As the Konoha team arrived near Sora-ku, Jiraiya had broken them up into cells to better canvas the area. He had elected to go alone, while Asuma went with Shizune and Kakashi took Ino with him. Ino was actually grateful that she wasn't searching with Asuma, as she knew that he still hadn't quite come around to her being involved in this mission.
Kakashi was actually a relief to work with, as he didn't care about any of the personal agendas that came with her desire to go on the assignment. He only cared about Ino being capable of performing the tasks appointed to her.
For those without a background in tracking, which was every last one of them with the exception of one, Kakashi had an entire pack of eight summoned dogs at his disposal. He lent one to each of the small teams and had the remaining five scour the area for anything that smelled of Naruto or Sasuke.
He had been extremely confident that if there was something to find, his dogs were the ones that could do it. It was easier to track by scent in the desert than in Hi no Kuni. There was a less of a chance of rain wiping out the needed smell that the one searching by smell would have to follow, since it happened so sparsely.
Ino hopped off of the blackened remains of one of the building within Sora-ku's as Kakashi continued to walk around, surveying the scene. Unlike the others, they didn't have a single ninken with them, as Kakashi had assured her it wouldn't be necessary.
"They'll be more useful with the others and by themselves than they would be with us."
They would report back to Kakashi first anyway. Even so, it felt like they were wasting a lot of time. Ino knew that she had to trust the expertise of her superiors, but she wanted to be moving around, doing things. Not kicking around scorched rocks and sand.
"This is what Amaterasu is capable of," Kakashi told her, running his hand over a surface that had been burned black, "The highest level of fire release. A black flame that will continue to burn for seven days. There wasn't anything that could have put this out, even if it had rained here."
From what Shikamaru and Neji had told them, Sasuke had taken it upon himself to deal with Itachi for personal reasons, while Naruto had fought someone with the power to submerge half of this massive city underneath five stories of water. Meanwhile, Neji and Shikamaru had been rescuing Yugito and dealing with Suna black-op units that had been sent in to sweep up.
"We're not going to find anything here," Ino grumbled. She wasn't even sure that she wanted to even if they could have, "Kakashi-sensei, can you really tell anything from looking at this?"
Ino didn't get it. She wasn't any sort of tracking expert, but she knew enough about scents to know that if it something was burned to a crisp, it wouldn't leave the same kind of visible sign, or even a scent that you could identify it by,
"I'm serious," She asked after not getting an answer, "If Sora-ku was burned to the ground, how can your ninken get any kind of scent from Naruto or Sasuke?"
Kakashi turned to the chunin girl and seemingly smiled at her, though all she had to go on was the single visible eye he had exposed on his face, "Because clearly, they weren't in Sora-ku while it burned down."
Such a declaration gave her more than a sliver of hope that they were on the track to finding something substantial, and soon, "So you're saying there's a chance?"
The answer didn't come from Kakashi, but from a small dog that came charging up to them in a Konoha headband and a small blue jacket.
"Girlie, there's more than a chance," The little pug spoke up, surprising Ino at its ability to talk. She got over it fairly quickly though as she had been well acquainted with Naruto's toads, most of whom spoke, "There's a trail of both of their scents that leads away to the north. Far north."
Too much farther north and they would be heading out of Kaze no Kuni altogether, which was not a good thing. It was already bad enough that they were searching in that country to begin with, "...How far north, Pakkun?" Kakashi ventured to ask.
The little dog clammed up, not knowing quite what to say to his summoner or the girl with him to assure them, "..."
The silence spoke clearer than most words could, "That far north," Kakashi said with a grimace underneath his facemask. What had previously been encouraging news had quickly gone back downhill as far as their hopes were concerned.
None of that answered the question for Ino, who wasn't a fan of the speaking-without-speaking byplay. Just because she was a mind-reader didn't mean she could do it without trying, "Would anyone like to tell me what's going on before we get back to the others? How far north are you talking about?"
"Tsuchi no Kuni north," Kakashi elaborated, getting a soft gasp of concern from Ino, "And hopefully not very far into that territory, for everyone's sake."
She didn't need to be told what Kakashi was implying. The hidden village that rested within the borders of Tsuchi no Kuni weren't exactly fans of Konoha, or of any other shinobi village either. Quickly, she reached out with her clan telepathy to try and contact the other members of their squad and let them know what was happening.
They would probably have to travel all day long again if they wanted to gain any kind of ground with the information that Kakashi's team of ninken were giving them.
XxX
(With Naruto – Iwagakure no Sato)
Naruto and Sasuke had agreed to meet after four hours of splitting up, but neither of them made that time frame for different reasons. It wasn't even close. Neither of them met up again for almost a full day in the agreed upon spot.
In a stark departure from their usual interaction, neither boy knowingly needled the other over being so late. Not only because they both knew that they didn't have a leg to stand on as far as accusing one another went, but because they were both still somewhat shaken up from yesterday's revelations.
"Whoa-whoa-whoa," Naruto said, breaking Sasuke's explanation of yesterday's events as they occurred through his eyes, "A guy wearing Akatsuki stuff came up to you and just told you where to find Itachi's body? For free? Well why isn't he getting it for himself then?"
He clearly could, if he could open a portal to where the location was. He teleported and snuck up on Sasuke to begin with, so there probably wasn't anything stopping him from doing the exact same thing elsewhere.
Sasuke couldn't answer because he hadn't thought about it. He had wanted to put the conversation with 'Madara' behind him immediately after it had happened, "I don't know. I didn't ask. I just got out of there," And thankfully the man in the mask didn't follow, "I couldn't have fought that guy. Not then. Not with what we're into right now. I'd have had the whole village on me within thirty seconds."
And that guy could teleport, which would have left Sasuke on the hook for all of Iwagakure's wrath in return. His boner for murder wasn't large enough for him to justify fighting a whole village to himself, at least right now it wasn't.
"Okay, well if he's related to you, why the hell is it just now coming up?"
"I don't know!"
Naruto grumbled to himself that for a 'genius', Sasuke didn't seem to know much, but he let it go after notching a mark in his memory banks to revisit this later, "Well about that. We're gonna have to pick a good time to break in. And we can't do it until the chunin exam teams leave to go home."
Sasuke closed his eyes in quiet annoyance, knowing why Naruto wanted to postpone their intended heist of his brother's corpse, "...Otherwise we'll wind up putting the teams from Konoha in danger..." He concluded knowingly.
He wasn't a fan of this approach, his normal impatience aside. The more time they spent hanging around, not taking any action, the more time Iwagakure had to do whatever with Itachi's Sharingan. They would try to use Itachi's Sharingan, and it would be sooner rather than later.
"Konohamaru and Hanabi's teams are here. You know something would happen to them if we just went balls-out and tore that place apart trying to grab Itachi," Naruto elaborated, aware of Sasuke's distaste for the situation, "The teams should be leaving today right after the closing ceremony. Until then, let's just try and scope out that place where you say the body is."
Sasuke let out a displeased grunt. He didn't want to wait, but he also didn't doubt that doing something that would aggravate Iwagakure's top brass would result in it being dealt out to the genin squads just trying to get home.
He more than anyone else knew just how eye-for-an-eye the ninja world could be. Losing the chance at both Naruto and Sasuke's respective gifts, losing Itachi's corpse, putting their dirty-dealing little initiatives on display in front of every other village in the Elemental Nations, and having whatever else got wrecked on the way out as they left would more than anger them into action.
Genin were still accounted for when it came to a hidden village's military power, and they had jounin teachers with them who were most definitely representative of military might. Wiping them out would still be a significant blow against a possible enemy, and it didn't take much to convince any of the hidden villages that someone or something was an enemy.
"They're going to find us eventually," Sasuke told Naruto, still displeased at having to wait and play things cautiously. Hearing that from Naruto of all people was quite irksome, "The longer we stay here, the closer we're cutting it."
A grin came to Naruto's face at the chance to needle Sasuke over something, "Are you admitting that you can't do something?" He asked, trying to chide his temporary teammate, "Wow. I wish I had a camera to take a picture to remember this."
Sasuke rolled his eyes, "Yeah, I guess your little goldfish brain will wind up forgetting about it in what, thirty seconds?"
"I wish Shikamaru was here instead of you. He's always nice to me."
"No he's not."
"…Yeah, you're right. Okay, whatever. Let's go find where your dead brother's corpse is."
XxX
(Southern Tsuchi no Kuni)
After being informed of what was going on according to the noses of Kakashi's ninken, Jiraiya wasted no time moving them all out. Ino didn't think she had ever moved so fast and so far in a short period of time in her life, but it was her responsibility to keep up with the top traveling speeds of some of the best in Konoha.
Eventually it came down to doing medical math in her head as she went along. How many soldier pills could she take in a certain amount of time to keep her going without causing her to overdose, keel over, and die? Kabuto might have been a backstabbing son-of-a-bitch, but if nothing else, he'd made sure that he'd taught Ino and Sakura how to be passable medics. They had taken the rest from there.
Jiraiya didn't even bother turning around as his team made their way across the rocky plains at a breakneck pace, "Alright, we're not going to stop moving because we're in a hurry, so keep up and listen up. I'm not repeating anything I say."
The more experienced shinobi were set for this kind of thing. But the precursor to his explanation was solely for Ino's benefit. She had been on the least of these high-profile assignments by far, and though he wasn't going to hold her hand, they all needed to make sure that she listened well the first time around, every time.
"All of you have your roles on this squad," Jiraiya said, laying out everyone's role, "Kakashi has been the most active mission-wise out of all of us lately, and I trust his judgment in the field. He's in charge of strategy on-the-fly. Asuma, you're our heavy assault man. Anything in our way, I want it in pieces or ashes. Shizune, obviously, is the medic, but she's capable of support in a pinch. Ino is the backup medic, but as Asuma here is at least aware, her clan's telepathy makes her an effective communications operative. That's her main job."
"Understood," Everyone else said as one.
"Are we going on the assumption that they're in Iwagakure?" Shizune asked, "...This isn't going to be easy."
"The only way this would have been easy is if we found them dead," Asuma chimed in, "I'd rather we have this be hard and have a chance at getting them out alive than have it easy and not."
Ino couldn't have agreed more. And if Naruto wasn't alive, that would be unfortunate for the first member of the party responsible that she wound up running across, "If Goldie is still alive in Iwa, I'll know the moment we get close enough."
Jiraiya had been aware of her skill set after he had brought her onto his team, but the sheer amount of confidence behind Ino's statement almost set him back for a moment, "Are you really that good of a sensor?" He asked.
"Only with him," The blonde interrogator replied succinctly, locking eyes with Jiraiya as he turned his head around to look at her. She didn't know what the older man had been looking for, but apparently he'd found it quickly as he turned back around.
There were more than a few reasons that the integral reason that the generational Ino-Shika-Cho combination of heirs was so well-known. For one, the Yamanaka Clan portion of the grouping developed their telepathic abilities in close proximity to their teammates. That practice established a base understanding of their teammates and abilities, as well as a connection that many others believed was just a natural affinity for working together.
It wasn't. The Yamanaka heir, whoever they just so happened to be for that generation, was just able to get into their heads multiple times during the evolution of each of them as shinobi.
If what she was saying was to be taken as more than confidence in their situation, Ino had managed to do that with Naruto and then some. Well, if the boy was still alive and in one piece, that was one advantage they would have in finding him.
XxX
Hanabi stood at attention with the rest of her genin squadmates, respectfully listening to the Tsuchikage's departing speech that was meant to close out the second part of the chunin exams. From there, they were all meant to return home to train for the month before coming back for the finals.
"You fight for more than just yourselves! You fight as representatives of your villages! To all who have advanced, each and every one of you will carry the reputation of your homes, of your friends, family, teachers, all of them, into battle with you once you return to this place!"
Still, despite the fact that one of the most powerful people in the world was speaking and giving advice, she couldn't help but let her mind stray.
Naruto was there, in Iwagakure. He had been captured, and now he wasn't. He was lingering behind instead of getting to work with an impromptu retrieval mission so that the genin weren't put in danger by his next course of action.
Her concerns until that point had been on how she would jump into her training when she made it home. Now those thoughts were set aside for the much more important ones involving one of her favorite people.
She more or less went through the motions with her team as the entire contingent of Konoha genin and their instructors started their sojourn back to their own village.
The entire time she thought to herself about what she'd been told by Naruto. Now he was by himself in the heart of a village that would tear his life away to make themselves stronger and weaken Konoha without a second thought.
It was then that she remembered the Tsuchikage's speech. No, not any of the words he had been saying. Old people loved to hear themselves talk too much if one were to ask for her opinion on the matter.
Instead, she remembered how he had been prominently displaying a piece of distinct green jewelry on his neck, above his white robes. It was clear for all to see, as if he were making a statement without even saying it.
That necklace he had been wearing belonged to Naruto. It was his. She had seen it on him far too many times to mistake it. The Tsuchikage had taken his necklace off of him and wore it proudly as though it were some kind of trophy.
The thought of it burned her up inside. She was so angry that her entire team took notice and gave her a few extra feet of space as they walked on.
Unfortunately for Konohamaru, he was unable to gauge how sour Hanabi's mood was from a distance, and his attempt at some good-natured pot-stirring for the finals wound up turning around on him.
"Hey, I hope you're ready to eat dirt in the-," Hanabi wheeled around on him with such a fury in her clear-colored eyes, it caused the aspiring chunin Sarutobi to step back out of self-preservation instincts, "Whoa. I didn't even say anything yet."
Hanabi let the murder in her gaze die off as she realized how much killing intent she had been exuding. Yes, she didn't like Konohamaru necessarily, but he hadn't done anything to warrant any sort of wrath from her... for now at least, "Sorry. I've just been thinking a little too much."
It couldn't have been about the exams, because Hanabi had been cool and confident in her chances from the very beginning. Whatever it was, it was renting more space in her mind than the chance at showing off her skills and getting promoted.
"You've been acting weird since yesterday, come to think of it," Konohamaru pointed out, squinting one eye at her as though it gave him a look into her inner self, "Did something happen during the second exam?" No, that couldn't have been it either. She'd been just the same as always when the teams had started making their way to the rally point after the second test.
"It's got nothing to do with the exams," Hanabi said, confirming Konohamaru's original suspicions. He and Hanabi didn't get along in the slightest, but they had butted heads enough to the point that he would know she wouldn't be shaken by anything a genin would face, "You didn't notice anything... off during the closing ceremony, didn't you?"
Konohamaru thought about it for a moment before shaking his head, "Nah. I couldn't pay attention to anything. The Tsuchikage is so boring. Grandpa would have given a much better speech if it was Konoha hosting the exams instead."
Hanabi let out a hum as if to feign attention, but she wasn't listening. Her mind was still in Iwagakure. More specifically, with Naruto. She wanted to tell someone. Her sensei, or any of the jounin around her, but there was a chance that they would do exactly what Naruto didn't want, make a fuss out of it and put the genin in danger. Naruto was a serious commodity to the village, and there was a chance that someone would get a wild hair up their backside and do something rash to get him out.
No, she would have to trust him. He did this kind of thing all the time, didn't he? Naruto-oniisama was incredible enough to pull this off and get away safely. He did things more dangerous than this just on the side.
He would be fine. Hanabi believed in him.
XxX
(Meanwhile – Tsuchikage's Office)
Every time, hosting the Chunin Exams was such a chore. If it weren't for the prestige that hosting the event brought, it wouldn't be worth the trouble at all.
'In my day, each village ran its own exam,' Onoki thought as he traversed the halls of his main administrative building, flanked by two guards, 'Bah. What do other villages know about what makes an Iwagakure chunin? Nothing. They judge all of the applicants on the qualities that they look for in their own ninja.'
And so Iwagakure did the same on their own exams. It was their right as the host village to make up the tests that comprised the event. If nothing else, it would weed out the useless pretenders from the other villages simply taking up a spot that could have been filled with a more deserving competitor.
He would never think such things about his own aspiring chunin of course. He wished all of them were Chunin Exams material. He loved every shinobi in the village. They were his, both to guide and to protect. Iwagakure was his treasure. He would ensure that whenever it was his time to leave that plane of existence, he would be doing so with the future of his home assured.
It was for his treasure that he would fight and gain possession of the treasures of others. Things like the Nine-Tails. Things like the necklace of the Shodai Hokage.
...Okay, the last one was just for bragging rights. The personal satisfaction of having it was just too much to let slip away. An old man could be afforded his simple vanities in his waning years, could he not?
Onoki's wrinkled fingers touched at the nigh priceless piece of jewelry around his neck. He hadn't taken it off since it had been procured from Uzumaki Naruto. He probably never would, 'I might just have them bury me in this thing,' He thought, getting a chuckle out of himself at his little joke.
Still, even with the good that had been happening lately, of course there would be troubles to come with it. It should have been expected though with what counted as fortune for them.
Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke had both escaped captivity and to the knowledge of those on the hunt for them were both loose somewhere in Iwa. Then again, what could really be expected with descendants from those two bothersome clans?
Which was probably what the presence in his office had to do with being there.
Iwagakure's ninja force had been instructed to keep the search as low-profile as possible, which included briefings and updates. Security was at a high in several vital locations in the village.
"I take it you haven't found our missing guests yet," Onoki said as he found his burly, bearded son waiting for his arrival, "I can't imagine Kurotsuchi is handling that well," He commented, referring to his hotheaded granddaughter. She was talented, but still had her flaws as a shinobi. Not in her technique, her desire to improve, or anything about her functionally.
There was tremendous pressure on her as the granddaughter of the longest presiding Tsuchikage in village history. It was pressure that she lived up to with her accomplishments and ability. Still, it left a chip on her shoulder that she wouldn't ever shed until she obtained the position of Tsuchikage herself. Probably not even then either.
"As well as you could expect. You know how she is," Kitsuchi replied, confirming what his father already knew, "They haven't been leaving any kind of a trail to follow. They've been keeping a low-profile, except for a few incidents. But those we've found couldn't remember anything about the attacks."
No deaths? That was surprising. From what was known of Naruto and Sasuke, the two were notorious for being actiony types. Clandestine, cloak-and-dagger affairs weren't supposed to be their thing, but Iwa didn't have any sensors better than average to find them while they were being sneaky.
They didn't know where the two Konoha chunin were, but Onoki could make an assumption about where they were going to be, given a little time.
"Should we try and send some ANBU to shadow the departing teams?" Kitsuchi offered, "There's probably a way we can convince them to let a search happen without causing some kind of incident if we just want to send standard forces to do it straight up."
Onoki waved off the suggestion, surprising his son at how he wasn't chomping at the bit and willing to tear away at any and everything to find their prisoners before something compromising got out, "There's no need for that. That would just raise suspicions all for the sake of a 'maybe'."
It was a maybe that could lead to war, and all with no gain for them if Naruto and Sasuke outright left at the first opportunity the way Kitsuchi believed they would, "Are you sure? They may have already left; slipped in with the crowd that had come for the Chunin Exams and snuck out that way. Probably with the Konoha travelers."
It was what he would have done. It was what any shinobi who was halfway sane would have done. If they were in a hostile place with allies that were able to leave freely, that would have and should have been the first place they sought help from.
Had Naruto and Sasuke been older shinobi, Onoki would have considered that approach to their whereabouts. But they were young, and they would do what young, headstrong fools oftentimes did; overestimate themselves. Iwagakure had something that they would want. Two things, if Uzumaki were cognizant enough to realize what had obviously been confiscated along with the rest of his gear.
They were just bullheaded enough to think that they could make a difference on their own. It didn't matter who they were and what they possessed power-wise. It was still two boys versus an entire village coordinated against them. And soon the kid gloves would be off once they were sure they were on their own again without any prying eyes from other villages.
"They won't be going anywhere," Onoki assured his son, walking reservedly through his office as he made his way to his desk, "They know, or at least the Uchiha boy does, that we have his dead brother. If there's one thing about that clan I know that's for sure, they could never let anything go, even in death. He'll come for the corpse."
Of that, he was certain. Even if the location of Uchiha Itachi's body was a secret, eventually they would find it, they would go to it, and it was there that they would be trapped.
"To catch the rarest of game, you have to bait them with something worth their while."
The full scope of Iwagakure's wrath would come down on those two. They were the most valuable commodities to fall into the village's lap in quite some time.
XxX
(With Naruto – Elsewhere in Iwagakure)
Naruto crawled into his and Sasuke's temporary hideout, a small depression in the rock behind one of the city's manmade waterfalls. He tossed a bag at Sasuke's feet containing a change of clothes that he'd picked up in town. Fortunately, the uniforms he'd snagged for them to sneak around town with had wallets with actual cash in them to use.
Sasuke let out a grumble at being supplied with something less conspicuous for them to walk around in while they were slightly transformed. The disguise they wore still worked, making them both look unassuming enough to pass as faceless Iwa shinobi. Now they would pass as faceless civilians. Maybe even travelers, as the last dregs of those who had come to town for the opening stages of the chunin exam were still hanging about.
"You need to chill out," Naruto said, sitting off to the side, looking at the waterfall that concealed their hiding place from outside eyes, "We're gonna get Itachi's eyes, alright. It's like you said, this isn't the kind of thing they can rush with. They don't really know what they're dealing with."
Sasuke gave Naruto a look as if to say that this was him 'chilling out'. In the Elemental Nations, Iwagakure had the lowest quality of the five hidden villages when it came to medical advancement so they would make sure they had all of their preparations in order, everything accounted for before they went to transfer the Sharingan eyes to someone else.
"Did you buy any food?" Sasuke eventually said, only to get a tomato washed in the waterfall tossed over to him for his troubles, "What? No ramen? I'm glad we're in here, because the sky must be falling."
Naruto smirked at the nature of the insult instead of flying off the handle at it. And here after he had gone out of his way to grab Sasuke's favorite, which was also coincidentally Naruto's least favorite grown item... which he hated in general to begin with, "You want me to buy food that smells behind enemy lines? Well I guess the scent of glorious ramen is enough to even make someone like you-."
"Forget it," Sasuke cut him off before he could get started on an annoying tirade and bit into the red tomato, savoring it as the first decent food he'd had in days, "So what the hell are we going to do?"
"Wait until tonight and hit that place 'Madara' told you to go after. We can't wait for too long, like you said, after all. How about it?"
Sasuke hated the thought of remaining around for much longer. He wanted to escape and he wanted to put the thing with Itachi behind him forever. But he had already previously admitted the fact that if they pulled off their mission they would be putting the genin teams in jeopardy. They had left in the morning, so holding off until after midnight would make sure that the teams could get out of Tsuchi no Kuni, or at least far enough away that they wouldn't be the first target once the two of them pissed Iwa off good.
"Then what are we supposed to do afterwards?"
"Run like hell until we get somewhere safe…" Naruto deadpanned as though it were obvious, "So we probably won't be stopping until we get past Hi no Kuni's borders."
"There's always Takigakure," Sasuke said with a small measure of distaste. Not for the place in particular, but what would happen if they did go there. It was the closest, and there was a great chance they would get a measure of sanctuary, but-, "…But Iwa doesn't have any problems starting things with smaller villages to get what they want. That's how the last Shinobi World War started."
Getting to two vulnerable pairs of Sharingan and a loose and floating Nine-Tails Fox inside of a jinchuuriki from a rival village was likely worth starting formal hostilities over, if anything else ever was.
Naruto rolled his eyes. He hadn't been paying attention in history class unless something had come up involving the Yondaime Hokage, "Well I guess there's a mark of progress for us," Naruto said, getting Sasuke to look over at him in confusion until he explained, "We're important enough to start a war over. Yay," He added with a spirited wiggling of his hands.
Sasuke scoffed and turned his attention back to his own little corner of the hideout, "How does Yamanaka put up with you? I just don't get it."
Being reminded of Ino caused Naruto to frown. With all of the panicking, subterfuge, and making slapdash plans, he had forgotten that he was supposed to be a prisoner, captured straight off of the field during a mission. And it had been days since that had happened.
Shikamaru and Neji were fine. Naruto knew that they were. Even if Killer B hadn't been there as well, those two were talented enough to make it out and get home. Ino would have found out that Naruto was missing from one of them, likely Shikamaru.
How would she have reacted? The last thing he would have wanted was to break her heart over something that had happened to him, but he'd never thought about it before. He'd never thought about it happening to him, getting killed or captured. He always figured it would have or could have, he just hadn't cared very much about it aside for the self-preservation reasons.
When he was younger, he always thought he would be the baddest ninja to step foot out in the field, even on day one. After that was worked out of him due to the reality of his profession scaring some clarity into him, he simply never figured that anyone would have cared about anything happening to him much past an, 'Oh I knew that guy. That's a shame,' kind of mentality.
Little Hanabi's reaction to his current circumstances showed that this clearly wasn't the case. Naruto cherished the people around him, but hadn't thought that anyone aside from a very select few of them felt anything similar outside of basic camaraderie. Over time that had clearly changed, to the extent that someone he hadn't thought would show that kind of concern over him was loyal to the point of putting herself in harm's way, had he not talked her down from it.
If someone like Hanabi would have been driven to near tears at the thought of leaving him alone in a place that wanted him dead and dissected, how did Ino feel when she got the news of him missing in action?
Gut-wrenching sorrow? Red-eyed anger? Both? At Akatsuki? At him?
He didn't want to think about making her cry because of something that he had done. Well he would find out soon enough when he made it home, because he would be making it home, even if he had to waltz over the Tsuchikage's body to do it. If she cried, he would hold her until her tears dried up. If she hit him, he would let her until she felt better.
But first thing was first. He had to rest and get his mind right. That night they would be breaking into the facility where Itachi's body was being held.
Sasuke didn't put it past the Tsuchikage to move the body somewhere safe before sunrise now that the outside traffic from the other villages was for the most part gone. That was what he would do if he knew that someone was lingering around to try and get at it. It made sense to Naruto, and that was why they would make their move before Iwa could get the chance.
XxX
'I hate the cold,' Orochimaru thought to himself as he and a small contingent of his forces headed north. There were things he wanted to tend to in those areas and he had been getting a tad stir crazy lately. Having a body with no shortage of inhuman power at his disposal would do that every now and then.
So he took it upon himself to head up his own operation. Do his own dirty work as it were. Not the grunt work, of course. He still had hordes of underlings for that sort of thing.
One of those underlings, one he had instructed to let him know of anything that may make their trip… unpleasant, to say the least, came up to him.
She was a teenage girl had red eyes, glasses, and red hair that was spiky and unkempt on one side and straightened out on the other. She wore a lavender top with long sleeves, black leggings, and black sandals with long black stockings.
And she clearly had something she felt he needed to know.
"Yes, Karin?" Orochimaru asked before she could even speak, letting her know that he was aware of her presence.
Karin seemed uncertain of her own safety, partially because of Orochimaru, and partially because of what she had come to warn him about, "I can sense a massive chakra signature coming our way through the air. He's not near us, and he doesn't seem to be getting any closer, but..." She trailed off.
A grin formed on Orochimaru's face as he thought of the people capable of flight who could or would try tailing him, 'Oh, Deidara...' He laughed inwardly, 'Still following orders faithfully, even after seeing what I'm now capable of firsthand. At least you learned enough to know to stay far, far away from me.'
Well, if Nagato was so curious about where he was going and what Orochimaru was doing, he was gracious enough to let Akatsuki's nosy figurehead in on just what he would be doing next.
"Orochimaru-sama, do you want something done about the person following us?" Karin asked, breaking the Otogakure leader from his musings.
Orochimaru simply laughed at the thought of any of the people he had with him being on the level of Deidara. It would have taken someone of Guren's ability just to give him a fight. But in the same vein, Deidara had to also know that he had little chance against Orochimaru in battle as well.
He had seen the snake's new power firsthand when Sasori had been destroyed.
"We'll just leave him as he is," Orochimaru told the red-haired sensor at his side, continuing on as she stopped and spared a look back and up into the air in concern. Even though the airborne figure was a long way off, about two or three miles, she could feel him as though he were standing right behind her, "Come along. We still have a ways to travel."
"But, his level of chakra is strong. Akatsuki-strong," Karin tried to reason with her employer, "I think-."
"Karin, dear," Orochimaru said, putting a chill down her spine at the eerie feeling that the calm, bright tone from such a man gave her. She was in trouble, "I didn't bring you along to advise me. If that was what I wanted, I would have brought Kabuto. I brought you, because of what you're doing. Find me the dangerous people that would like to do me harm. I will decide what to do from there, understand?"
Karin was afraid to breathe, but Orochimaru let up on the pressure of his killing intent enough for her to choke out the kind of response he wanted to hear, "Yes, Orochimaru-sama."
With that, Orochimaru left her alone and let her fret over the possibility of being attacked by Deidara, but Orochimaru was certain that this would not happen. If Deidara was going to attack, he would have tried to fly ahead to set something up. He was simply following and observing.
'Poor Nagato needs to know when to cut his losses and move on,' Orochimaru thought to himself, 'He still thinks that the Sanbi can be his.'
Not in this lifetime. Akatsuki had never had the opportunity in the first place. Orochimaru had made moves that had taken years, and had come out with too many assets in the end for Akatsuki to match once they began their own plans.
Now, the organization had their attention split in too many directions to take anything of significance from Orochimaru. If you were hunting him, you needed full dedication to the effort. They could do no such thing with their hunt for the rest of the biju. Additionally, their manpower was significantly cut.
They were still dangerous though. Akatsuki was still comprised of some of the most powerful shinobi in the entire world. It was just a shame that Orochimaru's own power was now out of this world, in his own humble opinion.
'And still with so much room to grow,' Orochimaru thought arrogantly, feeling giddy at the prospect of having a body that he could last more than an entire full lifetime in. Yukimaru had truly been the solution to so many of his woes, 'If Nagato waits too much longer before coming down from his tower, any novelty in facing him may wear off.'
XxX
(Tsuchi no Kuni – Iwagakure no Sato)
3 a.m. was the best time for an ambush or an infiltration. It allowed enough time for a second overnight guard shift to switch in and get bored and tired. That was why it wound up being the target time for Naruto and Sasuke to set out and obtain Itachi's body.
Or it would have been, had their hiding place not been compromised while they slept, hours before they had planned to get to work.
Naruto was awoken from his slumber by a sharp kick to the back by Sasuke, "Huh? Wha?" Naruto arose with a start at the unwelcome action, "What the hell?"
"We're surrounded outside," Sasuke said, a smile on his face. But not one of confidence. It was the kind of smile held by someone who was in utter disbelief of what had befallen them, "If I hadn't been awake, they might have tried attacking already."
Naruto frowned and scratched at his head. He had dispelled the clone he had keeping lookout outside before he'd gone to sleep, because trying to rest while keeping a clone or two as a lookout was worthless. He would just get the mental fatigue back when it/they dispelled. He figured they could have been safe for at least four hours. Thankfully Sasuke was endlessly paranoid, "Well that sucks."
"Tell me there's a back way out of this rat's nest," Sasuke said, looking around the dark back end of the hole in the wall that they had taken refuge in. There was nothing. The place got smaller and smaller to the point that only a snake would be able to slip through.
Naruto let out an exasperated sigh and plopped down on the ground cross-legged, his arms folded across his chest as he tried to think, "Man, if only I could teleport, or at least had a jutsu that would get me through rock without caving this place in," He closed his eyes and hummed in thought before looking over at Sasuke, "Wait, you know we're surrounded. Does that mean you can see them from behind the waterfall?"
Sasuke nodded and raised an eyebrow at the grin on Naruto's face, "What?"
Naruto jerked his head in the direction of the waterfall at the mouth of the cave, "If you can see them all from behind the waterfall, go make eye contact with all of them for me."
Sasuke wondered what putting them under a genjutsu would do if they were all prepared for a battle anyway when he saw Naruto make two clones, one to look like him and another to look like Sasuke, and not as they were, as the enemy expected them to be, 'They know what we're supposed to look like. Not what we look like right now,' "What are you thinking?"
"Just give 'em a little brain nudge to convince 'em that these two are us. Nothing big, just a little suggestion," Naruto told him, "If it works, they can chase them around for a bit. They can at least last two minutes if I really have 'em focus on trying to get away."
"We don't need that long to get to where they're keeping Itachi," Sasuke mused, following Naruto's train of thought before grumbling, "Well, it's not how I would have handled it."
"This way is less corpsy."
"That's not a word."
"It is tonight. Now do your stupid cheating eye thing so we can get this show on the road."
Sasuke glared at Naruto, but did as requested. Not because he was told, but because he wanted to do it. That was the only reason. It took five seconds for Sasuke to plant the suggestion in the Iwa scouts heads, and with a silent wave of his hand, Naruto's transformed clones took off through the waterfall, drawing away the small force sent to ambush them.
Naruto counted to thirty before he too left, Sasuke following as they made their way for the building that Sasuke had been shown by 'Madara'. He had taken the time to locate it on-foot beforehand, so he knew where it was and took the lead as they darted through the darkened streets of Iwagakure, not a sound being made between the two of them.
All of these places looked the same, especially at night, grey towers comprised of the rock that the village was built on and around, all in varying height and width. Sasuke had memorized the building's location however, and knew where they were going, so there was no trouble on that front. It was the only thing that such a thing could be said about.
As they got closer and closer to the target building, Naruto took stock of the situation. It wasn't good.
The two of them were barely armed, only with the bare minimum of what a shinobi was expected to carry around from what they had pilfered off of the Iwa shinobi they had taken uniforms from.
They had to keep things quiet, otherwise they would bring Iwa's full fighting force down on top of their heads. Both of them had no problems with a fight, but intentionally bringing one of that magnitude onto their heads was simply too foolish for words.
They were alone with absolutely no line of support. If they screwed up, it was all on them. No one was coming to protect their balls, possibly literally depending on how much they wanted some good old genetic material from the Uchiha Clan or the son of the Yondaime Hokage.
Nearing the gate that separated the village streets from the grounds of the building, Sasuke and Naruto both jumped over it. With his vision abilities, Sasuke spotted every sentry the moment his eyes made it over and quickly disposed of them with two shuriken to the throat before they could even begin to react at what they were seeing.
Naruto had jumped lower after seeing Sasuke take off and landed to gently cover the mouths of the two men as they fell to the dirt and died. They didn't need those two letting out any death cries and tipping off the enemy before they had even gotten started.
Sasuke raised an eyebrow at Naruto's rather manual way of keeping the enemy from making a sound. Shouldn't he have had a jutsu for that? They were high-level shinobi, after all, "Couldn't you have done something with your wind chakra to make that easier?"
Naruto stood up from setting the dead sentries down. He trained their features to memory and immediately made two Shadow Clones transformed to take their places as guards, at best to cover for them, at worst to dispel and warn them of danger, "Cut or push. That's what my wind does."
Sasuke wasn't buying that as an answer. Naruto just so happened to have what could be seen as one of the most versatile chakra types of the five to choose from, "You should have been able to kick up some wind to cover up any yells they would have-."
"Cut. Or. Push," Naruto cut Sasuke off, repeating himself with emphasis, "...That's what my wind does."
A roll of Sharingan eyes followed as the two started searching for a low-key way into the building, "Tch, slacker."
"Oh, I'm sorry mister-I-won't-learn-a-technique-if-I-can't-use-it-to-kill-somebody," Naruto said, cutting the bolts to a ventilation shaft on the side of the building with his chakra, "Were you saying something? I couldn't hear you over the sound of you not being useful."
Once they were inside, they promptly shut their mouths and began to search. Even if their voices didn't carry outside in the open air, they would resonate off of the walls. Even so, neither of them were expecting this to take very long. There were only so many places preferable for storing a dead body, or body parts if they had already gotten around to removing Itachi's eyes.
In places like this, security was rarely ever kept extensively on the inside. Mostly to the outside. The ninja forces ran every semblance of hidden villages. They kept the streets and everything around any given location was locked down with the bulk of their manpower and resources, so security inside of these places wasn't really a priority for them.
Konoha was similar in how they secured their sensitive locations. All hidden villages were, really. Getting into a place unnoticed was oftentimes the hardest part. Once you made it that far, it was just a matter of finding what you were after and slipping away again after you got back out.
Itachi's body wasn't exactly hard to find. It only took cursory searching before they found him inside of a room outfited with medical equipment and observation glass, likely for the village bigwigs who wanted to see the body of perhaps the second-to-last known Uchiha in the world.
As Sasuke walked into the room and opened the body storage freezer his brother's body was stored in, he froze and stared at the corpse, the breath sucked out of his lungs as he was finally able to process just what had happened in Sora-ku.
He had done it. He had killed his brother. The single thing he had committed every day of his being to for ten years had finally been completed.
So why didn't he feel as accomplished as he did when he saw Itachi fall? He felt sheer elation when he was the last one standing. He had fallen unconscious immediately afterwards and had woken up to quite the predicament. He hadn't been able to dwell on his victory, on finally avenging his entire clan.
Now he could. So why was it such a hollow feeling?
Sasuke couldn't even bear to look at him. The absolute nothing that he got from it after the fact was almost as painful as any sort of sorrow or anger.
Naruto raised an eyebrow at Sasuke going literally anywhere else in the room that he could get to, just as long as it kept him from looking at Itachi's still, pale, lifeless body. Were they burying him, or burning him? Well, either way they couldn't do it there, "We've got to move him out of here," A cloth covered Itachi's eye sockets, which still contained the most important aspect of him, "...His eyes are still in."
"They don't know what the hell they're dealing with," Sasuke told him, having picked up the notes from the medical team that had been working on Itachi's body, "They think his Sharingan is sealed away now that he's dead. But that doesn't make any sense."
Naruto lifted one of Itachi's eyelids and saw an eye with featureless red pupils staring back at him. None of the characteristic markings that he'd come to expect from the Sharingan, that he'd seen firsthand from Itachi when he'd fought against him, "They might have a point. They look broken or something."
Sasuke frowned and continued to read on through the report, his face slowly twisting into one of shock and then of smoldering anger as he reached the autopsy.
As Sasuke read, Naruto clicked his tongue and started digging around the area for a scroll that he could use as a makeshift sealing item for Itachi's body, "Well, congratulations, I guess. You got what you wanted," He said, "You fought Itachi and you kicked his ass. Way to go."
Sasuke's fingers dug into the paper of the reports as he tried to contain himself, "Thanks... but you see, the thing about that is-," He failed, and threw the report at the back of Naruto's head, growling in aggravation when it missed, "-Your fucking explosion is part of the reason he died, you retard!"
The sickness ravaging his body added onto the sheer exertion that fighting Sasuke caused him. By the time Sasuke delivered the killing blow, Itachi likely would have died within minutes regardless. Reading that report had been the bitterest medicine he'd ever had to swallow in his entire life.
Itachi wasn't at full strength. He wasn't even close. And Sasuke hadn't even been the sole reason that he went down in the end.
Naruto stared at the enraged Uchiha dumbly before working his mouth into forming words, "That's... awesome!" He exclaimed before noticing Sasuke glowering at him dangerously, "I mean, I'm sorry I kind of kill-stole on the most important moment of your life and everything but... that's so awesome I was able to do that!"
At a loss for words, Sasuke felt his anger subside at the outright brazen reply. In the face of his rage, people never tended to just ignore it and carry on. The novelty of it threw him off, "Anyway... what about the Mangekyou Sharingan?"
"Look for yourself," Naruto advised him, "I'm telling you, I don't see it."
Sasuke sucked up his feelings and checked on Itachi's eyes for himself, finding exactly what Naruto saw. The design of the Mangekyou Sharingan had faded completely. That didn't happen when a person with Sharingan died. That was only a thing when someone with Sharingan went-.
"Blind," Sasuke rasped out, his throat suddenly dry as a bone, "Itachi was going blind while he was fighting me."
No one else knew what the lack of definition in Itachi's eyes meant, because there was no true expert on the Sharingan. Kakashi came the closest, but he was barely aware of certain Sharingan information. Sasuke knew though.
Sasuke sank to his knees and punched the floor hard enough to crack the tile on it. With a series of deep breaths, Sasuke tried to calm himself and refocus on the mission, "...Do you have anything to put his body away in? We still can't let them have the Mangekyou Sharingan."
"Ugh," Naruto said with a cringe as he found a scroll to scribe the sealing arrays onto, "About that."
"What?"
"Can we just call it the MS?"
"What? No," Sasuke replied with a disgusted recoil. This was his family's kekkei genkai they were talking about here, "It's the Mangekyou Sharingan. Don't be an idiot. Say the whole damn thing."
"That's a mouthful!" Naruto told him as he walked over with the improvised sealing scroll to stash Itachi's body away in, "We've already said it like six times, and I feel like I'm gonna bite my tongue! I'm shortening it. MS it is."
Sasuke said nothing, simply glaring at Naruto as he quickly stored his deceased older brother away with a puff of smoke.
"Besides, it's not like anybody else has i-," Naruto absentmindedly started to say before realizing what he'd done, "Ooh. Sorry."
Sasuke stood directly behind Naruto, his hand up and prepared for a Chidori if the mood struck him. Instead he formed a fist and decided to choke down that anger. It would likely rear its head again in a few years in the form of an ulcer, "...I'm going to punch you in the face later, but now isn't the time for it. I just want you to know that it's coming, and there's nothing you can do about it."
"I probably deserve that," Naruto admitted, grimacing at his own callous remark. He was really hitting all of the sore spots today when it came to Sasuke's family woes, "Are we ready to get the hell out of here now?"
Fate took that moment to intervene as Naruto felt his clones dispel outside. They weren't killed by a force storming the building. They had simply done so to warn him about what was outside. But there wasn't anything he could do to stop it, as the building began to shake.
Naruto and Sasuke both looked at each other in alarm before the former made a decision on how to handle it. Neither particularly knew what they would face upon exiting, but they didn't want to do it going out of the front door and make it easy for them.
They made their own exit, crashing through the ceiling and punching a hole through the roof big enough for two people with the Rasengan and Chidori. It was there that they saw just what had befallen the building that they had been inside of.
It had been lifted, high above the rest of the village. Exposed. Singled out.
That had to have been the case. Because below them, around them, they could see none of the buildings that comprised the village they had run through prior to reaching the holding facility. That meant that either they were just elevated, or the entire village had simply vanished into thin air.
What they saw instead of a settlement was a rocky plain, with a gathering of what they assumed to be a task force, put together specifically to take them on. A squad that didn't seem intimidated in the slightest at the caliber of their opponents. Amongst them, their former jailer, Kurotsuchi, looking up at the two of them and waving cheekily, "Hi! Long time no see," She shouted up at them sarcastically, "What's the matter? Didn't like your accommodations? After all the work we did?"
"Oh, okay. I guess we're doing this now," Naruto said to Sasuke only. He took a step away from the Uchiha and began to dig deep for his chakra, reaching the depths of his supply before working to bring out the red; the telltale color of tapping into the chakra of the Kyuubi, "Wait. What the-?"
Sasuke's Sharingan had already been on and raring to go. When he didn't see Naruto using anything from the Kyuubi, he wondered what the hold-up was. The obvious plan was to cut right through their squad with full force and head for the hills. That didn't work if they didn't come out guns a-blazing, "Anytime you want to kick in with your stupid fox power, that'd be great."
"I'm trying," Naruto told him, still feeling nothing, "It's just... I can't."
On the ground below, Kitsuchi let out a boisterous belly laugh as he watched Naruto struggle to bring up something he couldn't reach, "What's wrong, kid? Did you miss one?"
Naruto's blood ran cold. There was no one needed to explain what that meant, to him or anyone else that heard it. The seals that had been distorting and blocking off Naruto's chakra.
He thought he'd gotten all of them. He'd been locked down tight, but had rid himself of all that he could find. He'd even felt normal again after disposing of the Five Elements Seal that had been the primary disruptor for his chakra.
Where was the one he was missing? How could he have missed one in the first place? And why did he feel so normal when he couldn't tap into the Kyuubi's chakra? Their chakra naturally mixed because of the seal, or at least it should have, so not having access to it whatsoever should have distorted his chakra control.
"You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?" Kurotsuchi asked, a smirk on her face at the thought of getting to exact some revenge for the humiliation of their escape.
Naruto let out a tired laugh, giving up on wasting time trying to contact the Nine-Tails within him, "We were hoping it would be."
"So you're not going to be exterminating half of these fools with a single jutsu. Figures. The one thing you're good at and you can't do it when we need it," Sasuke ignored the indignant 'screw you' he got from Naruto in response, "You got anything for this?"
"Well there's this one thing I worked out a while ago," Naruto said, digging into his mental Rolodex of techniques, "Don't need the Kyuubi's chakra for it, and it might be good for thinning out an army. Might take a while to set up though," He added afterwards.
Time wasn't really something they had. There wasn't anywhere to run, or anywhere to hide. Not that it really mattered though. It wasn't as though Sasuke had a move of the same magnitude up his sleeve at the moment that didn't take ample setup time as well.
"Well," Naruto said, hearing no objections from Sasuke on their would-be course of action, "See you on the other side, asshole?"
Sasuke thumbed his own nose, sneering down at the fight awaiting them below, "I'd better not have to save your ass too many times, dead-last."
With that, both of them were prepared to meet their fates on the battlefield.
XxX
Ino had never seen Iwagakure in-person before. Not even in the pages of a text book back in the Academy. Not even a rendering of what experts figured the village would look like. When Jiraiya's team had infiltrated past several outposts that led the way to Iwagakure, anticipation for what kind of urban sprawl they were set to head into rested at the front of her mind.
That was not what she wound up getting once they reached the crest of the mountains that gave way to the village itself.
"I don't understand," Ino said, standing on a cliffside, gazing at what was supposed to be Iwagakure. All she saw was nothing but plain, flat, rocky ground, "W-What happened? Where's the village?"
She had followed along as the squad split off, prepared for running reconnaissance by taking over an owl or some other sort of animal good for nighttime missions. Instead, they found nothing to wage an elaborate scouting task for.
Once again, she was paired with Kakashi, who seemed just as befuddled as her, only much quieter about it.
As he looked around, he was able to catch sight of the multiple manmade waterfalls dropping down from the cliffs surrounding Iwa and noticed something intriguing. They were falling into crevices on the ground at the very edge of the plains.
This made plenty of sense to Kakashi. The waterfalls were the main water supply for Iwa, and the system for it ran underground. This was common knowledge, 'If the entire water system was underground, what else could they have prepared down there?'
Every building was made of rock, raised straight from the mountains that the village was built in between. Iwa was a village that specialized in earth release techniques. How unlikely was it that Iwa's civilian evacuation plan simply consisted of shifting the entire village to a prepared location underground?
Konoha had never managed to reach Iwagakure during the wars that had been fought between the two powers. How Iwa responded to direct attacks on the village was a mystery to him. It made sense to him. They had the manpower and the elemental specialization to manage such a feat.
"Ino," Kakashi said gravely, getting the blonde girl's attention, "...Contact Jiraiya-sama, Asuma-san, and Shizune-san. I need them to know that I think the village has been shifted underground."
Ino remembered Jiraiya's instructions to her, to follow orders when they were given, but she still had to ask, "What? But why?"
"An emergency measure," Kakashi explained to her, "Similar to Konoha's evacuation plans for our villagers in case of an invasion."
It was enough information for Ino to accept it, even if it was hard to fathom without seeing it in-person. She reached out with her telepathy jutsu to update the rest of the team on what was happening, only to feel a familiar presence within her range. One she connected to almost automatically.
With a gasp, her control faltered and tears filled her colorful eyes, "He's not dead," She whispered, covering her mouth with her hand. She wasn't going to cry now. Not when she managed to keep from doing so when Naruto's fate was unknown to her, "Naruto is alive, Kakashi-sensei!"
"You're sure about that?"
"Yes! Yes! I couldn't ever make that mistake! He's here!"
"And you can find him?"
"YES!"
Ino's excitement at being able to mentally locate Naruto was interrupted by Asuma contacting her through the thought connection they all temporarily shared.
"Uh, I think I can tell everyone why Iwa pulled the whole village into the ground," The former jounin instructor informed her, "Take a close look around that single spire."
Kakashi's sharper vision was able to hone in on the only elevated structure in the entire village. Instead of the structure itself, his focus was quickly attracted to the people that had taken up positions around it, "Shit," He was a man who rarely spoke foully. To do so had to mean that things were bad, and they were.
Ino's eyesight wasn't as good as Kakashi's, but the moon was out, high, and full. She could see the tiny figures in the distance moving quickly on and around the stone tower. That was dangerously close to the distance she could sense Naruto from, and she was astute enough to put two and two together.
Jiraiya's orders were quick. It wasn't about infiltrating and gathering information. What they needed to know was out there. The location of who they needed to find was quite obvious. Now it was time to get them out in one piece, "Get them out of there. I've got a feeling that they didn't just lower the rest of the village so Naruto and Sasuke wouldn't wreck anything during this fight. I think they did it so that someone else wouldn't."
It went unsaid, but Kakashi believed that Jiraiya hadn't been including himself in the order to go and retrieve Naruto and Sasuke, "Where are you going then, Jiraiya-sama?"
"To try and head off the guy that would," Jiraiya finished cryptically, "I haven't heard of the old bastard who runs this place stretching his legs in a while, and I know for a fact he has a thing for smacking down kids he thinks are upstarts."
Kakashi's single visible eye went wide at what he figured Jiraiya to be implying, "You're not telling me you're going to-."
"No. It won't come to that," Jiraiya said resolutely, cutting Kakashi off before he could finish. If everyone else got the notion for what he was about to say, he would have had to hear it from all of them, not just him, "Not if what we've figured is spot on. If it is, I can salvage something out of this. Don't worry. I still need to kick the brat's head in for going and getting himself captured."
Even with the man's assurance, neither Kakashi nor Ino felt comfortable hearing Jiraiya out that way. The tone that came across the telepathic connection was Jiraiya's usual confident manner that would let others believe that he knew what he was getting himself into. But if Kakashi was right, there was a chance that even someone like Jiraiya couldn't stand up to what he was about to face.
Either way, he was an adult and the leader of the mission. He had given them their parameters, and it wasn't as though Kakashi and Ino were against it. They were to get Naruto and Sasuke the hell out of dodge. Asuma and Shizune were probably already halfway there, which meant they had some catching up to do.
"Well," Kakashi said, giving Ino the best smile he could with most of his face covered up and out of sight, "Shall we go get your boyfriend and my trouble student?"
Ino nodded and followed behind as Kakashi led the way. He was still by far the superior combatant, but that didn't mean she would stand on a hillside waiting for the job to be done. Naruto needed help, and even if they weren't in a relationship, Team 10 took care of their own.
Omake: 'Til Death Do Us What? (6)
Hiruzen normally enjoyed spending his free time conversing with pretty, young girls. It was actually his favorite pastime. He was quickly feeling that sense of fondness for the pastime drift away as he took an early meeting with Shizuka, the apparent leader of the Nadeshiko Village.
As the conversation progressed, he really wondered what it was that made so many odd things happen to Naruto.
Yes, he was a jinchuuriki, but he wasn't necessarily treated like one. He was treated like any other ninja in the village. He was just a chunin, nothing more. It was respectable, and he would be moving up the ladder sooner than later with the track record for succeeding in high-profile missions like he had, but for the time being he was a middle-of-the-road ranked ninja.
He wasn't a jounin. He wasn't ANBU. He was a chunin.
So why did he have to spend his morning talking politics with the human version of a brick wall in that regard? The topic of course, being the marital status of Konoha's sole jinchuuriki, and how dual status could be worked out between the Nadeshiko Village and Konoha once the marriage was complete and official.
"For the last time, Shizuka-dono…" Hiruzen said, trying his best to keep a strong diplomatic front and keep from sighing in exasperation in front of a young woman who simply wouldn't give up, "We will not accept a dowry from your village in exchange for hiring Naruto to ensure his own transport to your village for the ceremony."
Shizuka bowed from where she was sitting in her seat, "Our village's assets are quite massive despite its size. And if it's a matter of treatment, as the man who defeated me, my husband would be treated with respect on par with the village leader. He would be given all the concessions of a Nadeshiko Village ninja. He would be very happy there."
"I can assure you that he most certainly wouldn't be," Hiruzen replied with a wry grin. He just couldn't help himself. This girl didn't know anything about Naruto at all, aside from his strength, "This is just my advice, but after knowing the boy for his entire life, I can safely say that Naruto would not make a good pet husband."
He was actually doing her a favor, as clearly she was unaware of the sort of hell that Naruto would raise if he were to ever find himself truly locked in a situation such as an arranged marriage. Anyone involved would suffer until his wrath had subsided, and it was up to debate when it came to determining how long that would last.
It took a lot to bring that sort of response out of Naruto, but taking away his ability to choose his own course of action would definitely be the sort of thing that could evoke it.
"We would of course split our time between your village and my own," Shizuka continued, laying out her pitch to Konoha's leader and ignoring the 'pet husband' remark, "A year or so at a time for each? And of course our strength would be on-call to Konoha whenever it was needed."
If trying to convince Shizuka that she wasn't going to be able to get Naruto was impossible, trying to convince Hiruzen to let her take him could be seen the same way, "I don't like to make it a habit of selling out my own shinobi," The Sandaime Hokage deadpanned, "Young lady, without convincing him to take part of his own free will, you will not be marrying Naruto."
He didn't want to have to put his foot down. Hiruzen was a very indulging person. This was a fallacy of his that many were well aware of, himself included. But this was a matter that there was no flexibility on. Perhaps if Naruto were a willing party in the marriage suggestion, he would be willing to make certain conditions to allow it to happen. He was not willing to do the same for a one-sided desire to see it happen.
A knock came at the doors of the Hokage's office before the discussion could continue any further. Welcome to any sort of distraction at this point in time, Hiruzen spoke up to be heard from behind the great doors, "Enter."
They opened with ease and Shizuka turned her head enough to regard the entry. A moment of shock showed on her face when she saw Tsunade begin to make her way inside. She was now sitting before two of the most legendary figures to come out of Konohagakure.
"Oh, I'm sorry sensei," Tsunade said upon realizing that the office had more than one person inside, "I didn't know you had a meeting scheduled for this morning."
"Don't worry, it's informal," Hiruzen assured his sole female student with a wave of his hand, 'It's also going absolutely nowhere,' He thought to himself, but said nothing on that matter, "You're more than welcome to sit in, Tsunade."
Tsunade greeted her former teacher with a smile before regarding the dark-haired young woman sitting in front of his desk, 'Nadeshiko Village?' She thought to herself, noting her headband, "So what is this about, if you don't mind my asking."
Shizuka stood up and bowed formally to Tsunade. She was speaking to one of the most influential women in the ninja world. It was best to make a great first impression, "Tsunade-sama, I've come to the Hokage to discuss marrying one of his shinobi."
"I thought you could only marry someone if they win against you in a fight."
"But he did," Shizuka assured her, eyes glazing over as she remembered the power she'd felt from the man she felt to be her betrothed the day she accepted his strength, "I can't match him. Not in battle. He's the only man I've ever fought that could defeat me."
"Really now," Tsunade asked, her eyebrows lifting in intrigue. As far as she was aware, Nadeshiko Village had a very specific culture that required their kunoichi to only consider men capable of defeating them in battle as marriage partners, "Who is it?"
XxX
(Thirty Minutes Later – Naruto's Apartment)
*KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK!*
The loud, boisterous sound of someone banging on Naruto's front door stirred both him and the Yamanaka kunoichi bedding down in his room. Ino winced and moaned, but otherwise tuned it out. It wasn't her job to answer the door, as it wasn't her home.
That responsibility sat with the man holding onto her from behind.
"Mmm… go 'way," Naruto muttered, burying his face into Ino's long, undone hair. If anyone wanted to visit, they could wait until stores started to open, "…Too early for this shit."
The last thing he wanted to do was get up for anything. He had a mission to take later that day, but didn't need to move out until just before noon. That gave him a few more hours to get his fill of sleep and comfort with his girlfriend.
*KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!*
This time the knocks came slower, louder, and more pronounced, and Naruto couldn't ignore them this time. Slowly getting out of bed, he dodged Ino's attempt to reach behind herself and grab his hand to pull him back in. Mumbling an apology for taking away her source of warmth after hearing her whine, he got up and threw the covers over her before slogging out of his room and down the hall.
Naruto opened the door, apparently a split-second before Tsunade was about to punch it off of its hinges if the fact that her fist was at eye level with him was anything to go off of, "Hi."
She seemed terrified about how close she'd come to accidentally hitting him, but that soon turned back into the annoyance she'd originally felt while she had been marching across town to his home, "Good morning, brat. I heard something interesting this morning."
Naruto stared at the fist before pressing the top of it with his index finger and lowering it out of the way. Tsunade seemed to question his lack of awareness on her mood from the look on her face, "It's too early to be scared of you," Naruto said, explaining everything, "So what is it? What'd I do?"
"I heard you were engaged."
"Is there anyone around here that isn't gonna find out about this before I can handle it?"
"I was hoping you wouldn't have picked up quite that much from Jiraiya when I first heard he was training you."
"Technically, Jiraiya-sensei was never in a relationship to cheat on anybody the way you're trying to say I did, so I don't know what you're talking about."
Tsunade visibly recoiled from such a surprisingly sharp and astute jab at her attempt to needle Naruto. She didn't even have to flat-out state what she was upset about when it came to his current predicament. He picked up on it all on his own.
Also, normally Naruto would have shot back with something much more profane and based on anger. She couldn't even find it in her to get any more riled up, "You sure are mouthy in the morning, brat. And that's actually saying something."
"It's fucking seven-something," Naruto declared, plopping down in a seat at his kitchen table, "Let me catch you before you usually wake up and see how far you throw me across the village after I do."
She was going to say that if this was how quick his mind was after he had just woken up, he should think about looking into drug-induced narcolepsy for performance-enhancement. Interacting with him was actually calming her down, seeing how cool drowsy-Naruto was taking it all.
Taking a deep calming breath and counting to ten let her ease the rest of the way down, Tsunade took a seat at the opposite side of the table, "So you're really engaged to this girl? Everything she told sensei about you winning against her and getting locked into her village's customs is true?"
Naruto stared blearily at her before dropping his head on the table, his hands fisted in his own hair, "She talked to the old man about it? Really?"
"You were being obstinate about the whole thing, so she took it to your boss. That's what I would guess the motivation was," Tsunade told him. Come to think of it, she probably needed to head back and apologize to Hiruzen for throwing the doors to his office off the hinges and through the opposite wall when she decided to head out and find Naruto over the marriage thing.
Also, she probably needed to pay for a D-rank mission to have those things fixed. She would get to that once the request offices opened.
The sun had barely come up and already Tsunade felt like having a drink, "I don't even get how all of this even happened."
Naruto's sleepiness subsided for a moment as a realization struck him, "Wait. I met Shizuka at the capital," He pointed out before turning the tables on Tsunade with his own confused outrage, "Why didn't you know about this already? You were working there with me when this started! You're just now finding out about this?"
Tsunade pursed her lips in thought, trying to think of a time when something like this would have come up. It seemed awfully important for it to never be brought to her attention, but then again she had normally been extremely busy while she had been under contract as a medic for the Fire Daimyo.
Come to think of it, she did remember Shizune sometimes muttering as she tended to the paperwork about some strumpet thinking that she had a right to Naruto. Tsunade had just assumed that she had always been referring to that noble girl Naho who seemed to have an eye for both Naruto and Shikamaru whenever it had come up. She hadn't known that there had been another one.
"Do you want help?" Tsunade asked, "You're technically my cousin. I can't just sit here trying to scold you, then leave you dangling in the wind."
Naruto appreciated the sentiment. Tsunade was normally hard on him, but that was to try and wring out as much of Jiraiya's negative influence as she could, of which there was much, "I'd love some help. Do you have an idea that doesn't end with a war or me getting shipped out to that Nadeshiko Village place? Because mine is kinda simple."
Simple didn't mean bad. Tsunade gestured with her hand, motioning for Naruto to continue. If advisor was what he wanted her to play, advisor was what she would allow herself to be.
"I never actually finished the fight I had with her. She just saw me do Kyuubi stuff and realized she couldn't really beat me. I've gotta find somebody willing to kick her ass so they have a better claim than me," Naruto said with a wide grin, punching into his palm as he did so, "That'd get her off my back, or at complicate it enough to get me out of it, right?"
Tsunade leaned her chin onto her palms as she planted her elbows on the table, "You'd get some other poor sucker stuck in your situation?" Because that was what it sounded like to her. It wasn't the sort of solution she'd have expected from Naruto.
Naruto frowned and shook his head, squinting his eyes in consideration, "I wouldn't sneak it on 'em or anything. I'd tell them everything first," He would never trap someone in a situation that could compromise their free will if they didn't want to be involved.
Still, slim as the chances of finding a willing participant happened to be, Tsunade could see the merits of passing the buck, "There has to be someone that would do it," She admitted, remembering what she'd seen of Shizuka in the Hokage's office, "She's definitely not bad looking. And from what she said, whoever she winds up marrying would be treated like nobility in her village. You sure you're not interested?"
Naruto scoffed and turned away. As if he would ever be satisfied with sleeping his way to the top, "I'll earn my respect by being a badass ninja, thank you. Not because of who I'm supposed to be banging."
"Speaking of which…" Tsunade trailed off, gesturing with her eyes and her head in the direction of Naruto's room. Down the hall and through the door she could see the lump underneath the covers in his bed, presumably Ino.
Naruto went wide-eyed at the prospect of any kind of sex conversation with Tsunade, "I'm not talking about this with you!" Not then, not ever. Doctor or not, he didn't care.
"You brought it up first," Tsunade listlessly pointed out before deciding to find her fun in the form of embarrassing Naruto as much as possible, "So? You're aware of how to use protection right? That better not have been the one thing that old goat Jiraiya skipped out on telling you about."
"We haven't done anything like that yet," Naruto said, wishing he could sink down through his chair to the floor. This could not be happening today.
Tsunade nodded in apparent approval with his answer, "Good, because I'm pretty sure that as things are, that could be considered adultery."
It took a second for it to sink in with Naruto, helped along by the very self-satisfied smirk on Tsunade's lips. Eventually, he pulled himself up from his slouch and gave her the most piercing stare he could muster that early in the morning, "Are you proud of that joke? You feel good about yourself right now?"