Confidence is the foundation of friendship. If we give it, we will receive it. ~ Harry E. Humphreys, Jr.
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The Missions Desk was buzzing when we got back. Tsunade-sama wasn't there, which wasn't that unusual; she was the Hokage, and only spent a small portion of the day there, after all.
"Team Seven reporting a mission complete," Sasuke stated when we got to the desk.
Naruto set the mission scroll down on the table. "Kakashi-sensei got called back to Konoha," he said. "For some emergency meeting?"
"Emergency… oh, he probably got called to the Border Outpost," the Chunin behind the desk said. "I wouldn't worry about it. Was there anything else?"
"Yeah," Naruto said uneasily. "Other stuff happened. We picked up at least one extra mission, but probably two."
The Chunin raised an eyebrow but didn't really comment. "Alright. Go to briefing room four and someone will come and take your statement."
It probably said something about us, that the missions where we didn't get debriefed specially were less common than those where we were.
I followed the boys out of the room silently.
Konoha had a lot of outposts spread throughout the Land of Fire - and potentially in other places, though the official word was 'not'. Some of them were small, like the ones around Konoha itself, while others were reasonable sized buildings or towers with several rostered teams, holding cells and medical facilities. The biggest outposts, though, were the Border Outposts. They were responsible for the border patrol, quick response teams when shinobi ran into trouble on missions, and other varied functions. The outposts weren't infallible, as evidenced by the invasion at the Chunin Exams, but they were the first line of defence.
An emergency at a Border Outpost was almost certainly an attack.
"Alright?" Sasuke asked, eyebrow raised.
"I'll tell you later," I said.
When I actually know what's going on, I added mentally.
We had to wait quite a while in the briefing room before one of the missions room shinobi could come and debrief us. I was uncharacteristically impatient for it to be over with, but I had nothing on Naruto, who starting tapping an absolutely irritating rhythm on the table.
I liked to think I had patience. I dealt with Naruto on a regular basis, after all. But I was contemplating strangling him by the time the door opened. Judging by the spasm of Sasuke's eye, he probably was, as well.
"Finally," Naruto said, exhaling noisily and scooting his chair forward. "Man, you guys must be really busy out there."
"A bit, yes," the Chunin said. "So lets get this out of the way." He sat down and flipped his file open. "So, you're Team 7, under Kakashi Hatake and you were escorting Shibuki back to Hidden Waterfall. What was the issue?"
"We arrived in Hidden Waterfall safely, with no complications," Sasuke began after a pause. "And were offered a second mission to assist helping clean the waterways, which we accepted."
"That's when Kakashi-sensei got his message bird and left," Naruto picked up. "He went off alone and told us to finish up before coming back here. So we were doing that, then we got attacked."
The Chunin's eyebrow jerked up.
"A group of missing nin ambushed Hidden Waterfall and took the villagers hostage. They demanded… a village artefact, of some kind." Sasuke shrugged. "We assisted Hidden Waterfall, engaged the missing-nin and Shibuki killed the leader."
It was a concise, very concise, summary of the mission.
"How many missing nin were there?" the Chunin asked, pen darting along the paper.
"There were three four-man teams, of at least Chunin level and led by a Jounin and one more Jounin additionally, so thirteen," Sasuke said. We'd actually added that up and been surprised at the number. Both at how large it seemed against the three of us, and how small it was for fighting a village. Luckily, most of them had been taken out before the fight by the lake, or things might have gone even worse for us.
The Chunin coughed. "Four Jounin and nine Chunin?" he asked, disbelief colouring his voice.
Really, I don't know why he was that shocked, since we hadn't really mentioned that the Hidden Waterfall ninja hadn't been about.
"Hidden Waterfall has them prisoner," Naruto said, a little defensively. "The ones that survived, anyway."
"Right, right," the Chunin said hastily. "Thirteen. And then you returned?"
"We stayed the night," Naruto admitted easily. "Then we had an escort to the border."
"We got home without complications," Sasuke added dryly.
"Excellent," he said drolly. "Right, we'll draw those up as two separate missions. A D-rank cleaning and an A-rank hostage rescue." He twitched, just a little. "Fill out the forms and bring them to the desk. And don't forget to write up mission reports for them."
"We know the drill," I assured him.
We did as asked, and I left my team mates with an invitation to dinner before disappearing home. I could have combed through the Genin clearance announcements to find out what was going on, but why would I when I had a much better source of information?
"Tadaima!" I called softly, stepping out of my shoes.
Mum appeared in a flurry of movement and nearly knocked me off my feet when she pulled me into a hug. "Shikako! You're home! Are you hurt? I was so worried that you were going to get caught up in the fighting."
"I'm fine, I'm fine," I said. "We just got back about an hour ago and I don't even know what's going on. Kakashi-sensei got called off for something and… it sounds pretty bad…" I gave her a hesitant look.
Mum was a retired kunoichi. More than that, she was the wife of a Clan Head and the Jounin Commander at that. She kept up with what was happening.
"You aren't wrong," she said, sombrely. "Go, put your things away, and I'll fill you in."
That wasn't a particularly promising start, really, but I did as asked, and we sat down in the living room with cuts of steaming green tea.
"Is there fighting at the north-east border?" I asked bluntly. It was what all the evidence was pointing to.
"Yes," Mum said, equally straightforward. "Hidden Cloud made a major push against the border. The outpost managed to hold them off and send out for reinforcements. It was a priority order, so all Jounin and upper level Chunin who were capable of responding dropped their missions to answer it. I was afraid that with your team you would end up there. Land of Waterfalls certainly isn't very far away."
I shivered at the thought. As this mission had shown us, we probably would have just been cannon fodder. No wonder Kakashi-sensei had left us behind.
"They're still fighting?" I asked, because mostly ninja fights were over quickly. Even when you were talking about battles rather than individual fights, the principles were the same. Long term, head to head, knock down and drag out battles were rare.
"It seems so," Mum replied. "A second wave of reinforcements were sent out to back up the first responders, and your father went with the third wave yesterday."
I nearly spilt my tea. "Dad's there?" I asked, alarmed. I don't know why the thought bothered me so much.
"He is the Jounin Commander, you know," Mum said, a little tartly. "It makes tactical sense to have the strategist nearby to decrease the amount of time it takes to get new orders and information."
I nodded. "I know."
"It's unlikely he'll be on the front lines," she said, softer. I knew she was worried too.
She probably had a better idea of what it was like out there than I did. The only experience I had with that scale of fighting was the Chunin Exam Invasion, and for most of that I'd been off fighting Gaara and missed the worst of it.
A terrible thought occurred to me. "Where's Shikamaru?"
Had Mum thought I'd end up there because…
She shook her head. "On an escort mission to Shinjuku-gai. It's only the three of them, though. Asuma was sent out with the second wave."
The hand clenching my heart eased. "He'll be fine. That's not very far away at all." It wasn't even outside the Land of Fire.
I took a sip of my tea, marshalling my thoughts. "What do they want?" I asked, switching back to the original topic.
"If only we knew," Mum said wryly. "It's only a skirmish so far but there are rumours that it might blow up into a full out war. I can't imagine Tsunade-sama wants that so early into her reign."
Fighting happened among ninja villages, covert and overt. Fighting bad enough to be called a war? Well, that happened too. But if Konoha and Hidden Cloud went at it, you could almost bet that the other villages would be dragged into it and it would turn into the Fourth Shinobi War.
That… didn't happen…
I frowned. There hadn't been serious fighting between nations in the series, had there? None that had made the story, anyway, which wasn't always the same thing. I couldn't have changed something enough to have caused this, could I?
I mean, I'd barely managed to affect the things I knew about.
Dinner that night was a subdued affair, even with Naruto there. I'd hissed a warning at my team mates not to mention the 'extra' missions, because I was pretty sure Mum didn't need anything extra to worry about right now.
"So what is it?" Sasuke asked, after the table had been cleared off. "You've been acting weird since we got back. No, before that…"
"Ah," I said. "You know how Sensei got called off, and then the missions desk guy said he was at the Border Outpost? There's fighting there, with Hidden Cloud. That's where Dad is," I added, aware that they would have noticed his absence.
"Fighting?" Naruto said, puzzled. "What kind of fighting?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. It sounds pretty bad, though. They had to call in a lot of Jounin, so…"
"That's… not good," Sasuke said, apparently not knowing how to sum it up, either.
"What does it mean?" Naruto asked.
"For us?" I said, thoughtfully. "Probably not much, right now. They won't send rookies like us out there unless things get much worse." In which case, they might. Naruto had already proven himself to be surprisingly competent, and with Kyuubi… "We'll have to take missions without Kakashi-sensei, that's for sure. For the village? That depends on how long this lasts. Having so many high level ninja tied up will affect our ability to take missions. Which means our income will go down. There's injuries and casualties, which will overwork the system." And mean people are dying. "Less resources to use in other places. The other villages might decide we can't fight two battles at once and attack. If it escalates into war… well. Then it's war."
We were silent for a beat. I started setting up the shogi board, just for something to do.
"It's weird," Sasuke said. "That they waited so long. You'd have thought they would have attacked early, if they were trying to take advantage of the Invasion."
I frowned, rolling a shogi piece through my fingers. "Maybe it's not," I said slowly, "because they think we're weak. Maybe it's because they think we're strong."
There was a pause."Hidden Rock sent teams to scout because they thought we might be weak after losing the Hokage. But Hidden Cloud waited long enough to know that we aren't, not really. We're not at full strength, not yet, but we're not an easy target either. But… we are getting stronger."
"I don't get it," Naruto said, puzzled.
"Hidden Cloud is currently ranked as the strongest of the hidden villages. They're stronger than us. But for how long? Think about the kind of showing that we put on at the Chunin Exams, and how we rebuffed the Invasion. At the rate we're growing, in five years, in ten years? Where'll we be then?"
"They're trying to crush us back down while they have the chance," Sasuke said thoughtfully.
I shrugged. "It's a theory. Or who knows, maybe there was some secret mission that none of us know about that stirred them up. There's plenty going on in this village that I don't know about."
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For all the ominous portends, nothing had actually changed in Konoha itself. Ninja came and went and fighting happened, so it was nothing too out of the ordinary. It was probably a different story in the departments that dealt with the issue, but from the outside, everything seemed normal.
I stopped by the hospital. Lee was still there, which meant it had been a very long hospital stay for him. As far as I knew, he'd had his surgery and was recovering well.
I knocked on the door. "Hi, Lee. Oh, and Tenten, right?" I added, seeing that he already had a visitor. I knew she was Tenten, but it wasn't like we'd talked or anything.
"Right," Tenten said. "And you're Shikako." She glanced curiously at Lee. "I didn't know you two knew each other."
"I was just stopping by to see how Lee was," I excused. "I haven't been here for a while."
He beamed. "Much better! Tsunade-sama is an excellent medic. I have several more weeks of physical therapy before I can be returned to active duty." He looked, well, like himself, with green jumpsuit and orange legwarmers, and Lee wore bandages as equipment anyway so it was hard to tell if they were medical.
Tenten smiled. "I think they're only keeping him here so he doesn't injure himself training," she added.
Which sounded about right. Not that they could really stop him, but it probably curbed some of his outrageous tendencies.
"Ah, well," I said. "I'm sure it'll be over sooner than you think."
"Yosh! And if I work even harder, I will be out of here sooner!" Lee practically sparkled.
I traded half-amused looks with Tenten.
"I look forward to it," she said. "Really. With Gai-sensei gone, Neji and I are just getting shuffled around. It'd be nice to have the team together again."
Neji was probably in higher demand, too, with his Jyuuken skills and Byakugan.
"We should spar sometime," I suggested. "If you're free."
Sparring was kinda the ninja equivalent to going out for coffee or catching a movie. Everyone needed to train, and training with others (preferably of the same level) was always better, so it was practical as well as a social exercise. It was something we all needed to do, so it was a sure connection to make. 'Hey, I haven't seen you in a while, wanna spar?' or 'We've got a few hours, wanna spar?'
You could tell a surprising amount about someone by fighting too, if you paid attention. Had they improved, or gotten sloppy? Were they injured, tired, sick, not focusing? How was their gear; well looked after or rusty and old? And if so, were they taking care of themselves to the same degree? Why not? Were they stressed, depressed, on the verge of a mental break down? How were they handling the stress of the fight?
And, well, you needed to be able to trust someone to spar with them. We used live steel, and real techniques. You had to trust them to pull back if you couldn't dodge, to abort the fight if things got too dangerous.
"I- sure," Tenten said, blinking in surprise. "I've just been training by myself."
"You are so inspirational Tenten!" Lee said. "When I return to training, I will convince two, no three fellow ninja to spar with me!"
"Ah, you do that, Lee," Tenten replied, too used to his ways to make a big deal out of it.
We chatted for a little while longer, before Tenten invited me to Team Gai's training grounds. It was a little more immediate than I'd expected when I made the suggestion, but it wasn't like I had anything better to do.
"How do you want to do this?" she asked.
I considered. "To a decisive victory? And try to avoid injuries." Well, 'decisive victory' was sometimes hard to measure, especially if you were pulling attacks, but I didn't really see the point of getting injured during training.
"Sounds good to me," she said with a quick smile.
We paused, surveying each other, and the atmosphere switched from friendly-casual to battle-ready. I felt hyped, adrenaline starting to surge through my limbs, heart beat already picking up in anticipation.
My shadow lashed out, zipping straight across the clearing for her. She was expecting it, leaping backwards up into the trees, hands pulling out weapons and throwing them in a single fluid movement. I caught the gleam of silver, pulled out my kunai and deflected the first wave, thrown in a scatter pattern that would have hit ankles, knees, thighs, torso, shoulders and upper arms in places that were debilitating but not fatal, and more precisely, made it difficult to deflect them all quickly because of the range.
The second wave, released about half a second after the first, I dodged instead. Then I saw the flicker of white paper across the canopy, as a scroll was thrown across the clearing, unrolling as it went and Tenten leapt after it.
Oh, hell no.
"Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall!" I raced through the seals and slammed my hands into the ground, raising a fairly tall and stable defence. None too soon, I heard the rapid fire thunk of many, many sharp and pointy objects hitting it. Even more went sailing past the edges of the wall, embedding into the dirt, which would have prevented me from dodging in either direction.
Tenten circled around through the trees, to try and get around my Earth Wall.
Time to abandon the low ground, I thought. It gave her far too much of an advantage.
I ran through quick calculations in my head and pressed my hand to the ground. "Touch Blast," I murmured, watching as the ink spread out with my chakra.
I noted with satisfaction that my speed at setting the jutsu had improved. Having a name - something to sum up and recall all the parts involved - helped tremendously, even if it wasn't the most exciting of names. I'd contemplated having something whimsical like Blooming Flower or Gentle Fireworks, but simple, short and to the point worked best.
I darted backwards, to the edge of the wall, as it blew. It was a weak blast, very little heat or damage, but it threw a lot of dirt and dust into the air and obscured sight.
I moved.
Trees cast shadows, but ironically, shadow possession worked best at ground level. Being up in the branches meant that my shadow had to go up and down to reach it's target. The more the shadow had to travel, the greater the chance that it would be noticed. However, fighting in the tree branches gave me a much better position against Tenten's thrown weapons, so I went high.
Tenten obviously knew that the dust cloud was a distraction, and was on high alert for an attack.
It was easy enough to make an Illusionary Clone and have it take the most unexpected route out of the dust. That is, leap straight for Tenten, head on.
I think I was starting to base my idea of 'unexpected' on 'what would Naruto do?'.
She reeled, just for a second, before withdrawing two handfuls of weapons and sniping it down. They went straight through it, but were perfect shots otherwise. That gave me time to circle around the clearing and pinpoint her.
I ran through the hand seals for the Vertigo genjutsu, dropping it on her just as I threw a handful of shuriken. I could see the genjutsu hit, in the way she stumbled, but she drew a handful of senbon and threw them with unerring accuracy through the centre of the shuriken, pinning them to the tree.
One hundred percent accuracy, huh? It was an impressive shot to be sure, even without the balance affecting genjutsu.
"Kai!" She shouted, releasing the genjutsu as I dashed across the intervening space between us. I swept low, aiming to kick her legs out from underneath her, but she jumped over it, lashing out and forcing me to block.
Fast. I hadn't released my Resistance Seal, or enhanced my muscles, so I was hardly working at full capacity. But Tenten was faster and stronger than expected. Given her team mates and Sensei, it shouldn't have come as a surprise - I did remember watching her fight Temari - but her preference for long range combat created assumptions.
We traded blows, blocking and dodging, and working in the three dimensions provided by the forest. Tenten's scrolls were less useful when there were so many obstacles, and when I kept pressing in close she didn't have time to withdraw them anyway.
We rebounded off the tree trunks and the undersides of branches, flipped around them to gain surprise, twisted and turned, mostly managing to block each other though there were a few attacks that slipped through guards.
She vanished in a burst of speed, coming in low with a rising kick to my stomach. I'd seen the move before from Lee, and given that Naruto and Sasuke had both managed to copy it, I didn't doubt that Tenten had her own variation. I quickly used the replacement jutsu on a nearby log and impressed an illusion overtop of it.
She followed it up, shadowing underneath it and pulled two scrolls out. They curled through the air, arching over and around the 'body' she was attacking.
A flare of chakra through the scrolls and…
That could have been messy, I thought, as Tenten disengaged and the perforated log plummeted to the ground.
She tensed, looking around warily, kunai in each hand. She wasn't far from me. If I could keep her attention for a second or two…
I made a quick hand seal, and another Illusionary Clone shimmered into existence, in the opposite direction to where I was. It moved so that the very barest of edges was visible around the tree.
Tenten grinned and took aim -
"Shadow Possession Complete," I said. I raised one of my empty hands up to my neck, and Tenten mirrored me, only she was holding kunai.
"I give," she said after a pause and assessing her options.
I let the jutsu unravel. "Good fight," I said politely, before surveying the metal scattered ground. "Need a hand picking those up?"
She laughed nervously. "Ah, yeah. Thanks. That's one of the downsides of using a lot of weapons."
We set to work gathering them all up. They were everywhere, lodged in trees, scattered over the ground, and we'd covered a surprising amount of distance during the fight.
By the time we made it back to the clearing, we both had armfuls of weapons to be resealed. It was… awkward.
"I'll have to spread the scrolls out," Tenten murmured, before stopping to stare at the Earth Wall. She sighed.
"Alright?" I asked.
"Ah? Oh, yeah, fine," she dismissed. "Just something someone said…"
"Hmm?"
"'Any half decent ninja is going to be able to avoid those'," she quoted. "'And those that can't dodge will have some kind of technique to protect them.'" She ran a hand through her bangs.
I winced. It was, well, kinda true. The head on way she tackled the fight probably didn't help in that matter, either. "Well, eh…" I frowned. "Did Sasuke say that to you? It doesn't sound like a Neji quote and Lee would never…"
She blinked, startled. "Well, yes."
I smiled, apologetically. "Sorry. He's usually nicer than that." Okay 'nicer' might have been stretching it. 'Less deliberately cruel' maybe.
"I know," she waved it off. "It wasn't a good time for us, either. But he did have a point."
"Kinda hypocritical, though," I pointed out. "He does use shuriken techniques a lot."
"But he has more than just that. He has ninjutsu and taijutsu as well."
"Yeah, variety is good," I agreed. "I'm not saying that you can't make it with just one skill but… you have to be clever about it. I don't know, I like having options, which is why I use more than just the clan jutsu. Shikamaru does fine with nothing else, but he's a lot smarter than I am. Maybe if you mixed it up? Sasuke is living proof that shuriken, ninja wire and fire make an awesome combination. Think about what you could do by adding like… a wind jutsu behind them, or something."
She blinked, then looked thoughtful. "That's an idea. Yeah."
I smiled, pleased to have been some help, and touched the Earth Wall, sucking all the chakra out and letting it crumble back down. The various weapons clattered to the ground.
Tenten was spreading the scroll out across the grass and placing the weaponry over their respective kanji to reseal them. I brought a pile of them over, and well, was basically nosy and looked over what seals she used.
"Do you do a lot of sealing?" I asked curiously.
"I can't carry this many weapons otherwise," Tenten said with a shrug.
That wasn't really what I meant, but it probably answered my question. She only used it for sealing scrolls.
"Mmm. I just noticed that you used a different seal pattern for these and these," I said, pointing.
She glanced at it. "Kuukan Seals work better for objects that are bigger than the paper," she admitted. "But I don't need them for small things like kunai."
"The fold the space more efficiently," I said. "But have a higher chakra cost to set."
She looked surprised. "You use seals?"
"A bit," I said, and hesitated. Should I? It's my book. I wrote it, I can lend it to whoever I want. "I have a book on seals, if you'd like to borrow it."
"Thank you," she said, surprised at the offer. "Gai-sensei has been teaching me some, but he's not an expert or anything."
"Not many people are," I said wryly. "It'd be nice to have some one to talk to." Our focuses might be different, but imagine what Tenten would be like if she managed to whip up a hammerspace or something.
Mind you, I wouldn't mind a hammerspace myself…
"And, you know," I added, figuring I might as well go all the way. "If you're interested in medical jutsu, some of us girls get together for a study group."
"I wanted to learn medical jutsu once," she admitted. "I wanted to be like Tsunade-sama. I wasn't very good at it," she added, self-deprecatingly.
"It's a difficult subject," I agreed. "But you could still come anyway. Hinata can't use the jutsu either but there's still things that she can do."
"I'd like that."