As a rule, what is out of sight disturbs men's minds more seriously than what they see. ~ Julius Caesar
.
.
"Next," Sasuke said. "Papers?"
"Geeze, Sasuke," Naruto complained. "It's like you don't know us or anything."
Sasuke looked dully bored and this was clearly not the first hour of his shift on the front gates of Konoha. I didn't really envy him the duty. Sure, it was necessary. And sure, if it failed, things would get bad, but that didn't actually mean it was fun to do.
"No exceptions, idiot," Sasuke scoffed. He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers impatiently.
Naruto grumbled as he passed his ID card and the mission scroll over.
Teasingly, Sasuke flicked his Sharingan on and inspected it seriously, turning it over like he expected there to be something wrong with it.
I snickered and dropped mine on the table, beside Sai's. "I feel safer knowing Sasuke is prepared for all the imposters trying to sneak into the village right now."
There was silence. Not just 'silence' but silence. Meaningful, as conversations cut out behind me, as nervous tension jumped in the air.
I had just enough time to meet Sasuke's eyes in surprise, watched them widen in warning, before I dropped, rolling sideways away from the knife that swiped through the air where my head had been. I came up on one knee, shadow coiling like a spring and lashing out.
In the second I had been down, Sasuke leapt across the table and had one man pinned face down in the dirt, arms twisted up his back. The second had been backed against the wall with Sai's tanto pressed snugly against his throat.
The crowd startled, a few sudden screams springing up. Ninja materialised out of the gates, to herd them back and to remove the prisoners we had acquired. The Special Jounin – Hayate, I thought, the proctor from the exams – who had been manning the opposite desk, stood and quickly took charge of the situation, efficiently directing people until it was as if nothing had ever happened.
The fight had taken a second, maybe less. The clean up might have taken a minute. In less time than it took for someone to have a smoke break, the line was moving again.
No one could say ninja weren't efficient.
"That was dumb," I said, "launching an attack right at the gates. What did they think would happen?"
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Probably because you just blew their cover. Why do you have to make my job difficult?"
"I was just making a joke," I muttered. Because dammit, I hadn't known they were infiltrators. How the hell would I have known that? If they'd kept their cool and not attacked me I would never have known anything. They'd have had much better luck if they'd just kept bluffing. Didn't they teach you that before they sent you off from infiltrator school?
Deny, deny, deny.
Sasuke swept our ninja ID's up, and handed them back to us. "Get lost," he ordered. But he smirked, so I was pretty sure the brief fight had been the highlight of his day.
I stepped past, then had an idea. I smacked him on the shoulder. "Dinner. Ichiraku."
Sasuke shrugged. I took that as acceptance.
"Dinner after missions is a Team Seven tradition," I explained to Sai, as we continued on. "And Ichiraku is Naruto's favourite."
Those two sentences were both true. They just weren't related at all. But I didn't… I really didn't want to take Sai to my home. He hadn't done anything on this mission, and that wasn't as reassuring as it should have been. Because if he hadn't done anything, then why was he here? Why now, why with us, what was he after. What had he accomplished that I hadn't seen?
And until I had answers to those questions, then I didn't want him in my home.
But I didn't want to totally exclude him either. One, I wanted to keep an eye on Sai, not just now but in the long term. Two… socialising would be good for him.
"Ichiraku is the best!" Naruto said without pause. I was glad he hadn't questioned the change in routine, which was partially the reason I'd chosen Ichiraku. Naruto was hardly going to turn down an excuse to visit his favourite place. "You've gotta come. The tofu ramen is really good!"
Sai didn't really say 'yes' but he didn't say 'no' either, and I was hoping that his general propensity to follow orders would come through for us here.
"If you don't like Ichiraku," I offered. "You can pick the restaurant next time." Implicit that there would be a next time, that we would have another mission together. But Naruto had taken to Sai, so I was pretty sure that he was going to request it.
It wouldn't be so bad, as long as I could keep an eye on him. And work out what he was up to.
Being able to keep Sai would be handy, in the long run. It gave us a line back to Danzo, who had already shown he could keep tabs on us. We were playing at a disadvantage, here.
.
.
"Sai! You made it!" Naruto waved vigorously and nearly fell off his stool. Sasuke's reflexive grab was the only thing that stopped him.
Sasuke looked like he regretted the impulse. "Idiot, sit down," he said. "You're making a spectacle of yourself."
"Taicho," Sai greeted, barely refraining from standing at attention. "I am present, as requested."
Naruto practically beamed at the title. Sasuke looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I shrugged.
"This is Sai," Naruto said to Sasuke. "He was on our last mission with us. He's a pretty cool guy – he does this awesome ink drawing stuff. And this is Sasuke, our other team mate."
"Thanks for watching their backs," Sasuke said, and though he sounded disinterested there was something sharp and wary about his eyes. "And for this morning. You've got good reactions."
Sai simply nodded and slid into the open seat beside Naruto. Ichiraku was pretty busy at the moment, so we were crammed together down one half of the counter. But the food still arrived pretty sharply after we gave our orders.
Naruto filled the air with chatter, about our mission, pestering Sasuke about what he'd been doing, dragging Sai into the conversation – he was actually getting pretty good at wrangling people into talking with him and not just talking at them.
We didn't end up staying that long. Sai slunk off shortly after the 'goal' of consuming food was completed. I couldn't say I was exactly sorry to see him go, but Sai was a problem that I would rather have close at hand, rather than operating where I couldn't see what he was up to.
We went to the training grounds. It was starting to get too late to really be training now, but we were beginning to get used to taking our time together where we could get it and it wasn't like you could pick your conditions in the field. We'd worked that out.
"Spar?" Naruto suggested brightly.
I smiled. "I have a few new seals I want to test out in controlled conditions." Not that sparring was really 'controlled' per se. But it was better than trying to test them in actual combat for the first time. That was reserved for if we were in really deep trouble.
Sasuke eyed me warily. "I don't like the sound of that."
"They're harmless," I assured him. "Really. They shouldn't even explode."
I wasn't even lying, so the fact that that only made them warier was fantastic.
The seal I was talking about was basically a magnet. Magnetism as a jutsu was pretty damn rare, but I couldn't see a reason why. Magnetic fields were easy. Wrap a coil of wire around a hunk of metal, and bam, electromagnet. High school physics level. If you could do it like that, then you could probably do it with chakra. I knew you could do it with seals.
It was just that magnetic fields were one of those huge, fundamental forces. They were a little intimidating.
I wasn't even all that interested in the magnets themselves – this was just my trial run for the one I really was interested in; Gravity.
That was going to be more difficult.
"Ready?" I asked, teasingly.
The boys looked at each other, then leapt backwards up into the trees.
.
.
"So?" Sasuke prompted, turning to me, once we had finished sparring.
"So what?" I returned, genuinely perplexed. He'd have to give me a little bit more to go on than that.
"How come you don't like Sai?" Naruto continued. He frowned. "I thought you didn't, but then you were all nice to him so I thought maybe you did, but then…"
Huh. Naruto was always perceptive when you didn't really want him to be. "I like him just fine," I said. That was true, wasn't it? "It's just different working with someone new."
"Right," Naruto said doubtfully. "Because even if he's a little weird, I think he's really lonely. He needs a friend."
"I know," I said gently. Sometimes, I was in danger of forgetting that Naruto didn't win people over because he was a great fighter, or anything like that. It was because he empathised. He'd seen himself in Gaara and Haku and Sasuke. And now in Sai. And he'd wanted to help them. "I think so too."
Sasuke shrugged. Whether people liked each other had never been a high priority to him. But he probably spotted the inconsistency of not having team dinner at my house, amongst
other things. He was undoubtedly curious.
"Baa-chan agreed he could come with us on our next mission," Naruto said, like I hadn't been there for that conversation. "That's okay, right?"
I smiled reassuringly. "That's very okay."
Risky maybe, but okay.
"It's … interesting," Sasuke said, slowly. He crossed his arms, and leant against the wooden training post. "This morning at the gates…"
"He was pretty cool, right?" Naruto said. "Like, Shikako moved and then you moved, and then Sai had the other guy caught before I could even do anything." He looked a little sheepish.
It wasn't that Naruto didn't have good reflexes. He did. Once he knew that he was in a fight. Something like this morning, where the fight was unexpected and unprovoked could still take him by surprise. That was just something that experience would teach.
I'd been taken by surprise.
"That too," Sasuke said. "But his ninja ID…"
I sharpened. "Yeah?"
He looked at me, steadily. "It was new. Newer than ours. It wasn't worn. Didn't even have any fingerprints on it." Ours were new, seven months old, and it wasn't like we subjected them to terrible conditions. But they still got handled, pulled in and out of pockets, got bent and scratched. The edges wore away. They got faded and frayed.
"You could see that?" Naruto asked, confused.
Sasuke shrugged. "I had my Sharingan on, remember?"
I sat back. Not surprising, if 'Sai' was an identity created for this mission. Sasuke hadn't said there was anything wrong with the ID, which probably meant it was either a perfect forgery or created by the Konoha Administration. It wasn't hard to imagine that Danzo could get things fabricated. ROOT had to be interwoven with the village in order to function.
"People get replacement cards," I said cautiously. It was true.
"Yeah," Naruto said. "Maybe it got damaged on a mission. We could have asked him."
I… didn't really want that to happen. It was better for us, if Sai didn't know we knew. Once he realised we were onto him, it was going to be so much harder to keep an eye on him, than if he thought we were just unaware.
"It's not really a big deal," I said. "I mean, it's just a card."
Sasuke stiffened. Sharpened. "Do you know something, Shikako?" he asked.
Aww, dammit.
I blinked, trying to look surprised. Also innocent. "No?"
Unfortunately, Sasuke didn't look deterred. "We all know something is up," he said. "You might as well spill."
I did groan, that time. "Sasuke."
"Look," he said. "You did this before. With Yakumo. And you said you'd tell me next time."
I wasn't sure I had said that, actually.
"I don't know what it is," I tried.
Sasuke continued to look unimpressed. He folded his arms.
"I don't know exactly what's wrong," I amended. "And you're just going to think I'm paranoid." I chanced a glance at Naruto. He looked pretty nonplussed, looking between me and Sasuke like there was a tennis match in progress.
"I'm starting to feel pretty paranoid myself," Sasuke grumbled. His eyes were searching mine. "But even if it's nothing, we can look into it together. You don't have to do it alone."
"You're a better friend than I deserve," I said, sighing. I dropped my eyes to stare at the ground. The guilt was biting, a niggling feeling of shame twisting in my gut.
I was perfectly aware I was going to keep lying to him. There were a lot of things I was lying to Sasuke about, even if only by admission. He was better than I deserved.
"Shikako?" Naruto cut in. He sounded worried, and earnest. His face was creased and lined. "Is something wrong?"
I crumbled.
"Sai," I said. "Don't you think he's a bit… strange?"
"The ID," Sasuke said. "That's important, right?"
I nodded. "I think so. And just how he acts and stuff. Some of the questions he asked. Nothing big. Nothing that proves anything." I was trying to downplay it, now. Because I couldn't really point a finger to any one thing that screamed suspicious.
Sasuke hesitated, as though he were putting things together. "You think he's…" his voice dropped, secretive, even though we were here alone. His hands twitched into the sign for 'Anbu'. "There to watch out for you and Naruto? It's probably not the worst idea."
It was actually a little impressive that Sasuke had managed to come to a nearly correct conclusion from only two meetings. From barely any information at all.
"Or to watch us," I said. No, Tsunade assigning an Anbu to watch out for Naruto wouldn't have been the worst of ideas, when Kakashi-sensei was away and we were down a team member. But.
"That's the bit where you start to sound paranoid," Sasuke said cautiously.
"Wait." Naruto's voice rose several decibels. "Sai is-!"
I cut him off with a furious wave. "Don't say it! You aren't supposed to talk about it," I said. You weren't actually supposed to know about Anbu, even when it was something that 'everyone knew', like Kakashi-sensei. It was a bit of polite fiction. "And… Maybe. We don't know."
Naruto cupped his hand in his chin. "That's pretty cool. I believe it."
I shared a look with Sasuke.
"You can't believe it if we don't have evidence," Sasuke scolded, exasperated.
"We could ask," Naruto protested.
"We can't ask," I said, firmly. "It's a secret, remember?"
Damn, but I felt like a juggler, trying to keep a hundred balls in the air. I couldn't tell if this whole conversation had been a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe both.
.
.
Nara R&D stole me away for the next few days, for the introductory course / internship thing that I probably should have gone through before I'd been thrown in the deep end. It might not have totally prevented that giant muck up, but it probably would have gone a long way. And now I would absolutely classify all my seals as 'personal' rather than 'experimental' and would attach them only very grudgingly to my research project.
It wasn't all bad, and I could see the point of it, but it did seem too-little-too-late.
"Are you certain you don't want to transfer here full time?" Kofuku-oba asked.
"Absolutely certain," I said, flatly. "I like field work."
I hadn't wanted full time before, I certainly didn't want it now. This wasn't even part time. It was extracurricular. It was 'when I have time' work.
Except, there were a couple of things I really would have liked access to right now, that were unfortunately out of my reach.
I had a Hiraishin kunai burning a hole in my pocket and absolutely no way to read it.
I needed a seal expander, and yet, as Jiraiya had demonstrated – they were really damn difficult. There was no way I was getting at an R&D one (if they had one) without a whole list of reasons.
So. Either I had to give up, for now.
Or I had to make one myself.
There were problems with that. Firstly, I had no idea how. Secondly, seal expansion took up a whole lot of room. It was going to be really hard to find someplace secure where I could do it.
Jiraiya's had reminded me of a projector. It had magnified the seal and projected it. What if I went a different route? I didn't need it projected, I only needed to see it. I needed a microscope.
Or something.
I daydreamed about the solution while I complied my project notes for review, and avoided all the people trying to talk to me about the control measurement seal.
Yeah, no. I still wasn't doing that.