"The buildings on the hill? Oh, they belong to the cult."
"Cult?" Kakashi went over the mission briefing in his head. Nope, no mention of a cult.
"What did they say they were called again? Ah! The daughters of Mujou." The elderly innkeeper nodded to herself.
When Kakashi, baffled by her conversational tone, just stared at her in disbelief, she continued, "Now don't look at me like that! They're actually very nice. They come down here sometimes… I guess you could have asked them, but I'm afraid they don't speak to men. Their religion forbids it, you see."
Well, that was a problem.
"No men allowed," Kakashi told Gai bluntly, "we can observe the place from outside or sneak in at night and look for clues, but, frankly, I doubt we'll find out much that way. Long-term infiltration would be the way to go, but…" He trailed off, letting Gai come to the obvious conclusion himself.
"No buts! We've got a mission; we'll go in undercover!" Apparently the conclusion had not been obvious enough.
"Were you even listening to me?"
"We can transform into women! It's easy; Naruto does it all the time!"
And wasn't that something to be proud of…
"Naruto has more chakra than the two of us put together, and even he only does it for a few minutes at a time. We're talking days here, maybe weeks."
"We can do this! If anyone can, it's us!"
"How did you come to this conclusion exactly?"
"Because we're Konoha's strongest two man squad!"
Right, of course, that explanation again.
Kakashi shrugged. Well, maybe it was worth a try. The alternative would be aborting the mission and going back to Konoha empty-handed, a trip that'd take four days. Another, less male, team would then need another four days to get back here, and by then the teenaged son of the daimyo's second cousin twice removed might be dead. If he wasn't already.
He sighed, defeated.
"Seems like we won't be for much longer," he said and smirked at the look of shock and outrage that crossed Gai's face, "a two man squad, that is."
If he was honest, Kakashi had to admit that, as soon as Gai announced that he was ready, he'd secretly braced himself for a horrible, maybe somewhat hilarious sight. Everyone knew that in order to save chakra you only modified your looks enough to pass as the other gender instead of going for a complete transformation. And Gai as a woman? Kakashi would have pictured…
Well, he realized what he'd pictured had basically been Gai in makeup and a dress – which was more than a little disturbing.
But the woman standing in front of him was definitely not Gai in a dress. She - he- was all legs, slim and muscular.
His face was softer, the chin smaller, his cheekbones still prominent and his long, dark lashes really brought out his eyes. He could have toned down the brows a little more, Kakashi figured it wasn't that bad; it might even help with the clueless farmgirl impression.
Still, Gai was attractive, not in the classical sense but in a tomboy-ish sort of way. Kakashi had to actively keep himself from staring, from noticing Gai's small, extremely perky breasts and his shapely backside, which was hard to do, what with him not having changed his outfit. The spandex clung in all the right-wrongplaces.
Quickly, he averted his eye and focused on doing his own henge.
Kakashi gave Gai one last critical once over and decided that he was probably as convincing as he was ever going to get. His looks were perfect, rounded off with a cheap, slightly washed out Kimono they'd bought in a second hand shop, but whenever he opened his mouth…
"What are we waiting for, rival?" Gai bellowed impatiently, making Kakashi cringe and the jaws of a few passersby drop.
"You sound like a man, Mai-chan. It's unseemly."
And it wasn't just the diction – although that was abysmal, too – it was also the voice, which managed to be too deep and yet somehow too high at the same time. It simply sounded like a man faking a girly voice.
"Mai-chan?" Confusion suited this new, different version of Gai. It looked cute on her. Kakashi cleared his throat.
"I can't call you Gai-kun, can I? Anyway, just let me do the talking." He grabbed Gai's arm and pulled him along. "Come on, sister."
Kakashi himself had gone for long hair – as opposed to Gai who sported a chin-length bob not unlike Shizune's – an eye patch over the Sharingan, complete with the sob-story to justify it, and a worn silk scarf to cover the lower half of his face. He was definitely prettier than Gai – and the fact that he cared enough to notice probably proved that he'd been Gai's rival for too long – and, more importantly, he was much better at acting the part.
As soon as the massive wooden door was opened and two women in matching mofuku appeared before them, Kakashi launched into the elaborate story of Mai's and Kaminari's very sad lives – Mai's parents had passed away soon after she was born, which led to her being adopted and raised by Kaminari's parents, until, one fateful night, their parents' farm was raided by missing nin; that night Kaminari lost her eye, Mai lost her voice and they both lost their loving parents, and ever since then Mai and Kaminari, who had nothing but each other, had been forced to live like vagrants, that was, until they came to the village and heard about the kind daughters of Mujou.
At the end of the story, Kakashi managed to squeeze out a few tears, an effort that went completely unnoticed since both women were too busy staring in a sort of fascinated horror at Gai's face, which was threatening to drown them all in a flood of tears and snot.
They were led to the high priestess, a kindly elderly lady with grey hair and surprisingly sharp eyes, who in turn led them deeper into the vaguely temple-like building.
"We don't have much, but what we have we are more than willing to share with you. It is the way of Mujou-sama," she said, stopping in front of a plain wooden door. "You'll have to follow our rules, of course, but there'll be time for that talk tomorrow. You should rest now; you've been through so much already."
Gai took that as his cue to snuffle noisily.
"Anyway," she continued as if she hadn't heard, "I hope you don't mind having to share a bed." And with that she opened the door, revealing a tiny room furnished with a chair, a desk and one ridiculously narrow bed, the sight of which triggered a flash of him and Gai in their current forms lying under the covers, pressed against each other. Kakashi felt a treacherous trickling sensation in his nose.
This was going to be a long mission.
end.
