Guard duty was a tedious experience.
I found a comfortable spot to sit in Toki's room, where I could have my back against a wall and see both the window and door. And waited.
It was like meditating, in a way. A certain serene watchfulness, where thoughts faded into a quiet hush. It was as though the brain was a computer going to standby, to screensaver, everything there but still.
I waited as Toki slept and stirred and tried to sleep again.
Eventually she gave up, sitting so the covers pooled around her lap. She reached out and grabbed the pocket watch sitting on the bedside table, rolling it in her palms. In the darkness, lit only by the light of the moon from the window, she was a blur of outlines.
"Are you awake?" she asked, hushed and quiet.
"Yes," I replied, equally so. There was always something intimate about conversations in the darkness. Something that made it easier to talk.
"Sagi and I used to share a room," she said, still so soft. "We didn't have to, of course. But we did."
I breathed out, slowly. "I have a twin brother," I said, as though it were a confession. "We did the same."
"It's empty, without him," she whispered. "I don't know how to be one person, instead of one half of two."
"What was he like?" I asked.
She shifted. "Kind," she said eventually, and it sounded broken. "Kinder than me. He was good at making friends. With everyone, even the scribes and apprentices. He hated going to training with Komei. I used to convince him to let me go instead. No one could ever tell us apa- apart." She choked, and there were soft, breathy sounds of sobbing. She muffled them into her hand.
I shifted, uneasily, and wondered if I should go closer. Should comfort her.
"This watch," she continued eventually. "He gave it to me. As he. When he died." She swallowed, seeming to fight off another bout of tears. "It has been handed down for generations of Daimyo. From father to son. But no longer. The chain has been broken. The watch stopped ticking the moment that my father was killed. As if it too felt the pain of death. It is as broken as my heart – we are both stopped forever in the past."
She fell silent, sounding exhausted. Little wonder, if she was.
"Daimyo to Daimyo," I said, so so softly. "It doesn't sound like the chain has been broken at all."
Cold comfort, I thought. Watches could be fixed. Hearts were so much harder.
I listened to her cry and felt the ache in my chest. I wanted to say something. I wished I could make it better.
Even hearts healed, eventually. But that didn't make it any easier to bear when they were wounded.
"My brother and I have been fighting," I said quietly, leaning my head back against the wall. I was no less alert but… it felt easier. To not look at her. It felt like I was offering something up, cracking myself open to trade pain for pain. "As ninja, we're not really safe. I got hurt. It was- it was pretty bad. I was so scared."
I breathed in, ragged, startled at myself for saying it. For admitting it. It had been weeks, and I was only just starting to be able to consider it, without gently skirting the edges of my own thoughts.
"It scared him too. He wanted me to quit, to stay at home, where I would be safe. But I couldn't. I can't. This is what I'm for." I didn't know how much of this she was understanding. How much she could even hear. Maybe I wasn't even saying this for her. "I hate fighting with him. But I can't even imagine what I would do if he were gone."
"Revenge," she said, voice cracked. It sounded like a pact. Like we were swearing it, together. "You would get revenge."
"It won't bring him back," I said, the truth plain. I couldn't tell her she was wrong.
"No," she agreed, hand clenching around the watch that didn't tick. "But that's not the point of it."
Dawn came slowly, a creeping of light into the comforting darkness. Toki dressed in heavy, masculine finery and donned the mantle of her brother. If I hadn't known the truth, I probably wouldn't have guessed just from looking at her.
I trailed after her all morning, and though I received a few questioning looks, neither Toki nor I explained, and no one asked. She spent the morning embroiled in court politics, and was tireless in her arguments.
Even now, even spending nights hunting murderers, even planning to die once it was done… even now she was fighting tooth and claw for her country. Fighting to take part in discussion, to be the Daimyo she should have been.
It was a good sign. You haven't lost everything, Toki. Not everything.
I had hope for her. I just had to make her see it.
At lunch time, she decreed that we would eat at the lake. That was apparently more complicated than just packing a picnic basket and going, because there was an entourage of guards and courtiers and servants bustling about to escort her.
I bore with it.
And then three ninja jumped out of the lake to try and assassinate her.
I sensed them coming, chakra in a place that chakra shouldn't have been, and wasn't surprised when they leapt out of the water. I slid in front of her and deflected the shuriken – strange, triangular designs – and let them close into Shadow Possession range.
They landed on the shore, feet squelching in the mud, and my shadow slithered into theirs.
"Shadow Possession Complete," I intoned.
Face to face, none of them looked remarkable. In fact, they looked carefully unremarkable. Blue formless outfits over mesh under-armour, with cloth masks that covered all but their eyes.
The eyes widened.
"Who are you?" I asked.
There was a flicker of chakra. A familiar flicker. Something I had set myself more than a thousand times.
An exploding tag.
My hands raced through seals, even as I caught sight of the first, terrible spark of fire. "Earth Release; Earth-Style Wall!"
It wouldn't be in time.
I had to be in time!
The explosion rocked the wall even as it grew, shattering it into shrapnel. I was pelted with it and the heat blast of the explosion - tinged with the smell of burning flesh - seared my face.
That was. Sudden. I thought numbly, as the smoke faded away. There was no chakra left. Why did he.
I hadn't been going to kill them. Arrest them, maybe. But …
That didn't call for a suicide attack. This hadn't been that kind of fight. Had it? They hadn't even fought back, not really. There had been no escalation. No build up. No exchange of techniques or attempts or conversation. Nothing. They had just. Blown themselves up.
Dammit all. What was the point of that?
"Sagi-sama!" One of the guards cried out, in between coughing. "Are you injured?!"
"I am unharmed," Toki said. I glanced at her over my shoulder; she was giving every appearance of being completely unruffled. Good. The blast hadn't harmed her. "The attackers?"
"Dead," I confirmed, as the dust cleared and all I could see were… remains. Gingerly, I went forward. There were little enough of them left. Too little to gain any decent information from, without an experienced pathologist. Fire had a way of erasing evidence really well. What wasn't charred black was melted.
There would be no recognising who these men were.
I sighed, and ran a hand through my hair, rattling the dirt out of it. I picked up the strange shuriken, weighing them thoughtfully in my hand. They were unique, different to the standard Konoha model, but that didn't mean I knew where they were from.
The lake was wide enough that they could have entered it at any location, even swum up the river if they were skilled enough. It would be hard for the palace guards to have stopped them.
But.
This picnic had been a spur of the moment thing.
"Do you come here a lot?" I asked, mind racing. "To the lake?"
Toki blinked at me. "Occasionally," she said. "We would often play here as children. It is a place to remember."
But not so frequently now that it was a habit. Interesting. So, either they had chanced upon us, had been waiting here for some time, or… they had known we were coming. Either by following us, or by being informed. It had not been particularly secret, but at the same time, there had not been much time for the news to spread.
More questions. No answers.
.
.
We hadn't exactly set a time to meet up again, but I expected Naruto and Sai to come and find us in the evening. I couldn't exactly go and find them, since that would mean leaving Toki alone.
I almost regretted that we hadn't put a Naruto clone on Toki-duty but since there had, actually, been an assassination attempt, I didn't continue too far down that line of thought.
"Sorry we took so long," Naruto stage whispered as they snuck in through the shogi doors to the courtyard, having come in over the roof. "This investigating thing is really hard."
I smiled at him. "What have you found out?"
"The times, locations and causes of death of the Daimyo and 'princess'," Sai answered, smoothly. "The main suspects all have alibis. There have been three more attempted assassinations of the new Daimyo. They have alibies during those times too."
"Four assassination attempts," I said calmly, gesturing to the shuriken that I'd stacked on the table. "Three ninja attempted to ambush us at lunch time."
Sai frowned imperceptibly. "Ninja?" he repeated. But he also didn't seem surprised. I filed that thought away.
Naruto bent over the table and grabbed one of the weapons. The neatly stacked tower of them clattered over and scuffed the table. He rubbed the mark sheepishly with his sleeve. "These look like the ones we saw in the armoury, right Sai? Chishima took us around on a tour," he explained to me. "He said some of the guards used them but not many."
I sighed. "So they used local weapons." They could have just stolen them from the armoury. That would have been the easiest solution. It was a dead end.
"But they were ninja?" Naruto asked. "Really ninja?"
I nodded, biting my lip in thought. "I didn't see a headband and I didn't exactly ask for their ID cards," I said wryly. "But they had chakra and it was trained. And they had exploding tags."
"Can we interrogate them?" Sai asked.
"They had exploding tags," I repeated.
Sai didn't ask anything further about the matter.
"So you have found nothing," Toki said, wearily. "Another day, and I am no closer to the truth."
"Hey," Naruto protested. "We've only been here a day! There's heaps more stuff we have to do before we give up." He sounded stung, like solving this in a day wasn't an expectation too high to have.
She pushed herself to her feet. "I will continue my own investigations! These wasted hours weigh heavily on my heart."
She stalked off in a flurry, shedding the heavy robes of office and returning in a simple cotton outfit to wear beneath the heavy Cursed Warrior armour.
I yawned, propping my elbows on my thighs and letting my chin rest in my hands. After a full night keeping watch and a day of body guarding, I was tired. But it didn't look like rest would be coming any time soon.
At least this wasn't the constant rush-fight-rush of some of our missions.
"We don't all have to go," Naruto said suddenly.
I blinked at him. "Well, no. As long as one of us is with her. Did you want to split up again?"
"We could cover more ground," Sai agreed.
Naruto nodded, linking his hands behind his head. "We should watch Toki in shifts, like we do night watch. So I'll go now, and Sai can watch her tomorrow. That way you can get some rest."
That was directed at me. I raised an eyebrow. "I'm not that tired. I can keep going," I said. He did have a point, and I wasn't objecting the idea. I just didn't need it done solely for my sake.
He grinned. "I know. But you don't have to yet, so you should get some sleep."
This conversation felt oddly familiar, a strange echo of what we had told Sai at the start of the mission. In that vein, I could hardly argue with it, could I?
Sleep deprivation hardly contributed well to keeping a clear mind. I'd be a fool not to sleep when I could, especially if this turned out to be a long mission. We had no idea how long it would take to solve this.
"Yes, taicho," I said teasingly.
.
.
I woke to darkness, not quite sure what had startled me awake, but knowing it was a threat.
Beside me, Sai also jerked awake. We hadn't set a night watch for the two of us, but neither of us were heavy sleepers. The trade-off had seemed worth it.
"Status?" Sai breathed quietly. He hadn't moved.
There was nothing in the room with us. Nothing I could see or hear or sense. Further out… I stretched my senses, straining to find whatever it was that had awoken me.
There was chakra there, stronger and more defined that that of the palace guards.
"Ninja," I breathed back, sliding out of the futon. I slipped my shoes on, grabbed my kunai pouch and found my jacket. There was no question that I would follow them and find out what was going on.
Sai was ready to go in equal time – maybe even less. He followed me as we silently stole out of the room and slipped along the palace hallways. My only guide was the chakra right on the edge of my sensing range. I didn't want to lose it. It was moving directly away from us, towards the edge of the palace grounds.
Then I stopped. Because there was something coming towards us, something small and scuttling that had only the barest traces of chakra clinging to it. Sai's chakra.
He knelt to retrieve the ink mouse.
I hadn't known he'd made those. Now I had another thing to worry about.
"There are more ninja congregating in a room in the west wing," he said, without preamble. "A full squad, if not more."
Great. I weighed up how much I trusted Sai, over the urgency of the mission. Squads of ninja meant nothing good. I'd already taken out three. There was another ahead of us. How many were there?
"See if you can find out what they're after," I said, deciding. I hoped I wasn't wrong. "Try not to engage. I'll follow this one."
We broke apart, soundlessly going our own ways. I pulled my chakra in, as small and tight as it would go, as unnoticeable as possible, and made my steps as utterly soundless as I could. I was little more than a ghost in the night.
I followed, cautious but confident, all the way out of the palace and into the forest. They were heading close to the shrine, which made me a little nervous. Did they know? Were they after Toki? Was this another assassination attempt?
I touched down cautiously on the ground in the shrine courtyard, intent on sneaking the last few meters to avoid notice, and the chakra –
- vanished.
Damn. I flung myself sideways, rolling across the ground and coming up kneeling, kunai in hands and facing my original spot.
Nothing happened. The wind blew through the tree leaves. The stars twinkled overhead, moon beaming down brightly, giving enough light to see by. Enough light to tell that the courtyard was completely empty.
I refused to relax my guard. A trap. I walked straight into it.
I was on high alert but I couldn't sense anything. Nothing. Not a single person in my range.
I channelled chakra to my ears, hoping I could hear something. Breathing. Anything.
"Did you think I didn't notice you following me?" A heavy, male voice asked. Behind me. Too close. Too loud.
I spun around, rising, kunai whistling through empty air. Nothing.
Calm down. I told myself sternly. Don't get yourself worked up. Think it through. You know there is someone here, you just have to find them.
I could see nothing. Sense nothing. Hear only what he let me hear. He might as well have not been there.
I breathed in and out, slowly, trying to calm the rapid hammering of my heart. My palms were sweaty around the handle of my kunai. It wasn't productive.
My eyes darted across the ground. It was too dark to tell if he was leaving footprints.
I can fix that, I thought, trading one of my kunai for my lightsaber. It was a pity my legendary weapon was so frequently useful as a torch. The glow of it lit up the night, stripping away any chance I might have had of hiding – but they knew I was here, anyway. To my disappointment, the light it threw revealed no shadows of hidden people.
"That's a neat jutsu you have," I said, conversationally. My voice didn't even waver. "Camouflage Technique, right? You must be good to be able to cover your chakra with it."
The people we'd encountered before – Kajika's people – couldn't. They hadn't been able to move and keep it going either. I had a sinking feeling that might not be the case here.