If you are out of trouble, watch for danger ~ Sophocles
.
.
Shikamaru bolted for the hospital almost as soon as we hit the streets.
"I'll see you tomorrow," I said to Naruto and Sasuke hastily. "Stay out of trouble!" After everything that had happened today, I didn't want for there to be any more surprises.
Then I took off after Shikamaru with a groan. I'd done a lot more exercise today than I had since the mission, and I knew I was going to be paying for it.
I wasn't panicking, though, even if they'd just dangled us like bait, I didn't believe that Jiraiya and Tsunade would be quite so blasé if Chouji had been hurt. They would have said.
The hospital let us know that Chouji had indeed been signed out, just as planned, and had gone home. He hadn't been injured any further.
Shikamaru sagged at the news, some of the frantic energy leeching out of him. He thanked the receptionist tiredly, and headed back outside, scuffing a hand through his hair.
"He's okay," I said quietly. "Tsunade and Jiraiya would have said if anything had happened."
"Pretty trusting for someone that was really angry at them a minute ago," Shikamaru said wearily.
"Yeah, I-" My voice caught uncomfortably, rasping a little as residual anger pulled my throat tight. "I don't like what they did. But I also don't think they did it carelessly. I wish they'd told us, more than anything…" It wasn't like we wouldn't have gone through with it. Sasuke had already played bait once, and it would have been a lot less nerve wracking if we'd known what was going on.
Secrets. Everything is always layered in secrets.
But wishing for the past to change never helped anything. It was done. Move on.
"Come on," I said instead. "Let's go see him."
Shikamaru shoved his hands in his pockets. "This is not the kind of exciting I wanted in my life," he complained.
"You didn't want any kind of exciting in your life," I shot back easily.
"And the more I see, the more justified I feel about that decision."
I laughed and we headed towards the Akimichi Clan grounds with a slightly more casual pace. The Akimichi place always felt really busy in a way that the Nara grounds never really managed, with less empty forest and more buildings crowded together. Well, I say the 'Akimichi Clan grounds' but they didn't have a sharply delineated area that they all stayed in; houses and shops spilled out into the village and you could find Akimichi owned restaurants clear on the other side of Konoha.
Shikamaru knocked briskly on the door, and within minutes we were welcomed by Chouji's mother ushering us inside and tutting about getting us something to eat because we were far too thin, poor dears.
It was the exact same refrain we were met with every time that we visited their house, and it was soothing in its familiarity. I guess when you were an Akimichi, everyone seemed too thin.
Ino, to my surprise, was settled at the kitchen table across from Chouji, nursing a cup of tea and politely taking very small bites of food.
"Hey," Shikamaru said quietly. "Heard you had a bit of trouble earlier."
"Tch," Ino replied. "It figures that trying to go anywhere with one of you boys winds up with us in trouble." Her smile was kind of wan and strained though.
"You were there?" I asked, as we took a seat.
Ino nodded. "Yeah, we were just signing out when that Sound girl burst through the front doors waving a sword around. Chouji, being the big hero that he is," she teased, "went to go and wrestle it off her before she could hurt anyone, and then Sakura hit her over the head with a vase. It was all over very fast."
Lacking from that story was any description of what Ino had done and Ino usually wasn't shy tell tales about her exploits.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Fine," Ino said, waving it off with a light laugh that was so obviously fake. There was a long pause when none of us said anything. "Really," she insisted. "I didn't get hurt or anything. I just… froze. Sorry, Chouji. I just… couldn't follow through. I had it all lined up and ready and I just couldn't do it."
"It's okay," Chouji said. "Everything worked out alright." For Chouji, that was enough to make things okay. Even though he'd had to take the pills, nearly wrecked his body and been unable to continue as a ninja, even though they'd been attacked again, everything was okay now and that was enough.
"We had to get saved by Sakura," Ino said. "Sakura. She's not even-"
A ninja, hovered in the air unsaid.
Ino had the grace to look ashamed. "I didn't mean that."
"Sorry we weren't there," Shikamaru said. "If I'd known, I would have come with you." It was irrational; there was no way he could have known beforehand. That didn't make the desire any less truthful.
"Tch, slacker. I bet you were busy watching clouds or something."
"We ran into a few troubles of our own," I said, wryly. "Seems like it was the day for it.
"Are you both alright?" Chouji asked. "You didn't get hurt or anything did you?"
Ino's expression mirrored his worry.
"Yeah, fine," Shikamaru said. He rolled his neck, the vertebra clicking. "Naruto and Sasuke were with us. It was troublesome."
"What happened?" Ino asked.
"There was a prison break," I said with a shrug. "We ran into a few of the escapees. They attacked one of the clan labs for some drugs and stuff." It was a slightly less than elegant summation of the situation, but it would do.
"Crazy," Ino said, voice dropping in volume just a little. "Makes you wonder just how safe this place is, sometimes, doesn't it?"
"The safest place in the world is always going to be where we can watch each other's backs," I said. I couldn't exactly reassure them that 'no, Konoha is perfectly safe' but neither did I want to push the idea that it wasn't.
I didn't really want to believe that Konoha wasn't safe.
It was… sad to see them breaking the childish faith that home was the same as safe. As ninja, it probably wasn't a bad thing to move on past that, but it was still… something of a loss.
Eventually, no matter how cosy it was here, we had to go. With absolutely no discussion on the matter whatsoever, Shika and I ended up walking Ino home. It just happened, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
When we reached her house though, she paused and took a steading breath. "I'll meet you at the training fields tomorrow," she said, waving a finger in Shikamaru's face. "Don't be late! I need someone to use for target practice."
Shikamaru groaned. "Troublesome."
"I mean it!"
"Yeah, yeah, I'll be there," Shikamaru grumbled. "Can't you use 'kako?"
Yeah, no. Bad idea if I'd ever heard one. "Sorry," I said as apologetically as I could manage. "Team training."
"Not too much, I hope," Shikamaru said, eyes cutting sideways at me. "You haven't done much clan training lately."
Was… was Shika scolding me for slacking off at training? What bizarre backwards world had I stumbled into?
He was right, though. With so many different options open to me, my progress in any one of them was less than it could be. And I had been neglecting my clan training. Justifying it as dad not being here clearly wasn't going to work, if Shikamaru had managed to find someone to supervise him.
"Yeah," I said. "I'll work on that."
.
.
"Nara," Tsunade said as we stood arrayed in front of her desk. It wasn't the first time we'd come looking for work since Sasuke had been let out, and there were always D-ranks to be done. "How's your arm?"
"Ah, fine," I said, taken aback by the question a bit. "I've been cleared by medical." I was still doing exercises with it, but I'd already proven that I could fight and form handseals.
Tsunade nodded as if that was just confirmation for a decision she'd already made. "Alright then. I hate to do this, but I'm splitting you up-"
She didn't even manage to finish her sentence before Naruto exploded. "What? Why? Baa-chan, we're a team! You can't split us up!"
On his other side, Sasuke was drawn as tight as a bowstring, tension clear in the line of his shoulders.
"Quiet!" Tsunade slapped the desk, the smack of her hand like a whipcrack. "It's not permanent. But having the two of you cooling your heels just because your teammate can't leave the village does no one any good. I'm not breaking you up forever, but sometimes it will be necessary to work with other people and you're going to have to accept that. Understand?"
Naruto looked like he had bitten a lemon, face scrunched up and hands curled into half fists at his sides. "I don't like it," he muttered.
"You don't have to like it," Tsunade said, unsympathetically. "You just have to understand it. And if you can't see the reasons for it, then maybe I made the wrong call giving you that vest."
I winced a little. That was … harsh.
"What's going to happen?" Sasuke asked, voice inflectionless.
"I'm putting you on the patrol roster," Tsunade said. "You'll be paired with either one of the Jounin or one of the Special Jounin for safety, but don't expect them to go easy on you. They're there to do their jobs, not to babysit you."
Something eased in him, a little, at the directions. Probably at the realisation that he was still going to be doing something even if patrol duty wasn't exactly glamorous. Then again, maybe I was reading too much into it. Both Sasuke had been on missions with Team Gai while Naruto was looking for Tsunade, so he was more familiar with the idea than the rest of us.
"And us?" I asked cautiously.
"C-rank. Low risk," she said crisply. "You've been hired to locate a pet ferret that was lost around Kawara-gai and deliver it to Mizugiwa. Including travel, it shouldn't take more than a week."
I blinked, a little bit stunned. When they said that D-rank missions prepared you for actual missions, I'd rather thought about it as 'applicable skills' not that people actually still hired you to find lost pets. And, actually, 'around Kawara-gai'? Finding Tora in Konoha had been tricky, finding a specific ferret in an open portion of countryside sounded insane.
"As for your third squad member…" She trailed off, tapping her fingernails on the desk thoughtfully.
"Hinata?" I suggested hopefully. Having the Byakugan would be incredibly handy in this situation.
Tsunade shook her head almost immediately. "Unavailable. Take Shikamaru. Two Chunin should be enough to handle this."
She threw the mission scroll at us, directing Sasuke to report in and get his schedule, and we left.
"I hate this," Naruto muttered, scuffing his toe on the ground. "It sucks."
"Don't tell me you didn't expect it," Sasuke said, crossing his arms. "It's been coming since before we went to the Land of Snow."
Since Kajika and finding out that Orochimaru knew what missions we were on. Since the Chunin Exam, maybe, and Sasuke had become a target.
"It's not so bad," I tried. "There are plenty of positions within the village. And you'll have a lot of time for training." Of course, you could pretty much rule out anything sensitive, if he was carrying Orochimaru around on his neck. I wasn't sure how much that left, actually, but hopefully there was enough to keep him occupied.
"And Baa-chan said it wasn't permanent," Naruto chimed in, perking up a bit. "So it's probably just this once. We're still a team and nothing is going to change that, believe it!"
Sasuke and I exchanged looks because it probably wasn't going to be 'just once' but … I could believe in the rest of it.
"You better go," Sasuke said. "You've got a mission to do."
.
.
Kawara-gai was a small town, close to the border of Land of Rivers, which separated Fire and Wind. It was a decent distance from the village, even travelling through the trees but we were fairly light-hearted about it. We were as alert as always – because it was a mission – but I had my stress ball in hand and Shikamaru was stringing shadow tendrils through his fingers like a cat's cradle, and Naruto was rambling away about nothing in particular.
"So what's the plan?" I asked, unfolding the map as we set up camp for the night. We were at least half a day away still, but we didn't have a clear destination.
Shikamaru yawned, lacing his fingers behind his head and leaning back. "What do you know about ferrets?"
I shrugged. "They're mustelids, like weasels. About the size of a domestic cat. They're obligate carnivores and hunt pretty much anything – birds, rabbits, rats. They're crepuscular. They tend to burrow. A group of ferrets is called a 'business'." That last one was probably irrelevant.
Naruto snickered.
"Does that help us?" Shikamaru drawled.
"Depends," I shrugged. "Being crepuscular means the best time to look for it would be dawn and dusk, because that's when it's going to be active. If we needed to bait a trap, we'd use meat or maybe eggs… If it's a pet it might be used to eating other things though. If it can chase down a rabbit, it has to be pretty fast, so it could have covered a lot of ground between when it was lost and now."
Naruto nodded sagely, but I was pretty sure that he wouldn't have considered any of that. "If it's a pet, it might just have stayed at the town, right?" he suggested. "Because it's used to people."
"Maybe," I said. "It couldn't hurt to start their anyway. Kawara-gai is the closest thing we have to a centre point. While searching outside-in reduces the chance of missing it, there's only three of us and a lot of ground to cover." We could change that with shadow clones, but it was still a big area.
It was like a needle in a haystack. A moving needle.
We made it to Kawara-gai about midday and set about asking the townspeople if they had seen our ferret. Three kids looking for a lost pet wasn't exactly unusual – although there was no real reason to hide the fact we were ninja – but we didn't really get anywhere until we started knocking on doors on some of the outer lying farms.
"Might have seen one this morning," one farmer said reticently. "Could have been a stoat though. Didn't really get a close look at it."
It was better than anything we'd had so far, so we thanked him and started spreading out to check the area. We drew up a search grid and started combing through it, Naruto clones filling out the lines. We weren't particularly subtle about it, and we stirred countless rabbits out of the undergrowth as we checked burrows and dens.
"I think I see it," the Naruto who was next in the chain to me said, suddenly. I cast my eyes around, following the direction of his gaze, but couldn't see anything. "Ah, not me-me. Another me. That way!"
"Right," I said, feeling a little silly. "Could you take over my spot?" I took off in the direction he had pointed, ducking down the line of clones until one waved me over.
"Looks like the right markings," Shikamaru said as I got closer. He and Naruto were crouched in a tree, looking down on a ferret gambolling in the grass below. I landed nimbly on the branch beside them.
"Right," I agreed, then paused cocking my head to the side and frowning. "Do you hear that?"
It was… very faint. Just at the edge of hearing. A … humming, whistling sound, almost. It could have just been tinnitus, ringing in my ears…
"Hear what?" Naruto asked, puzzled. He looked around, as if he could see what I thought I could hear.
"Never mind then," I murmured. "Let's catch this ferret, yeah?"
It was probably over kill. Two shadow users and Naruto, who could be a near infinite number of himself at any given moment, verses one lost pet ferret. There was just no way we weren't going to catch it.
Once it got past the shock of being manhandled, it was actually pretty friendly and seemed content enough to curl up in Naruto's backpack, even though we'd brought a pet carrier with us.
Mizugiwa was a small town inside Land of Rivers, so it was still a fair distance from where we were. That said, there was nothing particularly critical about this mission and it was nice to do something that was easy.
The lack of Sasuke was like a shadow hanging over us – noticeable, but more important in that it was a reflection of bigger things – but Shikamaru didn't make for a bad team mate. I was biased, obviously, but the three of us worked well together, even in something as simple as this.
The humming didn't stop – faint enough that if I wasn't listening for it I didn't notice it – but it didn't get any louder either. I almost thought I was imagining it, like a song stuck in my head.
Almost.
"This is kinda strange," Shikamaru noted, as we approached Mizugiwa. "It's the middle of the day, but there's not a single person in sight."
"Yeah," I agreed, eyes darting over the scenery. It was hilly and steep, but the land was terraced with rice paddies and it was lush and green. There were plenty of well cared for paddocks and crops. There should have been someone out and about.
"We should start running recon tactics," Shikamaru said, mouth pulling downwards.
"You think it's serious?" Naruto asked, an uncharacteristic frown on his face. "Maybe they're just… having a village meeting or something." He scratched the back of his neck. "Everything looks really peaceful."
"It can't hurt to be careful," Shikamaru replied. "Sense anything, 'Kako?"
I shook my head. "The town's too far away."
"We'll split up, circle around," Shikamaru decided. "If it's nothing, then it's nothing. Otherwise, we should be prepared."
I nodded. "Naruto, can you give us each a clone for communication?" We should give them a snappy name if we kept using them like this. Comm-clones?
"Sure," he agreed. "As spiders?"
"Umm," I said. Then I saw the mischievous look in his eyes and elbowed him in the ribs.
"Ow, ow. Okay, not spiders then."
"As yourself is fine," I said. "Otherwise it'll just be one-way communications. Spiders can't talk."
"I bet they kind of could," Naruto teased. "It's not like they're real spiders or anything."
"Leaving aside arguments of chakra metaphysics for the moment," Shikamaru said drolly. "Can we get moving?"
Naruto popped off two clones and we took to the trees, separating with the barest rustle of leaves to mark our passing. I kept my eyes peeled for danger, but saw nothing. Even the sound that had been nipping at my ears for days had vanished.
The silence was a little unnerving. I'd started to get used to it.
Then we saw the village.
"Oh man," the Naruto beside me said softly. He looked sad, and stricken. "Who the hell would do something like that?"
I pressed my lips together in a thin line and didn't answer. The place was totalled. There were blacked charcoal frames of burnt down houses, piles of rubble, deep craters dug into the ground with the corresponding dirt thrown everywhere. Nothing had been spared, and nothing was untouched.
Fire, I could pass off. But some of the damage was clearly ninjutsu.
Land of Rivers had its own shinobi village – the Village Hidden in the Valleys – but it hardly made sense for them to destroy a town in their own country. Apart from that, River Country was bordered by Wind and Fire which wasn't pleasant to consider either.
"Let's see if anyone is down there," I said.
Walking into that destroyed town was eerie. It was worse than cleaning up after the Exam Invasion, because that had been over and the damage hadn't been that great. This place was destroyed, and worse, it was empty.
"No bodies," I noted, not sure whether that was a relief or not. It wasn't that I wanted there to be bodies, but then it raised the question of 'where are they, then?' There were certainly no survivors wandering around.
Gingerly, I tapped a finger on the blacked wood of a house frame, eyeing the white ash smouldering on the ground. It was still warm.
Naruto shook his head. "The others haven't seen any either."
"Any sign that the attackers are still here?" I asked, carefully scanning the streets.
"No. Shikamaru says to meet up at the town square."
I nodded. There was nothing that could be done immediately, and whatever course of action was coming next was something that we'd have to discuss.
I picked my way through the remains of the town, carefully heading towards the meeting point. There was still nothing alive, no sign of the people that lived here. The destruction had been thorough. There was furniture and belongings littering the streets, whole houses pulled apart before they had been destroyed.
Shikamaru and Naruto were both waiting when I got there, and the clone behind me dismissed itself with a puff. The ringing in my ears was back, and it set me on edge. I couldn't tell if it was harmless, anymore, or if it was connected.
"What happened here?" Naruto asked, agitated, as soon as I got within conversational distance. His hands were clenched into fists, like he wanted to know who did this so he could punch them. "This is horrible!"
"I don't know," I said, glancing at Shikamaru. He shook his head. "But it probably wasn't done that long ago. Today, or yesterday, maybe."
"Then we find them," Naruto declared. "This isn't right."
"We do kind of have our own mission to finish," Shikamaru said mildly, stuffing his hands into his pockets and slouching. It was probably the most token of protests imaginable.
"We can't worry about delivering a ferret when there are people that need our help!" Naruto protested immediately. "Besides, this is where we're supposed to take it and there's no one here."
And that was kind of a large loophole, if we had to explain things, wasn't it? I ignored the little voice that said 'Hokage-sama is not going to be impressed'.
"Yeah, yeah, don't get so worked up, I agree," Shikamaru drawled. "The question is, what are we going to do now?"
We didn't know who, didn't know when, didn't know why… we didn't know anything. Changing that would have to be our first step. There was a good chance that what was going on here was more than we could handle and we'd have to get backup.
"If they hit this village they might have hit others," I said. "Or some of the farm houses around the town. If they weren't hit, they might have noticed something."
"We should be able to track which way they went," Shikamaru contributed. "You can't move stealthily with that many hostages."
Or far, so there would have to be some kind of base nearby – and I didn't want to think about why they would have taken so many people away.
"Right!" Naruto nodded, determination shining in his eyes. "I'll send clones to the other towns, and we can follow the tracks and get those people back."
I glanced at Shikamaru. He gave a shrug.
"Sounds like a plan."