“Oof, oden,” Shisui said wistfully.  “You better bring some back for me.”

Haku wrinkled his nose delicately.  “I’m not sure you’ll want two-day-old oden, Shisui-san.”

Shisui made a face.  “You’re right,” he agreed reluctantly.  “Better not risk that. How about a pet?  If you get me a bird, I bet I could train it to screech every time Zabuza curses.”

The corner of Haku’s mouth twitched in a stifled smile.

“Konoha!”

Shisui turned to see the hulking Swordsman stalk out of the trees, rivulets of water trailing along the raised Y-incision scar on the man’s bare torso and dripping onto his rapidly dampening pants.

Shisui raised an eyebrow.  “Wow, Z, you ever heard of a towel?”

“Stop corrupting my apprentice,” Zabuza growled, jabbing a finger at Shisui.  “And you -- don’t even think about it.”

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to, Zabuza-san,” said Haku, completely straight-faced.

“I mean it, kid,” Zabuza warned as he clumped past.  “Any bird you bring back will be roasted. And eaten.”

Haku frowned regretfully.

“Well, maybe a rabbit,” Shisui suggested cheerfully.   

“No,” said Zabuza from the back of the cave, voice muffled as he shrugged into one of his black sleeveless shirts.

“A cat,” said Shisui.  “You better be okay with cats, Z, you don’t have a problem with any of the hounds.”

The Swordsman glanced askance at the two ninken very carefully not paying attention to their conversation.  “That’s different,” he muttered. “They’re not food.”

Guruko’s tail thumped encouragingly.  Low bar, but hey, this was Zabuza. Practically a declaration of love.

"Did you put warding seals up?" Zabuza asked, nodding his head vaguely in the direction of the forest as he wandered back towards Shisui and Haku.  "Didn't see any just now."

Shisui grimaced. "No, we're running low.  I figured I should keep the ones we still have for when I'm the only one here."

"Aw, afraid of being all by yourself in the scary forest?" Zabuza mocked lightly.  "Aren't you supposed to be a big, strong shinobi, Konoha?"

Shisui snorted. "I'm not the one bringing an eleven-year-old to watch his back, asshole."

“Nearly twelve,” Haku interjected helpfully.

"I'm training him," Zabuza grumbled, ignoring his apprentice.  "It's an investment."

“Whatever lets you sleep at night, Z,” said Shisui, trading an amused glance with Haku.

Zabuza sniffed.  “Give us a light, Konoha,” he said, in a valiant and rare attempt to be the adult in the conversation.  “May as well make us a target.”

Shisui spat a tongue of flame at the pile of charred wood obligingly.  “On your head, if the combined forces of Konoha and Iwa descend on us here,” he warned.  “I’m not going to be the one who tells Hatake-taichou who got his nice new base wrecked.”

“At least we’ll get some action.” Zabuza flicked a stick onto the burgeoning fire.

Shisui eyed him sympathetically. “You know, you could just ask Taichou for another kind of mission.”

Zabuza snorted.  “Is that what you do?”

Shisui hesitated.  “No,” he admitted ruefully.  “I take what’s given to me and am grateful for it.  But that’s different,” he reproached.

Zabuza shrugged one shoulder dismissively.  “Pretty sure you’re ready for the field, Konoha.”

“Hmm,” said Shisui noncommittally.  He stared pensively at the flame dancing merrily between them, and his hands twitched as he forced them to stay unclenched.  

“I’d be fine with you watching my back, I guess,” Zabuza offered gruffly, glaring at the fire as well to avoid making eye contact.  

“I as well, Shisui-san,” Haku chimed in much more warmly.

“Aw,” said Shisui, torn between feeling touched and mercilessly mocking the Mist-nin because feelings.

Zabuza rolled his eyes.  “Don’t make it weird, Konoha.”

Shisui gave in to the overwhelming temptation.  “Come on, Z, I thought we had a connection,” he wheedled, widening his eye innocently.  “I know you care. You love me.”

Okay, Shisui reflected, as he ducked the pair of shuriken that whistled over his head, maybe he had a habit of pushing the man’s self-restraint.  And maybe it wasn’t the healthiest hobby.

“Perhaps you should avoid damaging the base, Zabuza-san,” suggested Haku serenely as Shisui flickered out of the way of a second volley.

“Oi,” protested Shisui indignantly.

“And Shisui-san,” Haku added dutifully.   

Zabuza reluctantly replaced a handful of shuriken in his holster.  “Keep your sentimental Leaf bullshit out of this,” he growled.

“I can’t help it, it’s in my nature,” Shisui insisted with a straight face.  “The urge to emote, it’s just so strong.”

“Shut up,” Zabuza snarled, hand twitching towards Kubikiribocho.

Behind him, Haku raised his eyebrows subtly.

Shisui manfully shoved down the urge to needle the Swordsman further.  See, Haku? He did too have a survival instinct. He paused.

“I just feel -- ” And he fled into the forest outside as Zabuza charged after him, blade held aloft.

Okay, so maybe he didn’t.

Sometimes, Shisui wondered when he would stop running.   In battle, from his battles, from every shitty thing that ever happened to him.  After Konoha was theirs again, he’d told himself. Until he was home.

But he already knew that was a lie.  Shisui would run until the day he died.

“Go back to sleep, Haku,” Shisui said without turning around.

The younger shinobi ignored him, scooping Guruko’s head into his lab as he settled beside Shisui against the wall of the cave.  The forest outside was pitch black; the only light was the still-smoldering fire Shisui had allowed to dwindle.

“It is unfair that you should watch the entire night through when there are three of us,” Haku murmured, running light fingers over the sleeping ninken’s ears.

Shisui shrugged.  “I’m going to be up anyways.  Makes no sense that more than one of us needs to be awake.”  He glanced at the younger shinobi and reached over to rub at the furrow that appeared between Haku’s brows.  “Hey, cut that out. It’s fine.”

“You need your rest as well,” Haku insisted, by far too polite to slap Shisui’s hand away.

“You need it more,” Shisui retorted, taking his hand back anyways.  “You’re the one going to Kusa. You won’t have an extra man in the watch rotation after travelling the whole day with just the two of you, may as well take advantage of it while you can.”

Haku was a good shinobi kid.  Shisui eyed him, amused, as the boy’s eyes hooded involuntarily.  “You can keep me company as long as you sleep,” he offered magnanimously.  

“That does not sound fair,” said Haku reproachfully, the frown reappearing.

“I’ll tell Zabuza you stayed up training and wore yourself out,” threatened Shisui, “even though he told you to sleep.”

Haku’s eyes narrowed.  “You wouldn’t. That’s a lie.”

“Sleep, kid,” said Shisui smugly.  “I’m a shinobi. Shinobi lie.”

Haku accepted his defeat in silence with far more grace than either Shisui or Zabuza would have, leaning back against the rock.  The hound in his lap shifted, reaching both front legs up to cover more of Haku. A drowsy Uhei dragged himself over as well, folding in long limbs to curl up with his back against the youngest shinobi.  

By the time Zabuza clumped out, the sky was just a few shades lighter than pitch black, and Haku had slid down until his head was pillowed on Uhei’s side.  The Swordsman stopped and stared at his apprentice, something nearing a grudging affection and disapproval warring on his face to produce a strange half-grimace like he’d bitten into a lemon only to find it sickly sweet instead of sour.

Shisui watched with some amusement out of the corner of his eye until Haku stirred and Zabuza promptly wiped the expression off his face.

“Get up,” he growled, prodding at his apprentice with a sandal.

Uhei opened one eye balefully but didn’t otherwise move.  Haku, on the other hand, shot bolt upright, jostling Guruko, who yelped his disapproval before scuttling over to Shisui instead.  Haku blinked rapidly. “I’m ready,” he said, staggering to his feet.

“Good morning,” Shisui said cheerfully, unfazed by the long night.  He stretched his legs out and felt the joints pop satisfyingly. “Sleep well?”

Zabuza glared at him, eyes just on the side of bleary.  Zabuza was very much not a morning person.

“Yes, thank you, Shisui-san,” said Haku, because someone had learned their manners as a kid.  As a younger kid, still being a kid.

“Don’t die while we’re gone,” Zabuza ordered Shisui, as Haku slung a pack over his shoulder.  “I don’t want to clean up that fucking mess.”

Shisui watched the urge to make a quip about the Swordsman caring sail past just a little regretfully.  That could only end bloody. “Yeah, same to you,” he said instead.  “I’d hate to have to make Haku drag your corpse across half the country.”

Zabuza grunted.  Haku waved, and they were gone, leaving Shisui alone.

Well, Shisui regarded the slumbering bodies around him wryly, alone except for the captain’s ninken.  He hauled himself up and blinked the dryness out of his eye. May as well put the seals up and take a nap until the sun actually rose.

Shisui awoke, blinking blindly in the darkness, shivering uncontrollably as his muscles remembered the burn of the drugs.  He sat up, prying off the fingers clutching his tanto’s hilt in a dead man’s grip. Numbly, he shifted backwards until his back hit the wall.

“Taki no Kuni,” he muttered, deliberately spacing his breaths. “Late autumn.  It rained yesterday.” Inhale, exhale. “I saw Itachi. Taki no Kuni.” He half-grinned, half-grimaced bitterly, staring at his trembling hands and willing them to stop shaking.  “Late autumn. It rained yesterday.” Sixteen months later, and the Sannin still had a hold on him.

He strapped on his kunai holster and slid his tanto into its harness, hauling himself upright.  He didn’t know if training was a healthy coping mechanism, but hey, it worked, kind of, so it was good enough for him.

Shisui rounded the corner to the mouth of the cave, sidestepping puddles and sprawled-out ninken.  Only Akino, Urushi, and Guruko were here now -- it wasn’t unusual for Hatake’s ninken to take off into the surrounding forest by themselves overnight or even wander off in the middle of the day, but they didn’t tend to go far.  Guruko whuffed a greeting, craning his neck up to snuffle at his hand and though Akino merely stared regally, Urushi’s tail thumped against the ground in welcome.

“Good morning,” said Shisui, summoning up his usual cheer as he scratched Guruko’s ears.  “I’m just going to go train for a bit, no need to follow me.” Urushi’s tail stilled. Oh, gods.  Hatake’s ninken could be oddly clingy, and Shisui did not want to get glared at for making his hounds sulk.  “Maybe we can go for a hunt when I get back?” he tried, and Urushi gave him a wolfish grin as his tail resumed its rhythmic beat.  

Crisis averted.  He gave Guruko one last pat when the hound shoved his cold nose into his hand and strode out through the brush.  The rain had passed, but the sky was still blanketed in clouds and moisture hung in the air. Murky puddles were scattered on the ground, and where there wasn’t standing water, there was mud.  

Shisui walked lightly atop both, then picked up his pace to a brisk run, then a headlong sprint before he was hurtling between trees, wind whipping through his unruly hair.

He had been on the battlefield since he was seven, seen bloodshed and spilled blood for the first time in the same year.  He had never physically been the strongest on the battlefield -- even as a child, he’d only had his speed to keep him alive, to excel.

Reluctantly, he slowed as he reached his destination. This copse was no different than the surrounding trees, but had been his preferred training location since they’d established their base camp in Taki no Kuni.  He’d carved tiny marks into the bark, when he first came, but he’d trained here so many times the numbers were all but obliterated by deep scores from his blades. It was fine. He’d long since memorized the order.  

Today was a backwards by threes day, Shisui decided, hopping up onto the trunk of number 50 and casting a considering eye at 47.  He gathered his chakra, coiled in him like a snake. He drew a kunai, spinning it absently, slashed the bark in one quick strike and moved .

A thrill of exhilaration shot through him.  This was speed. This was living.  

He landed, already pivoted to rebound, and pounced for the next mark.  His focus narrowed to his body, his target, his breath rasping harshly in his chest.  The trees whipped past in blurs as he pushed himself harder, faster twisting his body to avoid the reaching branches.  

Land, slash, turn.  Shisui felt his chakra crackle as he threw himself into one shunshin, then the next, and the next.  All around him, leaves and tiny twigs rained down from the force of the winds blown by his passing.

Mid-shunshin, his focus wavered when he suddenly realized he’d misjudged the distance to the next target.  He twisted desperately and only just managed to clip the side of the trunk with side of his chest, knocking the breath out of him and sending into an uncontrolled tumble instead of a head-on collision with the tree.  He threw himself to the right to avoid a bush and skidded to a stop on his side. He rolled onto his back.

For a moment, he lay panting, a sudden frustrated rage bubbling up in his chest.   That wouldn’t have happened if he still had both eyes.  But as soon as it came, it vanished, leaving him hollow and indifferent in the mud.  He dragged a grimy hand down his face. “Damn,” he muttered aloud, without feeling.

He picked himself up, brushing off the thickest of the dirt caked on his clothes, then turned to face the trees again.  He sank into a crouch, raising his kunai back into a ready position.

Deep breath in, out.  He sprang.

The first sign something was up was the ninken.  From his upside-down position, balancing on one hand, he saw all three dogs’ heads go up, ears pricked.  Akino rolled to his feet without even shaking out his fur, Guruko and wolfish Urushi arrayed behind him. Shisui came down from his handstand, moving against the cave wall and dropping a hand towards his kunai holster.

“Is it an enemy?” he asked in an undertone.

Guruko swung his head around and blinked deliberately before turning back around, head tilted towards the entrance. Reassured but still cautious, Shisui leaned against the wall, watching the ninken watch the forest.

Eventually he heard what they could -- running pawsteps, feather-light -- and then the smallish shepherd mix that had left with Itachi some two days ago leapt into the cave.  “Shiba,” Shisui said in surprise.

The ninken had clearly been running hard for a long time.  His tongue lolled out of his mouth, and even as he stood at a halt, his legs trembled. Guruko and Urushi surged around Akino to nose at the new arrival, whuffing concernedly at his sides.  Akino growled something, clearly interrogative, and Shiba responded.

Shisui sighed through his nose and went to grab some water and meat from the deer he’d taken down the day before for Shiba from the back.  Kakashi’s hounds only talked -- human speech -- to Kakashi, or when they thought nobody would overhear, and he doubted that would change now.

There was a high pitched yelp, sounds of a scuffle, and Shisui turned in time to see Akino snap his jaws at Guruko, who reared back before grumbling a growl and sprinting from the cave in a whirl of long limbs.  “Hey!” Shisui called after him. The three remaining hounds swung around to look at him. “Where’s he going?” The ninken exchanged glances, and Akino rumbled a little and bumped his muzzle into Urushi’s shoulder.  Urushi gave Shisui a kind of apologetic, toothy grin and loped out of the cave as well.

‘They’re ninken,’ Shisui thought, ‘they can make their own decisions.’  And then, ‘Kakashi probably gave them orders too. He never said they have to stay in the cave.’  And he hoped it was true, because he really, really didn’t want the captain holding him responsible for his hounds running off to who knows where.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he told Akino, ambling over to sink down next to the two ninken.   Akino shot him the frostiest, most offended blue-eyed glare he’d ever seen from a dog. Unbelievable. “...just kidding.” Shisui faked a smile, to which the ninken sniffed and turned away, and set down the food and water for Shiba.

Shisui liked Shiba better.  Shiba was friendly.

Shiba sprawled with his back against Shisui’s lap as his legs folded involuntarily, paying no attention to the food or water as he let his head thump to the floor.

“Hey, no,” Shisui admonished, and reached out to grab the dog’s forelegs gently, slowly extending and folding them in turn.  “You can’t just lay down after running, you’ll cramp up.”

Shiba rolled his head around and gave him a happy grin, not even attempting to move since Shisui was doing all the stretching for him.  At his side, Akino let out a disgusted huff.

“He’s right, you’re spoiled,” he told Shiba, smoothing his fingers against the short fur on the ninken’s legs.  Akino twitched.

Shisui nudged the smaller ninken with his knee. “C’mon, Shiba, eat something,” he prompted.  “You must be hungry.”

Shiba lolled his head dramatically in the direction of the bowl of meat, snapping his jaws pitifully.

Akino bared his teeth.  Shisui rolled his eyes. “Stop being such a brat,” he groused, but leaned over anyways to scoot the meat closer.

Hatake was right.  His hounds were going soft, and it was probably because Shisui kept coddling them.  He reached out to card a hand through Shiba’s fur.

He stared out into the forest.  There wasn’t much to do at base camp besides train, make sure nobody found him, and keep supplies stocked.  Being the invalid of the team sucked. “When will my husband return from war?” he singsonged sardonically. “Ouch!”  He snatched his hand back from Shiba’s warning nip and met the ninken’s reproachful stare indignantly.

Shisui’s mouth quirked in a lopsided grin.  “Too depressing? Sorry.” He ruffled the hound’s ears.  Shiba stared for another second and went back to eating.

At the edge of his vision, he saw Akino roll his eyes.  

“Hey, I saw that,” Shisui snapped half-heartedly, and was summarily ignored.   He leaned back absently. “Hey, Akino?” The ninken’s ears swivelled in his direction.  “Where’d Uhei and Bull go? Are they, er -- on a mission?” Akino swung his head around to rest on his paws and regarded him unwaveringly.  “Okay. Are they still in Taki no Kuni?” Slowly, the hound blinked.

Shisui liked to think he and Akino had a special kind of connection.  They even had a special code to communicate, where Shisui asked a polar question and Akino answered with a withering stare that meant ‘yes’ or an are you dumb blink that meant ‘no’.

“Is it a surveillance mission?”  Stare. “Are they coming straight back here?”  Stare. “In the next day?” Blink.

Communicating with Akino could be a little tiring.

“Okay, what happened with Itachi’s mission?”  Shiba’s tail thumped a little at the mention of Itachi’s name as he gnawed a meaty bone, the last remains of his meal, but otherwise ignored the exchange.  “Is he coming back?” Akino blinked. Shisui hesitated. “...ever?” Akino gave him a particularly scathing look. “Dumb question,” Shisui admitted, hiding his amusement.

He gave up.  He suspected Akino liked being obstinate, and if it were really urgent, Itachi would have sent a written message.

He sighed.  “I’m going to get some more firewood,” he said, and carefully shifted Shiba so he could get up without disturbing the ninken too much.  Unsurprisingly, Shiba grumbled anyways.

A couple hours later, over a dinner of venison, stewed for Shisui and extra bloody rare for the hounds, Shiba vanished mid-bite in a puff of smoke.  

Shisui flinched hard enough to drop his bowl, but caught it before any of its contents spilled.  Across the fire, Akino rose unhurriedly and bit his paw. The ninken’s chakra surged, and Hatake appeared in a crouch amid the smoky residue of the summoning.  With the warning, Shisui only twitched.

“Taichou,” he greeted, as the older man rose.  Shisui glanced at Akino, standing alert at Hatake’s side, and Hatake’s own intent expression.  “What happened?” Whatever had happened on Itachi’s mission must have been urgent after all, for Kakashi to cut his own trip short.   

Hatake cast a cursory glance over the cave.  Shisui hoped he wasn’t looking for the other ninken.  

“Itachi found the Lost Four in Oshina,” Hatake said without preamble.  “Pack everything up and clear the site.”

Shisui blinked.   What?  “Hai,” he said faintly, on autopilot, glancing back towards the scattered equipment further in the caves.  

When he turned back around, Hatake had summoned back Guruko, who lay panting in a tangle of limbs on the cave floor.  Shisui turned a disapproving frown on Hatake, who looked at least a little apologetic.

“I’ll be going straight to Oshino to help Itachi and move the Four out of Iwa,” said Hatake, already facing out towards the visible sunset.  “I sent Bisuke to recall Zabuza and Haku. As soon as they get back here, meet us on the way. Pursuit is probable; we will need backup.”

“Where are we taking them?” Shisui asked, fumbling another trencher out of the bag for Hatake.

Hatake hesitated slightly.  “Tetsu no Kuni,” he admitted.

Shisui’s eyes widened.  “Iron? Isn’t that kind of risky?”

“We have a deep cover operative there,” said Hatake.  “And it’s more important that we get the Four somewhere safe, even if it means compromising our agent or risking violating Tetsu’s neutrality.”  He caught the trencher Shisui tossed him and helped himself to the stew, though he remained standing and poised to retreat back out into the forest.

Shisui hesitated.  “Is Sasuke…?”

Hatake cut his eye over to Shisui and nodded once.  “He’s there. He’s fine.” He tossed the empty trencher to Akino, who caught it with a snap of his jaws.  

Shisui let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.  

“There are some unknowns there as well,” the other man added vaguely.  “The situation will become complicated quickly unless we move fast.”

“I’ll come with you.  Zabuza and Haku can -- ”

“No,” Hatake interrupted.  Shisui snapped his mouth shut.  “We’ll be more conspicuous if we go together; by all accounts there’s been too much activity in the village already.  Wipe the area and meet us en route.”

“Hai,” Shisui acquiesced reluctantly.

Hatake looked up and met his eyes.  “Don’t take too long,” he warned, and in a swirl of his cloak, leapt out into the forest.  

The significance of the news didn’t really register to Shisui until after Kakashi had left.  The Lost Four.  Two years after the Fall, and nobody had known where the heirs had gone, or who, if anyone, had them.  And they’d been in Iwa. “Shit,” he breathed, and half-laughed. Not kidnapped. Not dead. Not collared in Konoha as bargaining chips or brainwashed soldiers.  

“The Four.  That was a pretty big damn thing to leave out,” he said to Akino pointedly.  

The big dog’s ears flicked back, lips peeling back from his teeth just a bit in a sneer. You didn’t ask, the ninken’s stare retorted insolently.  

Shisui rolled his eye so hard it hurt.  “Unbelievable,” he muttered, and went to get a bowl of water for Guruko.

Zabuza blew in with Haku and Bisuke at his heels the next day a few minutes after Shisui finished taking down the last of the secrecy seals around the perimeter of their camp.  

“Hey, Konoha,” the Swordsman greeted.  Haku smiled weakly behind him, swaying a little on his feet.  “What’s this about?” He tossed a scroll at Shisui.

Shisui caught it, unfurling it with one hand and gesturing absently at the pot of stew with his other hand -- the only sign of their camp remaining.  “Urgent. Abort mission. New objective. Butterfly.” It wasn’t signed. Shisui rolled his eye. “If I’d known he was going to make me tell you what’s going on I would have gotten him to give me a better explanation.”

Zabuza raised an eyebrow, shoving a trencher of stew at Haku, who took it gratefully and slid down against the wall.

“Itachi found the Lost Four in Iwa.  Village of Oshino,” said Shisui.

Zabuza didn’t blink, emptying the pot into another trencher.  “The what?”

Shisui rolled the scroll shut, regarding him with an incredulous stare.  “The Lost Four? The four kids that went missing from Konoha the night the Sandaime was assassinated?”

Zabuza shrugged.  “Don’t kids go missing all the time?”

“Well, yeah,” Shisui admitted.  “But these kids are the second son of the Uchiha Clan head, the first and second daughters of the Hyuga Clan head, and the Kyuubi jinchuuriki.”

Both eyebrows went up.  “Oh, shit,” said Zabuza.

“Oh yeah, I probably wasn’t supposed to tell you that last part,” added Shisui belatedly. “Why don’t you know about them?  Apparently it was a big thing in the covert intelligence community. Everybody knew about them.” Despite all the cover-ups went unsaid.

Zabuza rolled his eyes.  “I was busy trying to off the Mizukage.  And then getting sliced and diced by that creepy snakefucker.”

“Oh.  Right.”  Real smooth, Shisui.  Bring up everyone’s unresolved trauma, why don’t you.  “For a while everyone though Kumo had them, since that sort of thing’s right up their alley, and they are kind of at war with Konoha, but nobody could prove it one way or the other.”

“So what’re they doing in Iwa?”

Shisui hummed thoughtfully.  “There was another theory. When I was in Anbu, there was a protocol in case the walls had been compromised, to get the underage members of the major clans’ Main Branch families to safe points elsewhere in Hi no Kuni, in case the Head was killed.  It’s a relic from when the village was first founded; it’d never been used. But it was used that night, and at one of the safe points, the operative in charge of securing the Hyuuga girls left mission reports confirming their survival and that of Uchiha Sasuke.  The last report suggested she would be taking them into deep cover, outside the country. Everyone thought it was planted, and Danzo really had them, but -- ” he shrugged. “Maybe not.”

Zabaza frowned.  “That’s convenient.  You’re sure it’s not a trap?”

“It could be,” Shisui admitted.  “But I don’t think Itachi would fall for something like that.  Even for his brother.”

Zabuza’s eyes widened.  “Oh, shit. That’s his brother.  Damn.”

“Yeah,” agreed Shisui.  “Cute kid. Or he was.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“I think the big one is ‘get them out of Iwa.’  We’re supposed to meet up with them en route to Tetsu.”

Zabuza squinted at him dubiously.  “Lots of samurai in Tetsu.”

Shisui shrugged.  “Could be safer for a bunch of kids.  Supposedly we have a deep cover plant there already.”

“Hn.”  Zabuza was clearly unconvinced.  “When do we leave?”

Shisui hesitated, glancing at Haku.  

The younger boy was clearly exhausted, but struggled upright.  “I’m ready,” he insisted.

Zabuza scowled.

“Nah, not yet,” Shisui dismissed.  “Half an hour. I don’t think Bisuke’s ready to run again yet.”

Zabuza eyed the little ninken in question, curled up next to the fire next to a half-chewed bone.  “Take a break, Haku,” he ordered. “You’ll need your strength.” Haku slumped back against the wall gratefully.   “Anything else we need, Konoha?”

“Nah,” said Shisui, sinking down so he could run a hand over Guruko’s short fur.  “Everything’s packed. Unless you need to refill your water or anything.”

“Mm.”  Zabuza swung the broadsword off his back, running a hand over the flat of the blade.  He slit his finger on the edge distractedly, and when the blood welled up on his skin, smoothed it into the metal.  

“Man,” Shisui said.  “That’s still creepy.”

“It’s efficient,” Zabuza corrected with a pointy-toothed grin.  “It’ll still be a perfectly good blade when that twig of yours has been sharpened into a needle.”

Shisui scoffed, offended.  “My tanto is fine, thanks very much.  It just doesn’t need to suck blood like a mosquito.”

“Kurikiribouchou is a mosquito like an ocean is a puddle,” Zabuza said loftily.  “Whereas that pigsticker is a cup of water. A teacup. If I’m being generous.”

“Oh my gods, I’m not doing this,” Shisui groaned.  “You’re comparing our swords. With poetry.  It’s not even like the size matters, just the skill of the wielder.”

“That’s what the guy with the smaller sword always says,” Zabuza said smugly, waggling his eyebrows at Shisui suggestively.  

Shisui picked up the empty pot and threw it at Zabuza’s head.  

The clouds had finally broken up enough to reveal the moon by the time they were ready to leave base camp behind for the last time.

“Bisuke.”  Shisui poked the ninken, who ignored him.  “Bisuke, get up.” Still, the little dog didn’t move.  Shisui stared around helplessly.

Zabuza shrugged.  Akino looked supremely unconcerned, while Guruko panted at him cheerfully from the edge of the cave.  

“Nobody’s going to carry you, Bisuke,” said Shisui, poking the dog again.

The top of Bisuke’s head bumped against the underside of Shisui’s chin with every stride he took.  “Spoiled rotten, all of you,” Shisui muttered at the ninken tucked down the front of his flak jacket.  Bisuke, ostensibly still asleep, didn’t even twitch.

“I’m sure he could have caught up in his own time, Shisui-san,” Haku pointed out.

“He would have gotten eaten,” Shisui defended, as if he wasn’t aware what the ninken was capable of.  “He’s, like, one bite for an eagle or badger or something.”

“Konoha,” Zabuza said slowly, “badgers don’t eat dogs.”

“Yeah, but he’s the size of a rabbit,” argued Shisui.  “I’d eat him, if I were a badger.”  Bisuke made an offended grumbling noise.  “Hush, unless you want to walk yourself,” Shisui scolded.

The run north was relatively uneventful.  Shisui was just glad to be moving again. Staying in the same place, anchored in a relatively insecure area, had made him restless.   His lengthy convalescence after his time with Orochimaru had been terrible.

Following Akino’s lead, Shisui dropped out of the branches down next to Zabuza, and within minutes, caught sight of Hatake.  They were just a couple kilometers inside the border. The sun had just fully breached the horizon, giving enough light for a pretty good first sight of the group.

Zabuza and Shisui exchanged looks.

“I thought you said four,” said Zabuza finally.

“That’s what I thought?” Shisui responded uncertainly, surveilling the kid on Hatake’s back, the two girls riding Bull, a boy that had to be Sasuke on Itachi’s back, and the four other kids arrayed between them.  Each of the children regarded the newcomers with deep suspicion.

“Shisui, Haku, take point.  Momoichi, rearguard and decoys.  We need to get into Tetsu by nightfall,” Hatake ordered without preamble.  “Explanations will wait until later.”

Zabuza grunted.  “Hai,” said Shisui, giving the eight children another wary glance.

“Oh, and Shisui,” Hatake turned towards him, an inscrutable expression on the sliver of his face that was visible.

“Hai?” Shisui answered warily.

“Why,” said Hatake slowly, “is my ferocious war hound cuddling in your shirt?”

Shisui glanced down, as if he had forgotten the furry lump on his chest.  “Ask your ferocious war hound,” he grumbled, disgruntled.

“He thought a badger would eat him,” Zabuza interjected helpfully.

Hatake squinted slowly between the two of them before shaking his head and moving away.

“Thanks for watching out for my precious ninken, Shisui,” Shisui muttered under his breath as he leapt towards the front of the group.  “No problem, Taichou, they don’t drool as much as you do.”

One of the kids, the pink-haired girl, choked on a surprised giggle.

“What was that?” Hatake asked mildly from across the clearing, a dangerous gleam in his eye.

“Your ninken are delightful, and it’s an honor to work with you, sir,” Shisui said without missing a beat, and made a hasty retreat into the forest.

Nightfall saw them within the forests of Tetsu no Kuni without incident.  By that time, Shisui had gained another passenger -- a shaggy-haired boy that clung to his neck like a limpet and made no noise whatsoever.  Bisuke, meanwhile, made a disgruntled noise and stuck his entire head back into Shisui’s flak jacket.

Hatake called a halt in a small clearing with towering trees that did little to shield them from the wind whipping through the trunks.  

Shisui crouched to let the kid off; he stared at Shisui with black-rimmed eyes for about five seconds in complete silence before wandering off to where the others huddled at the center of the clearing.  Bemused, Shisui watched him go before giving a mental shrug and turning to put up the safety seal outside the perimeter of the camp.

With a familiarity born of repetition, Haku unsealed a tent from his storage scroll, while Itachi had already begun collecting fallen branches for a fire.  Zabuza had vanished from across the other side of the clearing, presumably to set up traps.

Hatake ghosted up to his side as he unfolded a paper seal and pressed it up against the smooth bark of a tree five meters from the camp.

“The children,” he said.  

Shisui pushed his chakra into the seal, and it lit up in a flash of blue.

“They’ll need to be interviewed,” Hatake went on. “The probability that one is a plant is...not nonexistent.”

Shisui paused and turned.  “Where exactly did these ‘unknowns’ come from?”

Hatake’s eye slid back towards the camp.  “That redhead you were carrying is the Ichibi jinchuuriki.”

Shisui did not grab the other man by the collar, but it was a close thing.  “What?” he hissed.

“Intelligence suggested he kidnapped his sister, the Kazekage’s oldest child, and escaped from Sunagakure, but that clearly doesn’t appear to be the case,” Hatake continued, as if he hadn’t just told Shisui he’d been piggybacking the human personification of an extinction level event for the better part of the day.

“What ?” Shisui’s voice came out faintly strangled.

“Exactly what they’re doing here, with the Four, remains to be seen,” Hatake said almost absently.

Deep breath, Shisui.  Strangling your commanding officer is not the answer.   “Argh,” said Shisui.

“The youngest of the Four is not here,” Hatake ignored Shisui’s incoherent sputtering.  “But I believe the Hyuuga boy is a close Branch relative. The remaining two are a complete mystery, but the boy moves with some training already.”

Shisui opened his mouth, then closed it again wordlessly.  

“Interview the girls,” Hatake ordered.  “Find out why they’re here.”

“Hai,” Shisui barely had time to get out before Hatake was striding away again.  Shisui stared at his back, then at the tree in front of him. His life was absolutely ridiculous.

He let out a short breath and went to put up the rest of the seals.

Shisui stared at the girl.  The girl stared at the ground.  Shisui cleared his throat. “Hi,” he said.

The girl peeked up at him through dusty pink bangs and said nothing.

“I’m Shisui,” he soldiered on valiantly.  “What’s your name?”

“Sakura,” she mumbled, training her eyes back on the ground.

“That’s a pretty name,” Shisui offered.  “Can I call you Sakura-chan?”

The girl scuffed at the dirt with one sandal and nodded mutely.

“So, Sakura, where’re you from?”

“Konohagakure no Sato in Hi no Kuni,” she answered after a pause.

Shisui crossed an item off his mental list.  “Konoha, huh? Why’d you leave?”

The little girl fidgeted.  “Me’n Tou-san went to Kanazawa ‘cause he needed acorn flour,” she told the dirt.  “But the ninja came at night and Tou-san told me to get under the wagon and then he fell and he wouldn’t move and he was bleeding a lot.”  She looked up at Shisui with solemn eyes. “He’s dead,” she told him, matter-of-fact.

Shisui swallowed.  “I’m sorry, Sakura-chan.”  Sakura looked back down. “Then what happened?” Shisui prompted after a long pause.

“Naruto got under the wagon too,” she said, swinging her feet back and forth.  “The ninja were chasing him but the dog mask fought them off but they hurt him too.  Dog-mask told Sai to take us somewhere safe so we ran. Sai knew where the secret hiding place was.”   

She spoke like a war survivor, numb and detached.  “Who’s Sai?” asked Shisui automatically, brushing the stray thoughts away.

A small smile appeared on her face.  “Sai is weird,” she told him. “He had a mask, too, like the dog-mask, except with a mouse face on it.”  Anbu trainee, then. “He helps Temari take care of us.”

Temari -- the Kazekage’s daughter.

“Is Temari nice to you?” Shisui asked.

Sakura nodded.  “Mhmm. She tells us where to find food and how to cook and ninja stuff.”

Survival 101 -- Academy students would have a good grasp on this by their third year.  “Is she strong?” he prompted.

“Yeah.  She knows lots of cool stuff and she’s good at taijutsu and she taught us wall walking.”

Wall walking -- Temari had to be genin level, at least.  

“How did you meet Temari?”

The girl fussed with the edge of her shirt.  “Neko-sensei took us to a new village and Naruto met Gaara in the market and took him back with him.  Temari’s his sister so she came too.”

Shisui nodded encouragingly.  “Right. So, er, what do you think about Gaara?”

Sakura paused noticeably.  “He’s strong,” she said.

Shisui narrowed his eyes.  “Does he scare you?”

Sakura shrugged.  “Someone was chasing us once and Gaara made the sand crush him.  He had the headband thing with the funny squished rectangle -- “ she tapped her own forehead.  “-- so Neko-sensei said it was okay, just that once, but Temari got kind of angry and they both told him not to do it again.”

Used sand to crush him.  Kami. This girl probably had PTSD.

“But he’s never hurt you?” Shisui asked, just to make sure.  

The girl scowled up at him, surprisingly ferocious.  “No,” she snapped. “He doesn’t hurt any of us.”

“Good,” said Shisui, for lack of anything else to say.  Sakura subsided, mollified.

“How did you meet Neko-sensei?” he asked, changing tack.

“She came to the secret hiding place too,” Sakura explained.  “And Neji and Hinata and Sasuke and Hanabi were with her. She told all of us it wasn’t safe and we had to leave, so we left.”

Shisui hummed.  “I see. Thank you for telling me this, Sakura-chan.”

“She didn’t want to take me with her,” the girl said instead, staring up at him conspiratorially.  “She said there were too many kids already. But Naruto wouldn’t leave without me.”

And with that, as Shisui sat frozen, she hopped off her rock and wandered back to the center of the camp.

“Shit,” Shisui sighed.

“Hi, my name’s Shisui.  It’s Temari, right?” The girl gave him an eerily close approximation of Akino’s are you dumb face.  Shisui smiled back, unconcerned.  “Can I call you Temari-chan?”

“Fine,” said the girl, in a manner that indicated it was anything other than fine.  

Shisui coughed.  “Right. Temari-chan.  You must know how it looks -- the Kazekage’s daughter with a couple of Konoha’s missing heirs.”

The girl raised an eyebrow.  “I don’t know. How does it look?”

Direct approach it was.  “Why did you leave Sunagakure?” he asked.

“Why did you leave Konohagakure?” she snipped back.

Shisui gave her his best, bitter, I have seen some shit smile.  “I was kidnapped and experimented on for my kekkei-genkai after a village elder stole my eye.”

Temari’s eyes widened, but she quickly rallied.  “That would have been my brother, unless I got him out,” she said, tilting her chin up.  “My father sent Anbu and assassins after Gaara. The night we left, he sent my uncle to kill him.”

Shisui blinked.  Well, shit. He should have known better than to hope her story would be any better than Sakura’s.

“I heard reports that he was unable to control his sand,” he continued, after taking a moment to scrape his mental composure back together.  “Are they true?” Are we all in danger of being smashed into little wet blobs in our sleep?

“They were,” said the girl, unconcerned, and Shisui’s heart dropped for a split second.  “But he has control over it now.”

“I see,” said Shisui noncommittally.  “How did that come about?”

“He broke my arm, on accident.”  Temari didn’t hesitate. “And after that, he had enough incentive to control it.”

“Okay,” he said, after a pause.  “What rank were you, Temari-chan?”

Shisui caught flash of temper in her eyes, before it vanished into cool composure.  “I was an Academy student,” she answered neutrally.

Shisui raised an eyebrow.  “You have an impressive knowledge base and developed chakra system for an Academy student,” he noted.

“Yes,” said Temari.  “If only it mattered to the Academy sensei.”

Whoa, sore spot.  “Maybe your sensei just wanted to make sure you had a childhood,” he suggested, quashing a pang of regret -- it was a luxury he never had -- or Itachi, or Hatake, or even Zabuza.

Temari tilted her head to the side.  “Maybe,” she said, in a tone that said it was most definitely not.

Well, Shisui wasn’t here to find out about whatever internal politics that probably involved just yet. “So, how did you end up as the, er, single mother of seven?”

Temari’s mouth quirked unwillingly into her first real smile.  “Dragged in by the cat,” she said dryly. “Gaara and I had been chased by Anbu halfway through Ame.  We stopped in a village to steal food -- well, I did, and Gaara wandered off while I was pickpocketing at the market.  When I found him, this little blond kid was just yammering away at him -- and Gaara let him.” Temari shrugged. “Nobody’s been nice to Gaara besides me, so I was a little suspicious at first, but he said there were other kids with him and they had a dry place to stay and food.”  She shrugged again. “I figured if it was an orphanage, Gaara and I could get back out easily.”

“Was it just the eight of you, then?”

Another distant smile.  “At first, yeah,” said Temari.  “But then Neko-sensei came back.”  Her smile turned wry. “Sai probably called her.  She was pretty mad at Naruto, at first, for bringing back strange children, but once she figured out we weren’t a threat -- and then who we were -- she was kind of okay with it.”

Shisui pasted a skeptical expression on his face.  “Just like that?”

Temari rolled her eyes.  “Well, it wasn’t that simple.  She didn’t even come back for a couple weeks, and when she did, I’d been helping the others out.  Did you know they’d been eating instant ramen raw? Because they didn’t know how to cook it?” Her eyes were fond, despite the derisive tone.  “I taught them how to cook, and pickpocket, and some basic shinobi skills.”

“That’s a lot of effort, for a bunch of kids you didn’t even know,” Shisui pointed out.

“Yeah,” said Temari, unconcerned.

“You care for them.”

“Yeah,” repeated Temari fiercely, tilting her chin up to stare at him defiantly.  “I wouldn’t let anyone hurt them.” Not even you went unspoken.  She jerked a thumb back at the camp.  “Can I go? One of those idiots is going to burn themselves playing with the fire.”

“Yeah, go ahead,” said Shisui, and watched her stride back to the center of the camp, inserting herself neatly into the huddle of children next to the fire.

“Shit,” Shisui muttered empathetically.

“If any of them are spies, their cover is thorough,” Hatake concluded, glancing back towards the fire.  Zabuza was perched on a fallen tree a little ways away from the puppy pile of children, facing out into the darkened forest.

“Sakura seems harmless,” Shisui agreed slowly.  “And I didn’t sense anything malicious from Temari, though both Sakura and Hinata confirmed she is capable of at least genin-level skills.”  

“Sai as well,” said Hatake.  “He claimed to have been recruited from the orphanage at age seven, and that he had been in the Anbu trainee program for a year before the Fall.”

Shisui and Itachi exchanged glances.  “Is that normal?” asked Shisui

“Gekkou was tapped for Anbu when he was seven,” Hatake mused.  “Uzuki at nine. It’s not too unusual.”

“There is a possibility he is a Root trainee,” said Itachi.

All three were quiet.

“It’s unlikely,” said Hatake almost reluctantly.  “My sharingan couldn’t pick up any traces of genjutsu or deception from him.”

Shisui grimaced.  “You used that on a ten-year-old?”

Hatake’s eye narrowed.  “It was necessary. He won’t remember it.”  

“Sakura has the least reason to be here,” noted Itachi after a pause.  “She is the logical suspect for a plant.”

Shisui shook his head.  “You’ve seen the way she moves.  No way she’s anything more than an Academy student, and a beginning one at that.”

“She was only orphaned during the Fall,” Hatake pointed out.  “Danzo doesn’t like recruits with attachments. The fact that the Kazekage’s children are here, however, is...odd.”

Shisui snorted.  “Can it be anything other than a massive coincidence?”

“Coincidences don’t exist,” quoted Itachi.

Shisui resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  “So the Yondaime Kazekage heard that some clan kids from Konoha went missing and decided to send his daughter, not even a genin, and his youngest son, the Ichibi jinchuuriki , on a gallivant through the minor lands in hopes of conveniently running into these supposedly runaway kids, while as-publically-as-you-can-unpublically admitting they’d left Sunagakure?”

“I suppose not,” Itachi conceded after a pause.  “Though given the circumstances, it is strange that Cat-15 took them in.”

“Maybe it was some kind of...latent female maternal instinct,” Hatake suggested halfheartedly.

Shisui snorted.  “Let’s not pretend you know anything about females, Taichou.  You have to admit it’s strategic, gaining authority over another jinchuuriki.”

Hatake rolled his visible eye and jerked his head at Itachi.  “Is the jinchuuriki stable?”

“He seems to have his beast under control,” said Itachi.  

Shisui went to nod agreement but hesitated.   “His sister seems to have a lot of influence over him,” he said cagily.  Over it.  “And the rest of them.”

“We’ll watch for that,” concluded Hatake.  “For now it seems they’d be hostile if we tried to separate any of them.”

“They’ve been through a lot together,” Shisui mused, turning towards the huddle of children.

“We’ll have to take care of their training,” Hatake added grimly.

Shisui jerked his head up incredulously, but Itachi had on his I-agree-but-I-don’t-necessarily-like-it face on, which was marginally different from his resting face.  “They’re kids,” he protested. “They’ve been living on the run for years. They deserve to be kids for a bit.”

Hatake’s tone was icily rational. “Not one of us wasn’t on the battlefield at their age.  It’s impractical to think the battle won’t come to them -- it’s better that they have the tools to defend themselves.”

“And when you need another soldier or two for the war?” Shisui challenged, narrowing his eye.

“We are all soldiers,” Hatake drawled, but his stare was deadly serious.  “When we are called to fight, we fight.” 

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT: D-14

All allied targets henceforth designated by number code only: AT1, AT2, AT3, and AT4.  Allied combatants x2 designated ACHN and ACNS. Allied noncombatant x1 designated ANHS.

All allied targets successfully extracted to [REDACTED], [REDACTED] kilometers from Konohagakure.

AT1, AT3, ANHS sustained moderate fatigue, light dehydration.  ACHN sustained mild fatigue. ACNS sustained moderate fatigue, light damage to left chest and left upper arm.

Current course: hold position for 48 hours.  Acquire provisions and medical supplies, additional supplies for AT2. Reevaluate security of location.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

Crouched behind Hinata in front of the fire, Neji narrowed his eyes at the shinobi placing seals on the trees.  “They will wish to interrogate us,” he said in a low voice.

“We have nothing to hide,” Temari said flippantly, but her posture was tense.

“I moreso than you,” muttered Neji.

“Unless they are actually Konoha agents,” Sai pointed out, and all of them turned to scrutinize the nearest -- the one-eyed masked shinobi with grey hair -- Hatake Kakashi, Temari had named him.

“Would a Konoha agent work with a Kiri nukenin, though?” Sakura wondered aloud.

“They’re not Konoha agents,” Sasuke snapped -- quietly.  

Neji sneered.  “I suppose you consider yourself unbiased.”  Sasuke puffed up indignantly.

“Shut up,” Temari snapped, distracted, before he could respond.  “This isn’t the time to pick fights.”

Neji glared at both her and the Uchiha spawn half-heartedly, but she was right.  He turned back to look at the grey-haired shinobi, only to start when he discovered the man was already staring at him.

“Ne, Neji, I think he’s looking at you,” whispered the blond brat in a voice that was much too loud to really be called a whisper.

“Shut up, Naruto,” muttered Sasuke, rolling his eyes.

Hatake raised an eyebrow and jerked his head towards the edge of the camp in a clear summons.  

Neji reflexively traded a glance with Temari.  “Watch over Hinata-sama,” he said automatically, his mouth suddenly dry.  

“Yeah,” Temari murmured and gave him an solemn nod.     

Gathering his composure about him, Neji found his feet and followed.  

The shinobi leaned against the trunk of a tree and gestured at a fallen log across from him.  Neji eyed him, then the log, and perched gingerly, angled in a way to keep both Hatake and the others in his normal line of view.

“What’s your name?” The grey-haired man tucked his hands in his pockets, carefully nonthreatening.  

Neji knew for a fact that the shinobi knew what his name was.  “Hyuuga Neji,” he answered anyways, straightening his back and lifting his chin.

The man hummed nonchalantly.  “And do you know my name?”

With a suspicious glance, Neji said, “Hatake Kakashi. Former jounin of Konohagakure.”

“Hmm,” the man said again. “Why don’t you tell me about how you came to leave Konoha?”

Neji turned his head towards the fire.  “The night the Sandaime Hokage was assassinated, I was Hinata-sama’s appointed guard.”

“A little young to be entrusted with the heiress, hmm?  You would have been eight years old?”

Neji hid a scowl.  “I was excelling in the Academy and with my studies in the Juuken style.  Hiashi-sama decided I should begin my responsibilities as a member of the Branch family.”

Hatake’s expression didn’t change.  “You must have resented that,” he noted idly.  

Neji tamped down the heat rising in his throat like bile.  “It is an honor to serve Hinata-sama in whatever way I can,” he snapped.      

“Hn.”  The shinobi eyed him for a moment. “You were keeping watch.  And then?”

“There was a disturbance at the front of the compound.  I could see attackers from the front and rear of the compound, battling the guards and those of my clan that rushed to respond.” He hesitated, a frown settling on his face unconsciously.  “There was a -- a shockwave. It knocked everyone off their feet. The Anbu came then. Neko-sensei.”

Hatake leaned forward a little.  “And did Neko-sensei ever tell you her name?”  

Neji shook his head.  “No. Only her codename: Cat-15.”

“And you just went with her?” the shinobi asked.  

“Yes,” Neji bristled.  “The compound was under attack, and as far as I could see, the rest of the village was as well.  Makoto-nii confirmed that the protocol was legitimate, and believed that the heiress and her sister would be significantly more secure at a safe house instead of in the village during an invasion.  I followed his lead.”

Hatake nodded thoughtfully.  “What can you tell me about Makoto?”

“Hyuuga Makoto.  Twenty-four years of age, chuunin at age eighteen,” Neji recited.  “Retired from the General Corps at age twenty-two following a traumatic mission.  Stationed at the main compound, on rotation as the personal guard for Hyuuga Hanabi.”

By the time Hatake let him go back to the others, Neji was strung out and on edge.  The other one-eyed shinobi had pulled both Sakura and Temari away and brought them back, with Hinata-sama now staring at the ground between them.  At another quadrant, Naruto was loudly extolling the virtues of a particular ramen shop in Konoha to a blank-faced Itachi.

“That was long,” Temari noted, sending a glance over his shoulder towards Hatake.

“Hn,” said Neji, glaring at the shinobi interrogating Hinata.  He was definitely not in the mood for conversation.

“His name’s Shisui,” Temari said, following his stare.  “He asked a bunch of questions about why Gaara and I left Suna.  What did Hatake want to know?”

“Everything,” Neji snapped.  “Why I am here, my dead cousin Makoto, how we met Neko-sensei.  And you.”

“He’s calling me,” Sasuke cut in, voice uncharacteristically quiet.  

They all turned.  Sure enough, Hatake was staring at the youngest Uchiha.  

“I don’t think he’ll hurt you,” whispered Sakura, huddled between Gaara and the fire.

“He will just want answers,” agreed Neji begrudgingly.  “He likely wants to eliminate any potential bias from either of the Uchiha questioning you.”

“Don’t keep him waiting, then,” said Temari, nodding at Sasuke encouragingly.

Neji watched him go before turning back to glare at the Uchiha with Hinata-sama once again.  Shisui.

For a moment, the five were quiet.  Temari watched the trees behind his back.  The ever-present shifting of the jinchuuriki’s sand hissed softly below the whisper of the breeze.  

He heard it first, turning his head towards the almost imperceptible scrabbling.

“Cover me,” Sai breathed.

Neji shifted to block him from Shisui’s view, while Temari pulled Sakura over next to her, covering him from Sasuke’s brother.   He stared around the clearing warily, but none of the shinobi paid them any mind other than a cursory glance.

Sai slipped a small scroll out of his pocket and unfurled it just enough for a small black mouse to hurl itself at the blank paper.

Neji glanced down at the single word and his eyes widened, darting up automatically to meet Temari’s as Sai continued to stare at the message:  

Clear.

Clear: understood, message received.

Clear: free of danger.

Clear: definite.

Clear: permission given to proceed.

Clear: far away from, removed.

Sai snapped the scroll shut.

Clear: Neko-sensei wasn’t coming.  They were on their own.

Finally, Temari’s mouth quirked in a wry smile.  “I guess these guys are for real,” she said at last, giving Sakura’s shoulder a squeeze, but her eyes were hard.  

Sakura smiled tremulously.  “We’re safe,” she whispered, but her shoulders remained hunched and tense.  She didn’t really believe it.

Neji didn’t either.

“It’s Neji-kun, right?”

Neji, who had been blinking groggily at the smoldering remains of the fire as dawn lit the edge of the trees, jerked his head up sharply.  The older Uchiha -- Shisui -- was wearing a pack and a travelling cloak slung over his shoulders. “Hai,” he answered shortly, taking a quick glance around the rest of the clearing.  While all the other shinobi were up -- minus the youngest, the one that looked around Neji’s own age -- none of them seemed inclined to move.

“Can you hold a good henge for a couple of hours?” Shisui asked, and Neji’s attention snapped back to him.  

“Yes,” replied Neji, allowing his suspicion to color his voice.  

Shisui nodded.  “Good. How about...hm.  Sakura-chan?”

The pink-haired girl flinched at the corner of his eye. “Yeah,” she squeaked, then frowned and cleared her throat.  “I can do it,” she said, jerking her head up defiantly even as her voice quavered.

Like a kitten growling at a panther.  Pitiful, perhaps ill-advised and quite unlikely to be taken seriously, but commendable.      

“Excellent,” Shisui said cheerfully.  “I’m heading into town to pick up some supplies.  Why don’t you two accompany me?”

He stared at the Uchiha silently as Sakura turned nervous eyes on Neji.  He nudged Temari with his foot. She woke immediately from a light sleep, sitting up quickly with squinted eyes.  “Why?” he asked slowly.

“I figured you’ll need more clothes, so I thought you could help me pick some out,” he answered readily, the hint of a smile crinkling the corners of his mouth.  

Neji narrowed his eyes.

“Why them?” Temari cut in, voice rough with sleep.

Shisui blinked slowly.  “Tetsu can get rather cold, especially in the winter, and you all seem to be kitted out for Iwa summers,” he said.  “Neji-kun and Sakura-chan are pretty representative of the sizes of clothes the rest of your group will need, and it’s less suspicious if I go into town with two kids versus eight.”

“Hm,” said Temari, and raised a brow at Neji.

He gritted his teeth.  “Very well,” he said. “Sakura?”

The girl twitched again. “Okay,” she agreed.

“Good.  Great,” said Shisui.  “Come on, then. It’s a bit of a run, but we can get breakfast when we hit town.  Sound good?”

Sakura nodded once, tentatively.  Neji said nothing, but rose to his feet gracefully.

“Cool,” said Shisui, eyes flicking between the two.  “The rest of you will probably start moving again in an hour or so,” he told Temari, who nodded, the sleep-fog fading from her eyes.  He gave Temari a friendly nod and turned slightly to offer Hatake a two-fingered salute before moving away.

“Watch over Hinata-sama,” Neji told her, before following the Shisui out of the camp.  

Shisui set a pace that was a light jog for himself and an easy run for Neji, but just a few kilometers later, he could see Sakura struggling to control her breathing out of the corner of his eye.  As a civilian-born, she was the weakest of the others -- Naruto, though an orphan, had the benefit of seemingly endless stamina, and the best efforts of the Clan’s training had managed to give Hinata-sama an edge over the other girl.  

Perhaps they should have brought along Hinata-sama instead, though she would doubtless have made them look suspicious with her stuttering and inability to meet another’s eyes.  The Clan had yet to train her out of that habit, unbefitting of their heiress as it was.

Sakura’s breaths degraded into harsh panting.  Neji eyed her out of the corner of his eye. Blotches of red stained her cheeks, but her eyes glinted with stubbornness.  

Shisui’s effortless strides slowed to a stop.  Neji stopped as well, and Sakura stumbled to a halt beside him.  “This is a good place to take a break,” said Shisui. “Neji-kun, Sakura-chan, do either of you want some water?”

Neji took a few deep breaths to slow his heartbeat.  “Yes,” he said. Sakura, leaning against the tree with her eyes closed looking rather faint, did not respond.  “We will both require water,” he amended grudgingly.

Shisui handed him a canteen, regarding Sakura with a mixture of bemusement and mild alarm.  Unused to civilian weakness perhaps. “We have a few kilometers left,” the shinobi said, crossing his arms comfortably.  “Sakura-chan, I’ll carry you until we’re a kilometer or two out, and then we’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“I can run,” Sakura rasped, opening her eyes at last and hauling herself upright.  She swayed on her feet. After one last sip from the canteen, Neji passed it to her.

She was stubborn, but she didn’t have the strength to back it up.  It was a foolish claim to make.

“You need to save your strength,” Shisui said firmly. “Once we reach the road, you need to be able to keep up a constant henge until we’re out of town.  If you drop the henge because you’re too tired, all of us will be in jeopardy.”

Neji eyed the girl out of the corner of his eye, increasingly dubious.

“Neji-kun?” said Shisui. Neji turned politely. “Are you able to continue running?”

Neji allowed just the hint of a frown onto his face.  The Hyuuga trained their children young, and he was the best the Hyuuga clan had produced in generations -- his skills were genin level at least.  “Yes,” he said shortly.

Shisui merely nodded in acknowledgement, shifting his pack around to his front.  “If you’re ready, Sakura-chan?”

Sakura skittered up to him uncomfortably, keeping Neji between them for as long as possible before approaching the Uchiha teen and clinging awkwardly to his neck.  For his part, Shisui crouched remarkably patiently until the girl had wrapped her legs around his waist.

“Here we go,” the Uchiha said cheerfully.  They went.

Shisui set a faster pace this time, the kind of run that left Neji breathing hard but not desperately.  He was aware, of course, that the shinobi was still moving much more slowly than he normally would when travelling on his own, and the thought of the allowances he was making for Neji, who wasn’t as strong, rankled.  At least he was able to run himself, though. He spared a quick glance for Sakura. She looked vaguely seasick.

After perhaps half an hour of this, at which point Neji had begun taking deliberately deep breaths so as not to gasp for air, Shisui slowed, then stopped, crouching to let Sakura off.  

Neji paced slowly with half his usual grace, legs stiff and uncooperative.  

“We’re a couple klicks out of town, so we’ll take another break and walk in,” Shisui announced, passing the water to Neji.

He took it gratefully, forcing himself not to gulp.

Sakura brushed her hands down her shirt absently.  She was frowning, hair falling over her eyes.

“This is the important part,” Shisui continued, his more tone hardening almost imperceptibly.  Sakura’s spine straightened, and she looked up. Neji set down the canteen.

“This is a town that samurai are known to frequent, and shinobi are very much not welcome here,” Shisui warned.  “Should the samurai discover who or what you are, you will at the least be forcibly removed from the country, or at worst, captured and eventually killed.  Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Neji.  Sakura echoed him quietly.

“Good,” said Shisui, and took stock of their expressions.  “I’m not trying to deliberately scare you,” he said, “but this is much more dangerous than even flying under the radar in Tsuchi no Kuni.  You need to stay alert at all times.”

“We understand,” Neji assured him, voice unwavering, but he could feel the shot of adrenaline that surged through his veins at the thought of discovery.

Shisui let out a short breath.  “Okay. This is our cover: the two of you will be my younger brother and sister.  Our family are merchants who specialize in metal products, like cookware and basins, and are currently at a town in the east to resupply.  The three of us are here to acquire clothing and other provisions before we all head further north.” He considered them thoughtfully.

“Henges are easiest to hold when they’re simple,” Shisui continued.  “So each of us will change our hair color to a medium-dark brown and our eye color to dark grey. Watch,” he ordered, hands flickering through seals.  

His eyes lightened and his hair changed color without even a wisp of smoke, bleeding into a shade lighter than the trees surrounding them with just a hint of red.  “Try to match the colors as best you can.” He glanced between them. “Neji-kun, go ahead.”

Neji narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing the shinobi’s hair.  “Hai,” he acknowledged, and began going through the hand seals.  “Henge,” he muttered, and blinked away the smoke.

“Good,” Shisui said approvingly.  “Your hair is a little darker, but that’s fine.  Better, even.”

Neji suppressed a frown and tilted his head forward until the shoulder-length strands dangled next to his eyes.  They were indeed a couple shades darker than Shisui’s.

“Now, Sakura-chan?” Shisui prompted.   

The girl concentrated on her hands, forming the seals precisely and confidently, if not quickly.  “Henge!” she said firmly, and was enveloped in a thin veil of smoke.

Neji leaned forward despite himself.  Sakura’s hair and eyes were exactly the same shades as Shisui’s.  He caught himself scowling and wiped the expression from his face.  

“Nicely done, Sakura-chan,” Shisui praised. “You have a good eye for detail.”

She beamed widely.  “Thanks, Shisui-san!” she chirped.

“Try not to say my name while we’re in town,” Shisui warned.  “You can call me onii-san and I’ll call you two imouto and otouto.”  He gave each of them a careful look. “Okay, let me just…” he closed his eyes  and flashed through hand seals again, and the slant of his eyes flattened, his nose narrowed, and his face elongated.

Neji stared in morbid fascination.  The Uchiha had a darker complexion now, Sakura’s nose, and a bit of Neji’s eyes.  Watching the process somehow made the changes seem profoundly wrong. At his other side, Sakura was unable to tear her gaze away, eyes wide with a horrified interest.

Shisui opened his eyes to their stares.  “It’s just a henge, same as yours,” he reassured them, just a hint of amusement in his voice.  Neji nodded slowly, but seeing that face talk after he’d seen it warp like some sort of melting candle made it even more strange.

He could see that face without flinching, of course, by the time they reached the town.  It was a largely unremarkable place -- wooden buildings with rusting tin roofs, cobblestone streets, precarious streetlights -- somewhat ambiguously ringed by a low stone wall.

The townspeople largely ignored them as they walked down the main street, busied with drawing water from a well, preparing the days’ meals, or housekeeping, doors flung open as occupants called out friendly overtures to acquaintances passing by.  A butcher hacked at the meaty ribcage of a cow, his apprentice sharpening cleavers on the other side of the yard. A trio of boys darted across the road, deftly avoiding a man with a handcart full of sacks of rice or barley or wheat as they taunted and called out to each other.

Sakura hovered closely at Neji’s side, which he endured with a long-suffering grace, even when she tread on the back of his sandal.

Shisui’s hunter’s prowl had transitioned into a flat-footed tramp, but he strode forward just as quickly.  “What do you two want to eat?” he asked lightly. “It’s a bit late for breakfast, but we could call it brunch.”

“Dango,” Sakura said wistfully, almost immediately.  “Anko dango.”

“If you meant lunch food,” Neji cut in delicately, “perhaps soba would be appropriate.”

“Soba and dango.  Sounds good,” Shisui agreed cheerfully.  “Come on, you two. I bet we can find some in the market district.”

That was not a bet Neji would take.  He followed readily as Shisui headed towards the loudest part of the town.

Many of the stores were open-air, with boxes and crates of fresh produce lined up outside storefronts.  A barbecue restaurant had a cart with steaming whole roast chickens and half a small pig parked outside.  Neji dodged a woman carrying a basket heaping with loaves of bread, dragging Sakura with him by the sleeve.

“There,” said Sakura distractedly, stumbling into his side.  “It’s a noodle shop.”

“So it is,” Shisui said, and changed course for the restaurant.

It was a clean enough place, Neji supposed, but he sat down gingerly all the same on the rickety wooden bench and eyed the menu inked onto the wall.  

“Kamonanban for me, I think,” decided Shisui aloud.  “What about you two?”

“Nishin soba,” answered Neji.  It had been so long since he’d had soba, longer still since he’d had his favorite topping, herring, with it.

“Hiyashi soba,” Sakura chimed in, expression a little dreamy.  Neji eyed her warily.

Temari had talked once about how she’d missed dorayaki, one of her favorite childhood foods, when her father forbade the children from pastries, and years later she’d snuck one in the market.  It hadn’t tasted the way she remembered -- just cloyingly sweet and sticky. Time had idealized the memory.

This was most definitely not the case for Neji’s nishin soba.  In fact, it tasted even better than he remembered. It could have been due in part to the fact that this was the first time he’d actually eaten in a restaurant in over a year -- even on those rare occasions when the group had scraped together enough money to buy a ready-made meal, they’d taken it to go and shared it in the relative safety of their home base.      

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten so comfortably.  Or so much.

Too much, actually.  

Neji glanced down at his bowl.  It was still at least half full, but he didn’t think he could eat another bite.  

Sakura, who had been methodically taking small bites of her own soba, seemed to have arrived to the same conclusion -- she stared at the remains of her meal despondently.

“Well then,” said Shisui. “I suppose we should get these to go.”

Their next stop was a general clothing-and-miscellaneous store towards the edge of the market district.   Inside was dim and musty, with most of the light coming in from the store windows. Neji paused just inside the door, surveying the rows of racks of clothing.

Shisui glanced back at them.  “Why don’t you two take a look around?” He suggested.  “Let me know if you see anything you like, and we’ll see if it’s something we can get, hmm?”

“Hai,” said Neji, more than willing to take the chance for relative privacy.  He tugged Sakura along by her grip on his sleeve into the racks of clothes.

Sakura touched the clothes tentatively, as if afraid of breaking or dirtying them, then with more interest.  “Ooh,” she murmured to herself, fingering a pink sequined shirt.

“That is extremely impractical,” Neji told her, brushing it out of her grip distractedly.  

Across the store Shisui had approached the storekeeper.  “...suitable for winter,” he was saying.

“Ah, yes,” said the storekeeper. “We do have a nice selection of sweaters, jackets, and cloaks, if you’d like to take a look.”  He bustled out from behind the counter, leading Shisui around to the back of the store.

Neji nudged Sakura to the next set of racks to keep them in sight.  She went willingly enough -- these held a selection of plain pants, and Sakura seemed to approve of the fabric.  “We all need these,” she muttered to him.

He eyed them critically.  “They seem alright,” he allowed, before returning his attention to Shisui.

“And what about these?” Shisui was saying, gesturing at something out of Neji’s line of sight.

“Ah!  Good choice.  Those cloaks are waterproof canvas, lined with bear fur, adjustable length through this detachable…”

“Do you think we need shirts?” asked Sakura, wandering to a shelf stacked with shirts of soft fabric.

Neji glanced over.  “Not those,” he dismissed.  “Those will tear much too easily.”

“ -- haven’t you sold any?” asked Shisui curiously.

“Ah,” the storekeeper responded.  “Well, er, they are a little...ah...heavy.”

Shisui leaned over, presumably to pick one up.   “I see,” he said blandly. He raised his voice. “Otouto?  Imouto? Would you come here, please?”

Sakura dragged a hand over the shirts reluctantly.  “Come,” Neji hissed impatiently, fighting the urge to roll his eyes, and forcibly maneuvered her by the shoulder.

The cloaks in question were a grey-brown and hooded.  Shisui had one in his hand. “Try this on, otouto,” he said, already fanning it out to drape over Neji.

Neji’s eyes flashed to the storekeeper, who’d opened his mouth as if to say something, hesitated, and closed it.  Shisui dropped the cloak onto his shoulders.

Neji staggered under its weight.  “What -- ” he muttered. The cloak was not only heavy, it was much too long -- designed for an adult.  It dragged on the ground.

“It is a nice cloak,” Shisui said thoughtfully.  “Alright. We’ll take them.”

Sakura eyed Neji dubiously.  Neji scowled.

“You will?” said the storekeeper, surprised. “I mean, er, great!  Ah, how many? Three?”

“All of them,” Shisui said blithely.

“All-- all of them?” the storekeeper choked out.

All of them? Sakura mouthed at Neji.  He shrugged, just as bemused.

“Well, we are heading north,” reasoned Shisui.  “I’m sure my mother will be able to find a market for them when it’s a little colder.  I’ll just take them off your hands, hmm?”

“Oh, ah -- thank you?” said the storekeeper, confused.

“You’re welcome,” said Shisui cheerfully.  “Mind boxing these up for me?”

“N-not at all,” said the storekeeper hesitantly, before turning to wrestle the cloaks off the rack.  “Just -- just give me a moment,” he said, voice strained.

“Of course,” responded Shisui genially. “Imouto, otouto, did you find anything you liked?”

Sakura lit up, the strange cloaks forgotten.  “We need pants,” she said brightly, darting back into the racks.  Shisui followed indulgently.

Neji grimaced at the folds of the disproportionately heavy cloak, leaning over to bundle up the extra cloth in his arms before he could follow.   

Sakura, it seemed, successfully sold Shisui on the pants, because he ahh’ed and hmm’ed at the right moments and finally said, “Sounds good,” and carried an armful to the front counter, leaving Sakura equal parts exhilarated and bewildered behind him.

“He’s actually getting them,” she hissed to Neji.  “Is it for real? Is it an act?”

Neji narrowed his eyes and shrugged.  “It could just be for our cover,” he warned.

“I know,” said Sakura, worrying at her lip.    

Neji eyed her with some distaste until she stopped guiltily.

“Alright, kids, we’re done here,” said Shisui, breezing past and leaving them to follow in his wake.

Sakura glanced back as they exited the store.  “We’re not buying anything?” she asked, confused.

“We are.  We did,” said Shisui, “but I don’t want to carry all that around, so Tenshu-san kindly agreed to hold onto it until we’re ready to leave town.”  He stopped when they reached the street corner. “I’ve got a couple more things to grab, but why don’t you two see if you can find some of the local kids to play with?” he suggested.

Neji narrowed his eyes, barely short of a glare, as Sakura’s mouth twisted uncertainly.  “I do not play ,” Neji said derisively.

Shisui glanced up at the sky for a brief moment.  “Okay, look,” he said, crouching to their level and lowering his voice.  “Children are pretty perceptive about whatever goes on or potential dangers around a town and usually give out information out more freely than adults.  It looks weird if a grownup starts chatting to all the kids, but you two have the advantage of age, yeah? Talk to the local kids, see what to look out for around here.”

Sakura glanced at Neji.  “We could do that,” she said.

Neji frowned. “Very well,” he conceded grudgingly.

“Try not to ask anything too directly,” Shisui added, almost as an afterthought.  “And make your your henge doesn’t slip.” He squinted up at the sky. “Let’s meet back here when the sun’s directly overhead -- it should be about an hour.”

“Hai,” said Neji, and pulled Sakura in the opposite direction as the Uchiha turned away.  He eyed her carefully. “Can you keep that up?” he asked, jerking his head at her hair.

Sakura considered for a moment.  “Yes,” she said confidently.

“Hn.”  Neji surveyed the streets dolefully.  “I suppose we should find some children , then.”

Sakura seemed unreasonably cheerful at this proposition.  She let go of his sleeve to run ahead, and consequently was the one who found a small cluster of boys near the wall off the market district.  

“Hi!” she called, skipping forward.  Neji belatedly grabbed for her and missed.  “I’m Kanako. Can we play with you?”

All four boys turned to stare at them.  One of them had strong, pointed features and looked just a little younger than Shisui; the others all seemed to be around Neji’s age.  

“You’re a girl,” said the shortest, scrunching his nose and sweeping dirty blonde hair out of his eyes.  

Sakura folded her arms belligerently as Neji came up behind her.  “And?” she demanded.

“Girls play with dolls and their hair,” the boy retorted.

Neji glowered at the boy over Sakura’s shoulder, who scowled right back at them.  

“Kawa -- ” the oldest began admonishingly, but Sakura interrupted him.

“Well, I don’t,” she snapped.  “I like playing Bandits, and Hunters and Monsters!”

A pause.  One of the other boys snorted.  “She’s got you there, Kawa.”

“Shut up, Kokkaku,” Kawa retorted good-naturedly.  “All right, if you like playing Bandits , you can play with us.  I’m Kawa, this is Kokkaku, that --  ” he pointed at the last boy, with black hair and dark brown eyes who raised a hand in a lazy wave “ -- is Hikaru, and Awasaru’s ‘watching’ us.”

“What he means,” said the teen, “is I attempt to minimize the property damage.  It is nice to meet you, Kanako-san, and -- ?”

Neji opened his mouth, but Sakura beat him to it.  “This is my brother, Jiro. He doesn’t talk much.” Neji frowned but didn’t correct her.

“It is a pleasure,” Awasaru said pleasantly, inclining his head.

“Yeah, cool,” said Kawa impatiently.  “So, how do you play Hunters and Monsters?”

Sakura brightened, edging closer to the group.  “So one group is monsters and they come out at night and try to catch the hunters, and when they catch a hunter the hunter has to drop down on the ground until another hunter can come and save them.  But if it becomes morning and they didn’t get saved they become a monster too, and during the day the hunters try and catch the monsters.”

The kid with brown hair and blue eyes -- Kokkaku -- looked doubtful.

“Kanako likes to play in the middle of the open market,” Neji interjected, borrowing one of Naruto’s ill-advised ideas. “Where there are more...obstacles.”  Chaos, more accurately.

There was a gleam in Kawa’s eye that reminded him eerily of the aforementioned blonde brat.  “I see,” he said, a grin slowly spreading on his face.

“No, Kawa,” Awasaru interjected firmly.  

“But -- ”

“ No , Kawa.”

“I don’t think people will take too kindly to us playing Monsters in the middle of the town, anyways,” muttered Kokkaku.

Neji exchanged a glance with Sakura. “Why not?” he asked.  

“You aren’t from around here, are you?” Kokkaku noted, not unkindly.  “Well, it’s kind of an urban legend but people say the forest around here is haunted by demons and monsters.”

“Yeah, sometimes people go out hunting and come back and say they saw giant white wolves with teeth like daggers that could eat a man in one bite,” Kawa agreed.  “Or a demon girl with a bloody grin. Merchants will come in and say they were chased by shadowy beasts at night.”

“There have been increased incidents in the past month,” Awasaru informed them.  “The traders in the marketplace currently are most unnerved by the situation and would likely take unkindly to that sort of game.”

“Aww,” said Sakura, disappointment flickering across her face.  “What do you like to play, then?”

“There’s Pirates and Samurai,” Hikaru offered.

“Bah,” Kawa wrinkled his nose.  “I’d rather be a rounin than a samurai or a pirate.”

“Why?” asked Sakura curiously.  “Samurai sound pretty cool.”

“They’re signing up to die early,” Kawa said derisively, at the same time Hikaru said, “They are.”

Kawa turned an incredulous stare on Hikaru as the other boy shrugged.  “They fight pirates and protect people, that’s pretty cool.”

“It is a noble profession,” Awasaru added. “To protect those weaker than oneself.”

“Have you seen samurai before?” Sakura asked.

“They come in town sometimes,” Kokkaku said.  “We’ve all seen them at least once or twice.”

“My father was a samurai,” Kawa bit out.  “And because of it, he died the day I was born.”

For an awkward moment, the other boys and Sakura exchanged uncertain glances.

“I’d rather be a rounin,” Kawa repeated.  “Fight for no sword but my own. Go wherever the wind takes me, meet new people, try new foods and all that.”

“You’re allergic to every other thing on this earth, Kawa,” said Kokkaku, rolling his eyes.  “Trying new food is like flipping a coin to avoid getting stabbed.”

“Speaking of flipping coins and stabbing,” said Kawa.  “We gotta do something. I’m so bored.”

“Might I suggest a sedentary activity, such as card games?” said Awasaru, eyeing the other five.

“Noted,” Kawa said cheerfully.  “Let’s go on the roof!”

Neji watched as the blond scrambled up the stone perimeter wall and took a flying leap across the narrow gap to the roof of a nearby store, and wondered if this was what civilian children normally did.  The other three boys stared at their friend with varying degrees of exasperation.

Kawa leaned back over the edge of the roof.  “C’mon, guys,” he urged.

Hikaru, closest to the wall, shrugged.  “To the roof,” he said, and hauled himself up the wall with surprising grace.   

Kokkaku rolled his eyes, muttered under his breath, and ultimately had to be heaved up the wall by Awasaru, who took the turn of events with a long-suffering air.

That left Neji and Sakura.  “I’ll give you a lift, Kanako-chan,” said Neji.

Sakura frowned.  “I can make it myself,” she insisted, starting for the wall.

“ Kanako ,” said Neji, gritting his teeth.

Sakura hesitated.  He narrowed his eyes at her.  “Fine,” she relented, and deigned to let him boost her up until Awasaru could swing her to the top of the wall.   

From the roof, the six had an excellent vantage of the open market, particularly the section with fresh produce, a bakery, and one penned off area milling with chickens.  For the first time since Oshino, Neji allowed himself to relax, removed from the bustle of the town.

“Hey,” said Kawa, kicking his legs off the edge.  “Hey, guys, do you dare me to steal one of old Saburo’s chickens?”  

“For gods’ sake,” muttered Kokkaku, at the same time Awasaru said, “No.”

“Uh,” said Sakura.  Neji agreed.

But Kawa had that light in his eyes again. “I can’t believe you guys are making me do this,” he said gleefully, not even listening to his companions.

“We’re not,” Hikaru interjected helpfully, but watched the man with the chickens interestedly.

In one motion, Kawa scooted right off the edge of the roof.  Sakura yelped in surprise, but none of the others reacted except for Kokkaku, who rolled his eyes again.

Neji leaned over the edge in time to see Kawa clamber off a stack of hay bales.  

“This is so wild, you guys are so messed up for making me do this,” he called up, and then darted toward the chicken pens.

“Is he all right?” Neji asked bemusedly, staring after the retreating back.

“Kawa’s...interesting,” Hikaru sighed, heaving himself up to follow the other boy over the edge of the roof. “He makes everything interesting.”

“He makes everything trouble,” Kokkaku growled, dropping off the roof after him.

Neji glanced back at Awasaru, the last one on the roof.  Awasaru looked resigned.

“I believe it is time for Kanako and myself to depart,” Neji said.

“Probably for the best,” Awasaru agreed.  “Kawa has a tendency to generate havoc. Safe travels, Jiro-san, Kanako-san.”  

“Bye, Awasaru-san,” Sakura chirped, and followed Neji over the edge.  “Civilians are weird,” she whispered as they hurried back to the rendezvous.  Behind them, the squawking of the chickens increased exponentially in volume.

“Indeed,” Neji agreed, slightly disturbed by the morning’s proceedings.

Shisui was waiting where they’d left him with eyes half-closed and one hand in his pocket, a burlap sack over half his height leaning against the corner at his side.  

“Is that dango?” Sakura gasped, running ahead of Neji.  He frowned at her back.

“With anko sauce,” said Shisui, eyes crinkling in a smile.  He held one stick out to her and offered the other to Neji.

Neji plucked it from his fingers and inspected it delicately.  “Thank you,” he said. Sakura echoed him, muffled.

Shisui swung the sack over his shoulder easily.  “Did you two have fun?” he asked.

Neji glanced at Sakura, who had a mouthful of dango.  “It was informative,” he allowed.

“Oh?” said Shisui.  “What did you learn?”

“Civilians are weird ,” said Sakura empathetically.

That startled a laugh out of Shisui. “Anything else?” he asked, amused.

“Samurai come by this town every so often,” Neji offered.  “And pirates seem to be a genuine threat, though perhaps only along the coast.”

“And there are monsters in the forest,” Sakura added. “Like giant wolves.”

“Hm,” said Shisui.

“The townspeople are comfortable enough during the day to leave their doors open and their children unsupervised,” countered Neji, narrowing his eyes at her. “The forest monsters are likely just superstition.”

“There’s usually a kernel of truth in urban legends,” Shisui said pensively.

The side trip to the village, while uneventful, helped alleviate the monotony of travel.  Neji still didn’t know where they were going -- the shinobi had all cryptically answered something along the lines of “a safer place” when asked.  This was currently the cause of contention among Neji’s group once again.

“Neko-sensei said they’re alright,” Sakura said doubtfully.

“We think Neko-sensei says they’re alright,” muttered Neji.  He glared around the huddle of children that had instinctively formed after Hatake had called the last break.

“My jutsu cannot be forged,” Sai countered.

“I trust them,” interjected Sasuke, unsurprisingly.

“They seem pretty nice,” Naruto agreed.  “They feed us a lot!”

“Oh, they seem nice,” Neji sneered. “Have you forgotten that a shinobi is a master of deception?”

“Enough,” snapped Temari.  “We’ve been over this. Whether or not this is a trap, we can’t do anything about it yet.  The chances of them killing one of us is slim. Even if they try, we have Gaara.”

Neji glanced at the boy, a silent shadow at his sister’s side.  Although he had witnessed the jinchuuriki kill an Anbu assassin with frightening ruthlessness, he wasn’t so sure Gaara would jump to anyone’s defense other than Temari’s, or possibly Naruto’s.

Gaara wasn’t paying attention to their conversation.  Instead, he stared out into the forest, just the hint of a furrowed brow on his blank face.

“Gaara?” Temari prompted, her voice sharp.

“There’s something out there,” Gaara muttered as Neji flipped through the seals to activate his Byakugan.

With a burst of chakra, Neji let his gaze expand, sweeping past Hinata-sama as she activated her own eyes, the other children and the shinobi in the clearing, past the trees and the brush and scattered birds in the branches.  He sucked in a harsh breath, his focus narrowing in on the silhouettes just on the edge of his range.

Shadowy beasts, Kawa had said.  Giant white wolves with teeth like daggers.  

“A-ah,” Hinata stuttered. “T-there’s, ah -- ”

“Wolves,” Neji said.

“Well, if it’s just forest animals -- ” Temari began, but Neji cut her off.

“They’re not regular animals,” he said tersely, watching the massive creatures lope closer, and reached for the kunai in the pouch strapped beneath his shirt.  “Much too large -- they’re familiars.”

“T-there’s a s-shinobi,” Hinata whispered.  “R-riding on o-one.”

“Sakura, Hinata, Sasuke, Naruto: stay back,” Temari ordered, palming a kunai in each hand.  Sai slid the tanto out of its sheath, even as Gaara stepped up to his side, the sand whispering at his feet.  

“We can fight!” Naruto insisted.

“You need to guard our backs,” Sai instructed calmly, even as he swept his blade back into a ready position.

“Stand down,” Hatake drawled from across the clearing.  “They’re friendlies.”

None of them relaxed.

“How is a giant wolf a friendly?” Sasuke hissed, spinning a kunai in his hand nervously.

Neji tracked the wolves’ progress with narrowed eyes.  “They’re not acting aggressive,” he noted doubtfully.

“Hm,” said Temari, stepping back a little to the rest of the group.

While Hatake’s posture remained loose and relaxed, the kid with the Kiri nukenin shifted uncomfortably at the Swordsman’s back.  Shisui sent a distracted, if reassuring smile in his direction.

When the wolves finally stalked into the clearing, Neji let his byakugan fade and caught his breath as the world returned in full color.  The pair were bigger than Hatake’s largest ninken and as tall as horses, with lush, snowy fur and acid-yellow eyes. They wove in and out of each others’ paths as easily as leaves in the wind on feather-light paws.

From the shoulders of the lead wolf slipped a kunoichi wearing the same white pelt as her companions and a string of fangs about her throat.  Despite her feral appearance, however, her eyes were sharp and assessing as she sized up the group.

“San,” greeted Hatake, straightening from his slouch.

“Kakashi,” the kunoichi responded, even as her eyes landed on Neji and the others curiously.  “It’s good to see you.” She waved her hand at her wolves. “This is Yuuki, of course,” she introduced, patting the one she’d been riding, “and that’s Chie.”  She nodded her head in Neji’s direction. “This is them?”

“Aa.  I apologize for the short notice,” said Hatake, “but they need to be out of sight as soon as possible.  I’ll let them introduce themselves later, but these are Uchiha Itachi, Uchiha Shisui --” Itachi dipped his head while the other offered a lazy salute, “ -- Momochi Zabuza, and Haku.”

“Inuzuka San,” said the kunoichi, ducking her head in a shallow bow before turning a fierce stare on the group of shinobi children huddled at the far end of the clearing.  “We need to move fast, and it’s all uphill from here,” she said. “Who wants to ride with Yuuki, and who wants to go with Chie?”

It was perhaps a testament to a strange few days (or years) that none of the others kicked up much of a fuss, not even Hinata-sama -- though admittedly she would be more inclined to panic and perhaps faint rather than fuss over riding a giant wolf that looked much more likely to eat them than Hatake’s placid ninken.  

“This is awesome,” Naruto cackled quietly -- for him.  “Ne, Neji?”

Neji grimaced as the blond’s arms tightened around his waist.  He tangled his hands further into the wolf’s ruff and didn’t respond.  Predictably, Naruto was undeterred.

“D’you think I can get a wolf?” he wondered out loud.  “That would be so cool!”

“You don’t ‘get’ a wolf, idiot,” Sasuke muttered from behind Naruto, his words nearly carried away by the wind.  “The familiar chooses you, not the other way around. And it’s usually a clan thing.”

“Oh,” said Naruto.  Then, “Is San part of a clan thing?”

“She said she’s Inuzuka,” Neji felt compelled to point out.

“Is that a clan thing?”

Neji closed his eyes and took a calming breath that was promptly jarred out of him by the wolf Chie’s rough stride.

“They’re only one of the biggest clans in Konoha,” said Sasuke, presumably rolling his eyes. “Known for their ninken and red-fang facial markings.”

“Neat,” Naruto breathed onto Neji’s neck.

Neji narrowed his eyes against the rush of wind as the trees whipped past and chanced a look sideways at the wolf Yuuki.  Hinata-sama, predictably, looked terrified, clinging to Temari’s waist, while a flush of excitement lit Sakura’s face with a pink glow.   Temari...Temari’s face was the most open Neji had ever seen it, eyes wide despite the sting of the wind, an elated smile tugging at the edges of her mouth.  He glanced away before she looked over.

San’s camp was hidden in the far corner of a hollow between cliffs, reachable by a system of caves in the craggy mountainside.  

“Make yourselves at home,” invited San, once the Neji had slid rather gracelessly from the wolf Chie’s back. “Chie can show you where the river is, if you need more water.”

“San,” called Hatake from the lip of the hollow, and jerked his head back toward the caves.  The masked shinobi and his team had shadowed the wolves through the forest until the thick undergrowth gave way to tall, scraggly trees, just out of sight.  

“Are you leaving us here?” Temari asked, slipping lightly from the wolf Yuuki’s back.

“Just while we secure the perimeter,” said Hatake. “If you run into trouble, Bull will keep you safe.”

Neji turned to give the ninken, sprawled genially in the center of the clearing, a dubious once-over.  When he turned back, Hatake and San had vanished.

“Great,” Temari muttered, reaching up to help Hinata down. She sighed and surveyed the clearing, planting her hands on her hips absently.  “All right. Neji, find a vantage point and keep lookout. Gaara, dig a fire pit. Naruto and Sai, get water. Sasuke and Hinata, firewood.  Sakura, help me with the food.”

The children scattered.

Neji glanced around the clearing and beelined for the hollow’s walls.  Concentrating his chakra, he took two steps straight up the rocky wall, then two more before his foot slipped.  Instinctively, he slapped his open hand against the wall and hauled himself the rest of the way to a shallow ledge with a combination of strength and chakra.

Once perched atop the ledge, he flipped through the signs and activated his byakugan, letting the world unfold to his gaze.  In the tunnels, the shinobi had convened in a small huddle, the youngest one standing back a couple paces. Neji focused in on the group curiously and watched their mouths move silently, but couldn’t make out any words.

Disappointed, he examined their chakra, but that was tamped down too tightly -- even that of the two ninken, each about the height of Neji’s waist, that lounged against the cave walls.  He let the chakra-color fade and instead switched to heat-sight. Little pinpricks of heat -- birds and mice and other wildlife -- bloomed in his field of vision.

The wolves Yuuki and Chie, lounging comfortably on either side of the hollow, were the biggest and warmest, then the ninken Bull meandering after Sasuke and Hinata-sama.  

Including the wolves, that was five ninken.  One more was tailing Sai and Naruto to the river.  Neji cast his sight further and made out at least three others of varying size, scattered around in the tunnels and beyond, in the forest.   How many ninken did this shinobi have ?  He’d never seen an Inuzuka with more than two or three dogs.  He filed the information away for later consideration.

It was full dark and the dried salt-jerky soup Temari made with sheets of dried vegetables and also two small fish Sai had pulled out of the river with the water was long gone, and the battered aluminum pot it had been in scoured clean by the time any of the shinobi made a reappearance.

“Heads up,” murmured Sakura, squinting past the fire.

Neji turned.  Shisui had the large sack from their foray into town slung over one shoulder, while at his side, Itachi held a small flame in the palm of his hand to light their way.   

“You’ve been busy,” Shisui greeted, padding up behind Naruto and letting the sack slide to the ground.  “Find everything okay?”

“Yes,” said Temari, both an acknowledgement and a question.

“Well,” said Shisui.  He glanced sideways at Itachi and carefully sat on a flat rock.  After a brief pause, Itachi closed his hand to extinguish the light and followed suit.  “I’m told we pulled you out of Iwa pretty quickly, and now that we have time, the captain thought it would be a good idea for us to answer some of the questions that you might have.”

“Who are you?” Temari pounced on the opportunity instantly.

Shisui nodded, eyeing her thoughtfully.  “As I mentioned earlier, my name is Uchiha Shisui.  I’m a former jounin of Konoha, and currently a member of this team, which is part of a larger group that calls itself -- ” he paused here almost imperceptibly, “ -- Hanabi-ha: the Hanabi Faction.”

“You call it what?” Neji demanded, drowned out by Naruto’s much louder, “The what?” as Hinata-sama sucked in a breath.

“Why?” asked Temari, an edge to her voice.

“In the early days following the Sandaime’s assassination, the prospective heirs to the Uchiha and Hyuuga clans went missing, along with the Kyuubi jinchuuriki,” Itachi took over smoothly.  Neji transferred a narrowed-eye glare to him. “There were suspicions of power-grabbing and blackmail, among others, and many shinobi took exception to attempts to obfuscate the circumstances surrounding the assassination and subsequent events.  ‘Hana’ and ‘bi’ as constituents represent our continued dedication to Konoha and Hi no Kuni. In itself, it serves as an accusation of the failings of Konoha’s current leadership, and a reminder of what is most important.”

“And that is?” asked Sakura suspiciously.

“You,” Itachi said simply.

“Konoha’s children are its future,” added Shisui. “They’re to be protected, because one day they’ll be protecting Konoha.  ‘Hanabi’ was intended to serve as a reminder of that betrayal. Though,” he added as an afterthought, “we’re mostly just called Hana-ha these days.”

“What are your plans for us?” asked Sai, as Temari somewhat incredulously mouthed ‘children’ and ‘to be protected’ silently.

Here, Shisui’s expression twisted into a shadow of a frown before smoothing out again.  “You should be safe in Tetsu for the most part, as long as you stay in San’s forest.  I’m told your previous sensei taught you some basic techniques for fighting and survival.  We’ll give you more extensive training.”

“Do you want us to fight for you?” Temari asked bluntly.

Shisui and Itachi exchanged a long glance with a silent argument.  Itachi narrowed his eyes.

“Yes,” answered Shisui finally.  “But we won’t force you to. Nobody in Hana-ha fights against their will.”

“We will train you, regardless,” said Itachi. “Enough to defend yourselves at the very least.”

“Cool,” said Naruto brightly, because obviously all he’d heard of that was ‘we will train you.’  “When do we start?”

“We will begin with one-to-one matches to gauge your current skill levels,” Itachi announced placidly.

Neji squinted his eyes against the rising sun and tried not to scowl too much.  The night had been restless, even with the ridiculously heavy cloaks Shisui had distributed out in lieu of sleeping bags, and his hair felt gritty from the dust that had accumulated in it.  

The sleepless week had been hard on them all.  Hinata-sama swayed gently on her feet even as she kept her eyes determinedly on Itachi.  Even Naruto’s eyes were slits, his face puffy and pale.

The only one unaffected was Gaara, who never slept anyways.  His arms were crossed, however, and his usual glower was pasted firmly on his face.

They were in a different gorge this morning, adjacent to San’s base camp.  All the shinobi had turned up for this -- San and her wolves perched high up on the walls of the ravine, Hatake leaning against a boulder with his arms crossed next to Shisui, and Momoichi and his silent shadow behind Neji’s clump of companions -- and Neji was feeling increasingly discomfited at the scrutiny.

“We will attempt to match you by your current skill set,” Itachi continued.  “Temari-san will fight Sai-san. Naruto-san and Sasuke. Neji-san and Hinata-san.  Gaara-san -- ” he hesitated, surveying the ragged group.

The blood had drained from Sakura’s face, and Neji rather agreed with that assessment.  Itachi couldn’t possibly put a blooded killer against a one-year Academy student and expect it to be a fair fight.

“And Haku,” growled Momochi from behind.  

What?  Neji turned to stare incredulously and wondered if the nukenin knew what Gaara was.  Surely not, if he was willing to put his protégé up against him.  Beside the Swordsman, the one called Haku straightened, lifting his chin a little.

Itachi frowned faintly, but despite the shocked silence from Neji’s group, none of the other shinobi perched around the gorge raised an objection.  He nodded in acquiescence. “Gaara-san will fight Haku-san. Sakura-san, you may fight either Naruto-san or Hinata-san as well.”

The sand hissed and shifted at their feet.  Gaara turned to pin Haku with an unnerving stare.  “Come,” he commanded.

Neji stepped back, shoving Hinata-sama clear.  She stumbled, but that was better than getting in between Gaara and his target.

Itachi did not seem to share that sentiment, even as the others backed away.  Sakura scurried towards Neji while the rest splashed through the shallow river that bisected the gorge to the far wall.   

Temari lingered for a moment.  “Gaara,” she said forcefully. The jinchuuriki’s glower didn’t falter.  “Gaara ,” she snapped, and reluctantly, he turned to her.  “No killing,” she warned.

“You may use whatever weapons or jutsu you please, but cause no permanent damage,” Itachi agreed serenely, when Gaara jerked his head in a grudging nod.  “Are you ready? Gaara-san? Haku-san?”

Gaara merely narrowed his eyes in response.  Haku stepped forward about five meters from Gaara and gave Itachi a firm nod, tucking his hands into his sleeves almost in imitation of Gaara’s crossed arms.

“Very well,” said Itachi, taking several paces back.  “The match will proceed until I call it, or until a participant yields.  Begin!”

Almost immediately, Haku’s hands came out of his sleeves with a fistful of senbon in each, sending a streak of silver in Gaara’s direction.  

The senbon bounced harmlessly ineffectually off a jagged column of sand that ripped up from the ground in a spray of dirt.  A wave of sand crashed after Haku, but the other boy was gone, having begun moving before the senbon left his fingers. Gaara himself made no movement beyond the narrowing of his eyes.  

“He’s fast,” Sakura murmured in surprise, as Haku launched another volley of senbon at Gaara’s side.

That too was batted aside with little effort as the sand gave chase to Haku, who ducked its grasping tendrils and sprinted back towards the river as his hands flashed through a series of seals.  Spines of sand burst from the ground at his feet, but he flitted away too quickly for them to strike.

“Hijutsu: Sensatsu Suishou!” Haku murmured, his voice carrying over the battlefield, and a ring of water rose up from the river to surround the jinchuuriki.  

Gaara threw up clawed hands crossed before him, and an encircling wall of sand shot up just in time for the hail of water needles to slam into.  When he lowered his hands, a dark scowl marred his face and deep pits were scored into his sand.

Neji’s eyebrows rose, and his eyes darted back to Haku with renewed interest.  

The boy’s face was focused and unruffled, even as he leapt backwards from the mass of sand that slammed inelegantly into the ground in front of him.  Another set of senbon coalesced from the river and hurtled at Gaara’s back from above, forcing the jinchuuriki to split his attention to block.

Another burst of water senbon, another sand shield.  Haku’s attacks were impressively fast and strong, but not enough to break through Gaara’s iron defenses.  He seemed to come to the realization at the same time Neji did.

“Zabuza-san?” he called, darting out of the way of as heavy fist of sand came crashing down.

Neji glanced over -- the Swordsman’s arms were folded as he watched the match almost boredly. “Go ahead, kid,” he said lazily, and Haku’s eyes went flint-hard.

Neji flinched as the temperature dropped abruptly.  Haku flung out a hand and sent a barrage of senbon that froze over midair and went hissing into Gaara’s sand shield and came out the other side .  

Sakura let out a muffled yelp.  “Is that ice ?” she demanded in a hushed voice, as a second wall of sand shot up just in time to block the projectiles right in front of the jinchuuriki.

Neji activated the byakugan for a better look.  Haku’s chakra curled around him, an icy blue coursing through his body as the malevolent chakra swelled in Gaara’s, oozing through his sand and seeping into the ground around him.  “His chakra is the ice,” he murmured in disbelief as Haku bounded backwards several paces.

“Hijutsu: Makyou Hyoushou,” Haku breathed, and with a crackle four mirrors of ice materialized, three about a meter up and tilted towards the ground with Gaara at the epicenter of the triangle, and one horizontal above him, effectively caging him in.       

Warily, Gaara pulled his sand in around him and it seethed at his feet as he considered the mirrors with narrowed eyes.  

Haku took that moment to make a flying leap straight at the nearest mirror.  Neji involuntarily sucked in a breath and forgot to breathe when rather than crashing into the unforgiving ice, the mirror absorbed the shinobi entirely.  On each mirror, a reflection appeared, a set of ice senbon materializing in each hand like claws.

“H-how -- ” Hinata-sama stuttered, eyes wide.  

“Let’s begin,” the Hakus all murmured, and hurled their senbon.

A dome of sand slammed into place over Gaara as he ducked, both arms over his head, but the hail of senbon flew hard and fast and the sand churned around him desperately when the projectiles breached his outer defenses.  Tendrils of sand lashed out like tree branches in the wind, battering uselessly against the mirrors.

Neji suddenly realized that the high keening emitting from the dome was Gaara -- and getting louder.

A wave of sand slammed itself against a mirror with a loud crack, but did not so much as scratch the ice.  The flurry of senbon continued uninterrupted.

The miasma of Gaara’s chakra surged unpleasantly, and the keening gave way to a blood-curdling screech as the sand dome crumbled away from him.  Neji jerked back reflexively. Hinata-sama tripped backwards in her haste to get away. He glanced across the river and locked eyes with Temari, whose face had gone bone-white.

“Blood?!” Gaara howled, enraged and inhuman, as a trickle of blood dripped down his forehead.  “Blood!”

The senbon stopped abruptly.  This time, it was Haku who regarded his opponent warily.  

“Yes,” Gaara muttered to himself, even as the outer edge of his dome crumbled away.  “His blood. I’ll have his blood.” Cracks spiderwebbed across his face and arms. Sand swarmed over his body, engulfing half his head with the snarling, fanged visage of a golden-eyed demon.  

As a familiar wave of killing intent swept over Neji, he wondered why the Hana-ha shinobi hadn’t stepped in.  

They were definitely on the alert.  Itachi’s posture was still relaxed, but the Sharingan spun in both eyes.  Shisui and Hatake each had one active as well, and Neji recoiled, momentarily revolted at the sight of the Uchiha kekkei-genkai in the socket normally covered by the Hatake’s hitai-ate.  

An ear-splitting crack drew Neji’s attention back to the fight.  Gaara’s sand-demon-tail slammed against the ice as sand crawled down his arm in a bulbous parody of armor, shot through with black-tipped spikes and claws.  

Haku’s face froze in a rictus of determination and dismay as he resumed his attack, but now the ice seemed only to annoy the jinchuuriki, sticking in the sand armor.  

The clawed growth that had sprouted from Gaara’s arm lashed upwards with a resounding crash, and the mirror fractured.  A second blow sent shards of ice exploding through the air.

Haku wasn’t throwing just senbon anymore.  An crescent-shaped ice blade deflected off Gaara’s arm and came spinning at Neji, who fumbled a kunai out to block before Itachi blurred in front of them and batted it to the side.  But the ice storm wasn’t enough to stop Gaara, who seemed not to care about the cuts that sliced through the sand and through his skin other than to add to his fury.

With a snarl, Gaara lashed out in a circle, smashing through all three mirrors with claw and sand as if they were truly made of glass.  Haku was sent flying backwards, tumbling out of a recently-decimated mirror, but turned his fall into a roll in time to leapt out of the way of the sand that crashed after him.  

He gave up all semblance of finesse and threw blast after blast of raw ice at Gaara, who pounced after him like a rabid, extremely angry wolverine.  The blasts deflected off Gaara’s sand and left deep craters in the ground with muffled thuds, showering the battlefield with sprays of ice fragments.  One blast of ice caught Gaara in the head, driving him back a step. He shook his head as if shaking off water, snarled, and lashed out with his sand.

Haku lashed out with his ice and twice caught the tendrils before they could reach him, but the third scored a direct hit that threw him across the clearing.

The thing-that-was-Gaara screamed triumphantly and lunged, bringing his sand to bear --

And then Itachi was standing there in front of him, calm and implacable.  “Enough,” he commanded. “This match is over.”

The Gaara-thing clearly was not about to let something trifling like a former Anbu keep him from his prey.   He slashed a claw through the shinobi, who vanished in a flock of crows, and launched his sand at Haku once again.

Haku send out another desperate blast of ice bringing up a shield that was instantly smashed, and the sand hurled him backwards.  The trunk of a tree broke his flight, and he collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

A giant blade impaled the ground in front of Haku before the sand could reach him again.  “It’s over,” growled Momochi, materializing next to his sword, and with a blur of hand seals, the entire contents of the river rose up to form a watery shield in front of the nukenin.  

“Stop,” Itachi ordered, planting himself between the shield and the jinchuuriki, the tomoe spinning wildly in his eyes.  “You will calm down.”

Gaara clutched at his head with mismatched hands, jerking from side to side as he snarled and muttered wordlessly.  The sand floated about him ominously, forming claws and dissipating just as quickly.

“Gaara,” Temari called from the other side of the riverbed, her voice uncharacteristically shrill and tremulous.  “Gaara, you need to control it.”  

For a long, frozen moment, Neji forgot to breathe as the jinchuuriki wrestled with his demon.  Abruptly, the sand dropped from the air and from his body, collapsing to the ground with a muted hiss.  The golden demon-eye winked once and melted away.

Gaara, now just a too-pale, too-thin boy, with exhausted eyes, swayed on his feet in the middle of the carnage left by the battle.  The ground was pitted where his sand had driven into the ground, or where Haku’s ice blasts had missed their target. Fragments of rock and puddles from melting ice were scattered across the clearing.  Several trees were no longer upright, and others sported gaping holes.

At the far end of the clearing Momochi let the water collapse back into the river.  “Not good enough, kid,” he muttered, eyeing the battered Haku as he struggled to breath.  

Neji huffed out an incredulous half-laugh.   Not good enough.  The clash of raw power, of two monsters, two titans that easily could have smashed any one of their group into a bloody pulp, was not good enough.  

He glanced across the river, to where Temari was just reaching Gaara, and caught the same combination of awe, envy, and resolve alongside the concern in her eyes.  

This is what they wanted to be: monsters on the battlefield.  

This is how strong they would become.

This he knew in his bones.  

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT: D-16

AT1, AT3, ACHN: returned to baseline status.   

ANHS: continued light fatigue.  

ACNS: reduced damage to left chest, left upper arm.  Injuries bandaged.

AT2, AT4: no change; Baseline status.

Provisions acquired: bread, salted pork, drinking water.

Medical supplies acquired: clean linen bandages.

AT2 supplies acquired: cloth diapers, powdered milk formula, dried fruit.

Location evaluated: security determined to be inadequate due to frequent shinobi traffic.

Course set for [REDACTED].  Estimated time of departure 1400 HOURS.  Estimated time of travel 52 hours.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

“What an ungrateful brat,” grumbled Zabuza, looming over his wheezing apprentice.  “All those hours of training, and what do you do? Fall on your back when you meet your first jinchuuriki.”

Haku blinked up at him.  “Yes,” he agreed with a beatific smile.  

“Unbelievable.  I don’t need your insolence,” Zabuza warned, yanking Kubikiribocho from the ground and slinging it back over his shoulder.  “And quit laying around. You’re holding everyone up.”

That wasn’t really true.  Besides the half-feral wolf-girl, the Konoha nin were paying much more attention to the jinchuuriki than to Haku.  

“Hey, Haku,” said Zabuza speculatively as his apprentice staggered upright. “How would you feel about becoming a jinchuuriki?” Because that kind of power, with Haku’s talents?  Unstoppable.

“It looks uncomfortable, Zabuza-san,” Haku said politely, the little shit.  

He would do it though, if Zabuza asked.  He turned the idea over in his mind and discarded it a little reluctantly.  Haku was a rare enough creature as it was, and the Tailed Beasts a risky investment if he ever heard one.

The Suna girl fussed over her jinchuuriki, shepherding him to the far side of the makeshift arena.  She would probably mother him for the next ten min -- oh. Nope. She was coming back.

Itachi cast a brief glance at her and nodded once.  “Nanashi Sai,” he called, and the group of kids on the far end of the clearing rustled expectantly.

Zabuza leaned back against the trunk of a tree and folded his arms.  This match was probably not going to be anywhere near as interesting as the first, but hey, he didn’t have anything better to do.

At the center of the clearing, the girl drew a kunai from somewhere under her shirt, and the fucking creepy kid with the completely white skin took his place opposite.  The boy had a tanto -- standard issue, wrapped off-white hilt, a little scuffed -- which he raised in front of him in a one-handed grip. Zabuza scrutinized him with narrowed eyes.  His form was decent enough: functional, but nothing fancy. The girl was poised on her toes, ready to pounce. She would make the first move.

“Begin,” said Itachi.

The girl lunged immediately, bringing up her kunai to parry the boy’s defensive slash, and used the momentum to throw herself into a spinning kick at his unprotected side.  He ducked, evading the blow, and launched a kick at the girl’s legs when she landed.

The Suna girl went down, rolling backwards over her shoulder as the boy slashed downwards, and regained her feet in time to catch a second strike on her own blade.  Her other hand whipped out another kunai and sent it spinning at the boy, forcing him to disengage and jump out of the way. The girl hurled the first kunai as well, leaping backwards as her hands flashed through a set of seals.  

“Fuuton: Reppushou!” she growled, and clapped her hands together sharply.

A block of wood was blasted backwards by the girl’s fuuton, substituted at the last minute as the boy vanished.

Alone on the battlefield, the girl narrowed her eyes and drew another kunai.  

A massive shape erupted from a copse of trees.  In a blur of movement a white-and-black lion-beast straight out of legends sprang at the Suna girl.

“Oh, shit,” muttered Zabuza, reluctantly impressed despite himself.  

After evading its claws on the first lunge, the girl sent a kunai into its side and scattered it into splatters of inky water.  Maybe actual ink. Zabuza frowned in consternation.

“Not much of a shelf life on those,” he muttered, to Haku, who hummed thoughtfully.

The lion-beast had bought time for an entire pack of smaller wolf-things to stream from the trees, and the Suna girl leapt backwards to keep them from encircling her.

If Zabuza squinted a little, they looked an awful lot like an unholy combination of Hatake’s biggest ninken and the wolf-girl’s wolves.    

“Fuuton: Daitoppa!” the Suna girl spat, and the three wolf-things in front of her were blasted away.  

The two still flanking her pounced at the same time.   The girl dodged backwards, drawing a kunai in both hands, and hurled one at each.

The wolf-thing on the right vanished in a smattering of ink, the left in a puff of smoke, and the boy twisted out of the remains of his henge as the kunai streaked past his head.  He brought his tanto to bear, and with a clash it met the girl’s kunai. The Suna girl batted away a succession of blows, and again was forced to leap backwards.

“You are at a disadvantage, Temari,” the boy pointed out helpfully.  “My tanto has a longer reach.” Which he demonstrated, and the girl dodged to the side, deflecting the blade away from her neck.

“Shut up, Sai,” the girl retorted, blowing scraggly tendrils of hair out of her face.  She produced yet another kunai from somewhere on her body, spinning it into a reverse grip, and pounced at him with a cheerfully bloodthirsty grin.

“Berserker?” he suggested absently to Haku as the girl enthusiastically attempted to separate her friend’s arm from his shoulder.    

“Too cautious,” his apprentice disagreed.  

“Eh,” Zabuza said dismissively.  “Maybe when she’s older.”

“That boy, Sai-kun…” Haku trailed off hesitantly, as the boy in question blocked one kunai and twisted out of the way of the other.

Zabuza grunted. “Creepy, right?  Wonder what Konoha feeds its kids to make something like that.  Is there any pigment in his skin?”

“I was going to say ‘seems skilled despite his lack of training,’ Zabuza-san,” corrected Haku delicately.

“Nothing special,” Zabuza said absently, watching critically as the boy swept his blade up to knock a kunai out of the girl’s grip and send it spinning across the clearing.  “His ink animals are one-hit wonders that he needs time and distance to pull off. Hey, maybe he leeches all the pigment out of his skin for his jutsu.”

“Sure, Zabuza-san.”  

What a brat.

“Someone needs to get that girl something to bludgeon things with,” Zabuza muttered, as the Suna girl smashed her bare fist into the boy’s face, sending him stumbling backwards.  “An axe. A mace. Whatever. She’d love it.”

“She has a natural affinity for wind.  It would be a shame to waste it,” Haku mused.

“She’s not even using it,” Zabuza pointed out.  “But I guess as long as she doesn’t use ninjutsu, that creepy kid can’t use his ink jutsu.”

The Suna girl slammed the boy in the chest with a brutal kick that sent him skidding out on top of the river in a spray of water.   He landed in a three point crouch, tanto held poised to strike. He leapt back again as the girl chased after him, bounding easily across the top of the water.  

Instead of darting into the tree cover, the boy whipped around, sweeping his tanto at knee height.  The girl leapt up, out of the way, but as soon as her feet left the ground, a pair of inky wolf-things burst from the trees, lunging at her from either side.

Haku made a small noise of surprise as the Suna girl twisted midair, a kunai in each hand flying true.  She caught the boy’s wrist as she landed, keeping the tanto inches from her torso. She yanked, sending him stumbling forward, and threw her weight on him.  He went down face-first, the girl’s arm at the back of his neck.

“Match,” Itachi announced, and the girl stepped away.     

“That would have worked,” the Suna girl said.  “I was out of kunai.”

“I know,” the boy replied ruefully, taking her hand and allowing her to haul him upright.

“Alright, keeping those wolf-things in reserve was pretty clever for a kid,” Zabuza admitted.  Because he was big enough to do that. As a ten-year-old, his idea of tactics had pretty much been ‘kill them all.’

“Mm,” said Haku agreeably.

Zabuza slanted a glance at his apprentice.  His face was the kind of blank mask he affected when he thought something was funny but was too polite to laugh.  

Zabuza scowled.  “Haku,” he growled.

Haku glanced up innocently. “Yes, Zabuza-san?”

“You’re going to volunteer for middle watch.  Every day. For a week.”

“Hai,” said Haku serenely.

“And we’re doing endurance training,” he added pettily.

“Yes, Zabuza-san.”

Zabuza sniffed.

The two Hyuuga sized each other up in the clearing, poised in identical starting stances.   The boy’s shoulders were tense and slightly hunched. The girl’s face was set in a fierce scowl as the veins spiderwebbed angrily across her eyes, the first time Zabuza had seen her look anything short of terrified.  It was a good look on her; he approved.

“Begin,” said Itachi.

The girl didn’t hesitate, darting forward sure-footedly in time with her clansman, and met every blow with her own open-handed strikes.

It should have looked like an exceptionally bitchy slapfest, except that Zabuza could literally see the chakra that sparked and swirled around them with every clash.  

The boy was violent grace and sharp movements as he knocked the girl’s wrist away from his shoulder and struck out at her head.  

She ducked aside neatly, and slammed a hand into his chest, knocking him back a couple steps.  First contact.

The boy’s grimace morphed into a silent snarl as he reset his stance.  “Your luck will not carry you, Hinata-sama,” he warned.

The girl’s face faltered for an instant before her frown of concentration returned.  She made the first move this time, a quick jab that was slapped aside almost derisively, and a second that the boy leaned around at the last second.  She spun to the side to avoid his retaliatory strike and deflected his wrist from her abdomen, raw chakra blooming from where their hands impacted.

The pair clashed, drew back, and dove in, again and again, sending up bursts of chakra that dissipated as soon as they formed.  The boy had a little more height and weight, a little more force behind his movements, but they seemed pretty evenly matched. He lunged in, sensing an opening in the girl’s defenses, but the girl’s hand came up at the last moment, and each landed a solid blow on the other’s chest just below the collarbone.

Zabuza heard the audible huff as the air was knocked out of their lungs, and they both stumbled backwards.  

The girl regarded the boy with a wary stare even as she wheezed for breath, though he seemed inclined to just glare in response, his own chest heaving.

“Those eyes are wasted on you if you cannot see what they show you,” the boy said coldly, as the girl swayed slightly on her feet.

The girl glanced down at her arms, still raised, and her eyes widened.  Her head snapped back up to meet the boy’s hard stare, tendrils of dread and uncertainty creeping across her face.  

Zabuza squinted dubiously.  Some kind of genjutsu, maybe?

“He’s blocked her tenketsu,” murmured Haku, sounding impressed.

Oh, right, Hyuuga.  They could do that, apparently.

The girl faltered, her composure broken.  She trembled with effort to keep her stance -- her left arm dipped conspicuously.

The boy didn’t take the opening.  His expression was a mask of thinly veiled contempt.  “Keep your guard up,” he snapped, and the girl jerked her hand back up.  

The boy struck again, but this time the girl visibly struggled to turn aside his attack, an edge of desperation to her movements.  

“You -- ” the boy struck, “are fighting -- a losing -- battle,” he gritted out, “if you don’t -- protect -- your tenketsu!”

The girl gave ground rapidly, batting away his attacks until a hard blow to the shoulder sent her skidding to the ground.  She coughed, staring up at the boy with one arm raised defensively. Despite the byakugan, the fear shone through her eyes.

“Get up,” the boy ordered harshly.

“Hey, knock it off, you jerk!” the blond jinchuuriki yelled from across the clearing.

Zabuza kind of agreed.  The match had taken on a distinctly nasty tone, and a kid with pre-genin skills had no damn business being arrogant.  Even if the girl was going to get herself killed the first time she ran into an actual shinobi.

“You cannot fight her battles,” the boy snapped, glaring at the girl.  “She should not need you to fight her battles for her.”

The girl scrabbled in the dirt as she struggled to her feet.   Her eyes were wild as they fixed on her clansman.

The boy, in contrast, stood unmoved, eyes cold.  The second she regained her feet, he lashed out again, sending her back to the ground.

She staggered upright, narrowly ducking two strikes before the third shoved her backwards. “N-nii-san,” she gasped.

“This is the power of the Main house?” the boy snarled in reply. “This is what would command me?”  He prowled forward grimly as the girl backpedaled.

Ah, this was some clan shit.  Thank the gods he never had to deal with that.  Perks of being a breeding program baby.

“Stand your ground!” the boy demanded, but the girl skittered backwards again.

He stopped abruptly, face twisted in an ugly scowl.  The girl regarded him warily, panting, arms trembling.  “You,” he said almost serenely, “are unworthy of the name Hyuuga.”

Zabuza stiffened at the spike of actual killing intent from the kid.  “Haku,” he growled.

His apprentice brought his hands up just as the Hyuuga boy lunged, and ice burst up from the ground, tangling around boy’s legs.  Shisui appeared behind the boy in a flash, grabbing him in a loose headlock as Itachi blurred forward between the two Hyuuga, one arm outstretched to keep him at bay.  Even Hatake stepped out of a shunshin, catching the boy’s arm in an iron grasp.

“You’re done,” Hatake said tonelessly, superseding Itachi.  “Stand down.”

The burning fury in the boy’s eyes intensified, but his face smoothed into a blank mask.  Hatake let him go first, then Shisui stepped back. Haku’s ice melted away with a wave of his hand.

On either side of the clearing, the children all stood frozen, only their eyes darting between the boy, the girl, and the shinobi.

A muscle in the boy’s jaw twitched, but he jerked forward in an aborted bow.  “I apologize,” he ground out. “I was out of line.”

“N-nii-san,” the girl whispered, but the boy turned on his heel and stalked off.

“They’re all hopeless,” Zabuza growled, leaning comfortably on the hilt of Kubikiribocho.  “The Suna jinchuuriki’s a loose cannon, his sister has no sense of strategy, that ink boy is fucking creepy, the Hyuuga boy has some sort of fucked-up family grudge he can’t keep off the battlefield, the Hyuuga girl is weaker than a wilted flower, Uchiha’s brother has less than a tenth of his talent, the Konoha jinchuuriki can’t do anything but get back up after getting hit, and the girl with the ridiculous hair can’t fight for shit.  If this is the future of Konoha, they’re delusional.”

“I don’t think that the fact that you find Sai-kun creepy means he isn’t skilled,” Haku said delicately.  “I thought they fought rather well, considering they haven’t had consistent training.”

“I don’t keep you around to think, Haku,” Zabuza snipped.

“One of us has to, Zabuza-san.”

The impudence.  Zabuza rolled his eyes.  “All right, genius, what do you think then?”

“Gaara-kun has great power, even if his control is a little rough.  Sai-kun has a keen mind for tactics and a good foundation with both his ink jutsu and kenjutsu.  Temari-san is strong and has fast reflexes, and perhaps an affinity for wind-natured jutsu. Neji-kun,” he hesitated briefly, “is already quite skilled in his family’s techniques, and Hinata-chan showed great perseverance.  Sasuke-kun already mastered several katon and basic taijutsu and shows potential to develop both further. Naruto-kun has a lot of stamina and a lot of chakra to spare, and Sakura-chan has great chakra control, given that she was able to stay on top of the water for a substantial part of her match.”

“You’re too nice, Haku,” Zabuza dismissed. “Washouts, all of them.  No sense of discipline.”

He could feel Haku silently, politely disagreeing beside him.  

For a moment, they watched the wannabe shinobi kids patching up their grievances with food, like good wannabe shinobi kids.

“Momochi, mission,” Hatake said curtly, stalking past and flicking a scroll in his direction.  Zabuza caught it instinctively and glared at the man’s retreating back. He flicked the scroll open, then shut it just as quickly.

The Hana-ha shinobi, minus the wolf-girl who had long since vanished into the forest to do whatever wolf-girls did, clustered in one huddle by the smoldering fire.  Zabuza scowled at that, because, again, they didn’t invite him to their little strategy powwow.  

“Go make something to eat,” he ordered Haku abruptly, yanking his sword up from where he’d stuck it in the ground.

Zabuza really couldn’t care less about the whole Hana-ha affair -- don’t get him wrong, he appreciated the whole coup thing -- but by the gods he was chafing at both the authority and lack of authority.  They didn’t trust him to do anything important so they sent him around with a chaperone or on independent information-gathering trips where he didn’t have to get ordered around but also didn’t get to kill, maim, or even lightly injure anyone.

He really didn’t like -- read: fucking hated -- people telling him what to do.  But if Zabuza ever wanted to do something useful and preferably bloody, he was going to have to knuckle under and suck it the fuck up.  He’d waited for a year; he was done biding his time. He slung his sword back over his back and stalked over to where the three had convened by the fire.

Hatake stopped talking as he approached, but that was fine.  Shisui regarded him with open curiosity and the Uchiha kid looked like a fucking stone as usual, but Zabuza ignored them.  

“You know what?” he snapped.  “I’m tired of you treating me like some grunt career chuunin from the general corps.  I was an Anbu captain and a Swordsman and you’re wasting my skills on these godsdamned courier missions.  Don’t you fucking cut me out of the loop.”

Hatake looked like he would interrupt, but Zabuza steamrolled right over him.  “If this is about my loyalty,” he spat, “you already have it.  Don’t make me say this again, sir.  A life was saved, so a life is owed.  I’m with you to the death. If you want me to wear your fucking colors, I’ll wear your fucking colors.”

Rant over, he crossed his arms and scowled at Hatake, who stared back at him blankly.

In his periphery, Shisui’s eyes were wide, brows raised.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Hatake said at last, after an uncomfortably long pause.  “We’re done here.” He gave them all a nod, with one last look at Zabuza, before striding off.

Silently, with a glance between the two, Itachi slipped off as well.  

Zabuza growled under his breath and slouched, scruffing a hand through his hair.

“So…”  Shisui dragged the word out.  Zabuza side-eyed him suspiciously.  “...would you really have worn his henohenomoheji?”

Zabuza stared at him incredulously.  “His what?”

“Like, a bandana with a cute little scarecrow face -- ”

“What the fuck,” Zabuza snapped, scowling.  “I’m not his fucking dog.”

Shisui pasted an innocent expression on his face.  “You just said you’d wear his colors.”

Zabuza recoiled.  “I meant that idiotic little swirl you call a leaf,” he snapped.

“Oh,” said Shisui unconvincingly.  Zabuza glared. “Did you know,” the Uchiha continued blithely, “that in Tetsu, when they go to battle, samurai often wear a token from their beloved -- ”

Zabuza whipped out a handful of kunai.  “You, I don’t owe shit, Konoha,” he growled, and pounced.

All in all, Zabuza reflected, after scraping together the tattered remnants of his masculinity via a rousing half hour of attempting to impale Shisui, a successful venture.  He was about eighty percent sure that Hatake got the message now, so at least he could lay off the ‘boss’ thing.

Gods, weren’t shinobi supposed to be good at all that subtlety shit?  Not that it had been very subtle. Maybe that was the problem. Too fucking unsubtle for Hatake to comprehend.

“Zabuza-san,” Haku greeted, standing up to pass him a bowl of stew.

Zabuza sniffed it cautiously.  “Is this squirrel?” he demanded, crouching down next to the fire.

“Yes,” Haku said serenely, but his eyes were apologetic.  “Uhei and Guruko brought them back. I know you find them, ah, distasteful --  ”

“I hate squirrel,” Zabuza grumbled.  “So fucking stringy.”

“Oh, just eat it, you big baby,” drawled Shisui, perched carelessly atop a pile of boulders with his own bowl of stew.

He glared, hand twitching instinctively for Kubikiribocho.   Shisui just raised an eyebrow and his free hand inoffensively.

Gods, he hated squirrel.  And squirrely little Konoha shinobi who wouldn’t stand still and let him hit them.  He stabbed halfheartedly at a chunk of meat. “Where’s the walking statue?” he growled.

Shisui’s other eyebrow went up, half-hidden behind his hitai-ate.  “Talking to Sasuke, trying to catch up,” he answered, motioning vaguely towards the second fire, with its small pile of children.  “Except, you know, he’s not too used to the Sasuke that’s been a fugitive in the minor lands the past two years.” He paused. “Or, well, the other way around too.”

Zabuza shrugged dismissively.  “Eh, builds character. They have something to bond over.”

Shisui cut an incredulous glance at Haku, who blinked tolerantly.  “Z, you ever think that your idea of ‘bonding’ is a little...strenuous?”

“I don’t bond,” Zabuza sniffed.  “I exterminate.”

What the fuck, he saw the Uchiha mouth, and bit down a smirk.  

“How long are you hanging around this time?” Shisui asked instead, clearly choosing to disregard the enlightening philosophy Zabuza had deigned to share.

“Heading out tomorrow morning to check the dead drop in Hi no Kuni,” Zabuza grunted.

“No, you’re not,” corrected Hatake, ghosting up behind them.  “Change of plans. I’m going to the dead drop. The rest of you will guard the children.  Haku, send Itachi here and watch them.”

“Hai,” said Haku, turning away after a brief look at Zabuza.

Zabuza exchanged a glance with Shisui, fingers itching for Kubikiribocho.  He had a bad feeling about this.

Itachi slipped out of the shadows by Shisui’s side, a pensive set to his face that smoothed into emotionlessness in the blink of an eye.   

“I’ll make this brief,” said Hatake.  “For the foreseeable future, the children will be divided into groups based on their strengths or needs, and each of you will be in charge of teaching a group.  Itachi,” he directed. “You are assigned to Gaara, Hinata, and Sai. Focus on training them in stealth. Concealment.”

“Hai,” replied Itachi, a slight frown marring his face.

“Zabuza, you will have Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura, a strength-based team.  Shisui, you will teach Temari, Neji, and Haku -- ”

Back the fuck up.  “Hold on,” Zabuza snapped. “That’s my apprentice.”  

“I would like to be the one to train my brother,” Itachi interjected.  “Perhaps we could -- ”

Hatake held his hand up, and Itachi’s mouth clicked shut like a damned puppet.  Zabuza snorted derisively.

Hatake’s eye snapped to Zabuza, who sneered back and tried very hard to think about playing a good little soldier for the sake of a nice, bloody massacre down the line.

“You don’t think Haku has anything to learn from Shunshin no Shisui?”  Hatake challenged coolly.

From the corner of his eye, Shisui’s gaze darted towards him and away.   Fuck. Zabuza clenched his jaw and didn’t respond.

“You just reunited with Sasuke for the first time in two years,” Hatake fired at Itachi next.  “Now is not the time to treat him as a subordinate.”

Itachi hesitated, but dipped his head in acquiescence.  

Wow, look at that.  Their own little rebellion quashed in a record fifteen seconds.  Zabuza scowled and crossed his arms.

The most annoying part about the whole thing was that Hatake was right, at least about the teaching assignments -- Haku did have a lot to learn, and speed-based attacks were Shisui’s forte, not his.  Zabuza’s own fighting style leaned heavily towards physical strength and ninjutsu, which at least the Konoha jinchuuriki and the Uchiha kid matched, and Itachi’s stint in Anbu had given him extensive training in stealth and espionage.

The pink-haired girl, though -- good thing she was a spare.  Zabuza didn’t think any amount of training could get her through her first battle without getting her skewered.

“I think it goes without saying, but you are in charge of their safety, not just their training” said Hatake, pinning them each in turn with a hard stare.  “This is a great responsibility. You can consider them candidates for genin at this point.”

Responsibility.   Genin, kami.  There was a fucking reason Zabuza took an apprentice.  Haku had basically sprung out of a river (dumpster) fully formed and ready to fight.   But three half-trained brats who probably learned a shitload of bad habits? He didn’t sign up for this.

He eyed Hatake resentfully, because no way that fucker didn’t know what he’d just done.  Zabuza’d gotten his damned wish, he was part of the club now, and thanks to that he got slapped with indefinite babysitting duy.  And he couldn’t even complain because Shisui and Itachi were in the same boat.

Fuck.

Really backed himself into a corner there.

Zabuza glared stonily.

Three sets of eyes peered back with varying degrees of venom.     

“I am Momochi Zabuza.  Former jounin, former Anbu, in your bingo books as the Demon of the Hidden Mist,” he announced stonily.

“My name’s Uzumaki Naruto, and I -- ”

Zabuza resisted the urge to rub away the burgeoning headache.  Gods, why was this kid’s voice so shrill? “That’s great, I don’t give a damn,” he interrupted.  “I’m here to keep you from killing yourselves, not to care about you.”

The Uchiha kid glowered.  The jinchuuriki looked incredibly offended for all of five seconds before visibly switching gears.  “Are you going to teach us super cool jutsu?” he demanded.

Zabuza laughed, muffled beneath the bandages swathing his lower face.  “You’re miles away from doing ‘cool jutsu,’ brat. Learning new techniques is only useful if you can stay alive long enough to use them.”

He pointed at the Uchiha brat, “You are weak.  You -- ” he jabbed a finger at the jinchuuriki, “can’t fight for shit.”  He turned his glare on the girl. “And you are useless.  Uchiha Itachi was an Anbu captain at thirteen.  Uchiha Shisui was a feared jounin by eleven, Hatake by ten.  Hell, Shisui and Hatake were on the battlefield at age five.”  He sneered at the trio of children glaring back at him with a mixture of defiance and anger.  “As far as I’m concerned, you three are so far behind, you may as well dig your own graves now.”

“What were you doing when you were five?” the jinchuuriki piped up.

Zabuza grinned beneath the bandages, slow and derisive.  “When I was five, I slaughtered a hundred and eight genin-hopefuls twice my age in the span of a couple hours.”  He surveyed their expressions with a grim satisfaction.

The jinchuuriki’s eyes widened.  The shadow of fear lurked in the Uchiha brat’s.  The blood drained from the girl’s face, leaving her bone-white.   “Why,” the girl managed to whisper, “would you do that?”

Desperation.  Anger. Resolve.  Zabuza shrugged a shoulder carelessly and let the emotions of the past slide away.  “To test the limits of my abilities,” he said blandly.

“That’s bullshit!” the jinchuuriki bust out.  The girl shot him a scandalized glare, but he continued obliviously.  “Nobody just murders a bunch of kids for some stupid reason like that!”

Zabuza hunkered down, because apparently step one was a history lesson.  “Do you brats know why Kirigakure is known as the Bloody Mist?” They all shook their heads.  Zabuza ticked the list off his fingers. “Kekkei-genkai purges. Public executions. Lynching mobs.  And the final Academy graduation test: killing another genin candidate.” He chuckled mirthlessly at their horrified expressions.  “You’ll find a lot of senseless killing in Kiri.”

The brats were watching him warily now.  Good. A little fear was good for them. The rest of that particular lesson could wait for another day.

He bared his teeth in a mockery of a smile.  “Now you know the standards I expect from you.  I don’t buy into that Konoha touchy-feely bullcrap.  If you can’t cut it, tough shit. That’s on your head.”  

He surveyed their expressions.  Anger? Check. Fear? Check. Defiance?  Check. Excellent.

He jabbed a finger towards the trees, and the girl flinched.  “Run,” he ordered.

The trio glanced at each other hesitantly.  

Zabuza rolled his eyes.  “What, do you need better motivation?”  He flipped through the signs almost casually, and the Uchiha brat tensed.  He was slightly more intelligent than the other two, then -- but not smart enough.  

Beside him, a mizu bunshin rose from the ground in a crouch, leering at the brats maliciously.  “My bunshin will keep you company. Try not to get skewered.”

“For how long?” demanded the girl, giving the clone an alarmed glance.

Zabuza shrugged.  “Until I tell you to stop.”  The clone twirled a kunai in one hand, then hurled it at their feet.

All three jumped backwards -- the jinchuuriki tripped -- with startled yelps.  “Run,” Zabuza repeated, and the three took off with a little encouragement from another water kunai.

Satisfied, Zabuza watched them disappear into the forest, his bunshin loping behind easily.  That should keep them occupied for a good hour or two, or until he figured out what the fuck he was supposed to do with them.  At least now he’d get some peace and quiet.

“How goes it?” said Shisui in his ear.

Zabuza barely managed to suppress a flinch.  He turned his head to glare at the younger shinobi.

Shisui lounged back against a nearby tree.  “Well?”

Zabuza shook his head.  “They’re insubordinate, undisciplined, and completely hopeless, not to mention soft.  Yeah, they’re not dead yet, but they’re no shinobi.”

Shisui snorted.  “C’mon, Z. They haven’t had much training, you can’t expect them to already know how to fight.  You can’t tell me Haku did.”

“Haku was five,” snapped Zabuza, bristling, “and he had already spilled blood.”

“That was an accident, he didn’t actually know how to fight,” Shisui pointed out dryly.  “Besides, he had you to teach him afterwards. These kids’ll learn too.”

Zabuza grunted dismissively.  “Where is Haku, anyways? Why aren’t you with your brats?”

“Clone,” said Shisui, pushing off languidly from the trunk of the tree.  “They’re just running some drills, nothing I really need to be there in person for.  You?”

“Clone,” Zabuza agreed.

“Anyways, I was thinking,” Shisui continued.  “Hunting’s probably good training for the kids, so we could all switch off taking care of dinner.  Taichou sent off most of the ninken last night, and we can’t really ask San to feed all twelve of us.”

Zabuza shrugged.  “Sure, fine.”

“Great,” Shisui said brightly.  “I’ll go tell Itachi. You can do the first day.  Later, Z!”

“Hold the fuck up,” Zabuza snarled, whirling to grab for Shisui’s collar.  “Konoha!” But Shisui vanished in a swirl of leaves and a two-fingered salute.

“What the actual fuck.”  Zabuza glowered, glaring in the direction he’d gone.  

Whatever.  At least he wouldn’t have to figure out how to train the brats until tomorrow.  He slouched back and unslung Kubikiribocho from its harness. May as well give it a good polish while he had the time.

Gods, why couldn’t he have waited until after they’d foisted off the brats onto someone else to make his fucking declaration of loyalty?  At least when he was running messages, he only had Haku with him.

He did trust Shisui enough not to screw him over, though.  Now that was a kid with a good head on his shoulders -- a head that was worth somewhere in the realm of forty million ryou according to the Kiri bingo book.  In the shinobi world, when it came to speed, it was Uchiha Shisui, even though he’d disappeared before ever reaching his prime. Zabuza would have to be a fool not to let Haku learn from him.

Zabuza examined his blade critically.  It showed no signs of wear and tear, but instead shone smooth and sharp as the day it had been forged.  Satisfied, he hefted it back over his shoulder and tucked the cleaning cloth back in his pocket.

He surveyed the empty forest, then sauntered off in the direction his clone had chased the brats.  He was probably going to need the whole rest of the day to make them catch dinner -- they were just so loud.  

His scowl deepened as the undergrowth crackled ahead of him.  Yeah, he was going to have to beat that out of them or something.  How the fuck do you escape an enemy if they can hear where you’re going?

Right on cue, the Uchiha whelp came crashing out of the bushes, face flushed with exertion.

“Stop,” said Zabuza.

The brat yelped and promptly hurled a kunai at his face.

Zabuza snatched it out of the air and levered the little bastard with a thunderous glare.

“Sorry?” the boy offered grudgingly, as the jinchuuriki stumbled out of the undergrowth.  The girl trailed him, tottering on quivering legs like a baby goat.

Zabuza tossed the kunai at the Uchiha’s feet and let the mizu bunshin dissolve into a puddle.  “I hope you’re warmed up now,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “We would probably start the actual training at this point -- ” the girl mouthed actual training incredulously “ -- but today you get to kill something for dinner, or all of you -- and entire little gang of hellspawn -- go hungry tonight.”

The jinchuuriki opened his mouth. “What do we -- ”

“Step one,” Zabuza interrupted. “Be quiet.”

“But I -- ”  By the gods, the kid didn’t know when to quit.

Zabuza snapped his fingers at the blond.  “That means shut up.”

Thankfully, the kid shut his mouth, though he glared furiously at Zabuza.  

“Step two,” said Zabuza.  “Pick something to eat.”

“Rabbit,” said the Uchiha, tucking away his kunai.

“Fish?” suggested the girl.

“Ramen!” crowed the jinchuuriki.

In Mizu no Kuni, there was a string of islands to the south of Kirigakure with clean, white sand, gentle waves rolicking at the shores, and a smattering of leafy palm trees.  Zabuza wished he was there right at that instant so a coconut could fall from those gently waving fronds and brain him so that he wouldn’t have to deal with this tiny moron.

“Idiot!” the girl elbowed the jinchuuriki sharply.  “You can’t hunt ramen!”

“Rabbit, great,” said Zabuza insincerely, beginning to realize that selective hearing could, in fact, be the answer here.  “Step three: find your prey.” He stared at the brats expectantly. They stared back cluelessly.

Zabuza rolled his eyes and gestured vaguely at the trees.  “Where are you going to find a rabbit?”

They all shuffled a bit.  The girl darted nervous glances at the other brats and at Zabuza. “Somewhere with water?” she said hesitantly.  “We could set up snares near a river, like Neko-sensei showed us.”

Thank fuck this mysterious sensei at least kind of knew what she was doing, because Zabuza sure as hell didn’t.  “River: yes; snares: no.” He crossed his arms across his chest. “We’re hunting today, not trapping.”

“It’s easier to catch small animals with a trap,” the Uchiha brat objected.  “And you said we have to feed eight of us -- ”

“Yeah, see, I don’t really care if you eat or not.”  Zabuza shrugged dismissively. “Kill the thing with your own power or starve.”

“That’s stupid!” the jinchuuriki protested.  “You’re stupid!”

“Naruto!” hissed the girl, giving the brat a good sock to the shoulder.

Do not maim the brat.  Do not kill the brat. Do not chop the brat into tiny, squishy pieces.  “When you kill me,” Zabuza gritted out, “you can make your own rules. Now go find a damn rabbit.”

The Uchiha brat once again proved he had at least one brain cell by turning decisively off into the trees, leaving his little friends no choice but to follow or be left alone with Zabuza.  They chose the former.

“And step quietly!” he snapped.  “Rabbits can not only hear you, they can feel you stomping towards them.”

Did they even know where the river was?  No, they didn’t.

“Go west,” Zabuza finally growled at them, after letting them blunder through the woods for a good half hour, “if you ever want to find running water.”

“Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” the jinchuuriki complained.

“Your incompetence is not my responsibility,” Zabuza sneered, before realizing that it was, in fact, kind of his responsibility.  Fucking Hatake. He gritted his teeth.

“All of you stop,” he ordered, “And take a look around instead of running around like headless chickens.”  The brats glanced around warily. The jinchuuriki shuffled a little. “Water runs downhill,” he said, very slowly.  “More green leafy plants grow near water. Humidity is higher. Most importantly you can hear the water running, which is why rule number one is be quiet.”

The jinchuuriki stopped moving.  “I hear it!” he said, eyes wide. “Let’s go!”

“Quietly,” added the girl, with a flickering glance at Zabuza.  Thank the gods.

The Uchiha brat took the lead, which was good because he was the quietest.  Zabuza trailed them by a half a dozen meters. They were on the right track -- he could pick out the hints of pawprints all around as they approached the stream.

The first time they passed a rabbit...absolutely nothing happened.  The creature crouched frozen in the bushes as the brats stalked right past and kept on going.   Zabuza glanced disbelievingly between the rabbit and the brats, but not one of the brats so much as blinked in its direction.  And then they passed another. And another.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered under his breath.  He doubled back on silent feet, where a rabbit nibbled obliviously on a leaf.  He gave it a narrow-eyed stare, because he definitely didn’t see what was so stealthy about it.  Eh, if they weren’t going to get it --

He snapped out a kunai and slashed the thing’s throat before it had a chance to so much as twitch.  Then he shrugged and went back for another. No reason why he shouldn’t eat even if the brats went hungry.

The brats had finally caught sight of a particularly large rabbit crouched among the roots of one of a tree, its pelt patchy and mottled with only half of its winter coat grown in.  Zabuza ghosted up next to them, and when they turned to look at him, raised an eyebrow and jerked his head towards the animal.

The jinchuuriki pulled out a kunai with an almost ostentatious flourish.  The Uchiha nudged him with an elbow, and while the boys were distracted with their silent squabble, the girl pulled out a kunai, took careful aim, and threw.

It soared fast and sure, and impaled itself in the trunk of the tree ten centimeters from the rabbit’s bobbed tail.  The rabbit’s head snapped up and in a flash of brown-and-white, darted away through the bushes.

In unison, the three children turned to look at Zabuza guiltily with wide eyes, the boys’ squabbling forgotten.

Zabuza resisted the overwhelming urge to close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose.  He settled for breathing in deeply. “Clearly we skipped a step,” he growled. “Learn how to fucking aim.”

The brats followed meekly as he led them back uphill, for once quiet and subdued.  He stopped at the top of the ridge, and grimaced at the ragtag brats clustered behind him.

“Alright,” he said, and slashed an X into the trunk of a tree.  “Stand back there. Each of you get five tries. Jinchuuriki, you’re first.”

“Don’t call me that!” the blond kid cried.  “My name’s Naruto!”

“Did I hurt your feelings?” Zabuza sneered.  Although, he reflected, advertising that the kid was a jinchuuriki was probably not a great idea.  “Just throw the damned kunai. Or do you not know how?”

The jinchuuriki glowered.  “I’m really good at throwing kunai!” he retorted, and hurled a blade at the target.  It sailed past the tree entirely and vanished into the undergrowth.

Zabuza raised a condescending eyebrow as the jinchuuriki’s ears turned red.

“Stupid kunai,” the jinchuuriki muttered, as the girl slapped a hand over her eyes.  The Uchiha sighed through his nose.

He threw a second, and it stuck in the trunk of the tree.  His third and fourth hit halfway along the X. The last missed, sinking into the trunk above the target.

Zabuza grunted.  “Great,” he said facetiously.  “Mini Uchiha, you’re next.”

The boy pulled a handful of kunai out from under his shirt and hurled each of them, one after the other in rapid succession.  All five clustered tightly at the intersection of the target.

“Hm,” said Zabuza, with grudging approval.  “Now you, girl.”

The girl stepped forward and set her feet determinedly.  She took a breath and spun a kunai absently in her hand. Her first blade went wide, but the next three thudded in just above and to the right of the Uchiha’s.  The last hit just above the target. She bit her lip, eyes darting to Zabuza apprehensively.

“All right,” said Zabuza. “You, boy, you’re coming with me.  You two -- stay here and keep practicing until you can hit the middle of the target five times out of five.”

“What?” the jinchuuriki protested.  “Why does Sasuke get to go with you?”

“Because he has at least a chance of hitting a rabbit if he sees one,” Zabuza growled.  “Or do you want your little pack of hellions to starve?”

The brat opened his mouth again, but the girl slapped her hand over his mouth.  “No, we’ll practice,” she said quickly, and then snatched it back when the jinchuuriki brat licked her palm.

“Get to it,” said Zabuza dismissively, already turning away, then paused.  “Girl, you’re letting go of your kunai too early. Uh, Kani -- ”

“It’s Naruto!” the brat shrilled.

“ -- you’re using the wrong muscles and your form isn’t stable.  Ask the girl to help you.” He eyed them both then gave a mental shrug.  “We’ll be back in an hour, if you’re better by then you can come for round two.”

“How long are we hunting?” The Uchiha brat asked, eyeing Zabuza warily.

“Until you catch enough or until the sun goes down.”  Zabuza smirked as the jinchuuriki’s stomach growled, as if on cue.  “And don’t try to sneak any food while we’re gone,” he added. “The consequences will be...unpleasant.”

“What?” the jinchuuriki shrilled, but Zabuza ignored him, stalking off between the trees.  Gods, he hated kids. Especially loud kids.

Okay, so the Uchiha brat wasn’t so bad.  He moved cautiously for the most part, and more importantly, he was quieter than the other two.

He was just about as observant as the other brats, though.

Zabuza slapped the back of his head -- lightly -- and pointed at the bundle of fur nibbling on grass at the edge of a clearing when the Uchiha turned to glare.  

The boy’s shoulders hitched up towards his ears a little when he spotted the rabbit, but he slid a hand under his shirt and produced a kunai.  One heartbeat, two -- and he sent the blade spinning towards the animal and caught it in the flank as tried to flee. The boy sprang out of hiding, and with a second kunai, tore its neck almost clean in two.

Zabuza grunted, unimpressed, as the boy picked up the rabbit by its ears.  “Aim for the head next time.”

Unfortunately, quiet didn’t mean mute, and the brat’s Uchiha blood didn’t give him his brother’s near-silent demeanor.  

Ahead of him, prowling with careful steps over a fallen tree, he asked, “Why are you working with my brother?  Why did you leave Kirigakure?”

His knee-jerk response was none of your damned business, closely followed by fuck off.  But Itachi’s newly rediscovered protective brother instincts would activate, and he’d probably stick Zabuza in a genjutsu that was physically harmless but honestly pretty traumatic while he himself would be forced to retaliate with severely debilitating injuries, Zabuza, put the sword down.  

But I owe a life debt was a little too personal and for shits and giggles too flippant.  If he gave the kid some kind of explanation maybe he’d convince the other two to actually follow orders.

Ha.  Right.

“I tried to assassinate the Mizukage,” he decided to say, and belatedly realized just how he might have fucked that up.

The boy froze.  Narrowed eyes darted at Zabuza, suddenly wary.

Zabuza grimaced.  “He’s a piece of shit.  What did I just tell you about the Bloody Mist?” he pointed out, pretty reasonably.  “You think a man who encourages all that to happen is as goody-goody as your tree-hugging chieftain?”

“Does my brother know about this?” the boy demanded, eyes flickering back in the direction of the camp.

Zabuza snorted.  “Boy, every shinobi in a village with a bingo book knows this.  It’s not exactly a secret.”

The boy scowled, but hopped lightly off the fallen tree.  “And working with Kon -- Hanabi-ha?”

Damn. So much for avoiding that part.   

“Hatake is honorable,” he admitted grudgingly.  “And what he’s doing with Hana-ha is...understandable.”

“What do you get out of it?”

“I dunno, citizenship or whatever,” Zabuza hedged.  “Look, boy, just hunt your godsdamned dinner.”

After one miss, followed by one clean kill, Zabuza herded the Uchiha brat back to where they’d left his friends.  The girl, mid-throw, nailed the center of the X with a solid thunk.

“Yeah, Sakura-chan!” the jinchuuriki cheered, to the girl’s bashful smile.

“Four more,” Zabuza ordered, and the girl jumped at his voice.  The jinchuuriki yelped and clutched at his heart.

“H-hai,” stuttered the girl, and fumbled another kunai from the pile at her feet.  

Zabuza watched critically as each blade embedded themselves into the abused tree trunk, each only centimeters from the next.

“Hm,” Zabuza grunted.  “You -- Hanpen -- ”

“Naruto!” the jinchuuriki yowled.

“Sure, whatever,” he grumbled, and waved a hand at the target.  

And to his surprise, the jinchuuriki managed to land each kunai on that tree.  But although the first four did hit the target, the last tipped, sticking crookedly to the side of the trunk.  The brat’s eyes darted to Zabuza’s face, and he bit his lip apprehensively.

Well, he was impressed, considering the improvement the jinchuuriki had managed to make in just an hour, but a rule was a rule.  “Girl, you’ll come with us. Sasa, tough luck. Keep practicing.”

The jinchuuriki, too distracted to even correct Zabuza -- he was pretty sure he’d gotten the brat’s name wrong again -- whined, “That’s not fair!  I almost had it!”

“A shinobi doesn’t care about fair,” Zabuza said dismissively.  “And if you don’t come into battle with a hundred percent confidence in your skills, you’ll die painfully.  Not to mention immediately. And embarrassingly.”

“I can do it!” the jinchuuriki insisted. “Just give me another chance.”

“You had a full hour to practice,” said Zabuza.  “More, actually.”

“Come on!” the jinchuuriki whined, and Zabuza was tempted to give in just because the brat was so, so loud, and twice as annoying.

“He -- he is doing pretty good,” the girl piped up, and blinked innocently when his glare turned on her.

“Yeah,” the Uchiha brat chimed in unexpectedly, and Zabuza rolled his eyes.

“Fine,” he growled, just to get them all to shut up.  “We’re going to eat lunch. You can choose to either eat or practice.  And if you can’t do it by then, you get to do target practice until the sun goes down.”

“Fine!” the jinchuuriki scowled, and stomped over to the tree.

Zabuza dug through his back pouch and pulled out a couple of wrapped ration bars.  He tossed one to each of the brats and opened one for himself.

The girl peered at hers cautiously, while the boy peeled his open with only slight hesitation.  Zabuza absently mused that it could have been a wonderful opportunity in training awareness for poisoning, if he’d thought of it ahead of time.

The girl took a bite and made such horrified grimace that Zabuza wondered if the bar had been poisoned after all.

“What is this?” she sputtered.  

“It’s a ration bar,” grunted the Uchiha brat, gnawing at the end of his.  “Shinobi take them on long-term missions when they won’t have time to get food.”

“I know what a ration bar is,” the girl muttered, “but why does it taste like cardboard and wet paint?”

“They’re not made for taste.”  The Uchiha couldn’t hide his own disgusted shudder at the flavor.

Zabuza laughed.  “You get used to it,” he assured them faux reassuringly.  He threw the last piece of bar into his mouth and crumpled the wrapper back into his pouch.  “Hey, brat. Satsuma!”

“Naruto!” the jinchuuriki insisted.

“Yeah, that.  You get one shot at five bullseyes.  Let’s see it,” he ordered.

“Yeah!” the jinchuuriki cheered.  “I got this, you’ll see!” And to Zabuza’s everlasting surprise, every single kunai hit the center of the target.

“Finally!” the girl sighed, waving her empty wrapper at the jinchuuriki.

The Uchiha brat just snorted.  “Typical,” he muttered.

“Great,” said Zabuza unenthusiastically.  “Let’s go, we’re burning daylight. Mini-Uchiha, take point.  Go two kilometers past the river, or you won’t find anything bigger than a mouse.  And for gods’ sake, don’t make a racket.”

Why were children so slow?   Going at this crawl was frankly exhausting.  How did they get anywhere? Didn’t they get bored?

And yet -- “Not so fast,” he said, as the girl and jinchuuriki stood back from the Uchiha brat, who had a kunai hefted in one hand.  “Each of you need to catch at least one rabbit before we head back -- or I’m taking those -- ” he pointed at the rabbits dangling from the Uchiha’s belt, “ -- and you all get to go hungry.”

“What?” demanded the Uchiha brat, outraged, loud enough that the rabbit he’d been stalking startled at his voice and, well, rabbitted.  Zabuza crossed his arms.

“Ha! Take that,” the jinchuuriki jeered, honest-to-gods sticking his tongue out at the other boy.  The girl looked torn between relieved and guilty.

“Better teach them well,” Zabuza warned, “if you want to eat tonight.”

The boy glared at him with such venom that it was almost intimidating.  Like how baby sharks were kind of intimidating. Or, you know, cute in a toothy kind of way.  Maybe in a couple years, when he unlocked those freaky swirly eyes. Zabuza gave him an insincere smile beneath the bandages.

With bad grace, the Uchiha brat turned to his companions with a glower.  The jinchuuriki sneered back, while the girl offered him a hesitant smile.

Zabuza leaned back smugly to watch the show.

The Uchiha, the civilian girl, and the jinchuuriki -- it sounded like the beginning of a bad joke -- had managed to pull it together long enough to bag at least one rabbit each.  Another three hours of painstaking instruction had seen the brats create an edible if very rudimentary stew.

And now, Zabuza was free of those little hellions for the rest of the night.

His nerves were about as close to frayed as they would ever get, and that was after just one day with the brats.  He unslung the broadsword from his back, resting it across his knees, and rummaged through his pouch for a cleaning cloth.  He ran the cloth over the flat of the blade methodically, letting the familiarity of the movement soothe him.

On the other side of the fire sat Haku, crosslegged, with a needle in one hand and a pile of torn clothes in his lap.

Haku was much better company.  Much quieter. He eyed his apprentice over the fire and the remains of their own rabbit stew.   

Too quiet.  Something was up.

“You’re quiet today.” Zabuza frowned at his apprentice, absently running the cloth over his sword.

“Oh?” Haku responded politely, but didn’t look up from the haori he was mending.

“Spit it out, kid,” drawled Zabuza, hand stilling on his blade.

Haku pursed his lips, but said nothing.  

“Haku.  That’s an order,” he growled, eyebrows knitting together in warning.  He set Kubikiribocho down, giving his apprentice his full attention.

Still the kid hesitated. “Zabuza-san,” he said at last. “Am I -- are you displeased with my work?”

Zabuza blinked, nonplussed.  “Am I...what?”

“I lost the match against Gaara-kun,” said Haku, eyes downcast, “and now I’m working with Shisui-san, and you have those three -- ”

“Hold on,” said Zabuza.

“ -- children to train, and I made that squirrel stew even though I know you hate -- ”

“Shut up for a second, Haku,” interrupted Zabuza, still trying to figure out where all of this was coming from.  It wasn’t like his apprentice to be insecure. “I don’t care that you lost a sparring match against a jinchuuriki, and training those three brats was not my idea.”

Haku still wasn’t looking up.  

Zabuza suppressed a sigh.  “You’re working with Shisui because he can teach you more than I can.  What is Uchiha Shisui known for?”

“His incredible combat speed,” Haku answered automatically.  “And his shunshin.”

“And what is your most basic advantage, with the Hyoton?” Zabuza prompted.

“Speed,” his apprentice answered.

“Yeah, see?” Zabuza shrugged. “The girl’s nothing special, and the Uchiha boy?   We’ve got two of them already. The jinchuuriki is too loud, uncoordinated, and doesn’t know shit .  But you’re something else.  An instinctive grasp of chakra manipulation, innate control of your kekkei-genkai, shinobi discipline -- you’re the most useful apprentice I could have right now.”    

The boy peered up at him.  “You mean that, Zabuza-san?”

Zabuza grunted and sliced open his palm on his sword, smoothing the blood that welled up into the metal.  “Just don’t go trying to feed me squirrel again,” he warned gruffly. “If the dogs want it, let the dogs have it.”

“Hai,” said Haku, his cheerfulness back in spades.  

Zabuza watched him critically.  Maybe spending all this time with Konoha shinobi and Konoha shinobi brats was making his apprentice sentimental.  It better not give him anxiety or insecurities or whatever wishy-washiness they let themselves be swayed by.

As if on cue, Shisui ghosted up out of the fog.  “Hey, Z,” he said cheerfully. “Good day?”

Zabuza glared.  “Fuck off,” he snarled.

“Whoa there,” Shisui said dryly.  “Little extreme, don’t you think?”

“Do you know how long it took them to catch six rabbits?” Zabuza demanded.  “Six! Hours!”

“They’re new at rabbit catching,” Shisui pointed out.

“They can barely aim!”

Shisui muffled a snicker.  “They’ll get better.”

Zabuza scowled.  “They better,” he growled.  “Where’s the yes-man?”

The playful expression on Shisui’s face slammed shut, and his visible eye went hard.  “Don’t call him that,” he said coldly.

Zabuza eyed the set of his jaw warily, the harsh angles of his face.  This was not something to test the younger shinobi on. “Fine,” he relented, not combative enough  -- and frankly too tired -- to pick a fight. “Where’s the brother bear?”

“Itachi is with San,” Shisui relented, after one last warning glare.  “She’s showing him the perimeter of her territory as she patrols it.”

Zabuza raised an eyebrow.  “Who’s watching the children, then?”

Shisui shrugged.  “They’re watching themselves.  They’re capable of it, and we’re more worried about someone finding us than any of the kids running away,”

“It’s not like anyone followed us,” Zabuza grumbled.  “I put down like six false trails and no one went after any of them.”

“You know the captain’s always cautious.”  Shisui walked a kunai through his fingers absently.  “One day we won’t get lucky. That’s what Itachi’s teaching his kids first, actually.”

“Ah,”  Zabuza smirked.  “Paranoia.” That would be a fun lesson to teach his brats.

He came awake to the sound of hushed voices.  For a moment, he was disoriented, but their chakra signatures were dim and passive, and he sensed no threat from any of them.

“ -- you know better than to wake a sleeping shinobi,” said one.

“Yeah.”  A female voice.  “But everyone else left already.”

“And it’s so late!” a third said shrilly.  “What if he makes us catch rabbits again -- ”

“Oh my gods,” interrupted the female voice.  “Are his teeth pointy?”

“Well, he was from Kiri.”  The first voice.

“That’s so cool!”  enthused the third, and was immediately shushed by the first two.

Oh.  His fucking brats.  He groaned and threw his arm over his face.   All three stopped talking abruptly.

“Uh, sensei?” said the girl hesitantly.

What the fuck do you want, Zabuza tried to say.  It came out as, “Blrrrrrgh.”

“Uh,” said the girl.

“It’s almost noon.”  The Uchiha.

“You’re supposed to be training us right now, old man!” said the jinchuuriki.

“Naruto!” the sound of a fist hitting flesh, followed by a yelp.

Zabuza grabbed for his control over his killing intent as it slipped, so he could pretend like he hadn’t pulled a double watch shift after losing cho-han to Shisui one too many times.  “Call me that again and I’ll drown you in a bucket,” he growled. “Give me...thirty laps around the training hollow.”

“Thirty?” the girl squeaked.

“Fine, fifty,” Zabuza snapped.  “Hop to it. If you’re not done in an hour you can forget about anything other than endurance training for the next week.”

“An hour?” the jinchuuriki squawked, but it was to the sound of little hellion feet fading from hearing before Zabuza could cut it down to half an hour.

The hollow wasn’t that big, only about half a kilometer in length and half that in width.  Which meant that one lap would be roughly two and a third kilometers, and fifty laps would be...almost a hundred and twenty kilometers.  Huh. That had sounded a lot more reasonable in his head. That’s what the brats got for making him do math in his head before he’d fully woken up.

He frowned briefly, tugging the bandages up over his nose and mouth, then shrugged.  Endurance training it was.

Light footsteps, followed by the lighter click of claws on stone.  Zabuza hauled himself upright just before the wolf-girl padded in, trailed by one of her wolves.  “Oh, it’s you,” he muttered.

“San,” the wolf-girl agreed, passing in front of him unconcernedly.  “There are three of your pups generating noise outside. It is very loud.”

The wolf snorted in agreement, pinning its ears briefly against its skull.  It settled in a loose curl, resting its great head on crossed paws and regarding Zabuza with golden eyes.  

Zabuza eyed it warily.

“That is Chie,” said the wolf-girl.

The wolf blinked slowly.

“Oh,” said Zabuza.  He scruffed a hand through his hair, absently reaching around for his hitai-ate.  “Inuzuka, right?” he grunted. “What brought you to Tetsu?”

“I was born here,” said the wolf-girl.  “My father was a chuunin who fled into Kusa to escape pursuers when severely wounded.  My mother was a kunoichi from Iwa’s Inuhara Clan whose superiors learned of a stray Inuzuka and sent her to seduce him, but they fell in love and ran away to Tetsu together.”

Zabuza snorted involuntarily, then covered it with a cough.  Love was a child’s tale.

The wolf-girl watched him wryly.  “Yes, it was too good to be true,” she said.  “Perhaps they loved each other once, but once I was born, her superiors told her to kill him.  So she did. But he was a plant.”

“...oh,” said Zabuza lamely.  

“Big story small,” said the wolf-girl, “neither survived when each attempted to kill the other.”

It was probably the wrong thing to fixate on, but… “Big story...small?”

The wolf-girl grimaced.  “Big story -- that is not what you say?”

“Long story short,” Zabuza offered.

“Yes, that,” said the wolf-girl.  “And so I was raised by the wolf goddess in this, her forest.”

Wolf goddess, uh, sure.  “Right,” said Zabuza. The feral was remarkably put together for someone literally raised by wolves.  “But you still choose Konoha?”

“No,” she said.  “I chose Hatake Kakashi.”

Zabuza raised an eyebrow.  “A little young for him, aren’t you?”

“Not as a mate,” she said derisively.  “He saved my life. And I have eighteen years.”

“Eighteen?”  She looked to be sixteen at most, close to Itachi’s age rather than older than Shisui.  He probed at the girl’s chakra signature -- it was tightly restrained, but Zabuza could sense it was larger than appeared.  Interesting -- she had shinobi training. “Who trained you?”

A flash of elongated canine.  “My wolf-mother. She knows the ways of the ningen shinobi, even if she does not practice them.”  

“Hm,” said Zabuza skeptically.  What a strange child.

The wolf’s ear flickered briefly towards the mouth of the cave, and the wolf-girl mirrored the movement with her entire head.

“Your pups are tiring,” she noted.

Speaking of strange children.  Zabuza grunted. “That was fast,” he muttered, and hauled himself upright.   “Later, I guess.” He clumped outside to round up his pack of brats.

It was true.  They did look tired.  The Uchiha’s pale face was splotchy with red, the jinchuuriki had lost his shirt somewhere along the way, and he could hear the girl’s wheezing five meters away.

“Stop,” he ordered.  “You fail.”

“That’s not fair,” the jinchuuriki complained immediately, and predictably.  The girl stumbled to a halt halfway across the clearing, trudging towards him on wobbly legs.

“Tough luck,” said Zabuza gleefully.  “Shisui could run twice that in half the time and come out the other side battle-ready.”  

The Uchiha brat glared balefully, but Zabuza wasn’t concerned.  The little hellion didn’t come anywhere near the intimidating he probably hoped he was, not when he looked like a bullfrog in mating season.  

“Water break,” he announced, clapping his hands together.  “Fifteen minutes. When you get back, you better be ready to work hard.”

The jinchuuriki let out a growl of mingled dismay and rage, but the girl tottered into him and sent them both to the ground in a dusty, sweat-soaked heap.  

The morning was still young.  Zabuza smiled maliciously beneath the bandages.  Endurance training was fun because he didn’t have to actually do anything -- he could just tell the brats what to do.  

Vertical sprints.  Vertical sprints would do nicely.

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT: D-21

Continued residence in [REDACTED].

All targets baseline status.  All allied combatants and noncombatants baseline status.

Operative Cat-15 beginning to experience sustained physical fatigue.  

Provisions remain basic: rice, tofu, produce acquired from local market.  Other forms of sustenance recovered from environment.

Security status: low level risk due to civilian traffic in environment.

No contact with enemy combatants.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

“This one is dangerous.  Kill him!”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Gaara mused thoughtfully.  The black-haired shinobi standing before the three regarded each of them placidly.  “He’s one of the ones Nee-chan says is protecting us.”

“That bitch.  Filling your head with lies and empty promises.  We don’t need protecting. We protect ourselves.”  A curl of pride and possessiveness.

Gaara hummed agreement. “Don’t call her that,” he reminded absently.  “I like her. She loves me.”

“Pah!”  Scorn. “I’m the only one who loves you.”  

Gaara shrugged ambiguously.

“As you know,” said Uchiha Itachi, as Gaara returned his attention to the outside world, “I was a former Anbu captain of Konohagakure.  I will be instructing you in stealth and infiltration, as well as combat.”

“We don’t need stealth.” A derisive sneer.

“Yes, we do,” disagreed Gaara.  “Remember all those teams that chased us from Suna?”

A disgruntled huff.

“As shinobi, the art of going unnoticed is quite essential for everything from general travel to pitched battle,” Uchiha Itachi continued. “However, for the three of you, it is exceptionally vital.  For example -- if you would each name what you believe your greatest strength to be?”

Sai blinked, and Hinata managed to shuffle her feet without actually moving.  Gaara glanced from the others back to Uchiha Itachi.

He met his gaze and inclined his head towards Gaara.  “Why don’t you begin?”

“Telling us what to do?  You should give me his blood.  Crunch his bones into splinters.”  A flicker of bloodlust, which Gaara waved away.

“No,” Gaara said patiently.  “We’re not killing him.”

“Gaara?” the shinobi -- Uchiha Itachi -- prompted, when Gaara didn’t respond.

“I am strong,” he said aloud, “because of my sand.”  He let the grains swirl gently at his feet.

“And me!”

Gaara ignored that.

“Thank you, Gaara,” said Uchiha Itachi, and turned his gaze on Hinata.

The girl jumped a little, ducking her head.  “I-I-I,” she stuttered.

“Weak.”  Dismissive, derisive.  “Easy prey.”

“She’s quiet.  I like that,” Gaara retorted.  “She doesn’t get in our way.”

“I-I have...m-my g-greatest strength a-are my e-eyes,” she finally got out, and leaned away from Itachi subtly.     

If the shinobi noticed, he didn’t give any sign of it.  He merely nodded acceptance and turned to Sai.

“I have received some Anbu training,” the older boy said, straightening as the shinobi’s attention shifted to him, “and my greatest strength is the ink jutsu I am able to utilize for combat, scouting, and sending and receiving messages.”  

“I bet his blood is the most umami.”  But even that was as half-hearted as it was wistful after months of Gaara’s denials.

“Thank you,” said Uchiha Itachi, and returned his gaze to the three.  He clasped his hands neatly behind his back. “Each of you has named something valuable, something unique to each of you.  While these are great assets, they are also known abilities to those hunting you. They make you a target.”

Gaara turned the idea over in his head.  He didn’t like the sound of that.

“We are not a target!  We are the ones doing the hunting!”

“Hinata, I believe it goes without saying that possessing a Byakugan, particularly an unsealed Byakugan, puts you at great risk,” said Itachi, and at Gaara’s side Hinata shrank back.  

“Sai, there are few who use ink, and those who trained you in Konoha could use it to identify you,” continued Itachi.  Sai nodded thoughtfully in response, and only the way he pressed his lips together betrayed his displeasure.

“Gaara.”  Gaara’s attention snapped back to the shinobi.  “Your use of sand marks you as of Suna heritage to most, and to those in the know, of the Kazekage’s line.”

“That ingrown cactus!  Should have ripped his head off when I had the chance.”

Gaara growled agreement, clenching and unclenching his hands.

“I will teach you to be capable shinobi in spite of this.  You will be an effective fighter, infiltrator, and leader without what you perceive to be your greatest strength,” Uchiha Itachi continued.  “Hinata, I will teach you to operate without your eyes; Gaara, with no sand -- ”

A deafening howl of outrage.  “ No sand ?”

“ -- and Sai, without your ink,” Uchiha Itachi finished calmly, seemingly oblivious to the way the sand shifted agitatedly at Gaara’s feet.

“Stop that,” Gaara snapped harshly, though he himself was discomfited with the idea of fighting without his sand.  At his side, Hinata darted nervous glances at him out of the corner of her eyes. “Look, you’re scaring Hinata.”

A sneer.  “Pitiful.” But the sand settled at his feet nonetheless.

“She can’t help that she’s weak,” Gaara pointed out reasonably.  “She doesn’t have you, like I do.”

A purr of satisfaction and agreement: temporarily mollified.

Uchiha Itachi’s first lesson was hiding.  This meant that Gaara, Hinata, and Sai would attempt to cross a clearing, a stream, and about fifty meters of forested land without being spotted by Itachi, perched in a tree somewhere in the middle.

Gaara did not realize how frustrating this would be.  

He eyed the ground in front of him warily before stepping forward.  His foot fell soundlessly, and he edged forward.

“This is stupid.  If you kill them, they won’t see you.”

“We’ve been over this,” said Gaara patiently.  “Nee-chan always says that someone else notices when people turn up dead.  Itachi-sensei is right -- sneaking around is useful.”

A derisive snort.  “ Sensei .”

“He’s teaching us, isn’t he?” Gaara pointed out.

“Stupid things.”

“Quit distracting me,” Gaara grumbled, annoyed, bringing his awareness back to his surroundings.  “Sensei might be moving around.”

“I’m listening for you.”

That was true.  

Gaara took another step forward, but the heel of his sandal crunched as he flattered a dead leaf.  He froze.

“Gaara,” Itachi-sensei’s voice drifted between the trees.  “Go back and start again.”

Gaara bared his teeth in a soundless snarl, and his sand whipped through the air in response.  The frustration and resentment and glee built up, welling in Gaara like a whirling sandstorm --

“Cut it out, you’re making this harder,” Gaara snapped, and the malicious delight dropped away suddenly with an air of sulking.  He let the sand drift back down as he turned to cross back over the stream.

Hinata darted past, taking cover behind a fallen tree.  Gaara watched her interestedly. A faint blush was dusted across her cheeks, but though her eyes were wide, she wasn’t trembling.  Instead of panicked, she seemed almost...excited.

“Hinata, you’re out,” called Itachi-sensei.  “Gaara, don’t give away your teammates.”

Ah.  Stupid.

“Shut up,” he growled over the taunting snickers.  “You’re supposed to be helping me.” He eyed Hinata, who wore an absent expression as she came up beside him, but she didn’t look too put out.

“T-this is h-harder than it s-sounded,” she murmured.  

“Hn,” said Gaara in agreement, surveying the terrain with narrowed eyes.  Ten meters past the stream, Sai crouched in the hollow between protruding roots of a large tree.   As he watched, the older boy vaulted neatly over the roots and disappeared to the other side.

“D-do you t-think he’ll m-make it?” Hinata whispered.  

Gaara frowned.  No, probably not.  

He edged around the side of the clearing cautiously amd sank into a low crouch behind an old stump.  He peeked around the side, and seeing no sign of Itachi-sensei, sidled forward.

Hinata scampered off in the other direction, flitting neatly over the stream and disappearing into the undergrowth.  

An indignant growl.  “She left us!”

“I left her first,” Gaara pointed out absently.  He leaned down onto all fours, creeping lightly across the surface of the stream, and came up with his back against the trunk of a tree.

“Sai, start over,” came Itachi-sensei’s voice.  Gaara took the opportunity to slink around his tree and past the bush he’d been caught at before.

“If you burrow underground, he won’t catch you.”

“Sensei said don’t use sand,” reminded Gaara, “and I need sand for that.”  He squinted, peering through the leaves in the direction Itachi-sensei’s voice had come from.

“That’s a stupid rule.”  Resentment, slowly roiling agitation.

“If I get stronger without our sand, I’ll be twice as strong when I do use it,” Gaara said logically.  He crept sideways, then slunk forward to the base of a large tree.

He eyed it with narrowed eyes, then the forest beyond.  Silent. He wound up and sprang. He landed lightly in the fork between two large branches, his chakra cushioning his landing.  The tree barely twitched. He froze, straining his ears, but heard nothing. Success.

“You don’t need to be stronger.  You have me.”

Gaara couldn’t think of a response to that, so he ignored it.  He inched upwards, sticking to the trunk with hands and feet like a lizard, then along a long bough that stretched out among the branches of one of the adjoining trees.   

Sitting back on his haunches, he reached out with one careful hand and placed it on the branch.  He leaned forward and it didn’t move, so he crept along that as well until he perched in the fork between branch and trunk.

He peered below him, hand stuck firmly to the tree, to see Hinata slither through a bush without disturbing the branches.  With barely a pause under Gaara’s tree, she flowed forward in a controlled roll over the crest of a little ridge to come up against a small boulder jutting up from the ground.  

A flash of something light drew his attention, and he glanced over in time to see Sai to leap gracefully from one tree to the next with a barely-audible thump.  His eyes flicked towards where Uchiha-sensei had been hiding, but nothing happened.

Emboldened, Gaara prowled onto the next branch and reached over.  His foot slipped, and he found himself grasping at air as he tipped off the branch.

He twisted midair even as he plummeted, turning to land feet first, but a plume of sand blossomed beneath him and cushioned his fall before he hit the ground.  Hinata let out a muffled yelp as she was sprayed with the loose grains.

“Hey!” Gaara snapped.  “I said no sand!”

Equal parts indignation and smugness.  “That wasn’t me. That was all you.”

Gaara simmered and banished the sand with a jerk of his hand.  

“Gaara, Hinata, back to the start,” called Uchiha-sensei.  “Gaara, suppress your sand.”

They went.

Again behind the stream, Gaara pounced lightly over its surface to the opposite bank without disturbing the surface of the water, and dove behind a tree.   

“Something’s happening.”

Gaara ignored that in favor of slithering carefully through a small thicket.

“Listen.”  More insistent.

He could see Sai, still clinging to the side of a tree with enviable ease, almost twenty meters ahead of him.  Hinata was still behind him, slipping carefully through the --

“ Listen !”

His hearing sharpened without warning, and he flinched at the suddenly loud noise.  

“ -- not even a clone?”  It took a moment for Gaara to place the voice as one of the other shinobi -- Shisui, the black-haired one missing an eye.  

“No,” came Itachi-sensei’s calm voice, muted.  “This stage of their training I will oversee myself.”

A soft exhale.  “My, Itachi, such a responsible sensei you make,” said the other shinobi, something strange -- warmth? -- in his voice.

A moment of silence.  “Did you need something, Shisui?” Itachi-sensei asked politely.

“Aa,” said Shisui readily.  “What do you say we take turns having the teams hunt for dinner for everyone?  I’m thinking it’ll be good for them.”

Itachi-sensei contemplated this.  “I am agreeable. It would be good practice.”

“Zabuza agreed to have his team take care of tonight,” said the other.  “You can do tomorrow if you want.”

“He agreed.”  Sensei’s voice was dry.  “Very well, we will take care of dinner tomorrow.”

“Hm, is that one of your kids?  Awfully brazen, isn’t he?” the other shinobi said, amused, and Gaara heard a small puff.

“Sai, begin again!” Itachi-sensei’s voice boomed in his ear, and Gaara flinched, stepping back, as his hands clapped over his head instinctively.  A twig cracked under his heel as his hearing returned to normal. “Gaara as well,” Sensei added, and Gaara growled.

By the time Itachi-sensei called a halt, the sun’s rays filtered only weakly through the trees.  “Each of you has shown significant improvement. We will resume tomorrow morning,” said Sensei. “Please return to camp, and I will join you there in time.”

In the end, predictably, Sai had managed to make it the furthest -- nearly halfway to the target.  

This does not particularly bother Gaara.

“How dare that no-name outperform us?  We should kill him for this insult.”

“No,” said Gaara shortly, too tired to elaborate after six hours of attempting to traverse the same seventy meters.  His stomach felt hollow -- they’d trained the entire day and skipped lunch, which was not new but still unpleasant.

“Just a little sand, is all it would take.  He would twitch, kick a little. His eyes would bug out, all that lovely blood would just flow straight to his face -- ”  

“Shut up!” Gaara snapped, forcing the sand down when it started to rise instinctively.  

“G-Gaara-san, a-are you a-all right?” Hinata asked timidly, to his side and about half a step behind him.  “Y-you’re quieter t-than normal.”

“Fine,” Gaara said shortly.

“That was a long session,” Sai noted placidly, but Gaara could see the slightest slump in his normally impeccable posture.

“He’s weakened.  Kill him now!”

“Shut up,” Gaara repeated, fighting to keep the sand from rising again.

“I w-wonder if a-all our t-training sessions w-will be t-this l-long,” Hinata murmured.  Her exhaustion showed in her stumbling steps, much louder than they had been when she’d flitted lightly through the woods.  

“Tomorrow, we hunt,” Gaara said.  “Heard Itachi-sensei talking to Uchiha Shisui.”

“Ah,” said Sai thoughtfully.  “I see. It would serve as a valuable learning experience while providing resources for the group.”

“H-have you h-hunted before, G-Gaara-san, Sai-s-san?” Hinata asked. “I-I only k-know how to t-trap animals l-like N-Neko-sensei t-taught us.”

“ Yes .  Remember that last Anbu, how we tracked him, cowering on the ground like a rabbit?  How we crushed his legs when he tried to flee, how he begged and screamed and bled?”  Purred, like a sated cat.  

“No,” said Gaara abruptly.  

“I have not either,” Sai answered.  “I’m sure Itachi-sensei will instruct us.”

The spot Uchiha-sensei had chosen for their training was quite a distance from the clearing beyond the caves.  Gaara had been reliably informed that this was because ‘you don’t spill blood near your den’ but the long walk annoyed him nonetheless.  

As they finally reached the caves, Gaara’s limbs were shaking as little-used muscles trembled with the effort it had taken to hold tensed positions for so long.

At least, since he was going back, he would see Nee-chan again.  This cheered him slightly.

“Bah.  You shouldn’t put so much thought into her.”

Gaara ignored this with the ease of long practice.  

Unfortunately, Nee-chan’s team wasn’t back yet.  Naruto’s team was, though -- an acceptable substitute.

“Danger.  Dangerous!” Hissed, then a pause.  “Loud.”

This latter half at least was true.  But Naruto was not just loud, he was bright and warm like the sun hanging over the desert he had not seen in nearly two years.  And maybe like the sun to unaware travellers he was dangerous, but Gaara had not seen any sign of danger from him. In fact, he was generally harmless.

A growled disagreement.

“Gaara!” the jinchuuriki cheered gleefully, bounding towards them energetically.  Gaara sniffed the air -- the scent of blood preceded Naruto, and his shirt was splattered with it.  “Hi, Hinata! Hi, Sai!”

“Get back here, Naruto!” Sakura cried.  Her forearms too were stained with red. Behind her, Sasuke stood as well, a half-shucked rabbit dangling from his hand by its ears.

Gaara wrinkled his nose and stepped back when the blond lunged to tackle him.  “What are you doing?”

Hinata edged away delicately. “A-ano, y-you have s-something on y-your s-shirt,” she said timidly.

“This is dinner!” Naruto explained, turning back reluctantly to the mess next to the fire.  “We hunted some rabbits and now we’re cooking them!”

A dubious expression flitted across Sai’s face.  

Gaara agreed.  The last time Naruto had cooked, half the vegetables had been raw, the other half soggy.  Temari-nee-chan still didn’t let him prepare meat.

“I-I’m sure i-it will be d-delicious,” Hinata said loyally.  Gaara frowned.

Naruto beamed.

“Uh, we?” Sakura demanded.  “Not if you keep slacking off!”

Naruto drooped dramatically.  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he groaned, and slouched his way back to his team.

“Let’s wash up,” suggested Sai, turning away from the squabbling trio.  “It seems we will have some time before dinner.”

“But all that blood will go to waste! Those stupid brats will just throw it out.”

“It’s just rabbit blood,” Gaara dismissed, and followed Sai to the adjoining ravine.  He disliked the stickiness of sweat, and the way his legs still trembled with every step.  A dip in the river would at least stop the first.

He stripped down to the skin, and tossing his clothes in a careless pile, waded into the stream past Sai folding his own clothes neatly at the bank.

The shock of the cold did nothing for Gaara’s temper, but he let himself sink neck-deep in the water anyways.

“Too cold!  I don’t like this.”

“Yes,” said Gaara, “but clean is better than sticky.  Even if it is cold.”

A snarl of disagreement. A pulse of warm chakra flooded Gaara’s body, burning away the numbing cold.   Gaara hummed at the sensation, closing his eyes. “Warm baths are nice,” he murmured.

“Hmph.”  A reluctant, rumbling purr.  “Just remember that it is I who loves you.”

As the days grew shorter, Gaara became much better at sneaking.  

He pulled the hood of his cloak lower over his head.  Though heavy, the fur lining kept him warm despite the chill that sank into the trees like the snowfall.  

That, he did not like.  Snow was heavy and wet and cold and made sneaking hard even though the sound was muffled.  

“Too wet.”  This was grumbled. “Too cold.”

In his head, it was quieter too.  

“Gaara,” Sai hissed.  “Up that tree. Hinata, left and press him at the signal.”

Gaara darted up the tree, landing lightly in the white-frosted boughs.  His cloak settled lightly around him without disturbing a single flake of snow.

Narrowing his eyes, he spotted a flash of black hair seven meters ahead of him.  “Wait,” he muttered. “Sai, continue circling. He will escape to the north unless you keep going.”

A hint of light cloth was all he could see as Sai moved, flitting lightly over the snow.  No movement from the target.

“Now,” Gaara snarled, and dove out of his tree, three kunai in each hand.  His cloak billowed out behind him as he leapt.

The target turned, weaving neatly out of the first volley of kunai.  Hinata burst out of the bushes three meters away from him, lunging with open-handed strikes that the target deflected easily.  A hard strike knocked her backwards several steps.

Gaara leapt forward as she faltered, launching another kunai from beneath his cloak.  At the same time, Sai darted out from behind the target, bringing his tanto forward.

Gaara yanked on the wire, bringing the kunai back to wrap the target’s arms to his torso as Sai delivered a debilitating slash at the target’s calf.  Hinata lunged back in, landing a hard strike to the center of the target’s chest.

The target vanished in a swirl of crows.

The wire attached to Gaara’s kunai went slack, and he snarled wordlessly.  But despite his frustrated rage, he did not let his sand so much as stir.

“Good work,” said Itachi-sensei serenely, dropping neatly out of a nearby tree.  “The plan was sound, your teamwork commendable.” He paused, meeting each of their gazes -- Gaara simmering, Hinata defeated, Sai blank-faced as always. “However, you were overly fixated on what you perceived to be the target and failed to notice a basic trap.”

Sai’s eyes narrowed as he sheathed his tanto.

“T-that is n-not a trap w-we will f-fall for t-twice,” Hinata murmured.

Gaara grunted in agreement, flexing his fingers absently.  

“This drill is over,” said Sensei implacably.  “I believe it is our team’s turn to prepare dinner.”

Gaara sighed through his nose.  He didn’t want to hunt animals, that was no challenge -- he wanted to hunt people.

“Perhaps we should try a moose,” Sai suggested.  “It would be enough for several meals, and we could have uninterrupted training for a week.”

Ah, Gaara liked this plan.  No hunting for a week. And a moose?  That would prove a greater challenge than the little rabbits that flitted across the top of the snow.

“You are welcome to try,” said Itachi-sensei contemplatively.  “Chie scented some along the northwestern border, and freezing meat for storage is no issue.”   

Gaara exchanged glances with Sai and Hinata.  

“Ah, ano,” said Hinata hesitantly.  “This is n-not a training m-mission…” she trailed off.

“Very well,” Itachi-sensei said almost indulgently.  “All ability restrictions are off. You may use whatever tools and techniques you wish.”

“Yes!”  The sand stirred of its own volition, twisting up out of his pack to wrap around Gaara like a second skin.  “Finally.”

“It’s been a week since I trained with our sand,” Gaara reminded, but couldn’t deny the hint of warmth that curled up inside.  

“A week too long.”

“Let’s get started,” said Sai, anticipation coloring his voice as he pulled a scroll and brush out from under his cloak.  Under his deft strokes, a pack of inky black wolves bloomed on the paper and pounced out in front of him.

Hinata’s eyes opened with the Byakugan, and she lifted her head.  “N-nothing in my r-range yet,” she murmured, as Sai’s beasts leapt past.

“We’ll see you back at camp, Sensei,” called Sai absently, darting after the ink-wolves.

“You will,” Itachi-sensei’s voice drifted through the trees, as Gaara chased after his teammate with Hinata on his heels.

The wolves split off, and Gaara followed as Sai hurtled a fallen tree.  He landed lightly on top of the snow, leaving only the shallowest footprints in the light powder.

“Moose scent.  North.”

“North,” Gaara said, and Sai angled down the side of the mountain.

“I s-see tracks i-in the v-valley,” said Hinata.  

“Take point,” Sai directed, and slowed to let her overtake him.

Hinata flitted past, zigzagging her way down into the valley.  

Gaara stopped as Hinata crouched by the blurred tracks, scrutinizing the snow fields with narrowed eyes.  He tilted his nose up to scent the air again.

“T-These are t-too small.  E-elk prints,” Hinata murmured, hovering a finger over the trail.  “A l-large h-herd, passed t-through only r-recently.”

“Elk everywhere.  Old tracks.”

“What about the moose?” prodded Gaara.

A disgruntled grumble.

“We’re not looking for elk today,” dismissed Sai.  “Are there moose prints?”

“N-not here,” Hinata said absently, and lifted her head as her gaze focused on something far-off.  “T-there,” she said. “L-larger hoofprints.”

A pair of Sai’s ink-wolves loped across the field, crisscrossing the river valley.  Gaara watched them go absently.

“Not true prey.  No blood.”

“We do not kill wolves,” reminded Gaara, “not even fake wolves.  Wolves are friends.”

“Pah!”  Gaara ignored the rising distaste with the ease of long practice.   “We don’t have friends.”

“W-When was the l-last snowfall?” asked Hinata, breath coming in visible puffs.  

“Two days ago,” answered Sai.  “The tracks may not be fresh.”

“Some wind,” Gaara pointed out. “It would have covered up the tracks if they were not fresh.”

“True,” said Sai, and crouched along the tracks.  He reached out with one hand then a second, splaying out his fingers, and barely matched the size off the hoofprint.  “We will be the first team to attempt to take down prey of this size,” he noted absently. “We will have to be careful if we are to succeed.”

“Aa,” Hinata agreed. “S-san-sensei said e-even wolves are c-cautious when h-hunting prey as l-large as a m-moose.”  She frowned suddenly. “These t-tracks are leading t-towards the w-western border of San-s-sensei’s territory. W-we should h-hurry if we want to c-catch them.”

“Understood,” said Sai, and straightened.  From all directions, shadowy streaks converged on their position as he recalled his ink-beasts.  “Follow my lead,” he directed, and took off after the trail.

Running Gaara did not particularly enjoy, but after long hours of training with Itachi-sensei, he grudgingly admitted that his speed and endurance had increased significantly.  As he loped after Sai, the cold air bit unpleasantly into his lungs, but the pace he knew he could keep for hours. The wolves split off as they crossed into the next valley.

“Keep us on track, Hinata,” Sai directed, and veered along the side of the valley instead of dropping down into its trough.

“I-I see it,” Hinata murmured.   “O-one, moving a-at a s-steady pace.  I-it’s a-almost at the w-western border.”

“We need to cut it off.”  Sai increased the pace until Hinata and Gaara were sprinting after the older boy, and down in the valley, two pairs of inky wolves streaked across the valley floor.

Gaara chanced a glance down as the bulky animal gradually came into view.  The ink-beasts were gaining on the moose, galvanizing the larger animal into a rough gallop.

The rocky shelf cut off abruptly, and Sai leapt from the lip.  “Gaara!” he called sharply.

Gaara threw out his hands, and the sand shot out from his pack and caught Sai in a billowing cushion, then himself and Hinata as they followed him over the edge.

“W-we’re not g-going to m-make it,” Hinata panted, eyes locked faraway even as she crouched on the sand platform hurtling down the side of the mountain.

Gaara narrowed his eyes, straining to control their fall.  He jerked the sand to the side, narrowly avoiding a rocky outcrop, and Sai nearly overbalanced over the edge of the makeshift platform.  Gaara frowned, yanking the sand higher. The others were just so breakable, and it was hard to account for their squirming.

“Just let them fall.”

“Go back to being quiet,” Gaara grunted, and received only a grumble in response.

Sai sprang off the platform as they neared the foot of the slope, and Gaara let the sand crash into the ground.   Hinata yelped as the sand crumbled beneath her, tripping off onto the uneven ground. Gaara blinked at her bemusedly, landing lightly beside her.  She could see everything; why hadn't she seen that?

“G-go,” Hinata wheezed at him, waving a hand weakly.

With a mental shrug, Gaara took off after Sai’s rapidly retreating back, summoning his sand back into his pack.

The thunder of heavy hooves rattled the earth beneath his feet as he ran, but even as he sprinted he could see they would not be fast enough.  

One of the ink-wolves stretched out and snapped at the leg of the moose, but a violent buck of its hind hooves splattered the beast into a spray of droplets.  

In just a few seconds, the moose would cross out of San’s territory.  Sai launched himself into a desperate pounce, tanto out, and the blade missed the rearmost leg of the moose by centimeters.  He landed in a crouch, sinking in the snow, as his three remaining wolves pulled up short, circling back to him as the moose thundered on.  A frown of frustration darkened his eyes as he watched it go.

Gaara bared his teeth -- he wasn’t going to let this prey escape.  He sprinted straight past, throwing out his sand in a wide, flat band.   

“Gaara!” called Sai sharply, but Gaara didn’t listen, not when he had this.

The moose lowed in alarm as it turned at the last minute, crashing shoulder-first into the wall of sand.  Forced back around, the moose lowered its head and trained its rack of antlers on Gaara, who skittered back a couple steps in spite of himself.

The moose charged.

Gaara threw up his hands in front of  him, and the sand shot up in front of him as he crossed his arms.  The sand sprayed as the animal slammed into the other side, but the shield held.  “Help me,” he gritted out.

Disinterest, shaded by amusement.  “You’re fine. The ink-boy is coming.”

The moose bellowed as Sai swept in from the side, rearing around antlers-first and forcing the older boy to leap backwards, then turn tail and run as it charged after him.

Hinata was there in an instant, flinging a pair of kunai at the moose’s other side, but the animal didn’t change its course until Sai’s three remaining ink-wolves harried it from behind, nipping at its hind legs.  

It turned faster than Gaara expected, whirling on gangly legs, and slammed a flailing hoof into one of the wolves.  It splattered in a shower of ink, and the remaining two dodged out of the way as Sai darted back in.

“Enough.  Cease allowing this prey-beast to make a fool of you.”

“Give me more sand, then!” Gaara snarled.

A derisive snort.  “If you can’t reach the sand beneath the snow by yourself, then you don’t deserve to use it.”

Gaara bared his teeth but reached, straining to reach, but only a pitiful handful of sand rose to his call, shooting up from the ground to join the swarm circling in front of him.

Hinata leapt in and out, landing a single open-handed strike before retreating out of reach of the moose’s range, just as it lashed out with both front hooves at Sai, who rolled out of the way.

Gaara gritted his teeth and yanked, and a shower of sand burst from the snow.  Immediately, he hurled a sand-claw at the moose’s leg and clenched his fist. A resounding crack split the air, and the moose bellowed in pain and rage as its leg shattered in a spray of blood.

A purr of satisfaction.

Sai was there in an instant, driving the entirety of his blade into the base of its neck even as its antlers decimated another ink-wolf with a blundering lurch.  It wrenched away, ripping the tanto from Sai’s grasp, and trampled the last ink-wolf. Sai whirled out of the way, but the tip of an antler raked across his torso and caught briefly on the edge of his cloak before ripping away.

The moose staggered and crashed to the ground, eyes rolling wildly as its legs flailed uselessly.  Blood leaked steadily from its ruined leg, and the satisfaction rumbled through Gaara viscerally as his sand soaked it up.

Hinata hopped neatly over the jerking antlers and delivered an almost delicate two-fingered tap to the moose’s chest.  At once, its legs jerked, then slackened, and its head collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

The blood roaring in Gaara’s ears subsided, and they looked at each other over the still-warm body in silence.  Hinata’s hands were trembling as she released her kekkei-genkai. Sai’s were clamped over the graze above his stomach.  All three were splattered in blood, though admittedly Gaara seemed to be the only one that did not seem to mind. For a moment, they simply stared, chests heaving, at the animal they had felled.

“We succeeded,” said Sai finally, leaning over to retrieve his tanto.

The impression of an eyeroll.  “No shit.”

“That’s a bad word,” Gaara reminded.  “Don’t -- ”

“Succeeded?  Perhaps,” said Itachi-sensei icily.  Gaara repressed a full body flinch, and Hinata’s eyes grew comically wide.  Sai let go of the tanto’s hilt and took a wary step backwards.

“Oh.  Shit.”

With a sinking feeling, Gaara didn’t respond.  When he turned, Itachi-sensei was regarding the team evenly, with displeasure wrapped around him like a cloak.  

“Itachi-sensei,” Sai greeted calmly, but his eyes flickered to the side, betraying his apprehension.

“I am quite certain that each of you understood that you were to remain within the borders of San’s territory at all times,” Itachi-sensei said implacably.  “Yet at least one of you ventured beyond.”

Gaara resisted the urge to seethe when Sai’s eyes tracked first the disturbed snow and flurry of footprints clearly continuing beyond the border, then flitted briefly to Gaara before returning to Itachi-sensei.  He was fairly certain that Itachi-sensei already knew not only how many, but who had done it.

“I apologize, Sensei,” said Sai smoothly.  “We merely became caught up in the -- ”

“No,” said Itachi-sensei, and Sai cut himself off abruptly.  “I will not accept these excuses from you. From any of you,” he warned, turning his icy glare on Hinata, who quailed, and Gaara, who bristled.

“It was for prey!”  Sulkily, with an undercurrent of resentment.

“Gaara,” said Itachi-sensei.  “What is the reason you were told not to leave San’s forest?”

“Making demands of us?” This was sneered.  “We should smear him into a paste.”

“There are many enemies hunting us and staying in the forest keeps us safe,” Gaara said grudgingly.

“Specifically?” Itachi-sensei prodded.

The roiling resentment took on an increasingly darker edge.  Gaara forced it down and bit back the urge to snarl. “Suna wants me and my sister, Konoha wants everyone else, Kumo and Iwa would want all of us, and the samurai from northern Tetsu would want to kill us for being shinobi,” he recited dully.   “A combination of seals and interference from the natural chakra produced in San’s forest hides us as long as we stay in her territory.”

“Yet,” Itachi-sensei said deliberately, “you did not.”

Gaara narrowed his eyes and said nothing.  The silence that followed was almost deafening.  The longer it dragged on, the more disappointment Gaara could read in his stare.

“Consider all ability restrictions back in effect,” said Itachi-sensei finally.  “All of you are confined to camp for the next week.”

Naruto would explode in protests.  Neji would argue with a heat veiled by logic.  But Gaara’s team just stared at their feet.

“I will ask San to retrieve the animal.  The three of you, return to camp at once,” Itachi-sensei ordered.  “Do not leave unless you are given permission to do so. Sai, have that wound looked at.”

“Hai,” murmured Sai, and was quickly echoed by Hinata.  Gaara jerked his head in a resentful nod when Itachi-sensei glanced at him.

“Go,” said Itachi-sensei, and the three of them began their humiliating trek back to camp.  

Gaara did not like Hyuuga Neji much, but this was because Neji saw everything -- unlike Hinata, who was supposed to see everything but couldn’t.  This meant that Neji could see Gaara’s sand sneaking up behind him during spars, or the special chakra Gaara used when he got angry.

Today, that meant he saw the way Hinata practically slunk into camp, the slump in Sai’s normally impeccable posture, and how Gaara seethed as he stormed in.  

“What is going on?” the older boy demanded, eyes flicking between the blood-splattered team and the tunnel entrance.  “Hinata-sama, are you injured? Were you attacked?”

“N-n-no,” Hinata whispered.  “No, I-I’m f-fine. There’s n-no d-danger.”

Neji narrowed his eyes.  “What happened?” he snapped, turning on Sai.

Sai lifted his hand to peer at the wound beneath.  “Our team attempted to take down a more challenging prey and crossed out of San’s territory,” he said shortly.

“You left the territory?”  Neji’s lip curled derisively.  “You were injured by a prey animal?”

“Yes,” Sai bit out coldly, leveling Neji with a blank stare.

“Gaara!” Nee-chan’s surprised call cut over Neji’s disdainful snort as she rushed towards them, and her focus zeroed in on Sai’s bloodied hands.  “Sai, have Shisui-sensei take a look at that,” she ordered. “He’s above the gorge -- ”

“I am forbidden from leaving camp,” Sai interrupted monotonously.

Nee-chan pursed her lips briefly in a frown.  “Neji, get Sensei,” she directed, and Neji turned away with a huff.  Gaara watched him go a little bitterly. Just the knowledge that the older boy could leave when he could not stung, and he’d only been back in camp for a minute.  He turned away.

“Gaara!” Nee-chan called after him, but Gaara wasn’t in the mood to talk to even her and stalked to the sleeping quarters.  

Gaara did not sleep, but he had a bunk in the cave anyways.  He swung up the first stack to the topmost hammock and slouched against the wall, slinging his cloak around him as he glowered into the dim.  The cave was empty except for him, but half-filled knapsacks, weapons, and cooking supplies littered the floor in small clumps.

He wasn’t in the mood to do anything except stew.  He wrestled his pack off, and for a moment considered just hurling it and the sand within at the opposite wall.  

“Don’t.”  A sleepy grumble and warning in one.  

Gaara scowled and settled for shoving it to the bunk frame until it dangled off the edge.  

“Quit sulking and just kill him already.  We don’t need to listen to that insect.”

“He’s the sensei,” Gaara grunted.  “I can’t not listen to him.”

A sneer.   “So you’ll just let him push you around?  Weak.”

Gaara bristled.  “I’m not weak, I -- ”

“Gaara?” said Nee-chan.

“That bitch!”  Gaara’s head reeled under the onslaught of unbridled rage.  “Daring to interrupt us -- ”

“Shut up!” Gaara snarled, and forced the fury back down.

“ -- gotten bandaged, and your team still needs to cook,” he heard her say as his senses returned to normal.  He peered down at her.

The wry tilt to her mouth deepened as she regarded him, hands resting lightly on her hips.  “I heard what happened. I know you’re not afraid of what’s out there,” she said, “but Itachi-sensei’s right.  If any of us use our chakra outside San’s territory, we’re sending up a beacon to our enemies.”

Gaara  glowered at her.

She sighed and reached out a hand to him.  “Come here,” she said.

Gaara considered.

“Don’t do it.”

He huffed and slithered down the bunk frame laboriously to the rumble of an annoyed growl.  

Temari-nee carded a hand through his hair, and he half-closed his eyes at the sensation, letting the motion soothe the resentment that had built up over the course of the day.  “The rules are stupid,” he muttered.

“They keep us safe,” Nee-chan corrected, but the gentle scratch of her fingers kept him from getting too annoyed.  “Come on, otouto. I brought you out of Suna for a reason, and I won’t let them take you back now.”

A snort.  “As if she could let anyone do anything.”

“Quiet,” Gaara admonished absently, leaning into her hand.

“Good job killing that moose, by the way,” she added, fingers stilling in his hair.  “San and Yuuki just brought it in.”

Gaara hummed, displeased -- that stupid moose was the reason he couldn’t leave this place.  But then Temari-nee brushed through his hair again and his annoyance melted away.

“Go on, help your team,” said Temari, ruffling his hair one last time, before leaning over to snag one of the kunai holsters scattered on the ground.

Gaara frowned.  He didn’t particularly want to help his team.

A derisive scoff. “So don’t.”

But if he didn’t, Temari-nee would give him the sad eyes and frown and wouldn’t pet his hair.

The impression of rolled eyes. “For Kami’s sake.  You’re a simple child, aren’t you?”

No, Gaara was a special child.  That’s what Nee-chan said.

When Gaara ducked out of the cave and through the tunnel to the small training gorge, Sai was crouching next to the moose with a kunai, prodding the wound in its chest cautiously.  San sat cross-legged on his other side, gesturing at the animal and leaning comfortably against her sprawled-out wolf, mindless of the snow carpeting the frozen ground. Gaara scented the air.  Yuuki. Hinata leaned over her shoulder, listening carefully to whatever she was explaining.

Her eyes flicked upwards as Gaara approached.  “Ah, Gaara. Come to learn to fish?”

Gaara blinked, nonplussed.

“She is referencing an old adage,” Sai offered helpfully. “That if one teaches a man to fish, one feeds the man for a lifetime.”

“Yes,” San agreed.  “I will teach you to fish this moose now.  It is like butchering elk, but bigger.”

Gaara eyed the trail the carcass had left in the snow when it had been dragged into camp.  The animal was easily double the size of an elk, nearly one and a half times the height of Chie or Yuuki and twice their bulk.

“This will take many hours,” San explained placidly.  “First, you will remove the organs. Then, you will peel off the skin.  All of it, at once, in one piece.”

She watched them expectantly.  Sai turned back to the animal resolutely, and Gaara crouched next to him, slipping a kunai out of his holster.  

A sniff.  “So unnecessary.  Just eat it like it was meant to be eaten: fresh.”

Gaara wrinkled his nose.

“Start at the stomach, Gaara,” said Sai.  “Hinata, start at the neck. I’ll take the head off.”

“The top of the neck is most vulnerable,” San added.  “It will come off easily if you cut there.” She proffered a curved knife, entirely white, and when Sai took it, Gaara saw it was one made entirely of bone.

Sai passed off his kunai to Hinata, who shuffled up next to Gaara.  

Gaara eyed the corpse carefully, then jabbed the kunai through hair and hide.  As he worked, he heard familiar footsteps padding softly over packed snow.

“Temari, Neji,”  San greeted. “Good.  You will learn to fish moose as well.”

A confused pause.  Gaara hid a twinge of amusement as he hacked his way across the animal’s stomach.

“Of course,” Nee-chan said belatedly.  Her sandals shuffled as she settled into a more comfortable position.

This was not the first time Gaara’s team had butchered an animal.  Sai moved around him, cracking open the pelvis and breastbone. Hinata pried windpipes and other tubes from the throat.  

Absently, Gaara reached for the wire Hinata handed him to tie off the entrails before hauling them out in one giant, sloppy mess.  They slid out easily for the most part, and when they did not, Gaara reached in with one arm, then his entire torso, to hack out the stubborn bits.  Even in the rapidly cooling air, the insides were still warm, and the intestines sank a little as the snow around them melted. He swiped at the blood splattered on his face and only succeeded in smearing it.

“Leave it.  I like it.”

Even with three of them working, an hour passed before they fully separated the pelt from the rest of the carcass.  

“Hey, hey!” Anyone could hear Naruto coming before they saw him.  Sometimes Gaara wondered how he’d managed to sneak out of Hi no Kuni without giving his entire group away. “Wow!  Did you guys kill this thing? That’s awesome!”

“We will show respect for the animals that give their lives so that we can eat,” San intoned pointedly, as Temari hefted the rolled pelt and Neji dragged the head towards the snow-hollow they kept their food in by its antlers.  “We do not call their sacrifice ‘awesome.’”

Predictably, Naruto was unperturbed.  “Oh, man, it’s so big! We could eat it for, like, a year!”

“Only if you want to starve, idiot,” Sasuke cut in.  The fur lining of his hood was dusted in snow, and his cheeks were flushed from the cold or perhaps exertion.  “A month, if that’s all we ate.”

“Ugh,” muttered Sakura.  “Remember when we ate only rabbit for weeks because that was the only thing we knew how to catch?”

Gaara made a face.  

“You may freeze some and salt-smoke-dry the rest,” said San.  “There is no need to eat all at once.”

“So, when’s dinner?” Naruto demanded, having clearly lost interest in San’s explanation halfway through.

Gaara sawed his way through a lower leg joint and tossed the severed limb behind him.

“Sai, Gaara, and Hinata are currently occupied.”  San paused and eyed the newly arrived team thoughtfully.  “Sai will give you some meat, and you will prepare dinner in their stead,” she decided.

“Hey!” Naruto sputtered indignantly.  

“We had dinner duty yesterday,” Sakura pointed out.  “We rotate.”

“Do you wish to eat tonight?” San leaned back into her wolf unconcernedly.  “I will not allow this team to stop until they have finished fishing this moose, and that may not happen until the moon is high.”

Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke exchanged glances.  “Fishing...the moose?” said Sakura hesitantly.

Hinata dropped another lower leg bone onto the ground.  “I-It’s a s-saying, about l-learning new s-skills,” she explained.

“Fishing the moose,” Naruto repeated, face screwed up in concentration.

“Just give us the meat,” muttered Sasuke.  “We’ll make dinner, whatever.”

“Hey, bastard, don’t you think that we should decide that as a team?” Naruto demanded.

“Do you want to eat?” his teammate fired back.  “Sakura agrees with me.”

Sakura shrugged when Naruto whipped around to glare at her accusingly.  “I want dinner.”

Sai slit the connective tissue off a bundle of muscle and tossed it at Naruto, who fumbled but caught it instinctively.

Taking apart an entire moose was hard work, made more difficult by their tools -- kunai and San’s bone knife.    

“Just use your teeth.  You have them for a reason, don’t you?”

Teeth were for eating.  Gaara wasn’t eating raw moose.

A snort.  “Who says you can’t?  It’s a delicacy. You have a little pointed tooth for tearing meat -- you should use it.”

Gaara considered the band of muscle he was working to pull free from the left flank.  Carefully, he leaned down and sank his teeth into the top of the muscle, braced against the bulk of the carcass, and jerked his head to the side, ripping it free.  

He unlocked his jaw and let the meat flop free.  He glanced up to see Hinata watching with wide eyes and Sai with an almost-frown.

“I scared her again,” Gaara complained.

An amused satisfaction.  “Well, you do have blood smeared all over your face.”

Gaara licked his lips absently, chasing the metallic taste with his tongue.

“That is not healthy for ningen ,” said San severely.  “Like elk, moose meat also has tiny animals that make you sick if you eat without freezing or cooking first.”

“You are not just ningen,” Gaara was reassured.  “I will burn out the bacteria and viruses.”

Reluctantly, Gaara reverted to his kunai.  He liked Hinata, but there was a difference between quiet and lets him do what he wants and silent and terrified and useless in the field .

“Dinner!” Sakura’s shrill yell cut through his concentration.  Gaara blinked up at the sky, now shot through with gold and grey.  

San caught his look but made no move to get up.  “You think you can eat when you are not even halfway through?  No, you will eat when you are finished.”

“That bitch!”  

Gaara flinched from the sudden onslaught of rage, but glowered at San nonetheless.  She regarded him with the same flat stare. “You will not disobey me on this. You are on narrow ice already.  Or did you think your sensei did not tell me what your team did?”

A snarl.  “She does not command us.  I demand her blood for her insolence!”

Gaara growled agreement, but caught a glimpse of Hinata’s pale face out of the corner of his eye.  “No,” he grumbled. “We don’t need to eat yet.”

“We’ll save some for you,” said Nee-chan, leaning down to ruffle his hair before heading back for the main camp with Neji.  

As the darkness encroached, Sai ringed the carcass with torches under San’s watchful eye.   But as the darkness grew stronger, so did the cold.

Gaara flipped the hood of his cloak up, leaving slimy fingerprints in the fur lining.  The meat froze beneath his fingers as he worked to pry it away muscle by muscle. Senses clogged by blood-scent, he didn’t notice Shisui-sensei’s arrival.  

“Shisui,” San greeted, and Gaara glanced up to see the teen settle next to her, his back not quite touching Yuuki.  He waved his fingers at Gaara in a salute.

“I see our little rulebreakers are hard at work,” he said to San, and Gaara scowled, stabbing viciously through tissue and tendon.  “I suppose it will free up Itachi to train his brother’s team while Zabuza’s still out.”

“I do not understand why you do not just starve them for a week or two,” returned San placidly.  “That is how I was raised.”

“Well, we’re trying to minimize the child endangerment here,” said Shisui-sensei.  “And I don’t think it’s as severe a punishment for wolves since humans eat two to three times a day while wolves eat like once a week.”

“Hm,” said San thoughtfully.  Yuuki chuffed a laugh. “So instead, you deprive them of fighting?”

“Well,” said Shisui-sensei.  “Yes?”

“It’s a stupid punishment.”  A resentful growl.

It was effective, though.  A month off of hunting duties was not worth a week of confinement.  Gaara would go for a rabbit next time and let the moose get away. He glared down at the meat in his hand and ripped it bodily away from the bone.  At least with a rabbit he wouldn’t be stripping it down six hours after the kill. He would be sitting in his nice, warm bunk, watching the others sleep.  

Beside him, Hinata hopped over the ribcage with an armload of meat.  The moose was mostly skeletal, now, clean white shining through the scraps of meat clinging stubbornly to bone.  

“Enough,” San announced.  “You may move the bones to the cold storage for the wolves.  We are finished here.” She stretched languidly and rose to make her way back towards the main hollow.  

“Good work with this,” said Shisui-sensei.  “Next time just stay in her territory, hm? I think Temari’s saved some meat for you, once you’ve washed up.”

Mmm.  Another reason why Nee-chan was his favorite.  

Day one of confinement was incredibly boring.  Naruto’s team took off with his sensei at dawn, leaving Gaara to glare impotently after them until Temari, on her way out with Neji and Shisui-sensei, ruffled his hair.  Gaara paced like a caged coyote, snarling impotently at the walls of the canyon.

Hinata, unperturbed, flowed through her katas around the ashy remains of the cooking fire and Sai, who sat with a cleaning cloth and his tanto.

“Come,” said Sai, at almost midmorning.  “We may as well spar in the training hollow.  Hinata?”

“Aa,” she agreed.  “I-It would be n-nice to d-do something p-productive.”  

Gaara whipped around, cloak billowing around him, and prowled through the narrow pass ahead of his team.  He could use a good fight, even if he couldn’t kill them.

“Could too kill them.”

“Taijutsu only,” said Sai after a pause.  “Testing Itachi-sensei’s rules at this time is unwise.”  

Ugh.  Gaara wrinkled his nose.  Fine, whatever. As long as he got to hit something.   He dropped his satchel of sand at the roots of a tree and whirled.  “Let’s go,” he growled impatiently.

“Begin,” said Sai, and turned neatly on his heel as Gaara lunged past.  Snow went flying in all directions as he landed in a crouch. Hinata darted into the fray, cloak whipping behind her.

Gaara may unquestionably be a predator, and Sai both fast and strong, but in terms of taijutsu, even without her kekkei-genkai, Hinata outclassed them both easily.

She caught Sai as he dodged, brushing aside his punch and landing an open-palm strike on his chest.  She pursued as he gave ground, only hopping backwards when he spun around in a kick.

Gaara charged before Sai could recover, swinging for his head, but Sai brought his arm up, barely in time to block, and ducked his follow-up.   Before Gaara could continue his offensive, his senses blared a warning, and he whipped around in time for Hinata’s hand to glance off his arm in a spray of sand.

“No sand,” Sai warned, even as he darted past after Hinata’s retreat.  “Thirty second timeout!”

Gaara bared his teeth.  “Stay down!” he growled impotently at his sand, pacing just out of range as Hinata and Sai exchanged blows, sending up sprays of snow.  

A snort.  “You can’t just turn off an automatic defense, no matter how badly your sensei wants you to.”

Gaara launched himself back into the battle with a roundhouse kick just as Hinata knocked Sai’s legs out from under him, forcing her to twist away.  She landed and struck in a single movement, lightning fast, and Gaara tripped backwards, rolling to his feet as Sai surged past. His jab was brushed aside with almost careless ease, and Hinata spun to land a kick on his unprotected side.  She ducked as Gaara pounced, and he sailed over her, twisting just enough that her hand just barely brushed his leg instead of landing a solid hit.

For a moment, the three eyed each other cautiously, chests heaving with exertion.  Sai shook the half-melted snow out of his hair.

Gaara charged.

Hinata’s eyes narrowed as she flipped neatly out of the way, but Sai was on her in a heartbeat with a spinning kick she blocked midair.  

Gaara lashed out as she landed, and although she twisted out of the way, it gave Sai the opening he needed to land a hit hard enough to shove her back a couple meters.

Gaara pounced after her, but was forced to veer out of the way when Sai launched a kick in his direction.

“Hey, pups!  Small ningen !”

Gaara flinched mid-lunge and skidded through the snow.  Sai aborted an aerial attack. Hinata whipped around fast enough to send snow slush flying.

Leaning atop Chie’s head, San eyed the trio with amusement.  “You have unfinished work,” she informed them. “You will have new clothes, but first you treat the pelt.”

The team blinked at each other bemusedly.

“The moose,” San prodded.  “The hide. Leather. Very simple.  Long process. Come along.”

“Very well,” said Sai.  “I suppose that since it will take a while, we should begin with the leather immediately -- ”

“Tools first,” corrected San.  “We will make tools from the bones.”

“Tools,” Sai amended.  “Then leather.”

Gaara scowled.  He wanted to keep trying to hit people.  

“Just hit them, then.  They’re not even paying attention.”

One moose could have twenty kilograms of antler.  Twenty kilograms of antler could make a lot of knives.  And hide scrapers. But mostly knives, because that’s what San liked, and Gaara was okay with that because he liked them too.

By the time the hide was soaking in brain, Gaara had the makings of two full tangs, and from the commotion in the main hollow, both teams were back.  

When his team wandered back in, there was a small upheaval of ninken, and at its center, the captain.   Naruto’s sensei skulked in the shadows, Haku by his side.

There was also Gaara’s sensei.

Gaara narrowed his eyes, not quite having forgiven him.

“Just kill him, already.”

Maybe not that annoyed with him, though, since he taught Gaara how to hit people.  

“Why do I even try with you?”

“Gaara!” Naruto beamed.  Most of them walked on top of the snow, since doing so with chakra was even easier than wall-walking, but Naruto hadn’t mastered even that and so slogged through the mess like a civilian.  “Your sensei is totally awesome! I mean, even though he’s Sasuke’s brother and Sasuke’s like, the worst -- ”

“Hey, watch it,” Sasuke snapped.

“ -- Itachi-sensei knows so much and he doesn’t make us run pointless laps like Zabuza-baka-sensei does -- ”

“Five laps, right now, for disrespect, Chikuwa!” aforementioned sensei hollered across the hollow.

“It’s Naruto!” the blond screeched even as he took off, leaving Gaara blinked bemusedly behind him.  

This also left Gaara with Sasuke.  The other boy jerked his head at the fire.  “Food?” he offered. “We made pigeon stew.”

“ -- and he helped me fix my taijutsu!  And he didn’t -- !” yelled Naruto as he thundered past.

“Aa,” said Gaara.  His stomach was hollow and his fingers half-frozen.  Stew would fix that.

A hand ruffled through his hair.  Gaara twisted around in time to see Temari-nee’s smile.  “Hey, otouto,” she greeted warmly. “How was your day.”

Gaara glanced at the bowl of soup, the half-finished bone knives in his holster, and Naruto still plowing his way through his laps.  “Acceptable,” he said.

She beamed back at him.  “That’s good,” she said cheerfully.  There was a smear of dirt on her cheek and melting snow in her hair and hood.

Gaara leaned into her, and wrapped in his cloak, let his attention drift.   

Gaara wasn’t entirely sure what happened.

It was day four of camp confinement.  Itachi-sensei had declared a three-on-one sparring match in the training hollow, but remaining infuriatingly out of reach the entire time and the roiling rage in the back of Gaara’s mind had swelled and swelled and --

On second thought, that was probably what caused it.  But in his defense, Gaara couldn’t really think, not when he was on his knees in the snow with both hands clamped around his head to ward off the thrum of agony and bloodlust.

Between the rasping of his own breath, he could hear Hinata murmuring something too quietly for him to hear.  He bared his teeth.

“Stand back,” he heard Itachi-sensei order.

A bolt of white-hot pain stabbed him through the temple, and he flinched.

“He dares mock us!  Kill him!”

The snarl echoed through his head, and for a moment, all he could hear was the throb of his own heart.  He clutched his ears futilely.

“Stop,” he growled, fighting down the wave of sand that swirled up around him.

“Gaara?” Itachi-sensei’s normally-calm voice sharpened.

Gaara opened his mouth to respond, but another jolt of pain whited out his vision and he let out a pained whine.

“Gaara,” Itachi-sensei repeated insistently.

“When Gaara loses control of his bloodlust, only a kill will stop the sand,” he heard Sai say urgently, as if from a distance.  “Generally, he -- ”

And the rest was drowned out by an enraged roar of, “I said, kill him !”

Gaara shrieked as the sand overwhelmed him, crawling over his body and enveloping his mind in a bloody mist.    

The panic vanished in an instant, replaced by an all-encompassing rage.   How dare this mortal, this ant to tell them what to do?  To think he could evade death at the hands of one like them?

Their mind was clear now.  Yes, only this mortal’s death would appease them now.

Gaara felt themself swell as the sand answered their call, slithering up from beneath the snow and dirt and raising them up and enveloping them in a snug armor.  They surveyed the area with golden eyes.

There was the one called Itachi, standing fearless before him, eyes spinning red and fierce.  Gaara would teach him fear.

The sand answered their call, slamming black-tipped claws through the shinobi, but as soon as the sand touched him he turned to shadows, winging away with hoarse cries.  Gaara snarled, whirling around.

But why did he want to kill Itachi-sensei anyways?  He liked Itachi-sensei.

No, they didn’t.  Itachi was a puny mortal with hateful eyes and Gaara would smash him into pulp when they caught him.  

A plume of fire blasted them from the side, but no mortal flame would penetrate their armor.  Gaara lashed their tail, but Itachi leapt, twisting gracefully out of the way of their sand, and launched a wave of kunai.  They clattered uselessly against the sand that rose to block them, but when they waved the sand away, Itachi was gone.

No matter.  The mortal could not outrun them forever.  And when they caught him, his blood would be sweet-salty -- they could smell it.  They licked their lips.

There!  Gaara shot out a claw, swiped it through the snow as the little shinobi darted about.  But again, he was too fast and flitted out of reach. A barrage of shuriken pinged off their shield like rain.

They whipped around and lunged, and a little tuft of silver-grey slipped out of reach.  Two of them! They launched spines of sand, peppering the snow, but Kakashi remained infuriatingly out of reach.  

“We have a seal,” said Kakashi, as Itachi appeared in a crouch at his side, and Gaara growled.  They hated seals! Hated, hated, hated!

But why did they hate seals?  Seals didn’t do anything to them.

“...developed for the incomplete Kyuubi, but should work well enough here,” Kakashi was saying.  

Not if Gaara killed them first!  They lashed out with a clawed paw, and the two little blurs scattered.  But when Gaara turned around, the shinobi had multiplied.

“That is one ugly motherfucker,” muttered Zabuza.  

Gaara was not ugly!  Gaara was beautiful and special.  Nee-chan said so.

Nee-chan?  Gaara paused thoughtfully.  Nee-chan wouldn’t want him to kill their sensei.

“What’s the plan here?” asked Shisui.

Gaara couldn’t let them make a plan!  They would lock Gaara away because they were afraid of them, and rightly so!  Gaara would crush them all into a pulp.

They slammed both paws into the ground, and from either side of the little huddle of shinobi a wave of sand erupted from the snow.  They darted away like little flies, and Gaara batted at them, snarling.

Something rammed into their back.  Gaara turned with a roar, flailing as Zabuza cursed and leapt away, leaving behind his sword.   Gaara flung it across the hollow, and Itachi ducked as it flew over his head.

The screaming of a thousand birds.  Gaara whipped around as Kakashi charged with a fistful of lightning.  Pathetic! Something so mundane could never touch --

Gaara shrieked as the shinobi crashed straight through their shield, and only a wild swipe with their tail forced Kakashi aside before his jutsu could do more damage than carve a wide gouge in their armor.

More sand.  They needed more sand!  The earth rumbled as the sand answered their call.   Gaara glared around the clearing. Zabuza and Itachi hovered at healthy distances, but Kakashi and Shisui huddled next to the river, muttering urgently.

Sitting out in the open so arrogantly!  That would not do. Gaara would have to kill them for that.  They shot out a clawed paw, and beneath the shinobi erupted a geyser of sand, boiling up from the snow.  They swatted at the little shadow that darted away and --

“Sorry about this, Gaara-kun,” said Shisui.

Gaara whipped around too late and Shisui slapped a paper seal on their forehead.

The world went dim and muted.  Gaara stared woozily at the blurry sky.  Little dots of snow fluttered down. One landed on his nose, and he went cross-eyed looking at it.  A chill wind blew the flaps of his cloak up, and he shivered.

“Gaara-kun?”  Shisui-sensei’s face swam into his field of vision, and Gaara blinked bemusedly up at him.  “How are you feeling?”

Gaara thought.  It was quiet -- almost too quiet.  There was no rumbling of bloodlust at the back of his mind, no omnipresent fury.   He swayed on his feet, and the familiar shifting at his feet prompted him to look down.  

He was standing on a veritable mountain of sand, far more than fit into his knapsack.  He shifted his feet, and the sand shifted as well.

Itachi-sensei, a slight frown darkening his face, stood at the base of the sand.  “Gaara.”

Gaara blinked at him owlishly.   A few paces behind Itachi-sensei was the captain, one eye shut as he scrutinized Gaara carefully.  And behind either of them, one hand resting on his sword hilt, Zabuza glowered.

He’d tried to kill them.  

Gaara took a step back, but wavered on his feet as the strength abruptly left his legs.  His control hadn’t slipped so badly since the ambush last year.

Shisui-sensei caught him by the shoulder with one hand.  He quirked a crooked smile at Gaara. “You're fine,” he said.  “How about we get you to your bunk, hm?”

Temari-nee met them halfway, eyes pinched as she crouched to his height.  “Gaara?”

“ ‘m fine,” he muttered.  

“He’s a little out of it,” Shisui-sensei said over his head.  “The seal cut off his connection to the Ichibi’s chakra pretty abruptly.”

Nee-chan’s hand brushed through his hair tentatively.  “Thanks, Shisui-sensei. I can take him,” she said to Shisui-sensei, and towed Gaara by the wrist.  Near to the fire, the Konoha kids watched as Gaara shuffled towards the sleeping quarters, tensed in a wary stillness.   Gaara turned away.

“What happened, Gaara?” Nee-chan asked quietly, when it was just the two of them sitting side by side in their top-bunks.  “You were doing so well.”

Gaara shrugged and wrapped his cloak around him more snugly.

“Have you been talking to it again?”

“No,” Gaara said defensively, curling his fingers into a loose fist.  

“Gaara.”  Temari-nee leveled him with a significant stare.

Gaara hunched in on himself.  “She always talks to me. I just tell her no, mostly,” he muttered.

Nee-chan exhaled with so much disappointment Gaara half-wanted to rend the sleeping quarters apart.  “We talked about this, Gaara,” she said. “Remember? After it made you kill Yashamaru-oji?”

Gaara bared his teeth, but it was half-hearted.  “Father made me kill Yashamaru-oji,” he retorted.

“Father may be the reason we left Suna, and Father may have sent Yashamaru-oji to test you and lie to you,” Temari-nee said gently, “but it was the demon that made you kill Yashamaru.”

Gaara glowered at the cave wall.  

Nee-chan nudged an elbow into his side.  “Remember when we met Naruto for the first time?”  she said with conspiratorial glint in her eyes. “This scruffy little kid with so much mud on him his skin was practically grey?”  

Gaara wrinkled his nose.  “He smelled gross,” he complained.

“But you let him touch you and grab you and drag you off to meet his friends,” countered Nee-chan.  “And you said the demon wanted you to kill him, and all of them, too.”

Gaara frowned.  “I wouldn’t,” he snapped.  “That would hurt Naruto and Hinata would be afraid of me again.”  She probably already was.

“Maybe,” allowed Temari-nee, “but you can’t let the demon win.  You almost killed your sensei today.”

Gaara’s hands clenched in the folds of his cloak.  “I know,” he said. “It won’t happen again. I won’t let it.”  

Nee-chan reached over to cradle the back of his neck with one hand and dropped a kiss on his forehead.  “I know,” she said fondly. “I love you; never forget that.”

Gaara leaned in, and together they watched the flickering fire outside as darkness fell.  

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT: D-29

Continued residence in [REDACTED].

All targets baseline status.  All allied combatants and noncombatants baseline status.

Operative Cat-15 experiencing sustained physical fatigue, mental stress, and depressed mood.  Mental status approaching critical.

Provisions acquired on biweekly basis.

Base established in [REDACTED].  Patrols conducted five times daily at variant times.  Sentry duties rotated between Operative Cat-15 and allied combatants.

Security status: low level risk due to civilian traffic in environment.

No contact with enemy combatants.

No contact with allied combatants.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

A Hatake without a pack is worse than lonely.  They spiral -- into depression, into obsession.  Kakashi knew this. It was a reason he’d sought out the other refugees after the Fall, a reason he kept at least two of his ninken with him when he travelled.  

Kakashi was dangerously close to not having a pack, but the only thing more dangerous to a Hatake than not having a pack was losing a pack.  And Kakashi was not so naive to think that he could keep a pack alive in the face of war.

Pressure on his forearm.  “Shiba,” he said, without looking down, “what did we say about biting me?”

The ninken unclenched his jaw and swished his tail mutinously.  “Don’t,” Shiba said mulishly. “But Pakkun said -- ”

“Pakkun needs to keep his nose out of other people’s business,” muttered Kakashi, rolling his eyes.

“He’s just worried about you,” Shiba said earnestly.  “He’s afraid you’ll go crazy because of what happened to your last pack -- ”

“Stop talking,” Akino warned, just as Kakashi growled, “ Thank you, Shiba.”

“Don’t you know when to keep your mouth shut?” Akino groaned, baring his teeth at the younger hound.  “Sorry about him, Kakashi.”

Shiba tilted his head apologetically, but Kakashi waved it away and took a drink from his canteen.  “Anything out there?”

“No,” said Akino.  “Urushi is making one last round, but it’s been all clear so far.  Should be a straight shot to the camp in Yu no Kuni.”

“Good,” said Kakashi.  “We leave in ten.”

When he travelled with only his ninken, Kakashi never bothered to unpack.  He hooked the canteen back onto his belt and spent the remaining minutes of respite picking bits of twig out of Shiba’s shaggy coat.

“You’re a ninken,” he muttered.  “This isn’t even your first life.  You’d think you’d learn to keep your own fur clean.”  

Shiba pinned his ears back.  “This is a swamp. Besides, maybe you should blame the older members of the pack for not teaching me,” he pointed out cheekily.

Kakashi tapped him warningly on the nose as Akino snapped his teeth half-heartedly in Shiba’s direction.  “Careful,” said Kakashi, amused. “The others will knock you down a peg if they hear.”

“This one will knock you down a peg as soon as we return to camp,” growled Akino, and Shiba widened his eyes in mock-fear.   

“Clear,” announced Urushi, prowling into the clearing.  “There are small clusters of shinobi to the south, but as long as we move quickly and discreetly we should slip straight past them.”

Kakashi tossed aside one last twig into the mud.  “Good. Urushi, take a break and catch up to us.  Akino, take point; I’ll watch rear until Urushi catches up.”

Urushi nodded gravely, and Akino disappeared into the marshland in a flash of white-brown-grey fur.   Kakashi leapt after him, stretching out his senses as far as they would go as he ran. The muted blurs of chakra of his ninken bobbed alongside him, and further out, a little group of unrefined chakra.  He inhaled, and even through the mask, he could scent the herd of deer scores of kilometers out.

A hundred kilometers flew under their feet before Shiba’s ears pricked and Akino’s swivelled.

“Kakashi,” Urushi growled from behind him.

“I know,” said Kakashi, glancing off to the side with a narrowed eye.  Three shinobi, closing fast on an intercept course. “Let’s move faster, hope they’re not out to get us specifically.”  

Their easy lope picked up into a dead run as they flew across the swampland, but even then, Kakashi heard the shinobi change course to pursue.

“Might have tripped something back there,” Akino muttered.  “All these factions running around Oto trying to kill each other.”  

“Hm,” Kakashi said consideringly.  “We’ll have to take care of this quickly.”

“And quietly?” asked Shiba doubtfully.      

“Of course quietly,” Akino growled.  “Kakashi?”

“Urushi and Akino, stay behind and flank them when they’re close,” Kakashi ordered.  “Shiba, with me.”

The two bigger ninken peeled off immediately, melting back into the shadows.  Kakashi slowed his pace almost imperceptibly, bounding from muddy island to muddy island.

Shiba barked sharply, and Kakashi dove, twisting off a patch of mud onto the surface of the murky water in a spray of droplets to avoid the barrage of kunai that hurtled through the space where he’d been.  In one smooth movement, he unsheathed his katana and slashed a second flurry out of the air, then twisted the blade sharply to slice the wire that was about halfway to encircling his torso. “I can smell you,” he murmured absently, landing in a ready crouch atop the water with his blade swept behind him.  

The first shinobi, built like a bruiser, crashed out of the bushes and charged, a well-used battleaxe halfway through a crushing swing.   He was promptly tackled out of the way by a snarling Akino, the blue-eyed ninken’s ruff bristling as he wrestled the attacker to the muddy ground.

“Shit!” the man yelped in an amusingly high-pitched voice, as Shiba sank sharp fangs into his dominant wrist and wrenched.

A piercing screech rent the air, far too loud and high pitched to be caused by natural means, and the ninken let go with pained whines, leaping free.  Kakashi gritted his teeth. “Kai,” he snapped, sending his chakra out in a small, controlled burst.

A second shinobi slunk out of the marsh with a snicker as his companion hauled himself upright unsteadily, clutching at his mangled hand.  “It’s not a genjutsu,” he explained smugly. “It’s a ninjutsu. And you can’t stop it.”

Another shriek.  Kakashi jerked his head to the side involuntarily as it hammered into his ears.  Urushi bared his teeth, ears flat against his skull, as Shiba whimpered, crouching lower to the ground.  

The shinobi Akino had mauled lunged at Kakashi, and again, Shiba darted forward in a flash, bringing him down by the ankle.  Akino sprang as well, intercepting the man’s other arm before he could bring his axe down.

Kakashi pounced at the other shinobi, who whipped out a kunai from either sleeve and hurled them at him.  He deflected both off his blade, and gave chase.

A third screech.  Kakashi clamped both hands over his ears, giving ground rapidly, and both Akino and Shiba tumbled away from their target in a flurry of muddy fur, ears flattened.

Kakashi’s opponent seized the opening and pounced, pinning Kakashi against a gnarled tree.  Kakashi dropped his sword, grabbing the man’s wrists with both hands as the other shinobi bore down with a pair of kunai.

The screech cut off abruptly with an audible crunch.  Both Oto shinobi flinched, whipping around with wide eyes.

“Maa,” said Kakashi faux-sympathetically.  “Urushi has a bit of a short temper. Sounds like you might need a new ninjutsu expert.”

Kakashi’s opponent turned back around with a sneer, increasing the pressure until his blades were practically touching Kakashi’s throat. “So, what clan are you?” The man mused conversationally, narrowing cold eyes.  “You’re about to join my teammate in hell, and I need to know what name to add to my kill list. Inuhara? Inutama?”

“Hatake, actually,” Kakashi said, tilting his head up, and had the pleasure of watching the blood drain from the shinobi’s face as he opened his eye.

“Kakashi,” said Shiba conversationally, “do you maybe think you’re getting a little too well-known?”

Kakashi dropped the body with a thump.  “I’m in pretty much every bingo book printed since I was ten,” he pointed out.  “Konoha made sure I would be well known. That’s why I wear this.” He tapped the battered porcelain of his full-face mask.  

“No, but like -- ”  He prodded the mangled body of the shinobi he and Akino had taken down with a mud-splattered paw.  “These guys were chuunin level, probably, and as soon as he heard your name he tried to run.”

Kakashi shrugged.  “The rest of his team was already dead.  He just wanted to cut his losses.”

Urushi dragged the limp body of the third from the bushes and dropped it, baring bloody teeth.  “Shiba, clean up the trail, would you?” he rasped, jerking his head back to where he’d come from.  “My ears are still ringing.”

“I hate Oto,” Shiba complained, but went.  

Kakashi spat a flame that set the bodies alight despite the damp seeping in from the bog.  “Keep watch, Akino,” he ordered absently, wiping down his katana. “If their faction comes looking for them before we’re out of here, we’re in trouble.”

The ninken growled agreement, slinking back into the marsh as the fire ate away the corpses into ash.  With a perfunctory douton, Kakashi buried what remained.

“Let’s go,” he called, and his ninken darted out of the shadows and onwards.

They crossed the border without incident, and about fifty kilometers inside the border, Kakashi angled them south.  Swamp-slush thankfully morphed into solid ground, damp and pocketmarked from hail or hard rain. He picked up the pace and angled for the hills.

Just after dawn, he slowed to a stop at a narrow valley nestled in the hills.  At the far end, hidden in a grove of low-growing trees, was a little hamlet.

Mist clung to the outside of his mask and collected in the eyeholes.  “Let’s take this slow, boys,” he murmured. “Shiba, advance. Urushi, sweep behind us.  Akino, sentry.”

An hour-long sweep revealed no followers.  Ninken at his heels, Kakashi approached the settlement, exchanging a nod with the sentry crouched in one of the larger trees.

At a small house no different than the ones around it, Kakashi tapped lightly on the door.  After a moment’s pause, it swung open.

“Oh,” she said, biting at her lip absently.  “I’m sorry -- she’s not having a good day.”

“I’d like to see her anyways, if that’s alright,” said Kakashi, hooking his mask to his belt.  Shiba wiggled past his legs and nosed up to her, tail wagging madly. “Maa,” Kakashi admonished, and the excitable ninken backed up a step.  

“It’s fine,” she reassured.  “I can get them something to eat and drink while you’re in there.”

“Thank you,” said Kakashi, and watched as all three ninken filed after her into the kitchen.  He glanced down at his pants, lightly flecked with mud, then shrugged mentally before knocking on the bedroom door.  There was no answer, but he hadn’t been expecting one.

He let himself in and shut the door behind him.  The room was dim and still. Faint shadows yawned from the far corners, and a slight chill emanated from the open window.  A tray with a bowl of rice, a plate of fish, and a bowl of soup gone cold sat on the bedside table. The sheets on the bed were folded in with clean, sharp corners, but the room’s sole occupant sat hunched and motionless in a worn armchair carefully angled towards the window.  

“Hime,” said Kakashi, but Tsunade did not so much as twitch.  

Kakashi stepped over carefully until he was standing next to her, in front of the window.  “I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that the kids are doing well,” he said quietly. “They’re learning so quickly.  Well -- Naruto’s almost got the hang of walking on top of the snow, but he seems to find tree-walking easier. He’s going to be a bulldozer on the battlefield.”

He glanced over, but Tsunade’s vacant stare still fixated on something far beyond what was outside her window.  “Gaara had a little incident last week,” he admitted. “He lost control of the Ichibi. We used the experimental seal for the Kyuubi on him, and it worked, but his control over his sand is improving.   He's been confined to camp for the past week and a half, so he's going a little stir-crazy.”

He paused to push back his hood and slide down the bandana that covered his hair to hang around his neck.  “Shisui has good things to say about Temari -- that's the Kazekage’s girl -- and Momochi’s little Hyoton user is faster than ever.  The Hyuuga heiress is growing up well too; Hiashi-sama should be proud. You should see her fight, Hime -- she's not the best fighter, but she has grace and resolve.  And the civilian girl is a little spitfire. She's got both the boys under her thumb, and her chakra control is prodigious.”

But Tsunade sat, blinking but unseeing, until the sun’s rays streamed brightly into the window and Kakashi ran out of words.   He sighed, soft and tired. “I'll see you later, Tsunade-hime,” he said quietly, and took the untouched food tray with him as he left.

Shizune had evidently not only fed and watered his ninken, she'd given them baths.  Shiba’s silky coat was again clean and golden, and his underside snowy white, as were Akino’s paws.  The mud was out of Urushi’s coat, and the wolflike ninken curled in a loose circle around Tonton, with one massive paw under the pig’s chin.  Shiba, unsurprisingly, was sprawled shamelessly on his back as Shizune ran her fingers through his fur with one hand, most of her attention on the book in her hand.  She glanced up as Kakashi emerged.

Kakashi shook his head, and Shizune’s face fell -- though she covered it as best she could.   She sighed. “She woke up all right this morning, but when I went to grab her breakfast -- ” she broke off, pressing her lips together.

“Any progress on a cure?” Kakashi asked, settling on the couch.  Akino shifted to give him more room, resting his jaw on his leg. Kakashi brushed a hand over the ninken’s head absentmindedly.

“Exposure therapy may have worked on her hemophobia, but post traumatic stress disorder, depression, schizophrenia -- these aren't things that can just be cured,” Shizune said, frowning.  “They're diseases and disorders of the mind, and the brain is incredibly complex and delicate. At best we can work on treatments, but the only iryo-nin qualified enough to perform such operations is, well -- ” she gestured at Tsunade’s bedroom, “ -- her.”

Kakashi exhaled.

“I made lunch,” offered Shizune.  “The commander will want to see you, I think.”

“Aa,” Kakashi acquiesced with a nod.  “I’ll drop in on him after. Thank you.”

As his pack third -- after Pakkun -- Akino padded at his side when Kakashi ducked out of Shizune and Tsunade’s house after a simple, homemade meal.  “Slug-witch-princess is not a strong leader like this,” the hound warned. “A pack will not follow her unless she is strong.”

“Human speech while we’re here, Akino,” Kakashi reminded absently.  “Tsunade-hime’s strength is recognized everywhere in the Elemental Lands.  And she is improving -- her catatonia doesn’t last more than a day. She’ll be ready for the meeting tomorrow.”

Akino tilted his head to eye Kakashi.  “You heard Poison-night-springs -- ”

“Shizune.”

“ -- there is no cure.  Are you sure you’re not clinging to the woman she used to be?”

Kakashi narrowed his eye at Akino until the ninken looked away.  “I’m sure. And human speech, I said.” He came to a stop outside yet another identical house and rapped on the door.  “Commander,” he greeted dryly when it swung open.

Shikaku rolled his eyes.  “Commander,” he drawled. “Akino.”  He held the door open as they filed in.  

The inside of the house was simultaneously sparse and cluttered.  Little piles of books and weapons were stacked haphazardly on shelves and chairs, but the floors and other furniture were bare.  The dining table -- generally empty in Tsunade’s house -- was dominated by a large map with little colored pebbles scattered along its surface.  

Kakashi scooted a stack of books off a chair so Akino could jump up and scrutinize the map, bracing his front paws delicately at the table's edge.  “Any big changes?”

Shikaku let out a short sigh, scrubbing a hand over the top of his head.  “You mean apart from the doomsday parley with the Bloody Mist insurgents? No.  Konoha and Kumo are still doing their back-and-forth, but nothing serious yet -- last week, a Kumo team chased a Konoha team through half of Yu no Kuni a two hundred and thirty meters southwest, but they were both moving fast and by all appearances focused on each other.  We have rumors Kumo will try to make an incursion through Nami, since the other option is marching an army overland through two minor countries, but that would have to wait until the ice melts.”

“No,” Kakashi said absently.  “A wouldn’t trust his shinobi to a wooden ship.  Subtlety is not his strong suit, not when hostilities have dragged out for over two years.”

“Exactly,” Shikaku agreed.  “The position of this base is becoming precarious.  Both sides will begin sending scouts, if they haven’t begun already.”

Kakashi grimaced.  “If the meeting goes well, it’s this or mobilizing to Uzushio.  We don’t have a lot of options.”

“If we mobilize, there’s only Uzushio,” the older shinobi countered.  “That kind of activity won’t go unnoticed if Konoha and Kumo escalate.”

“You need to think about Kiri too,” Akino pointed out gruffly, the syllables falling awkwardly from his mouth.  

Kakashi rubbed his chin absently.  “If this is going to work, then the insurgents need control of the Yu-Uzushio strait.  Right now, Kirigakure doesn’t have the manpower to crush a significant shinobi force on that island.”     

“Well, we’ll figure that out tomorrow,” grumbled Shikaku, glaring at the table with folded arms.  “Any news from the recruiting effort?”

“Momochi pulled a couple of chuunin out of a tight spot in Kawa.  Both of them are in the Konoha bingo book; apparently they defected two months ago, and Konoha sent a hunter-nin squad after them,” said Kakashi.  “He dropped them in with a cluster in Kusa, and we’re pretty sure they’ll join up.”

“Okay,” Shikaku muttered, tugging a book out of the stack Kakashi had relocated.  “We’ll add them to the tally. Type?”

“One taijutsu and weapons specialist, one genjutsu specialist,” answered Kakashi.  He hesitated. “And...add eight genin to the count.”

Shikaku’s pen stopped moving.

Akino dropped both paws from the edge of the table.

“Kakashi,” said Shikaku disapprovingly.  “Don’t tell me these are the Lost Four and company.”

“Well,” Kakashi hedged.  “Technically, we only have three of them since Cat-15 and Hyuuga Hanabi are still in the wind -- ”

Shikaku slapped a hand over his face and sighed heavily.  “They’re barely trained. There’s no need to throw them into the first war that comes along.”   

“So we keep them out of the fighting,” Kakashi argued.  “Support only. You know we need the numbers to pull this off.”

“You can’t guarantee the fighting won’t reach them,” Shikaku warned, but went back to scratching in his book.  “Seventeen percent of C-ranked missions escalate to genin fatalities, and that’s during peacetime.”

“I would say two of the teams are easily genin-level already,” mused Kakashi, tapping his fingers over his cloth mask.  “They lack experience, but I’m confident they’ll be able to defend themselves well.”

“We would still have to pull a jounin or two off the front lines to guard them.”  Shikaku frowned. “But that would only heighten suspicion; if their identities are discovered, we lose a tactical advantage.”   

“My team will rotate as necessary,” Kakashi offered.  “And Shisui won’t be on the front lines, in any case.”

Shikaku eyed him knowingly.  “Does Shisui know this?”

Kakashi grimaced.  “Shisui hasn’t been active in the field since two years before the Fall, not since Orochimaru kidnapped him.  His recovery’s been long, but he’s still not back to a hundred percent.”

“He’ll never be a hundred percent,” Shikaku pointed out reasonably.  “He’s missing an eye. But if he’s battle-ready, his talents are invaluable.”  

“He’s ready,” Akino rasped suddenly.  “The rest of the pack has seen him train.  His mind is all that is holding him back.”

“That could get him killed during a mission,”  argued Kakashi. “War is back-to-back action. We can’t put him through that kind of strain right away.”

Shikaku grunted.  “Fine, we’ll keep him on the Lost Four guard for now,” he agreed reluctantly.  “I don’t know that we could spare you or Itachi to it anyways.” He scribbled absently in his book.  “What about Momochi? He ready to come clean?”

Kakashi snorted.  “He better be,” he said.  “He can’t hide his association with Hana-ha forever if we ally with the Mist insurgents.”   

“You would think it would benefit us, bringing Momochi to the bargaining table,” Shikaku muttered distractedly, “since his information allowed us to make contact.  What is he hiding? Or, what is he hiding from? So troublesome.”

“I do trust him,” Kakashi said mildly.  

“I know.”  Shikaku waved a hand distractedly.  “Just thinking. Have you heard back from Operative 31?”

Kakashi glanced at Akino, who shook his head.  He frowned. “I’ll have Itachi send a crow, but slipping into Konoha unnoticed takes time.”

“Keep me updated,” said Shikaku, and made one last note in his book before setting it down.  He sighed, surveying the map with crossed arms. “That’s it for today, I guess. Sake?”

“Sake,” Kakashi agreed, and ignored Akino’s disapproving blue glare.

Sometime before dawn, a cold ninken nose bumping Kakashi’s hand woke him from a light doze.  He blinked up at Urushi, who leaned over him and his bedroll.

The big ninken snorted.  “Akino is on watch,” he informed Kakashi gruffly. “...you smell.”

Kakashi grunted and went to borrow Shikaku’s shower.  

As the water soaked through his hair, Kakashi scrubbed futilely at his battered mask.  It hadn’t been his, in Anbu -- he’d stolen it right off the face of one of his pursuers in the first few months after the Fall, so it was one of the generic cat-faces.  Now, it was scratched and blood-stained, the paint over the right eye scorched almost completely off by a katon he hadn’t dodged in time.

He shut the water off and slipped into his old Anbu blacks, faded enough that the stains splattered over the fabric were beginning to show.  He strapped on the vambraces, years beyond when they should have been retired and recycled. He didn’t look in the mirror; he already knew he would see.

Shikaku gave him a critical once-over as he exited the bathroom.  “You look like shit,” he offered charitably.

Kakashi hooked the porcelain mask to his belt and eyed the older shinobi’s worn jounin commander flak vest.  “Look who’s talking,” he retorted. “You look like you lost a fight with a squirrel.”

Shikaku rolled his eyes and tossed a bundle of grey-white fabric at him.  “If all goes to plan, we’ll have a bigger budget for equipment after today.”  

“You mean a budget?” said Kakashi dryly, slinging the cloak over his shoulders. “Let’s go.”

Simple as the houses in the village of Kiso-cho in Yu no Kuni may be, they had, as expected of a ninja village, excellent soundproofing.  This meant that Kakashi and Shikaku heard nothing right up until they opened the front door to Tsunade’s house and were greeted by Tsunade’s deafening roar of, “Shizune!” followed by the harried jounin herself sprinting past the doorway, a bundle of green cloth in her arms.

Shikaku winced, shutting the door behind Urushi.  The ninken slunk to the unhappy huddle of Shiba, Akino, and Tonton in the corner, and Kakashi regretted he could not join them.     

“Ah,” said Kakashi, “maybe the ninken and I could scout out -- ”

Shikaku snagged the back of his cloak before he could make his getaway.  “I suffer, you suffer,” he hissed, narrowing his eyes at Kakashi.

Tsunade stormed out of her room, her haori now flying around her.  Though her cheekbones stood out sharply on her face, she looked healthy and vibrant, nothing like the silent husk of the day before.  “Hatake!” she bellowed, and Kakashi felt himself snap to attention. “Updates; the short version.”

“An additional two chuunin and eight genin added to the roster,” Kakashi reported.  

Tsunade stopped short.  “Eight genin?” she demanded, levelling him with a severe glare.  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Kakashi suppressed the urge to wince.  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

She snorted.  “Fine,” she snapped, whirling.  “Shikaku, put that cloak on. Shizune!  My pig!”

The meeting point was not a hundred kilometers to the east -- an easy run.  Kakashi inhaled, letting the scents around him wash over him.

The tiny farmstead -- long abandoned -- sat at the center of overgrown fields.  From the lip of the valley, just beyond the fringe of trees, Tsunade surveyed the rendezvous with hands on her hips.  “Shiranui,” she barked.

Genma dropped lightly out of the tree beside the squad.  “No sign,” he said. “It’s clear.”

“Good,” said Tsunade.  “Shizune, Tonton stay back with the guards.  Hatake, Nara, with me. Assorted ninken -- ” Shiba perked up, wagging his tail eagerly as Tsunade pursed her lips.  “ -- on guard. Hatake?”

“Shiba, in the treeline.  Akino and Urushi, in the fields,” Kakashi directed.

Tsunade jerked her head, and the three advanced to the house.

Its walls were built to last -- white stone worn down by the elements -- but the frame and roof were wooden, half rotten away.  Kakashi followed as Tsunade stepped uncaringly past the dirt and debris littered on the floor and sat down at the dilapidated table.  With a glance at Shikaku, Kakashi took up position at her shoulder, the older shinobi at her other side.

Shiba’s chakra pulsed once.  None of them moved.

The door opened.  A figure entered, a blue-grey cloak draped over their shoulders, and like Kakashi and Shikaku, a hood over their head and a porcelain mask over their face.  This was quickly followed by a second figure with a slighter build. The first tilted their head, and the third figure stepped delicately through the doorway.  

“Mei,” Tsunade greeted curtly.  “You look good.”

“Tsunade-sama, a pleasure as always,” Mei purred, stalking gracefully to the table.  Her bodyguards ghosted up to take their posts behind her as she lowered herself carefully into the chair.  “Now -- we have considered your proposal. Have you any adjustments to make before we finalize the alliance?”

“We’ll raise our total by two chuunin and eight genin,” Tsunade responded smoothly.

One delicate eyebrow rose.  “Eight genin? My, I hope they know how to water-walk.”  Mei folded her hands delicately. “Very well. We will match you shinobi for shinobi, three for every two who falls in battle.  A war for a war.”

For a brief moment, Tsunade was silent.  “A war for a war,” she agreed gravely, and reached across the table to shake Mei’s hand.  

Kakashi slid a scroll and brush out of his sleeve, handing the contract over for both to sign.  Tsunade scribbled her signature perfunctorily, but Mei took long minutes to scrutinize the document before signing, which she did with a flourish.  Tsunade passed the scroll back over her shoulder to Kakashi, who slipped it back up his sleeve.

“Now,” Mei said brightly.  “Perhaps we could dispense with the formalities and the secrecy, now that we’re officially allies?”

Tsunade snorted.  “After you,” she shot back.

“But of course.”  Mei snapped her fingers at her two guards.

They unsubtly exchanged uncertain glances, but obediently threw back their hoods.  The slight figure took off their mask first, revealing the face of a young woman with hard eyes.  The other hesitated just long enough for Mei to level him with a glare before taking off his mask.

Beneath his own mask, Kakashi’s eyes narrowed.

“Fukaya Maiko, former Anbu captain,” Mei announced, “and my second, Senzaki Ao, former hunter-nin.”

Tsunade’s hand tightened into a loose fist.  “You have a lot of nerve,” she growled, “bringing him to a meeting with Konoha shinobi.”

“But you are not Konoha shinobi,” Mei pointed out, still draped in her chair with languid grace.  “You’re Hanabi-ha, and Ao is not only my right-hand man, but my best sensor.”

“We are Konoha,” Tsunade snapped.  “And we do not appreciate that this man has stolen the eye out of a dead comrade’s head.”

“Your comrade should appreciate that we are shinobi,” Mei shot back, “and as shinobi, our alliances change.”

For a few tense seconds, both women glared at each other with killing intent held just barely at bay, and chakra crackling just under their skin.  Kakashi shifted his weight subtly, but after a moment, they both relaxed. Tsunade glanced over her shoulder and waved a hand at them.

Kakashi grimaced and took off the Anbu mask, sweeping back his hood in one movement.  With a little more satisfaction than was probably considered decent, he took in the widened eyes of all three Kiri insurgents.  

“My second, Hatake Kakashi, former Anbu captain and commander,” Tsunade drawled with just a hint of smugness, “and Nara Shikaku, former jounin commander.”

“Reiketsu Kakashi,” Mei purred at last, rolling his name in her mouth.  “Cold-blooded Kakashi. Wanted for collusion with Kumogakure in the assassination of the Sandaime Hokage, and Nara Shikaku -- ”

“Framed,” Kakashi interrupted, and ignored the way Ao stiffened across from him -- likely for his perceived disrespect.  

Mei hummed.  “Konoha must really be doing something wrong,” she mused, tapping long fingers against the splintering surface of the table, “to drive away not only all three of her Sannin, but her Anbu commander and her jounin commander.”

Tsunade huffed.  “No kidding,” she muttered bitterly.  “Their identities -- and those of all under my command -- do not leave this room,” she warned.  “Danzo cannot know of our involvement.”

Ao and Maiko exchanged glances, but Mei merely nodded.  “Anything else on the agenda, or…?”

“No,” said Tsunade.  “We’re done for today.”

The corners of Mei’s lips curled in a smile, and her eyes lingered just a little longer on Kakashi’s half-masked face.  “We will be in touch, for the logistics,” she promised, and with a swish of her battle dress, swept over the debris and out the door.  Ao trailed her out, and with a last grim glance at the Hana-ha shinobi, Maiko did as well.

After a moment, Shiba’s chakra pulsed once.

“Shikaku!  Tell me we're working on logistics,” Tsunade snapped as she pushed back her chair and made a beeline for the door.

“We are, Tsunade-sama,” Shikaku answered hurriedly.  “We've made lists of equipment we need to procure, including weapons and war rations.  We're making arrangements to translocate the main Yu bases further south until we have confirmation of a secure channel to Uzushio, and then whichever islands the Kiri insurgents hold.  We're working on the timeline to the first major assault in six months, as outlined in the treaty.”

“Good,” said Tsunade, and narrowed her eyes at Kakashi as Urushi and Akino emerged from the brush to flank them through the rest of the fields.  “You get that, Hatake? Six months to get those genin of yours good at water-walking.”

“They'll be ready,” Kakashi confirmed.  Kami, he hoped they'd be ready.

“Did you say genin?” Genma dropped out of a tree, senbon protruding from beneath his own mask.  “Kakashi, are you making mini-me’s?”

Shikaku shuddered.

“I’m not the one training them,” Kakashi defended.  “Kami knows I’d do a shit job of it.”

“I don’t know, Genma drawled.  “Itachi’s still ticking, isn’t he?”

“Itachi is doing that himself,” he retorted.

“Uchiha Itachi is probably not the benchmark for mental health,” Shikaku muttered.

“Are you done gossiping?” Tsunade demanded, effectively putting an end to their hushed conversation.  “Where’s Tatami?”

“Forward scouting, ma’am,” Genma reported smartly as they came up to the lip of the valley.  “He’ll meet us back at base camp.”

Shizune, Tonton clutched in her arms and Shiba at her heels, met them at the treeline.  “How did it go?” she asked, squeezing Tonton until the little pig squeaked in protest.

“We have an alliance,” Tsunade said with a sigh.  “Kami help us all.”

The low-grade chaos of Kakashi’s Tetsu base camp was as great a contrast to the near-silence of the Yu base camp as a typhoon was to a mist.  

Perched in a tree overlooking the camp training hollow with Bisuke half-curled in his lap, Kakashi watched Shisui run his team through its paces.

Shisui’s favorite exercise by far involved sprinting across a circle denoted by numbered points -- a drill he’d unsurprisingly either passed along or forced onto his students.  

Three blurs zigzagged their way across the circle -- one clockwise, two counterclockwise -- intersecting in each other’s paths easily.  Kakashi shifted his headband up, opening Obito’s eye in time to watch Temari execute a neat flip to avoid Neji, who slid under her, before continuing to tag the marker on the edge of the circle and whirl to sprint for the opposite side once again.  

“Watch it!” Neji snapped, swerving sharply to avoid a three-person collision.

“Watch yourself!” Temari fired back, already on the opposite side of the circle.  

In the same amount of time, Haku had sprinted the full length twice.

“Come on, kids!” Shisui called gleefully.  “Are you just going to let Haku-kun smoke you like that?”

Perhaps that was a signal or a reminder, because in the next moment, Neji hurled three kunai at Haku, one after the other, but the other boy was far too fast, and Temari deflected the last away from her before hurling her own.  Haku brought up a fistful of senbon, and the kunai ricocheted at Neji, who twisted out of the way and directly into Temari’s path.

The older girl responded by grabbing him by the shoulder and throwing him bodily into Haku, knocking them both to the edge of the makeshift arena as she zipped past.  

Haku recovered his feet first, tripping Temari neatly, before Neji forced her to roll to the side with a hurled shuriken as he darted away.

“Time!” announced Shisui, clapping his hands, and the three blurs realized back into shinobi children. “And that’s 214 to 184 to 179.”  Shisui shook his head. “You gotta stop letting Haku-kun play you like this,” he admonished when Temari huffed a disappointed sigh.

“Neither of us will suddenly become faster than Haku,” Neji pointed out, crossing his arms.

“No,” agreed Shisui, “but even though this is mostly a speed and agility drill, you can’t forget about strategy.  If you and Temari-chan had worked together to block Haku-kun more instead of each other, he wouldn’t have gotten so far ahead of you two.”  He surveyed his charges. “Let’s take a ten minute break and move on to individual training,” he decided.

“Are you spying?”

Kakashi covered Obito’s eye and glanced behind him.  “Observing,” he corrected, as Bisuke flopped his head over to blink sleepy eyes at the newcomer.

“From a distance.  Covertly,” noted San dryly, sliding off Yuuki’s back.  “I do not understand why you do not view from closer.”

“That’s not necessary,” said Kakashi, subtly nudging Bisuke back onto his lap as the ninken began to slide off.

“They are pack, are they not?” San wandered to the edge of the cliff, peering down at the team.  Yuuki nosed up alongside her, settling with a sigh in the snow.

“No.  Drop it, San,” Kakashi said gruffly.  Itachi and Shisui, and even Zabuza, would have backed down, but San was not raised military the way the rest of them were.  

“My mother told me,” San said placidly, a non-sequitur, “that long ago, in this forest, lived a clan of men and wolves.”

“Izuhara Miyoko?” Kakashi asked cautiously.

“No,” said San.  “My wolf-mother.”  She carded a hand through her wolf’s fur.  “They were beloved by my mother, fierce in their battles and fierce in their bonds.  But eventually they grew tired of bloodletting and left the forest for the plains of the west.  Instead of warriors, the ningen became farmers of the land, and though they were no longer True wolves, their companions remained wolves in spirit.

“As the years passed, old enemies discovered where they had gone and sought retribution for past grievances.  Many years had flown by and the men had hidden away their weapons and forgotten how to fight. But their wolves had not.  The loyal wolves defended their companions until they could rally against their foes. The enemy was driven off, but the cost was high and paid in blood.  

“At the end of the day, there were no more Hatake wolves.  Only Hatake ningen .”

Absently, Kakashi felt a hot moisture seeping into the bandana covering Obito’s eye, and wondered when he’d realized who this story had been about.

“The ningen mourned their brave companions,” San continued quietly.  “They would not accept their deaths, and so followed them into the spirit lands.  Moved by their devotion, the shinigami decreed that if they so wished, the wolves may bind themselves to a single ningen who could call them back into a mortal body with a blood sacrifice.  However, some of the wolves and ningen wished not to fight any longer and longed for the peace brought by the spirit lands, and beyond, the Pure Lands.  And so half the ningen stayed in the spirit lands with their wolves, and half the wolves returned to the mortal realm with their ningen .

“The clan left their farms.  They were not destined to be farmers, and that land was cursed to them.  The name Hatake became one feared and respected among men.

“And when a Hatake child comes of age,” she began.

“He walks the spirit lands to find a wolf-spirited who died an unjust death,” Kakashi murmured.  “He spills blood in recognition of the blood spilled for him and finds a pack to which he will bind himself.”

“Your clan strayed far, but never from its roots.”  San smiled softly. “And now you’ve come home. Can you feel it?” She turned her face up towards the sky.  “This land is where your ancestors roamed. And now, here, you bear the favor of my wolf-mother.”

Kakashi honestly didn’t feel anything special about the woods, other than the fact that it had successfully harbored them and assorted loud shinobi children for the past four months, and he certainly had never met San’s elusive wolf-mother, let alone felt whatever her favor was supposed to be.

“A Hatake is only strong with a pack,” San said reproachfully.  “Your wolves are not enough. You are a ningen , so you must have a ningen pack.”

“And you?” Kakashi challenged.  “Where’s your ningen pack?”

San eyed him, amused.  “You are my ningen pack,” she said simply.  “You have been since you saved my life seven years ago.  And I am wolf enough to not need more.”

Part of Kakashi complained that this was cheating. “Hm,” he said noncommittally.

“The ningen pups are already your pack,” San said severely.  “You should not remain so distant.”

“ Thank you, San,” Kakashi growled, narrowing his eyes, and thankfully, this time, she got the hint.  

She sniffed.  “I am going to make clothes for your pups now,” she said haughtily, “since they brought in a nice moose pelt.  You should stop hitting at the plants and make sure they know that they are your pack.”

Bemused, he watched her vanish back through the snow with a swish of Yuuki’s bushy tail.  

“...hitting at the plants?” Bisuke asked doubtfully.

“She means beating around the bush,” Kakashi sighed.  “She thinks I’m avoiding the pups.”

The hound blinked lethargically up at him.  “Are you?”

“No,” denied Kakashi indignantly.

“Right,” said Bisuke knowingly.  “That’s why you’re watching them train from all the way up here, and why you stalk them while they’re hunting but vanish once they’re back to base camp, and -- ”

“All right ,” Kakashi growled.  “I don’t have time to train them.  I’m out running missions or at HQ more often than I am back here, and they don’t know me well anyways.  The rest of the team has it handled; I don’t need any more distractions.”

“Mhmm,” Bisuke hummed sleepily.  

Kakashi was fairly certain that his father had never had to deal with insolence on this scale.  No, his father’s pack had been the most wolfish since, apparently, the Hatake pack ninken were actual wolves.  “All right, time to go,” he grunted, scooping the ninken up and onto his shoulder.

“Where?” Bisuke squirmed around to get a better view.  

“To oversee Shisui training his team,” muttered Kakashi.  

For his part, Shisui did not look especially surprised to see him padding into the training hollow.  “Taichou,” he greeted cheerfully, Sharingan spinning merrily in his uncovered eye. “Come get a closer look.”

“Aa,” answered Kakashi, shoving his hands in his pockets and straightening his spine.

Nearest to them, Neji matched Shisui’s clone strike for strike, tanto against tanto.  Just past him, Haku sat in the snow, legs folded neatly beneath him and one hand up in a seal as ice coalesced into blades in the air before him.   At the far end of the hollow, Temari sent a massive, crescent-shaped fuuton blade at the side of the mountain.

In a village, this team would more than be ready for entry in the Chuunin Exams.  Perhaps not for promotion, but as strong competitors nonetheless.

“Team meeting later,” he informed Shisui, even as his eyes tracked Haku’s projectiles, “but Tsunade-hime sealed the alliance with Terumi Mei yesterday morning.”

Shisui let out a low whistle.  “This is crazy. This is actually, seriously insane,” he said.  “Who the hell goes, ‘wow, we don’t have enough shinobi, why don’t we mercenary ourselves out in exchange for more?’”

“There was more strategy involved than that,” Kakashi pointed out dryly.  

“It’s all pretty dependent on Terumi actually fulfilling her side of the deal and not going, hey, I like having these Hana-ha shinobi around, maybe I’ll just keep them in Kiri once they win it back for me,” Shisui argued.  “Any plan contingent on a formerly-hostile ally’s goodwill is pretty trippy.”

“Circumstantially antagonistic at worst,” Kakashi defended.  “We’re running out of options. Danzo has a hit out on every Command Corps shinobi who defected and many of the General Forces as well.  They may be on the cusp of war, but not too distracted to ignore the Hana-ha camps in Yu.”

“You ask a lot of our people,” Shisui said quietly, “to go into battle for a land that isn’t ours for a chance to fight a second war for our home.”

“Is it not worth it?” Kakashi tilted his head to meet the younger shinobi’s suddenly weary eyes.   

Shisui looked away and was silent for a long moment, pensively watching Temari practice her hand seals.  “You know I’ll follow you, whatever happens, Taichou,” he said at last. “But others may not.”

“I know,” said Kakashi.  

Neji launched himself into a spinning kick, sending snow flying as he forced Shisui’s clone backwards.  With a backhanded slash, he plunged the blade in the the bunshin’s side, and it dispersed in a billow of smoke.  

“Are they ready?” Kakashi asked.

Shisui turned to him incredulously.  “For war? Of course not, they’ve been training for three, four months.”

“They would serve a primarily support role, away from the front lines,” Kakashi reminded.  “Genin squads are part of the war effort in any village.”

“Okay,” Shisui admitted.  “For non combat-intensive missions, they’re qualified.  In Konoha, they’re C-rank mission ready. But this is war,” he stressed.  “Shit happens in war.”

“So, they’re ready,” Kakashi summarized.

Shisui blew out a short breath.  “Yes, Taichou. Reluctantly, they’re ready.”

“Noted,” acknowledged Kakashi.  Bisuke twisted around, and Kakashi caught him absently before he could slide down his back.  “We’re not going to throw them into a bloodbath,” he said. “Not the way you and I were.”

“No,” said Shisui, “but we can’t control what happens during war.”

“In six months, Hana-ha is going to war,” Kakashi announced.  Guruko sprawled at his feet, limbs splayed languidly in all directions.  Kakashi had thought it fitting to bring his youngest -- or rather newest -- ninken to his something-like-a-meeting with the assorted shinobi children, who in turn were arrayed in clusters of those thick greyish cloaks Shisui had for some reason seen fit to buy using their very limited supply budget.  

“With Konoha?” Naruto immediately demanded.  “Are we gonna fight Anbu ?”

Sakura made her best attempt at smothering him with the loose folds of his own cloak, while Sasuke made a face that was very much like his brother’s but slightly rounder and more annoyed.  

“No,” said Kakashi patiently.  Guruko shuffled his way upright.   “With Kiri. And no, you will not be fighting Anbu.”

None of the children appeared as surprised as Kakashi had assumed they would be.  Hinata leaned back a little as Sai’s face took on a pensive cast. Temari and Neji exchanged glances, while Haku looked vaguely guilty.  

Okay.  In hindsight, it was premature of him to presume that the others wouldn’t have mentioned the potential alliance to their teams, or that Zabuza wouldn’t have spoken of it with Haku, and Haku wouldn’t have told his team, who wouldn’t have told the rest of the children.  

The ripple of children exchanging unsubtle looks -- minus Gaara, who stared blankly into the middle distance and likely into his own head, and Naruto, whose head was entirely enveloped by his cloak as Sakura wrestled him into a chokehold -- unsurprisingly converged on the oldest girl.  “Where do we fit in this war?” Temari challenged. “Do you expect us to fight for you?”

“I’m giving you a choice,” said Kakashi.

The children all stilled -- even Naruto, who froze halfway through fumbling his cloak out of his mouth.  

“We will need all available shinobi when the time comes, and noncombatants are liabilities,” said Kakashi, leveling each with a serious stare.  “For the past four months, your sensei have given you the tools you need to survive. You can walk away right now -- we’ll drop you in a civilian town with supplies to set up a new life or stay in hiding or whatever you want.  There is a chance that after the war we can find you again, but for your own safety, we would not be in contact at any time.”

Another round of glances.  Sasuke raised an eyebrow at Sakura, who frowned and shook her head slightly.  Hinata tilted her head at Neji, who blinked. “What is the other option?” asked Sai.

“You join Hana-ha as full members, as genin.”  Kakashi resisted the urge to shove his hands in his pockets.  “You are subject to all rules, regulations, and command structures, and in the future,” the distant, distant future, “you will be instated as shinobi of Konoha.”

Sakura chewed absently on her lip.  Naruto’s entire face was screwed up in a frown.  

“You don’t have to decide now,” Kakashi offered, as if he hadn’t already added all eight of the Konoha-Suna kids in his troop tally to the rest of the Hana-ha leadership the day before.  “This is a lot to think about.”

“I will,” said Temari suddenly.  She met Kakashi’s eyes with a fierce glare.  “I’m tired of running and hiding. I’m going to fight.”  

“Yeah!” Naruto chimed in.  “I’m going to kick some ninja a -- ”

“Me too,” agreed Sakura as she tackled her blond teammate into the snow.  

“All right,” said Kakashi holding up his hand, as the others voiced their agreement.  “If you wish to opt out, you can tell myself or your sensei anytime before sundown in two days.  For those of you who wish to stay, you will begin combat training in earnest.”

Kakashi was no coward, but he stepped into a shunshin fast enough to rival Shisui the second the group of shinobi children exploded into chatter.  Behind him, Guruko let out an alarmed bark, but Kakashi had done his time and sometimes sacrifices were inevitable. He was finished pack-bonding with the pups.  Dropping an ultimatum counted as pack-bonding, right?

“Team meeting, part two,” he announced, appearing in a whirlwind next to Itachi, who was too used to Kakashi’s comings and goings to be startled.

“Kami, not another meeting,” Zabuza grumbled, squinting down the length of his sword.

Kakashi resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  “Brief announcement. I want you to focus on teaching active combat.”

“What?” Shisui demanded.  “Aren’t we keeping them in a support role?”

Zabuza set down his blade.  “No need to switch it all up,” he drawled.  “You want your own genin team, take the three fucking loud brats off my hands and form them in your image or whatever.”

“No,” said Kakashi.  He didn’t teach, especially not genin.  “Until now, I asked you to focus on teaching survival and evasion, with combat as a last-ditch option.  In light of the impending war, you will mold the teams into more balanced, combat-based configurations.”

“I’ve been teaching combat,” Shisui protested indignantly.

“Wait,” said Itachi, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.  “Let him explain first.”

Kakashi met Itachi’s eyes steadily.  “Momochi will continue with Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke and train them as a full-assault team,” he said.  “They have the basics down, but they need refinement, and training in more specialized ninjutsu.”

Zabuza grunted a reluctant agreement and muttered what sounded like “tiny loud morons” under his breath.  

“Shisui will train Haku, Temari, and Neji as a strike team -- fast entrance, deal massive damage, get out without getting caught.  Shisui, you’ve got them on speed drills, so double down on stealth and damage.”

Shisui nodded absently, but Kakashi saw a spark of something anticipatory in his eye -- having essentially functioned as a one-man strike team during his time in Anbu, he was arguably the best possible sensei in all things speedy and sneaky.   Zabuza still wasn’t too happy about his apprentice being coopted, but he’d live. “Itachi -- instruct Gaara, Hinata, and Sai in infiltration with a focus on information retrieval.”

Shisui frowned.  “Information retrieval?”

“Hinata is an apt sensor already with her Byakugan,” Itachi noted, “and Sai’s Chouju Giga techniques are ideal for sending and receiving confidential information.  Even Gaara’s sand armor can be utilized as a disguise.”

“Exactly,” said Kakashi, and paused.  “I expect you to help with training each others’ teams in your own area of expertise.”

“What?” Zabuza burst out, then reconsidered.  “What you’re saying is I foist my brats off on someone else,” he said speculatively.  

Kakashi fought a grimace.  “...yes.”

There was a suspicious gleam in Zabuza’s eye.  “Excellent,” said the Swordsman.

“For example,” said Kakashi, desperately trying to steer the conversation back on course, “Momochi has expertise in kenjutsu a variety of weaponry that maybe Sasuke or Temari would find useful, and Itachi’s range of ninjutsu experience might help Naruto or Gaara.  And as, arguably, the most well-adjusted shinobi on this team, Shisui can teach the art of lying.” He paused. “And blending in with other shinobi or civilians,” he added.

Shisui paused.  “I can’t argue with that,” he admitted.  “All of you combined have the emotional intelligence of a walnut.”

Kakashi narrowed his eyes dangerously.  

“Except Taichou!” Shisui backpedalled brightly.  “Because I have nothing but the utmost respect for you, and you are intelligent in every way.”

Itachi rolled his eyes discreetly, because Kakashi had taught his subordinate well.

“I’ve given them the two-day deadline to give me an answer,” Kakashi continued.  “Tell your teams however you want, but in three days, begin with the new assignments.  Understood?”

“Hai,” Itachi and Shisui echoed, and Zabuza sort of grunted an affirmative.   

Well, that was enough human interaction for today, ningen pack be damned.  Kakashi raised his hand in a perfunctory salute.  “San’s volunteered for third watch. I’ll take first.  Zabuza, you get middle,” he said, just for kicks and to see the man sputter in outrage.  “Later.”

High up in the cliffs, on a narrow ledge at the edge of the hollow, Kakashi sat with his back to the cliff wall with a pile of ragged missives, plans, and orders to begin his watch.  Not ten minutes in, a frantic scrabbling heralded the arrival of Pakkun. The little pug hauled himself over the lip of the ledge and glared at Kakashi’s amused air.

“Laugh it up,” he snarled without heat, and stumped over to trample dusty paws over Kakashi’s abdomen.  

“Watch the uniform,” said Kakashi lazily, resting his notebook against Pakkun’s back and scribbling a reply to a Hana-ha captain in Ishi.  “I’m only allowed to get bloodstains on this one.”

“That’s disturbing,” Pakkun admonished unconcernedly.  “Mind your words in front of the pups. You’ll corrupt them.”

“They’re plenty corrupt,” Kakashi scoffed.  “Did you see Sakura try to suffocate Naruto today?  Completely, organically, bloodthirsty.”

Uhei hauled himself over the edge as well, flailing clumsily as he clawed his way to Kakashi’s side.   Kakashi eyed him dubiously. The ledge was getting a little too crowded for his tastes.

“I’m keeping watch, not throwing a party,” he complained.  

“Guruko and Shiba are testing Urushi’s patience again,” Uhei grumped, flattening his ears against his head.  “I’m not going to be there when he kicks their asses and they go whining to someone bigger.”

“You wouldn’t be in this position if you didn’t go along with them the first dozen times,” Kakashi pointed out unsympathetically.

“It was fun the first time around,” groaned Uhei, arranging himself on top of Kakashi’s feet.  “But it always ends the same way.”

Kakashi rolled his scrap of missive into something resembling a scroll and tied it off.  “They should realize that the only one close to giving Urushi a fair fight is Akino,” he said absently, pulling the next message from the stack.  

“Akino’s more like to side with Urushi,” Pakkun pointed out.

Uhei’s tail thumped gleefully against the stone.  “They’d totally get curb stomped. I want to see that.”

“We don’t talk about pack members getting curb stomped,” Pakkun yawned.  “Bad for morale.”

“I’d watch that too,” Kakashi offered, and grunted when the little ninken jabbed a paw below his flak jacket.  “Ack!”

“Sorry, boss,” Pakkun said sweetly, and Uhei had the good sense not to snicker.

“Ah, shit,” Kakashi muttered, skimming a report from a captain in western Hi.   “Togeito’s teams are out of shuriken and any nonperishable food that isn’t beans.”  He unfurled a length of scroll. “Uhei -- tomorrow morning, run this to Koto no Sato, south Yu,” he said absently.  The last thing he wanted was desertion because of beans, and the position of the camp was precarious enough given its proximity to Konoha.    

Uhei hummed agreement, paws flexing in anticipation of a good run.  

“Don’t ask me to go with him,” Pakkun muttered, wrinkling his nose.  “All that snow will chap my paws like crazy. It’s bad enough here when I don’t have to run around.”

“I need you here,” Kakashi reassured him.  He set aside the rest of the supply requests to pore over the intelligence reports -- written out on neat paragraphs in a formal scroll, scribbled hastily on a restaurant napkin, and even one where the operative apparently had nothing better than what appeared to be a chicken bone to write on.  He paused and brought the latter to his nose. Definitely chicken.

Needless to say, the operative’s handwriting was terrible.  If Kakashi’s only original remaining eye went blind reading this godsawful chicken scratch, he was going to bury himself in ten meters of sand and wait for death.  

Kakashi was beginning to understand why the shinobi in charge of processing mission reports had been so high-strung.   

Jounin Chicken Bone’s teams had gotten into a minor scuffle with a team of Kusagakure shinobi, but --as explained in a small string of coded two-word sentences -- three team members had sustained minor injuries and the entire section had needed to relocate in a hurry before Kusa discovered an entire score of renegades on their turf.  Kakashi scribbled a confirmation, with orders to keep him updated on the situation, and moved on to the napkin.

Kakashi frowned, skimming the scrawl.  “Pakkun,” he said absently. “What did that one report say about activity in Kitakyushu?”

Pakkun blinked consideringly.  “The port city, western coast of Hi?  Danzo’s had a four or five team guard post stationed there permanently, but last week a couple other Konoha teams went into the city on missions.  Why?”

Kakashi tapped his pen against his mouth thoughtfully.  “Some of those teams started cleaning out the warehouses by the wharf -- arresting, killing, or scaring off both local businesses and organized crime.  Two or three Anbu were sighted throughout the city. They're getting ready for something big.”

“He can’t be preparing his own invasion into Kumo, can he?” Pakkun growled.  “Danzo doesn’t have the manpower.”

“Two years ago, he didn’t, not with twenty-five percent of the General Forces and at least forty percent of the Command Corps dead, defected, or imprisoned after the Fall,” Kakashi countered.  “Now, he’s had time to regroup and fill in the ranks.”

“But by sea?” Pakkun snorted.  “Man must be insane. The only thing a Kiri-nin hates more than a Kumo shinobi is a Konoha shinobi.”

“Kiri has its hands full with the insurgents,” Kakashi pointed out.

“So he’s using the unrest in Kiri to move his troops.”  Pakkun grimaced.

“Because A doesn’t have the balls to,” Uhei muttered.     

“A wouldn’t expect it for the same reason he’s ruled it out -- it’s high risk, even if it is high reward,” mused Kakashi.  He shuffled through his notebook and unfolded a map of the Elemental Nations. “The dozen most direct routes all cross through the Yu-Uzushio strait.”

Pakkun peeled back his lips in a silent snarl.   “If Hana-ha mobilizes to Uzushio, and Danzo discovers us there, he would abandon his plans for war on Kumo and use all his forces to crush us while we’re all in one place -- we'd make too tempting a target to pass up.”

“The civil war will benefit Danzo; he’ll be open to dealing with the Kiri insurgents for passage through the strait.”  Kakashi scribbled absently in his notebook. “But Hana-ha would need to operate under complete anonymity to avoid detection.”  

“After all the publicity we’ve been building up.”  Pakkun heaved a long-suffering sigh. “‘Be seen in different villages,’ ‘publicize Danzo’s crimes,’ ‘make Danzo nervous,’ and now we need ‘complete anonymity.’”

“Wait.”  Uhei shuffled a little, cocking his head.  “Do we want Kumo to win the war, or Konoha?”

“We do not want an invasion of Konohagakure no Sato,” Pakkun said with remarkable patience, as if this was the first time he had explained this to a younger pack member and not the third or fourth.  “Or any invasion that isn’t Hana-ha’s. Civilians and noncombatants in the line of fire is never good. Strictly speaking, no war is the best outcome, but that means Danzo will have a stronger force when we inevitably face him.”

“We just want a few of our fellow Konoha comrades to die,” Kakashi said dryly.   “Hopefully the Danzo faction.”

“Danzo got rid of pretty much all of the Yondaime or Sandaime’s most favored,” Pakkun pointed out, “so that’s most of Konoha.”

“Uh,” said Uhei, darting nervous glances at Kakashi.

Kakashi imagined that his facial expression must look especially dark.  “Most of Konoha doesn’t know the truth of what happened when the Sandaime died,” he reminded his pack second quietly.  As with any battle, the victor told the tale: the village knew only what Danzo told them -- that the Hokage’s Anbu guard colluded with Kumo agents to assassinate him, that every shinobi that fled, was killed, or was arrested in the aftermath was part of a greater coup d’etat orchestrated by the Uchiha Clan.  In Konoha, there was no one left to tell them otherwise.

Those that had, in the beginning, had quietly vanished.

“But they also know that Danzo was never meant to be Hokage,” Pakkun pointed out.  “Part of Konoha will never accept him.”

“It’s a good thing that Sandaime-sama thought to name a successor as he was dying,” agreed Kakashi grimly.  “It's the only reason we still have a foothold.”

Kakashi finished detailing his notes on Kitakyushu and his proposal for a response to a Konoha invasion of Kumo by sea in silence as his ninken stared pensively out into the snow.  Well, Pakkun pensively, and probably Uhei blankly. “Uhei, this is top priority -- you'll take this straight to headquarters tomorrow,” he said. “Never mind the Koto message -- Togeito’s teams can survive on beans for another couple of days until Guruko gets down there.”

“Copy, copy,” said Uhei, thumping his whiplike tail against Kakashi’s side.

“Urushi will accompany you,” Kakashi added.

Uhei groaned.  “I want to go fast,” he complained.  “Urushi will just slow me down.”

“No whining,” Kakashi admonished.  “It's extremely important that this information doesn't get intercepted.”  He paused. “Besides, you may be faster than Urushi, but he can still run you into the ground.”

“Damn him and his freakish endurance,” Uhei mock-growled.

“I'm going to tell him you called him freakish,” Kakashi said mildly, “and Pakkun will sit back and laugh when he eviscerates you.”

“Pakkun is against friendly pack mutilation,” Uhei pointed out.  “He’d side with me.”

“In your dreams, pup,” drawled Pakkun, still half-buried under assorted paperwork.

Kakashi sifted through his woefully large stack of papers with a sigh.  “Pakkun, if Momochi’s awake, tell him to go back to sleep. I’m going to be up anyways, I’ll cover his watch.”

“Sure thing,” said Pakkun, and wriggled out and down the rock face.

Pakkun’s dependable efficiency, however, met its match in one stubborn ex-Swordsman.  Kakashi resisted the urge to roll his eyes when the other man emerged from the sleeping quarters with his massive blade already slung over his back.  

As he deciphered a coded report, Zabuza settled on the mountain wall next to him in a crouch.  “Go the fuck to sleep,” the other man greeted him with an irritated scowl.

Kakashi cut him a glance out of the corner of his eye and proceeded to ignore him.

Zabuza rolled his eyes.  “Hatake,” he enunciated slowly, as if talking to a particularly dull-witted child.  “Sleep. You’re not a fucking machine.”

“I’ve functioned on less,” Kakashi said dismissively, when it became apparent that Zabuza was not going to go away.  He’d had a solid five hours the night before. That was practically luxurious.

Zabuza snorted.  “When we’re at war you can help yourself to all the sleep deprivation and shitty ration food you fucking want, but we’re not at war yet.  Kill yourself later, there’s no rush.”

Damn.  Kakashi hated it when other people harped on his bad habits.   Even more when they made sense. “This can’t wait.”

“Can’t you fucking delegate?” Zabuza retorted, baring pointed teeth like one of Kakashi’s hounds.  “I know you don’t trust me, but let the murder cousins go through the intel and, I don’t know, summarize.”

“I do,” Kakashi said lowly, and regretted it as soon as the words slipped out of his mouth.  Fuck, fuck, what the fuck was wrong with his control?

Uhei eyed him sideways.

“Bullshit.  Shisui complained about it the other day, sayin’ you stayed awake three days in a row instead of filling him in -- ”

“Trust you,” Kakashi finished, because commit to it, right?  He turned to face the other nukenin, who looked increasingly uncomfortable.  

“That’s a shitty decision,” Zabuza said finally, turning his head aside.

“I know,” muttered Kakashi wryly, and turned back to his reports.  Then, he paused. “Are you volunteering to do paperwork?”

The Swordsman scowled.  “Gods, no,” he growled. “I’m volunteering the teenagers to do it.”

Kakashi smiled, though he knew only his eye was visible.  “Tough,” he said sweetly, and handed over a report, piece of paper, and a pen.  “Read it, bullet-point it. Every detail.”

Zabuza snatched them from him.  “I fucking hate paperwork,” he snapped.   

Who the fuck didn’t.  

By virtue of having been an elite ninja in his own right, Zabuza worked both efficiently and thoroughly.  After checking over the other man’s first couple of reports, Kakashi skimmed the rest, and by the time Zabuza’s watch ended, they’d finished the rest of the report backlog between the two.  

“I,” Zabuza growled, “hate shitty writing.  If I ever meet these dipshits I’m dropkicking them into the middle of the ocean.  You know, in my program, they fucking beat you if your handwriting was too shoddy.”

Kakashi raised an eyebrow.  “Your Academy sounds rough,” he said wryly.

“I wasn’t in the Academy,” the other shinobi retorted.  “I was trained in the breeding program that produced me.  

Kakashi frowned.  “But the Academy graduation massacre -- ”

“My test as well as theirs,” Zabuza grunted.  “Every product of Kiri’s pilot eugenics program was entered in a free for all melee, along with the prospective Academy graduation class.  Only one child walked out of that room alive.” He bared his teeth in a humorless grin. “I was the pride and joy of that program. Only the best, kekkei-genkai-free blood in my veins -- a clan known for berserkers, and a clan that dominated the Intelligence Corps.”

Narrowing his eyes, Kakashi snapped his notebook shut.  “The program was a success, then,” he noted cautiously.

“The program was shut down,” Zabuza corrected.  “They had me execute my handlers, and abandoned their efforts at breeding the perfect shinobi.”   He caught Kakashi’s look and snorted. “Come on, Hatake. The Mist isn’t sunshine and rainbows like Konoha.  My handlers knew what they were doing -- and what would happen to them if it succeeded.”

“Over a hundred children,” Kakashi pointed out.  “You murdered over a hundred children.”

“And saved a thousand more,” Zabuza snarled.  “The lives I took that day were lives earned for today.”   

Kakashi leaned back.  “You really believe that,” he said.  

“I know it,” Zabuza snapped back.  “Kiri changed its graduation test after what I did.  That’s at least fifty kids a class, two classes a year that didn’t die trying to fucking graduate.  Fifty years of the Bloody Mist’s infamous exam. A hundred lives is nothing .” A slip in his control, just a blip, and Kakashi could feel the malice in his voice, the utter conviction.  “You know what? I would do it again. I fucking would, a thousand times over.”

“They were children,” said Kakashi listlessly.

“I was a child!” Zabuza snarled.  “But I was also a weapon. Because that’s what a shinobi is, child or not.”

Kakashi couldn’t think of an answer to that, staring unseeingly at his report.  “Damn,” he muttered at last. “You’re not wrong.”

Zabuza huffed a bitter laugh.  “Where did your sunshine and rainbows go, Hatake?”

“Reiketsu.” The word left an acrid taste on his tongue.  “I didn’t get that name from killing my enemies.”

For a moment, Zabuza was silent.  “Yeah?” he said, almost gently.

“Yeah,” said Kakashi, and with Uhei at his side, left Zabuza sitting alone.

Once, Kakashi had been a child living in the most prosperous Hidden Village in the Elemental Nations with friends, family, and a sensei that cared about him, and he let himself lose it all without realizing how precious they were.  But that was neither here nor now. Kakashi had no time for old grief or old memories. He could not -- would not let them touch him. Not with Konoha’s future riding on his shoulders, and nine wayward shinobi children asleep in the same hollow.  

And Zabuza might be his ally now, but what happened when he believed his debt was paid?  He was still a child-killer, a prodigy in the art of slaughter, oftentimes bloodthirsty for its own sake.  He was a killer who would never stop being a killer.

Kakashi wasn’t willing to bet that the other man was above exploiting his past once his goodwill was gone, no matter what his strange code of honor appeared to be.  One day, he might declare he was done, fed up with taking orders from Konoha dogs, and carve a swath through Hana-ha.

But as much of a betrayal as that would be, Kakashi would understand.  

They were, after all, shinobi.  

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT: D-54

Per last report, targets AT1, AT3, AT4 and allied noncombatant NCHS positioned in [REDACTED] base under care of ACHN and ACNS.  Security status: medium risk; enemy combatants believed to have pursued Operative Cat-15. Current status unknown.

Operative Cat-15 departed [REDACTED] base with AT2 due to increased care necessary due to age.  

Operative Cat-15 experienced physical fatigue, slight depletion of chakra.  Status adequate.

AT2 expressed restlessness, mild to moderate fear.  Rate of weight increase slowing. Rate of height increase slowing.  Conclusion: insufficient nutrition. Unable to acquire age-appropriate nutritional sources.  AT2 immune system possibly compromised.

Pursued by enemy combatants (4) affiliation: Sunagakure.  Evasive maneuvers prioritized.

No contact with allied combatants.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

Sakura was a clever girl.  It’s what her father always told her with warmth, and what her Academy sensei said with a cool blankness.  And she took pride in it, because it made her feel special -- finally, something she was good at, something she excelled at, even when all the other kids outran her and outsparred her.

But Sakura was just a girl, and the shinobi world grew very cruel very quickly -- and very, very lonely.

Naruto and Sasuke might have been her team, but they fought like cats and were thick as thieves and left her in the dust.  And so she was alone.

Running away from Zabuza-sensei, alone, on top of the lake.

Well, this part was as much because Sasuke and Naruto were busy blowing holes in the trees since their chakra control was terrible as it was her lack of combat prowess.  And technically, she was supposed to be trying to tag the scrap of cloth tied around her sensei’s wrist. But her point stood.

Sakura dove out of the way as Zabuza cast a massive tidal wave across the lake, sending freezing water and chunks of ice flying.  She tucked into a forward roll, coming up with her hands already in the seals for a bunshin, and when she charged, she was one of four streaking across the uneven surface.  

Another suiton sent water bullets screaming through the air, and Sakura threw herself sideways as they ripped through one of her bunshin and she lost control of it.  With the remaining two, she flanked Zabuza-sensei, drawing a kunai in each hand and hurling them in tandem with her clones.

Zabuza-sensei swung his massive sword in a wide arc, deflecting Sakura’s kunai and passing right through her clones’ before lunging at her.

With more panic than she'd admit to, Sakura scrambled backwards.  A quick kamawari switched her with a chunk of lake ice, just in time for Zabuza-sensei to bisect it in a vicious downward slash.  He bared his teeth in a satisfied grin. “Good,” he rumbled. “You're learning, girl.”

He whipped around and hurled his sword in one fluid movement.  Sakura let out a yelp muffled by the collar of her cloak as she threw herself into a second substitution.

The other day, Sakura had perched in a tree to watch a snow leopard hunt a rabbit.  Only, it didn't just catch its prey -- it cornered it, batted it around with sheathed claws.  Toyed with it.

That was what Sakura imagined Zabuza-sensei did when he trained them.

Sakura palmed a kunai and sprinted directly at Zabuza-sensei, lashing out with her closed fist at his head.  He leaned back to avoid her strike, and with her left hand, plunged down her blade at his wrist.

He caught her fist easily, dwarfing her hand with his own and squeezing until she was forced to drop the kunai.  The cloth fluttered tauntingly at his wrist. “Less good,” he growled. “Don't fight like a brawler unless you have the strength to back it up.”

Sakura glowered, using her trapped hand as an anchor to twist her entire body up into a spinning kick aimed at his head.  Zabuza-sensei shoved her away before it could connect, and she landed awkwardly half on a chunk of surface ice, half off. She scrabbled for a moment to get her feet under her before standing unsteadily on the ice.  

Zabuza-sensei watched, unimpressed, and leaned over to pull his sword out of the water next to him.  

Sakura gritted her teeth.  She needed a new plan. She was never going to be able even touch Zabuza-sensei on her own.  

She needed to get him closer to the shore.  

She glared at her sensei, watching her boredly with arms crossed.  “Come on, girl,” he goaded, hefting his sword onto his shoulder and striding in her direction.  “The enemy’s not going to give you ten minutes to do your godsdamned hair.”

Sakura scowled.  Her hair was scraggly and shaggy and tangled and definitely needed more than ten minutes to sort out, but she’d had nothing but lye soap to wash it with for years.  She palmed a handful of shuriken, and hurled it.

Zabuza-sensei didn’t bother with dodging, continuing his inexorable advance.  Sakura grinned fiercely and yanked on the wire with all her strength. Its attached shuriken jerked back neatly into the circle cut at the tip of his sword, wrapping tightly around the blunt side of the sword.

Zabuza-sensei looked mildly amused as Sakura gave another almighty wrench and the blade flew out of his hand and arched towards her.  Sakura caught the handle with both hands, but it was heavier than she’d expected, and it knocked the wind out of her, sending her skidding backwards across the water.  

“That won’t help you if you can’t use it,” he said, and charged.

Sakura let out a panicked huff and hurled the sword towards the shore, sprinting after it blindly as her sensei bore down on her.  She flipped through the signs for the bunshin as she ran, and then there were five of her, hurtling towards land.

Zabuza-sensei landed in their midst, and they scattered as he popped one with a perfunctory jab.  

A kunai took down another, and then Sakura hit the shoreline as her bunshin continued into the trees.

“This is an exercise in fighting on top of the water,” Zabuza-sensei warned.  “Life and death on the Kiri battlefield comes down to whoever outlasts his opponents.  Those who can’t stay up -- ” he punctuated this with a lunge, and Sakura flitted out of the way, “ -- drown.”  He stalked towards the land, and the water followed him.

Sakura knew that, but some prey instinct drove her to run to where her predator wouldn’t be so strong.  Next time, she knew Zabuza-sensei wouldn’t even let her get near the shore, but as a sensei, he was ever willing enough to see what she would try.  

She hoped she wouldn’t disappoint.  

She pawed at her leg, but her makeshift kunai holster was empty, so she bared her teeth and pounced at him.  He leaned back to dodge her punch but grabbed her by the arm and flung her off. She hit the ground hard, skidding on her back, and as he loomed over her, yelled, “Now!”  

“Ha!” Naruto howled, bursting from the trees and swiping a kunai at Zabuza-sensei’s face.  Sasuke swept in from below, darting from the roots of the trees with a kunai in backhanded grip.  Sakura lunged with a vicious grin.

Zabuza-sensei batted Naruto away like a wayward kitten, sending him flying, hopped neatly over Sasuke’s blade, and kicked Sakura in the chest.  

Sasuke pounced back in, a blade in either hand this time as Sakura fought to regain her breath.  Naruto charged back in fists first, and Sakura finally flipped back on her feet as well. Zabuza-sensei dodged neatly out of the way, and she could see that neither Naruto or Sasuke would hit him but but if she could just reach, even though the trajectory of Sasuke’s arm would --

She twisted, grabbing Zabuza-sensei’s wrist, and --

Sakura’s vision exploded into white, and she felt her body crumple to the side like a ragdoll.  She gasped involuntarily as the pain roared in, sending daggers through her skull.

“Shit!” Zabuza-sensei snapped faintly, as if from a long distance away.  

Scuffling footsteps.  “Is she okay?” Sasuke asked, voice uncharacteristically small.

“No, you bastard, you just slammed a kunai into her head!” Naruto yelled shrilly.  

“Just the hilt,” Sasuke muttered guiltily, drowned out by Zabuza’s snarl of, “If I hadn’t stopped you, yours would have gone through her throat, you fucking moron!”   

Sakura was glad of the relief from the silence that fell, even briefly.  She felt rather than saw Zabuza-sensei crouch next to her. “Idiot girl,” he muttered.  “You’re too young for that self-sacrificing bullshit.”

Sakura opened her mouth to respond, but only a tiny mew of pain escaped.  

“You, boy, get Shisui.  Brat, get Hatake!” Zabuza ordered.  “All right, girl,” he said, as running footsteps receded, leaning over her into her field of vision.  “You’re fine. Stay down and don’t move.”

Sakura blinked up past her sensei at the sky and breathed shallowly, and felt hot tears pricking at her eyes.  Why was she like this? Sasuke and Naruto always got hit and got right back up. They didn’t stay on the ground and start crying.   She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. She was going to be a kunoichi, no matter what Neji muttered snidely under his breath when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.  

She maybe lost a little time, but regained her focus when another face leaned into her field of vision.

“Hey there, Sakura-chan,” Shisui-sensei said warmly, his visible eye twinkling despite its serious cast.  “Looks like you took a good one to the head.”

Sakura tried to smile, though her vision blurred.  “Yeah,” she whispered. Sasuke hit hard.

“Well, not to worry,” Shisui-sensei told her.  “We just want to make sure you’re not too hurt, so don’t try to move until I tell you to, okay?”

“Okay,” Sakura agreed, blinking rapidly.  “It hurts,” she added, before she could stop herself.  

“Tell me if the pain increases,” Shisui-sensei instructed.  “Are you breathing okay?”

“Yeah,” she said.  

Silver-grey edged into the corner of her vision, and Sakura watched it as best she could without moving her head.  “How is she?”

Sakura did not know Hatake Kakashi very well, except for the bit where he was super strong and generally distant and kind of scary actually.

Shisui-sensei choked on what sounded like a laugh.  Oops. Sakura must have said that aloud.

“Hm,” said the captain noncommittally.

“It’s just a little head trauma,” Zabuza-sensei said gruffly.  

“It is bleeding, a lot, and she did seem a little disoriented,” Shisui-sensei said.  

“It’s bleeding a lot, a lot,” Sasuke chimed in, his voice a mixture of fascination and worry.  

“All right, both of you, back to camp,” Zabuza-sensei ordered abruptly.

“We want to make sure Sakura’ll be okay!” Naruto complained.

“Now!” Zabuza-sensei snapped.

A bright light hammered into her eye, and Sakura flinched away.  

“Don’t move,” reminded the captain sternly, flicking the flashlight over to her other eye.  “She has a concussion,” he said to the gathered sensei, clicking the light back off and tucking it back into a pocket.  “But head injuries bleed a lot, so you don’t need to worry about that too much.”

“I’ll take her back to camp,” said Zabuza-sensei, and Sakura felt his hands slide surprisingly carefully behind her neck and under her knees.  “Don’t squirm, girl,” he growled roughly. “If you make me drop you, you’re fucking dead.”

Shisui-sensei coughed another badly-hidden laugh behind them.  “Don’t jostle her neck,” he called after them.

Zabuza-sensei huffed.  “I know.”

Sakura maybe closed her eyes and drifted off a little, because the next thing she knew, Zabuza-sensei was settling her down in the thick furs of San’s bed.

“Sakura-chan,” said Shisui-sensei, which startled Sakura because she hadn’t heard him follow, “you can’t sleep too long at one time, so one of us will wake you up every so often, okay?”

“Mmkay,” Sakura murmured sleepily, and closed her eyes again.

“Gods, Z, you just going to let her sleep with blood caked all over her face?” she heard muzzily.  

“Fuck off, Konoha, I’m getting to that.”

Convalescing after her concussion sucked.  Sakura didn’t remember the first couple of days, when she slept pretty much the entire time with San or Zabuza-sensei or Shisui-sensei shaking her awake every two hours and sometimes spoon feeding her broth, but she definitely missed the bit where Itachi-sensei temporarily took over her and Naruto’s and Sasuke’s training while Zabuza-sensei ran yet another mission.  

Sakura knew, kind of, that Itachi-sensei was better for teaching them how to fight, but she’d only just gotten used to Zabuza-sensei’s oftentimes brutal training.  She didn’t want to have to figure out another sensei again, even if it was Sasuke’s brother. But she would deal with it if it was the best way to make her a stronger kunoichi.  She had to. She only had six months before she would have to fight for real.

“Oh, pup,” San murmured as Sakura curled against Chie’s warm stomach.  The teen was somewhere behind the wolf’s bulk, and Sakura blinked in her direction.  “I do not understand why you are so eager to fight in a war that is not yours.”

“It is mine,” Sakura argued groggily.  “Zabuza-sensei is fighting in it, and Shisui-sensei and Itachi-sensei and the captain and all my friends.  I have to keep them safe.”

San draped herself over Chie’s back and regarded Sakura with unblinking amber eyes.  “They fight because Kakashi orders it so,” she pointed out, “and they believe in him.  But you do not.”

Sakura frowned at the cave ceiling.  “I don't know him very well,” she admitted, “but my friends are fighting because they want to go home to Konoha, and save it from the man who killed the last Hokage.”

“Do you?”

Sakura shrugged.  “I want to be wherever my friends are, even if I don't care about going back to Konoha,” she said.  “I'll protect them and fight with them no matter what.”

San hummed.  “You will fight for your pack, then.  Good. Remember that,” she ordered. “A time will come when that, your pack, will be your strength.”

“Okay,” Sakura agreed, eyelids drifting closed again as Chie’s slow breathing lulled her back to sleep.

When she next opened her eyes, San and Chie had been replaced by Yuuki and Shisui-sensei.  She blinked muzily as Shisui-sensei crouched at her side.

“How are we today, Sakura-chan?” Shisui-sensei ran a green-tinged hand over her forehead.

“Good,” Sakura said sleepily.  

“I see we still don’t have any swelling,” Shisui-sensei noted absently.  

Sakura watched curiously as he let the chakra-glow fade, instead peeling back the bandages from her head.  “Where did you learn how to do that?” she asked as he inspected the itchy cut above her ear.

Shisui-sensei tilted his head curiously.   “Do what? Change a bandage?”

“That’s medical ninjutsu, isn’t it?” she asked.  “The green chakra.”

Shisui-sensei paused.  “Yes,” he said. “That was medical ninjutsu.  I learned it -- ” he broke off with a sigh. “Sakura-chan,” he said, “do you know what happened to me before the Fall?”

Sakura hesitated, frowning, because she’d just assumed Shisui-sensei had been a regular Konoha shinobi.  “No,” she answered.

Shisui-sensei sat back on his heels.  “When I was thirteen, I was confronted by a village elder over a mission to stop a military coup in Konoha.  We fought, and he stole my eye.”

Sakura’s eyes darted to the covered eye -- or empty socket?

“But before I could find help or report the incident,” Shisui-sensei continued, “another powerful shinobi took advantage of my weakened state.  He wanted to engineer a perfect body, and in particular, was interested in my remaining eye and abilities. He kidnapped me from the village.”

“Who was it?” whispered Sakura, almost afraid to ask.

“Do you know who the Sannin are?” Shisui-sensei asked, and she frowned.  She did, really, but the knowledge slipped out of her grasp every time she reached for it.  She scowled and shook her head.

“That's all right,” said Shisui-sensei sympathetically, catching her frustration.  “Your mind isn't at a hundred percent right now. They’re three legendary shinobi from Konoha, renowned for combat ability and mastery of rare shinobi arts -- some say they are the strongest in the Elemental Nations.  None of them are in Konoha anymore -- one is Tsunade-sama, an incredibly skilled iryo-nin. Another is Orochimaru, who wants immortality more than anything. He’s the one that took me.”

Sakura sat up slowly, hugging her arms around her.  “What did he do to you?”

Shisui-sensei smiled for the first time, a bitter cant to his mouth that Sakura wished she hadn’t seen.  “He experimented on me. Cut me open, injected me with -- well, you don’t need to know the details,” he cut himself off wryly.  “But he had me two, almost three years. When I was rescued I was in bad shape, and I needed a lot of serious medical care. They brought me to Tsunade-sama and her apprentice, Shizune.”

He crumbled the soiled bandage in his hands.  “It took me a long time to recover,” he said quietly.  “To be able to sit up, to mold chakra, to walk and run.  I stayed at the base in Yu, and to keep me busy, Shizune taught me a little of what she knew of healing.”

“That’s cool,” Sakura offered.  “You must be pretty good at it.”

Shisui-sensei snorted.  “Kami, no. Probably just as much as Hatake-taichou.”  He let just a hint of the green chakra envelop his hand.  “To be good at medical jutsu, your chakra control has to be incredible.  Mine’s good -- ” he winked at Sakura with the missing eye so obviously she could tell what he was trying to do under his hitai-ate, and she giggled, “ -- but I’ll never be able to do more than diagnostics, and maybe a little healing.”  He paused. “Why, are you interested in learning?”

“No,” Sakura said dismissively.  “I’m going to be a fighter, not a doctor.”

Shisui-sensei sighed.  “Ah, well. I think Haku-kun might be interested.   Let me know if you change your mind.” He tapped her on the nose.  “You’re all right to move back to the kids den, if you want,” he declared.  “Let me or San or one of the other sensei know if you feel dizzy or nauseated or anything, yeah?”

“Okay,” Sakura agreed, and accepted his hand up.  “Thanks, Shisui-sensei.”

“No problem, kid,” said Shisui-sensei, and ruffled her hair.  

“Sakura-chan!” Naruto cheered, as he barged into the den not an hour later, arms flailing.  “You’re back!” He made as if to tackle her, and Sasuke tripped him neatly, sending him staggering past the bed stacks.  

“Don’t touch her, idiot, she’s still hurt,” he said, rolling his eyes.  

Sakura smiled.  “Hi,” she said, swinging her legs from her bottom bunk.  “How was training?”

Naruto groaned dramatically, throwing himself to the ground.  “The worst! Itachi-sensei just keeps making us do the same thing Zabuza-sensei did, except he just stands there and silently watches us fall off trees all day instead of yelling at us like Zabuza-sensei does.”  

“You keep falling off trees,” Sasuke corrected, crossing his arms.  “I’m doing fine. Plus, he’s teaching us ninjutsu.”

Naruto stuck his tongue out at the other boy.  “Wait ‘til Sakura-chan comes back to kick your ass.”

“Are you coming to training tomorrow?” Sasuke asked, ignoring their blond teammate.  

“No,” Sakura said regretfully.  “Shisui-sensei said I need to take it easy for a bit.  But I can come watch.”

“Awesome!” Naruto cheered.  “Do you know what Itachi-sensei’s going to teach you?  He showed me this totally cool fuuton that’s even cooler than Temari-nee’s, and he says he’ll teach it to me as soon as I can walk on water!”

“So, never,” Sasuke muttered under his breath.

“Shut up, bastard!” Naruto growled, sitting up to glare at their teammate.  “I will too get it!”

“You can’t even climb a tree yet,” Sasuke pointed out smugly.  “I can spar in the trees and I’m starting water-walking tomorrow.”

“Itachi-sensei said my strengths are somewhere else,” Naruto fired back.  “And I’ll beat you in no time!”

“Aniki also said that you have to get it quickly or else we have to leave you in Tetsu like a civilian when we go fight Kiri,” Sasuke sniffed.  

“I’m not a civilian!  I’m going to be the best shinobi in Hana-ha, just wait!” Naruto fumed.  

“Boys,” Sakura said sweetly, taking advantage of the fact that they had to be nice to her while she was injured, “are we forgetting which member of this team is already sparring on water?”

Naruto whipped around, a distinctly betrayed expression on his face.  Behind him, Sasuke looked vaguely offended. “Ugh,” Naruto complained.  “We’ll catch up to you before you’re back, Sakura-chan!”

Sakura was kind of afraid of that, but she smiled nonetheless.

“Hey, are you hungry?” Naruto blurted.  “Gaara’s team is making moose soup.”

“Sure,” Sakura agreed, even as she saw Sasuke’s nose wrinkle from the corner of her eye.  Unfortunately for him, Sasuke had never been too fond of moose. There were at least three dozen meals’ worth of moose meat left in cold storage.  

She swayed a little as she stood, but no nausea came rushing up, so she followed her teammates back out of the sleeping den carefully.

At the fire pit, Gaara stirred the contents of a large metal pot with an expression of intense concentration pasted on his face -- one that uncomfortably resembled what Sakura privately called his hunting face.

“S-sakura,” Hinata greeted warmly, setting down the knife she'd be using to reduce a small mountain of potatoes into neat chunks. “It's g-good to s-see you w-walking a-around again.”

Sakura smiled.  “Thanks,” she said, touching the scabbed-over cut on the side of her head absently.  “Shisui-sensei really helped.”

“It seems Shisui-sensei is a man of varied skills,” Sai noted, setting down his load of firewood.  “Itachi-sensei speaks highly of him, and wishes his assistance in teaching our team infiltration tactics, and combat as well.”

“Cool,” Naruto enthused.  “So are you going to sneak into enemy territory and steal their secrets and stuff?”

“Likely not,” Sai said blandly, reaching over for a bag of rice and tipping it into Gaara’s pot. “As genin, our teams would all be kept away from the battlefields, not to mention enemy territory, if at all possible.”

Sakura absently turned over the idea of genin in her mind.  It’d been her goal when she first entered the Academy, but now that she was maybe officially genin, it felt surreal that she was going to fight and maybe kill -- or be killed by -- an actual enemy.  

“We'll fight,” Sasuke said darkly.  “No matter what.”

“Yeah!” Naruto agreed.  “We'll be so strong that they have to let us fight!”

“I don’t think -- ” Sai began, and Sakura tuned out the rest of the argument in favor of picking her way next to Hinata.

“C-careful.”  Hinata reached out to steady her as she wobbled.

“Thanks,” said Sakura gratefully, sitting down a little hard.  “I’m still a little shaky.”

Hinata bit her lip as she turned to slide her small mountain of chopped potatoes into Gaara’s pot.  Her teammate barely acknowledged the change except to stir a little more vigorously. “D-does it s-still h-hurt?”

“Just a migraine,” Sakura said tiredly.  She could feel her eyes unfocusing a little, but she dragged them back to Hinata’s face with effort.  “What does Itachi-sensei have planned for you?” she asked curiously.

“A-ano -- ” Hinata ducked her head.  “O-observation, i-impersonation, and f-fighting b-blind.”

Sakura’s eyes widened. “Fighting blind?” she asked incredulously.  “Why would he want you to do that when you have a doujutsu?”

Hinata shifted a handful of onions onto the piece of wood that functioned as a chopping board.  “I-it’s because the B-byakugan is t-too d-distinctive and d-dangerous,” she explained. “I-I have to c-cover it w-when I l-leave here, a-and if w-we a-are ever a-ambushed, I-I n-need to be a-able to r-react w-without my s-sight.  Shisui-sensei’s g-going to have N-Neji-niisan do the s-same.”

“That makes sense,” Sakura said slowly.  Before Hana-ha had picked them up, Hinata had often made her way around blindfolded -- but there was a big difference between walking blind and fighting blind.  “Have you tried it yet?”

Hinata bit her lip.  “O-once,” she said, slicing through the onions precisely. “I-it didn’t g-go very w-well.”

“You just need practice,” Sakura said confidently.  “I can’t even walk in a straight line with my eyes closed, so you’re way good at it already.”

“M-maybe,” said Hinata, and added the onions to Gaara’s pot.

“Definitely,” Sakura corrected, and Hinata smiled a little.  

“D-do you k-know what I-Itachi-sensei is g-going to t-teach you?” she asked.

Sakura sighed.  “Not really,” she admitted.  “I don’t have enough chakra for a lot of ninjutsu and I’m not fast enough or strong enough for taijutsu.  Maybe genjutsu.”

“I-I think y-you would b-be g-good at t-that,” Hinata offered.  “Y-your c-chakra c-control is r-really g-good.”

“You think?”  Sakura leaned back, propping herself up on her elbows.  “It seems a little, I don’t know, like hiding in the middle of battle.  I’d rather be in the thick of things.”

“W-we’re s-shinobi,” Hinata said firmly.  “B-being sneaky i-is p-part of b-being a ninja.”  

Sakura hummed agreement, but she could feel her eyelids drooping again.  The soup smelled good, but despite convincing herself that she really did want to try it, Sakura let herself lie back slowly on the ground and drift off.  

She woke up when it was full dark again, moonlight reflecting off the snow outside and filtering into the sleeping den.  Someone had carried her back inside and wrapped her in her cloak, which was a little embarrassing. She shifted upright carefully.  Above her, Naruto’s arm flopped over the side of his bunk as he snored.

Her stomach growled.   She took a cautious step forward, then another.  From the corner of her eye, eerie eyes glowed in the darkness.  She turned to meet Gaara’s unblinking stare.

“Awake,” he noted passively, not moving from his cross-legged position on his top bunk.

“Yeah.”  Sakura tried to smile.  “I’m a bit hungry.”

He regarded her in silence long enough for her to feel the stirrings of panic.  “Nee-chan left you soup outside,” he said finally.

“Oh,” said Sakura, surprised.  “That’s -- that’s nice of her.”

“Yes,” Gaara agreed simply.  

Sakura fidgeted.  “Do you -- do you want to come outside?” she offered.

Gaara tilted his head.  “Okay,” he said finally, and hopped off the stack lightly, landing on the dirt floor noiselessly.  Sakura smiled hesitantly as he turned to lead the way out of the den.

Nestled in the glowing embers of the cooking fire was a small metal pot.  Sakura fished it out gingerly, tucking her cloak beneath her so she wouldn’t sit directly on the snow.  Silently, Gaara offered her a spoon, then sat down to watch her eat.

From the side of the cliff, a shadow dropped down.  Sakura blinked at it, but Gaara continued to stare at her, unconcerned.  She spooned another bite of moose into her mouth.

The captain slipped out of the darkness, padding up to her and Gaara on noiseless feet.  Moonlight glinted dully off his shock of silver hair, catching on the vambraces he wore on his forearm.  He moved slowly but surely, a hunter's easy prowl. Sakura watched him warily, flinching away involuntarily when he reached out a hand.

He paused, hand outstretched.  “Do you mind?” the captain asked, voice low.  “I wanted to check your injury.”

“Uh, go ahead,” Sakura said, and forced herself to hold still as the shinobi held a glowing hand over her head.  

“You’ll live,” he said, letting the chakra fade.  “Limit your chakra use, and don’t do anything physically strenuous.”  

Sakura gave him a weak smile.  “Yes, sir,” she said.

He didn’t fade back into the shadows like Sakura had expected.  Instead, he spat a small flame at the remains of the fire and let it flare back to life.  “Your training,” he said. “How is it?”

Sakura glanced at Gaara, who blinked back at her.  

“It is useful,” Gaara said, before Sakura could respond.  

“Yeah,” Sakura added.  “Zabuza-sensei’s a good teacher.”

The captain nodded almost absently.  “And are you both satisfied here? Sakura, the deadline for remaining with Hana-ha passed while you were injured.  Is this still the path you want to take?”

Sakura set down her bowl, staring at her half-finished soup.  Was he only asking her because, of all their little group, she was the only civilian-born?  Not a jinchuuriki, not handpicked for Anbu, not from a shinobi clan. She was the only one who could walk away, clean, and not be hunted.  

And maybe the captain knew that, and after the initial wave of indignation, Sakura did feel a little grateful.  “Yes,” Sakura said, remembering what she’d told San before. “I’m sure.”

“I will not leave,” Gaara agreed placidly.  

The captain said nothing, but nodded -- just a shallow dip of his head.  “Here,” he said at last. “Something both of you can learn.”

Curiously, Sakura watched the man run his hands through seals slowly: Bear, Boar, Tiger, Cat, Tiger… “Kasumi Juusha no Jutsu,” the captain announced.

Sakura felt her heart rate kick up as black figures emerged from the shadows, looming over them from the edges of the fire.  Gaara tensed, eyes widening and narrowing in turn as they darted from figure to figure.

“It’s a genjutsu,” the captain said soothingly, and Sakura let her muscles relax.  “They won’t hurt you. It’s called the Mist Servant Technique,” he narrated, as the figures examined their own hands, stretching out their limbs in an exploration of movement.  “It doesn’t take a lot of chakra, and it likely won’t work on a genjutsu specialist, but you can supplement it with thrown projectiles. If you ever need a distraction for a quick retreat, or to prepare another jutsu, this is a good option.”  He let the figures melt back into shadows with a flick of his hand. “Give it a try, Sakura. But stop right away if you feel dizzy or your head starts hurting.”

“Hai,” said Sakura, and frowned in concentration as her hands formed the seals hesitantly.  “Kasumi Juusha no Jutsu,” she repeated, and willed the shadows to take shape. A shadowy figure with her silhouette dragged itself from beneath the stack of firewood.  Another, only half-formed and trailing inky black from one arm and leg, detached from a dip in the snow.

“Good,” said the captain.  “Now, release the genjutsu.  Your chakra is more precarious with that concussion.”

Sakura did as instructed, allowing the illusion to fade.  The persistent headache throbbing at the back of her skull briefly intensified, then ebbed, and she winced.

“Sakura?” the captain asked mildly.

“I'm okay, sir,” she said.  “I don't think I'll try it again, though.”

The captain eyed her with sharp eyes, then nodded.  “Gaara?” he prompted. “Why don't you try the genjutsu?”

The younger boy frowned, directing his inscrutable stare at Sakura and the captain in turn.  Clumsily, he went through the seals and narrowed his eyes. Sakura felt his chakra surge.

All around the fire, the shadows seethed and writhed, never quite forming, and falling apart only to be absorbed by another.  Gaara scowled thunderously and scattered the illusion in another burst of chakra.

“Too much chakra, not enough control,” the captain noted critically, “though a strong first attempt.  Again. Visualize the genjutsu you want to form more clearly and keep a tighter grip on your chakra.”

Face frozen in a rictus of a snarl, Gaara cast another -- then a second, then a third.  Formless shadows morphed into vague figures, and finally, in the murky darkness beyond the fire, a small figure -- a shadow like Gaara -- stepped forth.  Then another, bigger one, towering over the first. This one, with its four legs and pointed muzzle and pointier ears, was clearly not human.

Sakura sucked in an involuntary gasp as it prowled the edge of the fire, its head snapping restlessly from side to side.  

“Ah,” said the captain thoughtfully.  “Good progress, Gaara. However, this should only be a technique you use when you do not mind your enemy knows who you are.”

Strangely, Gaara did not look overly frustrated at this -- instead, he smiled, like a sated cat showing its fangs.

Sakura tried not to let the envy show on her face.  It must be nice, to have so many options that he could pick and choose which techniques he used in battle.  She stared down at her hands.

What did she have?  Some shoddy taijutsu, halfway decent kunai-throwing, the most basic ninjutsu the Academy could teach, and now about twenty percent of a genjutsu that she couldn’t even practice without giving herself a migraine.  Sakura’s options were limited and decreasing fast.

Itachi-sensei may have had none of the even rudimentary medical training Shisui-sensei or the captain had, but that didn’t stop him from forbidding Sakura-chan to so much as skip a pebble across the lake where Sasuke was taking his first wobbly steps across the water.   He glanced over when Sakura shifted restlessly from her snow-covered rock at the water’s edge. “I will not risk your health over something as trivial as training on a day you should be recovering from a traumatic brain injury,” he repeated

“Sensei,” Sakura said mutinously.  “The captain let me try a genjutsu last night.”

“Perhaps,” Itachi-sensei said placidly, hands loose at his side as he balanced easily on the gently bobbing lake.  “However, he would be able to treat you if your condition worsened, and I would not.”

Sakura narrowed her eyes and glared out at Sasuke, who lost his footing and fell flailing into the icy lake with a yelp.  He clawed his way out onto a sheet of ice, scrabbling for purchase. Itachi-sensei barely blinked as Sasuke shook his hair out like one of the wolves.  Sakura watched enviously. Further down the shoreline, Itachi-sensei’s clone supervised his own team’s taijutsu drills.

“Scenario,” Itachi-sensei said, almost absently, breaking her out of her observations.  “Your three-membered team is in a building. You see unknown hostiles approaching from outside.  You have one member injured and believe the hostiles have a chakra sensor. How do you proceed?”

Settling her chin in her hand, Sakura frowned. “Public building?  How many stories? Where are the exits?”

“Inn,” answered Itachi-sensei, finally turning to regard her with implacable eyes. “Six stories.  Windows and hallway doors in all rented rooms, main front entrance, one window, two back exits.”

Sakura hesitated.  “Civilians?”

“Twelve in the front room, three in the back room and kitchen, various in the rented rooms.”

Sakura chewed her lip.  “Nature of the injury?”

“Leg wound, muscle, nothing broken, heavy bleeding.”  Itachi-sensei returned his gaze to Sasuke, who bobbed precariously with one hand flailing.

“Stabilize the wound first,” said Sakura at last.  “Bind it securely enough that the blood doesn’t leak.’ She tapped her fingers one after the other.  “Split up the team,” she decided. “I open a second-story window, send a bunshin, go out a fourth-story window up onto the roof.  Teammates repress their chakra signatures and go out the front door, blend in with the crowd on the ground.”

“Minimal contact with civilians,” Itachi-sensei noted. “However, acting as a diversion greatly increases the chances of your death.  If one of you is to die, would it not make sense for the injured member to act as diversion to increase the chances of the rest of the team’s survival?”

“No!” exclaimed Sakura, aghast, then frowned.  

“Why?” Itachi-sensei prompted.  

Sakura could feel the beginnings of a headache throbbing at her temples.  “I -- I can’t leave behind an injured teammate,” she stuttered.

“So instead, your team will be down one member with another injured member?” Itachi-sensei countered calmly.  

“Not if I get away without them catching me,” Sakura defended.  

“How will you evade the chakra sensor?”  On the lake, Sasuke plunged into the lake once again with a loud crash of splintering ice, and Itachi-sensei’s eyes flickered in that direction until his brother’s head broke the surface.

Sakura narrowed her eyes.  “A chakra sensor shouldn’t be able to distinguish me from a bunshin if I match my chakra output to a clone’s,” she said thoughtfully.  “Once I’m out, I’ll mass produce the clones and send them everywhere -- civilian crowds, public buildings, rooftops. It would give me time to lose them and rendezvous with my team or set up a trap.”

Itachi-sensei nodded once, thoughtfully.  “Remember,” he said. “Bunshin don’t leave tracks or scent.  If you commit to a plan like this, you must be assured of success, or your team will be severely disadvantaged.”

Sakura blew out a harsh breath, fingers coming up instinctively to the sides of her head.

“That is enough for now,” Itachi-sensei said immediately.   “Do not aggravate your injury.”

“Hai,” Sakura murmured, too worn to even argue.  Through her fingers, she watched Sasuke take a victorious stride across the water, then another and another until he reached their sensei.

“What’s wrong with her?” he muttered, voice pitched low.  

“Nothing,” Sakura grumbled.

“A side effect of the concussion,” Itachi-sensei answered, as if she hadn’t spoken.  “Wait here a moment while I collect Naruto.”

Sasuke shoved his hands awkwardly into his pocket as he shivered.  “Any better?” he asked gruffly, as Itachi-sensei slipped away.

Sakura sighed, closing her eyes briefly.  “It just feels the same,” she said. “Headaches, on and off.”  

“Sorry,” he said shiftily.  Sakura could feel the hum of his chakra as he dried himself and his clothes off.

“It was just a training accident,” Sakura reminded him, shifting around to hand him his cloak, abandoned in the snow next to her while he trained.  He took it, slinging it around his shoulders and huddling into its folds.

He shrugged, sitting down next to her, and they watched the chunks of ice bob up and down on the lake.  On the far side, Temari’s team sparred, little black figures darting and pouncing across the water.

“Munashii,” said Sasuke.  

“What?”

“Empty,” he repeated slowly, glancing over like her stupid concussion might have affected her comprehension.  “In Konoha, as genin, we would have the hitai-ate and start going on missions, but here -- it’s still more of the same.  Training. It feels empty.”

“We haven’t left San’s forest since we got here,” Sakura agreed.  “The sensei keep talking about the war, but we’ve never seen it.”

Sasuke skipped a rock across the surface of the water with a little more force than necessary. “We will,” he said ominously. “The whole pack will.”

A teasing smile tugged at the corner of Sakura’s mouth.  “Pack?” she echoed.

Sasuke scowled.  “Shut up. San keeps calling us that.”

“San was literally raised by wolves,” Sakura pointed out.  “I like it, though,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

Sasuke snorted.  “You sleep in San’s den for three days and that’s what happens.”

“Oh, shut up,” Sakura grumbed.  

“Yeah, shut up,” Naruto chimed in, and instantly Sasuke’s face darkened into a glower.

“You don’t even know what we’re talking about, idiot,” he snarled.

“It is your turn on meal rotation,” Itachi-sensei said serenely over Naruto’s, “Yeah?  Fight me, bastard!” “I trust you two boys will be able to handle it while I escort Sakura back to base camp.”

“Sure, whatever,” said Sasuke, tucking his cloak around him more securely.  Itachi-sensei levered him with a look, and Sasuke blew out a sigh. “Yes, sensei ,” he amended grumpily.

“Hai!” Naruto agreed, abandoning his feud with Sasuke as soon as it’d started.     

“Sakura?” Itachi-sensei prompted.

Sakura sighed.  “Coming,” she said, and brushed off Naruto’s overly enthusiastic attempts to help her up.  

It was far too early for any of the other teams to finish training.  The captain, however, was holding conference at the edge of the clearing with a huddle of his ninken and San with her wolves.

Sakura knew better than to pry, and let Itachi-sensei herd her not-so-subtly to the pack’s den, following the trail he thoughtfully broke through the snow, since he wouldn’t let her walk on top of it.  He stood aside to let her in first.

Her cloak weighed heavy on her shoulders, twice as heavy today.  She staggered a little as she shrugged it off, and when she tried to toss it on her bunk, it slid half-off.  

But now that it was off, she shivered, the thin fabric and deerskin shirt an insufficient defense against the cold seeping in from the cave entrance.  

“Lie down,” Itachi-sensei said, and Sakura peered up to watch him make his way over.  

Obediently, she slumped into her bunk, and Itachi-sensei folded her cloak over her with clinical precision.  “I should help my team,” she protested weakly. “I know I can’t hunt, but I should -- start the fire or boil water.”

“Later,” Itachi-sensei said implacably, and despite herself -- despite the fact that she was acting like a useless little civilian -- Sakura felt her eyelids close.  

“Sakura?” Temari’s voice filtered through the fog of sleep, dragging Sakura unwillingly to the surface.  She resisted the urge to curl up and hide until the older girl left, shrink away from her.

Nevertheless, she forced her eyes open and blinked blearily at Temari.  Golden rays filtered weekly into the mouth of the den. “It’s time for dinner,” the older girl informed her, peeling back Sakura’s cloak.  “Come on, I’ll help you up.”

Sakura was sick and tired of needing help just to crawl out of bed, and to need Temari’s help of all people, but she accepted the older girl’s hand, swaying on her feet just a little as Temari draped her cloak around her shoulders.

“Sakura-chan!” Naruto cheered.  A half-chewed something was in his mouth.  With an impressively tolerant expression, Gaara leaned away from him.  

“Chew with your mouth closed,” Temari admonished, and guided Sakura to a seat on a log next to Haku -- rare, for him to eat with the pack.  Sakura blinked at the older boy when he offered her a small smile.

“Stay,” Temari told Sakura, drawing back her attention.  “I’ll get your food.”

Sakura smiled weakly.  “Thanks,” she managed. A shuffle at her feet -- a narrow muzzle shoved itself into Sakura’s lap, and she blinked down at Guruko’s liquid eyes.  “Hi,” said Sakura, hand coming up instinctively to rub the ninken’s forehead. “Is the captain working you hard?”

Guruko whined agreement, eyes half-closing in contentment.  

“He and Bisuke are accompanying myself and Zabuza-san on a mission tomorrow evening,” Haku said unexpectedly.  

“Another mission?” Sakura asked, surprised, and accepted a bowl from Temari.  “He's not even back yet, and the last one you went on with him was -- oh. That was six days ago.”

“Yes,” Haku agreed. “Zabuza-san will be back within a few hours.  We are continuing to monitor movement on the eastern coast of Hi while the Kiri insurgents battle the loyalists for control of that sea.”

“Maybe you should bring a set of eyes that can see everything,” Neji said pointedly on Sakura’s other side.

“Hey.”  Temari snapped her fingers warningly at Neji, who turned his glower in her direction.

“Itachi-sensei told Zabuza-san he will bring the entire team on his reconnaissance mission after competence in basic shinobi arts is demonstrated,” Haku said, unperturbed.  “He thinks perhaps next month.”

Deafening silence.  Even Naruto was startled out of his one-sided conversation with Gaara and Sasuke.  Sakura choked down a bite of bird, tears pricking her eyes when it caught in her throat.  Guruko blinked concerned eyes up at her.

“N-Next month?” Hinata said.  

“Perhaps,” Haku repeated.  

Sakura’s eyes darted to Temari, whose eyes first widened, then narrowed.  Neji’s face twisted into a thoughtful scowl, Sai’s into a pensive expression.  Naruto and Sasuke exchanged glances.

“Outside of San’s forest?” asked Sasuke cautiously.  

“I believe so,” said Haku.

“That,” Naruto breathed, “is so cool .  You’re going to be the first ones on a real mission!  A real team mission !”  Beside him, Gaara narrowed his eyes at Temari.  

Temari pursed her lips.  “I see,” she said. “Are all the sensei preparing to begin bringing their teams on missions?”

“Yes,” Haku said simply.  

Hinata covered her mouth with her hand.  Naruto hooted, slapping his hand against a slightly less enthusiastic Sasuke’s.  Sakura took a deep breath, oblivious to Guruko’s curious stare.

In, out.  This was Sakura’s world, changing, again.

Sakura was a clever girl.  Since her father’s death, her cleverness kept her alive.  She kept her mouth shut, and she watched, filing away all that information neatly into her brain.  And she learned.

Itachi-sensei’s team was by far the most ready for the missions, the coming war -- even moreso than the rest of the pack may have known, judging by Naruto’s whining.  Sakura, though -- Sakura knew better. Feared them, even, on days when she was tired and lonely and felt the years of being hunted wearing on her.

But fear -- fear was fine.  Fear was a tool that kept a shinobi alive.

This is what Sakura knew about Yuki Ichizoku no Haku:

Haku was the kind of metaphorical diamond one might find in a coal mine.  He was the last echo of a dead clan with a prodigious elemental kekkei-genkai, self-taught in everything his ice could do.  He possessed a naturally brilliant mind, and regularly created his own jutsu.

He was faster than a striking snake, his throw was deadly accurate, and he could hit a flying bird precisely in the eye with a senbon. Haku could track a rabbit in a snowstorm, identify a bird by the way it beat its wings.

In Kiri, he was hated and feared for his kekkei-genkai; in Konoha he would have been venerated and coveted.   In any life, in any country, Haku would always make a fantastic shinobi.

This is how Sakura knew to be afraid of Haku:

Haku was the kindest person Sakura had ever met.  His compassion was genuine, and he honestly, truly wanted to help everybody.  His eyes were warm and his smile pure.

But more than anything, he was loyal to Zabuza-sensei.

And for him, Haku could lock away that kindness in the blink of an eye and leave behind nothing but a blank mask.  

Haku’s special talent was killing, and he was especially gifted at it.       

When Haku was five, he killed his father and almost every able-bodied man in his village.  Zabuza-sensei picked him up on the side of the road, and within another two, three, four years, Haku was a Kiri hunter-nin.  

When Zabuza-sensei attempted to kill the Mizukage, Haku followed him.  When Zabuza-sensei raided a human experimentation facility during what was supposed to be a human trafficking A-rank, Haku followed him.  When Zabuza-sensei was captured during the mission by Konoha’s most notorious Sannin, Haku found the only people that would even consider helping, or even stand a chance of helping: Reiketsu Kakashi and Uchiha Itachi, the Hanabi-ha.

And as long as Zabuza-sensei was a part of Hanabi-ha, Haku would too.

But if Zabuza-sensei told Haku to kill any one of them, Sakura knew he would do it.  

This is how Sakura met Haku:

Two years on the run, and Neko-sensei left the pack in Oshino -- the last time Sakura had seen her or Hanabi.  Two years of ambushes, false alarms, and Temari called a Code Red: a Code 2-Red-2, recognition by a family member.

In the flurry of chaos that happened, Sakura met first Itachi-sensei, then the captain.  In the forests of Taki, fleeing again (nothing new), Sakura met Shisui-sensei and Zabuza-sensei and Haku.

Shisui-sensei was weary good nature and sardonic humor and tousled hair.  Zabuza-sensei was rough and sharp edges and towering height. Haku was light and lithe and coiled grace in his shadow.

Haku offered her a drink of water from his canteen, sat down next to her after a long day of travel, and asked her what her name was.   

Haku was the first member of Hana-ha who smiled at her, and for the first time since Neko-sensei had left them, Sakura had felt safe.  

This is what Sakura knew about Hyuuga Neji:

Neji was a genius.   He should have been the jewel of the Hyuuga Clan in Konoha, its greatest shinobi in a clan of great shinobi in this generation.  Neji never needed more than once to learn a lesson; there was never a taijutsu kata that took him more than a day to perfect, never a target he couldn’t hit, and never was his chakra anything less than impeccably controlled.  

However, Hyuuga Neji was born as a second-class citizen and he knew would never be anything more than a servant.

He could have been chosen for the Command Corps, sure.  He could have made jounin, or joined the Anbu -- he could even have risen as high as Joint Forces Commander, second only to the Hokage.  But he would never be Hokage, and in his Clan, he would always be subordinate.

Neji did not fight this.  The last lesson his father taught was obedience, and Neji never needed more than once to learn a lesson.  

Instead, he kept his head down and trained.  He trained even before he enrolled in the Academy, and when he did enroll, he ranked first in his class in every subject without fail.  He was six and already one of the most promising shinobi of his generation.

This is how Sakura knew to be afraid of Neji:

The Clan accelerated his Juuken training.  Neji did not protest. The Clan assigned him to take up traditional Branch guard shifts in the clan compound.  Neji did not protest. The Clan appointed him a personal bodyguard to the heiress, his younger cousin. Neji did not protest.

Hinata was everything that Neji was not: privileged, timid, and -- to put it nicely -- fragile.  She was taught the secret techniques of the Main House, waited on, guarded at all times. But where Neji learned quickly, Hinata took twice, three times as long to learn the same half as well. When she entered the Academy, the only subject she ranked first in was taijutsu, and even then, only among the kunoichi.  Instead of standing tall and proud, she wilted.

When she came of age, Hyuuga Hinata would become the next Head of the illustrious Hyuuga Clan, famed throughout the Elemental Lands as a clan of proud shinobi with one of the strongest doujutsu to exist.  And Neji would be at her shoulder, at her heels.

Neji did not protest, but he resented.

His anger burned slow, festering, and ignited in a flash.  

Neji would give his life for Hyuuga Hinata, and he would forever resent her for it.  

The whole pack -- and San, and the sensei -- had watched Neji almost kill Hinata.   Had seen the smoldering hatred so carefully hidden, packed beneath his veneer of cool control.  Killing intent was something the shinobi Academies and sensei cultivated carefully, nurtured. But Neji’s past had done that for him tenfold.  

This is how Sakura met Neji:

Still reeling from her father’s murder, Sakura had huddled in a tiny room with Sai and Naruto, all three muddy and blood-splattered.  There was no bathroom in the Anbu bolt-hole Sai had dragged them into, just a covered bucket. The only food was dried and packaged and hard as rock.  

Then Neko-sensei had shoved her way in and Sai had almost impaled her, crouching defensively in front of Sakura as she huddled uselessly in the corner and Naruto, who guarded her with his own body.  And behind her had been a hard-eyed eight-year-old Neji glaring white eyes at them with an actual baby cradled in his arms. And behind him was Hinata and Sasuke -- the former terrified, the latter fierce.

Eight of them crammed into an Anbu bolt-hole.  It wasn’t safe.

Hi no Kuni was a big country, but in the wake of Danzo’s upheaval, none of it was safe.  

Hinata, Sasuke, Hanabi -- each of them Main House blood, each in the direct line of succession.  Naruto -- jinchuuriki, the greatest weapon in Konoha’s possession. Them, Neko-sensei was honor-bound and duty-bound to protect, to keep away from the usurper’s clutches.  

Sai, Neji -- both prodigies, already blooded, already pressed into duty for village or for clan.  Them, Neko-sensei could lean on to protect her four charges.

Sakura, however -- civilian, worthless, more brain than brawn.  Her, Neko-sensei had no use for. Neko-sensei should have left her behind, wanted to even, for the good of the mission.

But Naruto resisted so adamantly, so fervently, that even Sai had somewhat hesitantly sided with him.

“Bring her,” Neji had snapped.  “We’ll waste less time if they come willingly.”

And Sakura had shrunken back at him and his cold eyes, but Neko-sensei agreed.  When they left, they left as eight.

It took eight weeks before Sakura willingly spoke to Neji.  

This is what Sakura knew about Sabaku no Temari:

Temari was strong.  The firstborn of the Yondaime Kazekage, she was a prodigy from the moment she stepped into a training ring.  Smart, fast, a killer instinct -- she had all the makings of a fearsome ninja, and that was before she started picking up elemental jutsu while still in the Academy.

However, she was also a kunoichi in a shinobi’s world and even at nine years old Temari was no fool.

Sunagakure’s only female Anbu were part of the seduction-infiltration division, and its few female jounin had all been relegated to desk jobs.  Temari didn’t want a desk job. She certainly didn’t want to get stuck working in a hospital or playing nice as an ambassador due to her high political status as the Kazekage’s daughter.  

She wanted to be a field commander, or join Anbu and complete S-rank missions.  She wanted to be the youngest jounin, like the legendary ninja she read about in her textbooks, who had been promoted at thirteen and fourteen and fifteen.

But she was nine and could have made genin in her sleep a year ago, and her tutor told her to “quit being so impatient.  You won’t be even chunin for another six years at least.”

Because her genin team would be her brothers, and she wouldn’t be allowed to enter the chuunin exams until they were ready.  Gaara was six, and still couldn’t control the Shukaku.

When she had made chuunin, she would be encouraged to retire and enter a political marriage.

But Temari didn’t want that.  She was too smart for her own good, too strong, too fast.  She didn’t master her first fuuton ninjutsu at eight for her own village to betray her.

She left.

She left, with Gaara.  

She was wasted in Suna.

This is how Sakura knew to be afraid of Temari:

No matter how prodigious she was, Temari knew wouldn’t last a day outside Suna on her own without being killed or retrieved.  And she knew her youngest brother, who was for all intents and purposes a living weapon with very limited control, could level the village either with intent or with carelessness.   She was afraid of him, yes, but she needed him.

It was almost laughably easy to get her youngest brother to trust her.  She started with a smile.

He was desperately lonely and starving for affection, and when she began showing interest in him, he soaked it up like the desert after rainfall.  He was so painfully earnest and eager to please -- and he tried so, so hard not to hurt her. He didn’t succeed, of course. His control was imperfect, and broke Temari’s arm on two separate occasions, and once three ribs when he couldn’t hold back the demon.  

“You need to do better, otouto,” she told him the second time after she got back from the hospital, arm wrapped in plaster, and his eyes widened at the address.  “What if you kill me on accident? You’ll be lonely again.”

And of course, he tried harder after that.

And then their uncle tried to kill her, or maybe him -- Sakura wasn't too clear on this part -- and Gaara perfected his control that night.  He protected her. That was the night they left Suna for good. He was seven, she was ten.

Temari didn’t tell Sakura all of this, not directly.  But Sakura was clever, too smart for her own good even, and pieced the story together from the scraps the older girl let slip.

“I am the one that loves you,” she’d heard the older girl whisper to Gaara at night, and even Sakura could tell he believed her.  And perhaps that was even true, but that was unimportant.

They hadn’t been let go easy -- their village had sent Anbu to retrieve or kill them.  Eventually, they stopped coming, after Gaara left their corpses twisted and bloodied or pureed in their wake.

This was how Sakura met Temari:

They were in the Land of Rivers, maybe, when Naruto came back to the decrepit toolshed they were staying in with a tiny boy with bizarre dark rings around his eyes and rust-red hair and a stare that could unnerve the Shinigami himself.  Sakura wasn’t entirely sure how Naruto managed to befriend the homicidal little boy and from the expression on his face Gaara didn’t know either, but stay he did. And with him came Temari.

But Gaara was on his best behavior and so was she, and over the next year Neko-sensei let them learn their story as she allowed them to learn a little of her and Gaara’s.  

But Sakura wasn’t fooled.  For all that both Sand siblings played up Gaara’s bloodlust, she knew that it was Temari that was the dangerous one, the ruthless one.  Temari was the puppeteer in the relationship and Gaara followed her lead.

Maybe the others didn’t see it beneath the caring older sister persona, but Sakura knew: Sabaku no Temari was a force to be reckoned with.

Whirling cloak and scattered snowflakes.  Sakura pounced across the top of the snow, gleeful in finally being allowed to do more physically strenuous activity after two weeks of light jogging at most.  Naruto blew past, his own cloak steaming out behind him, and Sakura gave chase.

“Can't catch me!” Naruto crowed gleefully, turning his head to peek over his shoulder at her with mischievous eyes.

Sakura smiled.  “Is that a challenge?” she called, leaping nimbly over a rocky outcropping.  She put on a burst of speed as his control slipped, sending him staggering as one foot broke through the crust of the snow.

“Got you!”  Sakura’s punch caught him on the shoulder as he tried to dodge clumsily, sending him face first into the snowbank.  She sped away before he could tag her back, veering out onto the icy river.

“Aw, Sakura-chan,” Naruto complained, stopping his charge just short of the water's edge.

Sakura smiled sweetly, a good three meters from the riverbank.  “What’s the matter, Naruto?” She took one step towards him teasingly, then another.  

Naruto growled wordlessly, pacing back and forth.  

Sakura yelped as Naruto took a flying leap, diving sideways as her teammate crashed flailing into the icy water.  “Naruto!” she cried, aghast, as his head popped out of the water, gasping.

“What an idiot,” Sasuke muttered, striding out on top of the water with surprisingly stable steps.  He reached out and hauled Naruto bodily out of the water by the arm, tossing him to the shore.

Naruto reacted about the same as if one had done the same to a drenched cat: yowled protestations and flailing of limbs.  “What the hell?” he demanded.

Sasuke crossed his arms.  “You jumped into a half-frozen river without knowing how to walk on water,” he pointed out.  “And you can barely swim.”

“I was fine!” Naruto insisted.

“Brats,” interjected Zabuza-sensei before their argument could escalate into a full-on fight, slouching languidly behind Naruto as if he’d always been there.  “Get over here, shut your traps. We’ve got a briefing or whatever.”

Naruto huffed as Sakura and Sasuke made their way towards the edge of the river.  “We did the briefing yesterday,” he complained.

“We did?” Sakura said pointedly.  Naruto and Sasuke looked vaguely guilty.

“These two brats wanted to know what we were doing today,” Zabuza-sensei drawled, cheerfully throwing her two teammates under the bus, “so I told them.  It’s you versus Itachi’s team.”

Sakura made a face and folded her arms across her chest.  The headaches were nearly gone, but physically, she still tired easily.  “So, it’s a joint exercise with Team Sa-Ga-Hi,” she said.

“That’s a terrible name,” Sasuke muttered under his breath.  

“The wolf-girl’s going to be your target.  Client. Whatever,” said Zabuza-sensei. “She wants you to guard her when she goes from the western caves to the tallest pine on the eastern shore of the lake.  The client will be travelling on foot, blah, blah, and you are to protect her and her wares from potential bandits.”

“Gaara’s team!” Naruto chimed it.

“Yes,” Sasuke said dryly.  “But we’re not supposed to know that.”

“Wares?” Sakura repeated suspiciously.

“She’s supposed to be a merchant or whatever.”  Zabuza-sensei shrugged and glanced towards the sun.  “Quit asking questions. You have twelve minutes to get the meeting point.”

“What?” Naruto cried, as Sasuke slapped at his kunai holster in a panic.  “We don’t have all our equipment!”

“I have mine,” Sakura said smugly.  

“A shinobi is always prepared,” Zabuza-sensei sneered maliciously.  “Guess you get to choose between meeting your client on time or getting the rest of your equipment.”  

“I’ll meet the client,” Sakura said quickly before Naruto imploded.  “You two grab whatever you need and find us before we leave.”

The three turned to Zabuza-sensei, who raised an eyebrow sardonically.  “Your mission, your decision. Eleven minutes.”

“Go,” said Sasuke, and took off towards the main camp with Naruto on his heels.  

Sakura really needed to get a watch.  She bolted for the western caves, skimming the top of the snow as she ran.  The western caves were around three kilometers away from the training hollow, and Sakura’s breath was rasping harshly in her throat by the time San came into view.  

“You seem a little out of breath,” San noted, staring down at Sakura with no small amount of amusement as she doubled over, hands on her knees.  She affected a higher voice. “I paid for a team,” she said, crossing her arms ostentatiously. “Why is it only you?”

Sakura smothered a smile and straightened.  “I apologize, but my team was unavoidably detained,” she said, trying not to laugh.  “They should be here soon.”

San sniffed, scrunching up her nose.  “I certainly hope so,” she huffed. “I need to get my things to the tallest pine before sunset or everything is ruined.”

“We’re here!” Naruto announced, skidding in with a spray of snow that showered both Sakura and San.  

“Real professional,” muttered Sasuke, as Sakura sputtered and dashed the snow off her face.

“Intolerable!” San intoned, and Naruto and Sasuke stared at her as if she had grown an extra pair of ears.  “I demand you show me some respect!”

“She’s in character,” Sakura explained in an undertone as San brushed her shoulders off prissily.  “We’re ready to go, if you are,” she said, louder.

“Am I?” Giving the trio one more gimlet-eyed glare, San hefted a large carrying rack piled high with rolled pelts onto her back.  “We go,” she announced imperiously. “We are scorching daylight.”

“I’ll take point,” Sasuke said.  “Sakura, stay with the client. Naruto, rearguard.”

“On it!” Naruto chirped, as Sakura said, “Hai.”

Sasuke bounded ahead.  Sakura sprang forwards as well, only to stop when San wasn’t at her shoulder.  She glanced behind her.

San eyed her with a raised eyebrow and stepped forward pointedly.  Her foot broke through the top of the snow and she sank. She took another pondering step.  And another. “Wait for the civilian, young shinobi,” said San with obvious enjoyment.

Sakura closed her eyes briefly.  “Of course,” she said with a strained smile.  

When Naruto hadn’t been able to walk on top of the snow, he had at least plowed through with the drifts enthusiastically as a charging bull moose might -- it hadn’t slowed him down very much.  San, on the other hand, moved as quickly as a browsing cow with a lame foot.

On a regular escort mission, Sakura imagined it would be marginally more relaxed, but since they knew an ambush was coming, she felt herself jumping at shadows.  The path San insisted they take cut through the forest, and Sakura eyed every creaking branch suspiciously.

Sasuke doubled back, a slight frown when he realized that Sakura and San had gone maybe a hundred meters since the mission began.  He turned his frown on Sakura, who flattened her mouth and shook her head. “Clear so far,” he reported at last.

“So far?” San echoed, stopping in her tracks with a mischievous glint in her eyes.  “Young pup, are you telling me that it won’t be clear later?”

Sakura glowered at Sasuke, who looked slightly abashed, and turned a wide-eyed look on San.  “Well, you hired us to protect you,” she said. “Aren’t you expecting to be attacked?”

San sniffed.  “Perhaps. Perhaps not,” she said, and mercifully, continued plodding forward once again.    

Sasuke vanished back into the trees ahead, zigzagging just in view of Sakura and San.  In the back, Naruto -- surprisingly silent -- prowled back and forth, never straying more than three meters.   

All around them, the bare trees trailed spindly shadows across the snowy floor, and Sakura’s breath puffed out in little clouds of white.  The day was cold and still, whatever wildlife there might normally be startled away by the crunch of San’s feet through the snow.

Sakura poked her arms through the side slits in her cloak, palming a kunai in a backhanded grip.  She glanced back at Naruto, but he shook her head when he met her eyes. No sign.

A full hour passed in tense silence.  In that time, the team had managed to traverse almost exactly one kilometer of terrain.  

Sakura’s hands were beginning to go numb, so she sent a thrum of chakra through them, flexing her fingers around her kunai.  

“I am tired,” San declared, and swung off her carrying rack abruptly.

“What are you doing?” asked Sakura, fighting down the thrills of anticipation and panic.

“What’s going on?” Naruto demanded, catching up in one large pounce.

“I am tired,” San repeated primly.  “I am going to take a break.”

Naruto ground his teeth audibly.  “You said you needed to be at the lake by sunset!” he complained.  “We’re really far away!”

“I cannot go on,” San insisted, just as Sasuke came back.

“What’s the holdup?” he muttered to Sakura.

Sakura fought the urge to sigh.  “The client needs to rest,” she answered.  

Sasuke rolled his eyes.  “Fan out,” he ordered. “I’ll stay with the client, you two scout around the site.”  

Sakura seized the chance to move faster than a snail for the first time in an hour and darted into the surrounding trees, one eye on her team and San.  She didn’t think the other team would attack them now -- more likely to surprise them on the move while they were focused on moving forward.

A soft crunch of disturbed snow caught her attention.  Sakura froze, turning her head in that direction. Noiselessly, she crept towards the sound.  For a brief second, she chanced a look over her shoulder, back to her team, but all was peaceful there.  

She prowled forward and peered around the side of the trunk, kunai held defensively before her.  She blinked once, bemused, at who she saw.

Shisui-sensei raised a hand lazily as he slouched against a tree opposite her, waggling his fingers in a greeting.  “Distraction!” he told cheerfully.

“No!” Sakura growled, and whirled, flying over the snow back to where she’d left the others.  

In the trees ahead, Naruto yelled in dismay, and Sakura burst from the trees in time to see Haku propel Temari and Neji out of an oversized ice mirror right in front of San, whose only response was to blink once, slowly.  

Sasuke spat a massive fireball, forcing the other team to scatter, and Naruto was on Temari in a flash, meeting her kunai with his own.  “You’re not Gaara’s team!” Naruto cried indignantly.

Temari grinned, sharklike.  “Nope,” she said sweetly, and knocked him bodily off his feet.

Ice senbon hissed through the air, and Sakura knocked them away, diving in front of San to block the next volley.  “Get back!” she cried, herding San away from the mirror.

Neji drew his tanto, head cocked slightly, and deflected the kunai Sakura flung at him neatly despite the strip of cloth wound over his eyes.  “Genjutsu: Tori no Uta!” she hissed, and Neji jerked involuntarily at the chirping birds that assailed his ears. Her next kunai sailed just past his shoulder as he ducked.  

“Keep doing that!” directed Sasuke breathlessly, his hands already flickering through seals.  He spat a stream of flame, and Haku jerked a hand up, a sheet of ice shooting up just in time.  

“Kai,” Neji growled, breaking through the illusion with a sharp pulse of chakra.  Sakura hurled another kunai to keep Neji back as he advanced, drawing another in each hand as she gritted her teeth.  The only other genjutsu she knew was visual -- useless against a shinobi fighting blind, and doubly so for an opponent whose doujutsu could see through any genjutsu.  

“Naruto, switch!” she yelled, as Temari blasted Naruto back with a precise fuuton.  Naruto twisted out of his backwards tumble into a pounce, yanking Neji with him by an arm.  Temari whirled after them, but Sakura was faster. “Kasumi Juusha no Jutsu!” she growled, and Temari froze, her eyes flicking at the dark figures blooming out of Sakura’s genjutsu.  It wouldn’t hold her long.

“Hey!” Sasuke barked, and Sakura whipped around to see Haku haul a supremely unconcerned San backwards into a mirror.  She lunged, but only hit the hard surface of the ice as the two vanished.

Temari turned on Naruto, blowing him backwards with another fuuton, and grabbed Neji by the shoulder.  “Let’s go!” she yelled, leaping for the dormant mirror they’d arrived from. Just before the two impacted the ice, Haku’s hand reached out and grabbed them, pulling them in.  

Sasuke’s fireball hit too late -- they vanished with a glint of light in the distance, and the mirror cracked, its pieces falling to the ground with a musical tinkle.

Naruto glanced at Sakura.  Sakura looked at Sasuke. Sasuke eyed them both.

“What was that?” Naruto yowled.  

Sasuke scowled thunderously.  “Bad intel,” he snarled.

“Forget that,” Sakura said.  “We need to get her back!”

“They’re long gone,” Sasuke muttered.

“Did you know Haku could do that?” Naruto demanded.  “I didn’t! I mean, it’s super cool that he can just -- ”

“I didn’t know he could bring others into his ice with him,” Sakura admitted, interrupting her teammate’s rant.   Sasuke nodded grudging agreement.

“Ideas for tracking them?” Sasuke asked.

Sakura tapped her chin thoughtfully.  “Transporting three others over a long distance has to be chakra-intensive,” she reasoned.  “And they probably expect us to try and find them. Either Haku took them as far away as possible, counting on Temari and Neji to defend if we catch up, or they're relatively close, and Haku can still fight or run them away again.”  She turned slowly and squinted off into the trees. “I saw a flash of light, there,” she said, pointing north, “like sunlight off a mirror. “They might have started travelling by foot from there.”

“Let's go,” said Sasuke immediately, yanking a kunai out of the tree it had been buried in.  

“Hey,” interrupted Naruto, ignoring or unaware of the way Sasuke scowled at him.  “What about that?”

They all swivelled to look.  San’s carrying rack, still piled high with furs, lay abandoned at the base of a tree, half buried in disturbed snow.  Sakura exchanged a glance with Sasuke.

“Bring it,” said Sasuke reluctantly.  “It's still part of our mission.

Naruto sputtered.  “Me?”

“I'm still recovering,” Sakura said primly.  “Plus, you're the strongest.”

Naruto preened.  Sasuke glowered. “If you say so, Sakura-chan!” said Naruto cheerfully, and hefted the rack onto his shoulders.  It towered over him comically, nearly twice his height, but he handled the weight easily. “I'm the strongest,” he told Sasuke, puffing out his chest.

“Whatever you want to think, loser,” Sasuke sneered back, leaping ahead atop the snow to get away from him.

Sakura scrutinized the landscape with narrow eyes as she sprinted.  All was still -- the snow here blanketed the ground in a smooth sheet, broken only by half-buried twigs or sticks.  Sakura caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye, but when she whipped her head around for a better look, she saw only a bird, fluttering away.

“We need a plan,” said Sasuke, breath coming out in soft puffs that hung in the air.  “That team -- ” He gritted his teeth, “ -- is stronger than us. They can beat us in a head on fight, even if Neji isn't using his Byakugan.”

“We need to wear out Haku,” Sakura said immediately.  “As long as he can use his ice mirrors, they have a quick escape.”

“Haku could take all of us in a fight,” Sasuke muttered under his breath.

“I can take him!” Naruto insisted.  “Itachi-sensei showed me this super awesome jutsu last week -- ”

“No, Haku can use wind-natured jutsu too, and so can Temari,” Sakura said absently.  “And I'm pretty sure theirs are stronger than yours.

“It's not a fuuton,” Naruto corrected, and lowered his voice conspiratorially.  “It's a super secret, super strong jutsu! Itachi-sensei said I shouldn't teach it to anyone else because you need a ton of chakra and I have a ton of chakra but no one else has a ton of chakra except maybe Gaara so it could maybe kill you because it'll drain your chakra and then you wouldn't have any chakra -- ”

“Naruto,” Sakura said with remarkable patience, “what is the jutsu?”

“It’s called -- ” Naruto paused for dramatic effect, “ -- Taijuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!”

“A clone,” Sasuke deadpanned.  Sakura frowned. A shadow clone?  One of the Academy sensei had talked about it her first week of class -- it was a kinjutsu, forbidden to even some jounin.  But if Itachi-sensei had really taught it to him, it had to be okay. Right?

“A strong clone,” Naruto insisted.  “It can hit people and use chakra and really fight and everything!”

“Itachi-sensei taught it to you?” Sakura clarified.

“Yeah!” said Naruto.  “But it’s a super secret, super strong jutsu, and Itachi-sensei said -- ”

Sakura tuned the rest of it out.  A clone that could actually fight -- like Zabuza-sensei’s mizu bunshin.  The wheels in Sakura’s head began turning as she scraped together the beginnings of a plan.  

Sasuke regarded her with narrowed eyes. “What are you thinking?”

“Naruto, can you henge them into whatever?” Sakura asked.

“Huh?” Naruto startled out of his rant.  “Uh, yeah, sure.”

Sakura smiled slowly.

Sakura’s team was not great at tracking.  They were not even good at it. They were, in fact, barely passable, which became painfully clear whenever they went up against the stealth-recon team -- Hinata’s -- and the mobile strike team -- Temari’s.  Sakura’s team was supposed to be the heavy combat team, but they weren’t too good at it yet either.

Temari’s team on foot was faster than Sakura’s, especially since all three could walk on top of both water and the snow easily while Naruto downright couldn’t on the first count and sometimes slipped on the second.  However, they would need to deal with San, who was undoubtably attached to her civilian persona, which meant they also had to lug around her dead weight.

That was ultimately the only reason Sasuke spotted them.  “There,” he hissed, pointing, and Sakura caught a glimpse of San draped cheerfully over Temari’s back -- physically, the strongest -- peeking back as the other team disappeared over a ridge not a hundred meters ahead.  

“Operation: Spook Them And Suddenly Whip Out The Super Strong Surprise is a go!” Naruto whispered gleefully.

Sakura resisted the urge to roll her eyes.  

“This team is horrible at names,” Sasuke muttered, and took off.  Naruto charged after him, possibly cackling under his breath, but Sakura wasn’t sticking around to listen.

She flitted from tree to tree, cutting around the side of the mountain at a dead sprint.  She just had to reach the base of the mountain on the other side before Temari’s team. Haku was in the lead, weaving back and forth methodically without straying too far from his teammates -- their close-knit formation was primed for a quick escape.  

But honestly?  Even if Sakura’s team was on the offensive now, putting them against Temari’s team -- when Sakura and Sasuke and Naruto were definitely not expecting it -- was more than a little unfair.  Neji was a year older, Haku and Temari somewhere around three years older, were physically taller, stronger, and faster, and all three of them had miles more combat experience than any of Sakura’s team.  Sakura’s team had been kept back from any fighting when at all possible, and with Gaara and Sai on Hinata’s team, Sakura’s team had the least real-world fighting experience: essentially, none.

So Sakura didn’t have high hopes about coming out of this victorious.  And given that Naruto generally didn’t have a stealthy bone in his body, she didn’t have high hopes of surprising the other team with an ambush.  This was a hail mary, because if they went back empty-handed and without even trying to get San back, Zabuza-sensei would cut their heads off and have them impaled in the base camp as a warning to the rest of the pack.   After he made them run laps until they dropped and beat them into the ground, which he would do either way if they didn’t succeed.  

Sakura had a fantastically healthy fear of her sensei, and she was not afraid to admit it.

She made it around the mountain with time to spare, half-hidden in the hollow of the roots of a tree.  She peaked over the roots. If Neji was using his Byakugan, there was no way he wouldn’t spot her team surrounding them -- they could just rabbit with Haku’s ice mirrors again -- but the other genin continued their slow lope towards her.

Sakura spared a moment to scowl.  This team’s biggest -- voluntary -- handicap was the only reason her team even had a sliver of chance, and that rankled.   She tipped her head to the side and just barely made out the sound of breathing. Haku was closing in on her position. “Naruto, you better not miss the signal,” she muttered.  “Kasumi Juusha no Jutsu.”

Haku’s breath stuttered as she cast her genjutsu, throwing it out like a net and catching everyone in her vicinity.  She blinked, allowing the illusion to superimpose reality, and sidled around the tree, keeping the trunk between them.  A burst of chakra on the team's other side -- Naruto.

“It's a genjutsu,” Temari said sharply.  “Kai!”

But the shadowy figures remained, pouring out of the trees in seemingly endless streams, and Temari tensed, tightening her grip on San.  

“Ow,” said San mildly.

Neji drew his tanto, settling into a ready crouch, and senbon slipped out of Haku’s sleeves until he wielded three in each hand, sprouting from between his fingers like claws as he retreated to set his back against his teammates’.

“Attack!” Naruto crowed, because he could never quite master a silent attack, and as one, his kage bunshin dropped their henge of Sakura’s mist servants and charged.

Okay, with this technique, Sakura could maybe see their team as the heavy combat squad.  The clones dogpiled the other team, flinging themselves kunai-first with wild abandon and one long, continuous war cry.  Haku’s senbon hissed into the stampede, but with every clone that popped out of existence, two more took its place. At his side, Neji wielded his tanto with deadly precision in one hand and blasted apart bunshin with raw chakra using the other.  The two of them, however, would soon be overrun by the swarm -- and Haku needed space for his mirror escape jutsu or he'd risk pulling along some unwanted passenger. Or maybe they could pull him back out? Sakura was curious.

“The hell is this?” Temari slid San off her back, reaching into her holster for her kunai.

The teen rapped her admonishingly on the back of the head.  “This is not hell,” San informed her sternly. “This is my mother's sacred forest, pup.”

Client successfully separated from enemy combatant.  Sakura henged into one of Naruto’s clones and leapt into the fray.

Neji let loose a blast of chakra that vaporized a third of Naruto’s clones, and Sakura tumbled out of the way.  Haku’s eyes zeroed in on her and narrowed. In a blur of movement, he sent his entire handful of senbon zipping at her.  One of Naruto’s bunshin dove in front of her, taking the brunt of the attack, and she darted forward, snapping out a kunai.  Haku caught it on another senbon as the clones surged. “Sakura-chan,” he said, voice mild, and she dropped the henge.

She bared her teeth, twisting with her whole body, and he let the senbon fly out of his hand.  She slashed with the blade again, backhand, but he grabbed her wrist and forced it away, pushing her back a step.  A clone pounced at him from the side, but he skewered it with a senbon without even looking. Sakura smiled.

Behind Haku, a huge fireball hit the ground and exploded, sending snow and droplets of water flying as Sasuke revealed himself among the clones on the other side.  Sakura threw herself backwards and away as Haku stumbled, and before he could follow, a pair of clones mobbed him. Sakura turned tail and ran.

“I have her!” Sakura veered towards Sasuke’s voice, but had to twist out of the way of a fuuton that hit the tree next to her, leaving a huge, spiderwebbing crack.  “Naruto!”

“I'm on it!” Sakura blinked, and their teammate multiplied once again.

How many times could he do that?  Sakura was beginning to think it was cheating, a little.

Temari’s team was clearing the rest of the clone distraction fast, but that was okay.  Sakura’s team fled for the lake, San carried between a pair of kage bunshin like some sort of trophy.

Sakura’s breath came in harsh pants, but they were almost there.  Just a little further. Once they reached the pine, their mission was complete.   She chanced a glance over her shoulder and squeaked. Temari glared back at her from a hundred meters, Haku and Neji hard on her heels as she charged down the slope.

“Incoming!” Sasuke shouted, and Sakura whipped around in time to see Sai -- aboard a giant ink construct -- swoop down like a bird of prey on San and her clone protective custody.  

“Oh, come on!” Naruto howled, launching himself bodily at the ink hawk.  

Sakura really, truly wished she had the time to stop and wail about the injustice of it all, because why was her team, the least experienced team, the target?  Why did everyone else have more information than they did? Why was this a three way drill? Why was Sakura stuck between two stronger teammates, on a team between two vastly stronger teams?  Why was Sakura the one who ended up with a stupid concussion? Why was Sakura the stupid civilian? Why was Sakura so weak?

But she didn't have time to complain, not now, so she gritted her teeth and unsheathed another kunai and hurled it at the ink creature as it banked away from San.  Hinata deflected it away with her own, leaning down from where she crouched on the bird's back behind Sai. Gaara sent a blast of sand in her direction, and she dove out of the way, back towards the clones guarding San.  “Keep running!” she yelled, and they booked it. “Whatever happens,” she snapped at Naruto, “get San to that tree. Don’t stop!”

“Yeah!” Naruto agreed, pouring on the speed and pulling ahead.

Sasuke scrambled to follow, dodging the kunai that whipped past his shoulder.  Sakura looked back to see Temari, just meters away, send a hail of shuriken at her.  Panicked, Sakura threw herself into a substitution and hit the ground running.

A shadow swooped down.  She ducked, but the bird streaked right over her.  “Sasuke!” she shouted.

“Hey!” Sasuke snapped, and twisted away, but it wasn't enough.  Sai's creature snagged him by an arm and swept him up, up, up --

When Sakura was a kid, she and all her friends had had a relatively well-developed and rational fear of heights.  Or of falling.  Sasuke, apparently, lacked this point in his development, because he reached around and hurled a kunai point blank into the bird.  

It shattered into thousands of black droplets, sending him and the entire Team Hi-Sa-Gaa free-falling through the air.  

“Are you insane, you idiots?” Temari shouted as they plummeted.  

Sand poured out of Gaara’s oversized knapsack, snagging his teammates by their cloaks and slowing their descent.  A second large hawk bloomed from Sai’s scroll and swept them all up, but Sasuke evaded Hinata’s attempt to grab him and kicked off the creature’s wing.

He plunged downwards, twisting midair like a cat, and ended up a meter in the snow.  

Sakura hurled her kunai at the bird as it dove and it banked away sharply, but not before Gaara and Hinata dropped neatly off the side.  It was abruptly clear to Sakura that Team Hi-Sa-Ga most definitely did not have the same objective that Sakura’s team or Temari’s team did.  “Sasuke, they’re after you!” she yelled, just as Temari blew past, ignoring her entirely.  Neji and Haku followed suit, and Sakura’s head whipped between them -- chasing Naruto and his clones -- and Team Hi-Sa-Gaa, closing in on Sasuke.

“I’m not the mission!”  Sasuke leapt clear as Gaara and Hinata cornered him, leaping halfway up a tree with a kunai in one hand and shuriken in the other.  “Go help Naruto!”

Sakura hesitated.   Sasuke was her teammate, but he couldn’t fight off an entire team by himself.  Neither could Naruto, despite his newfound ability to multiply seemingly indefinitely.  But Naruto had San and San’s things to guard, and he only had to get them to the pine. “Just hang on!” she called, and as she reluctantly turned to sprint after Naruto’s trail of clones and pursuers, saw Sasuke bare his teeth and launch himself at Sai’s bird out of the corner of her eye.  He could take care of himself, for a little bit. Probably.

Unfortunately for Sakura, Naruto could outrun her easily.  Temari’s team -- all of them -- could outrun Naruto. This meant that, despite her intention to help Naruto, Sakura couldn’t actually do much when Temari’s team caught up to him, because she was still several hundred meters away.  

“Get off me, you heathens!” Naruto cried as Haku cut off his escape, stepping out of a mirror right in front of him.

“That doesn’t mean what you think it does,” Temari retorted, “Fuuton: Toppa!” and scattered clones, Naruto, San, and San’s things with a blast of wind.  

Temari leapt after Naruto.  Haku stood his ground against the clones that crowded him.  Neji darted for San, who stood passively in the snow despite the demise of her bunshin guards.  

Sakura bolted towards Neji, hurling a pair of kunai ahead of her.   He slashed them out of the air with his tanto, whirling to face her as she approached.  “You cannot defeat me,” he said. Statement of fact; certainty, not arrogance.

Maybe not, but for the sake of her head staying attached to her body, she had to try.  

Sakura stopped short, yet another kunai in each hand.  She crept around him on silent feet, but he followed, turning his head and pivoting slowly to keep himself between her and San.  Sakura resisted the urge to grit her teeth. She calmed her breathing, then held it and cautiously slunk the other way.

“Clever, pup,” said San fondly, and in front of her, Neji tensed, raising his tanto higher into a guard position.

Sakura took a step forward, then another.  She didn’t trust herself to be able to get all the way behind him, but if he could just blindside him --

The second she released her kunai, he whirled, impossibly fast.  “Genjutsu: Tori no Uta!” she cried, fumbling through the seals as quickly as she could as he pounced at her.  She rolled out of the way, and he shook his head like a dog, her birdsong genjutsu giving her the opening she needed to grab San by the wrist and drag her off.  “Naruto!” she cried, yanking San out of the way of Neji’s lunge.

“Kage bunshin no jutsu!” Naruto yelled, yet again, and another mob of clones swarmed the battlefield, cutting off Neji’s charge.

The older boy snarled, “One trick --- nnnft!”

Sakura glanced wildly over her shoulder past the seething clones to see Sai’s construct carry away Neji much the same way they’d tried to Sasuke.  A glint of light reflected off his tanto, falling through the air as it was knocked out of his hand.

“What are you even doing?” Naruto hollered.  Sakura agreed, but she had more pressing things to worry about.  Like putting some distance between her and the rest of Temari’s team.

“Haku!” Temari shouted through the trees, and a trio of senbon hissed after the bird, followed by Haku himself.

Sakura no longer knew who was trying to do what, or if this was just a three-way brawl between all the teams in the pack.  All she knew was that San needed to get to the pine tree with her stupid --

Her stupid carrying rack.  “Grab her things!” she ordered, whirling towards one of Naruto’s clones.  “You two, carry her, go!”

“What’s happening?” Naruto wailed, as his opponent promptly abandoned the fight to chase after her teammates.  “Sakura-chan!”

“I don’t know!” And frankly, Sakura no longer cared.  Sakura just wanted to get San to her tree so the exercise could end and she could go find Sasuke, or maybe even give up and curl up in a fetal position because given further thought, Zabuza-sensei might murder them if they failed, but he would probably mutilate them for coming back one team member short.  At least if he murdered them, their suffering would be over faster.

Their mad dash turned out to be unnecessary, because neither team -- or Sasuke -- showed up.  The route was positively silent, even though Sakura twitched every time the wind blew or branches crackled.  The pine, just at the edge of the frozen lake, towered into the sky with snow-laden boughs.

“We’re here!” said Naruto.

“Is this the right tree?” asked another Naruto.

“I dunno, I think it looks pretty tall,” said yet another.  

Sakura rolled her eyes.  One Naruto had been bad enough, and now he could multiply at will.  “This is the right tree,” she said. “Right?” She turned to San.

“It is,” said San placidly.  “What an interesting trip we had.”  

Sakura took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “Great,” she said weakly. “So, uh, we’re done? We can just leave you here?”

“You are,” San agreed.  “You can.”

“We gotta get Sasuke!” Naruto said immediately.

Sakura would never admit it out loud, but she was tired, sore, and battered.  Her legs were jelly and her finger twitching from gripped her kunai. She really just wanted to wrap herself up in her cloak and curl up in her hammock-bunk and sleep.  

It was just a training mission, Sasuke would be fine either way.  They should just leave him.

But Zabuza-sensei.  

She sighed wistfully.  “Okay,” she agreed wearily.  “Let’s go get Sasuke.”

None of Sakura’s team was very good at tracking, but out of the three, Sasuke was by far the best.  Without him, Sakura and Naruto were reduced to backtracking as best they could and squinting at the horizon in hopes of spotting their wayward teammate or one of the other teams.

“Hey,” Naruto said.  “How come nobody chased us just now?”

Sakura grimaced. “They weren’t after San, not anymore,” she said.  She skidded on a patch of ice, tripped over a branch protruding from the snow, and sent little black flakes flying as she stumbled knee-deep into the stow.   She scowled, stepping free and looked a little closer, pivoting in a slow circle.

Naruto, oblivious, kept walking.  “But San was the target! Everyone only attacked us when she was with us.”  

Patches of ice, refrozen after a melt.  Branches and twigs, seemingly dark from moisture, actually charred.  Sasuke was here, still fighting, but a while ago.

Sakura needed a better view.  “Naruto,” she called after her teammate absently.  She stepped up onto the trunk of the nearest tree, running up its length with sure strides.  For kilometers around, the forest -- half evergreen, the other half skeletal -- was empty aside from her and Naruto, who true to form, was already several hundred meters away and still walking.  “Naruto!” she called again, loud enough that her voice carried through the trees.

He was possibly the least observant person she had ever met, and that included herself.  At least Sakura wasn’t so busy talking to herself that she didn’t notice her teammate wasn’t next to her anymore.  

“Hey!”  

Sakura grabbed for the tree frantically as she slipped, clutching desperately to the trunk as she peered down at her sensei.

Zabuza-sensei scowled up at her, arms crossed.  “What the hell are you doing up there by yourself, girl?” he demanded.  “Get down here, the exercise is done.”

Sakura squeezed her eyes shut briefly, took a panicked breath.  

“Now,” Zabuza-sensei snarled.  

Forcing her fingers to let to of their death grip on the bark, Sakura made her way down the tree slowly.  

Zabuza-sensei made as if to cuff her on the back of the head, but switched to her shoulder at the last minute, sending her stumbling forward.  “What were you thinking, girl? You don’t run off by yourself when you’re already weak and outnumbered!”

Sakura felt her shoulders hunching inwards involuntarily.  “I was -- ”

“I don’t care.”  Zabuza-sensei glowered at her.  “Where’s the loud brat?” He whirled even as Sakura pointed wordlessly, and she followed as Zabuza-sensei stalked after Naruto.   

Sakura was one hundred percent sure that Sensei was Not Happy.   

“You are all absolute morons who are going to get yourselves killed the minute you step out of this forest!”

From her spot between Naruto and Sasuke, Sakura snuck a glance at Zabuza-sensei and clutched her hands together beneath her cloak.   Sasuke, scowling, discreetly brushed soot off his pants.

“We finished the mission!” Naruto pointed out, crossing his arms and glaring at their sensei.

Zabuza sneered.  “Yeah? Was it worth it, losing your fucking teammate to get a paycheque?”

Naruto dropped into a sullen silence, but Zabuza-sensei steamrolled on.  “That kekkei-genkai is one of the last of its breed. Take a wild guess -- what do you think an enemy would do with that?” he barked, and jabbed a finger at Sasuke  “Ask his cousin. One eye gouged out, his body dissected and experimented on.  Uchiha Shisui was at the top of his game.  How easily do you think you brats will break?  How long do you think it'll be before you face those eyes on the opposite side of the battlefield?”

Sasuke was glaring beneath his bangs, but Sakura just felt sick.  That hunted cast that haunted Shisui-sensei when he talked about his time as a prisoner -- she didn't want to watch her teammates like that.

“I don't have the Sharingan yet,” Sasuke muttered spitefully.  

Zabuza-sensei sneered.  “They'll just breed you like a mule, then,” he snapped.  “And you!” He turned the full force of his glare at Naruto.  “You wander off without your godsdamned concussed teammate when you're already a man down?  Great way to make it easier for the other teams to take you out!”

“I didn't -- ”  Naruto defended weakly, darting guilty glances at Sakura.

“That was my mistake,” Sakura interjected hurriedly.  “I -- ”

Zabuza-sensei rolled his eyes.  “Oh, right, it's both your faults for letting the girl with the brain injury call the shots.  If you already know you're weaker than every other team, why the fuck would you split up?  You may as well slit your own throats and save everyone the time. You left your strongest member behind without even trying to lose your hunters!”

“We prioritized the mission,” Sasuke muttered.  “I told them to go.”

“San was a spy,” said Zabuza-sensei.  “The mission for Shisui’s team was to make contact and retrieve a report, which was hidden in her belongings.”

Oh.  Sakura felt her heart drop.  That explained a lot.

“What about Gaara’s team?” Naruto asked in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.

Zabuza-sensei shrugged.  “Capture the two with doujutsu.”

“What should we have done?” Sasuke demanded.  “We can't fight them off or outrun them. There's no way we could have won this!”

“Abort the mission,” Zabuza-sensei barked.  “Yeah, you're Hana-ha or whatever, but right now you're also nukenin.  You have no backup and no village to support you, and you are worth more than any merchant ever will be.”

Sakura exchanged uneasy glances with Naruto and Sasuke.  Fail a mission? Give up? That didn't sound right.

Zabuza-sensei fixed them with a narrow-eyed glare.  “You don't have the luxury of honor or pride .  If this was a war zone and you were protecting something or someone a lot more vital, maybe you make a different call.  But this?” he waved a hand derisively. “Pick your battles, brats. And you sure as fuck better come out of them alive.”

Chapter Text

For much of her life, San had lived alone in her mother’s forest with her wolf-siblings.  Now, her den was overrun by Kakashi’s pack -- two thirds of them pups.

San did not mind this overmuch, for all that they were loud and clumsy and scared the kodama.  They were pups after all, still learning to stalk and prowl, and mortals, so they could not see the kodama.  

They were just learning to hunt for themselves, but far too soon, they would leave to hunt other ningen.   This, San did not understand so much, just as she did not understand so much why her ningen parents had each followed their own orders and killed the other.  A territory dispute she understood, but why involve pups? They tripped over themselves and slept like branches and were always hungry.  Surely there were battles to be fought when they had grown.

But San was not their pack leader; Kakashi was.  Kakashi had asked them to fight, and fight they would.  San would not sway them.

Instead, San would do her best to ensure the pups survived.

Carefully, San brushed the shavings off the piece of bone she had carved from a bull moose’s rack two days prior and molded to her will.  Beneath her hands and her blade, the muzzle of a wolf took shape. She folded in her chakra, smoothing it into the mask’s smooth surface and letting it sink in as she ran her fingers along the pointed ears, raised muzzle, the cutout eyeholes.  With the blessing of her mother, this mask would not fail its bearer.

She set it aside with a sigh, arranging it carefully in a row next to the others.

Yuuki wound his way into the den behind her, settling down as she leaned back against his bulk.  She felt rather than heard the rumbling in his chest as he rested his head on his front paws. “Little wolves, you make them,” he noted.  “Six now, one face, this is.”

“Three to come,” San agreed. “Same face.”

“Hide the face this can, but hide the scent you cannot.  Fool a hunter once only,” he pointed out.

“We hide who they were, not the one that they are,” said San.  “No need to disguise scent when none will recognize.” She lolled her head around to meet Yuuki’s eye.  “And ningen scent-nose is not so strong.  Fool a ningen hunter many times by hiding that which is sensed by the eye.”

“Kakashi- ningen has a keen nose,” Yuuki mused.  “But agree. Pups seem not to smell-track, nor rest of the pack.”

“Kakashi is Hatake,” reminded San.  “He is wolf too, like you and I.” She felt it in her bones as he hummed agreement.  

“Much strength you use for pups not yours.”  His ear flicked backwards briefly towards a distant yell before angling forwards again.  “Kakashi- ningen’s pack, not yours.  Soon, they leave. They will not return.  This, you know.”

“Yes,” said San tiredly. “When the new leaves bud full growth, they go.”

Yuuki swung his muzzle around to nudge at her. “Not mourn.  Some, fleeting as the spring blossoms; others constant as the seasons.  Nothing to do but watch, sometimes.”

“True,” San agreed pensively.  “But the pups are too young for war.”

A snort.  “Never old enough for war.”

This was also true.  San lay back against her brother, letting herself relax against his warmth.

“Will you follow?”

“No,” she said.  “My home is here.”

“San!  Small sister!”  Chie leaned her head into the den. “Grow roots, do you, imouto?”

“Your imouto who is pack leader,” San corrected with a sniff, turning her head into Yuuki’s side to hide her smile.

Chie chirruped, eyes dancing.  “My strong, fierce, small imouto who is pack leader,” she agreed.  “Want you not to go to the ningen town today?  Sundown come, they fear you more.”

“You, they fear more,” San retorted, but slithered to her feet.  “ Ningen fear what they do not see, and lurk you in the forest outside the town like an onryou .”

Chie preened.  “That is so. Quite fearsome, I.  Come you, brother mine?”

“Sleep, I.”  Yuuki yawned, baring sharp teeth.  “Night patrol, I did, with the small Uhei.  Fast, he is.”

“No fun if haunt Mother’s forest all the time,” Chie complained.  “Wander, some.”

“With pups here?”  Yuuki snorted. “Venture not far, or danger finds them.  Chakra-scent if we are gone and seals fail may reach the samurai- ningen. ”

“Yuuki is right,” said San.  “Reactivate the seals he can.  Kakashi’s pack cannot.”

“Very well,” Chie said.  “Leave you then, brother mine.”

“You leave, sisters mine,” Yuuki agreed sleepily, and rested his head on his paws once again.  

San padded across the den, picking up her pack from the floor and stepping carefully over her brother’s sprawled legs.  

“Bring you things to trade?” asked Chie, swishing her tail back and forth.

San hesitated, glancing back around the cave.  “Three elkskins,” she answered. “Left where?”

“Hollow,” said Chie.  “Left, after treat to leather.”

“Ah,” said San, taking quick steps to her sister.  “I remember.” She took a handful of Chie’s ruff and swung herself up as the wolf crouched down obligingly.  

The clearing was empty, Kakashi’s packmates and their trios of pups having ventured into different parts of San’s territory, but San could hear Itachi’s calm voice and the clack of metal on metal coming from the hollow.  

“Silence-black-scorch is teaching his pups long today,” Chie noted.  “Before sunrise, he started, and still here.”

“Teach longer, as time passes,” San agreed.

“San,” Kakashi’s packmate greeted, turning to greet her.  “Chie.”

Behind him, Hinata clashed with Sai, a brace of kunai in the girl’s hand and a tanto in the boy’s.  Gaara sat crosslegged, watching intently with unblinking eyes. Though San knew each of the ningen names for the pups, her wolf-brother and wolf-sister used only sense-names because they cared not for other ningen names -- too hard to remember, when Kakashi’s wolf-pack numbered eight themselves.  Sense-names were much easier.

San tilted her head in greeting, and her sister mirrored her.  “We are going to town,” said San. “Have you anything you wish us to find for you?”   

Itachi frowned thoughtfully.  “Vegetables, if there are any to be found.  We are depleting your store of onions and potatoes quite rapidly,” he said apologetically.

“Food is meant to be eaten,” San said dismissively.  “We will find you vegetations. Vegetables.”

“Thank you,” said Itachi, and if he’d noticed her fumble he made no notice.  

Chie skirted the play-battle to the corner where the meat was buried in snow and the hides hung to cure.   San slid off her back, padding to the racks of hides. “River-petal-turtle,” she said aloud to her sister, as the wolf tugged an elkskin off the rack.  “She fights like metal claws are almost right, yes?”

“Not claws, she needs,” said Chie contemplatively.  “Used to her paws, but no chakra in claws. Hides, as turtle named her.  Too cautious to be close, but distance helps her not.”

“Claws but not claws,” San surmised, rolling the hide into a bundle, “with her fire-chakra within.”

Chie hummed agreement, nosing the second hide off the rack.  “Not meant for the hunt, she,” her sister noted. “Finds no joy in battle.”

“She carries the fire still,” San disagreed.  “Enjoy not, maybe, but born for the hunt.”

“Wings, she needs, for her paws,” Chie suggested,  “to raise the flames. Ningen have them, named what I know not.”

San bundled the second hide with a length of twine.  “Wings? A fan, the name you seek.”

“A fan,” agreed Chie.  “Maybe sharp, but no claws, and chakra within.”

“Would work well enough,” said San thoughtfully, as the two of them rolled the last hide.  “A project, for later. Easy enough to mold, I think.”

“Clever imouto mine,” said Chie affectionately.  “Come now; the sun waits for no wolf.”

San hefted the pelts onto Chie’s shoulders, then leapt up lightly behind them. “Run you fast, then,” she said.

Chie rumbled agreement, whirling on nimble paws and streaking into the caves with her tail streaming out behind her.  They burst back out into the snow with a flying leap, and Chie’s paws skimmed the top lightly as she wove surefootedly through the trees.  

One hand buried in Chie’s fur, the other clamped firmly on the leathers, San smiled.  The icy wind whipped against her bare face, sending her hair flapping out behind her along with her cloak.  She moved with her wolf-sister’s strides as Chie crested a ridge and plunged back downwards, sending sprays of snow in their wake.  

In the distance, beneath the cover of a patch of pine trees, one of Kakashi’s hounds bolted in the opposite direction, back towards the camp, with a package clamped firmly in his jaws -- sharp Akino of the ice-blue eyes.  San had scarce seen Kakashi’s entire wolf-pack in the same place; the hounds were ever in and out of her mother's forest bearing messages and packages.

A sharp yip of greeting -- a small figure capered at the top of the next ridge before disappearing down the far side.  Chie rumbled her amusement. “Still a pup, that one,” she chuckled.

“Always a pup, now,” murmured San.  “Cut far too short, Shiba’s first life.”

“In body, perhaps,” retorted Chie.  “In mind, only a few more years to still be a pup.  Another pup, Kakashi-wolf will pick up soon.”

“Kakashi has eight in his pack already,” San pointed out, the words nearly carried away by the wind.  

“No more Hatake,” Chie said gravely.  “No others to bring back half-spirit-wolves.  He does not, no more wolf-spirited live second lives.”

“He could find a mate,” said San.  “He is young enough still, to continue his bloodline.”

Her sister snorted.  “A mate, Kakashi-wolf?  Too focused on battle, Kakashi-wolf.”

“Far away from his territory, Kakashi,” San reminded.  

“Hatake, Kakashi-wolf.   Mother’s blessing, in Mother’s forest -- his territory too, should he wish.”  Chie skidded down the slope, sliding nimbly around a large bush and coming to a halt next to the road.  “But his heart does not allow this wish, mm?”

“No,” San agreed, hopping neatly off her sister’s back.  She reached back up to tug the hides down with her. “Lurk you in the forest?” she asked, slinging them on top of her pack.  

“Lurk in the forest, I.”  Her eyes glinted playfully.

San huffed, amused.  “Scare not too much,” she said, and turned towards the town.  The ningen startled easily these days, and with her shinobi clan kiba on her forehead and cheeks, the townspeople found her twice-fearsome.  They did not like shinobi in this country, nor wolves like Yuuki or Chie. She flipped back her hood belatedly, knocking the half-mask off the top of her head.   That, too, the ningen were wary of.       

Nearly half an hour of walking took her to the border of the town.  A wagon approached her, and the man driving took one look at her, walking down the center of the road, and jerked his horse to the side to give her a wide berth.  San narrowed her eyes at the horse’s mouth, then him. To his credit, the man did look slightly guilty and quite panicked, and the horse did not smell fearful nor was there a tang of blood in the air.   The horse rolled its eye to the side and sent her a long-suffering look.

She turned her head deliberately and stepped into the town.  The sun had tipped towards setting, and the the houses reverberated with  the clanging and banging of the occupants bustling around inside. San followed her nose down the familiar path to the leatherworker.  His den was large and made of hewn stone, with a heavy wooden door. San pushed it open. “Toshiki.”

A large man, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, dropped his metal scraper and clutched at his heart.  “San!” he said weakly. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

San blinked, nonplussed.  She’d made noise and everything when she was walking.   Ningen could be so insensitive to the world around them sometimes.  “I have elkskins,” she announced, swinging her pack onto the nearest clear surface with a thump.  

Toshiki may be easily startled, but he was deeply passionate about leatherworking.  He abandoned the pelt -- goat, it smelled like, but it was hard to tell from all the scents clogging up the air -- hanging from its rack, wiping his hands on his apron and stumping over to San’s counter.  He slit the twine on one, throwing it out to its full size on the counter, over the various tools scattered on its surface. “This is nice,” he said appreciatively, running his hands over its surface. “As always.”

“Yes,” San agreed.  “I have three.”

“Three!”  The man’s eyes lit up -- excitement, not greed.  San rather liked Toshiki leatherworker. “The usual rate all right?”

“Yes,” San confirmed.  The man had never tried to trick her the way some of the other townspeople had, when she had come into town for the first time with very little knowledge of ningen trading and money, or try to drive her away like a mindless beast.   Her wolf-mother’s knowledge had been decades out of date, and she had not so much practice being a ningen yet.  Now, though, she let Toshiki slide a stack of ryou to her and heave the skins further into his den.

“A pleasure, as always,” he beamed, shoving his hands in his apron pockets.  “Planning on sticking around today?”

“No,” said San, tucking away the money.  “I will be gone before nightfall. A little shopping -- food, cloth -- first, then I leave.”

“Still no merchants coming through with the snow,” Toshiki noted.  “But if you’re fine with the older stuff, Okoro’s place is still open.  She’s got cloth.”

“Thank you,” said San, dipping her head.  She swung her pack back onto her back. “Sightings of shinobi, late?”

Toshiki frowned absently.  “Not here, but some of the border towns think they have.  The samurai are stepping up patrols.” He reached for a pair of gloves absently.  “Why, little thing like you expecting trouble?”

San flashed a sly smile.  “Always,” she said, turning towards the door.

Toshiki laughed. “Come back any time!” the leatherworker called as she pushed her way back out.  

The pickings at Okoro’s were slim, as warned, but she picked out a bolt of grey-black cloth and tied it to the top of her pack for a handful of ryou.  The sun was setting in earnest now, blue skies turned golden-yellow-red. San wove her way through the dinnertime crowds to the open-air markets, where the shopkeepers were beginning to pack their products in large boxes for the night.  

At her usual market, she browsed what remained and collected a bag of carrots, onions, and a large jar of pickled vegetables.

“Dude, look at her fang tattoos.”  A small cluster of pups huddled behind her, tailing her as she moved from aisle to aisle with quick glances and whispers too loud to go unheard.  San did what one did when faced with curious pups: she ignored them, and instead contemplated a jar of miso.

“Isn’t she a shinobi?  Shinobi have tattoos like that.”

One of the male pups scoffed.  “Shinobi aren’t allowed in Tetsu.  The samurai don’t like ‘em.”

“So what?” said a third.  “She just has tattoos for fun?”

“Some individuals possess clan markings, as those appear to be,” said the oldest.  “It is not unheard of for them to leave their clan or village.”

“Oh great, is she a rogue shinobi or something?  That’s pretty dangerous,” one said warily. “My ma’ll kill me if she goes nuts and maims us or whatever.”

Flesh on flesh; an indignant yelp.  “Live a little, Kokkaku.”

“No.  I believe she lives nearby.  She has come to this town every month or so since I myself arrived and never seems to have caused trouble of any sort.”  The oldest, again, ignoring the antics of the younger pups in much the way Zabuza did.

“Really?  I've never seen her before.”

“Her cloak is totally wild.  It’s like, entirely fur.”

San resisted the urge to preen a little.  It was indeed wild: she’d made it herself, from the first bear she killed, scarce thirteen years, and it had taken nearly a full month to finish.  

She selected a jar of dark miso and swept to the front counter with her chosen items, scattering the pack of pups.  Carefully, she counted out the bills for the shopkeeper.

A long howl drifted over the clank and bustle of the marketplace, leaving a brief lull in the noise.  Sam’s head jerked towards the source of the sound. Chie. Urgent. Danger? The pups hushed abruptly.

“What the hell?” one murmured.

“I need to leave,” San snapped curtly, shoveling her food into her pack.  “Keep the remainder.”

“What -- ?” the woman began, but San wasn't listening.

She had the pack on her back and was out the door in a flash, sprinting as fast as she dared in a civilian ningen town.  She dodged clumps of people in the main streets who peppered her with confused or indignant shouts, then veered down an alley to the nearest edge of the town.  She ducked a clothesline, vaulted over two different fences, and in one smooth movement, hurtled the boundary wall and hit the ground running on the far side.

Once on open land, she let herself dip into her chakra, fueling her limbs as she streaked across the road and into the welcoming shadows of the forest.  “Chie!” she barked.

“Here!” her sister called, and skidded in next to her from the undergrowth.  

San leapt up to her back easily, and Chie reared around, lunging back in the direction of the camp.  “What happened?” she demanded. “Not hurt nor hunted, you?”

“Not I,” Chie panted.  “Brother howled from camp, Sea-fang-blood returned bloody.  Kakashi-wolf still gone, Yuuki with Silence-black-scorch and Guruko gone to track his hunters.”

“Hurry,” San urged, fingers tightening in her fur, and Chie obliged.

Zabuza’s blood-scent drifted on the wind long before Chie and San reached the caves, hanging heavily among the trees though she could see no spots of crimson scattered in the snow.  

“It’s fine!” San could hear Zabuza’s growl from across the hollow.

Chie leapt across the clearing in three great bounds, flying past the pups huddled near the fire, and skidded to a stop in their sleeping den.  The den San shared with Yuuki and Chie was a true cave, with a larger mouth than the pups’ half-underground den, and fur nests on stone floor instead of the stacks of hammock-racks the shinobi used.  It had become the den borrowed when one of the others sickened or was injured. San did not mind this, though Yuuki liked to grumble.

“You’re not okay.  Hold the fuck still,” Shisui spat back.  Blood stained his arms to the elbows, and he had one knee braced on Zabuza’s shoulder and the other pinning the other man’s arm to the ground as he held a green-glowing hand to the wound ripping through the other’s side.  Crimson dripped from Zabuza’s abdomen to the stone in little pools, and a pile of bloody cloth lay discarded just beyond the pair.

“I could smell your blood kilometers away,” San added, leaving Yuuki behind and padding closer.  “Shisui. What do you need?”

“To relax,” Zabuza snarled around the strip of leather clenched between his teeth.  His face, though unnaturally pale, flushed at the edges. He jerked suddenly, eyes rolling up as a convulsion wracked his body.  San lunged, grabbing him at the shoulder and hip and holding him down as the chakra in Shisui’s hand sputtered. “Shit,” he panted as the shaking subsided.

“Boiling water,” Shisui snapped.  “There’s something in there I can’t get out.  It’s ripping up his intestines.” His eyes blazed with the fire-shadow-wheel of his clan birthright, narrowed in concentration as he concentrated. “Clean cloth, if you have it.”

“Hai,” San agreed.  “Chie, water!” she called out to her sister, and dug through her pack for the cloth.   A shame, perhaps, to use her new cloth for what Shisui intended, but necessary. The blood-scent smothered the air in the cave -- and something else.  She tilted her head up and inhaled deliberately, much more deeply than the shallow breaths she’d taken since entering the den. “Poison,” she said aloud, slashing out strips of cloth.  

“I feel it,” Shisui answered calmly.  His hands continued their work steadily despite the veins and corded muscle that stood out harshly on his arms.  “I’m not good enough to extract it.”

“Probably water hemlock.  I’m immune,” Zabuza grunted.  “Mostly.”

“Not with your intestines shredded and more blood outside than inside your body, you’re not,” Shisui shot back.  “Stop talking, you’re distracting me.”

Chie ducked back into the cave, a steaming pot swinging gently between her jaws.  Shisui glanced up. “Thank you, Chie. San, could you come put pressure on this? He’s losing too much blood.”

Chie set the water down and retreated to the edge of the cave.  San traded spots with Shisui, pressing down firmly on the wound despite Zabuza’s pained wheeze.  “You are supposed to be the hunter,” she informed him reprovingly, “not the prey.”

He glared at her balefully.  “I wasn’t the prey,” he snarled.

Shisui spat a ball of fire at the ground under pot of water until it glowed faintly.  “Shut up!” he snapped, dropping a strip of cloth into the pot. “Or so help me gods I’ll knock you out and let the kids practice iryo ninjutsu on you.”

Zabuza’s glower promised death.  San thought perhaps it was okay to let him talk if it distracted him from the pain.  His bite was far worse than his bark, after all, and as long as he barked she did not need to worry about his bite.  

Shisui approached, a pair of senbon in hand.  “Hold him down, San,” he directed. “Z -- don't move.”

San obligingly shifted over to lean across Zabuza’s shoulders as Shisui took her position at his side.  Curiously, she watched as he peeled back the cloth, setting it absently further up on his chest, and angled the senbon down.

“Ah, fuck!” Zabuza yelped as Shisui jabbed the needle in, and San pressed down harder as his shoulder muscles tensed with the effort to hold still.  “Kami, Konoha, you learn that at the butcher’s?”

“From Tsunade-sama, so yeah,” Shisui said dryly, doing something complicated and wiggly in Zabuza’s abdomen that made the man's face turn white.  “Ah, shit.”

“What do you mean, ‘shit?’” Zabuza demanded.  

“It's fine -- ” Shisui began.

“Don’t say shit like ‘ah, shit’ when you’re fucking around in my organs!”

“This wouldn’t be a problem if you hadn’t gotten yourself half-killed in the first place,” Shisui groused.  “Didn’t I tell you to shut up?”

San watched with interest as Shisui pried something dark and bloody out of Zabuza’s innards, prompting a new gush of blood, and dropped it on the cloth.  “Blade?” she asked curiously.

“Looks like a piece of shuriken,” answered Shisui absently.  “It broke, and now there’s a bunch of shrapnel in this idiot’s intestines.”

“Fuck you,” Zabuza snarled.  

“This is going to take longer than I thought,” Shisui muttered, ignoring the other man.  “I’m going to heal this a bit so you don’t bleed out before I take out the rest.”

San leaned forward a little as Shisui called up the green chakra again.  Slowly but surely, he stemmed the flow of blood to a trickle.

“Shit,” Zabuza gasped.  “I -- ”

“Hold him!” Shisui barked as another seizure stole the rest of the words from his mouth and Zabuza’s body bucked violently.

San lost her grip on his wrist and the back of his hand hit her square in the eye.  She reeled back before pouncing back on him, shaking her head from side to side to chase away the pain.  

“My bad,” Zabuza grunted, as the shaking subsided.  

“It is the poison,” San replied, blinking rapidly.  

“Activated charcoal,” Shisui muttered.  “He needs it. Now. Chie!” His hands had a fine tremble.  

Chie shoved her head back into the den, eyeing Zabuza interestedly.  “Not look well, Sea-fang-blood,” she noted.

“Chie, could you grab the med pack from behind my rack?” said Shisui distractedly.  “It’s kind of small, squarish, I keep it in the back so it doesn’t get stepped on.”

“Look the same, all ningen things,” muttered Chie.  “What smell it?”

“What does it smell of?” San translated.  

The chakra flickered out of Shisui’s hand.  “Uh…” he squeezed his eye shut. When he opened it, his eye was grey-brown-black instead of red.    “Alcohol, ginger, willow, yarrow, cloth, coal…?”

“Burn-drink, yellow-bite-root, waterfall-leaf-tree bark, fire-wood-burn-black,” she told her sister, because she did not know what ‘yarrow’ was and all cloth smelled different.

Chie whirled in a flash of fur and vanished.  San eyed Shisui, whose already fair complexion seemed much paler than it had when she first entered the cave.  “Shisui. Take care,” she said. “None to help if you collapse.”

“Yeah, cool it, Konoha,” Zabuza growled.  “It’s not gonna fucking kill me.”

“You know,” Shisui snapped, “Orochimaru was at least trying to keep you alive.  He put in more effort than you ever did!”

“Will you fucking quit it with your fucking lectures?”

“ You do not look well,” San told Shisui pointedly.  “You look chakra-tired.”

“My control isn’t great,” Shisui admitted.  “I’m burning twenty times the chakra I’m using.”  

Chie slipped back in.  “Many smell like burn-drink and burn-black,” she commented, dropping the pack at San’s feet, “but only one like yellow-bite-root.”

Shisui lunged for the bag.  “Open your mouth,” he ordered Zabuza over his shoulder as he dumped the contents across the floor.  

Zabuza turned his head to spit out the leather strip.  “That’s fucking charcoal!” he objected as Shisui advanced on him.  

“What did you think ‘activated charcoal’ was?” Shisui shot back.  

“Some Fire country hick name for a plant?” Zabuza sputtered.

“Your immune system is shot and this will absorb whatever poison was on that shuriken,” the teen said grimly.  “Open your damn mouth.”

Zabuza did, probably to complain, and Shisui dumped the entirety of the bag of charcoal in his mouth and slapped a hand over his mouth and nose as the other man choked.  “Swallow!” he ordered.

“This will help?” San asked dubiously.

“Yes,” Shisui said firmly, letting go of Zabuza, who gagged and coughed up a cloud of fine black powder.  

San leaned away delicately.  “I will get him some water,” she said.  She did not want to breathe that in.

“Holy -- fucking -- shit!” Zabuza spat between coughs.  San brought a bottle of water to his mouth and he drank greedily.      

Shisui shuffled back to the wound in Zabuza’s side and picked up the senbon again.

“Care,” said San, as his hand wavered.

“I just need to get one more piece out,” he insisted, and slowly, laboriously, his eye swirled red once again.  “It's right up against his kidney. He moves the wrong way and he loses the whole thing. Again. ”

“He fought and ran and now he shakes,” San pointed out.  “Would it not keep?”

“That's probably what's pushed it in so deep,” Shisui muttered, narrowing his eye in concentration.  “It’d be nice if the seizures would stop,” he added pointedly.

“The fuck you want me to do, Konoha, die?”

San squinted, but her night-vision was not so good and she could barely make out what Shisui was doing.  “Can you see?” she asked dubiously. Orange rays filtered in weakly from the outside, just enough to give the cave a dim glow.

“These -- this eye lets me see extreme detail and chakra,” Shisui explained, working the senbon carefully.  “I can see the chakra of his cells -- and where they aren’t is where the shrapnel is.”

“Kakashi-wolf,” Chie rumbled from the entrance.  San lifted her nose to scent the air but couldn’t smell anything besides Zabuza’s blood-scent.  

The familiar chakra pulsed once, briefly, and Kakashi himself appeared not ten seconds later, silhouetted against the light for a brief moment before ducking into San’s den with them.  “Sitrep,” he said, without preamble.

“I -- ” Zabuza began.

“Not you,” Kakashi cut him off.  “You bled all over San’s forest. How the hell you have any left I have no idea.  Shisui, report.”

“Multiple lacerations, upper torso.  Punctured intestine due to penetrating trauma.  Multiple foreign objects lodged in stomach wall and intestines, likely shrapnel from a shattered shuriken,” Shisui rattled off without taking his focus away from what his hands were doing.  “Seizures, tachycardia, pallor, and cramping due to acute poisoning, poison unknown. Severe blood loss. I’ve removed a piece of shrapnel near the liver, temporarily clotted the largest laceration, and am now working to extract another piece near the left kidney.”

“And he shoved burnt shit down my throat!” Zabuza interjected.

“And I applied activated charcoal to combat the poisoning,” Shisui added.  

Kakashi nodded once, sharply.  “What do you need me to do?”

“Extract as much shrapnel as possible,” said Shisui, drawing back the senbon carefully.   A small, dark chip clung to the tip delicately. His chakra failed halfway, and it dropped onto Zabuza’s bare stomach.  Shisui closed his eye, exhaling shakily, and when it opened again it was dark. “This is my limit,” he said, brushing the metal onto the cloth with the other piece of shrapnel.  “Taichou, he’s not bleeding badly anymore, but if you could close up the cuts in his intestine I think that’s best.”

“How many pieces?  Point out the shrapnel to me,” said Kakashi, peeling off his half-gloves and reaching for the burn-drink-cleaner.  “This Sharingan saps too much chakra; it’ll take too long for me to find them all myself.” He shoved his headband up and opened his eye, leaning over next to Shisui.   

“Seven,” Shisui replied, and painstakingly, his eye swirled fire-shadow-wheel red once again.  “One more in the intestinal tract -- ” he pointed with the senbon, “ -- and six in the abdominal wall.”  He used the needle to shift what San presumed were the Zabuza’s intestines out of the way. “Here, here, two here, here, and here.”  

“Acknowledged.  Take a break,” Kakashi said crisply, accepting the senbon.  

Shisui’s eye blinked black almost immediately, and he leaned back wearily.  

“I stay?” San inquired.

Kakashi spared her a flicker of a glance.  “Yes. I may need you still. Shisui,” he said, when the other hovered uncertainly behind him.  “Get out of here, get cleaned up. I’ll call you if you’re needed.”

“Hai,” Shisui agreed reluctantly, and half-walked, half-staggered his way out of San’s den.  

“No anesthetic?” Kakashi muttered.  The green glow of healing chakra gathered at his free hand as he prodded at the gash in the intestine.  Slowly, it sealed from the outer edges until all that was left was a pale line.

“The fucking hell do you think I am,” Zabuza snarked, “a civilian?  Save it for when the brats brain themselves.”

“It’s not about your pain tolerance,” Kakashi said dryly.  “It’s so you don’t flinch and stab your own guts again.” His hands worked quickly and efficiently with the senbon as his eye narrowed in concentration. A third piece of shrapnel joined the first two.  

“Shisui wished for speed,” San offered.  “Zabuza has moved much already.”

“Hm,” said Kakashi.  “Do you have anything to soak up the blood with?”  

The moon was high by the time Kakashi sat back.  He had long since reverted to his natural eye, covering the glow of the fire-shadow-wheel, and Shisui had tagged in and back out twice to give him a break.  

Zabuza’s side bore a line of San’s somewhat crooked stitches, since she was otherwise rested and able to do the sutures while the others were fatigued from the iryo ninjutsu, but he was otherwise intact.  (It is not so different, sewing a person and sewing a cloth, she had said, and Kakashi looked at her gravely and told her that it was a slippery slope, which San did not understand so much.) San believed Zabuza had passed out somewhere near the removal of the fourth-from-last piece of shrapnel.

“San -- is it all right if we leave him here?” Kakashi asked.  

San eyed him keenly, noting the stiffness in his posture and bloodlessness of his face.  “Yes,” she answered. “Only, I clean up blood first. Hard to breathe with it in the air.  It will take longer to recover. Not you!” she added sharply when he reached for the pile of bloodied cloth.  “Chakra-tired, you two. Sleep now, or none with chakra-healing to help if he worsens.”

“Thanks, San,” said Shisui with an attempt at a smile that looked more like a grimace.  Kakashi merely nodded before leading the way out of the den.

Chie slipped back in as they filed out, snuffling curiously at Zabuza’s side as San mopped up the rest of the blood with the old cloth.  “Smells better, he,” she noted. “Fire-wood-burn-black fix him?”

“Eats the poison,” San explained.  “Watch him, you? Wash these, I.”

“Watch him, I,” Chie agreed, sprawling comfortably on her flank next to him.  She rested her nose delicately on her paws. “Much quieter asleep now, this one.”  

“True for all, that,” retorted San, and carried the cloth out of the den.  

The pups had learned not to make tracks in the snow, but tonight they had nonetheless, a deep-packed trail from the cooking fire to their den.  All save one slept now -- the eldest, with the yellow-sand hair who watched over the rest keen-eyed as though she were a mother wolf herself instead of a scant few years older.  Wind-blade-wing, San’s brother and sister named her, for her grace and ferocity and fierce love of her wind in even mock-battle. She descended now from her watch-perch, and San stopped to let her come.

“How is Zabuza-sensei?” she asked quietly, tucking her hands beneath her cloak.  “Shisui-sensei and the captain seemed exhausted. I didn’t want to bother them.”

“Sleeping, are they?” San inquired, and the girl nodded.  “Zabuza as well. Not much use tomorrow, but sewed him tonight.”

Temari hesitated, the shadow of a frown furrowing her forehead.  “He’s okay? It looked serious.”

“Serious,” San agreed.  “Shisui and Kakashi drained their chakra to fix him.  Not much use any of them, tomorrow.”

“Oh,” said Temari, relaxing.  “Okay. Thank you.”

San inclined her head and watched her curiously, but she seemed to not want anything more.  “I will go now,” she said, and lifted her bundle to show her the cloth.

“Oh!  Do you -- ” she hesitated.

“No,” said San firmly.  “I do not require help. Return to your watch.”   

Temari nodded, and San watched her go, amused.  A strong sense of duty, that one. A guardian’s spirit.  

She shook the thoughts out of her head; she had much to do.  She moved onwards.

San was roused from a light doze by the scent of fresh snow and the shuffle of her brother’s paws.  “Yuuki?” she greeted sleepily, and a cold nose shoved affectionately into her face. “How go it?” she murmured, reaching up to tug her fingers through his fur.  It was cold and touched with damp, remnants of a long run through the snow.

“No hunters,” Yuuki rumbled.  “Traced back to the battle site, Silence-black-scorch and I.  Hid the trail, but no interest, of yet.” He lowered his body carefully into the furs of their nest until he and Chie bracketed San on either side.  “Sea-fang-blood smells better.”

San lifted her head, leaning over Yuuki’s shoulders to examine the shinobi in the light of dawn filtering into the den.  “Looks better too,” she noted. “More blood, when little he had before.”

“Gone, poison-smell,” her brother agreed.  “Live another day, this ningen .”  

San swatted at him half-heartedly.  “Sound not disappointed, you,” she scolded.  

“Not!” he retorted, rearing his head back in affront.  “Though, fill this den with his blood-scent, he did.”

“True,” Chie yawned from behind her.  “Will take a moon to fade.”

San sniffed.  They did have a point.  “On guard, any?”

“A pup,” Yuuki answered, pillowing his head on his forepaws and letting his eyes drift closed.  “What name she -- River-petal-turtle.”

Amused, San huffed. “Name she Hinata,” she corrected, “but name you her River-petal-turtle.”

“Flows like river, delicate like petal, cautious like turtle,” he retorted.  “I know not a name more fitting for one like she.”

“Much noise you make for one who sleeps,” Chie complained.  “Done sleeping, I! Visit River-petal-turtle now. Come you, small sister?”

“Aa,” agreed San, throwing herself childishly at her sister instead.

“Sleep, I,” Yuuki grumbled.

“Always sleep you when awake we are,” Chie complained.

“Sleep a little, only,” Yuuki huffed.  “Wake at midday, today. Ran all night.”  He growled, baring his fangs as Chie nipped at his tail before dancing away.

“Leave him be,” San chided as Chie whirled towards the entrance of the den.  “Ran much, he did. Slept much, you did. Yuuki -- if he wakes, howl us.”

Her brother huffed in response, tucking into a tighter curl.  “If he wakes, if I wake, I howl.”

San rather liked the golden time when the sun was just peeking over the trees, sending brightness sparkling off the white snow until the light ricocheted everywhere and set the world afire.  The pups, however, quite liked to sleep past this time. Hinata normally would be no different, but this morning she perched at the favored watch-perch of Kakashi’s pack, high up on the cliff wall.  

Chie leapt up the cliff wall in a couple graceful bounds and perched just on the edge of the girl’s ledge.  Hinata smiled hesitantly, looking as if she wanted nothing more than to back away from them.

“Hello, small pup,” Chie wuffed cheerfully, flicking her ears.

“G-good m-morning,” greeted Hinata, forehead crinkling as she regarded them bemusedly.

“It is morning,” San agreed.  “Long watch.”

“A-ah, not t-too l-long,” she replied politely.  “N-Naruto-kun w-was on g-guard b-before me.”

“Na-ru-to?” Chie parroted, the syllables awkward in her mouth.

“Loud-sun-fox,” San explained.  Hinata watched their exchange curiously.  “You saw Itachi and Yuuki return, no?” San asked her.  “And Guruko,” she added.

“H-hai,” Hinata replied, shoulders hunching a little.  “T-they travelled through t-the forest n-near the t-trade t-town and e-entered the t-territory at the n-northeastern b-border.”

“Very far, to see,” commented San, impressed.         

For some reason, she ducked her head even further, in mimicry of Yuuki’s turtle name for her.  “T-thank y-you,” she stuttered.

San frowned at her, concerned.  “This only becomes harder,” she warned.  “Not all as fortunate as your Zabuza-sensei, to be able to run so far to a safe place after such an injury.  Your sensei will expect you to fight longer, harder. You will see more terrible wounds, maybe receive.”

Impossibly, it was this that prompted the girl to raise her head.  “I-I am p-prepared,” she said, earnestly meeting San’s eyes for the first time.  San tilted her head, considering. Young, maybe, but these eyes had seen the darkness in the world.  “I-I only w-wish I were s-stronger. L-like T-Temari-san. ”

“You will need strength in the time to come,” San agreed.  “But your strength need not be -- ” she hesitated, fishing for the words.  “ -- strength ,” she finished awkwardly, grimacing.  

Hinata frowned.  “I-I do n-not u-understand,” she admitted, voice small.  

San paused, gathering her thoughts.  “Neji sees for Temari and Haku,” she said.  “Haku moves for Neji and Temari. Temari pushes back the target for Haku and Neji.  But if all can push and none can see or move, what use is it? You do not need Temari’s wind to be strong.  You need not crush. Gaara does that. You need not carry; Sai does that. You need only find, because Gaara and Sai could not do this as quick or as well as you.”

Hinata bit her lip.  “I-I know.”

“You are strong already,” San told her.  “And perhaps later you will find something at which you are even stronger.  You need only a will and a reason to learn.”

“I-I h-have a r-reason,” said Hinata, face set resolutely.  “I w-will protect m-my friends.”

“Good,” San said, pleased.  “Go you on, then. Chie and I should like this watch.”

“Good with pups, you,” Chie noted, shifting more fully onto the ledge as the girl hurried her way down to join the pack of pups gradually spilling from their den.  

“I like pups.  Just like you and Yuuki,” San hummed, amused, “only need a little extra attention.”  

Chie growled playfully and shook her pelt out, and San had to grab handfuls of her ruff or be thrown off the side of the cliff.  “Not so, I,” she sniffed. “No attention at all, you watch.”

“Joke,” San insisted, reaching up to flick her sister’s ears.  “Much more attention than the pups.”

Chie rolled on her side, and San leapt up the cliff wall before she was squashed under the big wolf’s bulk.  “You will stop your lies,” Chie demanded, baring her teeth playfully.

“No lie,” San purred.  “Need not cuddle, pups.”  

Chie sniffed haughtily, sprawling back on her ledge.  “Important for pack bonding, that,” she said prissily.  

“Close enough as pack, pups,” said San, dropping back down on her sister’s back.  “Been through much.”

“Not enough,” Chie said grimly.  “Not for war.”

In the end, they did not need Yuuki’s howl because Zabuza’s was loud enough.  

“Fuck!”

The pack of pups scattered like startled starlings.  Shisui stumbled out of his pack’s sleeping den, Kakashi on his heels.  Yuuki emerged from theirs, ears flat against his head and eyes slit in annoyance.  

“Not enough sleep, he,” Chie noted, amused, and slithered languidly down the rock face.  “Up to the watch-ledge, you,” she called to their brother. “Sleep more there, in the sun.”

Yuuki grumbled an agreement, and eyes half-closed, pounced his way up.  San slid down from Chie’s back and followed Shisui and Kakashi into her den.  “You are chakra-tired, still,” she told the two pointedly.

“Just checking on him,” assured Shisui.  “I’mma sleep again. Right after this.” He peeled back the bandages on Zabuza’s abdomen.  

“I’m fucking fine,” groaned Zabuza.  “Just didn’t expect t’see those giant fucking fangs first thing.”

“You pulled your stitches,” Shisui scolded, picking at the loose threads.  

“Fuck you,” Zabuza growled, and then, “I know.”

Kakashi leaned over.  “No smell of rot,” he noted.  “No sign of infection; that’s good.”

“Thank the gods,” Shisui muttered.  “Kami knows this was the least sterile environment we could possibly manage.  No offense, San.”

San shrugged indifferently.  “I can sew the stitches again,” she offered.  

Shisui looked at her askance, possibly because of her person-sewing comments the first time around, but Kakashi nodded.   “Thank you, San. Momochi, if you’re alert, I need your report.”

“I’m alert,” Zabuza grunted.

“I’m going to get the kids started on training,” Shisui yawned.  “And then sleep for another three hours. Later, Z, San. Taichou.”  He snapped off a half-lazy salute at Kakashi and wandered back out.

San picked through the supplies for the needle and thread.  She had put everything back into Shisui’s medical pack, but she had not known how to organize it, so it was merely a glorified bucket at the moment.  Packets of dried herbs warred with rolls of bandages and tubes of unknown liquids for space. She wrinkled her nose and fished out a roll of bandages with the suturing supplies.

“I was on contract, outta the mercenary missions office in Tsumago,” Zabuza began, and San could see him eyeing her suspiciously out of the corner of his eye.  “Took a mission from Yasuo Yoshida.”

Kakashi frowned.  “A minor lord in Rice,” he commented.

“Yeah,” agreed Zabuza.  “Some kind of antique collector.  Wanted a piece of jewelry stolen from a merchant who refused to sell it to him.  Merchant hired a chuunin squad from Iwa to guard his things as he moved around Taki, so he wanted to hire a jounin.  Two, actually, but he didn’t want to shell out for it. Bunch of chuunin, piece of cake.” He grimaced. “Only, someone else hired a different nuke-nin to gank the merchant.  No big deal, I wait ‘til he’s actively trying to kill the guy and go in while the chuunin are distracted, but it turned out this nuke-nin just robbed an outpost in Kiri and the hunter-nin were after him.  The Iwa squad called for backup and the entire thing became a giant clusterfu -- mess.”

“Did they identify you?”

“Did they -- I’ve got one of Kiri’s seven famous swords, Hata -- sir , of course they recognized me!”

“You can stop calling me that,” said Kakashi, a pained look on what was visible of his face.  “No need to hurt yourself.”

Zabuza’s eyes glinted.  “You going to make me?”

San stuck the needle in his side.  “Sorry,” she said when he twitched.  “Your pack is quite odd, Kakashi.”

“Shove it, wolf-girl,” growled Zabuza.

“Continue,” Kakashi directed.

“I took down one chuunin, other nuke-nin took down another before the hunter-nin squad arrived.  Iwa squad retreated. Four Kiri hunter-nin, good enough at maneuvering in a silent mist, killed the other nuke-nin, and managed to put aside their differences with the squad of Iwa Anbu that showed up until I was dead.”  His derisive tone showed just what he thought about that. “I didn’t want to leave any able to follow me,” Zabuza continued, “so I fought.  Damn near killed them all. Took the rest on a run through Kusa.” He paused, frowned. “Completed the mission, too,” he added. “Box in my pack.  Someone better turn it in, deadline’s tomorrow at sunset.”

“Right,” said Kakashi slowly.  “Itachi backtracked to the ambush site.  The merchant made it out alive, but Iwa and Kiri both took heavy losses.  Looks like both sides just wanted to clean up, because they cleared their people out and and didn’t seem too keen on hunting you down.”

“Didn’t want to lose any more shinobi.”  Zabuza bared his teeth in a grin. “Kiri’s about to be real short on ‘em.”  

“Done,” San announced, slicing the thread with a kunai.  She handed Kakashi the roll of bandages, and Zabuza hauled himself upright into a sitting position so he could wrap his abdomen.  

“You’re fine,” Kakashi said.  “Move back to your bunk if you can without ruining the stitches again.  I’ll send someone to finish the mission.” He handed the leftover bandages back to San and stood.  

Zabuza grunted.  “I might have gotten ahold something else too,” he added -- his voice smug and just a little guilty.  

Kakashi paused in the entrance.  “What did you steal?” he asked, resigned.

“You know that blonde brat that Shisui has?  The girl?” Zabuza hedged, “And how I keep sayin’ she just needs something to bludgeon shit with?  Well,” he said, as Kakashi nodded warily, “one of the chuunin on the Iwa squad was from the Senpuu clan and had something he kept swinging around carelessly so I took it -- ”

“Momochi,” interrupted Kakashi deliberately.  “Did you steal an heirloom battle fan from the Senpuu clan heir and kill him ?”

Zabuza paused.  “The heir? I don’t know, he looked pretty wimpy, but his fuuton weren’t bad.  Fuck, fine,” he conceded, when Kakashi narrowed his eye. “I stole a battle fan -- which I did not know was an heirloom -- but I didn’t kill the guy.  He’s one of the ones that ran for help. I probably shouldn’t have let him do that,” he reflected, frowning, then caught sight of Kakashi’s face again.  “Or I should have?”

“Not killing him was a good move,” said Kakashi.  “The Senpuu are notorious for their blood feuds.”

“Good,” said Zabuza.  “Great. So, just give that thing to the girl and she can figure it out.”  

Kakashi looked blank as usual, but San could tell he desperately wanted to strangle Zabuza, bash his own head open on the rocks, or take a nap and forget about everything.  “This will not happen again,” he warned Zabuza, and walked out.

“You’re fucking welcome,” Zabuza muttered under his breath.  He made to stand up and stopped short, glaring down at his bandaged side.  “Help me up, wolf-girl, I’m out of here.”

Before Kakashi’s pack, San and her siblings had lived a comfortable, slow life in their Mother’s forest.  There was no threat except for the humans that ventured into their woods every so often, intent on killing a trophy, but were summarily chased off with no great effort.  Instead their days were regularly filled with mock-fighting, teasing the kodama, roaming the edges of their territory, and gathering supplies when necessary. They did not want for anything, nor did they fear attack.  

With the pups, however, a curl of protective instincts took root in San’s stomach and would not budge, and Chie and Yuuki humored her antics with amused tolerance.  There were a great many things to do, with Kakashi’s pack taking up residence in their forest. There were creatures to hunt and furs to gather for the pups to line their beds, masks to carve and knives to whittle.  She could teach them to strip entire carcasses of everything useful and cure a hide. She could watch Kakashi’s pack teach the pups hunting techniques and hiding techniques and shinobi techniques.

Today, Shisui had all nine pups gathered in the hollow with him as he sat crosslegged atop the snow, explaining something very earnestly and gesturing animatedly with both hands.  The pups arrayed themselves in a semicircle around him, varying from intent (Temari) to hesitant (Hinata) to thoroughly distracted (Naruto). San propped herself up on Yuuki’s head, far above the hollow on the lip of the cliff, and watched.  

“Go you not down to watch?” rumbled Yuuki, peering down into the hollow with interest.  

“Go you not down?” San retorted.  “Go I with you, if you do.”  

Yuuki heaved an aggravated sigh.  “Very well,” he said grumpily, but his tail swished to betray his anticipation.  “Up here, cannot hear, from the wind. Flicker-smoke-shadow very interesting, teaching.”  Instead of wandering back around through the caves, he leaned over the side of the cliff and placed an experimental paw on the face of the rock.  San shuffled back onto his shoulders as he padded down into the hollow.

Shisui saw them coming -- he could not avoid it, since Yuuki was rather large and stood out despite his white coat blending in with the snow.  He nodded to them once, absently, before returning his eyes to pups as they reshuffled, standing now in haphazard groups. “Neji-kun -- farmer’s son, rebellious, picks fights with other kids,” he said, as Yuuki sidled up next to him.  

The pups paid them no mind -- San liked to watch their practices, so this was nothing new to them.  Neji stepped forward, hesitated, and dropped his cloak to the side to the chorus of “oooh!” from the younger pups.  He ruffed up his hair, hunched, and gave his best glare. San was reminded of the geese who stood guard over their nests in spring and threatened to bite any who ventured near.  

“Good,” said Shisui, drumming his fingers on the side of his face thoughtfully.  “But try to look sullen and not aggressive. Let’s have you walk to the river and back.”

Shinobi were truly strange creatures.  Neji normally walked gracefully on light feet, upright but ready to weather what came.   Now, he plowed heavily through the snow, flat-footed, his head bobbing like a duck’s with every step.  

“ Ningen ,” murmured Yuuki, pure bafflement in his tone.  “Why not prowl when one can prowl?” He shuffled a little in the snow, tamping it down so he could lie in it more comfortably.  “Anger-leap-bird stalks well enough.”

“To prowl, to not prowl,” mused San.  “Shinobi teach both. Play at helplessness, like when you want Chie hunt you dinner and you not help.  This much though?” She shook her head. “This I understand not.”

“All right,” said Shisui, even as Yuuki hummed agreement.  “I’m a police officer, and I’ve just caught you skulking around somewhere off limits.  A nobleman’s estate. I ask you: what’s your name?”

Neji hesitated for a heartbeat.  “Hiro,” he said, surly.

“Common name, good,” said Shisui.  “What are you doing here, Hiro?”

He shrugged.  “I dunno,” he said stiffly.  

“Wrong,” Shisui shot back.  “That makes you look suspicious.  It’ll get you detained, and you don’t want any closer scrutiny.  Try again.”

Neji frowned, a quicksilver slip, and settled back into his slouch.  “I was bored,” he drawled. “The gate was open so I entered to look.”

“Watch your word choice.  You’re supposed to be a farmer’s kid, not much education,” Shisui warned, “but that was better.  The biggest thing here is to remember who you’re supposed to be. Don’t drop character, ever, even if you think you’re made.”  He surveyed the rest of the kids, choosing and discarding on some unknown criteria. “Naruto-kun, want to give it a shot?”

“Yeah!” Naruto agreed enthusiastically.  “Can I be a samurai? Oh, oh, can I be a daimyo?”

“No,” said Shisui patiently, as San hid a smile and Sakura slapped a hand to her eyes behind him.  “The point of this is to fade into the background so you’re less conspicuous. If you pretend to be a samurai or a daimyo, there’s a bigger chance someone will know you’re lying.”  He paused, and eyed Naruto, who had gone from sulky to bewildered, his face nearly screwed up on itself. “Yes?”

“What’s conspecialist?”

“ Conspicuous means obvious.  Like you stick out.”  Shisui was, San noted with amusement, a hundred times more patient than Zabuza was.  Zabuza probably would have ignored him entirely or snarled something uncomplimentary and made him do pushups.  “Okay, you’re an apprentice blacksmith. You don’t talk much but you’re strong and polite. Got it?”

“Yeah!” Naruto enthused, then caught Shisui’s pointed look.   He puffed up his chest, swung his arms loose at his side, and strutted through the snow with his skinny rear sticking out.  “Need help with that?” he asked an imaginary passerby with a comically deep voice.

Shisui blinked once, slow and exasperated, as the rest of the pups stifled giggles.  “Naruto,” he began, then stopped and closed his eyes again. “You’re trying to hide, not stand out more,” he said, long-suffering. “Don’t arch your back, stand up straight.  If you’re doing this in the field, make sure you only offer help to someone if it would help you build your cover. Don’t adopt a mannerism that would make you stand out -- no kid has a voice that deep.”

Naruto pouted, folding his arms across his chest.  “This is stupid!” he declared. “No one even knows what I sound like!  Why can’t I just be me and dress up like a prendice black-sniff? Ow!” he yelped, as Sakura smacked the back of his head.

“Idiot,” grumbled Sasuke.  

“Did you not listen to Shisui-sensei’s lecture?” demanded Neji.  “He covered it in great detail.”

“The point of adopting an entirely different identity is both so nobody recognizes you , and so that when the mission’s over, nobody remembers you outside that identity,” said Shisui patiently.  “You’re a shinobi, so that puts a target on your back. As an apprentice blacksmith, you can be expected to go places other people can’t, and even places where they don’t want shinobi to go.”  He paused, eyeing Naruto suspiciously. “I don’t need to go over why you need to make sure nobody recognizes you, right?”

Stifled groans from the pups.  Gaara narrowed his eyes dangerously.  “No,” Naruto sulked. “Because everyone wants to kill all my friends and there’s too many to fight them all off.”

“Okay, we’ll go with that,” said Shisui, with a half-grimace.  San snorted. “Try it again, but imagine you’re in a town to back up a different team, so you’re laying low.”   

Naruto huffed.  “Prendice black-sniff, okay.”  He screwed his face up. This time, his movements were less jerky as he strode through the snow.  He gave Shisui a mostly-serious nod.

“Better,” Shisui said approvingly.  

“Better?” Yuuki huffed in disbelief.  “Looks the same, smells the same, he, how a disguise is this?”

“Practice moving only,” San scolded, tugging at his ear.  “Disguise later. Hush.”

“Alright, same deal as Neji,” Shisui said over their muttered conversation. “I’m a police officer who found you in a nobleman’s estate.  Hey! You there!”

Naruto turned, glanced back at Shisui, and kept walking at the same pace.

“That’s not a good move if you can tell they’re addressing you,” Shisui warned.  “You look more suspicious.” He changed his tone again. “What do you think you’re doing in here?”

“I’m here for the horseshoes,” said Naruto, voice pitched low but nowhere near as deep as the first time he’d tried.  

“Good, but try again.  Just a little more detail, next time.  Why are you looking for the horseshoes?”

“I’m here for the broken horseshoes,” Naruto amended.  “I was told to pick them up here. To repair,” he added, when Shisui opened his mouth again.  “Later.” And he glared at Sasuke when he snorted.

“Okay,” said Shisui.  “That’s fine, Naruto-kun.  We’ll work on delivery later.” He clapped his hands together.  “Next, let’s have…” He eyed the pups thoughtfully, as San and Yuuki did the same behind him.  “How about Hinata-chan?” The girl twitched, but Temari gave her an encouraging pat on the shoulder, and carefully, Hinata edged forward.  She twisted her hands in front of her anxiously, bunching in the folds of her cloak until she caught Neji’s glare and let go abruptly.

“There’s no pressure,” Shisui said kindly.  “Just do your best.”

“H-hai,” Hinata whispered.  

Shisui paused, considering her carefully. “Hinata-chan, you’re a wealthy merchant’s daughter who dreams of marrying into nobility.  You believe you deserve be treated as nobility and you don’t tolerate perceived disrespect.”

Hinata’s shoulders hunched, and her eyes darted towards the other pups.  “A-ano, I-I -- ”

“Take your time,” Shisui encouraged.  “Forget about everyone else. Just think about who you’re supposed to be.  What are you feeling? What are you proud of? What makes you happy, or sad, or angry?”

Hinata closed her eyes as he spoke.  Gradually, her breathing evened out, and she straightened out of her hunch and she lifted her chin.  Her hands fell to her sides, easy and natural, and she shifted her weight, pulling her shoulders back.  Yuuki sat up to get a better look. San felt her eyebrows rising, and she leaned forward almost unconsciously.  Something had happened in the girl, something had changed. The shuffling of shinobi pups stilled.

“Again,” said Shisui, in the same calm voice, “I’m a police officer who has found you on a nobleman’s property.”  He pitched his voice deeper. “Hey, you there! You can’t be in here.”

Hinata opened her eyes and stared straight at Shisui.  Her eyes were cold and narrowed, and her mouth twisted into a little sneer.  “Who are you to tell me what to do?”

San jerked back in shock.  Haku blinked. Neji’s mouth actually dropped open as Sai frowned thoughtfully.  Sakura and Naruto exchanged wide-eyed glances, the former disbelieving and the latter gleeful.  Gaara’s head tilted curiously, and Temari’s hand froze mid-stroke through her brother’s hair.

“What the actual fuck,” said Sasuke into the stunned silence.

“Watch your language, you little monster,” scolded Shisui without heat.  Like everyone else, his attention was on Hinata, studying her posture, her poise, her unwavering glare.  “I’m with the police,” he addressed her directly, “and you’re trespassing on private property.”

The girl sniffed, flipping back her hair with a toss of her hair.  “If it were private, then you should have kept the gate closed!” she retorted, and flounced off through the snow.   

Another heartbeat of complete silence as Hinata stopped just at the river’s edge.

“Hinata-chan,” Shisui said at last.  “That was -- ”

“Totally awesome!” Naruto roared, throwing up snow in both hands in his enthusiasm.  “That was the coolest thing ever! You just -- and, and -- ” he waved his hands helplessly.  Beside him, Sakura nodded dumbly.

“ -- incredible,” Shisui finished, ignoring the ranting pup.  He stared still at Hinata, a strange expression on his face, as though she were a puzzle he was just now putting together.   

Hinata turned around, stepping back up on top of the snow, face pink and shoulders slowly climbing back up to her head.  There was nothing remaining of what had just happened, who she had become. “A-ah, t-thank you,” she murmured, looking as if she wanted nothing more than to sink back into the snow and hide from the attention.  

“That which hides but changes its shape to enter where it is not permitted.  Clever girl,” San noted, leaning back against her brother. “A turtle, yes, but something else as well.  A snake.” She rolled the words around in her head, testing. “Genbu, Guardian of the North.” Nine heads swivelled towards San curiously, and she realized she’d said it in the ningen tongue.  

“Genbu,” Temari repeated, eyes drifting back towards Hinata thoughtfully.  “That sounds familiar.”

San frowned and looked to Shisui, who shrugged goodnaturedly and waved at her to go ahead.  “He is one of the four great guardian spirits. Genbu is the Dark Warrior, Guardian of the North,” she explained, “he who guards the virtue of knowledge, enshrouded in darkness and shadow.  He is both a turtle and a snake at once, and he reigns over winter. He represents longevity and intelligence.” There was something unspoken happening in the pack of pups -- the same wordless communication in meaningful looks and microexpressions that San and her siblings used, and even Naruto was quiet.  

“Byakko, the White Tiger, is the Guardian of the West,” she continued.  “He rules the battlefield and the wind, and courage is his mantle. He is the protector, the bringer of autumn.  Suzaku, Guardian of the South, is the Vermillion Bird. She is summer, heat and fire, ruler of all that flies. Seiryuu, the Azure Dragon, he who safeguards the East.  He is blue and green and spring and ferocity, and his dominion is authority.”

There was another pause when San finished as the pups shot each other glances that varied from curious to blank to proprietary.  

“Dibs on Seiryuu,” Sasuke said quickly.

“Uh, nope,” Temari fired back.  “Weren’t you the one so proud of your fire nature?”

“Temari-nee, you’re the one who’s super proud that she can fly now!” Naruto shrilled.  

“I just started learning two hours ago, and Sai can fly too,” she pointed out.  “And you don’t see us going after Genbu because of Haku’s kekkei-genkai.”

“None other are as clearly suited for Genbu as we are,” said Sai, folding his arms across his chest.  His normally blank face was challenging now as he stood between Gaara -- faintly predatory -- and Hinata, peeking timidly at the others, a faint blush high on her cheeks.  

Shisui met San’s puzzled stare over the heads of the pups, his own eyes fond and exasperated.  “My fault,” he said wryly. “I told them to pick team names earlier.”

The sun spent more time in the sky above the trees, these days, and the frozen rivers swelled and crackled before bursting forth in showers of icy water.  San watched one such event as it happened, bracketed on either side by Yuuki and Chie and with golden-coated Shiba sprawled at her feet. “Snow-melt begins,” she said unnecessarily, and turned away from the omen.  There was much to do before the snow vanished completely, and not enough time to mourn what it meant.

The camp was empty, when they returned.  It was no longer unusual, but San felt a strange pang of wrongness, not seeing the pups dogpiled around the fire.  There was only Shisui, drumming his heels absently atop the watch ledge. She peeled off from her siblings and Shiba as they wandered to their den, where Akino and Uhei lay sunning themselves in the dying rays, and leapt up to join him.  “No pups today, still,” she noted, settling behind him.

“No,” Shisui agreed.  The wind ruffled his hair, tugging unruly tufts down over his crooked headband, and the setting sun lent his eye a molten glow.   “Team Genbu’s doing a quick run around the border, Itachi-kun and Team Byakko are still running supplies for one of the cells moving out of Ishi, and Zabuza and Team Suzaku are raiding a trade caravan.”  

“Developed a taste for that, Zabuza,” San said dryly.  

Shisui rolled his eye.  “Don’t let him hear you say that.  I think he’s overcompensating or something, but the captain says it’s a good thing because that’s the only way we get enough flak jackets and ration bars for everyone.  Plus, it’s good practice for the kids.”

“Not fighting, I thought,” said San, frowning.  “Were you not planning to keep the pups out of the war?”  

Shisui sighed, tired.  “We were. We still are,” he corrected.  “But if it comes down to it -- ” He shrugged.  “Team Suzaku is the best suited to fight. Haku has his mirrors, and Temari has her fan, so they can get away quickly if they need to.”  His fingers tapped absently against the rock. The sun crept ever lower on the horizon as they watched in companionable silence.

“Do not leave without warning,” San said abruptly.  “I would give you a gift before you go.” She slid her gaze over to watch him.  “All of you.”

His face was pensive, half-obscured by the headband as he tilted his head forward.  “It’s those wolf masks, isn’t it?” he said, an amused light in his eye. “I’ve seen them in the cave.”

“Masks are for pups only, when cloth and bandages they hide their faces with now are not enough,” San said dismissively.  “You are no pup.” She paused and reconsidered. “You are less of a pup,” she corrected, and bared her teeth in a grin as he shoved her lightly.  “Yours is not yet finished,” she said. “But I should like that you remember me and Chie and Yuuki when you go.”

Shisui smiled, a small, rare thing.  “You’re hard to forget,” he said.

San turned away again, hunching over her legs and propping her chin up in her hand.  “You are not so easy to forget, yourself.” Her siblings and the ninken had retreated into the sleeping den, as the temperature dropped with the sun.  Kakashi’s ninken pack slept in the warm furs in San’s den, when he was away -- and these days, he was away more than he was here. Soon, he would be gone entirely, and with each river that swelled and burst and tumbled down the mountainside, that day drew closer.  “This is the part where things change,” she said aloud, and she couldn’t quite keep the mournfulness from her tone.

Shisui met her eyes wearily.  “Yeah,” he said. “This is the part where everything changes.”

One night, San lifted her head from Chie’s side and Kakashi was there, silhouetted in the moonlight spilling into the den.  She glanced up and all around her was Kakashi’s ninken pack -- all eight of them, entangled in Yuuki’s paws, a head and legs thrown over Chie’s back, radiating out like the battle-fans she’d carved for Hinata out of a moose’s rack.  All eight of them, entangled in San’s own pack, and the last standing at the entrance. He jerked his head towards the outside, and she rolled to her feet and followed him out.

“It is time,” San noted, as they padded through the clearing.  There was no snow anymore, just a bite in the air and damp dirt to mark the season that had passed.  

Kakashi nodded just once, and his bone-white armor and unruly hair gleamed in the moonlight that streamed down unfiltered.  “We leave tomorrow,” he confirmed. “Most of our forces have mobilized already. I don’t want anyone to know we have Shisui or the Last Four, so we’re the last.”  

San hummed absently and reached up to push his crooked headband up his forehead.  He let her, staring down at her curiously. “I would see your eyes,” she said solemnly when he didn’t open the scarred eyelid.

“This is the only eye that is mine,” Kakashi responded.  

A hint of a growl built up in her chest, but she swallowed it back down.   “Packmate mine,” she warned. “Do not forget that you are not broken. A gift given made you even more than whole.  I would see your eyes.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Kakashi slid his eyelid and regarded San with mismatched eyes.  “Satisfied?”

San stared up at him soberly, memorizing the slant of his eyes, the faint glow of the fire-shadow-wheel as it swirled lazily and the deep onyx of the other.  Faces -- those changed; noses grew, jaws sharpened, cheeks collected scars. Eyes, though -- Kakashi’s eyes were the same and different all at the same time. They were sharp and intelligent and tired and resolved, his shields lowered for her, in this moment, this night in the early spring before he left her behind once again.  San would remember his eyes when he was gone. “Satisfied,” she said softly, and he reached up to pull the headband back down. “You will not return,” she said, a statement more than a question.

“No,” Kakashi agreed.  “I will not.”

Because even if he won this war, there was another to be fought, and even if he won that one as well, even if he survived, Kakashi would have a greater responsibility than just his little pack.  It was not a responsibility that would suffer him to return to San’s mother’s forest in the land the ningen called Tetsu, or even one that would suffer him to enter Tetsu at all.  “I will not see you again, packmate mine,” she said.

“No,” said Kakashi again.  “I don’t think you will.”

San did not cup him by the back of the neck or press her forehead to his, because though she was wolf and he was Hatake and pack, he was shinobi and shinobi did not do well with such gestures.  “Go well,” she said instead. “You have my mother’s favor.” She reached up and pulled off the fang that hung on twine around her neck, one of the four that had ringed her throat on the cord of her cloak, that her mother had given her when she was a child and had nothing in the world but two dead ningen parents.  She held it out to him.  

He took it gently, and at her nod pulled it over his own head until it swung gently atop his armor.  “Thank you, San,” he said. “You risked a lot, taking us all in just to repay a debt.”

“Do not insult me, Kakashi,” San grumbled, narrowing her eyes at him.  “You are pack, and that a debt I would repay a thousand times over.” She glanced away, across the moonlit hollow to the den where the pups slumbered.  “Take care of them,” she ordered. “They -- and you -- always have a home here.”

On some unspoken signal, San heard the light flutter of many paws, and she turned to see the eight hounds of Kakashi’s pack stream from her sleeping den, padding on light paws to where the pair stood at the edge of the hollow.  “You are leaving now,” she noted, as Uhei nudged her affectionately and Guruko stood up on his hind paws to shove a cold nose in her hair and Urushi brushed the length of his body against her side.

“We’re going first, to make sure the path is safe,” agreed Kakashi as Yuuki and Chie emerged last of all, the yellow of their eyes stark against the faint glow of their snowy pelts.  “The others will follow tomorrow at dawn.” San felt her heart swell with emotions she could not name at the sight of her pack -- the last time her pack would all be together.

“Go well, Kakashi- ningen ,” rumbled Yuuki, swinging his muzzle around to nudge at Kakashi’s shoulder.  

“May the wind guide your paws and sharpen your fangs, Kakashi-wolf,” added Chie, twining through the ninken and around Kakashi.  

And Kakashi, her strong, stubborn packmate Kakashi, nodded at them simply.  “Go,” he told his ninken quietly, and San and Yuuki and Chie watched as in one body, one pack, Kakashi and Pakkun and Akino and all the rest leapt across the clearing to the caves that would lead them into their territory and out of their mother's forest for the last time.

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT D-72

Per last report, targets AT1, AT3, AT4 and allied noncombatant NCHS positioned in [REDACTED] base under care of ACHN and ACNS.  Current status unknown.

Operative Cat-15 experienced physical fatigue, slight depletion of chakra, contusion to left shoulder, fracture to middle right rib.  Status adequate.

With AT2.  Established base in inn room in [REDACTED].  

Operative CAT-15 established undercover identity of traveler caught unaware in snowstorm.  Achieved employment at public stables for 100 ryo per day. Income sustainable if supplemented by street theft.  Accompanied to employment by AT2.

AT2 expressed following symptoms: cough, congestion, fatigue.

Purchased: eucalyptus salve, green tea, honey, chicken broth.  

Goal: alleviate symptoms of sickness in AT2.  Remain undercover in [REDACTED] until AT2 has recovered.  Procure necessary nutritional supplies for AT2 to continue projected age-appropriate growth.

Goal: rendezvous with targets AT1, AT3, AT4, allied noncombatant NCHS, and allied combatants ACHN and ACNS to ensure continued security and wellbeing.

No contact with enemy combatants.

No contact with allied combatants.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

The mantle of Hyuuga Hinata, firstborn daughter of Hyuuga Hiashi, heiress to the noble Hyuuga Clan, inheritor of the strongest doujutsu and most powerful taijutsu in the Elemental Nations, she who will hold the fate of her entire clan in her hands was a heavy one to bear.  It bowed her shoulders and weighed down her tongue until she hunched under the former and stumbled over the latter. It dogged her footsteps and loomed over her until she cowered in its shadow, unable to break free.

Matsui Moe, however, had no concerns besides filling her belly and having fun and finding a safe place to sleep at night.  She struggled with none of these, because despite having no parents, Moe was a cheerful, charming girl, and whenever she snagged an apple from the fruit cart on one of the market corners, the storekeeper pretended not to notice.   

Hinata liked being Moe.  Nobody expected anything from Moe, and her life was hard but comfortable.  Like any port city, Kitakyushu had its fair share of street urchins running around its streets, and its citizens never blinked when one or two appeared or quietly vanished.  She went where she pleased and nobody questioned what she was doing perched on the low wall just before the harbor, looking out towards the docks because the townspeople knew little Moe liked watching the sailors and the ships come in and go back out to sea.  

She swung her legs absently, blinking away the sting as the sea breeze brushed tangled strands of hair into her face.  Four hulking ships bobbed at the shore today, looming over the docks at which they were tied. Two sat idle, deserted as its sailors enjoyed the food and beds and other pleasures of solid land.  The other two buzzed with activity, one offloading and the other onloading. The distant figures scurried to and fro, swinging up and down the rigging, maneuvering huge crates from deck to shore or shore to deck, and clustering and scattering just as quickly.

The years spent with Neko-sensei, before Itachi-sensei had found them, had taught Hinata that street children truly were the ones who knew the goings-on in towns.  It was in part why the Hidden Villages valued child prodigies as much as they did -- rare as they were, no other could move so easily and gather so much valuable information as a child.  Civilians did not suspect children, and even if shinobi did, there were simply far too many leftover, forgotten children to police them all, and certainly no one to feed them or take them off the streets, though civilians would undoubtedly protest if the children were culled.  

It was no great struggle to return to the streets -- easier now, that she was Moe and not a hunted heiress.  Moe was free to meet the eyes of the other townspeople with her brown-not-white eyes, to smile winningly at them in a way Hinata never would have dared.  She wore Moe like the colored lenses and the hair dye and tattered, worn shirt that went with her persona.

“Moe-chan!”  

Moe turned, eyes crinkling automatically in a smile as the other girl waved at her.  “Ohaiyo, Ida-nee,” she said cheerfully, and pointed back towards the ships. “Look, there’s four today!”

“I see that,” Ida said indulgently.  “Come on, Moe-chan, you can’t spend all your time just watching the ships.  Kiyomi-baa-san gave out some biscuits earlier and they were only a little burnt.”  

“Oh,” Moe said wistfully.  “I like her biscuits.”

The other girl beamed and pulled out a package from behind her back.  “I brought you one!”

Moe gasped in delight and reached for the biscuit, then hesitated, biting her lip.  “I don’t have anything yet,” she admitted.

“I know,” said Ida, rolling her eyes, and shoved the biscuit at her.  “You can make it up to me tonight.”

“Tomorrow?” Moe hedged hopefully, opening the package with greedy hands.  “The Kagamaru is still unloading, and I was planning on trying the south district again today.”

Ida sniffed.  “You’ll never catch me down there.  Everyone knows that’s where the shinobi are -- they’re stingy, and they’ll kill you if they think you’re spying?  You’re lucky you’re still young enough to not look suspicious.”

“I’ll bring you back something tomorrow,” Moe promised, stuffing half the biscuit into her mouth and chewing as fast as she could.  “It’s a Thursday,” she said, muffled, “so that fish restaurant’s throwing out the old stuff.”

“Fried pollack or no deal, Moe-chan,” Ida warned, plucking the cloth back out of Hinata’s hands and tipping her head back for the last crumbs.  “I can’t keep just feeding you for free.”

“Yes, Ida-nee.”  

Moe would have to steal the fried pollack, she mused, watching the older girl saunter away.  Every city was different, but the street kids in every city had a code, a hierarchy, and Ida held a lot of sway as the younger sister of one of the drug runners for the Chokoto Syndicate.  Moe herself had found herself vaguely under the teen’s protection in exchange for choice foods from the more dangerous south district.

She leaned forward, bracing her hands against the low stone wall on which she sat, and watched as the command crew of the Kagamaru convened just past the docks.   The merchant ship was a regular; Moe herself had seen the vessel six times in the two months she’d been in Kitakyushu, and some of the other kids had heard from an acquaintance of an acquaintance that it had returned with the same frequency every month for years.  

Eventually, the movement of crewpeople slowed to a trickle as the setting sun lit the surface of the water with its golden rays.  She drummed her heels briefly against the stone wall and hopped down. There was nothing more to see here, so she picked her way back into the town proper.  

Moe darted between a pair of ox-drawn carts, ducked a woman balancing a basket of potatoes, and dodged a kick aimed at her by an irate storekeeper.  That baa-san hated when she and the other kids ran through the square, hated all the street rats polluting Kitakyushu. For that same reason, she was Moe’s favorite store to pickpocket.  She always had stone fruit, no matter what the season, and Moe loved stone fruits -- peaches and plums were her favorite.

She didn’t have time to swipe one today, though, not if she wanted to get through the Kumata Gauntlet before nightfall -- and only the dumbest street rats let themselves get caught in that strip between the central and southern districts in full dark.  Most didn’t come back. Those that did were missing a part of themselves -- if not in body, then in mind.

Moe hesitated, just on the near side of the stone arch preceding the Kumata.  Dilapidated warehouses yawned on either side, rough-hewn stone and scratched glass concealing the favored haunts of the drug-mafiosos, people-traffickers, and hunter-smugglers.  Moe had never been in those herself, but Ida’s friend's rival’s youngest cousin had run through the closest one on a dare once and come back shaking and white as plaster, physically unharmed but unable to speak a single word.  Three days later, he threw himself off the midtown bridge and drowned. That had been enough for most of the street rats to stay out of the South district -- no matter how good or rare, food was not worth losing one’s mind. Besides the Kumata Gauntlet, there was only the Hisato Thoroughfare to get there, and that had guards posted at all times specifically to keep rabble like her out.  Supposedly, it was to prevent robbery, but everyone knew it was to keep the gutter trash away from the rich people.

The supply wagons, however, were only permitted in the Kumata, so it was safe enough to travel as long as other people were around and the sun still shone.  And it did, if weakly, so Moe took a deep breath and scurried through the archway in tandem with the cured meats merchant in his rickety mule-drawn cart.

The wind swept between buildings, hissing eerily across the Kumata and lashing against Moe’s face.  Something clanged in the shadows and she flinched, straining her eyes in the direction of the sound, but there was nothing there.  Something small and dark darted down a side alley. “Hey there, darlin’,” drawled a voice from the opposite side, and Moe instinctively ducked so the cart was between her and the voice.

The Kumata was long, but the leering eyes that stared out at her languidly did nothing as long as Moe stayed in the shadow of the meat merchant’s cart.  At the far side, she ducked into a side alley as the merchant took the main road, her feet lighter and the air filling her lungs more easily now that she’d made it into the South district safely.  The back-alley streets here were worn and familiar, their shadows comforting instead of sinister.

She trotted down the alley between the barbecue restaurant and the silk shop and took a sharp right, where a set of stairs descended sharply into the storm cellar beneath the grocery store that’d been shut down due to a rat infestation.  The door at the bottom was locked, but Moe slid out the bent hairpins she kept in the cloth wrapped around her arm and picked it deftly. It creaked open, spilling light from the distant street lamps into the cellar, and she plucked the electric lantern from its hook next to the doorframe and hurried down the concrete steps.  

The door clanged shut behind her, and then the only light came from the swinging lantern in her hand.  She set it down on the rickety table at the bottom, humming absently as she turned towards the corner she’d piled a nest of blankets in.  Under it, she had a can of green beans, one of chicken, and a handful of packages of crackers --

Out of the corner of her eye, a shadow detached itself from the rest and Moe whirled, stifling a gasp.

“All clear.  No tails,” he said, voice low.  “Do you have anything to report?”

She blinked hard twice, three times, each time closing her eyes longer than the previous.  She took a deep, fortifying breath. “N-no,” said Hinata. “N-nothing out o-of the o-ordinary.”

“Gaara is in the sewers still.”  Sai handed her her mask and cloak.  “We have twenty minutes until check-in.”  

“H-hai,” she acknowledged, bringing the bone-mask up to her face.  She swung the cloak over her shoulders and pulled the hood over her head.  With a soft click, she turned off the lantern, leaving it on the table as she led the way up the second set of stairs into the store itself.  

The store was less dark, dim light filtering in from the outside to light the bare metal shelves.  Hinata ghosted past them to the stockrooms, where the stench of blood still hung over sloped floors.  She pried up the grate at the center and peered down into the yawning darkness. She let herself drop, the damp, fetid air rushing past her as she fell through the black.  She landed lightly atop the water with just a shift of chakra. Above her, the metal grate clicked back into place, and she moved aside so Sai could touch down beside her.

A low hiss.  A tiny flame bloomed in the darkness, and above them, a pair of green eyes glowed from behind a white bone-mask.  “The sewers are still empty,” Gaara announced, annoyance betrayed in the way his eyes flickered towards the rust-red hair plastered against his mask.  

“Acknowledged,” said Sai.  “We will proceed to base camp.  Hinata?”

Her Byakugan activated in a blink and a small pulse of chakra, muffled by the concrete around her so even the enemy shinobi in the district would think it only the erratic fluctuation of an untrained civilian.  The entire sewer system bloomed before her eyes, and far above, the bustling labyrinths of the streets.

That wasn’t important, though.  She stretched her sight along the sewer tunnels.  “T-there’s some f-flooding and t-two b-blockages,” she said.  “T-the d-direct line under the K-Kumata G-Gauntlet is c-completely i-impassable.”  

“I cut through the dry tunnels on the west side,” said Gaara, deeply resentful with just the suggestion of a snarl.  “Many needles.”

Hinata repressed a shudder.  “S-s-sorry,” she said meekly, swallowing as his eyes narrowed.  

“If it was the only way to tail Hinata, it had to be done,” Sai said dismissively.  “Base camp is to the northeast. We will not have to pass through the dry tunnels again, and when the tide rises, it will likely clear the blockages.  Take point, Hinata.”

“H-hai,” agreed Hinata, and stepped carefully across the surface of the water.  

The journey was largely quiet, interrupted only by their footsteps tapping on the water, the skittering of Sai’s otherwise-silent ink sentry rats, and the occasional agitated shift of sand from the massive knapsack slung across Gaara’s back.  The air changed, blowing in on them with a fresher, saltier edge to the oppressive mugginess of the sewers.

Hinata stretched out her vision again, to the sea, the beach, the base camp, and her focus divided, almost walked into the grate.  She stopped short before her mask hit the slimy metal, and her attention snapped back to her immediate surroundings. “I-it’s clear,” she said.

“Gaara,” Sai prompted, then added, “ gently .”

Hinata’s widened field of vision let her see Gaara’s narrowed eyes, if not the rest of his face beneath the mask, but she knew he was scowling.  He gestured, short and abrupt, and tendrils of sand snaked out to pry at the grate.

The debris that had been caught in the grate swept out in a rush, and all three of them swayed as the water level dropped.  Sai made the plunge first, taking a running start and sliding feet first, nearly horizontal, through the narrow tube. Hinata followed, pressing her eyes and mouth shut and pushing against either side of the tube to propel herself through the sludgy water.  Not a heartbeat later, the breath was stolen from her lungs as the tube dropped out from beneath her. She opened her eyes and landed on her feet, stumbling forward a few steps to stand beside Sai as Gaara followed her out, twisting midair like a cat and landing on all fours.  

“Disgusting,” Gaara spat, shaking the water out of his hair and waving his hand to replace the grate amid a hiss of sand.  

Sai dripped discontentedly.  “It is our best option while the main sewer lines undergo maintenance,” he said.  

“A-ano, c-could we s-stop to c-clean o-off before w-we go b-back?” Hinata suggested, discreetly flicking sewer water from the hem of her cloak.  

“Yes,” agreed Sai.  “I believe that is also our best option.”  

With a faint crusting of salt from their hastily-taken and hastily-dried dip in the ocean, they reported for their check-in with about fifteen seconds to spare.  Their base camp had been an abandoned mine, forgotten years ago when the tunnels collapsed. Now, with the addition of discreet air vents, it served as a Hanabi-ha center of operations.  A very small, distant center of operations with only a small impact on the overall war effort in Kiri, but busy nonetheless.

Shisui-sensei raised an eyebrow at them as they pulled off their masks, crunching faintly as the fabric of their cloaks shifted.  “Cutting it close, Team Genbu,” he noted.

“Ready to report,” Sai responded, standing a little straighter.  Hinata fidgeted with the mask in her hands, sliding her fingers absently over its smooth surface.  

“Go for it,” said Shisui-sensei, leaning back against the rough-hewn counter and crossing his arms.

“A nuke-nin team arrived in the South district in the afternoon, around 1650 hours,” Sai recounted.  “No pursuers, no visible injuries. One male from Ishigakure, one male from Sunagakure, one female from Takigakure.  Likely at least chuunin, if they still wear their hitai-ate. The Sunagakure male is likely a sensor; he sensed my sumi rats but couldn’t trace them back to me.”

Shisui-sensei nodded thoughtfully.  “It can’t be helped,” he said. “Kitakyushu is neutral, so mutual spying is not unexpected.  As long as they don’t follow you back, there should be no problem. Anything else?”

“The third Konoha team, designation W-12, departed in a northwesterly direction, 1400 hours,” Sai continued.  “Nothing further.”

Shisui nodded.  “Hinata-chan?”

Hinata fumbled the mask, just barely snagging it before she dropped it.  “H-hai!” she stuttered. “The K-Kagamaru d-docked today at f-fifteen -- 1450 hours,” she corrected.  “The c-command crew d-disembarked f-first and s-several u-unmarked crates were c-carried off w-with the r-rest and t-taken into the t-town.  The H-Hijumaru is p-preparing for l-launch, but n-nothing s-suspicious was l-loaded yet.”

“The crates were taken into one of the warehouses,” said Gaara shortly.  “Hinata was not followed.”

“Copy that,” said Shisui-sensei.  “Get the written report done before you take off tomorrow, but get some rest tonight.”

“Hai,” said Sai, and Hinata echoed him.    

“Good work, kids,” Shisui-sensei said cheerfully.  “There’s another team rolling through tonight, you know the drill.”  He tapped a finger against his temple. “And keep your afternoon open tomorrow -- we’ll need to cobble together the op but we’ll probably hit the warehouse then.”

“Hai,” Sai repeated.

Two makeshift wooden doors and a dusty corridor led them into the common room they shared with the rest of the pack.  Hinata slid into the warm glow of electric lanterns behind Sai, brushing the crusted salt off her cloak and letting the door close behind her and Gaara.  

“Hinata-chan!” Naruto greeted enthusiastically.  “Gaara! We have fish!” He waved his plate in the air, and something white and flat went flying.  

Only Sakura’s reflexes, snapping up with her chopsticks to catch it, saved his fish. “Watch it, baka!” she snapped, slapping it back down on his plate.  “Hinata, I’ll get you some before this idiot knocks it all over.”

Perched on the counter over her shoulder, Sasuke rolled his eyes discreetly.  “What happened to you?” he asked between bites of rice. “Did you roll in a salt flat or something?”

“We were unfortunately forced to submerge in sewer water in order to return,” Sai said blandly.  “So we bathed in seawater to rid ourselves of the smell.”

Hinata bit back a smile as Naruto burst into raucous laughter.  “Sai!” he crowed, as the older boy brushed the white crystals from his cloak carefully.  “You didn’t!”

Gaara scowled.  “Did,” he grumbled, but his resentment had lost its edge.

“Well,” Temari said wryly, appearing in the opposite doorway.  “We’ll never run out of salt.” Gaara’s posture straightened, angling attentively towards her, and she smiled at him fondly.  Hinata watched wistfully. “Go on, get some food,” the older girl urged. “Otherwise Naruto will eat it all again.”

“I’m hungry!” Naruto made a face as Hinata accepted a plate from Sakura.  

“Last night you ate Haku’s share except a bowl of rice!” Temari scolded, reaching out to slap the back of his head.

“He said I could have it!”

“Yeah, and then he had a ration bar after dinner,” she shot back.  

Naruto faltered.  “He did?” he asked in a small voice.

“Yes.  He did,” said Neji-nii-san coldly, sliding out of the same doorway to the sleeping dorms and levering Naruto with a disapproving stare.  “Haku-san is both older and taller than you. It follows that he needs as much if not more food than you.”

Hinata observed a rare moment in which Naruto seemed completely at a loss for words.  She bit her lip and looked down at her own plate. She didn’t need as much as Haku or Naruto, and she didn’t mind eating the ration bars even if they were tough and tasteless.  Should she offer him some of her food?

“ -- can’t get as much fresh food,” Temari was saying, “so we have to share what we do have.”

Hinata opened her mouth, but the words caught in her throat.  Frustrated, she closed her mouth again, staring down at her rice. What was wrong with her?  It was just Naruto-kun, and she’d lived with him for nearly three years and known him even longer that that.  She knew the favorite foods and birthdays and best jutsu of everyone in this room, but even around her friends, her pack, her throat constricted and wouldn’t let the words out.  She tried again. “A-ano...” It came out as a whisper. “Y-you -- ”

“That’s it!” Naruto burst out.  “I just have to find us more food and then we can eat as much as we want!”

“Naruto,” Sakura said, adopting a lecturing tone as she twirled her chopsticks in one hand.  “Shisui-sensei already told us we have to avoid the civilians as much as possible, and buying a lot of food will make people suspicious.”  Naruto’s face fell again, screwing up in consternation and disappointment.

Hinata could fix it.  She could give him the food he wanted and even needed more than she did.  She just had to get the words out, and Naruto’s bright smile would chase the misery off his face.  Hinata swallowed. Across the room, Neji-nii-san narrowed his eyes at her and shook his head, just the tiniest movement.  Humiliated, Hinata snapped her mouth shut again and stared at her feet. Neji-nii-san didn’t approve; of course he didn’t.  

Her cousin had a preternatural ability to know what she was thinking, and he would no doubt lecture her, in that stiff, formal manner of his, that the heiress of the noble Hyuuga Clan should not be giving her dinner away to a lowborn nobody.  Because Hinata was not her own person; she belonged to the Hyuuga, and to give in to her desire to be selfless was selfish in itself.

Sakura had been watching their exchange with her mouth twisted into a frown.  Hinata knew she did not like Neji-nii-san. Despite the other girl’s lack of a shinobi bloodline, Sakura was just as observant as Hinata, and caught each and every one of their silent conversations.  Hinata wished she could tell her that Neji-nii-san was just looking out for her best interests, but this too she knew her cousin would protest, barbed and deferential and defensive all at once. It was a Clan matter, after all, and outsiders should not interfere with or even be privy to their interactions.  

Behind her, Sasuke regarded Hinata briefly with hooded eyes before flickering to Neji-nii-san, but he merely turned back to his food with the faintest hint of a scowl.  The Uchiha Clan raised its children almost as carefully as the Hyuuga and with many of the same rules.

Hinata ate mechanically, standing halfway behind Sai like a coward the entire time, and willed her hands to stop shaking.

Hinata woke before dawn, as she always did, and stared up at the bottom of Sai's bunk.  Her dream, with its vague warnings and worries, slipped away, leaving behind a flash of a battle not yet fought and the stirrings of discomfort, fear, and a sense of urgency that drove her out of her bunk and into the small open room the pack used for sparring.  She sank into her kata, letting the familiar movements soothe her troubled mind. Absently, she reached into her sleeves for the pair of hiogi battle-fans San had carved for her from the great antlers of a moose and added them to her kata, snapping them open with a flick of her wrist.

Neji-nii-san did not so much like her use of the hiogi in their family's traditional taijutsu, but Hinata had argued that it served to disguise the style -- furthermore, the extra balance the beautifully crafted fans lent her had even let her take and keep the offensive in a spar between the two before it had ended as it always did, and Neji-nii-san had grudgingly accepted their utility in combat.  

Hinata twirled, bringing the splayed blades of one up to block an imaginary blow, and with a deft flip of her hand, hurled the other at the wooden target board opposite the door.  It flared gracefully before embedding itself into the wood. She stared at it, chest heaving as she stopped, frozen with her hand still outstretched.

“I recommend that you don’t actually stop in the middle of battle,” said Haku lightly from behind her, and she jumped and clutched her remaining fan over her heart.  He smiled apologetically. “Sorry,” he said.

“I-it was n-not y-you,” Hinata said quickly, flicking her fan shut and tucking it back up her sleeve.  She felt her cheeks flushing at her blunder, and she was desperately, pathetically glad Neji was not there. “I-I wasn’t p-paying enough a-attention.”  

“It was a good throw.”  He padded over to the target on light feet and inspected her hiogi briefly before pulling it free with deceptive ease.  He held it out to her, and she took it carefully and slid it back into its holster. “I don’t have much experience with fans,” Haku mused, “but I could give your pointers, if you like.”

Hinata hesitated and bit her lip. “A-aren’t you t-tired, H-Haku-san?  Y-you were o-on w-watch the w-whole n-night.”

The cloak slipped off Haku’s shoulder as he stepped back.  He tugged it back up absently and wrapped it across his chest more securely.  “Aren’t you?” he deflected mildly. “You and your team have been out constantly, and you didn’t sleep long.”      

Hinata tipped her head away almost involuntarily.  “I c-couldn’t,” she murmured, sliding her fan back into her hands and turning its folded form over and over.    

Haku watched her sympathetically.  “Lately I feel restless as well,” he admitted quietly, eyes not quite focused on her face.  “My purpose is to serve Zabuza-san and be at his side, yet -- ” he hesitated for a long moment, “ -- I am here, on the other side of the sea,” he finished, just a hint of bitterness in his voice.  “Useless.”

“Y-you’re not u-useless,” Hinata insisted, glancing up at his wooden expression.  “Y-you’re o-one of the s-strongest of u-us, and I-I’m sure Z-Zabuza-sensei k-knows that.”  

“If he thought that,” Haku said stiffly, “he would have brought me with him.”

“Y-you have h-heard the s-stories the t-teams bring b-back f-from the f-front l-lines,” Hinata said quietly.  “M-maybe h-he’s just t-trying to p-protect you.”

“I was Anbu,” Haku said coldly.  “Hunter-nin. I protect Zabuza-san.  If he needs to protect me, I am worse than useless to him.  He may as well have left me in the trash where he found me.”  He glanced sideways, as if surprised to see the worried frown hovering at the edges of Hinata’s face.  “I apologize,” he said lightly, and the harsh planes of his face melted back into something softer. “It wasn’t my intention to burden you with my pointless musings.  Perhaps I should sleep after all. I hear we are planning a raid tomorrow.”

“The K-Kagamaru,” agreed Hinata. “T-the crew c-cleared the s-ship for i-inspection but m-most l-likely will t-take back a w-weapons s-shipment to d-deliver to K-Kumo.  S-Sensei wants to s-steal them b-before they l-leave.”

Haku hummed.  “It’s distressing that merchants would smuggle weapons to Kumo -- the very village that would trample their country beneath their troops’ feet on their way to Konoha,” he noted distantly.  

“G-greed,” Hinata murmured, splaying open her fan one rib at a time.

“Greed,” Haku echoed, and left her to her katas.

When Hinata left the training room, she passed Gaara and Temari on their way in.  The first didn’t bother acknowledging her, while the latter sent her a cheery wave.  “Hey, Hinata! Good session?” The older girl reached out a hand to ruffle her hair, the same way she did Gaara and all the younger kids, and Hinata’s instincts fought between flinching and wishing she’d do it longer.  

“A-aa,” she managed to get out, keeping a wary eye on her teammate, who was suddenly watching her intently with hooded eyes.  “I-I just p-practiced with my f-fans for a b-bit.”

Temari sighed wistfully, hand going up instinctively to the massive weapon slung across her back.  “I wish we had the space for me to work with mine,” she said wryly. “I miss San’s forest.”

Hinata nodded agreement.  The training room was too small and too poorly shielded by seals to use anything particularly destructive or chakra-intensive -- and there was only the one, so training sessions were limited to an hour each to accommodate solo, pair, and team sessions.  “I-I will l-leave you t-to it,” she said politely, and sidled back to the kitchen area.

Sasuke was already there, banging around with bad grace.  While Team Suzaku could all cook reasonably well, Sasuke and Hinata were nominally the ones on their respective teams who took charge of food preparation -- Sasuke likely from sheer self-preservation in the face of Sakura’s persistent over- and under-cooking and the sheer disaster that was Naruto’s, though Hinata felt guilty just thinking something that unkind.  Hinata had learned cooking from Temari and rather enjoyed it, compared to Gaara’s general distaste for menial work. In Hinata, the Hyuuga had inadvertently bred the perfect Branch Hyuuga wife instead of the Main Family leader they had intended.

“D-do you n-need any h-help?” she offered as he thumped a large crate of tofu onto the counter and sent the water sloshing out onto the counter.  

He glanced up.  “Yeah. Can you julienne the carrots?  I wanna make sukiyaki for lunch.” He grimaced.  “Sai’s got breakfast duties.”

Hinata bit back a wince.  “H-he’s not t-that b-bad,” she defended loyally.  She picked through the refrigerator for the carrots and took a knife from the rack.

“Sai cooks like we’re in the field, with field rations, all the time,” Sasuke said bluntly. “And he doesn’t know how to salt things.”   It was true: Sai tended to favor aggressively simple, bland meals. He shuffled through the boxes scattered on the counter. “Where’s the flour?”

Hinata glanced up from her knife sliding easily through the carrots.  “I-it’s in the s-same c-crate as the s-salt,” she offered. She watched curiously as he hefted the flour.  “W-what do you n-need f-flour for?”

He looked down at the bag in his hands and back up at her.  “Udon,” he said, in the manner used to state something obvious.  “For the sukiyaki. We’re out of dry noodles.”

Hinata wondered if her father would also consider Sasuke the ideal Branch Hyuuga wife -- his only flaw being, of course, his Uchiha blood.  

She finished reducing the carrots to short, thin strips and reached for the cabbage next.  With ten mouths to feed -- sometimes more, depending on whether or not other Hana-ha teams had stopped by -- a staggering mountain of food was required for each meal, when they could afford the fresh ingredients.  Preparation ranged from an hour for the less culinarily-inclined to well over three for Haku or Sasuke when they felt restless.

She watched under her eyelashes as Sasuke dumped nearly the entire bag of flour into a giant vat, sending up plumes of white powder that he ducked, then liberal handfuls of salt without bothering to really measure it out.  In retrospect, Sasuke’s cooking style was not so different from Naruto’s, yet somehow Sasuke’s always turned out well. There wasn’t really a spoon big enough for Sasuke’s intended purpose; instead, he used a baseball bat to stir in the water.  Hinata suspected he would have used Temari’s battle-fan if he thought he could get away with it.

Sai wandered into -- no, arrived, because wandered implied Sai ever did anything without explicit purpose -- the kitchen as Hinata was shaving slices off a massive round of beef and Sasuke was rolling out a portion of his udon dough.  He blinked owlishly at the piles of vegetable scraps and light dusting of flour coating every flat surface.

“G-good morning,” said Hinata a little guiltily.  Sai opened his mouth to respond.

“This isn’t breakfast.  It’s lunch,” Sasuke said abruptly, hovering over his half-formed noodles defensively.

Sai closed his mouth.  “Noted,” he said, faintly bemused, and turned, unsurprisingly, for the rice.  Sasuke watched him with the faint shadow of a scowl but his dough dragged his attention back.  

Sai’s arrival signalled that of the rest of the pack, which trickled in little by little to perch in inobtrusive corners and watch the chaos unfold.  Sakura was first, scooting on top of the far table with her legs swinging free to untangle a snarl of ninja wire. Haku drifted in next with a bundle of cloth, a needle, and some thread.  Temari and Gaara followed, and the air of menace Hinata’s teammate usually wore like his cloak was muted.

“Looks good, Sasuke,” said Temari, leaning over the mound of uncooked noodles in the center of the counter.

Sasuke sort of grunted and eyed her warily, but the effect was somewhat diminished by the white dusting in his unruly hair.   “Almost done,” he said.

“You might even beat Sai,” Temari said playfully,  seemingly oblivious to the way Gaara peered at the other boy suspiciously.   

“This is not a competition,” Sai frowned.

Sasuke snorted.

“I know,” Temari said fondly, and nudged Gaara over to the tables.

“Masks up.”  Hinata jumped a little as Neji-nii-san strode in briskly, Byakugan activated under his bone-mask.  “We have company. Two teams.”

Temari pulled hers down from the top of her head and Hinata yanked hers up from where it hung by the straps around her neck.  She dropped her knife belatedly and lunged for her cloak, discarded near the door.

“What the hell,” Sasuke grumbled, leaving white fingerprints on his cloak and shoving his mask on his face and a bandana over his hair.  “Sakura, go tell the idiot before he stumbles in here and gives himself away.”

“Way ahead of you.”  Sakura vanished out the door in a swirl of her cloak, neatly sidestepping Neji-nii-san as he moved deeper into the room.

Hinata stacked her cut vegetables into little piles in one crate, the meat in another, and stuffed the entire thing in the refrigerator case.  Sasuke did the same with his noodles with a disgruntled set to his shoulders. Gaara picked up a cloth and began wiping the flour off the furniture with an air of tolerance.  

“Will they be joining us for breakfast?” asked Sai, frowning at the vat of miso soup bubbling on the portable stove.

“Evidently,” said Neji-nii-san with the shadow of a scowl.

“Where's Shisui?” Sasuke demanded, futilely brushing at his cloak.

“Shisui-sensei,” Neji-nii-san said pointedly, to which Sasuke rolled his eyes discreetly, “is currently debriefing the squad leaders.  I expect they will be finished shortly.”

“What's the news?” asked Temari, and it would have been casual had everyone in the room not discreetly turned towards Neji-nii-san or stilled just a little to hear him better.

“Nothing from Itachi-sensei or Zabuza-sensei,” he reported, and Sasuke and Haku sighed silently, almost in unison. “One of the teams briefly ran into Hatake-taichou during a front-line skirmish when he extracted them from an ambush, but he moved on quickly.”

“A-are the t-teams i-injured?” Hinata asked timidly.

Her cousin glanced at her dismissively.  “One shinobi has six broken bones in his left hand and arm, two have acute symptoms consistent with near-drowning, another is missing an ear and has recent extensive scarring on her right side torso.”  Hinata stifled a gasp and Temari’s eyes were grim beneath her mask. “The other team is relatively fresh and has only superficial wounds and light chakra exhaustion.”

“How long are they staying?” asked Temari quietly.

Neji-nii-san shook his head. “Not long for the uninjured team; they're mustering out to Kiri.  The injured team might stay longer to recuperate. They will likely receive an assignment to a support position similar to ours.”

“Yeah, the kids and the cripples,” muttered Sasuke, and Hinata’s eyes widened at his caustic tone.  

“Sasuke!” Temari admonished sharply, narrowing her eyes at him from across the room.

“You mean ‘Shi’ while we have company ,” he retorted, but ducked his head nonetheless.

“I'm here!” announced Naruto breathlessly, skidding into the kitchen with his mask haphazardly perched on his face. “What'd I miss, besides Sasuke being an absolute bastard again?”

“ Shi is not a bastard, watch your mouth, Roku ,” warned Temari, crossing her arms across her chest.  

Naruto waved irreverently. “Oh my gods, is Sai -- sorry, is Hachi cooking?” he demanded, flopping down theatrically across Temari and Gaara’s laps.  “Temari-nee, why ?”  Hinata stifled a giggle.  Gaara reached out hesitantly as if to run his fingers over the other's mask but pulled back his hand abruptly.

“How do you remember one codename but not the other?” muttered Sasuke derisively, and Naruto stuck his tongue out.  

“I can cook,” said Sai, turning from his pot of soup and looking mildly insulted.

“You cook like you would rather be doing anything but cooking,” Sakura interjected, wandering in to sit  between her teammates.

“I make efficient meals,” Sai corrected, and Team Byakko groaned in unison.

“Everyone takes turns cooking,” Temari reminded them.  “We have to suffer through your meals too, Roku.”

“Too?” Sai frowned, narrowing his eyes at Temari.

“I cook great!” Naruto insisted.   “I do like the exact same thing that Shi does!”

Around Hinata, the entire pack groaned or rolled their eyes this time.   

“Then why does yours always taste like sand?” Sakura demanded.

“Don't ask me, Go-Go-chan, ask Shichi.  He’s the sand guy,” protested Naruto.

“No,” said Gaara.

“Fine,” said Naruto. “It's Kyuu-chan.  She's been sabotaging me.”

Hinata jolted as everyone glanced at her curiously.  She took a panicky breath even a she let her mind shift, recalibrate.  Kyuu was cold and reserved but unafraid and warm with her packmates; a fighter, a teammate with loyalty only to her pack and her cause.  Kyuu was everything Hinata wished she could be but was not. “Even if I did sabotage Roku’s cooking it is not as though it could get any worse,” Kyuu drawled.

A pause.  “Man,” said Roku gleefully.  “That’s still -- ”

“Creepy,” said Shi under his breath.

“ -- awesome!” finished Roku.  

“Jealous?” murmured Kyuu sardonically, leaning back against the counter and raising her eyebrow at Shi.   He wrinkled his nose at her, torn between amused and disdainful.

“It’s a useful skill to have,” said Ichi, methodically folding away his mending.

Roku jabbed an accusatory finger at him, which he regarded serenely.  “You’re just sayin’ that because you’re good at it too!”

“Seriously,” added Go.  “You can make people think you’re a girl .”

Across the room, Ni was watching Kyuu with narrowed eyes, but she tilted her chin up and stared back.  She wasn’t afraid of him. He broke eye contact first. “They’re coming,” he announced to the room at large.

“The food is nearly done,” said Hachi, poking at his pots.

“I hate eating with the mask,” Roku grumbled.  

Rei-nee rapped Roku’s head gently with her knuckles.  “Get off me and Shichi,” she said. “Try to pretend like you’re an actual shinobi.”

Kyuu could hear the sulk in his voice.  “I am an actual shinobi,” he complained, but hauled himself upright.

“Kyuu,” said Hachi.  He jerked his chin at the pot of rice steaming gently on the counter, his own hands full with the soup, and she slipped behind him to get it as he carried his burden to the tables.  

“Okay, everyone,” called Juu.  Kyuu set the rice down next to the miso soup and turned to the doorway.  Most of his face was swathed in bandages in the style Kiri nin preferred.  The pack swivelled curiously towards him and the cluster of shinobi clustered behind him.  “We have company,” he announced. “They’ll be staying in the south wing, so I don’t expect you to have much contact outside of meals and guard shifts.”  

He gestured, and a man with a heavily plastered arm in a sling stepped forward, followed by another man and two women, one with bloodstained bandages wrapped over her head.  All four wore battered flak jackets, and their clothes were stained and torn to reveal blood or bandages or both beneath. “This is Chuunin Morita and his team -- Jin, Akiko, and Nobu.  They’re walking wounded, so Rei -- keep them off the guard roster for now.”

“Hai,” said Rei-nee, eyeing the newcomers with interest.

Juu waved at the other team hanging back in the doorway.  “That’s Chuunin Akimoto and his team: Yagami, Nakamura, and Hidaka.  They’re here for two days.” He turned slightly to address the newcomers.  “Teams, meet Rei, Ichi, Ni, Shi, Go, Roku, Hachi, and Kyuu. Ranks classified.”

“You’re shitting me, sir,” Nobu barked out a half-laugh.  “Masks and codenamed numbers zero through ten?  I thought ‘Juu’ sounded fishy.”

“What happened to San?” asked Nakamura curiously.  “Why don’t you have a Number Three?”

Juu paused.  “We had a San, but she is no longer with us,” he said, and Kyuu watched with amusement at the deliberate misleading as the teams exchanged wary glances.  “Teams Suzaku, Byakko, and Genbu are all tagged for infiltration work, so masks and codenames are necessary.” He shrugged. “Orders,” he said carelessly.  “You know how it is.”

One-eared Akiko scoffed.  “But it’s okay for them to know our names?”

Juu rolled his one visible eye.  “No offense, but you’re not that important.  Kiri’s interrogators wouldn’t care about you.”

Interestingly, Akiko seemed to relax at that.  She nodded at Morita, and on some unspoken signal, the team moved as a unit to one of the unoccupied sides of the table as the pack crammed in together on one long side.  The other team, however, exchanged glances and stayed hovering in the doorway. Juu paused halfway from retrieving a stack of bowls from one of the crates on the counter. “Problem?” he asked lightly.  

“Yeah, I got a problem,” growled Akimoto belligerently.  “You jerking us around right now. You expect us to believe that these midgets -- ” he gestured abruptly at the pack. “ -- are undercover agents?”

Kyuu shifted slightly in her seat, attention now firmly on the team standing tense in the doorway.

“Well,” Juu said.  “Yes.”

“Bullshit,” Akimoto spat.  “They’re green as the grass.  I bet they’d be in the Academy still.  That one’s barely tall enough to walk!”  He jabbed a finger at Shichi.

Shichi’s hooded eyes turned murderous in a split second, and his control slipped just enough to let loose a hint of killing intent.  Kyuu stiffened, but just as fast he wrestled it back under control.

“Shichi can take care of himself,” said Juu.  “Is your team going to eat?”

“Do any of them have field experience?” Akimoto demanded.

Juu set down the stack of bowls decisively.  “Okay,” he said, swivelling to face the other team.  “Stop.” He advanced on Akimoto, stopping just in front of him.  His slight frame was dwarfed by that of the much larger man, but he stared him down evenly.  “I am their commanding officer, and right now, yours. Sit down. Eat your breakfast. My teams and their operations have nothing to do with you.”

Akimoto sneered down at him.  “It does if it’ll get us killed acting on intel they get.  And you, sir ,” he spat derisively, “have to earn my respect if you want to command me or my team.”

The killing intent hit Kyuu like a stone wall, and flickers of the fear and death from half-remembered dreams came roaring back and knocked the breath from her lungs.  Juu watched Akimoto calmly as the bigger man staggered, one knee hitting the ground under the brunt of his sakki, and the blood drained from his face. Juu raised his gaze to the rest of Akimoto’s team.  Their eyes were wide in shock as they stood frozen behind their leader. Hidaka swallowed audibly.

“Sit,” Juu invited, as friendly as he might if he were asking an old friend to dinner, and just as quickly as it manifested the killing intent vanished.   

Cautiously, Akimoto’s team edged around their gasping leader’s hunched form, giving Juu a wide berth as they joined the wary audience at the table.  Kyuu sat frozen, one eye on the Juu and the other on her team and the rest of the pack. Like her, Hachi and Shichi watched the confrontation, muscles tense and ready to move.  Shi, Go, and Roku had their hands discreetly on their holsters. Team Suzaki ignored the spectacle and ate their rice. They were the only source of movement in the room.

Juu-returned his attention to Akimoto.  Drops of sweat had beaded up on the older man’s temple as he gritted his teeth.  “Well,” Juu-said to him pleasantly. “Are we done?”

Laboriously, with as much dignity as he could scrape together, Akimoto hauled himself upright and shot a poisonous glare at Juu.  “Yeah,” he grunted. He moved to shoulder his way past, but Juu sidestepped neatly back into his path and forced him to stop short.

“I said,” he enunciated pleasantly.  “Are we done, chuunin?”

Kyuu felt her heartbeats tick by as Akimoto glowered at the ground.  “Yes, sir,” he ground out, and only then did Juu let him pass. The table let out a collective breath.  Roku reached for the soup instead of his kunai, and Kyuu felt herself relax minutely.

“Damn,” muttered Nobu under his breath, eyeing Rei-nee as she popped the last bite of her rice in her mouth.  “You all have balls of steel. Juu is terrifying when he’s angry. I think I pissed myself a little.”

Rei-nee exchanged a glance with Ichi.  “He’s not angry,” she said, a slight frown in her voice.

“Perhaps annoyed at best,” Ichi agreed.  “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen him truly mad -- and certainly not today.”

“Juu has little patience for posturing,” added Ni in a low voice, spooning the miso soup over his rice.  “However, he appreciates being taken lightly even less.”

Nobu and his teammates shared an unspoken conversation in the creasing of their eyes and narrowing of their mouths and tiny nods or shakes of their heads. Kyuu tilted her head interestedly, and at her side Hachi watched quietly.  Morita finally spoke up in a hushed murmur: “How strong is he, to be able to pull out sakki like that out of nowhere?”

Kyuu’s eyes flickered to Hachi, who glanced at Rei-nee out of the corner of his eye before looking away again.  Rei-nee hummed absently, reaching for the soup. “Don't know,” she said. “I never met him in Konoha. Strong enough to hold a small command, even if it’s on the outskirts of the war?”

“Was he Anbu?  He’s gotta be at least tokujou,” said Jin.  

“He wouldn’t be Anbu if he’s all the way out here,” disagreed Akiko.  As one, the team turned to scrutinize Juu, poking amicably at his rice next to a visibly tense Akimoto.  “General or Command Corps, do you think?”

“Any information regarding any of our identities, including name and rank, are classified,” Ni said stiffly.  

“Keep your pants on,” grunted Nobu, letting his bowl thump to the table with a little more force than necessary.  “Idle talk, nothing more.”

After breakfast, six hours of Moe on the streets of Kitakyushu.  After that, two hours of Kyuu in the base at lunch. She had little time to be just Hinata, but honestly, she preferred it that way.  

“All right, kids,” said Shisui-sensei.  He leaned against the main table in their briefing room, a relatively large room with a series of rickety wooden tables of varying sizes and little else.  The pack perched, leaned, or stood in a rough semicircle around him, masks off but in easy reach. “This is your briefing. The room is shielded with privacy seals -- no eyes, no ears, no chakra output.  Let's get this done.”

Beside where Hinata sat with both legs dangling off the side of a table, her teammate opened his hand and let the sand slither out, rolling it over and over his wrist absently.  

Shisui-sensei folded his hands into a seal.  In a surge of chakra, his genjutsu caught them all up to create a visualization of the barest structure of a warehouse near the Kumata Gauntlet -- an empty suggestion of a building in blue lines. “This is the location of the operation,” he began.  “The Kagamaru docked yesterday afternoon, and as you know, they’re repeat weapons smugglers -- namely for outposts in Kaminari no Kuni. Intel gathered by Team Genbu suggests they have a shipment stored in this warehouse to the east of the Kumata Gauntlet while the rest of their goods are loaded and inspected.  Unfortunately, due to the presence of several teams of both Konoha and unaffiliated shinobi in the South District, including at least one sensor-nin, we’re unable to get direct eyes on the package itself. However, Sai was able to send some scouts in. Sai.”

Sai stepped forward, stopping just short the illusionary warehouse.  “My sumi rats were able to locate the package but not verify its contents,” he reported.  “There are eight civilian or genin-level guards stationed at the warehouse at night, rotating between stationary and patrolling.  Additionally, I can confirm floorplans for the warehouse.” He traced their outlines in the air as he spoke, and Shisui-sensei’s genjutsu added more lines to accommodate his descriptions. “Large bay doors on the east wall.  Seven regular doors: three each on the north and south walls, one on the west wall here. Dividing wall here. Stairs here and here, along the north-south walls. Offices upstairs here, here, here, and here. Windows half a meter below the ceiling along all walls.  Bathroom and kitchens, industrial hoses and drains.” His finger sketched rough boxes in the largest ground floor room. “There are metal racks in most of the warehouse space and pallets in between rows. The package is here.” He pointed at the center of the warehouse.

“Team Byakko, you guys are the distraction,” said Shisui-sensei, and a white circle pulsed on the north side of the warehouse.  “I don’t care what you do, just draw the guards away from the south wall.”

“Yes!” Naruto whispered gleefully.

Shisui-sensei paused and frowned.  “Nothing too loud or destructive,” he warned.  “The last thing we need is more attention.” He eyed the three suspiciously, but besides the grin Naruto was obviously swallowing down, they blinked back at him innocently.   “Gods help us,” he muttered under his breath. He jabbed a finger at the team. “No maiming, no killing, and no property damage, ” he ordered.  “Team Suzaku has point.  Locate the package and retrieve the contents.  If possible, replace with something of similar weight.  Minimal chakra use.” A red dot appeared on the south side.  

“Hai,” acknowledged Temari, exchanging a glance with Haku and Neji-nii-san.  

“Team Genbu, secure the perimeter.  No civilian interruptions, and report immediately if any shinobi get curious.”  He regarded the three teams evenly, and in front of him, the genjutsu expanded to include the outlines of surrounding buildings and the edge of the Kumata.  “This is a covert operation, but if things go south, I’m your backup and extraction.” He pointed at one of the buildings adjacent to the warehouse. “I’ll be on the roof here, but remember that if you’re discovered, the operation is blown whether or not you need me to pull you out.  Everyone rabbits and regroups at the rendezvous. Questions?”

Hinata hesitantly shook her head, mirroring Sai.  Neji-nii-san studied the map thoughtfully before Shisui-sensei cut the flow of chakra and dispelled the genjutsu.  “You have enough experience that I trust you’ll handle the finer details yourself,” said Shisui-sensei, and Hinata shivered at the implications.  “Team leaders, report your tactical plans at 1800 hours. Last run-through is at 1900; we leave at 2000 hours.”

The teams all had different pre-mission rituals.  Team Genbu’s started with a nap. When Hinata blinked awake after a solid two hours of unconsciousness, she made out Sai already up, crosslegged and hunched over a scroll.  She climbed out of her bunk and shuffled her way over. He’d drawn out a map, like Shisui-sensei’s genjutsu but in two dimensions with his thick black ink. He looked up as she approached before returning his attention to the map.  “There are far too many avenues of entrance to secure,” he said absently, frowning. “Even if each of us takes a corner and one covers two sides of the warehouse, even if we hold just a one-block radius, there is a good chance that the adjacent buildings will yield many potential witnesses from their own doors -- especially if Team Byakko is permitted to design their own distraction.”

Team Byakko was known neither for their subtlety nor self-restraint.  “W-we could f-focus on the s-side T-Team S-Suzaku is e-entering o-on,” Hinata suggested.  “T-Team B-Byakko can p-prevent anyone e-entering f-from the n-north w-wall.”

“We have no other reasonable option,” Sai agreed, resigned.  “Do you have any thoughts on this, Gaara?”

Hinata looked up to where their third teammate perched on his top bunk, staring down at the map with narrowed eyes.  “No,” he snapped, without shifting his gaze. Sai waited patiently. “Yes,” he amended after a pause. “We can smell them approaching upwind.”

“Seabreeze,” Sai muttered.  “Wind blows east to west. Good point.”  He tapped the southwest corner of the warehouse.  “This is the most crucial position,” he said. “Lines of sight along the south and west sides of the warehouse.  Smells from the east. Gaara, you take this position; ground level. There’s a stack of old crates and a boarded up stoop you can use for cover.”  Gaara made no indication he’d heard the instructions, but that was normal. He wouldn’t be the one to let the team down.

“I’ll be on the northeast corner,” Sai continued, “where I will have sightlines along the north and east sides.  Hinata, you will be here.” He tapped the building to the southeast of the warehouse. “On the roof of this building.  Sentry position.”

Of the three positions, Hinata’s was the safest -- it was high above street level, where any action was likely to take place.  But she was not the one who should stationed there. “I -- ” Hinata had to stop for a shuddering breath. “I-I-I -- I think I-I should b-be on the n-northeast c-corner,” she squeaked, and fought the urge to duck her head.  

“Oh?” said Sai.  

He sounded interested rather than dismissive, so Hinata took a fortifying breath and plunged on.  “Y-you n-need the v-vantage p-point. Y-you are the p-point of c-contact between u-us and the o-other t-teams and S-Sensei.  You n-need to be a-able to s-see b-both of us.”

Sai scrutinized the map silently.  Hinata instinctively twisted her hands together.  He didn’t agree; it was a bad idea. Of course it was, Neji-nii-san said she needed to think like a shinobi instead of a scared little girl like she always did and she was trying to be brave but she was still wrong.   She wished she could take it back --

“A logical point,” said Sai, jarring her out of her thoughts.  “You will have the northeast corner, in that case. Redirect any comers and incapacitate where necessary.”  Hinata took a shaky breath as Sai rolled the scroll back up. “I will report to Shisui-sensei,” he said. “You and Gaara can continue preparing for the mission.”

The wind rushed in from the sea, tugging Kyuu’s hair and battering the shaded wraparound glasses she wore, the kind that Ni favored to hide his eyes.  The night was dark and cold and shrouded in seafog that hung in the air and dampened her hearing. It did not obscure her Byakugan’s sight, but very little could hide from her eyes when she chose.    

She leaned against a coiling door that was rough and patchy with rust, swathed in the shadows lent by the stoop.   The warehouses yawned out before her in lines and shapes, leeched of color by the darkness. Hachi perched three stories up, motionless on the corner of the building, but she knew his creatures flitted and scuttled in the alleys, through the warehouses themselves, and deep below their feet, crawled along the walls of the sewer tunnels.  Opposite her, though she did not look through the walls of the target warehouse, Shichi sat on a stack of crates, chin propped in one hand and hood pulled low over his half-lidded eyes. Like Kyuu and Hachi, he had been sitting there for almost two hours.

The guards had finished their walkaround, their first of the night, and retreated back into an office for a round of cards.  Full dark meant the alleyways were deserted save the occasional townsperson still making their way home, the neighboring warehouse that shipped soy sauce and miso and tofu was closed up and still, and the drug- and people-traffickers haunted the Kumata.  Still -- minimal civilian witnesses. Kyuu breathed in, craned her head to check the streets behind her, then turned back to face front. The movements of the people on distant streets behind her appeared to her like ants, scuttling on their way on trajectories yet unknown to even her, but around the target there were none.  She signalled to Hachi with just a twitch of her fingers: all clear.

Hachi’s head dipped just a little in response.  One of his birds swerved abruptly midair and swooped down on Team Byakko, sequestered in the mouth of narrow alley a few blocks down from Kyuu’s position.

Roku shoved Go, who slapped him back and nudged Shi, who glowered at her in turn.  Shi sauntered out of the alley, cool as can be, and set a stack of wooden pallets alight with a flick of his fingers -- a match, not a katon.  He shoved the used match back in his shuriken pouch and strode away. Behind him, the flames picked up, licking merrily at the splintering wood.  Kyuu sidled along her wall as their light pushed her shadows back. She shook her head. Juu would have their heads, no property damage .

“Hey!”  Roku barreled out of the alley next and pounded his fist on the nearest door of the target warehouse.   “Hey, there's a fire! Hey!”

At first, nothing happened.  The four figures stayed hunched around their cards upstairs, silhouetted against the orange glow of the window.  After a moment, their heads started to turn, annoyance in their postures. Finally, one slammed his cards down and clumped over to the window to peer out.  Immediately he whirled, shouting, and the three at the table scrambled to get up. They rattled noisily down the metal stairs.

Outside, the flames licked hungrily at the outside of the building.  Roku beat ineffectually on the warehouse door until it was thrown open and the men poured out.  

One of them immediately threw Roku up against the wall, another started shoving the flaming pallets onto the ground.  The others crashed back inside, charging back undoubtedly towards the kitchens for the hoses. “The hell did you do, you little brat?” demanded the man holding Roku, giving him a little shake.

All eight guards accounted for.  Kyuu signalled Hachi again, and this time he would signal Rei-nee’s team.

Meanwhile, Go flew out of the alley and onto the man holding Roku, beating on him with feeble fists.  The man turned, dropping Roku. One of the men dragging a hose out of the building dropped it and rushed to pull her off.  

“Get off him!” Go shrieked, ducking before the other man could grab her.  

“Yeah!” added Roku, glaring at the man above the bandana wrapped around the lower half of his face and brushing his clothes off indignantly.  “Next time you can just burn, old man!”

Behind Kyuu, a man turned into her alley.  “The hell is all that?” he muttered, craning his head in the direction of the shouting and glow of the flames.  Kyuu had seen the man briefly when he'd wandered down off the Kumata five blocks back, but only now was he too close to the operation.  

‘ One civilian ,’ she signed to Hachi, moving only her hands.  ‘ Moving to neutralize .’

She didn't need to move to track his movements.  He coughed, shuffling right past Kyuu without seeing her.  She peeled away from the wall, shadowing the man's footsteps.  He was much taller than her, his shoulders rounded with hard work and jacket worn but sturdy.  She wrinkled her nose. Her sense of smell was far weaker than Shichi’s or Roku’s, but one would have to be scent-blind to miss the waves of alcohol emanating from his breath.  It was a minor miracle the man had not yet been mugged, wandering through a place like this drunk.

Kyuu thought he must be overdue.  

Just before he reached the corner, Kyuu rose up onto the balls of her feet and slammed her fist into the back of his head.  He went down like a sack of sand. She took him by the wrist and dragged the limp body backwards, depositing him back around the corner.  After a moment's hesitation, she patted down his jacket and pants until she found the wallet in his back pocket. She pulled out the stack of folded ryou and tossed the empty wallet back on his chest.  She left him there and slipped back to her post.

Atop his roof, Hachi had angled towards her almost imperceptibly.  ‘ Status? ’ he signed.

‘ Clear, ’ she signed, and he turned away again.

Go and Roku’s argument had escalated into a yelling match with the warehouse men that dragged in the other men one at a time as the fire sputtered out under the blast of the hose.  She tuned it out. It was not important to the mission, and Go and Roku had immediate backup in Shi if they needed it.

Instead she watched her alleys, and she watched Hachi out of the corner of her eye.  She caught the flash of his hands -- to Shichi, not to her: ‘ negative’ and ‘ two ’ and ‘ neutralize ’ and ‘ caution ’ and ‘ backup? ’  Kyuu stiffened, bringing up her hands in the seal that would summon her through-sight, but Hachi snapped a sign in her direction.   Hold.  She waited, still tense, because her time in San’s forest had taught her that all good hunters were patient and her time on the run with Neko-sensei had taught her that all bad prey was impatient.

Instead, she watched Go and Roku duck away from the warehouse men, now all but two grabbing for them like the townschildren chasing chickens.  There was an art to looking clumsy while every movement was carefully calculated, but Roku had none of that. His clumsiness was in no way calculated.  He tripped over a man’s outstretched foot, pitching under another’s grasping arms, and tumbled into a stack of crates that knocked into a third and sent him sprawling in the dirt.  In contrast, Go was nimble and crafty, deftly whipping her ponytail away from the man that tried to grab it in one meaty fist and pushing off another’s back to launch herself away from the tussle.    

“Bleh!  Can't catch me!” Roku crowed, hurling a handful of loose dirt at a man’s eyes.   The man yelped and stumbled backwards.

“Yeah, don't you mess with my friend, you giant jerk!” Go shrilled, backing away towards the alley.

“Ah, just let ‘em go, Nakahiro, they're just a couple of dumb kids,” called one of the men manning the hose.

“ You're dumb, Nakahiro, I'm just a kid,” Roku sang gleefully.

“Shut your damn mouth!” snarled Nakahiro and lunged. Roku dove away and landed in a crouch on all fours, then leapt away, cackling.  

A sudden, small movement caught her eye; Shichi’s hands flashed at her urgently.   Four Konoha shinobi approaching from north-northwest.  Withdraw immediately.  In a blur of dark cloth, he vanished off the corner of his roof, leaving her alone in her doorway.  

Hinata’s panic choked her, freezing Kyuu’s limbs and ripping the air from her lungs.  Frantically, she clawed for Kyuu’s calm focus.

A particularly strong gust of wind lashed the walls of the alley.  With a whoosh and a crackle, the fire roared back alive, sparks catching on another pile of wood debris further down.  The men and Go and Roku scattered with shouts.

The flames threw new light on Kyuu, and she shrank back.  Withdraw? Roku and Go were still entangled with the warehouse guards, with the fires cutting them off from Shi and their best avenue of escape.  Should she help? Hinata dithered, but Kyuu couldn’t afford to, not with a Konoha team closing in. She turned away from Team Byakko and darted back towards the Kumata, vaulting neatly over the fence into the next lot.  A dull roar rumbled through the air. Kyuu turned in time to see a plume of flame break the darkness of the night sky, and she huffed a dismayed gasp.

Her chakra-sense blared a warning and she had just enough time to suck in a frantic breath before a hand snagged her mid-flight and clamped around her throat.  She gagged, one hand flying up instinctively to the shinobi’s wrist as he slammed her backwards against a concrete wall. The back of her head cracked against the unforgiving wall and busts of white and black exploded across her vision.  Desperately, she caught the shinobi’s other hand with her own as he reached for her mask.

“Who are you?” the shinobi snapped, tufts of brown hair falling over his leaf hitai-ate.  Though only a little taller than Juu, he lifted her off the ground easily.

Hinata kicked against the wall but couldn’t find leverage.  Kyuu’s battle calm slipped further and further from her grasp as panic wracked black claws through her mind.  The shinobi squeezed, and Hinata reached desperately for her chakra. “Who hired you?” the man demanded. “Who do you work for?”

“ -- ack,” Hinata choked out.  

Even as her vision blurred she could not miss the slight figure storming towards them.  Sand swirled at his side, agitated as a swarm of hornets. She let go of the man’s hand around her throat to desperately sign ‘ no sand’ at Gaara because the second their identities were discovered they would have to run again, and she did not want to run anymore.  The sand dropped to the ground all at once with a hiss, but pure malice rose in its place, covering him like a second cloak.

The man loosened his grip slightly and turned towards the new threat, and that was enough for Hinata to wrest back both Kyuu and control of her chakra.  She blasted raw chakra from the tenketsu in her palm and sent the shinobi flying backwards. She stumbled, landing in a crouch next to Shichi, and wheezed for air, glaring at the shinobi as he rolled to his feet.  “I am one of us, and we are pack,” rasped Kyuu defiantly.  Hachi’s lithe form alighted on the roof behind the shinobi, blade in hand.  “And nobody owns us.”

The shinobi glanced between her and Shichi’s masks warily, flitting over their furred cloaks and the snarling wolf’s visage San had painstakingly carved.  Kyuu drew her battle-fans and shifted her feet. Shichi crouched low, dripping sakki, and prowled forward on light feet with bloodlust in his eyes. The shinobi tensed, a kunai appearing in each hand.

Kyuu feinted, snapping out a hiogi to its full width, and caught one of the shinobi’s kunai in between the slats of the other when he jabbed at her.  Shichi lurched forward, fingers curled in imitation of the claws he normally wielded, and lashed out at the shinobi’s legs.

“Shit!” spat the shinobi leaping backwards.  Kyuu flicked her wrist sharply and wrenched the kunai from one hand.  He sent the other spinning at Shichi, but silent Hachi who could hide even his intent flashed behind the shinobi in a shunshin and struck a single hard blow to the back of his head with the hilt of his tanto, narrowly dodging the reflexive strike.  The shinobi hit the ground with a thud and Shichi stopped short with a nearly-silent snarl.

Kyuu glared at the surrounding alleyways, chest heaving and ears straining for signs of witnesses or ambushers.  A flickering orange glow lit the sky back in the direction they’d come from. The warehouse was well and truly on fire now.

“We leave,” said Hachi, looking down briefly at the crumpled Konoha nin.  “Now.”

Droplets of sweat beaded up on Shisui-sensei’s face as he strained to hold his handful of green chakra to Hinata’s neck.  His eye was no more than ten centimeters from hers, and so she could see the sharp anger in it quite well.

Hinata was quite familiar with the Hyuuga displeasure -- her father’s cool disapproval and Neji-nii-san’s icy hatred, which smoldered long and slow into a cold rage.  She had heard too of the Uchiha wrath that ignited abruptly and burned fast, which she had seen hints of in Sasuke. Perhaps she believed Itachi-sensei and Shisui-sensei to be different, as they had never before demonstrated more than a mild annoyance.  

But today, Shisui-sensei’s famous Uchiha temper lit in a flash and sparked Hinata’s urge to sit very still on her table to avoid drawing his ire.  “I don’t know what you were thinking,” he said, biting each word off deliberately. “And I don’t care. You defied orders. You revealed our presence to the shinobi who want to hunt us down.  Your actions almost got your comrade killed tonight.”

Behind him, separated from Shisui-sensei by a single table, Team Byakko stood stiffly in a row.  Naruto watched Hinata, guilt in his wide, blue eyes. Sasuke glowered at the far wall, but his shoulders were hunched.  Sakura worried at her lower lip with her teeth, eyes darting between Hinata and Shisui-sensei.

On one side, pressed against the wall, were Sai and Gaara -- the former at parade rest, the latter slouched slightly and rolling a ball of compressed sand in his hands.  On the other wall was Team Suzaku, so still they could have been sculptures. Each of them tracked Shisui-sensei with wary eyes.

The chakra in Shisui-sensei’s hand coughed and sputtered out.  He whirled away from Hinata so quickly she flinched from the sudden movement and slammed his hand onto the surface of the nearest table.  It splintered with a loud crack. “Look at her!” he demanded, jabbing a finger back at Hinata. “If he squeezed longer, harder, just a centimeter to the right, she could have gotten a crushed larynx or a broken neck or brain damage.  All the chakra and chakra control in the world can't fix brain damage!”

Her hand rose unconsciously to her bruised throat and the heat rushed to her face as the pack’s eyes drew to her automatically, unwillingly.  Only her wheezing breaths broke the silence. She had been the only one caught, shaken like a mouse in a cat’s mouth and tossed aside like a woman battered by her husband, and she withered under their eyes.  Neji-nii-san’s narrowed at her balefully. She of all people should not have been snuck up upon and brutalized so easily.

“We -- ” Naruto began bravely, but Shisui-sensei glowered at him and he subsided.  

“You burned down half that warehouse and brought a third of the Konoha teams in the entire city down on us,” Shisui-sensei hissed.  “You’re lucky they were too interested in the warehouse to chase down a couple of kids. And you don’t get to rely on luck on the battlefield.”

“We got the weapons,” said Naruto in a small voice.  “Right?”

“Yes,” said Shisui-sensei in a deceptively calm voice.  “But when the Konoha shinobi don’t find the weapons while searching the warehouse full of contraband , the crew of the Kagamaru will know it was stolen before the fire, and not by Konoha agents.  Do you think they’ll be back?” With a final glare at Team Byakko, Shisui-sensei turned back around to Hinata, who couldn’t quite hold back a flinch, and willed the chakra back to his hand.  “You’re not just my students, now,” he said, voice so low it rumbled in Hinata’s ear as he leaned forward to press the chakra against her throat carefully. “You’re shinobi. You follow orders, you complete the mission, and you definitely do not get your comrades injured or killed.”

Hinata wrung her hands together anxiously.  She knew it was Team Byakko’s mistake that led to the Konoha shinobi investigating the warehouse, but she’d been the one who’d been noticed.  Neji-nii-san had not said such things aloud in months, but he was right -- she shouldn’t be in the field. She was a liability.

“Team Byakko,” Shisui-sensei barked, and Hinata flinched, jolted out of her thoughts.  “On the ground. Pushups.”

Sakura glanced at Sasuke, whose glare didn’t lessen in intensity.  Both dropped to the floor quietly.

“How many?” Naruto asked as he followed, though Temari shook her head at him -- the tiniest movement.  

“Until I tell you to stop,” Shisui-sensei snapped, and the chakra in his hand wavered.  He closed his eye briefly before glaring again at the bruising on Hinata’s neck with intimidating intensity. “Or will you disobey that order too?  Do them until you feel like dying and then keep going, because that’s what will happen to your teammates the next time you pull something this stupid.”

The cool wrap of Shisui-sensei’s chakra gradually soothed the harsh burn of Hinata’s breaths catching in her throat, and after half an hour marked by Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto’s forms bobbing up and down rhythmically, Shisui-sensei stepped back and let the chakra flicker out at last.  The glow of anger had dimmed from his eye as well, and Hinata breathed easier. “I can't fix everything now,” he told her, scrutinizing the mass of purpling. “But I mitigated the worst of the damage.”

“T-thank y-you,” Hinata whispered.

He shook his head, mouth pressed together.  “This shouldn't have happened,” he muttered.  He turned slightly to address the rest of the pack.  “You are all suspended,” he bit out. “What affects one of you affects all of you.  Don't leave this room.” He stalked out of the briefing room, and the door clicked decisively shut behind him.

Hinata stayed frozen on top of her table just as the rest of the pack save Team Byakko stood arrayed about the perimeter.  Time marched on, and Hinata’s heartbeat thundered in her ears. Nobody spoke.

Sakura’s breath grew ragged first, arms trembling from the effort it took her to push herself off the floor.  She was always first to stop running, first to be tagged out of sparring, first to exhaust her chakra. Sweat soaked through her hair and the back of her shirt, and her hair hung lank about her flushed face.  Sakura faltered, her entire body shuddering with the effort to keep herself off the ground, and Hinata shivered in commiseration, rubbing her arms subconsciously. She was beginning to understand why this was a group punishment.  

Hinata…

Hinata couldn't just watch Sakura struggle alone.  Not when she'd caused this with her own weakness. She stepped forward, almost as if in a trance, and the focus of the rest of the pack snapped to her immediately.  She wobbled, pulled her cloak off her shoulders almost absently and let it drop behind her.

“Hinata-sama,” Neji-nii-san said reproachfully, breaking the silence for the first time in an eternity.  Hinata wouldn't let herself be deterred, not from this.

She knelt in front of Sakura, and the other girl glanced up at her blearily.  Silently, Hinata angled her hands on the ground at shoulder width, set her feet, and lowered herself in a pushup.  Her throat throbbed in time with her pulse and she breathed deeply as she sank into the next.

“Follow my voice, Sakura,” said Temari quietly, and Hinata opened her eyes in surprise.  She hadn’t realized she’d closed them. The older girl nodded at Hinata, once, and focused on Sakura as she herself maneuvered into the plank position beside her.  “Down. Up. Breathe.”

Sakura sucked in a sob, but her eyes were clearer now, fixed on Temari doing the pushups next to her.   Sai dropped down next to Hinata and on her other side was Haku, then Gaara and even Neji-nii-san until the breathing of all her packmates grew choppy and uneven.

Hinata lost herself in a haze of pain and resolve.

Sakura hit the ground first, arms giving out beneath her, and she landed with a soft grunt.  She lay still, panting, before struggling to push herself back up, her entire body shuddering with the effort.  Then it was Sasuke, faltering halfway through pushing back up and hitting the ground with a muted thud.

“Get up, bastard,” rasped Naruto.  Sweat drenched his shirt and dripped to puddle beneath him.  Gritting his teeth audibly, Sasuke shoved himself up.

Gaara snarled wordlessly, a brief blast of sakki battering at Hinata’s nerves, but despite his well-known hatred of all things physical he did not get up or storm off.   

Hinata dropped her head, closing her eyes against the black spots that danced across her vision.  She knew if she tried to bend her arms again she would fall, and if she fell she did not know if she could get back up.  Even as her muscles screamed and her vision blurred and her heartbeat measured the hours ticking by, even though the ache in her throat grew raw and sharp, and even though this was not Hinata’s punishment, she would not allow herself to stop.  She was pack and this was her pack and this was right.

“What the hell are you doing?”  Someone grabbed Hinata around the middle with strong hands, and she flailed mindlessly, panic cutting through the veil around her mind as she was hauled upright.  She exhaled in relief when she recognized Shisui-sensei’s face, but her breathing stuttered again when she recognized the fury in his expression. “Sit down, don’t move,” he ordered her, lifting her easily onto a tabletop.  “All of you, get up,” he barked at the rest of the pack, and they scrambled to find their feet. Shisui-sensei turned back to Hinata. Healing chakra sparked to light in one hand as he leaned over her and he pressed it against her throat carefully.  “I just got through telling you how you almost died, why would immediate physical exertion ever sound like a good idea?” he snapped. “I’m not a medic-nin. If anything more serious develops, I can’t fix it.”

He glared over his shoulder at the rest of the pack staggering upright.  Temari’s cheeks were flushed, and sweat plastered her bangs to her forehead.  Neji-nii-san’s hair stood up in odd spikes, and Sai swayed on his feet. Naruto and Sasuke trembled from the effort just to stand still, and Sakura’s eyes were vacant.  “Whose idea was this?” he demanded.

Temari raised her chin defiantly, and Shisui-sensei narrowed his eye at her.  “Did you even think -- ”

“I-it was m-mine,” Hinata interrupted in a hoarse croak, and Shisui-sensei whipped back around.  “Gods above, Hinata-chan,” he grumbled. “Everyone else, get out. What are you trying to prove, Hinata-chan?” he asked, as if to himself as the others shuffled out.  His chakra soothed the worst of the throb in her throat.

“I-I’m n-not,” Hinata said meekly, watching the cords on his neck stand out.  She ducked her head guiltily. Shisui-sensei had already spent so much chakra and effort on healing her earlier.  

He caught her by the chin with his free hand.  “Shh. Careful,” he murmured. “Your team was supposed to go back out today,” he reproached gently.  “I came back here to call you for your briefing.”

Heat rushed to Hinata’s face.  “S-sorry.”

The chakra in his hand coughed and died, and he shook his head ruefully.  “I am proud of you, for doing that for your friends,” he admitted, ducking his head to meet her eyes.  “Just -- don’t do it again. The mission can be postponed today, but the war won't always wait.”

The waning sun warmed Hinata’s face, and though breathing deeply burned her abused throat, she welcomed the fresh air after spending most of the day underground.  The bustling townspeople hadn't looked twice at her, but the press of people has suffocated her nonetheless, and she was relieved to escape the city proper for Moe’s favorite perch by the harbor.  Like clockwork, Ida would saunter up any second now.

“Hey, Moe-chan!  Check this -- Moe-chan, what happened to you?”  Ida grabbed her by the chin abruptly to get a better look at the angry bruising ringing her throat.  

Moe tried to smile, but the corner of her eyes crinkled, betraying the fresh pain from the sudden movement.  “Kumata,” she whispered, and pressed her lips together. Her entire body ached and she could barely shuffle let alone walk, but her throat burned with fresh agony.

Ida frowned, her mouth a dark slash in her pretty face.  “Told you to be careful,” she said reprovingly. “Check this out.”  She brandished a poster at Moe, the kind the city officials used to post announcements in the square and throughout the streets.  “There’s some kind of new gang around mucking around the Kumata districts. They’re real dangerous, and I want you to steer clear of that area for now.  Especially since you got yourself beat up!” she scolded, and shoved the poster at Moe.

Moe took the poster and unfurled it.  She sucked in a startled gasp. “W-where did y-you get t-this?” Hinata stuttered, heart pounding.  The inked picture was of her -- or rather, Kyuu, standing tall with battle fans brandished, face covered by a snarling wolf’s visage and the rest of her in her fur cloak.  Behind ink-Kyuu crouched Gaara, similarly masked and cloaked, fingers curled into claws. ‘Yorozuku,’ the poster read. ‘Wolves: unknown organization wanted for questioning regarding criminal activities.  Dangerous.’

“Coupla streets down.   They just put ‘em up. From the shinobi, I think.”  Ida looked her curiously. “What’s wrong? Moe-chan?”

“I-I,” Hinata panicked, mind fizzling into blankness.  

Ida’s eyes narrowed, then widened.  “You saw them,” she said wonderingly, “didn’t you?”  

She could not think of the words to dissuade the older girl, or a reasonable denial, so she nodded meekly.  She glanced up at Ida beneath her eyelashes before fixating on the ground again.

Moe.  She needed to be Moe right now, not Hinata.

Ida’s gaze held a mixture of curiosity, horror, and badly concealed eagerness.  “Did they do that to you?” she prodded. Moe nodded, still staring at the ground.  “Did you see them real close?” Ida demanded.

“Yeah,” said Moe, then frowned.  “Yeah, but -- ” she waved a hand at her face.  

“What did they want?” asked Ida reverently.

Moe paused and swallowed painfully.  “A home,” she whispered.

She kept the poster tucked into her waistband as she hurried back to her cellar in the South District, and it weighed down her steps and her mind.  Her hands shook as she picked the lock, and she dropped her makeshift picks and her Moe persona both before she could jimmy the door.

Sai melted out of the shadows at the bottom of the stairs, a slight frown marring his normally expressionless face at her visible agitation. “Status?” he asked, looking her up and down critically for any obvious new injuries.

“I-I’m f-fine,” said Hinata hurriedly.  She yanked the poster out and thrust it at him.

Curiously, he took the paper and unrolled it.  His posture stiffened as he scrutinized it thoughtfully.  “Hmm,” he said. “Shisui-sensei will want to see this.” He reached behind him and unfolded a second poster, flattening it on top of the first.

Hinata’s eyes widened.  This figure was hidden behind a battered Konoha Anbu cat mask and plain cloak, but she recognized him even in sketched lines by build and posture.  “T-that’s -- ”

“Yes,” said Sai grimly, surveying the ink likeness of Shisui-sensei.

‘False Anbu wanted for assault, arson, and impersonation of a Konoha shinobi,’ the poster read. ‘Extremely dangerous: do not engage.  Report all sightings to local authorities.’

Shisui-sensei sighed when he saw the posters, tired more than anything else.  He studied them carefully, taking in every detail with a practiced eye. Finally, he rolled both back up.   “Well,” he said at last, looking back up to the pack ringing the table anxiously. “We have work to do, our Yorozuku.”

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT D-90

Operative Cat-15 and target AT2 achieved rendezvous with targets AT1, AT3, AT4, allied noncombatant ANHS and allied combatants ACHN and ACNS, who had begun cohabitation with identification: Sabaku no Gaara, jinchuuriki, and identification: Sabaku no Temari, heiress to the Sandaime Kazekage.  Designated as allied combatants ACSG and ACST. Both are battle-tested and exhibit no aggression towards targets AT1, AT3, AT4; allied combatants ACHN and ACNS, or allied noncombatant ANHS.

ACSG and ACST reported pursuit from Sunagakure probable; however, all past aggressors were subdued with prejudice.  Cat-15 recommends continued alliance for better protection of targets.

Status of all: insufficient nutrition, otherwise normal.

Course of action: proceed to and establish new base of operations.  Evade all pursuers if possible. Evaluate and monitor current abilities of all targets and allies.  Provide critique and techniques to improve as necessary, including: techniques for acquiring food covertly or in an uninhabited environment; concealment in urban and uninhabited environments; defensive and offensive maneuvers.

No contact with enemy combatants.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

Itachi reached up to touch his mask.  His fingers came away sticky and red-stained and he heaved an inward sigh.  He seemed to spend just as much time cleaning off the mask as he did sharpening his kunai or oiling his sword.  He crouched and apologetically reached for the nearest downed shinobi’s shirt. Hanabi-ha barely had the supplies for feeding its shinobi, let alone extravagences like cloth for cleaning blood off blades.

He stood and flipped the katana back up into its sheath.  He surveyed the scene carefully. Clean white sand had turned grey and red, with bits of glass and charred wood scattered among the churned-up dunes.  The treeline had been burned back twenty meters, and plumes of smoke still twined lazily into the sky. The beach was pitted with large craters, and an entire sandspit had been blown away entirely, its remains swallowed by the unrelenting waves.  Twelve crumpled bodies lay haphazardly on the shore or half submerged in the water, as if a careless child had discarded his dolls on his bedroom floor. He glanced back down at the nearest. The ends of the man’s Kiri hitai-ate stirred limply in the wind, half-soaked in the blood seeping steadily from the wound in his chest where Itachi had stabbed him not a minute earlier.

He turned his back on it all and walked back towards the open water.  There was nothing left for him to do here.

The waves were ablaze with the setting sun when he slowed his sprint just outside the camp.  He paused to sign the passcode at the sentry before continuing in. Shinobi in battered armor and clothing stained by mud and blood glanced up and back down quickly as he passed on noiseless feet.  He knew what they said: what shinobi wore his mask even among his own comrades? In a war such as this, where men slept head to foot and shared the same razors to shave, who was he to hide even his name?  But Itachi’s name was a weapon and a weakness in itself, and so he ghosted through the camp silently. Nobody called out to him, and he acknowledged nobody.

The command tent sat in the center of the camp, a healthy ten meters apart from the next nearest structures; Itachi sensed six chakra sources inside.  He flared his chakra gently and entered without preamble. Six faces looked up with varying degrees of annoyance, but at the head of the table, jounin-in-charge Haraguni Aimi straightened.

“Take a break,” she ordered.  “We’ll finish this in ten.”

Haraguni was a no-nonsense jounin who had worked her way up through the General Forces until her promotion to jounin, after which she had automatically been reclassified to Command Corps.  For that, she had Itachi’s respect. Though she was only nominally in charge while Itachi was here, this was her first major wartime command, but she was no stranger to overseeing strategic engagements.  She clasped her hands behind her back as the rest of the jounin filed out.

“Sector 37-25-E is clear again,” said Itachi as soon as the tent was empty. “Twelve total enemy combatants eliminated; prediction of one jounin, five chuunin, six genin.  Status here?”

Haraguni nudged a trio of small markers, two light blue and one a darker blue, off the map on the table.  It did little to dent the number of the hundreds of similar markers carefully scattered across the table in a rainbow of colors.  “Stable,” she said. “Our teams have pushed the front to the islands at 35-24-N, but unless the loyalists withdraw, we’ll have to put in more troops to hold them down.  I’m sending in Kitajima and Yamanoha’s teams later tonight.”

Itachi nodded once in acknowledgement.  “You have this well in hand,” he observed.  “I am returning to headquarters in eight hours, and will bring your report.  Have you anything else you wish to convey to Command?”

Haraguni tossed him the paper report and ran a hand through short-cropped hair.  “Just that we’re ready and awaiting orders,” she said. “But if you run into the quartermaster, rip him a new one.  The last food shipment was entirely beans. These shinobi can’t fight on beans .”  

“Noted,” said Itachi.  “I will notify you when I leave.  Until then, I will be in my quarters.”

“Copy that,” acknowledged Haraguni, fatigue weighing down her shoulders.  “Have a good rest, captain.”

Itachi slipped back out of the tent, and the jounin squad leaders clustered too-casually near the entrance shot him glances ranging from curious to wary to hostile.  Though he knew each of them by name and through observation, they had little to do with him directly. As far as they were concerned, Itachi was a hunter-nin from the Kiri Hanran independently stationed at the Hanabi-ha base.  He tipped his head up as he passed them, padding towards the small shack erected at the corner of the camp.

His quarters, as they were, were small enough that they could use it as a coffin to bury him if he died unexpectedly in his sleep.  The lowest side of the slanted ceiling just barely brushed the top of his head, and there was room enough for a bedroll, a small side table, his equipment, and little else.  

He pressed the tip of his finger to the wall and ignited his alarm seals with a spark of chakra.  Only then did he reach up to pry the mask off his face. He flipped it over. Dried blood marred its smooth red-and-white surface, caked in the grooves of the Kiri symbol.  

He closed his eyes briefly and set the mask aside.  That would be a problem for six-hours-later Itachi. He pulled the bulky armor over his head next, tossing it down next to the table.  Weapons pouch, holster, and sandals followed. He lay back at last, letting his aching muscles relax, and covered his eyes with one arm.  He slept the sleep of the wartime shinobi: immediately, lightly, and insufficiently.

When he woke, he spent an hour cleaning his armor, oiling his sword, and taking careful inventory of his supplies.  When he finished, he put everything away methodically and strapped on his equipment. He pushed out the door into the night.

Even good shinobi feared the dark when he knew what lay waiting; it was wise of him to do so.  Itachi did not let such a fear consume him, but held it gently in the corner of his mind. The moon sent shimmering ripples across the ocean as Itachi stepped out onto the waves.  

Jounin Haraguni’s forward base was located at a particularly precarious position in the overall war effort, having been once been attacked thrice in a single day and consistently as it pushed every closer to Kirigakure.  However, one would generally be attacked fewer times travelling backwards to Command than if one were scouting forward.

His trip today was uneventful.  About six hours in, he slipped aboard the stern of a merchant ship, unaffiliated with either side, and for a full hour ignored both the crew and the Kiri jounin who stared at him suspiciously from the bow.  This war still had rules; civilian crafts were strictly off limits for battle or even benign contact. He finished off a ration bar in efficient bites, then folded the wrapper and shoved it back into his back pouch.  He left the passing fare in an envelope in the captain’s door and dropped back over the side of the ship. He sank into the water and swam until the ship was out of sight, then surfaced and ran the rest of the way to Uzushio.

Uzushio no Kuni, after Uzushiogakure had quite literally been blasted off the map by Kiri, held nothing more than sleepy fishing hamlets, rice plantations, farmland, and one and a half functioning ports.  Out of respect for the spirits of the dead, the Hidden Village itself had been left unmolested and sat abandoned on the northern tip of the southern island. Naturally, as shinobi were equally superstitious but far less fearful than civilians, this is where the Kiri Hanran chose to make its headquarters.  

Itachi’s instincts flared to life, and he twisted out of the way as the water erupted next to him.  He landed in a crouch, one hand on the hilt of his katana.

“Stop.  No further,” demanded the insurgent, rising out of the water.  He wore a rebreather over his nose and mouth that distorted his words, and his hair was done up in a bun.  A sheathed katana rested at his waist. “Identify yourself.”

“Hana-An-141, captain,” Itachi replied, letting his hand drop slowly.  “And you?”

The insurgent glared, wariness in the set of his shoulders.  “Hana-An, my ass,” he muttered under his breath. “Hanran-Gun-419, chuunin.”  Hanran -- from the Kiri insurgency; Gun -- from Guntai, a member of the General Forces.

“Reporting in to Command from 30-20 Forward Base 025,” said Itachi.  “Passcode 4-7-Nexus-8-9-9-Raven-Quota-Raven.” He stepped forward, but the other shinobi drew his blade in a flash of steel, and Itachi lunged backwards, landing just out of reach.  He narrowed his eyes.

“I’m going to need to confirm that,” Hanran-Gun-419 said coldly, leveling the tip of the blade at Itachi.  “Wait here. Don’t move.” He signalled with his free hand, and a seagull swooped out of the air far over his head and winged back towards land.

Itachi slowly moved his hand back and straightened from his ready crouch, keeping his attention on the insurgent.  The sun sparked against the water, boring into his eyes, though he could not and would not close them. Though he would not let his posture show the how the day’s long travel wore on him after days of non-stop combat, he very sincerely wanted to be horizontal for four hours, if not twelve.  

Eventually, he sensed a burst of chakra, and the broad figure of Senzaki Ao, designation Hanran-An-046, commander in the Kiri Hanran, stepped out of a shunshin behind Hanran-Gun-419.  “What’s the situation?” he said without preamble.

Hanran-Gun-419 stiffened.  “Commander,” he greeted without taking his eyes off Itachi.  “Just a routine identity check, sir.”

Itachi waited patiently as the veins around Ao’s covered eye briefly bunched with a surge of chakra, then relaxed.  “Come with me, captain,” the older man said brusquely, turning abruptly in a swirl of his haori. “As you were, chuunin.”

“Apologies for the inconvenience,” said Itachi as he fell in step with Ao back towards the island.  “I did not expect you would be requested for something so trivial.”

Ao gave him a critical once-over with his exposed eye.  “You're wanted in a briefing,” he said gruffly.

Itachi held back a grimace.  Any briefing with the Kiri Hanran involved Terumi Mei making overtures at either him or Kakashi-taichou or both, Hanran shinobi glaring from just outside the room, and severe tests on his patience.  “Very well,” he said, and pragmatically let go of his longing for his bunk.

The Kiri Hanran headquarters sprawled out on top of the ruins of Uzushiogakure in a mishmash of makeshift wooden structures and tents.  Shinobi in various states of preparedness, from fully armed and armored to simple Kiri chuunin-jounin greys and the bare minimum kunai holster, stared openly or subtly as they made their way to the command center.  Salvaged from the sprawling Academy complex, the command center stood as a tragic and ominous reminder of the village that once had been. Wooden boards were nailed over gaping holes open to the rooms below, and the holes in most of the doors were papered over.

In the center of the complex, the teachers’ office has been fortified and converted into main control room.  As Itachi padded after Ao, he felt the gazes of dozens of shinobi boring into his back -- guards lounged in nearby rooms and perched in the rafters, and to the one glared at Itachi with suspicious eyes.

“Captain Hana-An-141 is here,” Ao announced drolly, pushing open the door.  Itachi followed him in.

“Captain,” Terumi Mei purred, lifting her head slowly from the mess of maps and reports on the mass of tables pushed together in the center of the room and regarding him beneath her eyelashes.  She snapped her fingers dismissively at her less-than-impressed Hanran captains ringing the room. “Give us a minute boys, ladies,” she ordered, and her shinobi slipped out without complaint. Ao closed the door behind the last and leaned against it, arms crossed over his chest.

Itachi touched his fingers to his mask in a silent salute when Kakashi-taichou looked up at him, and the other man nodded back once in acknowledgement.  His hands were shoved casually in his pockets as he leaned back against an errant desk, keeping the entirety of the table’s contents in his field of vision.  “It’s been a while since your last check-in, captain,” Kakashi-taichou noted, returning his attention to the map.

“Hai,” said Itachi simply.   His report was not for their allies’ ears.  Kakashi-taichou nodded almost absently.

Across the room, Fukaya Maiko, designation Hanran-An-593, Mei’s third-in-command, tilted her chin up challengingly.  “How goes the north, captain?”

“It holds,” Itachi said politely.  “And the east, commander?”

Fukaya narrowed her eyes at him, but deigned to answer.  “The Mizukage holds the east close to his chest,” she said begrudgingly.

Itachi nodded, unsurprised.  In a war where neither side possessed the shinobi necessary to patrol captured territory, Itachi’s north front was prone to guerilla raids by either side, while the eastern front saw the brunt of the pitched battles.

Mei hummed.  “Come, now, surely we needn’t be so formal,” she said.  “It’s only us, and I’ve even sent my captains out. I would love to see my allies face to face.”

Kakashi-taichou ducked his head to peel his mask off, hooking it to his belt.  He flicked a glance at Itachi, and only then did he follow suit. “I’d like to bring my captain up to speed,” he said.   

Mei flicked a dismissive hand.  “Go ahead,” she said. “Ao, come here.”  

“We’re moving headquarters,” Kakashi-taichou said without preamble as the Hanran shinobi clustered on the opposite side of the room.  “Kiri Hanran and Hanabi-Ha both.”

Itachi absorbed this silently.  “Uzushio no Kuni is far from the frontlines,” he said, both a statement and question in one.  

“Aa,” said Kakashi-taichou.  “We’ve gained ground. We’re too far away not to make effective battle decisions or respond to crises, and keeping our leadership away from the fighting takes some of our strongest shinobi off the board.”

Itachi tilted his head in a silent question, and Kakashi-taichou shook his.  Not the right time or place. “Very well,” said Itachi. “Am I being reassigned?”

“Yes,” replied Kakashi-taichou, eye crossing back over to the map.  “Your partner as well.”

“Ooh,” said Mei brightly, giving up the pretense of not eavesdropping.  “Will we finally meet this mysterious partner of yours at last? How is he?  Or she?”

“My partner and I have been working separate missions,” Itachi deflected blandly.  

“Hana-An-031, wasn’t it?” Mei mused, tapping delicate fingers against her lips.  “Mmm. I’m sure our paths will cross soon enough.” She clapped her hands together.  “Now: the two of you are the official Hanabi-ha representatives for coordinating this strategic relocation, correct?”

“Aa,” agreed Kakashi-taichou.  “We’re here with the confidence of Commander Nara and Tsunade-hime.”  

“Good, good,” said Mei thoughtfully, after a just too-long hesitation.  “Quite busy, are they?”

“Hm,” said Kakashi-taichou noncommittally.  “Commander Nara is triaging the most urgent intelligence reports, and Tsunade-hime is in the hospital today.  A pair of chuunin got a little too friendly with some shark summons.”

“A pity,” Mei said.  “Ao?”

“Moving our men and equipment will be a challenge,” the older shinobi said grimly.  “We’d like to propose a clear split in responsibilities between Kiri Hanran and Hanabi-ha to make the move more efficient.”

Four hours passed in the preliminary planning session before Kakashi-taichou politely but firmly excused himself and Itachi out with the pretense of reporting to Tsunade-sama.  Kakashi-taichou eyed him carefully as they wove their way back out of the Hanran command center. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“Twelve hours ago,” replied Itachi without hesitation.  

Wordlessly, Kakashi-taichou steered them towards the mess tent.  “Eat first. Debrief later.”

Itachi lowered his voice to a register only the other shinobi’s sensitive ears would hear.  “Tsunade-sama?”

Kakashi-taichou shook his head.  “In the hospital,” he murmured. “But Shizune’s doing the rounds today.”

Ah.

As nominal second-in-command of Hanabi-ha, a title he shared with Nara Shikaku, Kakashi-taichou had been issued his own quarters in a dilapidated apartment complex that housed other former members of the Konoha Command Corps, the Shirei-bu.  They took their meals from the mess tent to his apartment’s living room. A flash of chakra lit the perimeter seals, and Itachi took his mask off, mirroring Kakashi-taichou.

“I know it’s been a while since you took a break,” Kakashi-taichou said, breaking the silence as they settled around his low table.  “I wanted to tell you something before you hear it in the official briefing.”

Itachi paused, rice halfway to his mouth.

“We’re recalling Shisui,” said Kakashi-taichou.  “We’re bringing in the kids. The war’s reaching critical mass; we’re closing in on Kirigakure, and all combat-ready shinobi are heading to the front.”

Itachi set his rice down.  “The plan was to keep them away from the war,” he said mildly, even as the first waves of anger and panic sent fire spiking through his veins.

In response, Kakashi-taichou reached behind him and pulled a stack of paper from under the half-rotted couch. Itachi spared a moment to give the piece of furniture a wary glance before the other shinobi slapped one of the papers down on the table.  

Itachi leaned over it and stopped breathing.  

‘Yorozuku,’ the poster read.  ‘Organization of 6-12 individuals wanted for espionage, robbery, and other criminal activity.’  Below the words was a crude ink drawing, but Itachi recognized the bone-masks San had carved for each of the children, the ‘pack,’ and the furred cloaks Shisui had bought when they found the children for the first time.  Kakashi-taichou set down another, then another, all with slightly different words and illustrations but the same meaning: even with the Konoha-Kumo war, even with Danzo’s attention diverted, Itachi’s brother was no longer safe in Kitakyushu.  The last few were not Yorozuku posters, but of a rogue Anbu. Itachi grimaced. “There is no need to bring them to the war,” he argued. “There is always Tetsu.”

Kakashi-taichou shook his head.  “Staying half a year in samurai territory was risky enough,” he said.  “And San is not part of this war, but the kids are. They’re genin now.  They’ve infiltrated and evaded capture in a Konoha-held city; they’re not helpless.”

“They are still children,” said Itachi, very carefully not balling his free hand into a fist.  “Surely nine children will not affect the war overmuch.”

“Maybe not,” said Kakashi-taichou, his one dark eye fixed on Itachi.  “But nine children -- including one former Anbu trainee, one former hunter-nin, and two jinchuuriki -- and Shunshin no Shisui will.”

Itachi stared at his food and examined Kakashi-taichou from his peripheral for a long moment.  “You did not want to bring Shisui back before,” he noted.

The captain did not move, but he suddenly seemed far more tired than the steely-eyed commander he had been in Mei’s command center.  “We’ll ease him in slowly. This war is not something I can protect him from any longer,” he admitted quietly. “Tsunade-hime can't justify his missions any longer without revealing why she's keeping a top jounin and nine genin on the mainland, not when his primary mission hasn’t yielded results.”  He took a swig of his water like it was something stronger. “And he's still a good shinobi. That hasn't changed.”

No, but Shisui had.

“He will not be happy,” Itachi warned.  More than anyone else on their team, Shisui had wanted to keep the children away from the shinobi life for as long as possible, and doubly so for a war such as this.  

“We’re taking full precautions to keep all of their identities secret,” assured Kakashi.  “Shisui included. The masks San carved for the kids? That’ll hide their faces from even Ao’s Byakugan.”

Itachi narrowed his eyes.  “How?”

“Well,” said Kakashi-taichou.  “San is a witch.”

Itachi stared at him blankly.

“Maa,” Kakashi-taichou amended.  “Some sort of priestess, probably.  And she carved the same sort of privacy runes into the masks that she uses to keep her forest safe.  Apparently her mother taught them to her.”

“Her mother,” Itachi repeated.  “The...wolf goddess?”

“Yes,” said Kakashi-taichou, equally nonplussed.  “The runes have a blurring effect on the wearer, so no one can tell who they are as long as they keep those masks on.  Pretty much like the standard Anbu masks. ”

Itachi bleakly wondered how Naruto could be convinced to keep a mask on for more than two hours.  “And Shisui? He has met Ao in battle before. He will recognize Shisui’s chakra.”

Kakashi-taichou grimaced.  “I called in a favor,” he said, and reached under the couch again.  This time he produced a porcelain Anbu mask, like his own, but smooth and clean, painted with a smattering of feline grey-black spots.  When he flipped it over, seals inked and carved spiderwebbed from the center.

There was only two men alive with enough knowledge in sealwork to completely disguise a shinobi’s chakra.  “What did this cost you?” Itachi asked at last.

Kakashi-taichou stared at the mask grimly before tossing it over to Itachi, who caught it automatically.  “Too much,” he said. “Let him know that if he breaks it, he owes me his firstborn. Your next mission is to take that -- and his next set of orders -- to him in Kitakyushu.  Think of it as a vacation.”

“Understood,” said Itachi, tucking it away in his pack.  He straightened his back slightly; it screamed in protest at his continued ramrod-straight position.

Kakashi-taichou eyed him knowingly.  “The next briefing is not one you are required to attend, but I expect you in the briefing center at 1800 hours,” he said.  “Get some rest, Itachi.”

“Hai,” said Itachi, letting himself slump just a little.  

“Your old quarters were reassigned,” Kakashi-taichou informed him. “You're welcome to sleep here, though.”  He patted the couch. A chunk of rotted stuffing came away in his hand.

“Thank you for the offer, Taichou,” said Itachi, giving the couch a wary glance.  “I will sleep on the floor.”

Kakashi-taichou’s visible eye crinkled.  “Nonsense,” he said, casually tossing the stuffing off to the side of the couch.  “What sort of host would I be if I let a guest sleep on the floor?”

Itachi blinked once, slowly, and followed the only viable course of action: he ignored him.  

Itachi was glad to leave the Kiri Hanran-Hanabi-ha headquarters and its stifling animosity behind.  The red-orange rays of the sun skipped over the waves as he set off, and by the time he reached the coast of the mainland, twenty kilometers north of Kitakyushu, the sun was rising at his back.  

He picked his through the shadows where the sand turned into cliffs, towering high above the beach, hyper-aware of his bone-white armor and porcelain mask, but he sensed no one of significant chakra prowess, and the few on the beaches -- fishermen, an elderly couple on a morning stroll -- did not notice him as he ghosted behind them.

Itachi turned into the tunnels that would lead to the abandoned mine designated as Outpost 013 and came face to face with a battered Anbu cat-mask.

“Cousin,” Shisui greeted.

“How is the cat-herding?” Itachi asked politely.

“Please,” scoffed Shisui, rolling his eye.  “You and I both know herding cats is much easier than keeping these brats in line.  Come in. What are you doing here in person? Don’t think I haven’t noticed Kombu flying in and out of here,” he warned.  

Itachi shrugged one shoulder.  “I could hardly sneak away from the frontlines to visit Sasuke myself,” he defended.

“It's not like Kombu talks,” said Shisui.  “How’s he even supposed to know that big-ass bird is from you?   You've never pulled him out in front of Sasuke-kun. I haven't summoned a single crow myself.”

“He knows,” Itachi said simply.

Shisui shrugged and then glanced at Itachi suspiciously.  “Really, what are you doing here? Gods know Hatake-taichou’d never send you on a milk run courier mission.”

Itachi hesitated, and Shisui came to a full stop to face him, his exposed eye searching Itachi’s face.  “Taichou had a message for you,” Itachi said at last. “He thought it best it came from me.”

Shisui’s shoulders slumped, and Itachi regretted the bitter understanding he saw in his cousin’s gaze.  “Hit me,” Shisui said tiredly.

Itachi stared at him blankly and punched him in the shoulder.  It was not a light blow.

“Ow!” Shisui yowled, rearing back.  “You little shit! Who gave you permission to have a sense of humor?”

“Perhaps I have had too many katon sent my way while being told to ‘lighten up,’” Itachi suggested.

“It's my sworn duty as your older cousin to prepare you for the realities of the world,” Shisui sniffed.  “And it is yours to respect your elders.”  He waved his hand at Itachi.  “Come on, what's the message?”

Itachi heaved an inward sigh.  “Operatives Hana-An-010 and Hana-Shi-000, -001, -002, -004, -005, -006, -007, -008, and -009 are to establish Forward Base 25-35W and await further instruction.”

Shisui absorbed the information silently.   “That sounds pretty close to the front,” he said at last.

“It is the front,” said Itachi mercilessly.

Shisui closed his eye and sighed, scrubbing one hand through his hair.  “I understand,” he said. “Captain.”

Itachi instantly frowned, but Shisui held a hand up, forestalling him.

“Don't,” he said quietly.  “Orders I can take, but not from you.   Not from my cousin.” Itachi stayed silent for a long moment, and Shisui grimaced.  “Sorry,” he said wryly. “That's not fair to you. I know how you feel about this.”

Itachi tilted his head in acknowledgement.  He would not begrudge Shisui this sentiment. “You’re being reclassified to take a forward command,” he added.

“Yeah, I know, jounin-in-charge,” said Shisui.

“Ah,” Itachi said dryly.  “It appears I have been remiss in conveying the message accurately.  ‘Operatives Hana-An-010 and Hana-Shi-000, -001, -002, -004, -005, -006, -007, -008, and -009 are to establish Forward Base 25-35W, whereupon Operative Hana-An-010 is to assume the title and rank of captain and await further instruction.’”

Shisui shoved him, sending him stumbling forward a step.  “You ass ,” he complained.

The corner of Itachi’s mouth lifted in a victorious smirk.  “Kakashi-taichou would never send me on a milk run courier mission,” he reminded.

“I don’t want a damned promotion,” scowled Shisui.  

“That is likely why Kakashi-taichou sent me to tell you,” Itachi said reasonably.  He slid the mask and scroll with Shisui’s orders out of his back pouch and passed them both over to his cousin.  “A shinobi employs any tool necessary, up to and including your goodwill towards your favorite cousin.”

“You better watch your back,” Shisui muttered.  “I'm about to demote you to second favorite. Sasuke-kun hasn't set anything on fire for ten whole days.”  He opened the scroll first. “You know,” he said, skimming its contents, “When she was scraping me back together, Tsunade-sama said she would never put me back in the field without consulting me first.”

“You are already in the field,” Itachi pointed out.  “There are wanted posters of you that prove so. But in this case, I believe she may have simply signed a scroll Kakashi-taichou put in front of her.”

“That bastard,” Shisui grumbled without much heat.  He flipped the mask up for a better look. “I take it this is for protection against an old friend?”

“Aa,” said Itachi.  “Kakashi-taichou would like me to convey to you that should this be damaged, he will marry your heir.”

Shisui shuddered.  “Good gods,” he muttered.  “He really sold his soul for this thing.”  He hooked the mask onto his belt. “All right, come on back to the mess,” he said.  “The kids’ll get curious if I’m gone too long, and Neji-kun can read lips through the back of peoples’ skulls now, the little terror.”

The tunnels were nearly pitch black, but Itachi followed Shisui as he wound unerringly through the corridors until a faint flicker of light appeared ahead.  Damp air turned a little fresher, cutting through the murkiness of the caves.

“Look alive, everyone, we have a visitor,” Shisui announced, pushing his way through a rough-hewn wooden door.  Itachi padded in after him and found himself in a relatively large, low-ceilinged room with a makeshift kitchen ensemble on one side -- a large ice box, several large tables clustered in an approximation of counters, and crates of food or portable stoves -- and a pair of long tables ringed by benches on the other side.  At the tables, nine pairs of eyes moved between Shisui and Itachi, eight unimpressed and one eager. Itachi swallowed a fond smile.

“You can cut the act, Sensei, we know who that is,” said Temari, propping her chin in one hand.  Naruto and Hinata nodded agreement -- the former empathetically, the later timidly.

Shisui threw up his hands in disgust and flipped up his mask.  “Whatever, you brats,” he growled. “Naruto, go get Itachi-sensei some food.  Itachi, sit.”

Naruto swung his legs over the bench and trotted off towards the pot steaming gently on the far counter, and Itachi slid neatly into his vacated seat and tucked his mask back onto his belt.  “Otouto,” he said serenely.

Sasuke’s head jerked like he’d wanted to duck his head but stopped himself at the last second.  “Hi, Aniki,” he said shyly.

“I trust your training and missions have been going well?” Itachi prompted.

“We have successfully completed several missions,” answered Sai from across the table.   Beside him, Hinata shrank into her seat, face turning bright red, and Gaara narrowed his eyes slightly.  “Last night -- ” He cut himself off as Temari jabbed an unsubtle elbow into his side. “Oh. I see,” he said.  “Disregard that.”

“No matter,” said Itachi, even as he felt rather than saw Sasuke bristling next to him.  His baby brother was rather cute when he was territorial. “I am glad to hear you are doing well.  He tilted his head back towards Sasuke. “I hope Kombu reached you well.”

Sasuke’s brow crinkled.  “Kombu -- oh! Yes, he did,” he corrected himself, a faint dusting of red across his cheeks.  

“Here’s your food, Itachi-sensei!” Naruto interrupted cheerfully, plopping down a bowl and chopsticks in front of Itachi.  He hopped over the bench to sit on Itachi’s other side. “You’re lucky, ‘cause Haku made this, and if you came tomorrow you’d’ve had to eat Sakura-chan’s slop -- ”

“Hey!” Sakura snapped, lunging to her feet and slamming her fists on the table.  “You're one to talk!”

Haku reflexively covered his mouth to hide a tiny smile.  Neji wrinkled his nose as the soup slopped over the side of his bowl.  His Byakugan was active, and distracted as he was, he made no great protest.  

“We can just say that Sasuke is the best cook in Team Byakko,” Temari cut in with a warning glare at Naruto before the fight could escalate.  Sakura sat back down.

“I look forward to trying his meals,” said Itachi genuinely, and Sasuke ducked his head bashfully.

“Will you be staying at the base for a while, Itachi-sensei?” inquired Sai.

Itachi paused, setting down his chopsticks.  Across the table, Shisui glanced up, eye whirling red, and caught him up in a genjutsu.  

“No mission talk over breakfast,” his cousin warned, words reaching Itachi alone through the illusion.  “There’s time to break the news later, in the briefing room.”

“Hn,” said Itachi noncommittally as Neji’s eyes flickered between him and Shisui.  “I will not be here long.”

“So, whatcha talkin’ about?” Naruto piped up.  “Neji’s doing the thing, so he sees Shisui-sensei using chakra and also his eye’s red so he’s doing that thing where he makes you see things nobody else can see cuz Shisui-sensei says you can’t jump into a genjutsu if the person making it doesn’t make you see it.”

“They’re called Byakugan and Sharingan,” Neji muttered under his breath.

“LastnightNarutoandSasukeaccidentallykissed,” Shisui said in a rush, projecting a split-second snapshot of the memory with mischief glinting in his eye before he broke the genjutsu.

“Shisui has a fondness for telling stories at inopportune moments,” Itachi said blankly. “He detailed an incident last night in which you defiled my younger brother.”

Haku choked on his rice and coughed as Sakura outright cackled.  Sasuke turned bright red and froze stiff.

“I did not!” Naruto yowled.  “That bastard wasn’t watching where he was going!”

“We were sparring!” Sasuke snapped.  “You were the one who tripped into my face. ”

“You didn’t dodge!” Naruto retorted, the tips of his ears blushing crimson.

“Masks up,” Neji interrupted suddenly.  “Team Morita inbound.”

A general shuffle ensued as the children all reached for their bone wolf masks with well-rehearsed motions, Sasuke with perhaps more haste than strictly necessary.  Shisui pulled his down from the top of his head, and Itachi followed suit.

“Bowls are on the counter, Morita,” Shisui called as the man stepped through the doorway.

“Thanks -- ” Morita jerked to a halt when he caught sight of Itachi sitting in the midst of the masked, cloaked children.  His team peered around him and immediately straightened.

“This is Hana-An-141, captain,” Shisui introduced.  “He'll be here for a couple of days.”

The one-eared kunoichi -- Akikio -- behind Morita hissed something in his ear and he snapped to attention.  “Captain!” he stammered. “Sir -- what are you -- I mean -- ”

“At ease,” said Itachi.  “This is not a briefing.”

“Uh, yes, sir,” said Morita, and reluctantly edged into the room when Akiko prodded him insistently in the back.

“Welcome to the back alley of the war, captain,” said Nobu gruffly, pushing past Morita impatiently.  “Nothing here but rubbish and a rat infestation. We getting moved or something, sir?” Behind him, Morita swallowed visibly.

“No,” Itachi said honestly.   He remembered the report on Morita’s team and the brutalization of its members in the name of interrogation.  It would be another month yet before Command sent for them to return to active combat, if they could be spared for so long.

“Team Genbu, up and at ‘em,” said Shisui, and Gaara, Hinata, and Sai stood obediently, clearing space for the new team to sit down.  “Routine intel mission,” he explained to Itachi. “Care to join them?”

Itachi had been running all night, but he did wish to know how his students fared.  “I believe I will,” he said, and very carefully did not react to Sasuke’s slightly disappointed slump beside him.  “If it will not jeopardize your mission, Operative Hachi?”

“No, captain,” said Sai.  “Kyuu will be aboveground, but you are welcome to accompany Shichi in active surveillance or myself in the onsite control center.”  

Itachi soon discovered that the ‘onsite control center’ was in fact an abandoned grocery store, from which Sai sent ink creatures scuttling in every direction, and ‘active surveillance’ involved mirroring Hinata’s movements from underground, in the sewer.  He followed Gaara as the boy wandered through the maze of tunnels, eyes half-lidded as he chose turns seemingly at random. Itachi sent out his chakra-sense, but he could not differentiate Hinata’s from the faint press of thousands above them. “How are you following her?” he asked, breaking the silence for the first time since he and Gaara had left the rest of the team.  

Gaara blinked, as if confused, and peered at him out of the corner of one black-rimmed eye.  “Our -- my sand,” he said. “There is some in her pockets. It calls to me.”

Itachi filed the fumble away for later consideration.  “That is clever,” he offered. Gaara shot him a somewhat alarmed glance but otherwise did not acknowledge his comment.  “What is your purpose in following Kyuu?”

“Get her out alive if she is injured or captured,” the jinchuuriki answered after a pause.  

“Would Hachi not be better suited for an extraction?” Itachi prodded carefully.  

Another long pause.  Gaara shook his head slightly, a tiny jerk in response to something Itachi could not hear.  “He uses too much chakra. For his scouts. He needs to save it to report back. I get her out.”  

“Hm,” said Itachi thoughtfully.  It seemed to be a functional system, though likely not one that had needed to be tested.  Hinata’s preparations had been thorough, from contacts to clothing to a complete personality transplant.  Her alias ‘Moe’ was unlikely to be ruled suspicious by the Konoha shinobi that swarmed the city, as Nobu had worded it, like a rat infestation, because ‘Moe’ herself did not think herself suspicious.  And it seemed Danzou’s men were far too preoccupied with the war effort to be bothered with policing the city, considering the lackluster response to even a rogue Anbu in Kitakyushu.

The pair lapsed into silence once again.  Itachi observed Gaara even as they turned down a slime-encrusted corridor.  He held himself with a strange self-assurance, at odds with the barely-hidden agitation of his chakra shifting and roiling beneath his skin.  He was not so feral as the defensive creature he had been when Taichou had corralled him back with the other children that first night in Tsuchi, whose very chakra had growled as he hunched back against his sister in the dark of the forest.  His behavior had been exactly while jinchuuriki were commonly chosen from the kage’s family, though clearly nobody had thought to account for Temari.

Gaara had grown, since the three seasons since their first meeting.  He was comfortable here, in Kitakyushu, with his role as silent, unseen protector, comfortable with his team and not just with Temari.  Itachi was proud of that, and sincerely regretted that he would upend that.

A small black shadow swooped over their heads.  Gaara paused and regarded it thoughtfully. A tendril of sand slithered from his pack into his hand, and when he offered it to the ink-bird, it was small and round and solid.  “Hachi wants something tracked,” he explained briefly, watching the bird wing away. “He will drop the sand there for me to follow.”

“Hm,” Itachi responded, and Gaara sent him an unfathomable look out of the corner of his eye before continuing down the pipeline.  

Itachi considered Gaara’s retreating back.  Dissatisfaction, irritability, desire. He was missing something here, something not mission-related.  Sasuke had always been an easy child for him to read but Gaara particularly difficult with the Ichibi factored in.  Sasuke’s woes were easily enough assuaged with the offer of training. Perhaps that was applicable here as well?

“It has been three months since I last saw your team spar,” he said.  “I look forward to seeing how your skills have grown.” No reaction but for a slight relaxing of the shoulders.  Itachi decided to count that as a positive response. Shinobi children perhaps were not so different across the board.

One debriefing and one briefing later, Itachi stood with Shisui outside the briefing room as inside, nine shinobi children exploded into chaos over the prospect of going to war.  Itachi had been awake for over thirty hours, and given that the briefing room was not in fact soundproof, the noise was beginning to hammer distractingly at the inside of his skull.  Shisui glanced over at him wryly. “Let's find you somewhere to crash,” he said. “I think you've caused enough of an uproar for today, hm?”

“I did no such thing,” Itachi protested.  The words sounded very far away.

“‘You have all been ordered to position 25-35, west of Kirigakure, effective immediately.  Please have all equipment ready to move by 0800 tomorrow,’” Shisui quoted sardonically. “And then you walked out when they started yelling.”

In retrospect, Itachi perhaps could have worded that differently, but he was quite tired and no longer in an active combat zone.

Shisui slung an arm over his shoulder, carefully projecting the movement.  “Come on,” he said. “Let's find you a bunk. We don't really have a spare room in the north wing -- that's where the pack and I crash -- but there's an empty room in the south wing where Morita’s team is -- ”

“No,” Itachi interrupted.  “Your room is fine.”

Shisui stopped.  “Sure,” he said affectionately. “My room it is.”

Shisui’s room boasted only slightly slimy walls and one wooden deck spanning half the floor area, on which he kept both his equipment and his bedroll. Itachi took half a second to appreciate this before he let his mind short-circuit.  He dropped his equipment next to Shisui’s, shucked his sandals, and tugged the blanket over himself.

“Okay,” Shisui said above him, amused.  “Steal my blankets, no problem.”

Itachi closed his eyes, deliberately ignoring him.  After a moment, the deck shifted as Shisui climbed up as well, settling down with his back against Itachi’s.  “Sleep well, cousin,” he murmured, his voice reverberating through Itachi’s own chest. “I've got your back.”

Itachi would have punched him again, but he was already mostly asleep.

When he awoke, he felt relaxed, which instantly put him on edge.  He gently shifted Shisui’s arm off his chest and sat up. The one other dorming room in the north side of the base, down the rough-hewn tunnel about three meters, rattled with the sound of shinobi children packing their clothes and equipment with what sounded like varying shades of panic.  Comparatively, as Shisui never kept anything unpacked that he couldn't leave behind and Itachi hadn't needed to take anything out the night before, Itachi felt no great compulsion to do anything other than sit and savor the calm.

Behind him, Shisui shifted and sat up.  “Hey,” he murmured, scruffing a hand through his hair.  

Itachi glanced over.  His cousin was not wearing the bandages he’d taken to swathing his face with, and both eyelids slit open to reveal one grey-black eye and a hint of the glass that had replaced the missing one.  “It is morning,” Itachi noted.

“Yep.”  Shisui patted him on the head absentmindedly.  “That's why they call you genius. Want some breakfast?”

Itachi paused, remembering Naruto’s attempt at dinner the night before.  “Who's cooking?” he asked cautiously.

Shisui huffed a laugh.  “No need to worry. I am.”

“Oh gods,” Itachi said dryly, and sidestepped his cousin's jab.  

Despite his needling, Shisui, given his seven-to-ten year advantage over the children, was a better cook than most of the pack.  Itachi leaned against the counter and occasionally passed him a bowl or knife, but mostly just watched as he filleted a handful of fish, sliced a bundle of scallions, and julientined gobu root.  He moved with an ease Itachi recognized from the battlefield, his shoulders loose and relaxed as he swept a rack of fish over the open flame. Shisui may have been bred for battle, but in another life, peace would have suited him well.  

Temari shuffled into the kitchen first, hair tied up hastily and eyes half closed.  “Morning, Itachi-sensei, Shisui-sensei,” she said, and wandered over the benches to slouch over the table.

“Morning, Temari-chan,” greeted Shisui cheerfully, scooping rice into a bowl.  “Who's on watch?”

“Gaara,” she yawned, resting her head on crossed arms.

Haku drifted in next, every stitch of clothing perfectly in place.  “Good morning, Shisui-san,” he said. “Good morning, Itachi-san.” Itachi cracked an egg over the first bowl of rice and nodded back at him.  “Do you need any help?”

“No, but thanks, Haku-kun,” Shisui called over his shoulder.  “Are you all packed?”

“Aa.”  Haku drew closer to the counter.  “I believe everyone except Naruto and Sakura are finished.  Sasuke is spectating, Hinata is attempting to help, and Sai and Neji are silently judging their efforts.”

“Hm,” said Shisui, transferring the fish to a platter.  “That does sound about right.”

Haku reached over for the finished rice-egg bowls.  “Yesterday, at the briefing,” he began hesitantly. “You said we were going to the front lines, Itachi-san.”

“Yes,” Itachi agreed implacably, even as Shisui hesitated for just a split second.  “The war will be approaching Kirigakure itself very soon, and all active forces are being called to the front.”

“Will we see Zabuza-san?” asked Haku a little too casually to not sound hopeful.

“Yes,” said Itachi, and Haku tilted his head down to hide a smile.  “I believe we will.”

The beginnings of conversation were lost as the rest of the pack and the low-grade chaos Naruto trailed behind him like a cloak spilled into the kitchen, and Itachi turned back to his self appointed task of cracking eggs into rice.  Gaara drifted in as Sai and Sakura carried the rest of the food to the table, and Itachi handed him the last bowl of rice.

“Status on Morita’s team?” asked Shisui as he slid down next to Itachi.  

“Late night training session.  They are all still sleeping,” Neji reported, letting his Byakugan fade.  

“No mask meal!  No mask meal!” Naruto chanted, stabbing for the fish with his chopsticks.  Sakura elbowed him neatly in the ribs and stole the fish when he flinched.

Shisui rolled his eye fondly.  Naruto would never be, as they said, a typical shinobi.

“How will we reach position 25-35?” asked Sai, passing the platter of gobu to Haku.  “Logically, we cannot run the entire way, as Naruto would surely drown -- ”

“Hey!” Naruto interjected indignantly.

“ -- but stealing a ship from a Konoha port while Konoha is at war with Kumo is highly risky.”

“We could disguise ourselves as Konoha shinobi,” Sakura suggested, a mad glint in her eye.

“Pirate attacks are not uncommon,” Neji contributed.

“Whoa, whoa.”  Shisui frowned, holding up one hand bemusedly.  “Nobody's stealing a ship. We're just going to board one like regular passengers.”

Nine pairs of eyes swung from Shisui to Itachi dubiously.  “Really?” asked Sasuke.

“Yes,” said Itachi.

Shisui rolled his eye.  “You can't just trust Shisui-sensei, who's pulled your collective asses out of too many fires to count?”

“Sorry, sensei,” Temari said, not the least bit repentant.  

“Aren't you not supposed to say that word?” Naruto piped up.  

“It is uncough,” agreed Neji, wrinkling his nose.

“No, F-I-R-E,” Sakura corrected.  “Because of what happened last time with Sasuke and the sausage cart.  Shisui-sensei thinks it'll give him more ideas.”

“That was an accident,” Sasuke scowled, slinking down in his seat a little.

Itachi had a feeling that was a story he would like to hear at greater length at a later time.  “We will all disguise ourselves as regular civilians, and board the Okamaru, bound for islands off the south coast of Uzushio no Kuni,” he said instead.  “A hundred kilometers away from the destination, we will disembark and make out way on foot.” He paused. “Yes?” he said to Sakura’s hesitantly raised hand.

“Can we fly?” she asked hopefully.  “Temari has her fan and Sai made this really giant bird one time.”

Itachi glanced at Shisui, who nodded longsufferingly.  There was another story not yet told there. “If San and Temari can spare the chakra, we may fly for a short distance after disembarking the ship,” he allowed.

“Yes!” Naruto hissed gleefully, and even Hinata perked up.  Itachi briefly wondered if he had made a grave mistake.

“I should not have to remind you how dangerous this will be,” Itachi said quietly.  “But I will do so anyways.” The table grew abruptly silent as hands stilled on chopsticks.  “You are entering real war -- an active warzone,” he said. “Everyone you meet out there will actively strive to kill you or subject you to an even worse fate.  Here, in Kitakyushu, you have had the luxury of a distracted enemy and unaware targets, but in the battles for Kiri, you will have neither.” He met each of their eyes, reading the fear and defiance and determination and resolve in each if them.  “Trust each other, and trust your sensei,” he finished. “There is no one who would rather see you survive this than we.”

“Don't worry about us, sensei,” Naruto chirped.  “We'll kick their butts!”

“We have trained for this,” agreed Neji.

“W-we’re ready,” Hinata added, raising her eyes to Itachi’s.

“We'll make you proud,” said Temari with fierce conviction.

“Senseeei!” Naruto whined, and Itachi wondered if he couldn't simply disappear over the side of the ship and leave Shisui to herd the children.  He must have gotten quite good at it with three months’ worth under his belt.

“Yes?” he asked patiently, keeping his eyes on the far horizon.  

Naruto squinted at him suspiciously from over the bandages swathing his lower face.  His sun-bright hair had been dyed a deep red-brown, and he had attempted to wear colored contacts, only to poke his eyeball too many times by mistake, and had so given up.  His eye was still red and puffy. “Are we there yet?”

Itachi could just genjutsu him into silence, and no one would be the wiser.  “No,” he said with remarkable patience. Then, struck by sudden genius, “Why don't you ask the other sensei what we will be having for lunch?”

Naruto perked up.  “Ooh,” he said, and pattered off to the opposite side of the ship.  Itachi watched him go remorselessly before turning back to the vast sea.

After a moment, a more unobtrusive presence replaced him.  Itachi allowed himself a small smile as Sasuke leaned against the rail beside him.  “I didn't know you had crows,” his brother said gruffly, conscious of the prying ears aboard the ship.  His voice was still too high for Itachi to take him seriously.

“My cousin kept them,” Itachi said.  “After he died, he left them to me.” Except he didn't die, or he didn't stay dead.  Itachi remembered the first time Kombu and his flock had come to him, perching like gargoyles in his favored training ground until he was surrounded by the death-omens, the vise that squeezed his chest when Shisui’s favored Mirin had presented their summoning scroll, his cousin's name faded into grey just as their contract had faded after his death.  Shisui was now the only summoner in the crows’ contract to appear twice.

Sasuke absorbed that quietly.  “I've never seen them before.” Sasuke had been five when Itachi inherited the crows, but Itachi had never summoned the flock in Konoha or on a team mission.  He’d kept the flock and what they represented a secret, buried down in his ribcage next to his heart.

Itachi did not like to think of what Orochimaru had done to Shisui, how he must have chased his cousin's spirit from his mortal body long enough to severe a summons contract before dragging him back.  He had never liked summoning the crows those first months because of what they meant, but gradually the flock became his as much as Shisui’s. “My cousin did not keep them out in the open, and neither did I,” he answered.

For all that Shisui had been the Uchiha’s prized dark horse until his disappearance and presumed death, his known idiosyncrasies -- many friendships outside the clan, no particular predilection for katon jutsu, use of a tanto instead of a full katana -- had been outnumbered by those he kept secret, including his crow summons when the Uchiha’s favored contract was with the ninneko.

“I like them,” Sasuke said decisively, dragging Itachi’s attention back to the present.  

“I am glad,” said Itachi, glancing down fondly at his brother's now short-cropped brown-blond hair.  “I did not mean to be separated from you for so long.” He paused. “Perhaps you can show me what you have learned in that time, later,” he suggested.  

Sasuke straightened slightly before forcibly relaxing.  “Yeah, maybe,” he said, keeping up the pretense of disinterest.  

“ Fellow sensei, ” Shisui gritted out behind him.  

Itachi turned to see a wide, fixed smile plastered on his cousin's face.  In the background, Naruto peered at them, waving his hands animatedly as he chattered at a stonefaced Gaara.  Like vultures sensing a dying animal, the rest of the pack perched casually in their vicinity. “No,” Itachi said politely. “We two do not require food at this time.”

Shisui glowered at him, and had they been on dry land Itachi was quite sure he would have attempted to incinerate him with the force of his glare alone.  “I will get you,” Shisui promised, and stalked towards the stairs that would lead below deck. The pack trailed him down in twos and threes.

Itachi did not watch them go, but instead stretched out his chakra-sense as far as it would go.  Civilian ships had been neutral ground since the war began, but the oceans were not.

By the time the ship reached the drop point, night had fallen.  The ever present ocean wind streaked sticky fingers through Itachi’s hair, and he was glad to be able to bundle it back into its customary ponytail.  

“Over, over, over,” Shisui urged, chivvying the pack over the side one at a time.  Once again swathed in their fur cloaks and bone-masks, they vaulted over the railing silently and lightly.  Shisui hopped over after them, and Itachi followed last of all, hunter-nin mask over his face once again. The Okamaru plowed past, showering the eleven crouched atop the surface of the water with seaspray in its wake.  

“Hachi, you're up,” ordered Shisui.

Sai nodded acknowledgement and swept out a scroll as long as his arm.  His brush danced over the surface, and a great seahawk bloomed in black and white.  He lifted his hand into a seal, and in a bust of air and chakra, the creature peeled off the paper and took wing under their feet, growing ever larger until its wingspan rivaled the Okamaru’s length.  Sai staggered as his foot slipped, unbalanced by the loss of the chakra he'd used to will his bird to life, and sand snaked around his arm to haul him back upright.

“Good to go?” asked Shisui, watching him balance himself on the neck of his creature.

“Hai,” said Sai, rolling up his scroll and sliding it back under his cloak.  “Until the chakra in this construct is fully used, it will bear all of our weights.”  On a silent signal, the construct beat its wings powerfully and swept them high above the waves.

Itachi had leapt and run through trees, but flying was an entirely new experience.  His crows were minor summons, nowhere near large or strong enough to bear him on their backs as Sai’s ink hawk did now.  Had anyone asked, he would have professed no great love or hatred for the experience, but in truth, after just one minute in the air, Itachi would not have chosen to fly if it were not the most efficient option.  Each stroke of the wings jarred his entire body, and Itachi appreciated for perhaps the first time the intimate knowledge Sai must have for the mechanics involved in keeping such a creature aloft.

Nevertheless, he settled in a loose crouch on the bird’s back.  Neji knelt at his side, his doujutsu active as he fixed unseeing and all-seeing eyes on the horizon.  

Itachi watched as the ocean flashed by, mentally checking off landmarks on his mental map as Shisui directed Sai at the bird’s head and the pack settled in alertly between them and himself.  The ink construct was admittedly much faster than the Okamaru, and as he discovered as they both overtook and dwarfed a flock of seagulls, much faster than an ordinary animal. Time and waves alike sped past.  

“Ah,” said Sai abruptly when the moon had long passed its zenith. “I believe -- ”

The rush of air muffled Sakura’s surprised shriek as the ink-creature dispelled with a soft puff.  Itachi’s stomach slammed into his lungs, ripping his breath away as the ground suddenly dropped out from beneath his feet, plunging him into a freefall.  He twisted midair, grabbing for Neji, who was nearest, and bleakly indulged his justification in his distaste for flying.

“Hinata-sama,” Neji gasped, even as he hooked one arm around Itachi’s shoulder.  The ocean sparkled ever closer beneath him, but the roar of wind and vastness of the blue-black sky battered his senses and he took a precious few seconds to consider his options.

A whirl of movement caught his eye as Temari whipped the fan off her back and snapped it open instinctively, catching her fall and bearing her back up.  She leaned over the edge and snagged Hinata by the back of the cloak, dragging the smaller girl up behind her. Haku threw out his hand and slammed feet-first into the ice mirror that appeared in a flash of light.

Itachi could brace his own fall from any height, and he knew Shisui could as well.  However, the children would not have had much opportunity to perfect the technique, and Itachi would greatly prefer they not attempt it for the first time from four hundred meters above the ocean.  Shisui threw himself into a midair shunshin, tackling Sasuke out of his tumble, and Itachi felt a rush of relief and gratefulness and guilt.

Five meters below Itachi,  Gaara’s eyes closed. They had fallen far enough now that through the stinging of his eyes and hair whipping in his face, Itachi could see the ocean churning beneath them.  A curious circle frothed directly beneath them, and from this erupted a massive fountain of sand. Like branches towards the sun, the pillar streamed upwards, reaching for Gaara and the others with grasping claws.  Too fast.

“Gently!” Shisui shouted, the word nearly carried away by the wind.   

Gaara bared his teeth in a snarl of concentration, eyes slitting open, and Itachi could not tell if the green glow of his eyes was chakra or just a trick of the light.  Naruto hit first in a plume of sand, then Sakura and Sai to either side of him with audible thumps. Gaara alighted behind the three, the sand cradling him as it collapsed in on itself, carrying them down to the water.

Itachi twisted away to the side of the sand-tree for a cleaner impact on the ocean’s surface and gripped the back of Neji’s neck with a stabilizing hand.  He landed in a crouch, and the force of his landing sent a shockwave blasting through the water beneath his feet. Not a second later, a second ripped through the waves as Shisui hit the water.   

Cautiously, Itachi let go of Neji, who wobbled before finding his feet.  He eyed the boy carefully. “Are you unhurt?”

“Aa.  Thank you,” Neji said grudgingly, stepping away hastily.  His roughly-cut hair stuck out at odd angles behind his mask, and Itachi forced down the sudden urge to smooth his hair down.  Neji had never quite seemed one for gestures of affection.

“Oh, man, that was awesome!” Naruto breathed, stumbling off the sand onto the choppy waves.  “That was super cool. Gaara, you’re so cool!” Gaara’s mask had been knocked askew and his face had turned red, but from embarrassment or the wind Itachi was not sure.    

“That was crazy,” said Sakura, voice still shrill.  “I can’t believe we didn’t die.”

Shisui stepped over the remains of Gaara’s sand as it sank back below the waves.  “That was a close one,” he said unconcernedly. His new mask still sat perfectly in place, hair wind-tousled as ever.  Behind him, Sasuke did an unwitting impression of a cat that had been caught out during a windstorm. “Good catch, Gaara-kun.”  He peered up at the sky to see Temari’s fan still circling above them, but drifting lower.

Moonlight glinted off the ice mirror that grew laboriously from the sea spray, and presently Haku’s image appeared before the younger shinobi himself stepped out.  Like Shisui, he appeared entirely unruffled, mask still firmly in place and cloak draped about his shoulders as if he had gone on a midnight stroll. “That was unexpected,” he noted placidly.  “I will have to suggest that we run the rest of the way.”

“I do not have the chakra to animate another construct of that size, in any case,” Sai admitted, grabbing absently for Naruto’s shoulder for support.  

“We are within fifty kilometers of the target site,” said Itachi, scrutinizing the waves.  “Continuing on foot should prove no great obstacle. However, we should move quickly. A chakra output of that magnitude would not have gone unnoticed.”

Temari’s fan tipped to deposit her and Hinata atop the sea foam.  She landed in a crouch, swinging the fan back shut. “What does that mean?” she demanded.  

“Gaara-kun used a lot of chakra to catch our people here,” said Shisui, patting Sakura on the head.  “In this kind of war, Kiri will probably send a scouting party to find out where we set up a base, and if they think we're a big enough threat, they'll send a squad to take us out.”

“They’re going to try and kill us?” Naruto yelped.

“It’s a war, idiot, of course they’re trying to kill us,” Sasuke snipped back, eyes still wild behind his mask.

“Yeah, but -- ” Naruto waved an expansive hand at the ocean around them.  “Now?”

“Kiri shinobi are more at home in the water than shinobi of any other nation,” Haku interjected helpfully.  “It is easier to catch you off guard when you are exposed like this.”

“What do you mean, ‘you?’” Sasuke said slowly.

“I did used to be a hunter-nin of Kirigakure,” Haku pointed out.  He glanced at them apologetically. “Konoha shinobi were the easiest to take down on open water.”

Naruto looked mortally offended.  “What about Suna?” he complained. “They don’t even have any water!”

Temari shrugged.  “There’s the elemental disadvantage to consider, too.  Suna shinobi don’t do much water-walking, but it’s not too different from sand-walking.”

“As much as this self-education thrills me as your sensei,” Shisui interrupted, “we really need to go.  Itachi?”

Although this was technically Shisui’s command, Itachi’s sense of urgency did not have time to politely and respectfully argue his cousin into making the decisions.  “Ichi will take point with me,” he said, nodding at Haku, who inclined his head gracefully. “Rei and Ni will follow. Shi, Go, and Roku after, then Shichi and Kyuu. Hachi and Juu, rearguard.”  He paused, and Naruto raised his hand. Itachi resisted the urge to sigh. “Yes?”

“Do you have a cool codename?” Naruto chirped.

Itachi stared blankly.  “Hana-An-141, captain,” he said, and turned.  “Ni and Kyuu, trade off keeping watch,” he ordered, and took off in a sprint across the waves, Haku by his side.

“We can’t call him that,” Naruto huffed distantly behind him.  “That’s way too long.”

“Logically, we can use his identifying number, as the rest of us do,” suggested Sai.  

“141?  Hyaku-shi-juu-ichi is way too long,” Temari disagreed from five meters back.  “And if we use Ichi-shi-ichi it just sounds like you’re calling Ichi and Shi.”  Itachi did not sigh or pinch the bridge of his nose, though he was beginning to see the appeal.  If Temari joined the conversation, it legitimized the topic of discussion.

“He’s a captain,” Sasuke contributed.  “Just call him ‘captain.’”

“We can’t call him captain, the captain’s captain,” Naruto argued.  

“What about just ‘sensei?’” asked Sakura, sounding slightly out of breath.

“Not your sensei,” Gaara grumbled, the words nearly carried away by the wind.     

“Enemy territory, kids,” Shisui reminded from the back.  “Let's cut the chatter.”

A shinobi knew better than to gamble on one's luck.  The gods would surely strike down such presumption, and barring that, an enemy would simply find a hapless prey who had let their guard down to indulge a flight of whimsy.  Hope, however, had sustained all sorts of lives through innumerable trials, and did in part fuel Hanabi-ha at large. Thus, Itachi was both unsurprised and disappointed when Hinata called, in Kyuu’s unwavering voice, that a team of four shinobi each was approaching from the front on either side.

An excellent sensor could report four shinobi with well-developed chakra systems, two with mildly developed chakra systems, and another five with the ability to manipulate chakra.  A merely good sensor would sense nine child-sized chakra sources and two muted adult-sized chakra sources and and the execution of a chuunin-level jutsu.

Several possibilities, then, for the approaching Kiri shinobi: eight shinobi of upper Guntai caliber judged to be able to handle eleven assorted Guntai genin and chuunin; eight shinobi of both the Guntai and Shirei-bu capable of taking down suspected Shirei-bu genin teams; or a fully Shirei-bu squad capable of completely eradicating other chuunin-jounin teams.

No chances.

Itachi glanced over his shoulder and met Shisui’s eye.  His cousin nodded once.

“Kyuu, north team.  Ni, south. Tell me everything you can about the shinobi -- weapons, chakra systems, body build,” Shisui ordered.  

“North side -- three male, one female,” Hinata reported.  “Estimate three chuunin, one jounin from chakra system development.  Female and jounin male are slight and carry basic weaponry. One male medium build with a katana, one male heavy build, wrapped hands.”

“South side, also three male, one female,” said Neji.  “I predict all four are jounin with well-developed chakra systems.  One male, one female carry katana. Based on body language, the female is the leader.  One other man is medium build and carries basic weaponry, the other carries fuuma shuriken.”

“Team Suzaku, we’re going in hard and fast,” Shisui decided calmly.  “Target the north team only. Ichi, get your team in, then Rei and Ni, you have the swordsman.  I’ll meet you there; I’ll take the jounin. Ichi, box the last two in until Team Byakko gets there.”  

“Hai,” Haku acknowledged, his voice gone cold and hard.  Temari and Neji echoed him, exchanging glances.

“Team Byakko, you’re in charge of the heavy male,” Shisui continued.  “You’re not as fast as Ichi or I, but get in as quickly as you can and either take him down or stall until Ichi is done with his target.”

“We got this!” Naruto reassured.   

“We won’t let you down,” Sasuke agreed, voice low.

“Team Genbu -- ” Shisui hesitated for a moment.  “Once we go after the north team, we’ll have a team of four jounin who are going to do their damndest to get to the fighting.  Your job is to stop them, because if a single one of them gets to us before our battles are over, the chances of one of us dying triples.  Itachi will engage the jounin, and hold as many as he can for as long as he can when they pursue, but he can’t be everywhere, and neither can I.  You don’t need to face them directly, just deflect. Got it?”

“Hai,” Sai responded crisply.  

Itachi’s hand ached for the hilt of his katana.  He settled for training his eyes to the side, towards his four targets.  By himself, he would take his time and pick them off one at a time, but the circumstances and the stakes were different today.   

“One kilometer and closing,” Neji reported.

Most shinobi could effectively shunshin half a kilometer into or out of battle and still have the wherewithal to fight, while gaining the distance or element of surprise to do so effectively.  As far as Itachi knew, Shisui had once performed a shunshin six kilometers into battle and single-handedly extracted a besieged genin team. Although Shisui had skirmished in the streets of Kitakyushu, he had not fought in a pitched battle since the night his eye had been stolen, but Itachi recognized the hard set in his cousin’s eye.  Like many of his comrades who had seen death young, the war had never truly left him.

“On my mark.”  Shisui’s voice took on the hunter’s purr Itachi had not heard in five years, the promise of danger that other shinobi had literally fled from after realizing who had spoken.  

“Five hundred meters,” Hinata said.

“Go!” Shisui snapped, and vanished in a burst of chakra.  A surprised shout broke the silence in the distance as he landed in the middle of the Kiri team, blade first.

Immediately, Haku dragged Temari and Neji through the mirror that materialized in a flash of ice and chakra.  A twinkle of light across the water answered, and the team exploded out the mirror on the far side.

“Charge!” roared Naruto, barrelling across the water, Sasuke and Sakura at his heels.  Itachi perhaps needed to have a conversation with him regarding the wisdom of letting the enemy know one’s intentions.  

“Team Genbu, intercept!” Itachi ordered as the south team broke into a run, and darted forward.

He threw out a wide genjutsu first, snaring the entire team in a sensation of the water beneath their feet growing thick and sticky, dragging them down.  One stumbled; the rest barely paused before shaking off the illusion. “Suiton: Mizuame Nabara,” he muttered, and this time the water that sucked them down was no illusion.

The ocean rumbled, and a wall of sand breached the waves.  Hinata dashed behind him on light feet and leapt up on top, drawing both her fans in one smooth movement as she sank into a ready crouch on the crest of the rising wall.  High above, Sai circled on a small ink bird.

Itachi stepped forward unhurriedly as the Kiri team escaped his trap one by one.

“Four against one, traitor,” the leader said coldly, drawing her katana in a hiss of steel.  “Tell your genin to come home before they are labelled the same.”

Itachi tilted his head, the stolen hunter-nin mask still covering his face.  “I cannot do that,” he admitted. “I will end this quickly.”

“Damnit, we don’t have time for this,” snarled one of the shinobi behind him.

“Hirai and Yoshida, go help Ibuka’s team,” the kunoichi directed without taking her eyes off Itachi.  “We can take care of this.”

The two shinobi nodded sharply, but as they leapt forward, Itachi brought his hands up in a seal, and a mizu bunshin blurred up out of the water to block their path.  “I’m afraid I cannot let you do that,” he said, and drew his sword with his bunshin in tandem.

The kunoichi lunged to attack, and Itachi sank into calm.  He deflected the first slash and flicked his own blade backwards, but she twirled out of the way.  Movement flashed in the corner of his eye, and he threw himself into a backwards shunshin as the second swordsman bisected the air where he’d been standing.  

One of the shinobi facing Itachi’s mizu bunshin ducked its slash and slammed a kunai through its chest, dispelling it in a splash of water.  The other leapt over Gaara for the top of the wall, and shouted in surprise as the wall stretched reaching claws back towards him. Hinata dropped down to dart along the sand arm towards him.

Itachi activated his Sharingan in a split second and hurled another genjutsu at the second shinobi leaping for the wall before blinking the doujutsu away as the other man froze.  He turned in time to sidestep the kunoichi’s pounce and whirled out of the way of the second swordsman. Itachi would have to trust the children to keep the jounin busy for now.

“Kage bunshin no jutsu!” Naruto’s faint shout rose above the clash of metal, and a brief burst of fire bloomed from beyond Gaara’s wall.  A shriek cut off midway.

“You bastards!” the swordsman snarled, swinging hard and fast at Itachi’s neck.  

Itachi executed a neat shunshin, then another in quick succession to evade the swordsman and kunoichi’s blows.  “Suiton: Suidan no Jutsu,” snapped the shinobi who’d been caught in Itachi’s genjutsu, and Itachi leaped up high as the suiton tore through the air, leaving deep divots in the ocean's surface.

“Suiton: Suiryūdan no Jutsu,” Itachi countered, flashing through the seals one-handed, and his dragon reared up out of the water and lunged towards all three with a fanged maw.  He chanced a glance backwards at his team, besieging the Kiri shinobi. Spikes of sand shot out of the wall, dogging the shinobi’s steps as he swung his folded fuuma shuriken at Hinata, who countered with a battle-fan.  Ink birds dove at his eyes, and he swiped at them with the kunai in his free hand.

Itachi’s attention snapped back abruptly as the kunoichi erupted out of the water directly in front of him.  He deflected her, slipping out of her path, when she whirled back towards him. He ducked her next blow, reversed his grip on the hilt of his katana, and took three quick steps back to stab it backwards into the swordsman charging at him from behind.  The tip sank cleanly into the shinobi’s chest and straight out his back. The man choked. Itachi yanked the blade back out in one smooth movement, and blood splattered on his cloak as the man tipped forward, motionless, the sword dropping out of one nerveless hand and sinking below the waves.  Itachi brought his katana, still dripping blood, back down to his side and carefully eyed the kunoichi who had pulled up short.

The kunoichi stared at the body of her teammate, eyes narrow and mouth twisted into a disgusted grimace.  “How dare you,” she said softly.

Itachi said nothing, as there was nothing to be said.   He knew what he was; war made monsters of every man.

The kunoichi swept her blade behind her.  “ Dance of the Cicadas ,” she snarled, and blurred forward until first two, then four of her and her clones streaked towards him.  

He could not move backwards; Gaara’s wall would box him in.  Lightning-fast, Itachi drew a kunai to block the blade whistling towards his left side and deflected a strike at his throat before flicking his sword down, catching another blade on his katana’s and another on its hilt.  He shoved, desperation lending him extra strength, and hurled his kunai as he dove under a swinging blade. It flew true, and then Itachi faced three of the relentless kunoichi.

“Incoming!”  Hinata’s nervousness bled into Kyuu’s breathless voice.  “Team of four jounin towards the north team!”

None of them had the ability to help their teammates in the other battle.  “Hold position!” Itachi ordered, spinning out of the way of the kunoichi’s assault.  It was time to end this fight. He substituted out of the way of a water tendril lashing through the air from the other shinobi.  He substituted again almost immediately, out of another of the kunoichi’s two-point attacks, and landed with his back to open water.  

“You’re done for, now,” sneered the ninjutsu specialist, hands already flickering through another set of seals.  “You and your little kiddies over there.”

Itachi narrowed his eyes in response.  Hinata gasped behind him, high and panicked, and he glanced up to see her stumbling backwards from the Kiri jounin as he leaped above Gaara’s grasping sand.  With a snap of his wrist, the fuuma shuriken extended and he hurled it, knocking one of the fans out of her hand. Sai’s bird dove in a sharp arc, but a second shuriken clipped its wing and splattered the construct in a spray of ink.

Then Itachi had no time to look, because the water rose up around him like snake heads ready to strike, and he leaped out of the way, straight into the blades of two of the kunoichi.  He swung his katana up and released the chakra buoying his feet, diving into the water beneath her; at the same time, he wove his chakra into a potent genjutsu so she would see him charging her.  

She froze, and her bunshin dispelled one after the other as she watched them meet their end under Itachi’s genjutsu.  She would see her death, too, and Itachi’s illusion would make it reality.

Now to deal with the ninjutsu specialist.

A shunshin put him behind the man, who swung around with a snarl on his face, and the water beneath Itachi’s feet erupted in a geyser.   Itachi let the momentum carry him up, flipping sideways, and darted forward. His katana met a kunai, his backswing hit wood as the shinobi substituted out of the way, but Itachi knew where he’d be and snared him in another genjutsu when the shinobi alighted behind him.  It took only a second for the shinobi to rip himself free of the hastily-constructed illusion, but Itachi only needed the one second to slide his blade beneath the man’s ribcage.

Hinata cried out.  Malevolence surged behind him, and Itachi glanced up sharply to see Gaara’s sand snare the last hapless Kiri jounin, crawling up his ankle and up the struggling shinobi’s chest as Hinata stumbled backwards along the sinking wall, red-stained hand clutched to her arm. Sai dragged himself out onto the water’s surface.  Itachi ran.

Sand closed over the shinobi’s face.  “Shichi!” Itachi barked, but Gaara’s eyes glowed golden beneath his mask and he clenched his hand into a fist.

Hinata let out a muffled yelp as blood rained through the air, splattering her liberally.  “Come down,” Sai urged her, darting frantic glances at their teammate, who stood stock still, staring at the sand cocoon that had once held a man.  Around him, the sand shifted, as if waking from a long sleep.

“Hachi, get her out of there,” Itachi commanded, waking the Sharingan in his eyes.  The Ichibi did not care whether Gaara considered them friend or foe. Sai leapt up, wrapping an arm around Hinata to carry her off the collapsing sand and over the other side, and Itachi landed in a crouch, face to face with Gaara.  The jinchuuriki’s eyes snapped to his, the beginnings of a snarl carving sharp furrows around his eyes. “The threat is gone,” Itachi said. “Calm down, Gaara.”

At the sound of his name, Gaara’s eyes flickered, losing their acidic edge and fading back to green, but at once he shook his head savagely, and the gold flared.  

“Calm!” Itachi repeated insistently, this time layering the word with genjutsu.  He preferred visual genjutsu; he had never been as proficient as Shisui in the realm of suggestive genjutsu.  Gaara swayed, blinking confusedly as his eyes settled back towards their natural color. “Calm,” Itachi said one more time for good measure, pouring as much chakra as he dared into the genjutsu, and Gaara stared back at him placidly, the sand around him slowly sinking back into the ocean.  

With the sand gone, Itachi could see the clash of light and metal as the other battle raged.   Across the open water Sakura was thrown backwards, and she skidded across the surface on her side as Naruto dove at their opponent, fists first.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hinata stumbled, and Sai reached out a steadying arm when her foot broke through the water’s surface.

“Status?” Itachi said sharply, glancing sideways at them.

“I-it’s a m-minor i-injury,” Hinata panted without releasing her death grip on her arm.  Blood trickled from beneath her hand, but it indeed did not seem life threatening.

“My chakra reserves are low,” added Sai.  

“T-the new j-jounin have a-almost r-reached the o-other t-teams,” Hinata whispered.  Her face was pale -- from blood loss or fright Itachi could not be sure.

Itachi’s eyes slid briefly to Gaara before a spike in chakra heralded a plume of fire in the distant battle.  Out of time. “Stay back. Your priority now is evasion. Watch out for your team.” He tilted his head towards Gaara, swaying unsteadily now.

“Understood,” said Sai.

Itachi broke into a sprint, streaking across the surface of the water with renewed urgency.  He stretched out his chakra sense and his heart sank as the four new shinobi’s chakra collided with the tangle of chakra that comprised the current battle.  

Metal flashed.  Sakura shrieked, high and anguished.  Shisui’s chakra spiked, enraged.

Wait, said Itachi’s caution, so he did not immediately throw himself into the furthest shunshin he could manage.  There was more at stake here than any single one of them. Instead he gathered his chakra as he ran, held it just below his breastbone so that just a flash of chakra would ignite his eyes, and with them a genjutsu.

Itachi blinked and his doujutsu burned into existence and in that moment in time immortalized the tableau: Haku’s senbon held like claws protruding from one shinobi’s chest through his flak jacket; Temari swinging her fan grimly over Neji’s head as he skidded backwards; Shisui with his burning fury and the path he would rip through three shinobi with fire chakra sharpening his blade; Naruto face up in the water, eyes closed and the hilt of a katana emerging from his abdomen; Sakura with crimson splattered on her mask as she lunged over his prone form; an answering bloody glow from Sasuke’s eyes.  Then Itachi cast his genjutsu and with it dissipated his Sharingan and the world sped back to real time. He landed behind the jounin facing his brother who turned too late, still entangled in Itachi’s genjutsu, and with a dispassionate jerk of his katana cut the man's throat before he could speak.

Shisui landed behind him in a spray of water, blood splattering his blade where he had scored his enemy.  “Cover me!” He snapped, and whirled. He skidded into a crouch at Naruto’s side as Sakura and Sasuke hovered above him, terrified and furious at once.

Chakra swelled; Itachi recognized it, and so did the Kiri shinobi.  The man charging at him pulled up short, eyes going wide, and was promptly bisected at the waist by one Kubikiribocho.  

Zabuza landed in a crouch among the three remaining shinobi like a fox among chickens, one hand wielding his massive blade with ease, and they scattered.  “Pursue?” The older man growled, eyes flickering after the fleeing jounin.

Itachi calculated the chances of one of them recognizing Sasuke’s nascent Sharingan for what they were.  “No survivors,” he said, heart heavy.

“Suzaku, with me,” Zabuza snarled and charged.

In the wake of his uncharacteristic brutality, Haku’s mask too dripped blood.  He reached out imperiously and his ice responded to his call. He took Temari by the shoulder and dragged her into the mirror, and she in turn gripped Neji by the arm.  An answering twinkle in the distance, and the three vanished from the surface of the ice.

Ahead of Zabuza, mist rose from the surface of the ocean, caging the three jounin between the team that exploded from the mirror ahead of them and the vengeful jounin behind.  Zabuza was fresh. The Kiri shinobi had already been in battle, were already wounded. Itachi turned away. The mist would be bloodied soon enough.

Shisui’s hands were steady as he cupped a handful of chakra above Naruto’s stomach.  Sakura leaned in closer to get a better look.

“Shi and Go, stand guard,” Itachi ordered.   “Allow Juu space to work.” Sakura backed up immediately, but Sasuke remained frozen, staring at Naruto with the tomoe in his eyes spinning, spinning, spinning.  

Itachi regretted that this would be the first scene that his younger brother remembered with crystal clarity for the rest of his life.  He crouched in front of Sasuke and reached out carefully with his chakra-sense, but there was nobody near but them. “Sasuke,” he said insistently, and his brother's unfocused eyes snapped to him.

“It hurts,” his otouto whispered, more surprised than anything else.  His fingers clenched, bunching the fabric over his heart.

“I know,” Itachi said.  “You need to cease the chakra to your eyes.”

Sasuke blinked, but his Sharingan whirled in his eyes still.

“Sasuke,” Itachi repeated.  “The battle is over.” He reached up and poked his brother’s forehead, like he had not done since, he realized, before the night of the Fall.  The familiarity of the motion was enough to jar Sasuke out of his panic and battle haze, and his Sharingan died away with one last whirl. Itachi swallowed down both relief and pride.

Pure malice billowed up from behind him like a spark caught by wind, and he tensed, spinning around and positioning himself between Sasuke and its source.  Shisui let out a surprised huff and jumped backwards. Naruto’s eyes slid open slowly and locked on Shisui, considering him with slitted red eyes.

“Shit,” Shisui muttered succinctly, voice a mixture of awe and apprehension.  

Itachi’s memory jolted with flashes of a half-remembered night of fear and the press of hatred, far more potent than even the Ichibi’s chakra the day Gaara had lost control in San’s forest.  Naruto’s lips peeled back in a snarl, and Itachi caught a glimpse of pointed fang as he sat up. In one sudden motion, the jinchuuriki reached down to the sword with a clawed hand and ripped it free.

“Hey!” Shisui snapped, lunging back forwards, but the wound was already sealing over with a bubbling miasma of raw, red chakra.

“That’s super useful,” Sakura said from behind him.  The curiosity in her voice overshadowed her trepidation.

Shisui hummed agreement, leaning back in with careful movements as Itachi watched warily.  “Okay, Naruto. Battle’s over, bud, let's turn it back down, hmm?”

For a long moment, the eerie gaze swept across each of them. Then Naruto blinked, and almost immediately the red in his eyes faded to violet, then its regular brilliant blue.  “Turn what down?” he slurred. “I wa’nt talking.” He glanced down at the katana in his hand, regarding it bemusedly. “Uh, you gave me a sword?”

Shisui, for his part, was remarkably unfazed.  “No,” he said empathetically. “You just pulled that out of your kidneys, probably.”

“Cool,” said Naruto.

“Idiot,” Sasuke snarled with particular vitriol and whirled, stalking away a few steps towards the distant mist.

“You’re covered in blood,” Sakura pointed out, morbidly fascinated.

Naruto looked down at his blood-soaked shirt.  “Huh,” he said. “That’s kind of cool. You, uh, want this?”  He waved the sword, and Shisui leaned back as it swayed dangerously close to his face.

Sakura wrinkled her nose.  “No,” she said. “Sasuke?”

Sasuke glanced over his shoulder, and Itachi could tell he did want it.  Longing warred with irritation and won. “Yeah, fine,” he said, and stalked over to take the hilt from his teammate gingerly.

“Still in a warzone, kids,” said Shisui.  He craned his neck. “Where’s Team Genbu?”

“They are recovering,” Itachi responded, tilting his head back towards the south.  Shisui blinked at him once, slowly. Itachi frowned. “They are not in danger. Relatively speaking.”  His cousin continued to stare at him, exasperation bleeding into his eye. “Ah,” said Itachi at last. Shisui believed that particular team required what he called a ‘lighter touch,’ to which Itachi freely admitted that save Sai, the team did not handle much like a traditional shinobi unit -- Gaara was too volatile, Hinata too delicate.  Shisui liked to apply what he called ‘proximity and affirmation’ and what Zabuza called ‘godsdamned coddling’ -- but never to their faces -- in order to keep them and their mental states in optimal condition, to which neither he nor Itachi could not contribute from half a kilometer away.

“Ah,” Shisui agreed dryly.  “I’ll fetch them.” He stepped into a shunshin before Itachi could respond.  From an objective standpoint, Itachi was best suited to instruct Team Genbu considering his extensive undercover work in Anbu, but Shisui’s easygoing nature elicited the best results from its members.  

In the meantime, that left Itachi with Team Byakko.  Naruto pushed himself to his feet, deliberately bumping into Sasuke, who jerked the katana at him threateningly.  Sakura set her hands on her hips and glared at them both. The team, true to form, bounced back rather quickly considering Naruto would most likely have died if not for the Kyuubi, whose chakra had materialized for the first time since its sealing almost ten years ago, and also that Sasuke had just activated his kekkei-genkai for the first time at age nine.  In fact, Itachi seemed the one most concerned by these immediate past events.

Itachi brushed these thoughts to the side and narrowed his eyes across the ocean’s surface, where the mist dissipated slowly.  Zabuza’s hulking silhouette emerged, trailed by the three slighter figures of Team Suzaku. All four were liberally splattered in blood, and Itachi’s insides clenched at the sight of the children. Turning a blind eye seemed the universal answer to war, so for the time being, Itachi quashed sentiment with practicality. “I was not expecting you to join us here,” he said to Zabuza. “Did you receive new orders?”

“No,” drawled Zabuza.  “I just wanted an excuse to spend more time with these little hellions.”  He rolled his eyes. “Yes, of course I have orders.” His eyes slid to Sasuke, who clutched his newly acquired katana closer to his chest.  “I see we’re looting bodies now.”

“Actually, Naruto pulled that out of his own body,” Shisui corrected.  He had one arm around a woozy Gaara. Hinata now had a length of bloodied cloth tied about her arm in two places and walked unassisted next to Sai.

Zabuza eyed Naruto warily, who beamed back.  “Hm,” said the Swordsman grudgingly. “I guess that’s all right then.”  The older shinobi’s strange code apparently decreed, among other things, that a swordsman who lost his sword did not deserve it.  Even if they were now dead.

“New orders?” Itachi prompted, stretching out his chakra-sense again.  Their decimation of the backup jounin squad would likely result in one of two outcomes: Kiri conceded this section of the ocean to the Hanran for the time being, having already lost three teams including at least nine Command Corps caliber shinobi; or Kiri sent a squad of Anbu or hunter-nin to take them down while they were wounded and spent.  

“You and me are temporarily reassigned to this godsforsaken corner of the ocean with this lot of heathens,” said Zabuza, folding his arms and mostly succeeding in appearing disgruntled.  “Tell you more when the munchkins aren’t around.” Sasuke aimed a glower at the man, but the redirection wasn’t enough for the real target.

Shisui stilled thoughtfully, and Itachi bit back a grimace.  If Shisui could be called the minder for the children, it seemed Zabuza and Itachi were to be the minders for Shisui.  Itachi did look forward to working with Shisui once again, but his cousin was no doubt perceptive enough to read the situation as it was.

“You’re staying?” Sakura asked with some trepidation.

Zabuza snorted, tactful enough not to look at Shisui.  “Unfortunately.”

Unfortunate they were not, as Kiri declined to send a kill squad after all.   They made landfall at dawn on a miserably muddy island, designated as Position 25-35 by the Kiri Hanran.  Itachi generally preferred to remain objective, but he disliked the island almost immediately. Inland, thin trees yawned above and draped whiplike branches down into the sludge.  Even classifying the island as ‘land’ was difficult -- the swell of the tide submerged at least half the mud and licked greedy fingers at the rest.

Even Shisui paused to stare in disgust.  “Is this a covert mission?” he asked.

Itachi considered the orders he’d received.  “Identities, yes; our presence here, no,” he concluded.

“Good.  Let’s at least make this dump habitable,” Zabuza growled.

“This is totally gross,” Naruto said gleefully, slogging along ankle-deep.  “Let’s just sleep in this!”

“No,” said Temari empathetically.

Four hours later, all nine children had effectively been bandaged, wrapped in their cloaks, and minus Gaara, were sleeping the sleep of the post-adrenaline crash.  Instead of merely mud and trees, the island now contained mud, trees, and a series of platforms raised above the former made of the branches and trunks of the latter.  They were not particularly structurally sound, and Itachi was quite sure that exsanguination by splinter would have been a legitimate concern if Gaara hadn’t recovered his capacity to harness his sand to smooth out the wood before lying down in the centermost platform and simply ceasing all movement.

The children slept separated by team on three of the platforms towards the center of the cluster.  There were six in their little city of platforms -- all completed to the bare minimum to accommodate a prone shinobi without dropping them into the mud, each with varying sizes and heights, which would need to be improved upon once their occupants regained their energy.  Itachi and Shisui shared another, for now, and on the far side, Zabuza hunched over his sword. Whether because he desired to be alone or because he wished to give the cousins some time to themselves, Itachi was not sure -- the Swordsman alternated between aggressively antisocial, indifferent, and grudgingly considerate.

Some conversations were best held in the light of the moon, when all was dark and quiet but for the murmur of another’s voice.  In a war, however, time was precious and times of peace doubly so, and Shisui -- Shisui did not soften his blows when he seized the moment, below the sun trickling through the trees above and just one meter above the mud below.

“Babysitting duty, huh?”  His voice held no accusation, only neutral observation, and his back against Itachi’s did not so much as tense.

Itachi concentrated on scrubbing the ever present blood from his mask.  “This will likely become a strategically critical position as Hanran headquarters are moved,” Itachi deflected, but that in itself was an answer and they both knew it.  

Yet Shisui persisted.  “I’m sure there’s more critical parts of this war effort that need you.”

A former Anbu captain was a valuable commodity in a war like this, where the number of chuunin outnumbered the jounin ten to one, who in turn outnumbered the Anbu ten to one.  They were squad-killers, one-man-armies, and now two of them languished here, in an isolated, newly-established outpost, as much as one could be considered ‘in’ as the island could be called an ‘outpost,’ with children who, for the most part, had seen only the edges of war, and one former-jounin former-Anbu who believed his recent promotion to captain was primarily granted to maintain his cover and those of the children.   

This, Itachi noted with clinical detachment, was a rather ugly assessment of his cousin.  One could further describe Shisui as damaged, having lost his nerve along with an eye and the year stolen from him along with other things indescribable. At night, his breathing and sleep both stuttered.  He wore his cheerfulness as a mask, when it had been genuine before -- and sometimes, Itachi looked through the cracks and something dark and bitter and unfamiliar stared back.

Just a hint of that had reared its head now, but Itachi stared it down calmly as he did any opponent.  “As strategically unimportant as this particular island may be, its position will allow myself and Momochi to assist other bases in launching targeted strikes,” he said.  He hesitated. “And perhaps the teams,” he redirected.

“Absolutely not,” Shisui snapped, undoubtedly seeing the trap but not caring enough to avoid it.

Itachi had assessed and accepted the circumstances already.  His cousin had not. “Team Suzaku is battle-ready,” he murmured.  “Momochi will want his apprentice at his side, and Temari and Neji are more or less capable of keeping pace.”

Shisui blew out a frustrated breath.  “They’re not as tough as they pretend to be,” he argued, sotto voce to keep the children from waking.  “Haku’s fine, obviously, but the others? Keep up with him and Zabuza? Haku used to be a hunter-nin, for Kami’s sake.  Even Temari never made it to genin until Hatake-taichou sort of slapped a rank on the kids en masse. And how will Neji match either of them?  He doesn’t have the stamina.”

“He is younger than them both,” Itachi pointed out.  “He will grow. Until then, his team will guard his back.”  He slid his eyes sideways, though he could only make out Shisui’s spiky hair in his peripheral.  “They are strong -- all of them -- and they have each other.”

Shisui tipped his head back with a sigh, craning his neck awkwardly until it rested on Itachi’s shoulder.  “Here I am, demanding answers from you that I already have,” he said wryly, and this time his voice was tired more than anything else.

“You care,” Itachi said simply, and it was true.  Uchiha fought and loved fiercely, and Shisui was no different.  Itachi loved his brother more than anything else, but Shisui had grown a strange attachment to all nine of the motley pack of children.  

“So do you,” Shisui said softly, and turned his head towards the clusters of slumbering children.  “I guess I just haven’t learned how to trust them yet.”

When Kombu swooped down on him, Itachi was standing out on the open water, the base at 25-35W distant enough to be just a smudge in the distance; ostensibly, he and Sasuke were on patrol.  He sensed nothing and took advantage of this to enjoy the gentle roil of water beneath his feet, the rare moment of stillness to speak with his brother alone.

“The Sharingan is both a strength and a burden.  Guard them and they will guard you,” he said, and Sasuke nodded solemnly, but not quite enough to hide the exuberant glint in his eyes.  When Itachi first awakened his Sharingan, their father had given him this speech, the words bearing in them the weight of tradition. But their father was not there, so the responsibility fell to Itachi.  “He who wields the Sharingan wields the power of illusion, holds the potential to master infinite jutsu, and possesses the ability to see the future itself.”

Sasuke nodded again, a little impatiently.  He would have heard this before a hundred times over in Konoha before he turned five.

Here, Itachi broke with tradition.  “However,” he said severely, and Sasuke’s head snapped towards him in surprise.  “The Sharingan’s illusions are not infallible, copying a jutsu does not mean you are able to perform it, and if one cannot react, seeing the future -- a future -- is useless.  Understanding these weaknesses is the key to best utilizing the Sharingan.”

Sasuke paused to absorb his words.  “So we train,” he said at last, turning over the katana in his hands.

Itachi allowed a slight smile onto his face.  “We train,” he agreed, sliding his own sword out of its sheath.  “Activate your -- ” He cut himself off abruptly, glancing up to see the black speck winging its way towards him unerringly, and lowered his blade.

Sasuke faltered, katana half-raised uncertainly.  His gaze followed Itachi’s up to the sky. “That’s Kombu,” he said with sudden realization.  “You have to go, don’t you.” A statement, rather than a question.

“Yuruse.  Forgive me, Sasuke,” Itachi said regretfully, swinging his blade up and back over his shoulder.  “Again, next time.”

He raised his forearm for the crow to perch upon when he approached.  Kombu landed, shuffling his clawed feet and beating his wings unceremoniously, and Itachi waited patiently for his summons to regain his balance.   “You have flown long and far,” he noted, taking the tiny scroll from Kombu’s beak.

Kombu cocked his head, regarding Itachi with intelligent eyes.  “Caw,” he agreed. Itachi glanced back solemnly before turning his attention to the scroll.  Kombu swivelled his head towards Sasuke interestedly.

The paper contained three sets of code, arranged in grids.  Itachi narrowed his eyes, parsing the messages as he read them.  The first contained updates to the ever-changing battle map. The second held general orders for the base.  The third detailed a raid to be undertaken by himself and Zabuza. Itachi skimmed the scroll one more time and snapped it back closed.  “Thank you,” he told Kombu sincerely. “I will summon another for the return message when necessary.”

The crow tilted back towards Itachi.  “Caw,” Kombu croaked. He flapped once and vanished in a cloud of white smoke.

Zabuza, once informed, smiled slowly, baring pointed teeth.  “Back at it, partner,” he drawled. He stood languidly, swinging Kubikiribocho back over his shoulder with indolent grace.  “When do we leave?”

Itachi spared a quick glance for Shisui, still seated in seiza on the same platform.  His cousin’s face betrayed no emotion. “Immediately,” he answered.

“Cool,” said the Swordsman, and raised his voice.  “Haku! Keep an eye on things while we’re gone. Gods know Konoha here can’t handle it by himself.”

Haku glanced up, attention taken away from the coil of wire he was untangling.  “Hai,” he said obediently, though it was clear he had little idea of what had just transpired.

“Hey,” Shisui objected, an insulted expression wiping the blankness off his face.  “I’m actually in charge of this place.”

Zabuza cast an pointed stare around the clearing, which had improved little besides adding improvised roofs over the platforms.  “Very impressive.”

“We will return tomorrow night,” Itachi informed his cousin, whose glare did not leave Zabuza’s smug face as the Swordsman wrapped his face with his customary bandages.  

“Is this top secret or can I know what you’re doing?” Shisui asked, finally turning away from Zabuza.

Itachi paused, tilting his head thoughtfully.  “I would rather inform you once we have returned,” he said truthfully.  

Shisui shrugged.  “No problem. Have fun, kids.”  

“We will,” Zabuza promised, hooking his mask over his face.

Itachi spared one last glance for Sasuke, lingering just within hearing distance.  “Practice,” he said.

“Hai,” said Sasuke, straightening.

Working with Zabuza again heralded a return to the strangely comfortable partnership that they had stumbled into when Zabuza had been released from Tsunade-sama’s tender mercies for the first time, four weeks after a desperate Haku had staged an ambush only to beg them for help and three weeks after he and Kakashi-taichou had raided one of Orochimaru’s laboratories to find a skeletal Shisui drugged out of his mind and Zabuza with half his organs outside his body.  Those first few weeks of their partnership, the Swordsman had been easily irritated, wary, and defensive, but perhaps because Itachi had not sought to treat him with anything other than professionalism, he gradually relaxed into mild abrasiveness and an easy confidence.

Despite the older man's consummate bloodlust, Itachi respected him as a shinobi.  If arrogance could be defined as misplaced confidence, Zabuza had very little. He was strong enough to afford to hold himself to a code of honor and did so diligently.  He was, of course, exceedingly brutal and sporadically homicidal, but every person had flaws, and Zabuza’s were hardly unusual for a shinobi.

Though he could not hear Itachi’s internal commentary, Zabuza’s eyes slid sideways to Itachi, who had been observing him only through his peripheral vision.  “What?” he said gruffly.

Itachi considered the probe, dismissed it as unimportant, and declined to answer.

The waves churned under their feet as the kilometers swept past.  High above them, Nori circled lazily, a barely visible speck against the blue sky.  

Itachi slowed as they approached the Hanabi-ha base, and Zabuza matched his pace.  This base squatted on an island significantly larger and drier than Shisui’s, and easily four times as many shinobi prowled its shores or lurked in the trees.  Unlike Shisui’s base, the suspicious eyes followed them even when he provided the correct passcode, drawn to their Kiri hunter-nin masks. More than one shinobi twitched, or reached for their holsters, suppressing full-body flinches at their passage.

Jounin-in-charge Nishizawa glanced up when Itachi entered the command tent, Zabuza shadowing him at his shoulder.   “Ah,” he said, eyes darting towards the jounin and chuunin team leaders already ringing the room. “You must be the specialists from Command.”

Itachi did not feel this warranted a response, so he said nothing.  Zabuza sidled in next to him, folding his arms across his chest in a simultaneously comfortable and menacing movement.  

The jounin-in-charge coughed.  “Right. So, er, would you like the rundown of the operation?”

Nishizawa seemed surprisingly high strung for the man in charge of this military operation.  Perhaps Itachi was not promoting what Shisui called ‘an encouraging atmosphere.’ Granted, this man had to be at least ten years older than Itachi and he was fairly certain that Shisui had intended that particular concept to be applied to the children, but he could see how he could transpose it here.  “Yes,” he said.

“Ah, okay,” said Nishizawa, hands unconsciously going back to the map on the table.  “The, uh, the objective is to capture a Kiri outpost that will give us an avenue of access to another base, which will lead to the stronghold on Amani Island.  Our target is an outpost eighty-five kilometers south-southwest of Amani. Intel suggests it has a skeleton garrison of eight chuunin teams and at least ten jounin.  Three teams with long-range specialists will approach from the south.” He tapped different points on the map. “Here and here, teams will engage at close range and draw out the garrison.”

Here, Nishizawa glanced up, as if just remembering Itachi’s presence. “And, er, you and your partner can launch a strike as soon the teams come out?”

Zabuza snorted.  “Long range distraction?  They won’t bother looking to see what the noise is.” Itachi glanced over, and the other man jerked his head towards the map.  Itachi dipped a shoulder.

Zabuza strode forward, and had the trio of chuunin leaders clustered at Nishizawa’s left not hastily shuffled backwards, they would have been shouldered out of the way.  “New plan,” he growled. “I charge the front; they’ll come out. Move your long range teams back and wait outside the mist for any stragglers. Close range teams penetrate the garrison as soon as they’re out.”

“Mist,” one jounin murmured thoughtfully from across the room.  In Itachi’s peripheral, she regarded Zabuza with interest.

Nishizawa tapped his fingers nervously.  “What, uh, what makes you think they’ll all come out?”

Zabuza crossed his arms.  “They’ll be terrified of me,” he said, voice smug.  

Nishizawa glanced at Itachi for clarification, perhaps to see if he would refute the assertion.

Itachi did not see the need to correct his partner, although he could understand why Nishizawa might have concerns.  Anbu thrived under covert conditions, even in times of war. Shinobi capable of dealing massive amounts of damage in an attention-attracting manner as Zabuza professed typically did not stay in black ops, instead rotating back out to the General Forces, or more likely the Command Corps, yet both he and Zabuza wore hunter-nin masks with Kiri flak jackets and held codenames identifying them as Anbu.  But that was not the only reason Zabuza had altered the plan this way. “As he says,” Itachi said eventually, when the silence had stretched on too long.

“Oh,” said the jounin-in charge blankly.  He paused and shuffled the markers on the map.  “And, er. Where will you be?”

Itachi considered the map.  “I will enter the tower from the top and work my way down to locate and eliminate those who stay.”  

Twelve pairs of eyes swung towards Itachi incredulously.  Zabuza exuded an air of amusement. “Er,” hazarded Nishizawa.  “By -- by yourself?

Itachi paused for a moment to recalculate in case he had overestimated his own abilities.  He did not believe he had. “Yes,” he said simply. “Your teams will enter from the bottom.  Once we have reached a rendezvous, your teams will maintain control of the outpost and I will move to assist my partner.”

“Okay then,” said Nishizawa, clearly dubious, but when neither he nor Zabuza faltered or commented further, turned back to the room at large.  “Let’s, uh, let’s go over individual assignments.

The nature of their operation meant that after planning, Itachi and Zabuza had roughly one hour to eat after the planning session had concluded before they would have to move into position.

Zabuza eyed the row of vats bubbling in the cooking tent perched precariously between two tall trees with a combination of curiosity and distaste.  “You eating that slop?”

Itachi did not consider himself a particularly picky eater.  However, even the rock-solid, dust-dry field rations did not consist of a watery soup with flakes of charred garlic and undercooked potatoes.  Additionally, choosing to eat the camp meal meant he would have to pass through the rows of wary shinobi lining the walls of the tent. Normally, Itachi would not so much as twitch at the thought of dining amidst the hostility, but today he was fresh from the comfortable atmosphere of Shisui’s camp and Sasuke’s company and on the brink of an operation that promised copious amounts of violence and blood.  

He drifted away from the tent, and perhaps sensing his mood, Zabuza did not comment as he followed him to the edge of the trees.  Instead, he reached into the pocket of his flak jacket and tossed something small at Itachi, who caught it instinctively. The Swordsman flicked the mask up to his nose and tugged down the bandages swathing his mouth.  “What's on your mind?” he asked gruffly

Itachi turned the ration bar over in his hands and opened it.  “You think the outpost is a trap,” he said without accusation.

Zabuza’s eyes were hidden beneath the mask, but Itachi felt the older man regarding him with no small amusement.  “Yeah? So do you.”

True.  “You did not mention that during the briefing,” he noted, tilting his mask up slightly so he could eat.

Zabuza bared his teeth in a sharklike grin.  “You didn't either,” he pointed out. “Aren't you Konoha types all about sharing?”

“Transparency is encouraged when one trusts one's comrades,” Itachi said neutrally.

Zabuza leaned back.  “Hn. So you agree that not everyone in there's as trustworthy as me.”

There was a joke in there somewhere, though Zabuza typically enjoyed and employed a more straightforward type of humor.  “A secret is best kept when there are fewer to tell it,” he said instead. “You and I are best equipped to deal with a potential trap.”

Zabuza snorted.  “The two of us are best for everything except medic and cannon fodder, kid.”

Itachi knew he reminded Zabuza of Haku, who was only three years younger than Itachi himself and had fought at his side for years the way Itachi did now, albeit with a different arrangement.  However, the war and the horrors Haku had witnessed or bourne at a young age had not yet stripped away his innocence the way it had Itachi’s, and Zabuza most definitely did not try to train Itachi.  Even still, the older shinobi seemed not to notice his slip.

Itachi let the silence stand and finished the ration bar.  Zabuza unsheathed his katana and removed a whetstone from his pouch, letting it rasp over the edge of his blade.  Zabuza’s silent killing techniques with even a regular katana were unparalleled, and his ability to inspire fear as good as a genjutsu, so while they still concealed their identities, he generally kept Kubikiribocho’s blade sealed into its hilt.  

Time ticked inexorably on.  A harried chuunin stuck his head out of the command tent and shouted, “Operation Bluebird, five minutes!”

Itachi rose with Zabuza as the older man slid his katana back into its sheath with a hiss.  Zabuza stretched leisurely, tugging his bandages back up and his mask back down. “Let’s go,” he growled.

The target outpost perched atop a rocky buff, a hundred meters up from the waves that lapped at the base of the island.  Itachi could not see the other teams from his position, only Nishizawa and Zabuza beside him. Nori perched on his shoulder, ruffling her feathers fussily.  

“Once the operation starts, I’ll, er, signal you when the garrison clears out as much as they will,” said Nishizawa, squinting off in the direction of one of the other teams, who included the only sensor-nin for the operation, a chakra sensor of middling power.  “You have -- ten?” He glanced at Itachi.

“Ten is sufficient,” Itachi agreed placidly.

“Ten minutes before I signal the rest of the teams,” finished Nishizawa.  “Er, Hana-An-031? Whenever you’re ready.”

“I’m ready,” said Zabuza with malicious cheerfulness.  His eyes slid over to Itachi. “Don’t take too long,” he added.  He turned purposefully and charged.

Nishizawa huffed out a surprised breath at his abrupt departure.  “He’s, uh, he’s a kenjutsu specialist, he said?”

Broadly speaking, that was correct, but that was not the question Nishizawa was really asking.  “My partner is skilled in a variety of techniques,” Itachi answered instead, watching as the ocean swelled in front of Zabuza.  A massive water dragon reared out of the waves and slammed into the foremost tower, sending stone and water flying as it spent itself against the tower wall.

“Oh,” said Nishizawa faintly.  “That -- that’ll get their attention.”

“I will leave now,” Itachi announced.  Nori croaked and hopped over to Nishizawa’s shoulder, who flinched and nearly went for a kunai.  “Inform Nori when you have the signal.”

“Right,” said the jounin, rolling his eyes to the side to stare at the crow without moving the rest of his body.

Itachi slipped across the water as another of Zabuza’s jutsu battered the outpost.  One after the other, tiny black figures swarmed from its walls and dropped over the side of the cliff to meet Zabuza’s charge.  The ocean roiled beneath them as tendrils of waters erupted to combat Zabuza’s second dragon. Zabuza’s chakra swelled and mist seeped upwards from the surface of the water, and soon all the combatants were lost to sight.  

Itachi did not want to risk detection with undue chakra expulsion, even with Zabuza’s chakra-laden mist obscuring the battlefield, so he ran atop the waves to the side of the island rather than shunshin.  He paused at the base of the cliff, pressed against the rock face as unobtrusively as was feasible, and waited.

Two more chakra signatures flared as they dropped into the mist.  The clash of metal on metal echoed across the water, and then Itachi’s eyes caught a black shape winging into the air.  

He reached out with his chakra-sense.  His senses were not attuned enough to determine how many remained in the outpost, and there seemed to be a chakra dampener in effect, but he suspected there were still at least three full teams inside, and likely as many as five.  He straightened and leapt up onto the rock face, sprinting up the side even as it transitioned from natural stone into the rough-hewn wall of the guard tower. He flowed over the top and unsheathed his katana in one movement, Sharingan spinning to life in his eyes.  

Three shinobi stood guard, two with swords ready and one with kunai and wire; Itachi forestalled all their attacks by snaring them in a genjutsu.  

The mind of the first shinobi -- the oldest, with kunai already brandished -- bent under his attack, and both the kunai and the coil of wire dropped from nerveless fingers.  Itachi strode forward unhurriedly as the man crumbled to the ground, eyes open and unseeing. The second, a kunoichi, snarled, trembling head to toe with her sword gripped tightly in both hands as she fought to break free.  Itachi brought his katana up and stabbed her through the chest with one quick, short thrust.

She choked, the breath stuttering in her lungs, and Itachi reached up to grip her shoulder as he slid his blade back out.  He caught her as she fell backwards, lowered her the rest of the way to the roof. Her eyes drifted to meet his, hatred and fear and confusion in equal parts until those too faded as her life did.  

Killing intent bubbled into the air as the last shinobi threw off the remaining tendrils of genjutsu.  He tracked Itachi as he stood, eyes lingering briefly on his fallen teammates. “I’ll kill you,” he promised, sweeping his katana up.

Itachi did not justify that with a response.  Instead, he darted forward, sending the blade in front of himself with lightning speed.   Fall of the Mourning Dove .  His katana deflected off the other shinobi’s, and he whirled in a quick step and one-two flick-slash.   Dawn Sparrow’s Cry.  

The other shinobi parried both easily, flowing easily into a waist-height slash at Itachi that he recognized from one of the more difficult styles Kiri favored -- Hunt of the Northern Tiger .  He flickered out of the way, but even with the foresight granted by his doujutsu Itachi had no intention of constraining the fight to kenjutsu.  This close, the other man could not miss the Sharingan whirling lazily as Itachi glanced up from beneath the mask.

The other man’s eyes widened in recognition as he looked him full in the eyes.  “Uchiha Ita -- ”

Itachi’s genjutsu caught hold of him, freezing his limbs and giving Itachi the opportunity to slide his blade up into the shinobi’s ribcage.  The man collapsed with a muted thump.

Itachi withdrew his blade and scrutinized the rest of the outpost roof.  The wind blew in from the ocean, ruffling the clothing on the three crumpled bodies littering the roof.  He sensed no one else near him.

The door to the stairwell hung ajar.  He stepped towards it, then paused. A seal pulsed on the wall above the stairs, and he examined it carefully.  Alarm seal? Trap seal? Itachi had no great experience with seals; as far as he knew, very few in Hanabi-ha were proficient enough to recognize anything other than a summoning seal or explosive seal besides Kakashi-taichou.  With other seals, the structure and design varied widely, such that Itachi could only identify the seals he himself had used in the past, which had been created by an actual seal practitioner.

He tilted his head to consider the seal from a different angle.  Ah. He recognized this one. He had seen it before, in a base far to the north.  He gathered fire chakra in one gloved hand and touched it to the seal. The wall cracked beneath his touch, the edges of the seal itself flickering and burning away to ash.  He stretched out with his chakra-sense, and this time, he could sense the chakra signatures of the Kiri teams within.

To borrow one of Zabuza’s favored statements, it was time to hunt.  He flicked the blood off his blade and proceeded down the stairs. The narrow hallways would hamper the swing of his sword, so he sheathed it back over his shoulder.  He did not need a blade.

A flash of killing intent betrayed his first assailant, lunging out of a doorway with a shout.  Itachi leaned backwards to avoid the tanto swinging for his face, batted aside the flat of the blade with one hand in a movement that must have appeared careless, and caught him in a genjutsu of licking flames and cold steel and innumerous figures stalking him from the shadows.  Itachi stepped around the man, struck motionless and dumb with his blade hanging by his side, and walked onwards. Behind him, no more than three paces later, he heard the soft thud and clatter as the body hit the ground.

He opened the next door he encountered.  Small and barren, it boasted a narrow window overlooking the sea.  Itachi ventured over, glancing down at the heavy mist that carpeted the waves, blocking them from view.  He moved on. In the hallway, the Sharingan revealed to him the glow of another seal, which faded from view when he deactivated the doujutsu.  

He could sense muffled chakra signatures in the floors below him still; in conjunction with its positioning, he reasoned it could not be for privacy -- more likely a trap seal.  He formed a clone and retreated back down the hallway as it advanced, allowing the Sharingan to swirl in his eyes once again. He turned back into the room and closed the door. No sooner had it clicked shut than a concussive blast tore down the hallway, rattling the door.  After a moment, Itachi opened it and proceeded through the smoke once again.

A gaping hole yawned where the seal had been, the walls of either side cratered, and the ceiling dripped rock and dust.  Itachi paused, straining his eyes into the particle-choked air, but saw nothing. He leapt over the hole and continued down the hallway.  The silence settled heavily but for the whistle of wind through the window slots, unbroken by his noiseless footsteps.

He opened three more doors and found two storage rooms and a bathroom before reaching the opposite stairwell.  Three steps down, the air changed, and he twisted sharply out of the way as an oversized kunai buried itself into the wall next to his head.

Clawed hands slammed out of the stone behind him, gripping him fast and immobilizing his limbs as they pulled him into the wall.  He blinked and flipped the genjutsu on its original wielder, drawing out a prolonged scream from the kunoichi as the illusionary rock crushed her legs; in the same moment, he substituted a clone that splashed to the floor as the foremost shinobi stabbed it in the neck.  He alighted behind the third shinobi, whose douton went wide as he jerked in surprise. A giant boulder crashed into the opposite wall, flushing a fourth shinobi out from behind it.

Suiton: Mizurappa.  Itachi inhaled and blasted the entire team backwards, the burst of water hammering them relentlessly into the stairwell.  It left behind only the drip of water and the blood rushing in his ears. He stepped forward, gathering a genjutsu behind his eyes.   Two bodies lay broken on the stairs -- the doton and genjutsu wielders.

A figure lunged through the wall beside him as if it were merely liquid, and Itachi dodged a kunai blade the length of his arm.  He snagged the shinobi by the wrist as he flew past and slammed him into the opposite wall, squeezing until he was forced to drop the blade.  The other man snarled, flipping a kunai out of his holster and hurling it underhanded at Itachi, who let go and stepped back to avoid it.

The shinobi drew a kunai in either hand and lunged.  At the same time, the fourth shinobi materialized out of a shunshin at his back, already swinging a katana with the intent to behead him.  Itachi unleashed his genjutsu, potent from the time and chakra spent building it, and both froze in their tracks as Itachi fueled a false battle that would end in both of their deaths.  He skirted them both and continued down the hallway. By his estimate, the Hanabi-ha teams would commence their approach in a little under four minutes, and if there was a trap to be sprung, Itachi needed to be present in order to neutralize it.  

He tripped two more trap seals -- one that launched a flurry of shuriken and senbon, another that turned the floor to molten lava -- and cleared the abandoned barracks before descending the stairs once more.  

Two minutes.  Itachi wove another genjutsu as he turned into the mess hall, casting it out before him like a net.

Immediately, he leapt up onto the ceiling to avoid the jets of water crashing to the floor from the side, piling unmoored tables against the far wall, and ran upside down as a barrage of kunai peppered his footsteps.  He reached for his katana and leapt, corkscrewing down on a kunoichi who unsheathed her sword and slashed in one fluid movement. Itachi parried, bearing down on her, but her partner flashed behind him with his own blade upraised and he was forced to jump clear.

His eyes flickered to the side and he had half a second to substitute a clone, which was promptly buried under a douton slamming a hail of boulders into the ground.  He created three more clones and slipped away from the battle to the rafters.

Itachi observed the team intently.  The ninjutsu specialist coordinated fluidly with the kenjutsu specialists, spitting bullets of water when Itachi’s clones evaded them.  One hit a clone, pinning it to the ground, and a kunai from the fourth shinobi dispelled it before Itachi’s second clone pounced, scoring him from sternum to hip.  As he watched, a third swordsman vaulted through the window from the kitchen, beheading the clone.

Five shinobi.  Not a squad of four -- two jounin trios?  Itachi’s eyes darted to the side.

A kunoichi leered back at him, eyes half-hidden under kelp-green bangs.   “Hello, traitor,” she purred, and five bunshin bubbled into existence, surrounding him.  “ Dance of the Moonlight Crane .”

Itachi dropped from the rafters, but the bunshin followed, diving after him with blades drawn.  He landed on a table in a crouch, willing two more clones into existence, and the three scattered as the kunoichi’s clones landed among them in a flurry of steel.  

Itachi blocked one blade with his own, but his riposte was batted aside by a second before it touched the clone.  Movement flashed in the corner of his eye, and he leapt straight up as spikes of rock lanced up from the floor, then to the side as a handful of senbon hissed past.  He alighted in the rafters and spat a Suiton: Sugadan .  The ninjutsu user dodged, but one of the swordsman was slammed into the wall with a cry.  

The green-haired kunoichi lunged over a table, cold intent in the glint of her eyes, and Itachi substituted himself across the room, burying his blade in the hapless long-rage specialist’s back.  

“Toguta!” cried the first swordswoman, drawing a kunai in her free hand and charging.  The man choked and slid off his katana, and Itachi stepped into a short-range shunshin to avoid her.

The green-haired kunoichi’s clones pounced on him in a flash, and he caught their blades on his.  A sinkhole opened beneath him; Itachi leapt backwards and inhaled involuntarily as he plunged directly into a sphere of water that weighed his limbs and constricted his lungs.  The kunoichi landed next to the clone that had captured him. “Gotcha,” she whispered. Itachi felt the last of his clones dispel dispassionately.

The room, uniform and uncluttered at his first entry, bore the scars of their battle.  Water puddled and dripped along the cracked floor. Blades protruded from broken rafters, and one shinobi knelt over the one Itachi had wounded.  The first swordswoman cradled the head of the one he had killed in her lap.

Itachi watched passively beneath lidded eyes as the tallest swordsman stepped forward, twirling the hilt of his sword easily in one hand.  Rage and malice festered in his eyes as he glanced around the room at his fallen teammates, and the green-haired kunoichi stepped back to give him room.  “You’re finished,” the shinobi sneered. With a sharp thrust, he slammed his blade into the water prison, through bone and flesh alike into Itachi’s chest.

“No,” said Itachi, and opened his eyes, stepping out of his genjutsu.

The water vanished, the ceiling where the kunai had been embedded was smooth and unblemished.   The first three shinobi stood frozen in their ambush positions, one clutching a wound that existed only in his mind; the fourth lay prone on the ground -- dead.  When he reached out, he sensed the chakra of the fifth in the far corner of the room, and the sixth yet in the kitchen. He glanced around, and each of the Kiri-nin met his eyes with horror in theirs.  

One minute.  “Let us begin,” he said.

Jounin Chiaki, identification Hana-Shi-057, leader of the three incursion teams, skidded into the doorway and paused.  Itachi deactivated his Sharingan at her approach and glanced up, sliding his katana out of the sixth shinobi, the green-haired kunoichi.  He spared a quick look around at the rest of the room. Most of the tables had been shoved up against the edges of the room, but some still sat in neat rows.  Bodies lay sprawled as if tossed by a child who no longer wanted to play, some in pools of blood and some not. Only a little water puddled in the center of the room; the ninjutsu user who had survived his genjutsu had spent too much chakra for an effective defense.  

She eyed the room and then Itachi himself, standing unbloodied at the center of the carnage.  “We’ve secured the base, uh, sir -- ? Eight hostiles neutralized.”

Itachi understood her confusion.  He had identified himself as an operative rather than a captain, and operatives held an ambiguous position in the Hanabi-ha hierarchy -- all Anbu ranked above the Guntai, and all captains ranked above the Shirei-bu, but depending on the shinobi, Anbu operatives could rank either above or below a jounin.  He nodded. “Fourteen hostiles neutralized. Upper floors should be clear, but proceed with caution.”

Eight neutralized, and no sign of a trap.  

“Chiaki,” he said, when she turned to go.  “What of the battle outside?”

She hesitated.  “We can’t really tell what’s going on inside the mist,” she said.  “Long range teams have eliminated a total of three shinobi when they left the mist and wounded another two who reentered.”

“Understood,” said Itachi, and Chiaki nodded awkwardly before vanishing into the hallway.  

Where was the trap?  Itachi stepped over the fallen shinobi and entered the hallway, where he passed the rest of Chiaki’s team on his way to the next set of stairs.  Indeed, the bottom floor was empty as the second Hanabi-ha team prowled up the stairs as he descended.

Three floors, and Itachi had yet to find the command center.  In the ground floor hallway he encountered a training room, a weapons and supply room, another bathroom, and a front-facing sentry room, in which clustered the third incursion team, watching the mist intently.  

He turned back out into the hallway and activated his Sharingan again for a closer examination, pacing back down towards the stairs.  He paused outside the training room, his attention caught by a slight glow that vanished when he stopped. If he tilted his head just a little -- there.  A flicker of chakra, nearly hidden. Even a chakra-muting seal emitted chakra when active.

He stepped forward, pacing across the empty room until he reached the edge of the seal, then crouched and reached out.  With a touch of chakra, he peeled it back to reveal a trapdoor and the much larger chakra lurking inside. From down the hall and the floors above, he sensed the alarmed agitation of the other teams’ chakra as he dropped inside.

Explosive tags liberally wallpapered the covert command room, maps had been hastily torn from the walls and scattered across the floor, and in the center of the room, a Kiri shinobi bared his teeth at Itachi over hands already folded into the snake seal.  “Boom, motherfucker,” he snarled, and his chakra lit the room in a concussive blast, and even as Itachi flinched backwards, he could feel his very flesh ripping apart as the building collapsed in on top of them --

He tore himself out of the genjutsu, chest heaving as he struggled to regain his composure.  In front of him, the Kiri shinobi’s face froze in the rictus of a grimace, hands ready to activate the seal but his chakra dormant.  Itachi walked forward, bearing down harder on the man’s mind with his genjutsu. Carefully, he reached forward and beheaded him in one quick slash.  The head fell one way, the body the other. With a silent sigh, he let his doujutsu fade once more.

“Good gods,” breathed Chiaki behind him.  Itachi turned to see her and her team crowding the opening in the ceiling. “That many explosive tags could have dropped the entire island into the sea.”  

Itachi nodded once in agreement, the vision of the future that could have been still lurking at the forefront of his mind.

“Suicide attack,” said Chiaki’s second grimly.  “We can clean this up, sir.”

“Go ahead,” said Chiaki, casting one last glance into the room before leaning back.  Her three team members dropped down, giving Itachi a wide berth as he slipped past them to leap out.  

He caught up with Chiaki in the hallway, and she paused, half-turning.  “I intend to assist my partner,” he informed her.

The jounin nodded.  “We have the base,” she said.  “I’ll signal Nishizawa and let him know.”

Itachi strode down the hallway, past the team still huddled in the sentry room, and walked straight out of the base.  The wind buffeted him as he stepped foot outside, ruffling the dry, flattened grass as he stepped to the edge of the cliff.  He paused for a moment, glancing over his shoulder, and caught sight of the Hanabi-ha teams perched on the outpost roof, watching, and another moving on the far side of the base.  

He faced forward again, narrowing his eyes as he scrutinized the base of the cliff.  Itachi crouched and leaped off the edge, flaring his chakra once sharply as he plummeted into the thick bank of mist coiled below.

Itachi did not bother to activate his Sharingan.  It could not penetrate this mist, so there was no use.  He landed with a light splash, having misjudged the distance to the surface with the lack of visibility, and immediately ghosted away from the site of impact.  Zabuza’s dominion was one of slow, deliberate movements, an unnaturally muffled silence, and oppressive, omniscient menace. Itachi slid the hilt of his sword into a backhanded grip and prowled forward.

His eyes darted to the side as they caught movement, and he forced himself not to tense as a figure loomed out of the mist.  Zabuza’s posture oozed satisfaction, and the blade of his katana dripped blood. “You’re late, he growled, and his voice echoed.  If he had not been standing in front of Itachi, he would have been hard-pressed to locate the source. “There are only two little rabbits left.”

Itachi tilted his head apologetically.  “You have this well in hand,” he noted. “You do not need my assistance.  Finish toying with your prey and end this.”

Zabuza snorted and his grip on the mist loosened.  “Meh. I was getting bored anyways. You can get one,” he said magnanimously, and vanished into the thinning mist.

Itachi did not particularly care to ‘get’ one, but it seemed the fastest way to end this mission.  He raised his katana grimly.

True to his word, he and Zabuza reached the welcoming muddy embrace of the base at 25-35W by the time the first stars bloomed in the infinite black.  Gaara met them some forty meters out from the shore, regarding them birdlike with a tilted head. Itachi was not quite sure what the appropriate response here was, but fortunately, Zabuza had no such reservations.

“Hey, midget,” he said gruffly.  “Anyone else up?”

A pause.  Gaara dipped his head in a slight nod.

“Shisui?”  Another nod.  “Anyone else?”  He shook his head.  “Cool,” said Zabuza.  “I’m beat. Have fun out here.”  He sauntered towards the island.

Itachi hesitated and reached out to pat Gaara’s hair carefully before following the Swordsman.  

Shisui did not rise at their approach, but he did set down the oiled cloth he’d been running over the blade of his tanto.  “Good mission?”

Zabuza thumped down on his platform, yanking the mask off his face.  “Yeah,” he grunted, hooking it onto his belt. “Short and broody here foiled a suicide bomber.”

Shisui coughed a surprised laugh, and Itachi frowned, reaching up to remove his own mask.  “My height is within typical parameters for my age,” he pointed out. “Yours is the abnormal one.”

“Brat,” Zabuza snapped halfheartedly.

“Settle down, children,” said Shisui, eye twinkling gleefully.  “Don’t make me separate you.”

Zabuza rolled his eyes.  “Got anything to eat? That camp had jack shit.”

“That camp had a serviceable soup containing salted pork and potatoes,” Itachi corrected, though he had declined it as well.

“And charcoal,” Zabuza muttered.

Shisui jerked his chin towards one of the other platforms, which now boasted three walls and a slanted roof.  “Food supplies in there,” he said. “Think the kids might have left some fish stew in the pot, but who knows? Naruto eats like a wolf in winter.”  

“That brat,” Zabuza complained without venom, but slid off towards the supply platform anyways.

Wearily, Itachi raised his eyes to Shisui’s, which reflected wry understanding back at him before movement caught his attention from the edge of his vision. “Ohaiyo, Sasuke,” Itachi said quietly, watching his brother struggle upright.  

“Aniki,” Sasuke greeted, voice rough with sleep.  “You’re back.”

“Aa,” Itachi agreed.  “The mission is over.”

“I trained,” Sasuke offered.  “Shisui-nii helped me with the Sharingan.”  He paused hopefully. “Can I show you?”

Itachi hesitated.  “Now?”

“Let your brother rest, Sasuke-kun,” Shisui cut in kindly, and Sasuke’s shoulders slumped.

“No, I don’t mind,” Itachi said, suddenly desperate for some sense of peace after the bloodshed of the past few days.  

Shisui frowned up at him as he rose.  “You ran I don't know how far after fighting I don't know how long and spending who knows how much chakra.”  He stopped and shook his head. “Just be careful,” he said, instead of dissuading him.

Itachi widened his eyes slightly.  “Of course,” he said with just enough injury that Shisui rolled his visible eye.  “Come, Sasuke.”

Sasuke sprang up eagerly, tripping over Naruto in his haste, who rolled over and said something like, “Mushroom jungle buys midautumn turtle more sake thatch,” before letting out a surprisingly quiet burp.  Sasuke flushed, and Itachi strongly suspected he would have kicked his teammate if Itachi had not been present.

Itachi turned and led the way back out onto the water, stopping roughly halfway between the camp and where Gaara stood sentry, and faced his brother.  “Show me what you have learned,” he invited, and ignited the chakra to awaken his Sharingan.

An answering glow from Sasuke’s eyes mirrored his, and he watched as his brother palmed a kunai.  He charged, and Itachi let him come. He slipped to the side to avoid his first strike, but that too Sasuke could see and he twisted in a low kick meant to knock Itachi’s legs from under him.

Of course, using the same doujutsu meant that Itachi could see the movements Sasuke intended to make as much as if not more than his brother could see his.  This turned the spar into a choreographed dance, where each knew what the other would do some three to four moves in advance.

Sasuke’s movements were fluid as he dodged Itachi’s jab and retaliated with a jab -- comfortable already with the foresight granted by the Sharingan.  Itachi spared a moment for the fond pride that warmed his chest and then conspired to disturb his otouto’s footing: he changed his mind.

The first time Sasuke stumbled, his brow furrowed.  The second time, he lunged past Itachi, who had aborted a sidestep halfway instead of completing the step and parrying Sasuke’s strike as he had originally intended.  His eyes widened and then narrowed, and the tomoe in his eyes spun wildly as he forwent his next attack to crouch some four meters away from Itachi, watching him warily.

“The Sharingan shows you one future,” said Itachi, allowing him the respite as he himself straightened.  “To trust in it unconditionally is irresponsible and unwise.”

Sasuke frowned thoughtfully and lunged in a burst of speed that Itachi’s Sharingan had not predicted.  He allowed himself a small smile -- his brother was learning. The spar morphed into game of chess, an analysis of the could-be futures where either did not fight fully in the present but in the possibilities.

When Itachi felt the pull on his chakra reserves, he changed course abruptly and pulled back from the fight, raising his hand to call the fight to a stop.  “Yuruse, Sasuke,” he said, as his brother skidded to a halt, the bright glint in his eyes dimming slightly. “I cannot spare any more chakra.”

Itachi’s heart twisted as Sasuke’s face fell, but his brother slid his kunai back into its holster.  “I understand,” he said. “Thank you for training with me, Aniki.”

“Not at all,” said Itachi.  He turned back towards the camp, but Sasuke did not follow.  He paused.

Sasuke jerked a thumb out across the water, where Gaara still stood motionless.  “I’m going to go keep Gaara company,” he said. “It’s not really fair that he does all the guard rotations just ‘cause he doesn’t sleep.”

“Good idea,” said Itachi, slightly surprised despite himself.  On impulse, he stretched out a hand and tangled it in Sasuke’s hair just briefly before he left.  “I will see you later.”

Though Zabuza was still crashing around the food supplies remarkably quietly, Shisui had since retreated to one of the platforms clearly designated as sleeping quarters.  Reminiscent of the quarters they had shared with Kakashi-taichou in Tetsu, the platform now boasted two raised racks that could comfortably hold two each. Shisui, wrapped in his sleeping bag, had laid claim to one on the top row.  He had carried in Itachi’s pack as well, and that sat neatly on the rack next to him.

Itachi removed his sandals before joining him, spreading his own sleeping bag to his cousin’s steady breaths.  He took pains to do so quietly, but Shisui rolled over nonetheless and cracked open his eye. “I did not mean to disturb you,” Itachi said apologetically.

“Didn’t,” countered Shisui, his voice only a little sleep-rough.  He watched Itachi’s preparations through a slitted eye. “He’s been waiting for you to do that,” he informed Itachi.

Itachi slid himself into the folds of his sleeping bag.  “To train him in the Sharingan?” he queried.

Shisui snorted. “No.  Yeah. Sure.”

Itachi blinked, but his cousin did not clarify, as was his wont.

He heaved a sigh.  “These kids really look up to you, Itachi-kun,” he said instead, the words half-slurred.

“I am aware,” Itachi said blankly.

Shisui shook his head at him ruefully, and Itachi again felt the impression that he had missed his cousin’s point.  “Here. Got you something,” he said, and fished something out of the blankets around him.

Itachi frowned at his outstretched hand and did not move.  “Where did you put that?”

“Nowhere gross, you punk,” Shisui grumbled.  “C’mon take it.”

Itachi proffered his hand obediently.  “What is it?” he asked, examining it cautiously.

“Not much,” said Shisui, rolling onto his back and draping an arm over his eyes.  “I know you hate getting weapons and stuff on your birthday, so -- happy sweet sixteen.”

Itachi closed his fingers around it carefully, cradling its warmth in his hand.  “Shisui,” Itachi said seriously, and his cousin tilted his head to glance at him beneath heavy lids.  “Thank you.”

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT D-113

Operative Cat-15 reports all well with all targets and allies.  Nutrition has improved by instructing targets and allies in acquisition of resources, including: trapping, foraging, and pickpocketing.  Instruction in concealment in urban and uninhabited environments progressing well. New temporary base of operations established; all targets and allies instructed on course of action in event of attack.

Course of action: Continue to evade all pursuers if possible, evaluate and monitor current abilities of all targets and allies, and provide critique and techniques to improve as necessary, including: techniques for acquiring food covertly or in an uninhabited environment; concealment in urban and uninhabited environments; defensive and offensive maneuvers.

Contact made with enemy combatants, origin: Konohagakure.  Operative Cat-15 eliminated all covertly without sustaining injury to self, targets, or allies.  Imminent departure of Operative Cat-15 may prove necessary to draw away potential pursuers and/or backup team.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

Naruto had a problem.  Okay, it wasn’t really a problem, more like a change.  He could call it a new roommate, really.

Except, you know, one without a body.  One that he imagined kind of growled a little bit and lurked at the back of his mind and made him angry sometimes, like angry Gaara angry but Itachi-sensei called it Ichibi.  But Gaara’d had the Ichibi since he was born, and Naruto’s only had his angry voice since like, two weeks ago and he’d only heard -- or felt, really -- the one time.  And yeah, Itachi-sensei said the Ichibi was actually like a demon, not a sickness or something, and that Naruto had one too called Kyuubi, but he wasn’t supposed to talk about it.  

And one time in San’s forest Kakashi-taichou had said that his parents -- Naruto’s parents! -- had made him eat the demon fox because the demon fox had wanted to eat Konoha.  Kakashi-taichou was scary and kind of shifty in general and Naruto didn’t really know much about the guy but he didn’t really think the captain would lie to him because, like, he was the captain.  Plus he knew Naruto’s parents! He wouldn’t tell him who they were even though Naruto really, really wanted to know because it was super secret and dangerous and Naruto wasn’t strong enough to know yet even though he and Sakura-chan and Sasuke had totally taken down an actual jounin that one time mostly by themselves.  

So anyways Naruto guessed he’d had this Kyuubi thing since he was a baby too but it was maybe it was sleeping all the time before and now it was only mostly sleeping.  But now he had this feeling of not being alone, which was kind of nice but totally weird because weren’t you supposed to be the only one in your head?

“Hey!” Sakura-chan shoved him, sending him wobbling across the ocean surface.  “Were you paying attention at all?” she demanded.

Naruto’s eyes darted between her and Sasuke, who was scowling again under the metal crap covering half his face, that bastard.  “Yes?” he hazarded.

Sakura-chan crossed her arms kind of like how Zabuza-sensei did but not as scary because she was way shorter than him.  “Really,” she said.

Ah crap.   She totally didn’t believe him.  “We were talking about -- ” he glanced around wildly for any idea of what she could have been saying, “ -- the mission?”

Sasuke snorted, and Naruto shot him a glare as best he could without actually moving his head.

Sakura-chan took a deep breath and her ears turned a little red the way they did when she was mad but trying to act like she wasn’t.  “Yes,” she said. “What about the mission?”

Naruto wracked -- wracked, what a weird word -- his brains, but nothing.  He slumped. She was totally going to lecture. “Sakura-chan,” he whined. “It was taking too long!  We’re just picking up supplies!”

Sakura-chan actually vibrated with anger.  “This is our first solo mission!” she hissed.  “The other teams both did it successfully. We can’t screw up.  How would we ever face everyone else?”

“If we screw up, we’ll probably be dead, so we won’t have to face them,” Sasuke inserted helpfully.  His voice was muffled under the rebreather Itachi-sensei had given him to disguise his face when they first started running supply missions.  Naruto didn't think he needed a reason to talk even less, but Sasuke insisted it was part of disguise.

“Karasu-sensei would totally kill you if you died,” Naruto said speculatively, because they -- pretty much him and Temari-nee -- had decided to name Itachi-sensei after the crows he could apparently summon that pretty much only Sasuke had ever seen and was kind of stuck up about and who also didn’t like the nickname that much but was stuck with it because that made Naruto like it more and also he didn’t have a better codename thought up.  Also, the ‘kill him’ bit was true. Itachi-sensei would be pissed .  Like glare disapprovingly pissed, because Itachi-sensei kind of didn’t emote and Naruto definitely never saw him look angry.  Just, like mildly disappointed.

“That doesn’t even make sense, idiot,” Sasuke said dismissively, and Naruto bristled.  Who was he calling idiot? Idiot.

“Boys,” Sakura-chan said loudly before he could retort.  “The mission.”

Naruto was about to sigh really loudly but then remembered that Sakura-chan was still kind of pissed.

“Yeah, we got it,” Sasuke grunted.  

“We don’t have anyone with the right doujutsu -- ” Sakura-chan began.

Sasuke stiffened and Naruto cackled.  “Hey,” he snapped.

Sakura-chan shrugged unrepentantly.  “Sorry, Sasuke,” she said. “S’not like you can use that outside battle.”

Sasuke crossed his arms.  “Well, we don’t have the right jinchuuriki either,” he snipped.

Naruto’s jaw dropped.  He wasn’t even part of that argument!  “I can’t help it!” he complained. Stupid Gaara with all that stupid sand under the ocean.  What did the Kyuubi thing ever given him, besides Sasuke’s sword?

“The point,” Sakura-chan bulldozed on, “is we don’t have a way to tell if someone’s sneaking up on us like the other teams do, so we have to be extra vigilant.”

Naruto screwed up his face.  “Why do we gotta be extra villainous?”

“Vigilant,” corrected Sakura-chan.  “Extra careful and quiet so we can see or hear if anyone tries to attack us.”

“Let’s go.” Sasuke fidgeted with the hilt of his sword impatiently.  He didn’t have a sheath for it so he kind of just used an extra belt to swing it behind him at his waist.  Personally, Naruto thought that was a stupid idea because it could slice his butt open if he fell backwards or sat on it or something, but that was Sasuke’s problem and Naruto would probably just laugh at him if that happened.  “Stick to codenames from here on out. I’ll take point, Go, take rear. Roku -- ” He eyed Naruto critically, and Naruto bristled. “ -- try not to be too loud.” He turned and took off, sprinting flat out across the waves, and Naruto rushed to follow.

“I can be quiet when I want,” Naruto muttered mutinously.  He plucked at the bandages swathing the bottom half of his face.  He thought it was a stupid disguise, though not as stupid as Sasuke’s; these bandages that made him look a little like Zabuza-baka-sensei and the hair dye that made his hair like Gaara’s but more brown, but Itachi-sensei said all the strong shinobi would recognize the marks of the Kyuubi on his face so now he had to wear them all the time.  At least he didn’t have to bleach or cut his hair, though, like Sakura-chan and Sasuke both did. Sakura-chan was lucky -- she and Haku were the only ones who didn’t have to hide any of their faces.

Apparently people in Kiri knew Haku was always with Zabuza-sensei, but for some reason nobody seemed to recognize him, and nobody was really trying to kill Sakura-chan other than the ones who wanted all of them dead anyways.

Most of the rest of them got by with a little waterproof makeup, or sunglasses in Neji and Hinata-chan’s case.  Naruto wished they could wear their Yorozoku masks, but Shisui-sensei said that could make people think they were Anbu and then Kiri might send actual Anbu to kill them and Naruto was strong but he wasn’t stupid -- he knew they at least needed Gaara or Haku to try and take on an Anbu.  Or Sai, he guessed, since Sai used to be an Anbu trainee so he was probably pretty good.

But Naruto was super strong now!  He was learning so much stuff they didn’t teach at the Academy, because even though he’d been there like four whole months or something all they did was teach stuff in books and how to throw a kunai or throw a punch or something.  He could do real ninja things like taijutsu and super secret forbidden ninjutsu and walking on water! Running on water! Even though that last bit took him like half a year to get really good at, which Zabuza-sensei said was because his chakra control was ‘ah-troh-shus,’ which Shisui-sensei said meant it ‘needed work.’

The important part was that he could do it, which meant that Team Byakko was in business!  Naruto loved the wind rushing through his hair, battering the upper part of his face that didn’t have the bandages.  The sunlight glinted off the water, and he probably would have been blinded if he hadn’t squinted his eyes a little like Gaara did when he was tired but couldn’t sleep because Gaara never slept because if he did sleep then the demon would take over his body and literally nobody wanted that.

Ahead of him, Sasuke veered off a little, angling away from the sun.  Naruto didn’t entirely know what direction they were supposed to be going, so he followed his teammate.

Naruto tilted his head up and inhaled deeply, like the captain did sometimes when he was trying to track something, but unfortunately, Naruto didn’t have super-smell or super hearing or even super vision so all he could smell was the bandages and the overpowering wet-seaweed ocean smell.  

He threw a glance over his shoulder, because Sakura-chan sometimes couldn’t keep up very well because her stamina and chakra stores were ‘ah-bis-mol’ according to Zabuza-sensei and ‘on the small side’ according to Shisui-sensei.  Sakura-chan glanced back at him, puzzled, so he grinned under the bandages and waved at her cheerfully before whipping his head back around to make sure Sasuke hadn’t taken advantage of his distraction to shunshin or something because Itachi-sensei taught him how to do that the other day and Naruto hadn’t figured it out yet but Sasuke could go like fifteen meters if he had enough time to prepare the jutsu and Naruto wouldn’t put it past him to pull a fast one when he wasn’t looking.   He hadn’t. Slightly disappointed, Naruto drooped and mentally crumpled up the draft of the rant he’d been preparing.

Running on the ocean was wonky because the surface kept bobbing up and down, and Naruto could be running down one wave only for it to do its wobbly thing and then suddenly Naruto would be running uphill instead.  Mostly, though, it was pretty boring because it was just water, water, water, sky.

Naruto felt super weird just running out in the open.  Like, they weren’t even trying to hide. The only thing stopping an enemy team from finding them was the fact that there was so much ocean that you had to know exactly where something was in order to find it.  He frowned. Or, he guessed, you could just keep wandering around on top of the water until you ran into it.

Like this ship, for example.  They -- or at least Sasuke -- knew where it was going to be at this exact time, so they could just run up to it.  It had also stopped and dropped anchor at the drop point, so that helped too.

The ship loomed over the water, and Naruto realized belatedly just how big it was -- maybe twice the size of the one they’d ridden out of Kitakyushu on.  Barnacles crusted on its hull peeked out as the waves broke against its sides, and the familiar, ominous creaking cut through the rush of wind and the flapping of the sails.

Sasuke crouched and sprang straight up and over the side of the ship.  Naruto bunched chakra in his feet to follow suit and promptly crashed through the surface of the water.  He yelped, but before he could fall more than thigh-deep, a hand grabbed him by the arm and dragged him up, up, all the way to the deck of the ship.

He twisted his head around and met Sakura-chan’s longsuffering stare.  “Thanks, Sa -- Go-chan,” he corrected sheepishly as she let him go. Sakura-chan’s chakra control was the best, and sometimes Naruto wished he could trade the Kyuubi thing with her but then he remembered that he had like fifty times the amount of chakra that she did, which meant that he could use the super secret kage bunshin jutsu and she couldn’t and then he was okay with his control sucking a little.  He frowned at his pants, now sodden, and dripped his way after Sasuke, who hadn’t even bothered turning around, that bastard.

The back of Naruto’s neck prickled, like something was watching him.  He flicked his eyes to the side and noticed for the first time a bunch of people just, like, on the ship.  Which made sense, because otherwise the ship wouldn’t move. They didn’t seem to care too much that Naruto’s team had just jumped out of the water onto their ship, because they just kept climbing the rigging and mopping the deck or coiling rope or whatever they were doing.  There was a guy at the back with a giant wheel, and Naruto was about to wave hi at him but then he remembered that he was a shinobi on a war mission, and shinobi on war missions didn’t have time to wave hi.

Sakura-chan strode past him when he slowed, stopping at Sasuke’s side as a couple of guys with shinobi gear like kunai holsters and those back pouches met him under the tallest mast.  Naruto trotted up and slid over to Sasuke’s other side, because he was cool and professional like that. “I’m Hana-Shi-005, genin,” introduced Sakura-chan, since Sasuke couldn’t talk too well with the rebreather and both they and Zabuza-sensei had forbidden Naruto from talking to new people first.  “These are Hana-Shi-004 and -006, also genin.”

“Hana-Gun-1950, genin,” said one of them.  He had a bandana tied around the lower half of his face and another around his upper arm, and he glanced at Sasuke’s totally excessively masked face warily.

“Hana-Gun-1949, genin,” said the other guy, who looked more like he was the one in charge since he didn’t even blink at them.  He wore a bandana too, but over his forehead like he might a hitai-ate, probably since none of them were supposed to actually wear their hitai-ate because it was a secret that they were all in Mizu no Kuni.  “The rest of our team is sleeping belowdeck, but welcome aboard the Yujimaru, sir.”

Naruto wasn’t very good at guessing ages but he was definitely older than Temari-nee and maybe younger than the captain?  He frowned. They were all genin here, weren’t they? These guys were older, they didn’t have to be so formal! “Hey, hey, there’s no need for -- ”

Sasuke had an irritating ability to read Naruto’s mind, even though Itachi-sensei said the Sharingan didn’t really do that Sasuke’s wasn’t actually active, but more importantly he slapped a hand over Naruto’s mouth before he could finish.

The older genin stared at them warily, and if Naruto squinted, they looked -- confused?  Offended? Uncomfortable?

“Sorry about him,” said Sakura-chan.  “I don’t know what our sensei saw in him.”

Naruto stuck his tongue out but he forgot about the bandages, so instead of licking Sasuke’s hand, his tongue made contact with the linen.  He sputtered, and Sasuke shot him a very unimpressed stare.

“You’re here for the supplies?” 1949 said after a pause.  “They’re right this way.” He exchanged a glance with 1950.

Sakura-chan nodded and followed, but before Naruto could do the same, Sasuke used the hand covering his mouth to yank him in close with his mouth right next to Naruto’s ear.  “Remember what Sensei said? They’re General Forces, we’re Command Corps,” he hissed. “Even if we’re all genin, we outrank them and rank is very important during a war.”

Naruto shot him an injured look as his teammate took his hand back.  “I know,” he said, although he really didn’t remember that particular lecture and honestly not many lectures in general and he thought that particular rule was stupid anyways.  “But they’re older than us; it’s weird! And not very friendly.”

The bastard just rolled his eyes and stalked after Sakura-chan.  Naruto considered throwing him overboard, but this was their first solo mission and he was not going to mess it up!  

He followed his team and the two older genin belowdeck, squinting in the gloom, and promptly ran into something tall and wooden.  He bounced off it -- maybe multiple wooden things, like a stack of crates -- and tripped back towards Sasuke. Only it turned out to be Sakura-chan, not Sasuke, and she caught him by the shoulder before he could fall.  

One of the genin -- 1950, maybe -- turned around.  “Careful,” he said. “We’re pretty sure this ship is smuggling narcotics into southern Hi, so that’s probably not a box you want to stumble into.”

“Narcotics,” Sakura-chan repeated in a higher voice.  Naruto didn’t know what those were, but they weren’t any kind of weapon he recognized.